Neptune Crossing (The Chaos Chronicles) (33 page)

He bit his lip, at a loss for words.

/// It's an idea.

You might be able to sabotage the effort

for a day. ///

/I thought you said you wanted to get going./

/// Well...that's true, too. ///

Bandicut cleared his throat, realizing that Julie was waiting for an answer. If he was still on Triton tomorrow, he would be going out on survey, anyway. "I could try," he said finally.

"Good! I see you have your cast off. Are you okay now?"

"Ah—yes!" he croaked. "Yes—I'm doing great."

She peered at him intently, with those penetrating blue eyes. "John? Are you
sure
you're all right? You seem—I don't know—upset. Or distracted."

He shook his head, but could not wipe the insipid busy-talking-to-an-alien grin from his face. "I just know," he managed, "that you invited me to dinner. And that it's about time we stopped talking about...alien artifacts...and started talking about...well, whatever." He blushed, but felt better when he saw an answering glimmer in her eye.

"Okay," she said. "Just let me put in a good word for you for tomorrow. If you'd really like to."

"Sure," he whispered. "I'd like that. A lot." He tried not to wince at the insincerity in his own voice.

*

Dinner in the cafeteria seemed as unromantic as ever, so they opted for sandwiches and beers in the lounge. Julie suggested a round of EineySteiney, but Bandicut's head already hurt with images of balls hurtling through Einsteinian fields. "Could we just talk, instead?" he asked nervously.

"Sure," she said, eyes laughing. "Imagine that! A man, wanting to just talk!"

"Aw, come on. We're not that bad, are we?"

"Well, you might yet qualify as a credit to your species. I'll let you know later." Julie took a bite of her club sandwich and said with a mischievous grin, "Want to see my holos, back in my place, after we eat?"

He smiled and didn't answer.

/// Not now—please!

Not when we have so much to— ///

/Go to hell,/ he thought cordially. /Tomorrow might be yours—but tonight is my own./ He grinned at Julie, and she returned it with her eyes.

*

"Nice," he said, as her tiny compartment opened into a mountain vista, stark barren peaks at the summits, with caps of snow, and forested bases lying under blankets of white. The sky seemed infinitely deep overhead. "I like that. It's almost better than the VR room."

"You can't walk around in it, but this image is one of my favorite retreats," Julie said, settling into a cross-legged sitting position beside him on the bunk. She lifted his arm and placed it around her shoulders.

"Mm," he said, leaning back against the wall. He had her pillow tucked behind his back, but it was so small as to be useless against the hard wall. He decided to ignore the discomfort.

"Tell me what your favorite memories are of Earth," Julie murmured, gazing at the holo.

"Mm?" He swallowed uneasily. He imagined the question being asked after the Earth was destroyed, when the planet of his birth was only a memory.

"I mean, what do you think about when you think of Earth? What do you miss most? Where do you come from?" She hugged closer, still gazing at the snowy landscape.

"Ah. Well, I'm North American—"

"I know
that
!"

"Oh—well, let's see." He thought a moment, his tongue feeling thick and awkward. "I grew up in Ohio, small factory town, couldn't wait to get out. I—fell in love with the Rocky Mountains the first time I saw them—just like this."

"Really? Me, too," Julie said, nodding against his shoulder.

"But...I never got to live near them, except for a few months in piloting school. I lived on the East Coast after school, until I shipped up to L5 City and got training in space piloting." The words brought back a surge of memories; he didn't think of his past very often, and when he did, it was like letting in a dizzying rush of air.

"What did your family think about your going into space?" she asked, turning to peer up into his eyes.

"Well—uh—" His eyes watered.

"Uh-oh, did I ask the wrong question?"

"No, no, I just—well, my family all died before—I mean, in the Chunnel collapse...the English Channel...?"

"Oh,"she sighed softly. "I'm sorry, John."

"It's okay, I'm over it now." He laughed falsely. "I still have a niece, back in Iowa."

