The Low Places

In contrast to many animals, leporidae are incapable of sweating of any kind. Nearly all of their heat exhaustion and thermoregulation occurs through their ears.

Auburn wished he could sweat now.

Maintenance of Tethys' hydrocrackers was not comfortable work. Cramped (not for a frame, certainly, but absolutely for a jackalope of his size) and hot (an uncomfortable 45 degrees Celsius this far down from the solar collector) and dirty (a considerable amount of hydraulic fluid that was fine for Lyricians but not so much for the housing seals of the frames they'd tried to send down to do the work themselves), it was probably his least favorite job, but it was among the most critical of his functions – without the hydrocracker, there'd be no drinking water for Telemachus City, no heat for the few hundred thousand working and living and thriving there ("in no short part due to Guldsommar Generosity," he mused, disappointedly).

After rotating the collar of the upward feed line until it was wrench-tight, he squeezed through a set of return pipes and very carefully past a photovoltaic reflector path into a control area. Using his wrench for leverage, he grabbed the cutoff valve with two meaty peach-furred hands and twisted clockwise to open it. The equipment flushed to life, no drips or spurts or splashes.

Another job well done. He smiled and lifted his wristcom to his mouth.

"Hydrocontrol, maintenance complete. Wheels are turning."

"Copy clear, Auburn, looks like she's hummin'. Union break?"

"Nah, Cole, I think I'm done for the day. Don't think there are any other travelers left to process in my queue."

"Yeah, yeah, was hoping to pawn off some of these wastew–"

"Nnnnnnope."

"C'mon, man, the treatment plant could use an engineer like you helping them with their work orders!"

"The treatment plant could use any competent wrenchwringer!" Auburn shot back.

A bellicose laugh over the comms. "Yeah you're right about that. All right, sounds like we're wrapping up."

"Fire up the gravlift for me. Auburn out."

"Looky looky! Guldsommar's most talented waterboy," came a squeaky voice from the descender airlock.

Paying no mind to his engineering manager, Auburn peeled the coldsuit from his upper torso, sliding his huge arms out of the upper sleeves and shimmying the rest down his legs. He threw it into his locker, crumpled, and slid himself into a tank top and a pair of Guldsommar-issue work slacks. "What can I say, I know my niche. You should try it sometime, Oleg. Afraid you might crack a talon?" He pulled his button-down work shirt out and wiggled his way into it.

"Got more important things to do than knock pipes with grease-knuckles, wolpertinger," the osprey frowned as the jackalope buttoned his shirt. "You, ah, got a call while you were out. Someone at Aldyne's looking for you."

The locker door slammed shut. Auburn wasn't one much for visibly shaken, but he sure looked that way now. "I assume they left a message."

"They did, ja. I didn't pry. Just said they were with Stellar Agriscience, said to call back soon as possible. Asked if they could leave a message. I took one." The bird narrowed his eyes. "I thought you didn't know anyone in the inner rim."

The jackalope's silence spoke volumes. Oleg continued unabated. "Anyway," he said, whipping the transpariflex in his hand about a few times before setting it down on the bench behind Auburn's locker, "here you go. Hope is good, ja? Never good when those inner rim guys make long distance calls."

"No."

"Cole tells me you are off shift. Work went well I hope?"

"The gaskets on cracker 4 should be good to hold for decades to come," Auburn said, tugging his shoes on. "Pleased to say that the next fellow touches 'em won't be me unless something catastrophic happens. Took a look at the heads on the ice grinder while I was down there; might have a few sols left of life on 'em, though I'd replace them sooner than later."

"Ja, ja, okay, will bring it up at the next planning. Take off. Get some sleep. Cool off? Maybe return that phone call?"

Auburn rolled the flex up and put it in his bag, threw the bag over his shoulder, made towards the door.

"Maybe," he said, sliding it shut behind him without a second thought.

