Sparks in Cosmic Dust

by Robert Appleton

  Varinia curled again, arched her back under his commanding massage of her breasts. Full span, gathering her cups together for several blissful handfuls. He bent low, sucked each nipple in turn, and right then she wanted, needed him inside her. Nothing else mattered, not where they were or what happened before or after. His sex was right there and she craved it like the sum addiction of a billion pyrofluvium sparks.

  Whump!

  He leaped up and tore the tent door open.

  Clank! Clank!

  Varinia darted behind him and peered over his shoulder. Outside, long black cords were piling on top of a rectangular silver container about the size of a small coffin. Red and green flashing lights attached to untidy white wiring decorated all the edges. She grabbed Solomon’s shoulder, and they both recoiled as the black cords ended and a large silver parachute collapsed, enveloping the tent.

  “Hell, we need the rifles, now.” Varinia rammed her T-shirt on. She couldn’t find her panties quickly enough and decided to lunge through the door anyway. Modesty was less important than staying alive. “Solomon. The guns. Where are they?”

  He caught her by the wrist and wouldn’t let go.

  “What’s the matter with you? They’re here.” Why wasn’t the fool making a move? “Great! You’re just gonna crouch there like that? I need Buck Rogers and I get Buck Naked? Get your meat hooks off me, sleaze-heaver.”

  “Cool it. Think this through.” Studying the box, he raked his free hand through his greasy hair.

  “Think what through? We just got bombed, and you’re sitting there asking it the time. Get the fuck off me, Solomon. That thing’s gonna explode!”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You’re bugnuts!”

  “Look closer.” A sudden gust filled the parachute, lifting it six feet off the ground. He craned his neck, directing her to a label on the lid. “It’s more like a luggage trunk. See the clasps? And what do those lights remind you of?”

  “How should I know? Shuttle-landing lights?”

  Varinia jumped again when Grace wrenched the canopy up and trained her handgun at the mystery object. Clay stumbled beside her, a blanket wrapped around his half-naked form.

  Christ. She covered her privates and dashed back inside. Had he seen? Hell, of course he’d seen. They’d all seen! She fumbled around until she found her khaki shorts, then for good measure threw a heavy blanket over herself as well. Avoiding eye contact with anyone, she crept out beside Solomon, who wasn’t wearing a stitch, while Grace and Clay dragged the parachute to one side, exposing the box. They all converged on it.

  In the middle of the flashing lights, what was clearly a luggage label—Solomon was correct—read, in French: Cadeux pour les orphelins millionnaires ci-dessous. Joyeux Noel!

  Puzzled, she translated aloud to the others’ astonishment. “Presents for the millionaire orphans below. Happy Christmas!”

  Chapter Twenty

  A Twitch Upon the Thread

  “This some kind of trick?” Clay crouched to inspect the magnetic latches, then gazed up at the night sky. “If there’s still a ship up there, it’s in hiding. Grace, this something you’ve seen before?”

  “Not exactly. We were sent a counterfeit deed to our silver mine on Fourmyle one time, though. It arrived in the morning through our subspace fax, giving our exact coordinates. It claimed we were trespassing on official licensed property. The biggest load of crap you ever read. I told the others it was just scare tactics, but they never settled after that. When the same fax arrived again, they downed tools and got the hell off Fourmyle in under a day, two months before schedule. They didn’t have the stomach to fight for their claim.”

  “Old-school psychology.” Clay rubbed his chin stubble. “They’re letting us know they know we’re here…and what we’re doing. They’ve called us millionaires, so they must also know we’ve struck pyro. Hmm, I reckon they’ve been watching us closely for days now, probably at high magnification. They know our strength, and that they’ve made contact suggests either they’re not sure they can force us out, that they’re counting on scaring us off, like Grace suggests, or they’re simply making things easy by giving us the chance to leave peacefully.”

  Varinia fingered the messy wiring and the frozen adhesive keeping it attached. She swallowed a lump in her throat. Grace’s small hawk eyes were narrower than ever, twitching with defiance. And the men weren’t about to bow to such a cowardly threat either.