She looked up again, and her blue eyes seemed dark and liquid and full of mystery and life. "Yes," she said, touching his nose with her finger. "I can see that you're over it." She smiled and settled back against his shoulder. "My parents
hated
the idea of my going to space. They said it would age me prematurely. They said it was too dangerous. They said there wouldn't be any decent men there." She chuckled softly. "What do you think? Were they right?"

"About the men? Definitely," Bandicut said, clearing his throat.

"Maybe most men," she admitted. "But there are a few..."

"Nah. Stay away from 'em. There's only one thing they want."

"Oh? And that is?" She looked up, wide eyed.

"Er...to kiss your knuckles," he stammered. "Every one of 'em. That's it. Anything else, they couldn't care less. Oh sure, they'll
tell
you they want your whole body, and even your mind, but knuckles is it. Take my word for it."

Eyebrows arched, she raised her hand and offered him her knuckles. He took her hand gently, and nibbled on the first joint of her middle finger. She giggled. "You said
kiss
, not nibble."

"Oh—sorry!" He took a breath, dizzy with desire. "I meant, nibble." He carefully kissed and nibbled all of the knuckles on her right hand. She hummed, laughing softly. When he was finished, she raised her left hand. "Knuckles?" he said. "Did I say knuckles? I meant...er, ears."

"Ohh." She carefully pulled back her hair and offered him an ear. He kissed it lightly.

"Ears?" he murmured. "I meant..."

"Mmm?" Her eyes widened, pupils dark and beautiful.

"Lips," he whispered, and moved to kiss her.

"That's what I thought," she said, touching his mouth with her fingertip, before kissing him suddenly. "Men," she said, after the first kiss.

"It's all we want," he whispered, and then they didn't say anything more.

Until the comm chimed.

They paused, looking at each other. His hand was poised over the front of her shirt. Julie started to giggle, then stopped. Bandicut shook his head, thinking, it's never going to happen, is it? Julie turned slightly to touch the buttons on the comm. She killed the sound, and activated the message receiver. "There," she murmured, turning back to him. Her eyes, her smile, her tousled hair dazzled him. "Now...tell me again what men want?" she sighed, touching his hair.

"I think you should tell me what women want," he murmured, touching her lips.

She pulled him down, a slow slide in the low gravity. "An honest man who knows how to treat knuckles," she murmured, kissing his hand and then his ear and then his mouth. "And ears. And...lips." His hand moved and settled on her right breast. "And...I think you've...mmmm..."

He was aware, as Julie pressed close to him and he smelled the warm musky scent of her arousal, of the quarx stirring unhappily in its corner of his mind. But if it said anything, he didn't listen, and he certainly didn't answer.

Chapter 24

Afterfugue

As they lay together in silence afterward, he gazed over the contours of Julie's body, admiring the silhouette of her shoulder and arm and stomach against the flames of a holocampfire flickering beneath a tree canopy. He stroked her skin gently, touching the perspiration on her breasts, thinking that there was something magical about this moment that he would never feel again. Julie was still, her dark eyes gazing into the fire, only occasionally shifting to look at him. She touched his nose, smiled faintly, then turned to the fire again.

He felt the quarx coming out of hiding, like a frightened animal.

/// Is it safe? ///

Bandicut chuckled to himself. /Safe to look, but don't touch. What did you think of all those pheromones?/

/// Ugh... ///

Bandicut squinted into the fire. /If that's all you can say, you may return to your hiding place./

/// Well, you asked. ///

/Well, maybe I didn't really want to know. If you'd like to take the rest of the night off and get some sleep, I'll call you in the morning./

"Anything wrong?" Julie asked, her gaze shifting to study his eyes.

He shook his head as the quarx vanished back into seclusion. "Just a little internal dialogue I have every time I make love to a beautiful woman. Very boring stuff."

"I'll bet," she said, rolling toward him with a laugh. "You don't look bored to me." She reached down and stroked him, and he felt himself rising with unexpected excitement.

Not again! he heard a distant, muffled voice cry. Then the voice was gone, and he heard only his own heartbeat and Julie's murmurs as they pulled each other close once more.

*

There was a frantic desperation to their lovemaking this time; and when it ended they fell, entwined together, into silence. Within minutes, Julie had fallen asleep, and he found himself alone with his thoughts, musing over the woman at his side.

