by P. W. Child
He whispered an instruction to the device, which began a slideshow of images of Parashant. They covered the entire area in high resolution, picking out the tiniest details. Looking at these, Purdue would have known the place like the back of his hand before his arrival. "I surveyed the area thoroughly," he said, with a hint of pride in his voice.
"But how? Did you get someone to come out here and take these for you?"
"Nothing of the kind. I took them myself, from my desk at Wrichtishousis. Remote photography is increasingly easy if you have access to the right technology." The tone of his voice had tipped over from pride to smugness.
"What, you mean like a drone or something?"
"Precisely."
Not for the first time, Nina stared at Purdue and wondered what it must be like to be him. To have that perfect sense of entitlement, to live in a world where, for the right price, all problems had solutions, and to have the funds to take advantage of them . . . Once again, the thought of it made her uncomfortable. She focused on the images on the device. The nook in which they were now sitting was depicted in detail, from one angle after another. The river was shown so clearly that she could discern every pebble on its bed. Then there was the campsite itself. Seen from above, it was clear that it had been used for these purposes before—leftover stones and stumps gave away the positions of previous connection tents and teepees, more or less where they stood now. The shape of the fire pit was visible, its thin covering of sand not quite concealing it. And close by, a line in the sand . . .
"Is that a door?" Nina asked, pointing to the suspicious line. "Look, just there—it looks like a trapdoor or something, doesn't it?"
Purdue repositioned his glasses and peered through them. "You know, it does . . . " he mused. "I am surprised that I hadn't spotted that."
"What do you think, Sam?" Nina turned to look for Sam and noticed for the first time that he had not followed them. "Shit. Where is he?"
Sam was, in fact, right where they had left him—collapsed in the sand at the entrance to the connection tent. He had rolled onto his back and was now gazing at the stars, watching them squirm and dance. He felt as if he could reach out and touch them, so he gave it a try. First he plucked a single star from the sky (which, he was surprised to learn, had the texture of velvet.) Emboldened, he swept a large handful of them into his palm, then worried about the effects of messing around with the solar system and tried to reposition them. He tried to recall the layouts of the constellations, something he had not considered since his brief time in Scouts. Nothing looked right.
Oh well, he thought, nothing I can do about it now. Whatever it is, it'll just have to happen. He released the remaining stars, scattering them at random across the sky, and let his arm drop back onto the sand. He closed his eyes, suddenly exhausted, and let himself start drifting off to sleep. He felt a familiar, comforting weight on his chest. Must be Bruichladdich, he thought. How did he get here from Paddy's? Cats do that sometimes, I suppose. They follow their owners. I read that somewhere. They stow away. He's a good cat, coming here to find me. I wish he'd shift over a little bit, he's squashing my lungs . . . but he'll be so comfortable. I can't move him. I'll be fine. I'm so tired . . .
The next thing he knew, a black bird had swooped down and lifted him gently in its talons, cradling him as they rose into the air. It lifted him higher and higher, up toward the stars he had so recently rearranged. He could see them at close quarters now, much bigger than when he had held them in his hand, and was disappointed to see that they were nothing but large white buttons. But none of that mattered. The condor was carrying him into the brightness of the Moon. Soon the light would consume him, and he would be asleep, and everything would be as peaceful as the cat curled up on his abdomen.
"He's not here!" Nina looked frantically around the campsite. "If he's not here and he's not back in the tent, where is he?"
"It's only speculation, but perhaps he chose to sleep in another tent. He might be giving us a wide berth in order to avoid any possible confrontation with me."
Nina looked at Purdue with curiosity. Was he really jealous? It was so hard to tell how he felt—not just about her, but about anything. His anger was impossible to detect until it became white hot rage, which had never been directed at her but which she had seen at close quarters and been unnerved by. His happiness was likewise indistinguishable until it spilled over into childlike glee. Even in bed his reactions were difficult to judge. She always had the sense that he was constantly analyzing every experience, to the point where he could not simply feel an honest reaction to something without it being extreme.
"Look, Dave . . . " Nina twisted her fingers together awkwardly. "I know it probably looked a bit suspicious, waking up and finding that Sam and I were both gone, and then coming out here and finding the two of us together. But honestly, there's nothing going on. I just couldn't sleep and I was feeling trapped in the tent and wanted someone to go for a smoke with."
He nodded. "I know."
"You do?" She scoured his face for any clue that might tell her what was going on. She found nothing.
"Oh, yes. Or if there was, you would be concealing it remarkably well. It's true that your hair is a little disheveled, which could be consistent with an act of passion, but you do not seem guilty. You aren't blushing, you have not been touching your throat, which you always do when you have something to hide. There is no flush across your chest, which I would expect to see if you were sexually aroused, and the smell of your sweat is unlike the scent that you give off in those circumstances."
Nina was perplexed. On the one hand, his analysis was absolutely accurate, and it was certainly preferable to an unwarranted jealous scene. She could only imagine what her ex, Steven, would have made of a situation like this. But on the other, it was infuriating to be read so calmly. Surely a normal human being would have at least a slight flicker of jealousy. She tried to imagine how she would have felt if she had caught Purdue out here with Julia Rose, or perhaps with Sara. She couldn't make the image work in her head. It was too unlike him. She had no doubt that if Purdue felt the need to look outside of their relationship, he would simply tell her. In all likelihood, he would probably ask her to join in.
