Page 42 of Stealing Mercury
“Leave him to me. We take care of our own.”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, we’re back to that. I’m the outsider again.” She tried to move away, prepared for a good rant, but he gripped her hips and pinned her in place. He said nothing, but the frustration still etched into the brackets around his mouth made it clear he had no interest in the fight she offered. It hit her then, the deliberate way he gently squeezed her hips and the measured distance, or lack of, he’d kept between them.
Samantha stroked along that tense thigh muscle under her hand. Was he feeling unsure of her because she’d ignored his offers of early morning sex? A part of her wanted to soothe away his concerns, but her head reminded her some distance might be called for.
“So, what’s up with this low-sound?
“Our hearing is different from humans. We can hear in a wider range. Carn is hearing a low pulse.”
If quiet sounds made them ill, they’d all be sick all the time. “When you say low, you don’t mean not loud, do you?”
“No,” said Mercury. He tapped a spot near the bottom of his breastbone and growled out a bass note. “Low here.” His eyes shifted to Carn and back. “I think this one is like a small tap.” He lifted one hand to brush a line down her nose, then tapped three times lightly on her forehead. “Even a soft hit will cause pain over time.”
“And he’s been getting tapped since?”
“Since we arrived here.”
She turned to Carn. “Sorry to be talking about you like you aren’t here, butstars,you big lug, shouldn’t you go lay down or something?”
He laughed. Carn laughed. The rich sound eased the tension that had been thick moments before. Without a word, he got to his feet and headed toward the shelter.
Across the campsite, Lo leaned with his butt against a boulder—half sitting, half standing. He looked fine. Tightly wound, but that was Lo.
Samantha squeezed Mercury’s thigh. “But you and Lo are okay?”
He nodded. “We aren’t all alike in our abilities... or physiology.”
His voice trailed off as if the uniqueness of their genetic make-up was disconcerting or maybe just a reminder of their genetically engineered status.
Samantha wrapped her hands around his jaw. “Maybe I should call you snowflake.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“Well, I’ve only seen them once. They were beautiful. Millions of them. Ice crystals that fall from the sky. My father told me each flake of crystals is unique, but when you look at them together after they’ve fallen, they all make this uniform blanket of white that’s spectacular.”
Mercury kept silent, but his eyes had widened, and they sparkled with wonder as he met hers.
“I hope I get to see them some day.” Lo’s voice drifted across the campsite like a lazy stroke. She looked up to see him staring at her as if she were the snow.
“Me too.” She smiled hesitantly at him before turning back to Mercury. “I think you’re talking about what I’d call low frequency or infrasound. You can make those kinds of sounds too, can’t you?”
He frowned.
“Back on the ship, I detected a low frequency sound coming from the cargo-hold.”
The wonder left his eyes and his cheeks flushed. She didn’t bother to tell him that she’d somehow felt it. That part still didn’t make sense. Sure, she’d always been more sensitive to the vibrations ships made, but no way could she hear low frequency.
“Yes,” he said. We can make them, and Lo and I can hear them, but Carn’s abilities in that area are much stronger.”
“So, what are we going to do about this?”
“I don’t know,courra. If it’s part of this world, what can we do about it?”
He’d only ever been on Roma before and inside a habitation-dome, so it shouldn’t have surprised her that he might think something like this was natural. “I suppose a planet could have a low frequency background noise for some reason, but you said it’s a steady tap. That doesn’t sound natural to me.”
“You said the planet was uninhabited.” Small frown lines creased Mercury’s forehead and his thigh muscle tensed beneath her hand.
“As far as I could tell. I didn’t see any sign of civilization. But somebody terraformed this world. That means someone was here at some point, even if it was just the terraforming crews.” He seemed to be following and his frown lines had started to disappear, so she didn’t stop to explain terraforming. “It could be some old piece of machinery causing the noise.”
