Nara

by M. L. Buchman

  “Jump.”

  “Where?”

  She looked back at Levan. He’d pulled out his gun and it was aimed right between her eyes. She automatically took in that the setting was lethal at this range and the safety was off.

  “Out the door. Jump.”

  “Are you nuts?”

  He shot a blast into the bulkhead so close to her head that she had to duck from the heat of the melted area. The weapon had never appeared to waver from her face. Even in her wildest imaginings, she’d never thought to see someone who could move so fast. The stories of the great Ninjas told such tales but she’d always discounted them.

  Perhaps there was truth there.

  He pressed a small button and the entry hatch blew off. She was jerked to the door by the sudden decompression and barely managed to catch a strap. Levan was unmoving in his seat, held in by the belts she hadn’t seen him secure. His weapon remained unwavering.

  “Jump.” He roared above the complaints of the ship and the stream of curses from the pilot as he fought to control his plummeting craft.

  “You crazy fuck! What are you trying to do? Angel-lady will be pissed if you kill me.” After a year of training with him, she knew she had only moments to act or he just might shoot her.

  “She’s not here.” He shot the strap next to her hand. Ri jerked her burned hand free before it could be really damaged. And screaming in frustration was her only solace as she was thrown free of the hatch and out into the howling wind. She could feel his smile even when she could no longer see it. As Ri flipped and spun, she spotted the flitter, now under perfect control, departing much faster than could be accounted for by her fall.

  She tried to take a breath to continue her scream but the air slammed so hard into her lungs that she couldn’t expel it at first. She fell forever until she finally remembered the altimeter in her wrist unit. She flipped unpredictably but was able to move both hands in front of her face and change the mode of the unit. She’d only fallen a thousand meters from the flitter’s altitude.

  Fifteen seconds.

  The knowledge leapt from some part of her maniac instructor’s endless drills. Fifteen wasted seconds. Another thirty and she’d make a hole in the ocean’s surface that would barely cause a ripple, but from which she’d never recover.

  Ri slapped at her clothing and gear. A startling roll wrenched her spine. She was head down when she felt the padding against her back. There had been so much different equipment over the last year of training that she hadn’t thought to look at today’s gear. There’d be plenty of time before she landed wherever he was taking her.

  Now she was down to twenty-five seconds to study whatever Levan had given her. Tucking her chin against her chest she was able to focus on the straps of the harness. The world gyrated sickeningly beyond her vision, but the pain and fear were quelled by the lack of time. She could barely see as the wind ripped at her unshielded eyes. There was a red pull handle anchored to one strap and a green one to the other.

  Twenty seconds. She pulled the green.

  The front of the harness sprang open. The world flashed bright blue above her and deeper blue below as she tumbled downward. Nausea blinded her. She’d never fallen more than a dozen meters before in her life. A sprained ankle had kept her from the hunters for almost a month. No such luck this time.

  Thirty seconds. It might be easier to give up. But then she’d never have a chance to kill Levan. She twisted sharply several more times before her fumbling hands recovered the flapping harness ends and seated them back into the clips. She slammed the catch home. She added a pinched breast to her list of grievances against the man.

  Ten seconds to go. The water approaching impossibly fast. Her altimeter flashed meters so fast that the last two digits were more blur than number. Her hand reached the red handle. The altitude decreased remorselessly as she pulled.

  She hung head down in her tumble when the chute released. It billowed up white and immense between her legs as if she were giving birth to some impossible baby with a head bigger than all outdoors.

  A sharp jerk and she was flipped upright like a rag doll. She may have screamed as the harness jammed into her crotch and armpits; she’d never be sure. Her breasts felt as if they’d been ripped off her chest. Ri was certain of her scream as she slammed into the water a second later because she inhaled a lungful of seawater immediately afterward.

