Ben Dover's Arc

Chapter 73 of 150

The seam went quiet. Ben stayed pressed against the rock beside the hidden crate. His sister was somewhere up the west scree with three men behind her. The woman with the courier animal was pulling the other three east. He had bought minutes, maybe a quarter hour. Then the men would climb back down and start sweeping the middle again. He could not carry the crate alone. He could not leave it. He needed a second pair of hands before the first horn sounded. A scrape came from above. Not a boot. Lighter. Ben flattened. A girl dropped down into the seam in a heap of elbows and leather. She landed hard, rolled once, and stood up grinning. Red hair under cracked goggles. A flight jacket two sizes too big. She saw him and did not startle. "You're the man with the box," she said. "I saw the lynx go up. Also the blue thing go down. I was on the ridge. I was trying to jump off it." Ben stared at her. "Trying to what." "Fly. I got three inches once. I'm working up." She flatly added, "Today I got zero. I'm Millie." He did not have time to sort her. He had time to use her. "Can you lift." "I can lift." He pulled the boughs away. The crate sat where he had wedged it, dark and silent under the flat stone. He tested the seams with his thumb. The oiled leather patch held. The sap seal held. For now. "Front end," Ben said. "On three. Quiet feet. Down the seam west, not up. Away from my sister." Millie set her hands under the lip without asking why. She was smaller than she looked in the jacket, but she braced her legs like someone who had lifted awkward things before. They pulled the crate free. It cleared the fold without knocking. They moved. Ben led. Millie followed at the front end, walking backward, watching his feet. The seam bent south and opened into a shelf of loose scree. Ben stopped at the lip. Below them, past a drop of twenty feet, the pines began. Cover. Real cover. "Rope?" Millie whispered. "No rope." She looked at the drop, then at him. "I can lower one end from up here while you climb down with the other. Then you catch. I jump after." "You'll break your leg." "I've been practicing landings for four years." She shrugged. "Sort of." A horn blew. East. Then a second, further east. The woman was still pulling them. He had one shot. Ben went over the lip. Millie fed the crate down, hand under hand, until he took its weight against his chest. He set it in the scree. She dropped after, hit rolling, came up limping but upright. They were off the seam. The crate was moving. He was not alone.