The Year's Best Science Fiction, Volume 29

had it. Thirty seconds later she was pushing it, sneaking the speed bar up, looking for places where she could make the diggler skip over rocks.

“I’d go easy on that throttle,” Milaba said. “The battery life is eight hours; That’s why we ride the scoopline up and down again. You don’t want to get stuck up here with night coming down, no traction and no heat.”

Tash eased the stick back but not before the diggler hit the small boulder at which she had discreetly aimed and bounced all four wheels in the air. Milaba smiled that morning-sun smile. Then shoulder by shoulder they stood at the controls and rode up into the orange valley. The land rose up on either side, higher as they drove deeper, kilometres high. They felt like oppression to Tash, shouldering close and ominous, their heights breathless and haunted with dark things that lived in the sky. At the same time she felt hideously small and exposed in the fragile glass ornament of the diggler. The wind was rising, she could feel the diggler shake on its suspension, hear the shriek and moan through the cables. The controls fought her but she pushed the little bubble deeper and deeper into Windrush Valley. When her forearms arched and the sinews on her neck stood out from fighting the atmosphere of Mars pouring through this two-kilometre wide notch in Mt. Incredible, Milaba leaned over and tapped a preprogrammed course into the computer.

“Suit up,” she said. “We’ll be there in ten minutes.”

The tokamak station was a wind-scoured blister of construction plastic hunkering between a boulder field and a stretch of polished olivine. It was only when the diggler slowed to a stop and fired sand anchors that Tash realised that it was near and smaller than she had thought. It was not a distant vast city, the power plant was only slightly higher than the diggler’s mammoth wheels. The wind rotor, spinning like it would suddenly leap from its pylon and spin madly away through the upper air, was no bigger than her outstretched hands.

“Mask sealed?”

Tash ran her fingers around the join with her psuit hood and gave In-Aunt Milaba two thumbs up. “I’m dee- peeing the diggler.” There was a high-pitched shriek of air being vented into the tanks, a whistle that ebbed into silence as the pressure dropped to match the outside environment. The scribbled-over psuit felt tight and stuff. This was true eyeball-squelch altitude. Then Milaba popped the door and Tash followed her out and down the ladder on to the wild surface of Mars.

Gods and teeth, but the wind was brutal. Tash balled her fists and squared her shoulders and lowered her head to battle through it to the yellow and blue-chevronned tokamak station. She could feel the sand whipping across the skin of her psuit. She didn’t like to think of the semizoic skin abrading, cell by cell. She imagined it wailing in pain. A tap on the shoulder, Milaba gestured for her to hook her safety line on to the door winch. Then In-Aunt and In-Niece they punched through the big wind to the shelter of the tokamak shell. Out. Out in the world. Up high. If Tash kept walking into the wind she would pass through Windrush Valley and come to a place where the world curved away from her, not towards her. The desire to do it was unbearable. Out of the hole. All it would take would be one foot in front of another. They would take her all the way around the world and back again, to this place. The gale of possibility died. It was all, only, ever circles. Milaba tapped her again on the shoulder to remind her that there was work to be done here. Tash took the unitool and unscrewed the inspection hatch. Milaba plugged in her diagnosticators. She was glorious to watch at work, easy and absorbed. But it was long work and Tash’s attention wandered to the little meandering dust-dervishes that spun up into a small tornado for a few seconds, staggered down the valley and collapsed into swirling sand.

“Willie-willies,” Milaba said. “You want to be careful with those, they’re tricksy. As I thought.” She pointed at the readout. “A hard fail in the chip set.” She pulled a new blade out of her thigh pouch and slid it into the control unit. Lights flashed green. Inside its shielded dome the tokamak grumbled and woke up with a shiver that sent the dust rising from the ground. Tash watched the wind it whirl into a dozen dust-devils, dancing around each other. “Just going to check the supply line. You stay here.” She headed up the valley along the line of the power cable. The dust devils swirled in towards each other. They merged. They fused. They became one, a true dust demon.

“Looks all right!” In-Aunt Milaba called.

“Milaba, I don’t like the look…” The dust-demon spun towards Tash, then at the last moment veered away and tracked up the valley. “Milaba!”

