Pennsylvania Reclamation Project, Oakmont–Verona–Plum
May 21, 2440, 7:12 AM
Jelk Carr had checked the handover twice before Jeff Whetherall arrived with coffee.
“You leaving me instructions or writing a book?”
“Instructions. A book would require an explanation of why you keep interfering with my equipment.”
“I improve its recreational applications.”
Jelk accepted the cup.
Across the display, several drone groups moved over the eastern survey area. One had paused above a fresh subsidence, while another followed the exposed course of a spring through the fractured limestone.
The hunting flights had occupied only a small part of Jelk’s work. Most of his attention went to keeping the assigned fleets useful, moving equipment between tasks and recognizing when a machine’s report required someone to look beyond the immediate reading.
He enlarged the subsidence.
“This group stays here until the rover finishes. The surface failure is small. The cavity underneath may not be.”
Jeff leaned closer.
“That where the water disappeared yesterday?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’d keep looking.”
“I intend to.”
Jelk made another entry in the handover.
Jeff watched him for a moment.
“You’ve still got all day.”
“I know.”
“And a shuttle tonight.”
“I know that, too.”
Jelk’s eyes moved to a small family picture beside the survey display.
His oldest daughter was holding the baby with an expression of fierce responsibility. The three-year-old had managed to put most of her face into the foreground.
Jeff smiled.
“Your wife send that?”
“Last night.”
“How’s her training?”
“English is progressing. She says interface training is easier.”
“Less arguing with the equipment?”
“Apparently the equipment is more consistent.”
Kdas Tall had worked in retail before they left V’ren. Now she spent part of her days aboard the Kalnareth learning English and qualifying for work she had never previously expected to attempt.
Their daughters were six, three and six months old.
Jelk had begun counting the hours until departure before breakfast.
He could speak to Kdas, see her, hear the children interrupt. None of it settled the increasingly persistent need to be near his bondmate.
“Two days,” Jeff said.
“Then I bring them back.”
“Whole family?”
“All four.”
Jeff nodded toward the construction display.
“Better warn the people building your house.”
“They have already been warned.”
8:36 AM
S’rethi K’var stood beside the test channel while a technician checked the level at its outlet.
The small Wonder Foam pond had held through another night. Water moved around the corrected bend, spread briefly across a shallow shelf and passed through the overflow without cutting into the surrounding rubble.
A pale deposit had begun forming where the spring first entered.
S’rethi crouched to examine it.
“Sample that separately.”
The technician marked the location.
“Same water series?”
“Yes. Keep the deposit associated with this inlet.”
A few meters away, the worker carrying the backpack sprayer waited beside a short run of forms.
D’vann K’var looked from the outlet to the proposed extension.
“How much farther?”
“Only to that marker,” S’rethi said. “I want another day of flow measurements before we take it downhill.”
“The landscaping people will be disappointed.”
“They can be disappointed on stable ground.”
He smiled and signaled the sprayer operator.
The new section was small enough to place by hand. The worker applied the selected mixture between the forms, slowing at the transition where the channel widened. Foam expanded into the uneven limestone beneath it and settled within the containment.
Beyond the test area, the scale changed abruptly.
Placement equipment moved along the first sitio’s prepared sections. Survey markers established the street datum above the lower base reserved for the two-level apartment garages. Other machines worked outward through the foundation grid.
The second and third sitios remained separated from it by expanses of broken limestone.
Five days earlier, the bombardment had stripped the ridges and exposed the ground they were now trying to understand. Filling the mine workings had begun changing the movement of groundwater almost immediately.
Some springs had diminished. Others continued with little variation.
S’rethi was unwilling to promise anyone a permanent waterfall on the strength of an attractive afternoon.
D’vann checked the channel alignment once more.
“Can I tell them this one is behaving?”
“You can tell them it behaved last night.”
“I shall try to convey your enthusiasm.”
10:18 AM
Kate Red Hawk was checking an installation list when Ella Murphy stopped beside her.
“Did you see the latest citizenship discussion?”
“Which one?”
“The same one. Two hundred and nineteen people.”
Kate kept reading.
“What about them?”
“I still think people have a right to ask why.”
“They can ask.”
Ella waited for more.
Kate marked an item and looked up.
“Was there something you needed for the electrical schedule?”
“I’m talking about citizenship.”
“I noticed.”
Ella folded her arms.
“My great-grandmothers were Boone Marmaduke, Littleton, Hart and Whetherall. My mother was a Chakrobarty.”
“You told me.”
“That ought to mean something.”
Kate rested the tablet against her thigh.
“What do you think it ought to get you?”
“Recognition, for a start.”
“From whom?”
“From the man who just sponsored more than two hundred strangers.”
A worker approaching with a cable-routing question slowed, glanced between them and decided to wait.
Kate saw him.
“Did you speak to anyone about sponsoring you?”
Ella’s mouth tightened.
“That isn’t the point.”
“It was how I became a citizen.”
“You didn’t grow up there.”
“No.”
Kate had reached the Freehold as a teenager. She did not need Ella to remind her.
“The people who sponsored me knew where I came from.”
“That’s different.”
“Yes,” Kate said. “They knew me.”
She turned toward the waiting worker.
“Show me which run you mean.”