  She surfaced inside the chute and choked the water out, sucking air through the thin fabric. The green handle released the chute from her back. Salt stung her eyes and a wave slapped more water into her mouth when she surfaced clear of the chute. Her jacket had inflated and was keeping her head more or less clear of the water.

  Green. There was green to her right. The top of the next wave revealed a tree nearby. She paddled listlessly in its direction and at long last managed to drag herself onto the sandy beach. There she lay until she had finally cleared her lungs.

  Any attempt to rise caused her head to spin in the never-ending tumble of her fall and set her retching again. She’d long since lost anything to throw up other than a supply of salt water and spit. A few hundred trees were scattered across the island. There must be some sort of freshwater. She crawled to the shade of the nearest one and swore. She could see the ocean through the narrow screen of growth that had migrated down the center of the islet.

  She tapped the quick code on her wrist unit announcing a citizen emergency. It certainly was. Levan had tried to kill her. Though she should have checked the equipment right away. That was a lesson she’d not forget quickly.

  There was no comforting beep announcing a comm satellite had received and passed on her signal. Ri rolled over onto her back and squinted at the device against the bright sky. Her eyes were slow to focus on the words across the tiny screen.

  Never trust technology. Figure it out.

  Levan.

  “Asshole!” No sound beyond the waves and the rustle of the palm leaves far above answered her shout. She didn’t even know if she was north or south of their starting point, she hadn’t paid attention to the sun. An hour’s flight, they could be anywhere in the Atlantic Ocean. She kicked and thrashed at the sand, but finally stopped utterly exhausted.

  Or had he decided this was the best and easiest answer. Get rid of the embarrassing Japanese by marooning her on a desert island.

  No, that wasn’t it. If he wanted to kill someone, she was sure he had no compunction about using his own hands.

  “Asshole,” she repeated much more softly.

  Chapter 10

  Robbie was morosely checking Jaron’s figures again. His conclusions about resurgence of several endangered species were hard to credit, but she could find no errors. There’d been something somewhere else that might explain it, but she just couldn’t find it in all his neatly scribed pages. After weeks spent studying his various papers and notes, all the information had turned to mush in her head. She needed a break.

  Shutting down the console, she stormed out of the lab and into the evening light. Another day, come and gone with her barely noticing. She blinked and reoriented herself.

  The dawn light. She’d worked through the night without realizing. It took an immense amount of effort to understand Jaron’s work and to decide how to publish it without stepping on too many professional toes. In two more months she’d be back in the academic world while Jaron would be well buffered by his precious forest. Fully two months up-river, and still Jaron was pissing her off. A long-distance irritant.

  Perfect. She blinked her eyes trying to adapt them to brightening light. At last she could see the trail she wanted and followed it down to a bend in the Orinoco. She peeled back her coverall and shoved it down, kicking out of her boots as she did so. She pulled her legs free and tossed her t-shirt and underwear on top of the pile. She had one foot in the cool river water when she heard a loud splash. She almost dove in
anyway, she wouldn’t mind fighting with a crocodile or two. It might even cheer her up.

  Instead, she squished back across the muddy bank and pulled out the repulser. She stabbed it down into the soft muck and flicked it on. With a roar of protest, Josiah, the neighborhood croc, surfaced and moved upstream with a broad lash of his tail.

  Robbie dove in and let the fresh water sluice the long night off her body. The sweat, the frustration, the immobility of desk work were all shed as she swam against the current. She could overpower it, but she knew that Josiah was not far off and certainly not happy from being slapped by the repulser. She wanted to rage against the water but contented herself with just wearing out her body. For an hour, maybe more, she worked against the current until, with the suddenness of a falling tree, she was wiped out.

  Her arms throbbed as she moved back to the bank. She crawled out onto a rock and let the morning heat dry her off. Josiah was just in sight, riding the fine line of hating the repulser and desire for a taste of her flesh. It was nice to know someone wanted her, even if it was only a predator.

