by D L Frizzell
Redland's smile disappeared. "Alex," he said, "I suppose I've got the world in my hands."
"Fool!" Benac snarled at Redland. "I told you he would see through your deception. Kill him and finish the matter."
"Maybe you'd like to hold the T’Neth girl while I take care of him?" Redland asked under his breath. When Benac backed away, covering his mouth in fear, Redland shook his head in disgust. "Useless, like I figured."
"You know I'm T'Neth?" Kate asked Redland.
"Of course I do, little lady," he smiled down at her. As she tried to pull away, she found her hands suddenly bound by a pair of shackles. Redland grabbed Kate by the right arm with his left hand. With his right hand, he drummed on the butt of his pistol.
"Kill the boy," Benac ordered.
"Shut up," Redland ordered Benac.
"No!" Benac shouted back. "You work for me, lawman, now do what I say!"
"Kill Alex?" Kate looked from Redland to Benac. "Why?"
Redland squeezed her arm harder. She threw her weight against him in an attempt to break free, but he dropped her with a single stroke of his pistol grip against her head. She went limp and sagged under his grip.
"We had her going, you know," Redland called out to Alex. "She even left her swords behind when I told her to. She couldn't wait to be an official deputy. Have you seen what Benac did with them?"
"No one here will miss her," Benac taunted Alex. "They think she is a killer." The gash in his lower lip pulled apart to give him an unnaturally wide grin. Spit dribbled down his chin and fell onto his shirt.
"That's right, Alex. We got a fugitive here," Redland said. "Got a pretty big bounty on her head, too."
"Where are you taking her, marshal?" Alex asked.
"Oh, just headin' south a ways, I think," Redland motioned in the direction they'd been heading. “You kinda ruined our other exit.”
"Kill him," Benac snarled.
Redland ignored Benac. "Listen, I told you my last deputy didn't work out so well, Alex. I like you a lot more 'cause I think you've got what it takes. Do me a favor and head to the Council at Ovalsheer. Report that the Narrow's been closed, and just wait for me to get back. That's all you have to do."
Alex had the uphill advantage but made no move for his gun. He figured the marshal was still a better shot than he. Besides, Redland held Kate…innocent Kate…who was just standing up after the rap on her head. Alex hesitated, not wanting to risk a gunfight. But then…he felt an object in his pocket. It was heavy and rock-shaped, but it wasn’t a rock. He had kept it in reserve in case the boulders above the cliff did not roll as planned.
"Kate's innocent," Alex said, hoping to stall Redland as long as possible. He needed to be sure what he was thinking was the right choice.
"I have no doubt of that," Redland said.
"Kill him!" Benac shouted.
"Shut up, you damn idiot!" Redland snarled.
"I had this crazy idea today, marshal," Alex said. "I figured we were all the same, with the same dreams and goals, even if we weren't always on the same side."
"Sounds profound," Redland stared at Alex. "Do we have a deal?"
Alex hesitated. A moment later, he saw in Redland's eyes that the offer was no longer valid. As he steeled himself to set the timer, he saw Kate slip one hand out of her shackles and reach into her front pocket. "I can't let you take her," Alex continued. "She's special to me."
Redland frowned. "She's special to me, too, Alex. And I don't mean in the rainbows and sunshine, puppy love way that you do. I mean she's the most special person on this planet." He thought about what he was saying for a moment, then added, "and that's why she's worth so much. Sorry boy, I've got a big payday coming. You don't get any now, of course."
Redland brought his pistol up to aim at Alex. As he did, Kate grabbed his left thumb and flicked her wrist. A glint of metal flashed in the sunlight, followed by a cry of pain. Kate pulled away from Redland and ran across the boulders to escape.
As Redland doubled over in pain, blood spurted from his left hand onto the boulders. Redland pulled his left hand up and cradled it against his chest with his pistol arm. He screamed, then glared at her with a crazed, terrifying rage. With the gun now pointed in her direction, he fired off three rapid shots.
Kate only made it a short distance when a bullet hit her in the side. She fell and disappeared into the cracks between the boulders.