  That left bloodshed. Or, if the watchers really were counting on this Yuletide omen gifting them a free, unchallenged claim, they might not show themselves until the camp had left. Yes, it could all be a bluff. A handful of men or women up there using fear to achieve what they could not by strength of arms alone.

  Varinia stepped back and gazed up into the bracing emptiness of deep space. Her home lay out there somewhere, so far beyond her sight that a trillion of her standing in relay, each at the extremity of human vision, could not conspire to see her front door. This was her home right now, and pyro her future. She was sick of being forced into corners by forces she couldn’t meet face to face, sick of being bullied, first from her Selene dream, then from any chance at a quiet life in the Inner Colonies. Now these unseen sons of bitches wanted her to leave somewhere so remote there wasn’t even an official name for it.

  She tightened her fists on her woolen wrap. “We’d better not be buying any of this.”

  Grace snorted and stomped round to the front of the box. “Not while I’m still vertical.” Without hesitation, she unclasped and lifted the lid. Varinia flinched at the click, but soon peered inside with the rest of them.

  They found a bundle of five small magnesium flare candles, four paper plates, three socks dyed red with what smelled like beetroot juice, two large sachets of syntho-turkey roast, and, finally, a cartoonish digital printout of a partridge in a pear tree.

  “Funny fuckers, aren’t they?” Clay spat into the sand. “First they luck onto the richest trove in the galaxy, then they mock us for doing all the hard work for them. They’ll soon see how funny it is when they try to collect.”

  Solomon glowered at him, pursed his lips. “Luck? How do you think they found us in the first place, dickhead? That hoorah double-back warp sounded like a dumb idea as soon as I heard it. Jesus. Trying a bolt-head stunt like that on professional trackers. What the hell were you thinking, Grace? And you—” he flung an outraged finger inches from Clay’s face, “—have been a fucking liability ever since we left that shithole on Kappa. This is all you fault.”

  “My fault?” Clay smacked the big man’s hand away. “Watch it, Bodine. You’re coming apart, spouting shit. This was no one’s fault. We did a double-back because there was no alternative. If by some infinitesimal fluke they stumbled on our new vector, how is that anyone’s fault? I suggest you cool off before you get hurt.”

  “Okay, I will.” Solomon shoved his open hand into Clay’s face.

  Once again, Clay batted it away. “Man, I knew you were a fucking time bomb, but that God-fearing shit must have really put a weed up your ass. Do you hear me, loaves and fishes? You’re fucking loco!”

  Before Varinia could intervene, Solomon let loose with a strong right hook, knocking Clay clean off his feet. She thumped the big man’s arm but he paid no notice. Out of the blue, Clay sprang at his opponent’s legs and rugby-tackled him to the ground, sparking a vicious, near-naked brawl in the sand and over the fallen parachute. Meanwhile, the Christmas lights illuminated them in alternating red and green hues, rendering the absurd truly ridiculous.

  Fuming, Varinia snapped the chest lid shut and sat on it, crossed her legs, and sank her chin onto her fist. There was nothing she could do to break them up that wouldn’t be construed as favoritism, so she watched resignedly instead. Nude Greco-Roman wrestling did have its perks. But she was sick to death of them being at silent loggerheads. At least this represented progress. They’d just have to punch and headlock each other senseless until one of them stopped.
Then she’d have her say.

  Crack!

  Grace’s gunshot pierced the night. Stepping out of the gloom, she trained her Ares pistol on the nearest man. “Either go back to your tents right now or I execute you both. I’ll not warn you again.” She cocked it. “More profit for me, better for Varinia. Don’t test me, shitheels.”

  For one soul-swallowing second Varinia reckoned the good doctor really was going to pull the trigger. She’d never seen such a murderous scowl on an old woman before.

  Slowly, the two men got to their feet and, prideful not to reveal which parts of them were injured—from the ferocity of punches, probably most parts—they trudged apart toward their respective beds without saying a word.

