by John Park
“It’s a cheat,” he said suddenly. “A trap. It’s—” His voice lowered. “There’s something dark here, eating away, in here where my life should be. . . . Secrets.” He stopped and turned to her, staring. “You cared too, didn’t you? Now you’re giving up. And you won’t tell me what happened at work today. You too.” He swung her round to face him. “You know and you won’t tell—” Then he stopped. He pushed her away and turned his head to the sky. His eyes were clenched shut but the pale light glimmered on his cheeks. “Oh god,” he whispered. He twisted his head from side to side. “I was ready to hurt you. You’re all I’ve got to hold onto, and I was going to hurt you. I’m scared, Elinda. I don’t know what’s happening. Come here. Please come here.”
When she went to him his arms gripped her so that she could hardly breathe.
After a while, he stepped away, stood beside her. He did not speak but she could hear his ragged breathing. His fingers quivered in hers. The wind shrieked and fell, shrieked again. She cleared her throat. “I think,” she said, “I’d better tell you what I found out this afternoon.”
The next morning, while she and Larsen inspected a new batch of corn seedlings, Elinda told him she had betrayed his confidence.
“When you decide to do a thing, you waste no time, do you?” he said. The dawn wind roared outside. Rain and hail rattled on the window. “Is there something in you that insists on putting yourself in the wrong? I suppose you have a reason for this?”
She started to tell him about Grebbel.
He nodded. “I know of the man. Menzies, his foreman, was my associate. If you know so much, I may as well tell you that. He has mentioned your Mr. Grebbel to me too.”
“Will you help him, then? Will you do whatever it is you’ve done before?”
“After what happened yesterday?”
“But that was because you wouldn’t help her—Erika.”
“Or because I did ‘help’ poor Strickland.”
“In this case, you’d do more harm by refusing Jon. He’s suffering,” she said. “I don’t know what he’ll do if he can’t get help.”
“A suggestively vague threat,” Larsen said. He peered at a discoloured leaf, put the plant aside for examination later. “Meaning, I take it, that what I decide will determine not only this man’s welfare, but perhaps yours and my own as well.” He bent and tightened a clamp on one of the nutrient hoses. “I already told you I’m not the stuff heroes are made of.” He did not look at her. “Give me time to think. If I can schedule something, Menzies will contact your friend.”
In Barbara’s lab the door was open and Osmon, the technician, was coming out. “I have to go in for a minute,” Elinda said. “There’s some data I need for the Greenhouse here.”
He hesitated, then smiled. “As you like. But I’ll have to be locking up in five minutes.”
She switched on Barbara’s computer and entered the password. When she brought up the file directory, it was incomprehensible at first. Then she mentally eliminated files that were clearly part of Barbara’s work. A few stood out. FAILSAFE, for one, and RABBIT.
She debated whether to try guessing Barbara’s other passwords, but then checked the memory storage. Four of the files, including the two she had noticed, were empty.
She switched off. A clumsy, and probably hurried, piece of cover-up. But by whom? Security? She had to assume so, which meant she should stay away from this terminal, in case it was monitored.
She flipped through the desk drawer until she found the memory stick Grebbel had copied the files onto. Stupid not have devised a safer arrangement for getting the files to her. But if Security were still keeping a low profile, maybe whoever had sabotaged the online memory wouldn’t have come into the lab and gone through the backups yet. She put the stick in her pocket and left before Osmon returned to lock up.
Through chilly rain squalls she hurried up the hill to her home, went to the couch and from under the seat cushion she pulled the papers she had found in Barbara’s room. She scanned them quickly, selected half a dozen sheets that looked promising and took them with her.
Then she made the long walk back through the rising wind past the Greenhouse. She opened the office and switched on her computer.
When she loaded them, the files Grebbel had copied seemed to be intact. She looked at the sheets with Barbara’s writing and tried to decide which one might hold the password.
It took an hour. Several times the files erased themselves when she entered too many wrong guesses, and she had to reload them from the stick. But finally she unlocked them.