"No!" Alex yelled.
Redland screamed at Alex. "She nearly took off my goddamn thumb!" When his thumb flopped backward over his hand, held on by a narrow strip of flesh, he cried out again. "You gave her that razor, you little bastard? I'm gonna make you suffer for that!" With sweat rolling down his brow, Redland angled his body so he could aim his pistol at Alex while still cradling his bloody hand.
Alex pulled the explosive of his pocket. "You've been trying to kill me from the day we met, haven't you, marshal?" Alex snarled. "You put spiders on the dead man outside the city and made sure I got onto the team to chase the Jugs."
"Seneca has always treated you like his pet," Redland snarled as he wiped the sweat from his eyes. "He’s spent the last ten years bending over backwards to shelter you from real life. Gettin’ you involved was just a convenient way to keep him off-balance and have a little fun." He pulled the hammer back on his pistol to fire. "Nothing personal, but screw you, kid."
"You’d better think again!" Alex yelled. He wound the timer and held up the explosive for Redland to see. "Go ahead. Let's see if you can outrun my boulders."
Redland froze, knowing full well what an explosion would so to the already-loosened boulders. "Oh, fuck," He gaped at Alex in disbelief.
Benac turned and ran, leaving Redland behind.
"Damn fool," Redland muttered at Benac. He fired a shot at the fleeing Jovian and hit him in the left calf. The fat man screamed and fell onto a boulder.
"We'll both die," Redland shouted back to Alex. "You really want to go out the same way your daddy did? Look, you've ruined my deal now, and I expect I've lost my job, too. You've beaten me, congratulations, so let's cut our losses. I'm leaving. All you have to do is disengage the timer on that explosive." He began to sidestep across the boulders away from Alex.
Alex looked at the explosive. He didn't care what happened to him now, as long as he got Redland. "Time's up, marshal." Alex knew if the explosion happened on the surface, it would not be effective. Yet, the boulders were already loosened from the quake. They wouldn't have to fall far into the boulders to get the desired result. He threw the explosives behind the boulders above Redland. As it bounced off a boulder, he took off at a run.
Redland knew that shooting at Alex would be a waste of precious seconds, so he fled in the opposite direction, swearing as he nearly tripped over the prone Benac.
When Alex reached the boulder where Kate had fallen, he saw only blood smeared down the sides. She was gone.
A second later, the explosive went off, sending a shock wave through the entire field of boulders. Though he was a good fifty meters from the explosive, the boulder he was standing on started sink. With a last look to the gap that Kate had fallen through, he turned toward an outcropping in the distance.
A low, grinding rumble echoed through the mountainside. At first, the boulders just shifted, their masses realigning with the explosive shockwave. Several tiers up from the explosive’s detonation, a large boulder had been sitting precariously atop two smaller ones, balanced just enough to keep it in place. When the two smaller ones sank just a few centimeters, the large one found its center of gravity shifted forward. Its tremendous size slowed by a resistance to move, it nonetheless teetered. And then it moved. Almost imperceptibly at first, the boulder leaned out into the open air. Its center of gravity continued to shift forward. When enough of its weight passed the tipping point, at accelerated, dropping onto the boulder below with a tremendous crack. The boulders underneath were forced downward into the pile, which then offset the balance of three other boulders. These boulder
s had the same effect on the ones beneath them, causing further disruption in the balance of the mountain. Just as in the apple cart analogy, the neighboring boulders began to roll. Their momentum combined and spread outward. Then the mountainside shifted all at once. Grinding noises became impacts, and then crashes. A hundred boulders combined their weight to push everything into motion, and then a thousand boulders rolled freely.
Alex reached the outcropping in just enough time to see the boulderlanche change the geography of the Crumbles. He was shocked at how much downward momentum the boulders already had. Even in the tiers above his position, boulders tumbled and accelerate downward. Across the clacking mountain of granite spheres, Redland was far away, and still running.