  Before they vanished altogether, Varinia called after them. “Right, this has gone on for long enough. Solomon, we’re finished. It was never going to work between us, so consider us over. I don’t love you, never did the way you wanted. And Clay, don’t even think about it. As of right now, I’m Varinia Wilcox, Kappa Max ghost again. There’s a sheet of glass between me and every man for a billion light-years in every direction, no exceptions. We dig, we leave, we each go our separate ways. I’m putting the spare tent up right now, so you don’t need to measure dicks on my account anymore.”

  Both men disappeared, and a few seconds later Solomon slung her sleeping bag, blankets and clothes out onto the sand. Asshole. He then zipped the door and switched out the light.

  “Nice speech, chick.” Grace holstered her sidearm. “That’ll have them licking their wounds.”

  “Yeah? That was okay? Not egocentric at all?”

  “Epically egocentric.”

  “Sue me.” A chill gust delved inside the neck of Varinia’s cloak, making her shiver. “Grace?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Help me put my tent up?”

  Grace sighed and, giving a slight nod, slung an arm over Varinia’s shoulder. “Sure thing, Sarah Jayne.”

  Sarah Jayne. Demure Snow White virgin with rosy cheeks and ebony ponytail, Sarah Jayne. Well, that had been her reputation. But in her first year in the prestigious Selene modeling academy, sweet Sarah Jayne had slept with two of her instructors. Nothing compared to most of the other girls, though. Protected promiscuity within the academy—no one was permitted to enter or leave without being screened for pregnancy or STDs—was an unspoken part of the institution. It helped cultivate sexual self-identity, and though it wasn’t exactly advertised on the official Selene prospectus, nearly all the instructors freely engaged in extracurricular “tutoring” of their ingénue models.

  After all, Selene modeling was all about projecting sex, albeit coquettishly. The more a model knew about her own sexuality, the more effectively she could ply it. Or so her first tutor had told her…in his quarters…while peeling off her sports bra after a hundred tandem circuits of the low-g velodrome. She was sixteen. Mr. Hughes was in his thirties and had been the object of her crush for weeks. Barely legal, the ensuing half hour, during which he’d ravaged her innocence but made sure she loved every moment, had left her glowing for days after. The next time they made love, she took charge briefly, to his delight, and so the new, confident Sarah Jayne grew sexually from strength to strength.

  But she never forgot that time early in her second year when she’d sneaked out of holo-catwalk practice to be with him, and Mr. Hughes, fresh from another tandem session in the velodrome, had someone else in his quarters. Door locked. She’d peered through a gap in his blinds, burning with jealousy, but had soon gasped as he’d peeled down a freshman boy’s cycle shorts. A lanky sixteen-year-old lad with a huge erection. Stunning Hispanic face.

  That same time next week, she found them both in his quarters again, but this time, having discovered the lad also had a sophomore girlfriend, she knocked on the door. Her gambit worked, as they both eagerly invited her in. Sarah Jayne always counted that hour of sexual athletics as the most satisfying lesson of her entire academy training. Worshipped by two partners across two generations, she’d orchestrated the whole show from start to finish, and by the end she’d had them both gasping for breath, on their backs, burned out.

  It was safe to say, without Sarah Jayne, there’d never have been a Varinia Wilcox.

  Strange how little any of that mattered now. Her big secret wasn’t a secret anymore. While Grace helped her put the new tent up, it was as though a fresh chapter in her wayward life drew breath, as though she had the power to reinvent herself once again.

  Free from obligation.

  “So you were the Selene doctor when I was there?” she asked Grace. “I don’t remember you.”

  “I only remember you because of the controversy, chick. That decision to disqualify you, the whole coining palaver. I was on the voting committee. It was pretty much unanimous in the end, except for me and a couple of younger contest judges. Most of them couldn’t get past the stigma, the precedent of including a coiner in such a high-profile contest. Their sphincters puckered, simple as. I argued that it gave you no advantage in a beauty pageant other than knowing where the other girls hid their sex toys.

  “Then there was that business with the collapsed woman outside, in the hedge maze. The life you saved.” She flexed one of the tent spines until it arched the canopy to its full height, then locked it into place. “I said if that wasn’t proof of your character, there was no such thing. Didn’t do any good. You could have saved the President of ISPA and his whole cabinet and it wouldn’t have cut any ice. They’re just not ready for anything they can’t get a handle on.”

