A Second Chance at Eden (38 page)

‘Ready for
me
to live in?’

‘Yes.’ Rousseau shifted unhappily from foot to foot as Eason stared at him.

‘Did she mention me by name?’

‘No. How could she? Listen, I made sure the toilet works. You don’t have to run back to the house every time.’

Eason reached out and grasped the front of Rousseau’s vest. ‘What did she say, exactly?’

Rousseau gave him a sickly grin, trying to prise his hand loose. Sweat broke out on his forehead when he found just how implacable that grip was.

‘She said there would be a man coming. She said it was the time and we should get ready. That’s all, I swear.’

Eason let go of his vest. ‘The time? What did she mean?’

‘I don’t know.’ Rousseau stroked the front of his vest down. ‘Tiarella, she’s not . . . you know. Since Vanstone’s death I have to make allowances. Half of what she says is mad. I wouldn’t worry about it.’

*

After Eason finished sweeping the chalet’s floor and washing fungal colonies from the walls he sat on the cot-style bed and opened his case. The three confinement spheres were still functioning perfectly. Of course, there were only two modes, working and not working. If one of them ever did suffer a glitch, he’d never know about it. That still didn’t stop him from checking. Their presence was heightening his sense of paranoia.

Tiarella worried him. How the hell could she know he would be coming out to Charmaine? Unless this was all some incredibly intricate trap. Which really was crazy. More than anyone he knew how the Party members operated. Sophistication was not part of the doctrine.

It was no good terrorizing Rousseau, that drunken fart didn’t know anything.

‘I brought you some cups and things,’ Althaea said. She was standing in the doorway, wearing a sleeveless mauve dress that had endured a lot of washes. A big box full of crockery was clutched to her chest. Her face crumpled into misery when he looked up, the heat of surprise in his eyes.

He closed the case calmly and loaded an access code into its lock. ‘It’s all right, come in. I’m just putting my things away.’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t think. I always walk straight in to Mother’s room.’

‘No trouble.’ He put the case into his flight bag and slipped the seal, then pushed the whole bundle under the bed.

‘I knew Ross would never think to bring anything like this for you,’ she said as she began placing the dishes and cups on a shelf above the sink. ‘He doesn’t even know how to wash up. I can bring some coffee beans over later. We still dry our own. They taste nice. Oh, you’ll need a kettle, won’t you. Is the electricity on here?’

He reached out and touched her long bare arm. ‘Leave that. Why don’t you show me round the island?’

‘Yes,’ she stammered. ‘All right.’

Charmaine’s central lagoon was a circle seven hundred metres across, with a broad beach of fine pink sand running the whole way round. Eason counted five tiny islands, each crowned with a clump of trees festooned in vines. The water was clear and warm, and firedrakes glided between the islands and the main jungle.

It was breathtaking, he had to admit, a secret paradise.

‘The sand is dead coral,’ Althaea said as they walked along the beach. Her sandals dangled from her hand, she’d taken them off to paddle. ‘There’s a grinder machine which turns it to powder. Mother says they used to process a whole batch of dead chunks every year when Father was alive. It took decades for the family to make this beach.’

‘It was worth it.’

She gave him a cautious smile. ‘The lagoon’s chock full of lobsters. It fills up through a vent hole, but there’s a tidal turbine at the far end to give us all our power. They can’t get past it so they just sit in there and breed. I dive to catch them, it’s so easy.’

‘You must have been very young when your father died.’

‘It happened before I was born.’ Her lower lip curled anxiously under her teeth. ‘I’m seventeen.’

‘Yes, I’d worked that out. Seventeen and beautiful, you must knock the boys dead when you visit Kariwak.’

Althaea turned scarlet.

‘And you’ve lived here all your life?’

‘Yes. Mother says the family used to have a plantation on Earth, somewhere in the Caribbean. We’ve always grown exotic crops.’ She skipped up onto an outcrop of smooth yellow coral and gazed out across the lagoon. ‘I know Charmaine must look terribly ramshackle to you. But I’m going to wake it up. I’m going to have a husband, and ten children, and we’ll have teams of pickers in the groves again, and boats will call every day to be loaded with fruit and coffee beans, and we’ll have our own fishing smacks, and a new village to house everyone, and big dances under the stars.’ She stopped, drastically self-conscious again, hunching up her shoulders. ‘You must think I’m so stupid talking like that.’

