Sparks in Cosmic Dust (20 page)

She pulled him to her breast. “It’s all right, darling. You can tell me anything. Please, let’s share everything. We need to share everything.”

“I was a regular enough navigator, kept myself to myself, obeyed orders,” Clay said. “Until one day when I repeated the codename for an upcoming recon mission. What I’d forgotten was
how
I’d come to learn of the codename.”

“During coining?” Varinia recalled her own outing at the Selene Pageant.

“Uh-huh. That’s usually our Achilles heel—the line between what we’ve experienced astrally and what we’ve actually experienced. It only takes one wrong slip and you’re busted. No turning back. They found out what I was, and my career was over right there. Rapture’s Point, those two little words, a codename for a classified blockade-running mission, buried me. I was all set to be cashiered when, in the middle of the night, my CO called me to his office. The room was full of suits from Kuiper Wells. They said how excited they were to meet an EPT and how valuable I could be to their research—cutting-edge military projects and the like. It was either that or be washed out from the corps for good, so I signed their digi-coil contract, and three days later I was installed in the wasteland barracks on Ladon.” He shuddered. “That’s when the nightmares started.”

“What did you do there?” Varinia still couldn’t grasp that notion of a bridge between astral and physical realities.

“The scientists had created a kind of micro quantum interface to collect energy from the coining dimension. They call it the ether. It’s an infinitesimal shift away from this reality. It looks the same, unfolds the same, but there is no sound and no cause and effect—as you know, a coiner can go anywhere without suffering the slightest consequence. It’s like a hollow echo of the real world.”

“I’m with you.”

“Well, that slight shift between dimensions is so slight it has no measurement. Not even the micro quantum computers can locate it. It’s a shift only the human mind is capable of making, a gateway somewhere deep inside the subconscious. So the only way they can explore the coining world is via communication with someone actually in the coining state.”

Clay sat up and began gesticulating like a teacher fascinated by his own lesson. She couldn’t blame him. It
was
an extraordinary topic. “It happened quite by accident. Seven of us were told to coin inside a heavily protected pipe, to see if we could penetrate the shielding. We all made it, of course. But only one of us made it out alive afterward. What they hadn’t told us was that we’d entered the collider tube of a giant particle accelerator! The micro quantum particles exploded all around us like a hundred sudden solar eclipses. I was sure I was going to be sucked into one of them—the hole kept burning and burning, black and about the size of a one-clip disc. I sensed the others around me being sucked in, and I knew this had to be something phenomenal. I’d coined inside psammeticum engines before and hadn’t felt anything like this. It was almost irresistible.

“I summoned every instinct I had to pull away. When that wasn’t working, when the black hole was still dragging me in, I imagined myself blasting the roof off the pipe itself—three feet of solid metal—with nothing but my force of instinct. The next thing I knew, I was floating in a zero-g hospital chamber at HQ, bandaged to hell. The entire particle accelerator complex had been vaporized. Miles in circumference just…
ka-boom!
Lucky for me I’d coined from the neighboring facility, which just about withstood the blast. They later told me I’d averted the formation of a catastrophic singularity in space-time. If I hadn’t breached the pipe, disrupting the vacuum, the black hole might have sucked in the whole of Ladon. As it was, the thing just exploded with the force of a small hydrogen bomb.”

“Ah, nothing to worry about then.” Varinia frowned.

“Yeah. That was the end of particle colliding on Ladon, but the start of a new era of coining research. As it turns out, all coiners have the ability to effect change in the physical dimension. It’s innate in the separation of consciousness from the body. We only assume that we’re ineffectual when coining because nothing affects us, and also because it takes a strong focus for us to make anything happen. Have you ever tried?”

“Not really. Only halfheartedly,” she replied. “It’s kind of a habit until you remember where you are.”

“Exactly. It’s conditioned. In other words…useless. You have to develop new muscles of the mind. Not arms and legs, these clumsy tools.” He grasped her arm, held it aloft. “You’re not bound by locomotion. It’s more a flexing of the imagination, and the clearer you can imagine it, the deeper you
feel
it happening, the more likely it will happen. It’s a kind of psychokinesis. Thrilling if you can sustain it. Frustrating until you’ve mastered it. And deadly when you know how.”