  Varinia shuddered as the wind picked up and flapped the canopy. “What about you, Grace?”

  “What about me, chick?”

  “What do you think will happen next? For people like me, I mean.”

  The old woman flashed her with the beam of her helmet lamp. “Well, I’m not playing Battleship with you, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  Varinia grinned to herself. With that dry and throwaway bit of humor, it was suddenly all right to be what she was, to do what she could do…if only around Grace. When the tent was up and she was snug inside, she’d try her best to prove that the good doctor’s faith in her, all those years ago, had not been misplaced.

  How much farther now? Despite the often remarkable disparity between real time and astral time—Varinia had once floated for what seemed like days, when it had in fact been a single night—she’d never ventured into outer space from a planet’s surface before. The height was impossible to judge. She could gauge neither her speed nor her geography. Storm clouds hovered thickly above, the occasional impish flicker of lightning inside auguring nasty weather. A new kind of pseudo-cold, empty and lonely, struck deep into her coining alter-ego.

  This was too ambitious.

  Locating the orbiting vessel and spying on its mysterious occupants had seemed a good idea at first. Like many of her special-ability-inspired schemes—relaxing through a brief travel before she stepped onto the Selene stage; drifting into space from her shuttle cabin, just to see what it was like, and almost ending up light-years disembodied when the ship began its warp jump cycle; conning Archie by signing up for Cydonia Face at the Delfin. Yep, she’d always been a tad too cocky with her gift. Too reckless. And now it was time to know her limitations and get safely back to ground. One of these days she’d pull a stellar Hansel and Gretel and run out of breadcrumbs altogether…for eternity.

  But would she simply stay in this form when she died, only cast away from where she was supposed to be when her afterlife guide came to usher her away to a further existence? Who knew? Mankind had never been equipped with a handbook for any of this stuff. She sure as shit hadn’t. Long-held theories about the parallels between coining and lucid dreaming simply weren’t true—she was no more trapped in her body right now than were the sound waves expelled from her vocal cords when she’d yelled at Solomon and Clay. Coining was phenomenal. A metaphysical can of worms that mocked the infancy of neural science while at the same time openin
g it up to infinity.

  Before they’d died, her mum and dad had assured her this ability was simply the next stage of human evolution, and that they were proud to have a prodigy for a daughter. But she’d always sensed a hollow air of duty in those pep talks. The kind of knee-jerk optimism all parents use to cushion their children from harsh reality. Truth be told, they’d never really forgiven her for keeping her gift a secret from them all those years—they’d found out with the rest of the galaxy when she’d returned home in disgrace after the Selene Pageant. Mortifying times. Ashamed to leave her own room. Meals her mum had made her left hovering on the grav-lev dumbwaiter outside her door. Endless astral escapes to nowhere, the only way she’d ever felt at peace.

  The storm clouds grew purple and more volatile. She could almost taste the electric charge. Time to quit. A swoop back toward the ever-so-faint flashes of mountains and coastline below gummed her with giddy excitement. As a girl, her favorite ride at the Martian Theme Park had been the mile-deep log flume into one of the great canyons. The sensation of falling and the huge controlled splash at the bottom remained unmatched…but easily simulated.

  All right. No parachute. No holding back. Lightning flashes emblazoned the shapes of enormous mountains onto her lidless vision. She recognized the intricate lines of architectural growth, like crusted plaque on the teeth of vast ridges, identifying the alien city. Along the coast, across the forest valley, a persistent fluorescent-green sliver intrigued her. Its glow wasn’t commensurate with the lightning flashes nor with the properties of running water she’d seen thus far on Zopyrus.

  Now falling at the same speed as the raindrops around her—a track race of diamond bullets—she veered toward the glow. It led her to the nape of a gigantic gorge, hidden from the beach by a tall seaside crag. The course of a massive river fed into it. Hundreds of meters wide, this river appeared to wind around several mountains, finally emptying via a mind-boggling waterfall into the hidden gorge. Yet she hadn’t noticed the river itself from aloft. Its color was emerald like the sea and therefore dark at night. The waterfall, however, cascaded iridescently from neck to trough.