‘No, not at all. I wish I had dreams like yours.’

‘What do you dream of?’

‘I don’t know. Somewhere small and quiet I can settle down. Definitely not an asteroid, though.’

‘But it could be an island?’ She sounded hopeful.

‘Yes. Could be.’

*

Starship fusion drives twinkled brighter than stars in the night sky as Eason walked across the garden to the house. Only one of Tropicana’s pair of small moons was visible, a yellow-orange globe low above the treetops and visibly sinking.

He went into the silent house, taking the stairs two at a time. When he reached Tiarella’s bedroom door he turned the handle, ready to push until the lock tore out of the frame. It wasn’t locked.

Moonlight shone in through the open window, turning the world to a drab monochrome. Tiarella was sitting cross-legged on the double bed, wearing a blue cotton nightshirt. The eccentric pendulum was held out at arm’s length. She didn’t show the slightest surprise at his presence.

Eason closed the door, aroused by the scene: woman waiting calmly on a bed. ‘You have something to tell me.’

‘Do I?’

‘How did you know I was coming? Nobody could know that. It was pure chance I bumped into Althaea back in the harbour.’

‘Chance is your word. Destiny is mine. I read it in the cards. Now is the time for a stranger to appear.’

‘You expect me to believe that crap?’

‘How do you explain it, then?’

He crossed the room in three quick strides, and gripped her arms. The pendulum bounced away noisily as she dropped it.

‘That hurts,’ she said tightly.

He increased the pressure until she gasped. ‘How did you know I was coming?’ he demanded.

‘I read it in the cards,’ she hissed back.

Eason studied her eyes, desperate for any sign of artfulness. Finding none. She was telling the truth, or thought she was. Cards! Crazy bitch.

He shoved her down on the bed, and glared down at her, angry at himself for the growing sense of vulnerability, the suspicion he was being manipulated. All this astrology shit was too far outside his experience.

The nightshirt had ridden up her legs. He let his eyes linger on the long provocative expanse of exposed thigh.

‘Take it off,’ he said softly.

‘Fuck off.’

He knelt on the bed beside her, smiling. ‘You knew exactly what you were doing when you asked me out here, didn’t you? Eighteen years is a long time.’ He stroked her chin, receiving another glimpse into that steely reserve, but this time there was a spark of guilt corroding the composure. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You knew what you were doing.’ His hand slipped down inside the nightshirt to cup her left breast. He enjoyed the fullness he found, the warmth.

‘Don’t push your luck,’ she said. ‘Remember, the only way off this island is the
Orphée,
and she’s affinity-bonded to me. If you want to clear out ahead of whoever is hunting you, you do what you’re told.’

‘What makes you think someone’s after me?’

‘Oh, please. Fresh off a starship, no money, desperate to get out of the city. I believe you’re drifting.’

‘And you still let me on board.’

‘Because you were meant to be. It’s your time.’

‘I’ve had enough of this crap. I think I’ll go see Althaea. How do tall handsome strangers fit into her horoscope today?’ He let go of her and stood up.

‘Bastard. Don’t you touch my daughter.’

Eason laughed. ‘Give me a reason.’

He waited until she started to unbutton the nightshirt, then tugged off his jeans and T-shirt.

*

Charmaine’s daily routine was insidiously somnolent. Eason soon found himself lapsing into the same unhurried rhythm Rousseau used to approach any task. After all, there was nothing which actually needed doing urgently.

The old man showed him the outhouse which was fitted out as a carpentry shop. Its roof leaked, but the tools and bench jigs were in good condition, and there was plenty of power from the tidal turbine (Tropicana’s moons were small, but they had a close orbit, producing a regular fluctuation in the ocean). It took him three days to fix up the chalet’s frame properly, and repair the thatch roof. He had to junk a lot of the planking, cutting new wood from a stack of seasoned lengths. After that, he began to survey the remaining chalets. Two of them had rotted beyond repair, but the others were salvageable. He started to measure up, surprised to find himself enjoying the prospect of restoring them.

He decided it was because the work he was doing on Charmaine was practical. The first time in his life he had constructed rather than destroyed.