This is not a helpful train of thought, she told herself firmly. Setting it aside, she gave Purdue a brief recap of what she and Sam had witnessed in the connection tent. "I don't know what was in the steam, but I've been to a couple of parties where people have been using poppers and the smell sort of reminded me of that. They were throwing a lot of herbs around, but what I was smelling wasn't entirely natural. I think Sam got more of a lungful than I did—he was up a bit higher. I was crouched down with my head about here, where the air was clearer. What if he's wandering around somewhere, high as a kite? We should find him."
"I doubt that we can," said Purdue. "Look around. We have nothing but desert. You and I, searching together with just a single light source between us, would cover these dunes and hollows slowly. Besides which, Sam's reaction to the drug would have to have been considerably stronger than yours to send him off on such addled ramblings, and that seems unlikely. Come back to bed. I would be prepared to bet that Sam will reappear in the morning, having spent the night in another tent—and if not, we can mobilize the entire group to search for him."
He held out a hand to Nina. Suddenly she felt weary. Purdue was probably right. Things had been a little weird between Sam and her thanks to her relationship with Purdue, and it made sense that he would have made himself scarce. Dawn was just a few hours away. They would find out what had happened to him then. She let Purdue take her hand and lead her back toward their tent, where she lay in the darkness, his arm around her, unable to sleep.
Sam, on the other hand, slept soundly and dreamlessly. When at last he woke up, he was drawn gently back to consciousness by a soft voice speaking his name.
He opened his eyes to see a white ceiling above him, lit by gently glowing white lights. He turned his head and
felt a soft pillow beneath his cheek. As he shifted his body, he felt a light blanket move with him. The place smelled clean, slightly chemical . . . medical. The gentle voice belonged to Sara, who was sitting at his bedside dressed in a silk trouser suit in pale gold.
"There you are, Sam," she smiled, laying a cool hand on his forehead. "You had us worried! How do you feel? Cody, give him some water."
"I'm fine," Sam rasped, gratefully accepting the glass of ice water. The liquid soothed his parched throat as he swallowed. "I think."
"You were lucky," she said, and held out a handful of half-mangled leaves for him to see. "We found these in your hand. I would assume that you recognize them, but if you got the leaves from someone who didn't tell you what they were, perhaps you don't. It's salvia. Salvia divinorum, to be exact. I guess you found them down by the river? Or did somebody give them to you?"
Sam's head ached as he tried to remember. He could not recall anything to do with leaves, and he said so.
"It's ok. People often don't remember what they've done when they are under the drug's influence, or recently released from it. Since these have obviously been chewed, I guess you were chewing them last night—in which case you were lucky to end up down here. A little while ago we had someone get high on salvia during a Vision Quest and he wandered out into the desert. By the time we found him he was extremely dehydrated and had to be airlifted to a hospital. So even though it's a legal high, we don't advise using it while you're here—or any other mood-altering substance, for that matter." She closed her fingers, crushing the leaves.
"Where is this?" Sam asked.
"This is our medical facility," Cody spoke up, leaning on the back of Sara's chair. "It's kind of basic, but we've got everything we need for cases such as yours."
"But . . . where is it?"
"Right beneath the connection tent!" Cody said. "No, it's ok, there's no need to look so weirded out. You didn't know it was here, and that's because we didn't tell you. We try to keep this place a secret so that all the delegates can feel like they're getting the authentic Parashant experience, hundreds of miles away from anything. They're not gonna feel like they're out here on their own if they know they've got this right downstairs, are they?" He flashed Sam a conspiratorial grin. "So don't go telling everybody, ok?"
Still bleary and half-awake, Sam agreed to keep the secret. Cody and Sara left him for another half hour, with strict instructions to finish the pint of water on the table beside him. When Cody returned, he got Sam back on his feet and led him down a white corridor to a kitchen, and between the two of them they carried that morning's breakfast up to the connection tent, ready for the delegates to start filing in.
Well, Sam thought, as he looked at the ovens, fridges, and microwaves lining the kitchen walls, that solves the mystery of the food. Maybe at some point I'll figure out what the hell happened last night and solve that one, too.
☼
Chapter Fifteen
"Where's Sam?" Julia Rose rubbed her eyes. Only a sliver of morning light had made it through the tent flap, but it fell right across her face, making her blink hard. "I didn't think early mornings were his thing. Nina, have you seen him?"
Half awake and not yet thinking straight, Nina looked to Purdue to see whether he could inspire an answer. She could think of no plausible lie, but she did not want to tell anyone that she was worried about Sam until she had had the chance to look for him. Unfortunately Purdue was still sound asleep, sprawled on his back on the reed mat, so no help was forthcoming. "Er . . . " Nina began, somewhat inauspiciously. "I think he's . . . he might have . . . " she trailed off into silence. "I don't know. Sorry. I'm going to go and look for him." She fumbled around in her backpack, looking for her clothes.