Redland stumbled when the boulder underneath him shifted. He let go of his injured left hand to steady himself with his right. As he started running again, faster despite the pain shooting up his arm, he managed to keep his balance as more boulders loosened and joined the downward slide. He moved horizontally across the boulders, keeping his eyes on a ridge that had been exposed during some previous boulderlanche. When he reached the comparative safety of the ridge where none of the boulders rolled under him, he looked behind him and saw Alex watching stoically from his own outcropping.
Benac yelled in impotent fury at Redland, the betrayer who had betrayed yet again. He could not run on his wounded leg, though he had managed to stand and hobble forward after the marshal. He tried to jump to an adjacent boulder, but his bad leg gave out. Losing his balance, he fell down to the next tier and landed one of the large spherical boulders. He screamed as a loud crack sounded from his spine. Now unable to move, Benac wailed. His boulder did not roll, but shifted down the mountain under him. His luck was short-lived. A ninety-ton boulder had begun skipping down the mountain like a pachinko ball until its path lined up directly above him. It bounced, clearing another boulder to land squarely on Benac’s chest. The sound of his bones being crushed drowned out in the clamor of the surrounding impacts, the boulder continued without slowing, leaving behind the rendered flesh that was once a Jovian nobleguard.
Ten minutes later the boulderlanche lost momentum as the slope flattened out. Alex was still safe on the outcropping, but not relieved. Kate was gone. Redland was gone. He sat and watched the boulders settle for another hour before Colonel Seneca and his team found him.
"Alex, are you okay?" Seneca asked.
"Redland was the spy," Alex said in a flat voice. "It was never Kate." He stood and began making his way across the boulders to where he had last seen her. Norio and the other team members stayed on the solid foundation of the outcropping, watching him. Only Seneca followed.
When Alex reached the place where he lost her, he stopped and sat down heavily. Seneca signaled the others to make their way down to safety. He would stay with Alex until he was ready to leave. Brady nodded, and gestured for the others to follow. Seneca sat on the boulder next to Alex.
"I'm sorry," Seneca told Alex.
"For what?" Alex tried to sound unemotional, but his voice broke just a little
"For being wrong about Kate," Seneca replied. "I was wrong about Redland, too. And I was wrong about you."
"How?"
"You insisted on doing the right thing from day one," Seneca admitted. "I guess there's a lot more of your father in you than I gave you credit for."
"Thanks, I guess," Alex replied, and looked away.
After they sat for a minute, Seneca thought he heard the sound of scraping within the boulders and wondered if they hadn't fully settled. He heard the sound again a few seconds later and got to his feet. He didn't want to disturb Alex, but he would pick the young man up and carry him to safety if he wouldn't do it on his own.
The scraping sound occurred again, this time loud enough to get Alex's attention. With a lethargic gaze, he looked over his shoulder as if waiting for another boulderlanche to crush him. But the sound was coming from below.
"That sounds like somebody moving," Seneca said.
Alex’ eyebrows twitched. He knelt down and stared into the cracks between the boulders. He sniffed at the air and wrinkled his nose.
"That smells really bad," he said, not with disgust, but hope in his voice.
"Help me," a girlish voice rasped from below.
Alex flattened himself onto the boulder and reached into the darkness. He found a hand - a very sticky hand.
His eyes filled with wonder, Alex pulled Kate from the gap between the boulders. As he helped her stand, he looked her over to see how she was. Kate was filthy once again, her face almost unrecognizable from the dirt she accumulated within the boulders. She looked just the way she did when he first saw her. She pulled her goggles down with her free hand and gazed into Alex's eyes.
"How did you survive?" Alex asked.
"The boulders don't roll if you go down far enough," she said.
"You've already bandaged yourself?" Alex asked when he saw the gauze beneath the blood stain on her shirt.
"I still had the gauze from my sword injury," she said. "I moved it over to the new hole."
"How smart," Alex smiled. He reached up and wiped a drop of blood from her cheek. She shivered at his touch but did not pull away. He caressed her chin lightly, and then kissed her on the lips.
Seneca noticed their hands were still stuck together, and wasn't the least bit surprised that neither of them bothered to pull them apart.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Alex, Colonel Seneca, and Niko sat beneath the canopy outside the ranger station, admiring the shoots of grass emerging from the new lawn.