FAILSAFE contained the text of the leaflet, with instructions to broadcast it if Barbara failed to get in touch the following morning. It must date from the time Barbara had vanished. And it must have been sent over the net, to Jessamyn. She closed her eyes and took several long, deep breaths.
This certainly wasn’t going to get Barbara off the hook. If Security had found this and they were going to try to hang the bombing on her as well, there seemed to be only one way out. She would have to follow Barbara’s tracks and prove that Barbara had been right.
She opened the file named RABBIT. It evidently consisted of some dialogues held over the computer net. The original exchanges must have been in volatile storage, forcing Barbara to make notes afterwards. A few times and dates had been highlighted, and some of the entries had received comments in capital letters: OTHERS BEFORE ME? E.F.? Near the end was an entry that read: Trap 01:00. Recorder. Weapon?
Elinda winced. Setting traps and looking for hidden things? She shook her head Then finally she remembered what the nurse had said about Barbara’s compulsion to keep moving and her hint about a cave.
EIGHT
“Just what I needed,” said Grebbel. “I’m barely off the shuttle, hardly got to know her, and she drags me up the side of a mountain.” They had stopped on a bend of the trail, where it gave a clear view into the valley. The settlement was spread out below them, as he hadn’t seen it since his first night in the dirigible, but this time clear and detailed in the daylight. A truck edged back across the causeway to the near bank, like an ant on a pencil. As it turned, its windshield caught the light and for an instant became a tiny sun.
Elinda scowled. “Sourpuss. Misery. I even did without the ropes and the ice axe just to make it easier for you.”
“Hah. I bet you wouldn’t know one end of an ice axe from the other.” He paused, frowning, “When we . . .”
“When we what? When we who? Jon? Have you remembered something?”
He paused, then shook his head. “No, just a funny feeling. It’s gone now. So where’s this cave you want to look in?”
“It’s a place Barbara and I sometimes hiked to,” she said. “Farther along the valley and up. I don’t think we’re going to get there before dark. I still think in terms of twenty-four-hour days half the time when I try to plan things.”
And maybe, Grebbel thought, you’re not totally happy about bringing another lover to one of your former trysting spots.
“Oh, look,” she cried, and pointed. Out of the sun’s red glare, riding down the wind, the pair of raptors came sweeping towards them. Steel blue wings cut the air like scimitars; the crimson heads and orange crests might have been arrowheads loosed from a titan’s bow. The two creatures passed twenty metres below them, their round, amber eyes staring, the talons at the first wing joint clearly visible, and the needle teeth in their jaws.
“Scaly eagles,” she whispered. “Such an ugly name. I’ve never seen them this close before.” She leaned against Grebbel and he put his arm around her shoulders.
The two eagles dwindled down the length of the valley until they were almost out of sight. Then they banked and turned across it, two drifting flecks of light against the bluish foliage the trees. They soared over the river and back towards the head of the valley, where the elongated bubble of a dirigible was gliding into their territory. If they mobbed it, they were now too far away to be seen.
Elinda let her head rest on Grebbel’s shoulder. “It’s still the same, isn’t it?” she said. “We keep teasing each other, playing games, because we don’t know what’s real behind the play. Even now, even here.”
He rubbed her neck, his gloved fingers stiff and clumsy and comforting. “Let’s leave the masks on,” he said. “Right now, the play’s the thing.”
They followed the trail almost up to what passed for the treeline, where it widened into a clearing that overlooked the valley. Clouds of green creatures the size of houseflies buzzed in the shade, but did not approach them, but once Elinda was bitten by something that lurched away through the air and fell to the ground, twitching.
Slabs of grey stone were thinly covered by earth where spongy turquoise leaves grew among fallen boughs that looked like the limbs of fallen dragons or angels, and the trees formed a living shield between them and the rock face. Spray from a hidden waterfall glimmered in the shade there, and that dark wall swayed and shivered with the voice of the sea.