Ella remained long enough to make it clear she had not finished, then walked toward the operations huts.
11:47 AM
At the river shelf, clean water passed steadily from the reclamation equipment while another load of soil accumulated in the receiving container.
The incoming material was considerably less appealing.
River muck, camp waste and contaminated debris arrived through separate handling stages before entering the processing stream. Recoverable material was separated. Harmful constituents were gasified or vitrified as appropriate and retained for further shipboard processing.
The containers holding those residues were sealed and labeled.
Nothing about the operation depended on making the dangerous fraction disappear into the landscape.
The T-38 continued supplying power from its containerized position above the river. Its present placement served the camp and the reclamation operation; it could be moved when the permanent arrangement was settled.
R’alen K’var reviewed the output record with the operator.
“How much is already assigned?”
The operator indicated the soil container.
“This batch is reserved for the planting trials. The next two go to the landscaping stockpile.”
“Keep the batches separate until the test results are attached.”
“They are.”
R’alen checked the entries, then acknowledged them.
Ella arrived as he closed the record.
“Have you heard who’s coming back with Carr?”
“His family.”
“I know that. His bondmate is training on the ship, isn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“Does she know Tell Rarz?”
R’alen looked at her.
“I haven’t asked.”
“She’s involved with my apartment manager.”
“Then perhaps you should ask your apartment manager.”
“Eric has children. People seem to forget that when they’re discussing how wonderful all these new couples are.”
The operator continued working.
R’alen returned the display to its regular status page.
“Was there an electrical issue?”
“No. I was making conversation.”
He waited.
Ella glanced at the sealed residue containers.
“Well, you’re clearly busy.”
“Yes,” he said.
1:26 PM
The latest notice from Leta arrived while D’vann was reviewing the first residential release areas.
He read it, then sent it to S’rethi and R’alen.
Kate arrived a few minutes later.
“They’ve settled which teams they can transfer?”
“They have identified them. The final numbers and transport allocation will follow.”
She took the offered display.
The qualifications were more useful than a list of available bodies.
“These people have done the kitchens.”
“And the service installations,” D’vann said. “Several have worked through complete houses.”
Kate enlarged the model designation.
“That’s the one.”
Leta had begun printing three candidate designs on May 17. By the following day, the fit-out results had reduced the choice to one.
The selected house had been easier to finish consistently. Its advantages were in the work that came after the structure: access to service routes, the sequence of installations and the ability of several trades to work without continually displacing one another.
Move-in-ready homes had opened there yesterday.
Kate studied the incoming crew assignments.
“Put an experienced installer with each of our first teams. Don’t keep all their knowledge in one block.”
D’vann nodded.
“That was my intention.”
“And let them tell us what changed during the first houses. The drawings won’t tell us every reason they moved an operation forward or back.”
R’alen opened the local sequence beside the transfer notice.
“I’ll request their completion notes.”
“Ask for the people’s notes, too,” Kate said. “Whatever they actually used while working.”
Outside, an automated carrier passed with another set of containment forms.
S’rethi joined them and examined the proposed starting areas.
“I can release this section after the next verification pass. That one stays held.”
D’vann followed her finger.
“The additional sounding?”
“And the water movement beneath it.”
He shifted the first team allocation.
“Then they start here.”
The change took less than a minute.
3:54 PM
Jelk had finished the fleet handover when Ella found him beside the operations entrance.
“Going back to Missouri?”
“Tonight.”
“To see your bondmate?”
“Yes.”
“You must be looking forward to it.”
“I am.”
For a moment, the conversation seemed likely to remain pleasant.
Then Ella said, “You probably hear more about what goes on aboard than we do.”
Jelk closed his case.
“Sometimes.”
“What do people make of Matt and L’tani?”
He looked at her without answering.
“I’m only asking because everyone’s seen the T’mari pictures.”
“You asked me about L’tani.”
“Well, yes.”
“I have nothing to tell you about her.”
“Nothing you know, or nothing you’ll say?”
Jelk lifted the case.
“I need to confirm my departure.”
He went inside.
Ella watched the door close, then turned toward the maintenance area.
Kate was standing beside a workbench.
“Everybody gets terribly careful when her name comes up.”
Kate set down the fitting she was examining.
“Jelk is trying to get home to his wife.”
“I wished him a pleasant visit.”
“Then let him have one.”
5:42 PM
Jeff found Jelk at the landing schedule display.
“Still leaving?”
“Yes.”
“Good. You’ve looked at that enough.”
“My transport assignment changed.”
“Did the destination change?”
“No.”
“Then you’re ahead of most freight.”
Jelk glanced toward the serving area, where preparations for supper had begun.
“What did you bring back?”
“Forest bison.”
“Another successful recreational application?”
“Entirely respectable hunting.”
“Did Kate agree?”
“Kate was occupied.”
“That sounds important.”
Jeff handed him a small packet containing the portions set aside for transport.
“For Kdas. If she wants to know what you’ve been doing with your evenings.”
Jelk accepted it carefully.
“She may already have seen the retrieval picture.”
“The good one?”
“The one with both of us hanging from the strap.”
Jeff grinned.
“They’re all good.”
Across the camp, someone called that the first roast was ready to carve.
Jelk checked the departure time once more, then put the display away and followed Jeff toward supper.