"I'll come with you," said Julia Rose, kicking off her blanket. "Just let me get out of my PJs."
Nina wanted to put her off, but in her bleary state she could think of no good reason why Julia Rose should not come with her. Turning her back, she quickly stripped off her nightshirt and threw on a pair of shorts and a tank top, then pulled on her hiking boots and aimed a few swift sprays of sun cream at her pallid limbs. By the time she turned back around, Julia Rose was already dressed and ready to go.
"He's probably dead."
Both women whirled round to see Hunter, flat on his back and staring at the roof of the teepee. Both had completely forgotten that he was there. Nina mentally kicked herself for not being more aware of everyone else in the tent as she changed, and hoped that she had not given him an inadvertent eyeful.
"If he went out in the desert, all by himself, in the middle of the night," Hunter droned, "yeah, he's dead. There's probably a whole pack of coyotes snacking on him right now. Or maybe like a rattlesnake or something. Or maybe he saw something he shouldn't have seen and someone dropped him at the bottom of the canyon."
Nina stared at him, somewhere between bemusement and disdain. "Well, aren't you just a little ray of sunshine? Come on, Julia Rose. We've got better things to be doing than hanging around cheerful bastards like this one."
"Don't be hateful just because I'm right," Hunter said, apparently unperturbed. "See you at breakfast—unless you're dead too by then."
"What the fuck is his problem?" Nina raged, as they walked away from the tent. "Who says things like that?"
"Douche bags, mostly," Julia Rose replied. "Don't worry about him, he's just an ass. I'm sure Sam will be fine—he probably just couldn't sleep or something." She followed hard on Nina's heels, striding across the campsite. It was still early, and only a couple of people had emerged from their tents. Sensing Nina's growing concern, Julia Rose searched for the right thing to say. "For what it's worth, I think it's great that you two still care so much about each other. Were you together for long?"
Nina stopped in her tracks and looked round. "Sam and I weren't together. Why does everyone think that? There's never been anything between us—well, one brief moment, but that's it—and another brief, brief moment on the last trip. Hasn't anyone else ever had a short-lived attraction to a friend? Why does it have to be such a big deal to these people who aren't involved and never were? He's my friend, that's all—don't people usually care about their friends?"
Before Nina's eyes, Julia Rose's confidence crumbled. "I'm sorry . . . " she said. "I didn't mean to upset you."
Nina sighed, pressing the heels of her hands against her hot, sore eyes. "Of course, you didn't. I'm sorry. It's just . . . it's hot, I didn't sleep much, I'm in desperate need of caffeine and there's a lot that I'm struggling to get my head around just now. I shouldn't have taken it out on you. It's just . . . a lot of people ask me that kind of thing about Sam."
"Yeah," Julia Rose half smiled, "I kinda got that. So where are we going? Where do you think he is?"
"I've no idea," Nina admitted. "I wish I had. He was outside the connection tent last time I saw him, so I was thinking that he might have come back down to the river for another cigarette and maybe fallen asleep down here. Or that . . . " she fell silent. The mental images of Sam's possible fates that were currently tormenting her did not bear mentioning. Deep in the pit of her stomach, she could feel the grip of the irrational fear that speaking those possibilities aloud might somehow cause them to come true.
They walked down to the river and Nina paced the bank, scanning it for any possible places where Sam's sleeping form might be concealed. For the briefest of moments her eyes strayed downriver, alert for any sign of him in the water. I'll give it a few more minutes, she thought, and then I'm going back to the campsite to get help.
As Nina searched, Sam was emerging from the underground facility with Cody escorting him. His eyes were covered by a thick blindfold, leaving him feeling vulnerable and ill at ease as he entrusted himself entirely to Cody's guidance. He was still not convinced that the blindfold was really necessary, but Sara had insisted that this was the policy—only initiates and officials were allowed to know the location of the entrance to the facility, therefore Sam wou
ld have to be led out blindly and his eyes must remain covered until he was a safe distance away.
Stumbling after Cody, Sam felt the change from steps to sand under his feet. He heard the soft thud of the door falling shut behind them, and the swish of sand as Cody covered it over, concealing it from view.
"This way, Sam!" The twangy, nasal voice set Sam's teeth on edge even more than usual. There was something about being reliant on Cody that made him even less bearable than Sam had previously found. He felt Cody's hands on his shoulders, steering him away from the door, walking him around in large, looping circles so that Sam would have no chance of finding his way back to the place from which he had been released.
When the blindfold came off, Sam was back outside his own teepee. "There you go, buddy," said Cody. "You've still got time to get yourself cleaned up in time for breakfast. See you in the connection tent!"
Still in a daze, Sam crawled into the tent. Only Hunter was there, apparently asleep. Sam rifled through his backpack in search of clean clothes. He had a vague memory of rolling around on the sand, and it clung to his hair and hid under his fingernails. Changing his clothes was not going to be sufficient for making him feel less grimy. He dug out his towel and headed down toward the water.
"Sam! Oh, god, Sam!" Nina waded toward him as fast as she could, splashing madly. She threw her arms around him in a sodden hug that nearly overbalanced them both. "Where were you? I thought you were dead!"