“I can imagine.”

“Soon. You will soon.” He treated her to a passionate kiss, as if to say, “Thank you for listening.”

“Mmm.” She hummed her delight. “So, Clay, what was in the plastic bag?”

“A little something I managed to drag across the dimensional barrier. Ladon developed a quantum ether interface, a lattice-like configuration of energy net converters. A kind of complex funnel to cover all their bases. They called it a dreamcatcher. Their idea was to channel any trace of ether energy I could push through, in whatever form it took, and corral it in a dimensional vacuum. They tried about forty prototypes before they finally captured something I pushed through—a pint of water. No recognizable particles made it through, though. Turns out I’d squeezed a bubble of ether space-time through their dreamcatcher instead.”

“You had one of those in your plastic bag?” She looked at him, incredulous.

He nodded. “I stole two quantities of ether before I made my getaway. The first I used to escape the facility. It stopped time for half of Ladon for about forty minutes. That was a major event, and they’ve been searching for me ever since.”

“No kidding!”

“I used the second ether bubble to freeze those bastard amphibians on the beach, then I wiped them out. Those fucking—” He spat to one side, continued cursing under his breath. Varinia had seen that side of him last night, during his fight with Solomon, but Clay was a fugitive as well. And she’d thought she had it rough being on every wanted poster on Kappa Max.

“But on Ladon, none of their other test subjects could push ether energy through, so I became their go-to guy for months. Blowing things up while coining, blowing things up while coining inside an ether bubble
across
the dimensional barrier, stopping time itself. I opened Pandora’s Box for them, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

His jaw muscles quivered as he suppressed livid emotions inside.

“Time we made a move?” he said.

Before you explode, sunshine.
“Sure. We did have a job to do.”

He flicked a smirk.

“Unless—you’ve already checked the ship out, haven’t you?”

“From my tent before we left. The camouflage is good.” He gathered their things.

Varinia whistled silently in approval of his tight naked physique, front and rear. Clay was a dark horse, all right, in every way. If she hadn’t managed to peel away his layers, she might never have discovered the man beneath—the troubled, guilt-ridden yet intoxicating fugitive inside. And she felt sure she’d barely scratched the surface of Clayton Barry. The notion intrigued and chilled her at the same time. He might be perfect for her right now, on Zopyrus, but what about inside 100z? He’d have to keep a low profile forever…

Like her.

Coiners in hiding.

She caught the top and slacks he threw to her.
Mmm.
Right now, spending a lifetime in obscurity with him sounded pretty damn good.

“I’m guessing you’ll want to keep this between us,” he said. “Until after Zopyrus, I mean. Makes no difference to me, but that prick you were with would probably blow a gasket if he found out we’d had sex.”

“I know. I feel bad for him. He doesn’t deserve this—poor guy’s treated me like royalty ever since the Delfin. And he had his heart broken just before we met. I think this would kill him.”

A bittersweet pang she’d half-expected now took hold, and she really did feel like a selfish bitch. Poor, dear Solomon. At least if they made it off Zopyrus, he could use his new fortune to reach a little higher in society if he wanted. No doubt he’d be chased by enough gorgeous women to fill a shack-sheik’s harem. Looks and clips—he couldn’t lose. But that was weeks away. He’d have to suffer until then.

“You do know he’s snapping.” Clay magno-laced his boots.

“Who?”

“Solomon. He’s wound way too tight. If we don’t keep an eye on him, he’s gonna snap.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? Snap how?”

“
Snap
—as in blow his hatch, flip his lid, do something incredibly stupid because he’s a jealous prick who was poisoned with the God virus when he was a kid.”

Varinia had heard enough. “Why don’t you shut it! It’s bad enough he’s all alone out here. We can be magnanimous about this and treat him like a friend, keep us a secret, or you can be a galactic fuckwit and keep goading him the way you do.
That’s
why he’s gonna snap. Not because of his religion.”

Clay shook his head. “You’re wrong about him. Dead wrong. But if it makes you feel better, I’ll keep out of his way. No sense throwing rocket fuel on the fire. Let him suffer in peace.”

