On the third day after the irrigation system breaks down, the house's internal temperature controls — those that remain — flicker, then short out, then stay off. It isn't so bad until mid-morning, when the waxing sunlight seems to pool in every nook and cranny.
By noon, Ilana thinks she could probably bake bread outside on one of the hot desert rocks.
By mid-afternoon, she's almost convinced she's melting. How did her ancestors work in this kind of heat? If it were proper, if she weren't potentially surrounded by ger maharim, she would rip the veils from her face and hair. But it isn't proper, and the farmhold hosts far too many men who have no right to see all of her.
So instead she works. And underneath the veils, she sweats.
The engineer arrives before sun-up. She sees a beaten-looking speeder by the cistern, leaned up against the only spot that has a chance of staying shady all day.
Her father is kind enough to send the engineer to the kitchen first.
His markings — clan and creed; he's an oldest or only son — are harsh, unforgiving. But his eyes and voice are soft. His lips curve gently upward when he takes the second canteen from the counter.
Ilana smiles under her veil. Before he can turn to the door, she asks, "Did you bring a lunch?"
"I…? Yes. Yes, of course. Shouldn't I have?" He looks faintly confused, like her asking has thrown him off balance, and maybe what he thought was good manners and professional behavior is an insult.
Telling him it is when she just wants to get to know him seems cruel. Like kicking a baby chicken-cow.
She feels her heartbeat pick up as she searches for a way. Words have never come so slowly to her before. Why can't she — aha!
"City food," she says, careful to sound just a touch dismissive. Never mind that her father's farm helps supply the city. "When we eat, I'll bring you something good."
That makes his eyes widen. He looks around the room, but there's no help to be found. Her cousins are all pretending disinterest. So, with an awkward, stammered, "If you think it's proper," he half-flees to the door.
Before he goes, though, he turns and smiles at her. The expression lightens his face, makes his cheekbones beautiful instead of merely sharp, softens his markings. The warmth that touches his eyes in the wake of the smile is more beautiful even than his face.
"Thank you," he says.
Ilana finds him scowling and elbow-deep in the mechanical workings of the irrigation system. Three or four diagnostic scanners hang from his belt. The long angles of his markings, the dark smudges around his eyes, the sharpness of his face all combine to make him look ferocious.
She almost doesn't approach, but her brother takes his lunch from the basket and collapses in the shade of one of the water-bearers.
"Are you going to make me beg? You are, aren't you. Fine. I'll beg. Please,please reset pump drive nineteen."
Perhaps it's a scowl of concentration?
So Ilana asks: "Should I come back later?"
His head jerks up. He smiles at her, the quick, fleeting smile of someone who's spotted a friend, then looks down at the panel. He withdraws his hands — which drip grease, thick and gray-black — and smiles again.
"No, no. I'm sorry if I… anyway, no, it's fine. All I can do now is wait." The smile turns a little rueful, a little confiding. "I just feel better if I have my hands on the gears."
It does make a sort of sense. She looks at the hands in question. Even covered in grease and sloggy water, they're slim, nimble-looking.
Ilana nods and holds out a basket. "I have more water for your canteens. And a wash rag, if you want to —"
He takes the rag gratefully. He mops his hands with the rag, then rolls one sleeve back down his arm to swipe at his forehead.
"I'm Ilana," she says.
"Razer."
They eat together. He makes her laugh, and smiles when he does.
"So what's wrong with the water-bearers?"
"Pump nineteen is overactive, wasting water, which sets off the system auto-shutdown," Razer says. "But it looks like a virus is affecting the entire operating system and spread to the house. I've re-coded what I could and done a hard reboot."
"A virus?"
"People have been programming and reprogramming this OS for years, and nobody's commented any of their changes or bugfixes. Complete tangled mess of code. But I'm pretty sure the if/then conditional in line thirty-three nineteen wasn't written to loop, and that the water-level-check executable wasn't written in without a referrent."
He doesn't pause to explain anything. Ilana might be annoyed at the near-gibberish, but it's… nice. Not to be talked down to.
"Who would want to infect a farm with a virus?"
Razer looks at her. His lips turn down. The three lines on his chin make him look even sadder.
They both watch a plane fly overhead. Ilana doesn't bother trying to identify it by markings or colors. The warlords do have a half-coherent system of figuring out who is who, but they steal each other's planes as often as they steal each other's territories.
When Razer leaves, her father catches her eye, then turns to him and says that he should come back in a couple of weeks. Just to make sure the OS is safe.
When Razer comes back, he has a bolt of fabric for her. It's a pretty enough blue, but someone embroidered the borders with a delicate white and gold bird-and-sun pattern. She thanks him graciously.
Later, she and her mother measure it. It's just long enough, so she folds a corner, and sews a hem.
The next time he visits — two weeks later, this time to check their systems and stay for dinner — she wears it to cover her hair.
Two weeks later, and Razer doesn't pretend he's there to check on the irrigation system. He does check it before he goes. But he spends most of his time with her.
"Ilana, the problem is the warlords," he says and points to one of the low-flying planes that are always cris-crossing the sky.
"The problem," she retorts, "is nobody has anything. We all look to a warlord to solve our problems."
"So teach people otherwise," Razer says. "What does that change? Tell a warlord to get off your land, and what does he do?"
But he's wrong, she can see that he's wrong. And she tells him so: "Armies can't solve this. Everytime one army loses, the victor rolls in. It's endless. We have to try a different angle."
"We need a militia. Something to make them stay away."
"If we choose that path, how close will we come to destroying ourselves? The war won't be able to end until all the warlords are dead and their armies broken. The system is what's broken, not just the warlords."
"And you think the warlords will let us fix the system? It's not in their interests. They'll destroy any city that tries, and steal whatever they don't burn."
It's a disagreement she can live with, and he is not unkind about it. He is by nature a builder, a fixer, not a destroyer.
Notes:
Title from Mirah's, "The Dogs Of B.A."
Certain words are altered Arabic.