Downtime Read Online Free PDF

down to the roots.
    In
sudden glee, she raised her brows. Those were tinged with slate-gray. “I never
knew you admitted it, not even to yourself. I thought I would have to pull rank
to get the respect I deserve from Jason D’Estelle.” She fingered the gold
worlds on her collar, obviously proud of them.
    Jason
frowned and resisted the temptation to touch the silver moons on his own
collar. She hadn’t overlooked seeing them. Not Calla. Ten years ago, or thirty
as she calculated it, she probably would not have believed he was capable of
achieving them. And maybe he wouldn’t have if he had stayed in the Decemvirate’s
Praetorian service as she had. But he was smart enough to know his limitations,
even if she did not. He had gone into the one service where his rustic
beginnings did not matter, and had come by his rank honestly, though not
without pain. Jason had always understood the entitlements of silver moons and
gold worlds, had always wanted them for himself. He wore the silver with pride.
He spoke softly, exercising a control she would know he once did not have when
she was deliberately goading him. “It’s a delicate situation, isn’t it? You
outrank me, yet I’m the Ranger-Governor of Mutare. You’re subject to all the
regulations I have established, and so are your people.”
    “Governor
of a hundred bushwhackers on an outback, downtime planet like . . .
” Calla’s smile faded when she saw his face. “What’s this sudden concern with
rank? It’s not new for me to outrank you. You were always getting busted for
one reason or another . . . fighting, insubordination, fiscal
irresponsibility.”
    She
had listened to the crier broadcast. He felt disadvantaged. “Ten years is not
sudden,” he said. “I thought, perhaps, some clarification of how I perceive the
situation would be helpful.”
    “Yes,”
she said, “it would be — if you would say it straight out. Are you trying to
tell me that I should not have chewed out the smartass on the comm this
afternoon?”
    He
was too taken aback to ask what smartass. He saw all the old signs of her
anger, the unflinching stare and thinning lips, signs that only he was privy to
ten years ago, for she never showed them in public. What was he to her now? Was
her anger still just between them? Or in thirty years had she found some value
in public anger and learned to exploit it?
    “I
wanted a damn weather report,” she said, still glaring, “and he tells me the
danae have gone home. What the hell kind of answer is that when I’ve got forty
people outdoors wearing stellerators and I can see clouds with lightning
streaks on the horizon?”
    “He
gave you the same answer he would have given me,” Jason said sharply. His
careful control was gone, his own anger rising because he hadn’t known she’d
dressed down one of his people and didn’t like it that she had. “This post is
only three years old. Rangers don’t get the kind of support Praetorian guards
do, no weather satellites for instance. Today we knew there were spiral cloud
bands off the coast of Mer Sal because your Belden
Traveler told us they were there, but it doesn’t mean a hell of a lot
because there’s no storm pattern data in the plotter’s jelly beans. We couldn’t
tell which way the storm would go any more than you could. We do know that the
danae seem to have a feel for the weather. They don’t like to be out in the
rain. We keep a relay camera up in the terrace garden where the danae come to
feed. If it’s daytime and there are no danae, chances are good that it’s going
to rain.”
    “Danae
are one of the indigenes, right? I’d forgotten.” She seemed mollified by his
explanation, her anger gone. “You mentioned them in your reports. Had you said
anything about their connection with the rain, or didn’t I read the right one?”
    Jason’s
anger, as always, did not cool as quickly and now he felt slighted, as well.
Had their positions been reversed, he would have