“That wasn’t quite what I had in mind.”

“It’s all you’ll get from me…unless he apologizes.”

Men. New world. Same old crap.
“Let’s just get to the
Taras
. Make sure.” She huffed, then let him help her up.

He smirked. “You don’t trust me?”

“Two words for that—exploding heads!”

Clay blurted an infectious laugh as he retrieved their rifles. Offering her his arm, he seemed more relaxed and carefree than she’d ever seen him. She snuggled close, held him while they crept back onto the silt. For a minute, she forgot all about the hidden threats they might soon have to face on Zopyrus.

Despite the occasional glimpses of solitary tree-hugging creatures—blue salamanders with elongated, suckered limbs and one bulbous eye raised on a spindly antenna—the forest was lifeless. The night’s downpour had sponged the tree trunks so they now felt supple to the touch, and the upper fronds burst now and then with a pop, releasing frothy rainwater which the salamanders appeared to drink through their suckers.

By now the air was muggy and a vaporous mist lined the forest floor, making it tough to see the ground more than a few steps ahead. Clay went shirtless, and seemed to be reveling in his role as protector—his dramatic body movements whenever he heard a noise or sensed something untoward were probably more for her benefit. It was cute and it made her feel safe. Having a powerful rifle apiece didn’t hurt either.

She finally spied the
Taras
through the foliage of two tall trees. Its metallic nose glistened like a rain-minted sky-cab in the hot sun. As Clay had said, Grace’s camouflage appeared unaffected by the storm and, if anything, the winds had swept even more loose foliage onto the giant net covering the shuttle.

They stepped out into the glade. Clay turned and gave her a shrug. She repeated the gesture.

“Well we’re here. Might as well rest for a bit inside the ship,” she said.

A loud hoot ripped their attentions to the far side of the glade, behind the
Taras.
Clay raised his rifle and began to stalk alongside the craft. He motioned for Varinia to follow him.

Check.

Another hoot, even louder, made her jump and set her pulse to a rapid thump. What the hell was it? One of the amphibians that had killed Lyssa? Surely not this far inland. What then? Her boots squelched through the top layer of mud. She rammed the padded butt-stock of her rifle against her shoulder, careful to aim the muzzle away from Clay. God forbid she should hit the trigger if something spooked her. She’d fired assault weapons before on the ranch—her father had insisted on it, for possible self-defense—but never in a life-or-death scenario.

He stopped at the aft wing thruster, then peered around it.

“What is it?” she whispered.

No reply.

Clickety-click.
A shadow dashed over the ground in front of Clay. She sidestepped to gain a better view, her rifle trained in the direction she guessed the thing was heading. All she saw was the hideous rear form of a lobster-like creature as it scurried away to the tree line.

She gasped.

The entire tree line was alive with similar creatures. Hundreds of them, just…watching the
Taras.
Exactly as Clay had described the amphibians, these aliens were about four feet tall, standing on six sharp legs, and had two muscular arms that folded into their sides. The head resembled an elephant’s trunk with a bony hood similar to a triceratops’. Disgusting to look at, they also appeared tough and dangerous.

For some reason they weren’t attacking. Grace had harped on about indigenous forest dwellers who’d traded with the previous prospectors. Could these be—

Another hoot sounded from somewhere to the right.

The entire horde vanished into the woods in a heartbeat.

“Clay?” She crept to his side and gave him a nudge. “Everything—”

“Strange.” He ducked under the thruster to pick an object up from the mud.

“Something they left?”

He stepped back, showed her what he’d retrieved. “Something
they
left all right. The last humans to visit Zopyrus.”

“A book?”

He slung his rifle strap over his shoulder and flicked through the worn paper pages. His eyes danced with wonder. “An actual paperback book. Decent condition, too. I haven’t seen one of these since, let me see…the museum on Phiniac.”

“We had a library at home,” Varinia said. “No paperbacks, though. They were all bound in hardcover. Which book is it?”

The front cover was badly discolored, the picture and lettering faded. He flicked to the opening page instead.

“
Chessmen of Mars,
” they both read at the same time.

“You heard of Edgar Rice Burroughs?” Clay asked.