Respirators back on, Cleve and I head down the hillside into the network node’s valley once again. In the daylight, we can see the thick soup of bluish-gray miasma pooling below us. Cleve carries Cor’s fungicide getup with the sprayer set to blow air, but I stop him before he leads us into the fog. Last night Cleve asked if I could clear miasma; it’s time for me to try. I step in front of him and walk forward. I feel a little silly, but I reach my arms out toward the mist and then sweep them to the sides, as though I could bat aside the miasma with them. Dr. Citali will be able to say for sure what is going on, but I figure this must have something to do with pheromones or spores or however plants and fungus communicate among themselves. At any rate, the physical gesture helps me set my intention and visualize achieving it.
The fog rolls back; I haven’t destroyed any spores, only shifted them. The cleared path is the width of a small room, granting us plenty of room to breathe—at least for as long as I concentrate on pushing. “Nice!” Cleve murmurs behind me. I turn, and Cleve gives me a nod of approval. “Seems useful,” he says, high praise from the man, indeed. I grin in response. Can I clear miasma? It seems I can.
We slowly make our way forward, Cleve keeping close to me as the miasma rolls back in to fill our wake. In the daylight and with the air clear around us, last night’s activities are painfully obvious in the muddy ground. There are far too many bootprints for us to do anything about. “Maybe stuff will grow back,” Cleve mutters, with unusual optimism.
Once we get near the network node hut, I let Cleve handle matters. I need to keep my focus on holding the miasma back away from the work zone. He plugs in the battery Cor gave him and then since we’ve got to wait anyway, decides to poke around. I’ve already explained the roof access, so he knows how to get inside. I cringe when he accidentally knocks one of the roof tiles off on his way up. It falls to the ground and shatters into several pieces. There will be no hiding that.
After a few moments, Cleve opens the door from the inside. He’s got a spare battery under one arm and a toolkit in hand. He glances over at the broken tile pieces. “Maybe it will look like something hit the roof, rather than like somebody broke in,” he suggests.
“We should drop the pieces inside, then,” I tell him. “If something hit the roof, that’s where they would have fallen.”
“Good point.” He looks around nearby for a rock or large mushroom branch that could account for such damage, but the area is pretty well cleared. When he doesn’t find one, I take over the operation. I feel a bit like I’m doing that plate-spinning trick in old circus acts. It’s taxing, certainly, but I can keep the miasma at bay while doing something else if I’m slow and deliberate. I scoop up the pieces of chitinous tile and head inside to evaluate the hole above me. I place the shards where they would have fallen if a heavy bird—or whatever flying life there is on Chiron—had smacked into the roof. It looks believable to me.
Before I leave the network node, I tap the computer to wake it up. I’m not so big into computers myself, but it’s been around twelve hours since Hypercor’s hack, and I want to see what’s showing on the monitors as a result. The status display board has a bunch of labels that don’t individually mean much to me, but they clearly represent buildings and factories in various domes. One of them is flashing red. I presume that was Dr. Citali’s target. I jot down the strange designator in my sketchbook so I can let her know the results. Then I pull the door closed behind me as I step back outside into the eerily quiet landscape.
Cleve and I wait out the rest of the half hour. Part of me is constantly monitoring the ebb and flow of the miasma, so there’s no opportunity for me to be bored. Cleve inventories the contents of the robot repair kit. It contains a circuit diagram that Cor might find helpful, which is a nice bonus find here. Aside from that small project, Cleve takes the silence and inactivity in stride. I can picture him in a hunting blind somewhere, waiting hours for the right duck to come by.
Finally, the battery is fully charged. Cleve unplugs it and puts it in his backpack along with the spare. “How you feeling?” he asks me.
“I’m fine,” I tell him. He looks straight back at me, brow furrowed in its constant crinkle of concern, and I insist, “I’m not just saying that. I am fine. If I am not fine, I will let you know.” And not by passing out. To make my point, I slip my cane into the loops of my satchel strap and stride confidently out of there on my two legs alone.