  Predators. Of course. Wilkson’s article. No wonder it wasn’t in Jaron’s notes. The Amazon had lost over a dozen amphibian predators in the last two decades. Of course there was a resurgence in threatened, prey species. Jaron had discovered their return, but he hadn’t known why either. He hadn’t even admitted in his notes that he’d been unable to discover the cause. But she knew.

  Damn, she actually was good. Not just some front for Jaron. That was what had been growing inside her. Not anger at Jaron avoiding her, well, not just that rejection. But rather that she was Jaron’s string puppet. Well, she wasn’t. She knew things he didn’t. She let forth a whoop, gave Josiah a jaunty salute of thanks and turned for her clothes.

  Standing next to them was a small woman in a natty lavender pantsuit and neat lace-up boots that had clearly never seen mud. Her brown-blond hair tumbled down her back. She was so petite that Robbie felt like a WEC attack tank even being near her. Robbie made no move to cover herself, she wasn’t the intruder after all.

  “Who are you and what are you doing here?”

  “I was thinking of going for a swim. How’s the water?”

  “Fine,” her mouth replied without much volition from her. She recovered with a quick shake of her head sending a cloud of spray from the unruly, mouse-brown mess.

  “Provided you don’t mind having Josiah watch you.”

  On cue the croc surfaced and splashed back in with an aggravated roar at two such tender morsels standing so near yet so out of reach.

  She turned back and the woman was stripping down, though her boots took some doing to get out of. Whoever she was, she was everything Robbie wasn’t: shapely legs, rounded hips, tiny waist, and a stylishly petite bosom. Robbie steadfastedly remained the beached whale on the riverside rock.

  “Maybe he’d best watch out for me.” With an impish grin, the woman dove in and began swimming upstream just as Robbie had, not too fast, but strongly. As her arms drove out of and back into the water, Robbie noticed the long sinewy muscles that showed the fitness in her unsolicited companion.

  Robbie watched her in silence. How could a woman like this end up in the middle of the Orinoco? There were no roads, which meant there was a flyer back at the station.

  Perhaps “Why?” was the more important question. The existence of Orinoco station had been carefully purged from her and Jaron’s papers before publication. Even the data she’d sent to Wilkson was all from the other side of the Sierra de Curupira mountains deep in the Amazon. She and Jaron had correlated it against local findings, mostly her own observations, but no published data mentioned Orinoco.

  There was only Jaron and herself who knew about the station. No—there was one other.

  Robbie focused her eyes on the woman now rising out of the water like a sea nymph rising out of a Botticelli painting, not the least winded by her workout.

  “SJ, I presume.” And she’d bet next year’s tuition, that wasn’t the woman’s real name.

  She nodded gracefully and rather than hustling back into her clothes, picked a tree trunk near Robbie and perched upon its rough bark.

  “You are more than you appear.”

  The smile that lit up her face was like a little girl’s. “With my size and choice of clothes, I can get away with a hell of a lot more than most.”

  Robbie couldn’t help herself. A laugh burst forth. She decided that she could get to like this person.

  “Why are you here?”

  “Not yet.” She leaned forward and, gathering her long hair into a thick ponytail, twisted a cascade of water onto the ground. “Are you alone here?”

  Robbie nodded. She hadn’t planned on it, but with Jaron gone, she could answer honestly.

  SJ, who’d offered no more of a name, looked disappointed. “I’d hoped that he’d found you.”

  “Who?”

  “Robert.”

  “My name is Roberta.”

  “What? You aren’t Isabel.” The nearly nameless woman’s face twisted in confusion.

  “Roberta. That was my mother’s choice. But Robbie’s been my nickname since before I could talk.”

  “You’re not male?”

  “What, did the breasts give me away? Or was it the lack of male genitalia dangling between my legs?” Robbie clamped her jaw. She’d had enough of that shit from slender little girls in school and she’d be damned if she was going to take it from another under-nourished little twit who’d invaded her jungle, patron or not.

