Sparks in Cosmic Dust (25 page)

Two down, one to go.

Battery acid pumped through Solomon’s veins, his pulse hammering so hard at his left shoulder that he had to kneel before he collapsed altogether. Watching Varinia disappear behind the sheets of silver drizzle a mile or so along the coast, her troublesome black four-legged trotting some distance behind, was a sight he knew would haunt him for the rest of his life. The weeks of agony flooded back. He’d known all along his feelings for her would suffer unrequitedly. It was inevitable. First Maggie, then Varinia. That was the damnable truth of love—it could exist, even thrive, in one person alone, while its counterpart, its very reason for being, could remain oblivious or, worse still, indifferent.

No curse ever uttered, no oath ever sworn, could equal the devastating force of Varinia’s flippant dismissal of him those few nights ago. Hell, why had he fallen so hard for a woman he knew would treat him like garbage in the end? Of all the women in the galaxy to find on the rebound, he’d been suckered in by a professional stripper, an actress who screwed people to get what she wanted.

Preacher McDougall had been right all along. Those puritans on Crichton’s Folly, he should have stayed with them. He’d been content there, trustful, trusted. Not like on Zopyrus.

The Kuiper bird roared overhead once more, snapping him back to the task at hand. With Varinia safely out of the way and Clay’s body hidden in the mine, he only had the old woman to contend with. He smirked to himself, then rushed to wake her. The weight of extra pyro in his reinforced rucksack anchored delightfully as he jogged. Let Varinia have her share. Three quarters of everything prized from the mine was more than enough to see him to the end of his daze.
Days.

“Grace, get up. Grace.”

The roly-poly unfurled its eight-foot vertical form, like a headless cobra, in front of him. The good doctor stirred behind it. “Huh?”

“I said get up. We have to move
now.
The mine’s rigged and ready—we just need your detonator.”

“What? Where are the others?”

He helped her up. “Gone chasing after Varinia’s stupid fucking four-legged. It went crazy up the beach, kept darting out when the Kuiper ship flew over. Clay said it’s gonna give away our position unless he can get to it.”

“And then what can he do?” She rubbed the tiredness from her eyes, then shook herself awake.

“Drag it onto the
Taras,
I suppose, or shoot the damn thing.”

“Those idiots.” She rummaged inside her backpack, where Solomon spied her waterproofed pyro pouches. Pay dirt. For him, that was. After checking the charges Clay had helped her set inside the mine entrance, she hustled Solomon away and whistled for the roly-poly to follow. It obeyed.

They were over fifty feet clear when she keyed in the security code and pressed her thumbprint against the detonator pad. A hurtful
crack
shook the inlet. It brought the tunnel’s ceiling down with a roar, and a blast of rock dust soon masked the carnage from view.

“Come on.” Teeth gritted, she dragged the bucking lead mule after her. The other animals followed. “We’ll wait for those idiots at the
Taras.
”

“For how long?”

“As long as we have to.”

Not
the answer he wanted. That made things trickier, but he’d already factored Grace’s unswerving loyalty to the others into his plan. The three of them had clearly been as thick as thieves all this time. At least now they could stay that way, thieves together, at the scene of the crime they’d tried to commit against him.

He had them. Wow, had
they
underestimated him. Against all odds, he was one last move away from leaving Zopyrus with more wealth than he’d ever dreamed of. One last move.

The farther she dared, the greater her doubts that this impromptu tryst in the mist could possibly end well. For one thing, the tide swept over, then raked back the remaining narrow sandy crescent on this part of the beach. She glanced behind her but the dour drizzle had drawn its curtain over the forest, and she realized she’d never ventured this far from the camp before. It might have comforted her to see Clay’s footprints as a guide. The surf, however, put paid to that notion.

Danai’s distant splashing behind kept her company at least. How many times had she beckoned the mare, and how many times had Danai kept her distance? For weeks and weeks. She’d come close twice, once close enough to feed from Varinia’s hand, yet in all honesty—and it was truly a time for that—the mare had been a crushing disappointment. No real trust, no promise of temperance. Danai resembled so much the horses of Varinia’s youth in every other way, this failure to connect was all the harder to take.

So why did she keep following? It was a bit late for a show of friendship now.

Varinia tramped on through the shallows until the cliff wall depressed a good twenty feet all of a sudden. Around the corner, a crafted stone archway, similar to those on the city’s outskirts atop the plateau, gave her entry to a winding tunnel through the cliff. She hesitated a heartbeat, then recalled the urgency in his note.

“Here goes, Clay. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

While not as smooth as she’d expected, the walls of the arched passage were slick, and a strange rubber-looking maroon webbing covered the ceiling. Lime-tinged spray formed a gentle mist, while the increasing roar of cascading water left no doubt as to the soundness of her bearings.

The passageway opened up without warning—the lime mist hid all but a few inches around her—and Varinia had to check her footing on the bank of a choppy dark green lake. A coconut smell filled her nostrils. On either hand, a pathway appeared to circumnavigate the lake. Being right-handed, she plumped for that direction.