Auburn's home – a condo in the neighboring city of Hallusport – was described accurately as "spartan," though it left a lot of room for that word to do a lot of work. The concor walls were bare save for the hotel-style decorative lighting and on-lease artwork that came with the rental, the furniture and electronics were Guldsommar standard issue company stock for employee housing ("only the finest for our frontier founders" he'd scoffed once when the bed they'd provided him didn't fit his nearly seven-foot frame and promptly split in half after a week of use), the pantry stocked just enough for a couple meals in advance.

After sloughing off his work clothes and hitching up his boxer briefs, he fumbled around in his bag for the transpariflex. "Open message," he said to it, and the blank transparent sheet sprang to life with a full-page video message.

"Hey, longears. It's, uh, I know. I know it's been a while," the voice began, soft as cotton's caress and gentle as a mist settling in the branches of a forest vale. Auburn's ocean-blue eyes locked on to his correspondent's golden ones, his expression and state shifting from exhaustion to fondness, an ever-so-slight tremor in his hand as he held the flex.

"Sorry to send you a message from my work address, I uh, well, actually have a work-related thing I wanted to propose, but also, uh – oh yeah, I suppose I should start with the fact that I've got a new job now, with Aldyne – yeah, yeah, I know, I know, but it's arboriculture on a space station! I get to work with trees in space! I'm so excited. I can't believe it. I'm going to get a chance to make some world a better world, where people like us can live. A new home for Lyricians. We're going to be explorers! I'm going to be an explorer. A pioneer!"

The camera panned away. A blur of gray and mint-green turned to walls of white, configured in a drum, with rows and rows of tree plantings and trimmings and agricultural equipment, peppered throughout with lush patches of all shades of green. "Look! Look at this. Isn't this magnificent? It's so...it's so green! We did so much work to bring this back on Earth, and now it's here. I'm so happy. Doesn't this make you happy?"

It did.

The camera panned back, an image of mostly nose and eyes. He was never any good with technology, the jackalope laughed to no one in particular, echoing hard off the concor. "Auburn, I, uh, I know it's out of the blue for me to call you like this. We haven't spoken for years. I know that. I'm sorry." He paused. His expression turned. "I'm sorry. I wanted to ping you and let you know that, well, we need people for the venture. We need like-minded, future-forward folk. I need a good hydrologist and I need a good engineer, and I know you're both of those, and it'd be nice to see you again, e-even after all that, uh."

The feed went quiet briefly. "Anyway. I'm sorry. I know it's hard to catch transport out of the Jovians but if you can, please. If you can make it to Mars, meet me at New Mawsynram. Just...call first, okay? I'd love to hear from you. I'd love to see you." A chuckle, in spite of himself. "O-or, you know, call when you get here! I'm just in orbit. Bet I could see your hotel from here!"

The camera whipped around roughly again, his caller's reflection in a glass porthole disappearing as the camera pressed against it, revealing puffy white dots hovering gently above a broad swath of coniferous forest, the blackness of space forming a backdrop to the glittering emerald jewel amongst the sea of red iron dust. "Look! That's Holyoke Weld. I helped do that. Isn't it beautiful? Forests like this are going up all over Mars. Silviculture. We even have animals living in some of them now! Very carefully-timed introductions of species native to Earth. Good stewardship." A squeal. "It's fantastic! If we can replicate this level of growth elsewhere, well. Maybe we can build a place of our own."

In the background, someone called a name. The video careened back to a lens full of eyes and snout. "Oh, uh, that's me. Okay. I'm gonna hang up now, um, okay. Love you. Take care. Call me either way, okay? Okay. Bye for now. Look!" the message said, camera panning back to the lushness of the drum trees. "Look again! Okay. Bye for real now, okay, bye. Uh. End transmiss–"

The communique stopped and the close-out animation played across the flex.

End transmission.

///Shigo, Dr. Trellis R.
///Principal Exosilviculturist
///Aldyne Stellar Agrisciences
///Technologies for the Modern Frontier

[CARNET ENCRYPT // 33KAPPA-979 // MESSAGE VALIDATED]

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