Grebbel prowled, examining the site.
“Does this suit Madame? Let’s see if I have this right. Note the scenic view from the front bedroom, and the fashionably elegant decor in grey, brown, and leaf blue. The lighting is entirely natural, and it comes with its own built-in timing mechanism specially adapted to this planet. And, here, the back bedroom leads to a bathroom with shower and constant cold running water. Over there is the eastern bedroom. And in the western bedroom we have—someone half buried under a collapsed tent.”
“That’s okay, there’s no real hurry. Finish your guided tour, sit down and have a good laugh before you come and help.”
“We obviously learned this in different schools. The way I was taught, you look around for the best spot before you pitch the tent; it saves the effort of keeping it on the poles when you move it. But I suppose your way’s more interesting. That goes in there.”
“It’s out of the wind here; the nearest glacier’s five kilometres away; I know for a fact that the chances of being hit by avalanches, lava flows, meteorites and—giant squid are no more than twenty percent in this particular spot. And we can look across the valley without getting up. Or do you want to do a geological survey first?”
“That’s a thought,” he said. “But I don’t think we’ve got time.”
She stuck out her tongue, and he grinned and backed to the entrance. “Hand me the pegs, and I’ll fix the guy ropes.”
When it was done, they lay in the tent, looking across the valley. Far to the south a trail of smoke grew from a pale blue peak. Orange light flickered at its crest. They watched it and heard only the wind and a trickle of water. “Well,” she asked finally, “how’s the western bedroom now?”
“I admit I’ve seen worse. There’s no snow on the ground, for one thing.” He frowned. “It can be rough, camping in the mountains, in the snow. . . . What are you doing?”
“A survey—what does it feel as though I’m doing? A geological survey.” She put her tongue out again.
“Come on,” she said a little later. “Wise guy, tent erector. That goes in there.”
“So it does,” he whispered. “My god.”
“You may be wondering,” she said, frowning in concentration, breathing rapidly, “why else I asked you here today.”
“No . . . actually, I . . . No.”
“I was—hoping—to remind you. Of certain things. Now that you’ve decided to look for your past . . . by yourself. In case . . . in case you had any ideas of—giving up . . .”
“Who said—?” he began, and lost the thread of his thought. After a while he tried again. “Who said . . . I was giving up . . . anything? I didn’t say that.”
But now she was beyond replying. Her eyes had closed and her face was soft, though she gasped like a woman drowning. At each movement he made, she moaned and writhed as though her nerve endings had been stripped bare. He watched her with a remote intensity, in fresh astonishment at what a simple motion could trigger in her. Then she screamed. And her convulsions tore him from his detachment and flung him across an echoing, void.
She came back slowly, like a great chord booming and shimmering into silence. The sunlight dappled the tent roof, flirted with her eyelids when she let them close to feel herself closer to him.
They lay together until hunger roused them and they dressed to find the food in their packs and collect wood for a fire. There were piles of dry leaves for kindling. The fallen branches that they piled onto the fire burned aromatically with yellow flames and a thin blue smoke that eddied above the trees and was lost along the upper slopes of the mountain.
The next morning, they packed the tent and set out again. The path was muddier now as she led the way through the watery afternoon sunlight. They came round a stone outcrop, and stopped. A creature like a maroon, six-legged bear stood in the middle of the trail, half-heartedly nibbling at wiry scrub. It raised its eyeless head towards them, and patterns of light and shade rippled over the hair on its flank, then froze into place as though it was sensing them with its coat.
“What is it?” Grebbel whispered. “I’m not sure. I’ve heard of sightings, a few tracks. ”
He took a step forward.
She grabbed at his arm. “Wait. What are you doing?” He was bending to pick up a long rib of frond, like a spear, and going forward again. Suddenly there was a thin shriek above them and a small black creature fluttered down. It landed near the bear and scuttled to it, pulled itself up by the long fur. In a moment the outline of the bear’s head changed and two small black eyes stared forward.