The path climbed above the mist, while she trod carefully on the slick gray stone. After about half a kilometer, she reached a deadfall. No steps thereon, and on the far side of the lake, a few hundred yards across the mist, the parallel pathway ended with equal abruptness.

“Clay, where are you?”

Her cry made no impression on the deafening thunder. To her dismay, no sign that he was here, or that he’d ever been here, met her careful scans of this impressive gorge. The maroon webbing decorated from top to bottom the towering cliffs that flanked this violent watercourse. And though mist reached higher about the cascade itself, she could still discern the neck of the falls, as well as its uppermost rock ledges.

Nothing. Not even a fluorescent sliver of green among the bellowing tons. She crouched over the precipice and waited. The inside of her mack clung hotly to her upper body sweat. While waterproof outside, it was now soaked from within. She wrapped her arms round her knees and rocked impatiently.

Okay, genius. How long do I wait?

Clay woke to a tight, burning
thump, thump
in his jugular. A warm and damp underworld slithered beneath him when he tried to get up, his limbs weak as a newborn calf’s. He coughed a little, shivered a lot, and though he blinked like crazy, the blackness of his tomb remained impenetrable.

A strained, gurgling noise in his throat defeated any attempt to cry for help. Whatever Solomon’s syringe had injected, it had to be some kind of paralytic. Maybe the son of a bitch had thought it a lethal poison, and this was to be a straightforward burial. Who would guess? The mine was sealed—he couldn’t see even a dim moon glow if it were night-time outside—and the
Taras
was probably homeward bound by now. How many passengers did it carry?

Varinia!

What had the evil bastard done with her? Surely he couldn’t be that…oh, but he could. He was. The psycho didn’t have a conscience any more. Nothing was beyond him. Not now. The women were likely dead somewhere…

He tried to blank the imagery from his mind.

…knifed in the back? Strangled, drowned in the river? Buried in here with him?

“Uh-oh, m’Go—” Gurgling syllables wrought more pain in his shriveled throat. He should never have woken from death. If Varinia lay in here with him, lifeless, he would find a sharp edge and finish Solomon’s job for him.
If
he could even move again.

Remembering her easy laugh, her irresistible come-hither gazes, the way she’d tried to de-glam herself for the grimy dig without a moment of success, her honed, flirty, even unconscious body language that drove him nuts, her satin skin caressing his naked body on the soaked grass—it was all too near, too easily smudged by uncertainty.

She might still be alive, damn it.

But what use was he here, a corpse in all but surrender?

If the paralytic wore off, and his mind grew a little stronger, and he could summon enough concentration…maybe, just maybe…

He could break out of this tomb.

He’d broken out of worse places.

But he was weak,
so weak…

“Strange we haven’t seen any footprints. Not a one.” Grace trudged through the sticky silt lining the forest river. “Either they chased the horse deep into the forest or they wandered right down the coast. Either way, they’re dumber than death-row spinsters. I’m telling you, hours before takeoff—it’s a wonder they lasted this long out of diapers.”

“They’ll show up.” The more Solomon listened to Grace’s caustic grumblings, the more he remembered how much he’d grown to like her over the weeks in camp. Like the favorite irreverent aunt he’d never had, she didn’t give a shit about religion or politics or the human conquest of the stars. She wanted to get rich, die comfortably and leave in her will a big “Fuck you” to the worlds and all the people who’d wronged her. And the rest could eat shit as well.

Hmm, she’d certainly gotten rich. Her final words would be venomous. But as for dying comfortably—
sorry, old girl. No can do.
It would be better than being eaten by fragmentia, though. Quicker, at least.

“Say, Grace, you got any more of those headache pills? My skull feels like a construction site.”

“What? Now?” She motioned him to the mud under their feet and the vast, rippling bog a few feet to their left. He was fully aware of both.

“Uh-huh. It’s killing me.”

She rolled her eyes and, after glancing skyward, probably to check the position of the sun, hustled her rucksack off her shoulders.

“Thanks, Doc.” Stepping closer, he felt the chill eyes of scrutiny from every wax trunk and gap in between. For one sickening moment he thought Varinia had returned early and had followed their tracks.
Christ.
Why hadn’t he hurried the old bitch up? But when he spun, Varinia was not there. “It’s a good job we had somebody medical with us. We’ve all been in the wars in one way or another. Yeah, all of us. All except
you.
”

He snatched the bag from her grasp and threw it safely away.

“What the—” Her body contorting sideways in the mud—she couldn’t move without her feet slipping—Grace bared her teeth, drew her pistol and snarled.

He caught her gun arm. Effortlessly overpowering her, he blocked her knee and yanked the pistol free.

“You’d better do it right,” she growled, “’cause if you don’t, I’m gonna make sure you die squealing.” Her defiant spit wet his eye. “Fuck you, psycho.”

