She pulled thezigto a stop in front of the building. Rasker stopped her before she could get out.
“Are you okay?” A crease bisected his pinched brows. “You seem jumpy.”
“I’m fine,” she said quickly. “Just been so busy. You know.”
His gaze didn’t leave hers. “Sure.”
She slipped from thezig, grabbed her bucket, and headed for the door with Rasker following. The building itself was nothing, just a narrow entry with a flat ceiling and a basic panel on the wall. But past the entry, the floor dropped away, and Holly stopped walking.
A long walkway stretched before them, railed on both sides, and below it lay the pools.
She had not expected this. Nothing about the schematic, or what Alyce had described, had prepared her for pools made fromnatural formations of rock, organic scoops from the stone that were filled with still and perfectly clear water. Soft blue-white and pale gold light glowed from flat, round fixtures embedded in the walls and ceiling, and from smaller ones set into the sides of the pools themselves. The effect was something between a deep cave and a well-appointed room. The ceiling curved down low on one side and opened up on the other, and the light was just enough to see by without being harsh. It asked nothing of your eyes.
The smell reached her then. Salt and stone and deep, clean minerals. “Oh,” she said quietly. “This isn’t what I expected from a plumbing station.”
“Same,” Rasker said, and his voice was different. Softer.
Holly stood there for a moment longer than was strictly professional. She felt like she did as a child, watching the dark forest through the windows.
She shook herself and shifted the tool bucket to her other hand. “Right. The water system is through there.” She gestured toward the far end of the walkway, where a fabricated wall divided the natural stone from a more utilitarian space beyond. “Feel free to hang out here.” The light made his features practically glow, highlighting his cheekbones and the firm cut of his lips. “I’m going to find out what’s going on back there.”
“Do you think you can fix the rain?”
“Maybe. The distribution lines branch off from there.” She started moving. “I think there’s a blockage somewhere in the connection to the square. I need to find it.”
They walked the length of the pool chamber side by side, footsteps quiet on the walkway, and Holly kept her attention forward. The light shifted as they moved, and the water in the pools was so still it looked like poured glass.
“You pursued a career in engineering,” Rasker said, not quite a question, as they walked. “You could have chosen not to workat all. Most humans on Earth can now, yes? The automated systems provide.”
“Most things, yes,” she said. “The old monetary system collapsed hundreds of years ago, when automation replaced most jobs.”
“So why work?”
It was a good question, and one every single employer asked of every single applicant. It had been a long time since she’d been asked this. “I like reinventing things. Fixing them and making them into something more. And I wanted to be very,verygood at it. Sol-Arc Industries’ business is upgrading facilities, making them more efficient, or changing their purpose from one thing to another. Full redesigns, but made better.” Ugh, that was actually one of their sales lines. She glanced at him. “Not for thenits. The work was always more interesting than what thenitscould buy.” She paused. “I thought that was ambition. Now I’m starting to think ambition was just the word I used before I knew what I actually wanted.”
“Whatdoyou want, then?”
She considered the question before answering. “Purpose, maybe? To matter. But I—I think I was chasing it in the wrong direction.” She thought of Sol-Arc. Of the years of careful neutrality, the standardized wardrobe, the stripped-down version of herself she had settled for before Beenan demanded more. “I’m beginning to think my ambition caused me to mistake prestige for purpose. They can look a lot alike from the outside.”
“There is nothing wrong with ambition,” he said. “Nothing would get done without it.”
“Sure, as long as you don’t lose yourself in it, and that’s the whole trick, isn’t it?”she mused. “Figuring out which parts of yourself to lose and which to keep. What brought you here? Prestige or purpose?”
Rasker shrugged. “Prestige, for sure. And I have never denied my own ambition.”
She hadn’t expected such plain honesty from him. “So you do this…” She swept a hand to encompass the outpost and his designs on acquiring it for his clients. “For thenits?”
“Yes.” He nodded, but his gaze moved over the water. “The ‘old monetary system’ that collapsed on Earth is still operating on Nakri.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” But it made sense.
“Well, I’d like to retire one day—noton Nakri,” he specified. “Someplace quiet and less hectic. Maybe then, I’ll have time to find my purpose.”
She followed his gaze over the still pools and the soft light. This place could make people content with less than they thought they needed. She had a sudden, clear image of herself here, years from now, running the day-to-day of Moone’s Landing with no crises and no Sol-Arc and no one telling her how to look and what devices to embed in her brain. It was a startling image. It did not feel ridiculous. It felt wonderful.
Yes, she had been getting purpose wrong for a long time.
Holly ducked through a low archway into the plumbing space and instantly, the tool bucket became heavier. This part of the underground was everything the pool chamber was not: functional, ugly, and honestly, a bit overwhelming. Rasker followed her, but she waved him off. “I invited you here to enjoy the water, which sounded like the kind you described from your home. Not to poke around in the water system.” She smiled. “You would be absolutely no help, anyway.”