Milaba hesitated. The hesitation was death. The dusty-demon bore down on her, she tried to throw herself away but it spun over her, lifted her, threw her hard and fast, smashed her down on to the smooth polished olivine. Tash saw her face-plate shatter in a spray of shards and water vapour. It was random, it was mad, it was a chance in a billion, it can’t happen, it was an affront to order and reason but it had and there Milaba lay on the hard olivine.

“Oh my gods oh my gods oh my gods!” For a moment Tash was paralysed, for a moment she did not know what to to, that she could do anything, that she must do something. Then she was running up the valley. The dust-demon veered towards Tash. Tash shrieked, then it staggered away, broke itself on the boulders and spun down to dust again. The psuit would seal automatically but In-Aunt Milaba had moments before her eyeballs froze. “Oh help help help help help,” Tash cried, her hands pressed to Milaba’s face, trying to will heat into it. Then she saw the red button on the safety line harness. She hit it and was almost jolted off her feet as the winch on the diggler reeled Milaba in. Tash hit the Emergency Channel. “This is Diggler Six this is Diggler Six in Windrush Valley. This is an emergency.” Of course it is. It’s the Emergency channel. She tried to calm her voice as the winch lifted the limp Milaba into the air. “We have a suit dee pee situation. We have a suit dee pee.”

“Hello Diggler Six. This is Diggory West Emergency Services. Please identify yourself.”

“This is Tash Gelem-Opunyo. It’s Milaba.”

“Tash. Control here.” Tash recognised Out-Uncle Yoyote’s voice. “Get back. Get back here. You should have enough power, we’ll send another diggler up the line to meet you, but you, darling, you have to do it. We can’t get to you in time. It’s up to you. Get back to us. It’s all you can do.”

Of course. It was. All she could do. No rescue swooping from the skies, in a world where nothing could fly. No speed-star scorching up the slope of the Big Dig in a world where the scoopline was the fastest means of transport. She was on her own.

It took all her strength to swing Milaba through the hatch into the diggler cab and seal the lock. Almost Tash popped her faceplate. Almost. She re-pressurised the diggler. Air-shriek built to a painful screech then stopped. But Milaba was so still, so cold. Her face was white with frost where her breath had frozen into her skin. It would never be the same again. Milaba knelt, turned her cheek to her In-Aunt’s lips. A whisper a sigh a suspicion a sussuration. She was breathing. But it was cold so cold death cold Mars cold in the diggler. Tash slapped the heater up to the maximum and jigged around the tiny cab. Condensation turned the windows opaque, then cleared. Back. She had to get back. Was there an auto-return programme? Where would she find it? Where would she even begin looking? Wasting precious instants, wasting precious instants. Tash took the control column, stamped on the pedal to release the anchors and engaged the traction motors. Turning was difficult. Turning was scary. Turning forced a small moan of fear when the wind got under the diggler and she felt the right side lift. If it went over here, they were both dead. This was not fun driving. There was no glee, no whee!; at every bounce Tash tensed and clenched, fearful that the diggler would roll over and shatter like an egg, smash an axle, any number of new terrors that only appear when your life depends on everything working perfectly. Come on come on come on. The battery gauge was dwindling with terrifying speed. This was outside. This was the horizoned world. Where was the scoopline? Surely it hadn’t been this far. Come on come on come on. A line on the sand. But so far. Power at twelve percent. Where had it gone what had she used it on? The heating blast? The emergency ree-pee? The burn on the winch? Call home. That would be sensible. That would be the act of a girl with a good head and better sense who did what she was told. But it would use power. Batteries at seven percent, but now she could see the scoopline, the laden buckets above, the empty buckets below, bucket after bucket after bucket. She drove the diggler on. Matching velocities with the scoopline was teeth-gritting, nerve-stretching work. Tash had to drop the diggler into the space between the buckets and hold exact speed. A push too fast would ride up on the preceding bucket. Too slow and she would be rear-ended by the bucket behind. And ever edging inwards, inwards, closer to the line as the batteries slid from green to red. Lights flashes. Tash threw the lever. The shackle engaged. Tash rolled away from the drive column to Milaba on the floor.

“Tash.” A whisper a sigh a suspicion a sussuration.

“It’s all right, it’s all right, don’t talk, we’re on scoopline.”

“Tash, are my eyes open?”

“Yes they are.”