"That's the greenest grass I've seen in these parts," Seneca said. "Well done, Niko."
"The fish dung makes it better," Niko said. "Kate told me that. It's funny how she knew what I needed to make the grass grow."
"I guess she's picked up a few bits of knowledge here and there," Alex said.
"Mm-hmm," Seneca replied.
Norio approached the ranger station with a small bundle under his arm. The others tipped their hats to him. He waved a gloved hand back at them.
"What's that?" Niko asked.
"Some medicine I put together," Norio replied. "It will help Miss Runaway's gunshot wound heal faster."
"Sarah's already in there, helping her clean up," Niko said. "Go ahead and let yourself in. She's in the cell."
"Why?" Seneca asked. "She's not a prisoner anymore."
Niko chuckled. "It's the only place she'll sleep in Edgewood. I guess she thinks it's her bedroom."
"That girl's a strange one," Seneca grinned.
Alex grinned, too.
"Thank you, Ranger," Norio replied. He walked in and closed the door behind him.
Norio opened the door to the jail room and let himself in. Sarah was in the open cell with Kate, who was taking her shirt off.
"Don't come in," Sarah warned him. Norio stopped.
"It's okay," Kate said. "He knows."
"How?" Sarah asked, shocked that someone else was in on Kate's secret.
"I have known her since she was a child," Norio said, "for ten years now."
"You have?" Sarah asked. "I always thought she lived alone."
"Yes," Norio acknowledged, "as a T'Neth, she is quite capable of taking care of herself. And I have always found her to be a good student in the brief times we have been able to meet each other."
"Then you know everything?" Sarah asked.
"Yes," Norio said. He noticed Kate's straight razor lying on the table next a bowl of shaving cream. "I will wait until you are done. We can treat her wounds when she is done shaving."
"Does Alex know?" Sarah asked.
Kate shook her head.
"I'm glad I'm here to help, then," Sarah said. "I noticed you have trouble reaching some places."
Kate reached for the razor, then hesitated. "No," she said. "I don't want to shave anymore." Sarah and Norio stared at her. "It is not who I am."
"Are you sure?" Norio asked.
"Ye
s."
"Very well," Norio said. "Lift up your shirt, then. I will apply the medicine."
Kate turned around and lifted the back of her shirt up to her neck. She pulled her hair over her shoulder to get it out of the way, revealing that her hairline didn't stop at the base of her neck. Though she had hidden her secret by shaving frequently, most of it had grown to a length of a few centimeters. Her thick mane of silky brown hair continued growing from her spine until it narrowed to a point in the small of her back.
Sarah stared at Kate's mane. Even after seeing it for the first time when Kate was a prisoner a few weeks earlier, she still had difficulty coming to grips with the implications. In every other respect, Kate was perfectly human, except for this. "Where does she come from?" she asked Norio.
"Her people did not come from Earth like our ancestors did," Norio answered simply. "They are not from Arion, either, but they have been here much longer than we have."
Sarah carefully removed Kate's bandages. As she did, she touched the hair where it grew from the middle of Kate's back. "It's so soft," she said.
"Don't tell Alex," Kate said. "Please."
"You can tell him when you're ready," Sarah told Kate. It would be best to come from you, anyway.”
Norio and Sarah brought Kate out of the ranger station a short time later. She was wearing a new linen outfit that Sarah gave her. Despite being in the shade, she still wore the hood up with the drawstrings pulled tight to cover her neck.
Alex chuckled at her and took her hand.
Niko brought more chairs onto the porch and set them up for everyone to sit together. He went into the station one more time and brought back a bottle with a shot glass for each of them. "The good stuff," he smiled. "I think the occasion calls for it." He filled everyone's glasses to the brim. Alex stared into the dark liquid, his thoughts suddenly troubled.
"What is it, Alex?" Seneca asked.
"Redland wasn't bothered that you destroyed the Narrow, colonel," Alex said. "He almost seemed relieved. But he was still going to take Kate and Benac to The Guile."