Althaea brought him an endless supply of fruit drinks when he was working on the chalets. She was eager to hear stories of life in the Confederation, gossip about the Kulu abdication, what asteroid settlements were like, details of a starship flight, the new colony worlds, wicked old Earth. The chilled fresh juice, the sweltering heat, Rousseau’s continuing laziness, and her interest were good enough excuses to down tools.

He accompanied her when she went across to the lagoon, and watched her dive for lobsters. It was a ridiculous way to catch the things; a couple of pots would have brought an overnight bounty. But that wasn’t the way of Charmaine. Besides, he enjoyed the sight of her stripping down to a bikini, almost unaware of her own sexuality. She was an excellent swimmer, long limbs propelling her sleekly through the water. Then she’d emerge glistening and smiling as she held up two new snapping trophies.

Tiarella took
Orphée
out sailing every two or three days, visiting the neighbouring islands. She and Ross would pick a couple of crates full of fruit from the accessible trees around the lagoon to trade, returning with fish, or cloth, or flour. She told him they only visited Kariwak every couple of weeks, carrying a cargo of lobsters to sell at the harbour’s market, and buying essentials only available in the city.

She spent most of her days working on the
Orphée.
A lot of effort went into keeping the boat seaworthy.

Eason kept returning to her at night, though he was beginning to wonder why. After a week he was still no closer to understanding her. Island life had given her a great body, but she was lifeless in bed; appropriately, for she fantasized she was making love to a dead man. On the two occasions he had managed to rouse her, she called out Vanstone’s name.

On the tenth day he turned down an invitation to sail with the three of them on a circuit of the nearby islands. Instead he spent the morning overhauling a mower tractor which he found in the cavernous shed used to garage Charmaine’s neglected agricultural machinery. After he’d stripped down and reassembled the gearbox, and charged the power cell from the tidal turbine, he got to work on the lawn. Driving round and round the house, grass cuttings shooting out of the back like a green geyser.

When Althaea emerged from the trees late in the afternoon she gawped at the lawn in astonishment, then whooped and hugged him. ‘It looks wonderful,’ she laughed. ‘And you’ve found the lily pond!’

He’d nearly driven straight into the damn thing; it was just a patch of emerald swamp, with a statue of Venus in the centre, concealed by reeds. If it hadn’t been for the frogs fleeing the tractor’s blades he would never have guessed what it was in time.

‘Will you get the fountain working again? Please, Eason!’

‘I’ll have a look at it,’ he said. Pressed against him, her lean body left an agreeable imprint through the thin fabric of her dress. Tisrella was giving him a stern frown, which he replied with a silent mocking smile.

Althaea took a step back, face radiant. ‘Thank you.’

*

That night, Eason jerked awake as Tiarella’s hand jabbed into his side.

‘Get up,’ she hissed urgently.

It was gone midnight; a storm had risen to batter the archipelago. Huge raindrops pelted the windowpanes; lightning flares illuminated the garden and its palisade of trees in a stark chiaroscuro. Thunder formed an almost continuous grumble.

‘They’re here,’ she said. ‘They’re docking at the jetty, right now.’

‘Who’s here?’ His thoughts were still sluggish from sleep.

‘You tell me! You’re the one they’re after. No one with honest business would try to sail tonight.’

‘Then how do you know anyone’s here?’

Tiarella had closed her eyes. ‘
Orphée
has a set of dolphin-derived echo receptors fitted under her hull. I can see their boat, it’s small. Ah, they’ve hit the jetty. It’s wobbling. They must be getting out. Yes . . . yes, they are.’

The Party! It couldn’t be anyone else, not creeping up in the middle of the night. Conceivably it was comrades he’d once fought with, although contract killers were more likely.

Eason’s training took over: assess, plan, initiate. He cursed violently at being caught out so simply. Ten days was all it had taken for Charmaine’s cosy existence to soften him. He should have moved on immediately, broken his trail into chaotic segments which no one could piece together.

‘There’s three of them,’ Tiarella said, her eyes still tight shut.

‘How do you know that?’

‘Three!’ she insisted.

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake. Stay here,’ he ordered. ‘You’ll be safe. They only want me.’ He rolled out of bed and shoved the window open, climbing out on to the balcony, still naked. Retinal amps scanned the freshly cut garden. Nothing was moving.