Would he ever see her again? he wondered. He was astonished by how powerfully he felt drawn to her. The thing was, he genuinely liked her, and not just because of pheromones or hormones or raw animal passion. He liked the way she talked and walked, the excitement with which she seized upon thoughts, the way her eyes blazed, the way she looked when she made love. When was the last time he had felt that way about a woman? Maybe never. It was a wonderfully satisfying feeling—and it was about to be ripped from him, probably forever, if he did what Charlie asked. What would Julie think, if she learned that the man she had just made love to had, hours later, gone out and stolen a multimillion-dollar spacecraft, in some insane messianic pursuit? Would he return a hero or a criminal? Would he return at all? He wondered if Charlie even cared about the price that he would be paying for this crazy mission...

This mission to save the Earth.

He felt a disjointed sense of urgency, as he was brought back to the decision he had to make. It was almost as if the quarx had reminded him with a stern warning; but it wasn't the quarx's voice, it was his own. He knew that if he didn't make his decision tonight, it might be too late to make it at all. How far did he trust the quarx? What he had seen of the translator's powers suggested that it all could be true, and probably was.

But what if...Charlie were lying, for some unfathomable reason? What possible motive could he have for tricking Bandicut into stealing a ship? To get to Earth? There were easier ways to do that. Besides, Charlie wasn't even talking about flying
to
Earth, merely to its defense, on the far side of the sun.

No, the lying scenario just didn't make sense. Even as he contemplated it, he waited for the quarx to leap forward with an indignant defense. When he heard only silence, he grunted to himself and turned his head to study Julie's sleeping form again, silhouetted against the flickering flames. What a thing to think about, so soon after making love! But there was no stopping the train of thought; Charlie had set it in motion, and there would be no stopping it until he had made his decision. But it seemed unlike the quarx not to be right there trying to convince him.

Still there was no response—and in fact, no stirring of the being at all. Charlie seemed to have completely isolated himself, leaving Bandicut to work things out for himself. Which was okay, except that with Julie asleep, it seemed a little lonely just now. Lonely...

Just himself and the flames, flickering...

And EineySteiney balls careening through space, and colliding, and flames consuming them...

He felt the silence-fugue creeping over him like a whispering fog, obscuring his vision of the world that lay before him, and superimposing another view, a sense of invisible shapes and presences and forces. He felt a great awareness of
gravity
, of the shaping of space by the presence of mass and gravimetric fields; he felt as though he were
becoming
space, his mind and spirit stretching out into emptiness, but that emptiness was being warped and twisted by the presence of objects hurtling through it. Then, moments later, he felt himself transformed into one of the objects, a comet, and ahead of him now was the fantastic blue and green and white form of the Earth, and he was plummeting toward it...there was no stopping him, the Earth was growing, swelling before him...he saw death rising up to greet him like a leering specter, not just his own death, but the death of a planet's civilization...

The feeling of horror within him swelled like the Earth, until he could no longer breathe—

And then the fugue-nightmare snapped away, and he was floating in darkness, gasping for breath. A broad array of information slowly came into focus surrounding him. Elements of it gleamed faintly in the darkness like toy soldiers creeping silently out of hiding in the night to surround and capture him. His heart beat rapidly, anxiously, until he realized what it was. It was a summation, awaiting his inspection.

He had warned the quarx not to trouble him about it anymore tonight, and Charlie had obligingly vanished inward. But he had left behind the answers to many of the questions that Bandicut might ask, if he were of a mind to.

He wanted to flee, to avoid the questions. But he was penned in by an army of information: gleaming datapoints that revealed the evolution of the quarx's plan. He saw, without real comprehension, the threading of space that would speed him across the solar system; and he saw the breathtaking simplicity of the translator's power to intercept the comet and destroy it. He even saw the numbers, the probability that the maneuver would cost him his life, the one-in-two chance that he would buy Earth's life with his own. And he saw what was perhaps the greatest uncertainty in the plan: the actual theft of the ship, because that involved human unknowns that even the quarx and his translator's science could not clearly fathom.