“Come here!” Nora leaned back on her arms and waved Anna down. “Take a break for a minute.”
Anna settled down, ungraceful, her red face grimacing. “It’s good to take a rest. This baby is going crazy in me.”
“The baby?” The grass flattened as Tilly rolled over Nora’s legs. “Can I feel?”
“Yeah. You don’t even need to feel. Can probably see. She is kicking up a storm.”
Tilly pressed her fingers on Anna’s side anyway. The entire span of her abdomen was jiggling, causing Anna to shift and grimace.
Stiffly, Atlas lowered himself next to her, not fully resting back. His eyes focused on Anna’s belly, which continued to move even as she sat still humming a wordless tune.Twinkle Twinklehe recognized after a minute. He'd never heard thattune hummed in real life before, only in the movies. He listened intently.
He shifted, mixed emotions tugging at his neural mind. The only reason he was here was because Anna needed assistance. Right?
In front of them was the lake’s edge. Anna pointed ahead. “Do you swim in this? Like the ducks? Are there ducks?”
“No ducks right now. We don’t swim, but you could.” The ground warmed his legs. Simon was walking around the lakefront, but Atlas felt no need to explore further.
Nora was rubbing on her leg, the recently healed one. “Oh, that’s good. I’ve always wanted to try swimming.”
Anna rubbed on her side, where her belly moved with the baby’s kicks. “Why don’t you swim? I saw in old magazines people used to do that for fun.” She tapped at Nora’s arm. “At the beach, right?” Then she jiggled her stomach. “I’ve got my beach body right here.”
Nora snorted.
Atlas caught himself smiling.
It looked like Anna wanted to say more, but instead leaned back on the springy grass to watch Tilly drop rocks in the lake. The rocks made a gigantic splash; the lower gravity made the water rocket higher than it would have on Earth.
Nora picked up a rock and threw it in. A large splash followed. “This is all so wild.”
The way Anna moved certainly was wild. Atlas smiled at the word. It really wasn’t an insult anymore. Leaving the grassy shore, he filled a bottle in the lake and brought it to her. “You’re flushed. Here. All the water here is monitored and safe to drink.”
Anna had a frown on her face as she echoed, “Monitored?”
The hollow, uncertain feeling returned.Monitored and tracked.Atlas swallowed. “Yes.”
She balanced the bottle on her belly before drinking it down, then handed it back. “Thanks. Yeah. The air isn’t hot, but more sticky?”
His eyes snagged on her mouth as she wiped it. “The air is humid. Different from the desert you lived in before.”
“Well, we had monsoons. This feels like it did then.”
Atlas refilled the canteen before shaking the bottle in front of her. “More?”
“No.” She pushed it away with her hand. “Thank you, though.”
Anna leaned back on her arms, firmly in the shade of a tree behind her back. She tilted her head toward him. “Where is the place Stella said to go? I wasn’t really listening once the doors opened.”
He cleared his throat. “Our permanent settlement is back near where the ship landed. That is where previous humans once lived. We have quarters already set up.”
“Oh.” Anna picked at the grass. “Yeah, I saw a large building, but was too distracted by the forest.”
He watched her fingers move, long and delicate, before forcing his sensors away. “When you are done exploring here, we can go there. The others are expecting you.”
“Okay. They just sort of let us walk off.” Anna frowned. “I was kind of surprised we could.”
But Nora pointed overhead at a drone hovering in the distance. “That’s probably why they let us. They’re still watching.”
The dark green drone, two of them in fact, were hovering directly overhead. Anna shaded her eyes as she looked up. “Yeah. I didn’t even notice. So much to see here, it kind of blends in.”