He raised his arm to one side and crashed it down, pistol-whipping her. The thud on her skull surprised him—the impact felt gooier than he’d expected. Whinnies from the dumb mules accentuated his sense of release as Grace slumped lifeless in his arms, and he hoisted her onto his shoulder. Lighter than low-g insulation foam. He strode about ten feet into the bog shallows, then, bending his knees for extra momentum, hurled her out into the swamp.

Her splash spawned hundreds of oily, metallic-blue bubbles that lathered high around her. Inch by inch, she began to disappear into the noxious bog.

To distract himself from the awful loneliness, Solomon whistled to himself. A few of his favorite hymn tunes. They’d always relaxed him as a boy. He tied Grace’s backpack onto the lead mule and dragged the stubborn beast so hard its hooves slid through the mud. He fell, tasted acrid silt, spat it out and slithered on, desperate to leave Zopyrus before he came to grips with what he’d done.

A conscience was a helluva thing. Nowhere when you needed it, all over you when you didn’t. It had no form or face that he could beat the shit out of, and it went wherever he went. The fucking thing.

Maybe if he went even faster…

“Why didn’t I see it coming? Why?
Why?
” Varinia sank, defeated, on the edge of the freezing-stone ledge. Watching Grace sink into the disgusting swamp had wrenched her from the worst coining experience of her life. Helpless, invisible. A voyeur, nothing more. If she’d had anything like Clay’s ability she might have been able to…no, not even then. No one had seen this coming. Evil, paranoid Solomon? A cold-blooded killer? Turning on his workmates, his
friends?

She groaned soundlessly in the mouth of thunder. The giant cascade fell with such force and whiteness it could easily be an avalanche, not a waterfall, the moon’s crumbled icy foundations pouring into oblivion.

Clay was not at the camp or in the
Taras.
She’d checked. No sign of his prints through the muddy riverbank either. Which meant he was either here somewhere, as per his note, or—and God help her—Solomon had disposed of him somehow. In the sealed mine? Drowned him in the sea, weighted his body?

She retched, then swallowed rapidly to fight a bigger toxic upwelling. This was her fault as much as anyone else’s. More than anyone else’s because she’d
brought
the murderer here, picked him out from the thousands of skuzzy sleaze-heavers dying to get inside her, just because he’d looked cute.
Christ alive.
What kind of recommendation was that for trusting a man with her life, with the lives of her companions? How stupid and naive could a person be? What had she been thinking? And what the hell had happened to Solomon on Zopyrus?

Clay. Clay, where are you?

She slowly uncrumpled herself to stand upright, then took a long, cool, coconut breath. The freshness invigorated her. The bitterness sharpened in her mind. She knew exactly where she must go and what must be done if—
when
—she got there.

The
Taras.

A film of moisture slicked the pistol’s grip as she drew it from her belt holster under her mack. The weapon was light and compact. Its safety catch cupped the trigger. Of all the dangers they’d faced as prospectors on Zopyrus, she’d never have suspected, not in a million years, that the deadliest threat would come from within the camp. Solomon Bodine, the only man who’d ever beaten her at Cydonia Face, the man she’d surrendered to.

Not this time.
She started back through the mist, her body tensed and energized. Reckoning had its way of steeling a person in the face of unspeakable acts, at least in the run-up. And by the time she reached the tunnel, Varinia was fully prepared to shoot him dead.

She marched out onto the beach, ready for a long jog to the
Taras.
The bastard wouldn’t dare take off yet, not while it was still light. Purple rays suffused the breaking clouds over the horizon, and sunlight hopped across the ranks of ever-restless waves, near and far, creating a dusky phantasmagoria. The tide had also begun to recede, leaving a ten-foot wide crescent of sand on this side of the forest.

“Danai!” The wayward mare trotted up behind her and stopped a stone’s throw away. “What is it, girl?” Varinia started toward her. The horse reared up on her hind legs, thrusting vicious front hooves. Hyper. Damaged after all. Protesting to the end.

Then it occurred to Varinia the animal might not be reacting to her at all. Danai had never been this scared, this violent before. “What is it, girl?”

On the far edge of the coast, where mist was still lifting, several dark forms scrawled into view. They appeared to be scouring the beach from cliff to water and back again, zigzagging. More of them appeared behind…and more…and more. Hundreds now. Dangerously close to the mouth of the inlet, the campsite.

She dashed for cover and gawped at the full force of the amphibian army. A mass of crawling death…headed her way. They were slow, though, and at their current pace, they might reach the forest in about ten minutes. Yet, if she bolted and they spotted her, they might move ten times as fast. She’d have no chance.

Think, damn it, think. How can I move but stay invisible?

A solitary figure darted from the inlet. She frowned, squinted to focus. It was too far away. But after taking a tumble, the figure turned and fled at double the horde’s speed. Varinia sprinted out in a panic, ignoring everything except the sight of Clay,
alive,
and fleeing for his life.