The bear shook itself as though waking up, then swung its head from side to side and hissed at Grebbel. Its mouth was a black and cruel-looking beak.
Grebbel stopped and took a step to one side. The compound creature hissed again, then quietly trotted past them along the trail and vanished behind the outcropping they had just passed.
Elinda and Grebbel looked at each other wide-eyed, then suddenly burst out laughing. But the sound seemed so out of place, they fell quiet again. “And what were you planning to do with that pointed stick?” she asked.
He shrugged and dropped it. “I wasn’t sure it would get out of our way. Probably wouldn’t have, the way we found it. What do they say—two minds are better than one?”
“Even if they’re in the same head?” she asked, and immediately wished she hadn’t. “We’re almost there. Around this bend.”
Ahead of them a cliff gleamed like a brow ridge. Beyond a screen of vegetation the dim sun showed a dark opening. “Palace Cave,” she said, and then was reluctant to say more.
They made their way into the entrance. There were marks in the earth that might have been bootprints, but she could not guess how recent they might be. “Flashlights now,” she said, but Grebbel was already unpacking his.
The cave seemed to be empty. Their lights glimmered on grey limestone, the roof receding in narrowing crevices up into the cliff. “Barbara left something here?” Grebbel asked. “Any idea what we’re looking for? I don’t see any tracks.”
She went forward cautiously, crouching under the low roof. “Anything at first.” She realised she was whispering. The air was damp and musty and filled with the murmur of trickling water. “Careful. It goes down here; it’s like a couple of steps.” After ten paces, the ceiling was high enough for them to stand, and the cave opened to the right to form a small chamber hidden from the outside.
Uncomfortably, she recalled the last time she had been in this cave. Barbara had prowled restlessly, climbing ledges and testing out the echoes of her voice.
She glanced back Grebbel was standing stiffly just under the higher ceiling. His face was drawn, his eyes closed. The flashlight in his hand twitched, and sent a fan of light along the pleated wall.
“Jon, what’s wrong?”
“The air in here . . . at the bottom step, I thought I smelled . . .” His voice shook. “No. Forget it.” He cocked his head. “Listen to the water dripping, further i
n. These caves must go right into the mountain.”
“You want to go that way? There’s a place we had through here. . . . I’d like to look there myself.”
“Okay. I’ll call if I find anything.”
Elinda had been unpacking their lunch, that last occasion, listening to her call back as she explored. When she went to fetch her, Barbara had vanished, her voice throbbing out of the empty air in the main cave. The sounds had seemed to come from everywhere, and Barbara had decided to play hide and seek. It was ten minutes before Elinda, following the calls of “warmer” or “colder,” had found the way up to the hidden cleft in the wall.
This time it took longer and she found the layer of soil and rock fragments on the floor thicker than she had remembered, a pile of dead leaves that looked like an abandoned nest, a litter of what must be bones and broken eggshells, and two or three angular fist-sized lumps that must have broken from the ceiling.
If Barbara had been here she’d hidden her tracks pretty thoroughly.
Before she could do more than start sifting through the debris, Grebbel called and then reappeared, “I think there is something in there.” he said somberly. “If I’m right we probably ought to find it together.”
“Just a moment. It’s so quiet, it used to be beautiful in here with just the torchlight.” She reached up on tiptoe to where a stalactite grew above their heads, and touched it, finger to finger. She felt a bead of moisture transfer itself, and when she brought her hand down into the light, a bright transparent gem quivered on her fingertip.
His arms slid around her. The light clicked off and for the duration of a few more breaths they held each other in the dark, in the stone dream.
They switched on their lights and edged into the mountain. Grey walls enclosed them, with the steady trickle of water sounding somewhere out of sight. Was there a flicker of motion just at the edge of the lights, a quick rustling, almost too soft to hear? The beams flickered over columns and spears of stone, impending swords, the walls of tunnels and chimneys. To Elinda it suddenly felt like entering a stark and sombre dream.