  The woman shook her head as if to clear it and then her merry laugh burst forth. A quick hand rested on Robbie’s arm a moment and was gone.

  “You’re the university student. Robbie Enlara. The one I’ve been sponsoring. It never struck me to check the name. The governor of the remains of Eastern Canada is very male and is also named Robbie.” She laughed again. “I’m so sorry.”

  Robbie unsteamed enough that she could see the joke, but not enough to be amused.

  “So, did you find Clara?”

  “Who the hell is Clara?”

  Once again the confusion landed between them. Josiah released another cry of frustration.

  SJ spoke very slowly. “You didn’t find a young woman named Clara?”

  “No.” Was this woman and her guessing games even rational? Didn’t she know anything?

  “What’s her name?”

  Then Robbie remembered that had been Jaron’s sister’s name.

  “His name.”

  “His?” SJ released another high burst of giggles that sounded half embarrassed and half surprised.

  “His? I sent a woman named Robbie to befriend a man named Isabel.” She held onto her sides in pain as she laughed. Something about that kicked the woman right into near-hysterics. SJ rolled off her log and landed in the mud of the river bank smearing the slop all up one side and into her hair.

  Robbie tried to fight the smile, but the laughter was too infectious. She too was soon in agony holding her sides from watching this powerful patron who had sponsored the wrong person to find another wrong person in the heart of the Venezuelan jungle.

  When at last they recovered their breath, SJ took another dip to scrub off the mud. She reemerged from the river like Venus on a Half Shell, trying to unsnarl her hair with her fingers like a little girl.

  “I’d like to meet him. What’s his name? Where is he?”

  She flung the wet mass of hair over her shoulder and looked about her eagerly.

  Jaron going skinny-dipping with two women. Now there was an unlikely image. “Jsaon. Up-river. Gone these two months.”

  “And you’ve been here just thirty-two days. That explains the earlier data spike.” Her bright blue eyes met Robbie’s. “I’m sorry. Men are such jerks. Even my son. Good boy, but, well, very male.”

  “You ha
ve a son?”

  Now the woman looked down toward the river and was a long time in answering. At last she straightened her back and stared at Robbie as if daring her to deny it.

  “A son. Yes, I have a son. He’s twenty-two.”

  Robbie would have guessed she was the one who was twenty-two, not forty-something. Yet there was something about the eyes that made her believe the woman.

  SJ sprang to her feet and headed for her clothes. “C’mon. There’s something I want to show you.” She picked up her lavender underwear, exactly the same shade as her suit, but covered with little blossoms.

  “Besides, I expect Josiah is pretty sick of bumping his nose against your repulser field.”

  # # #

  Robbie lumbered along behind SJ. The forest that opened for her delicate step slapped at Robbie with broad branches and raised its roots for her to stumble over. She’d walked the trail daily this season and last, yet it had changed somehow.

  As they entered the clearing, a long, elegant flyer of some model that screamed of wealth filled the center of the clearing. Then a squad of six WECs came into sight. Jaron would be terrified if he knew. Had this woman perhaps come for him? She seemed nice, but was it merely a costume that covered a spine of hard steel? Jaron’s DNA must exist a hundred places about the station in fingerprints, hair follicles, and on his journals.

  A big man, nearly as big as Robbie, came forward and stopped in front of SJ.

  “You went swimming? In that river? How do you expect me to protect you if you do things like that?”

  “At ease, Commander Levan.”

  The man snapped into parade rest.

  “That’s not what I meant. I had Robbie with me. I was perfectly safe.”

  The man’s cold gaze turned to assess her. Robbie resisted the urge to flex her muscles or, better yet, bat the man aside. His inspection paused especially at her hands and her eyes. She didn’t blink or look away.

  He finally shrugged. “Perhaps.”

  Robbie bristled at the slander, but SJ forestalled any protest by putting a small hand on her forearm. “That is high praise from our good commander. Please take it as such.”