Great North Road (81 page)

Angela reached up and stroked his cheek. “Wrong thinking,” she said. “Your first farm is five hundred kilometers from the beach.”

She was renting a big clapboard bungalow with a veranda running its length outside. “I don’t need this many rooms,” she said as the door unlocked itself for her. “But the living room sold it for me.”

He could understand why. It was large, taking up half the floor space, with wide doors opening onto the veranda outside, and a big stone fireplace at one end. She’d decorated it in pastel blues and white; furniture was simple wooden frames with lots of cushions. Saul liked the summer feel of the place, but he imagined winter would be a bit bleak. A real bachelor pad, he admired ruefully as Angela walked around, lighting candles. The kitchen was spotless from lack of use. Jacuzzi out on the veranda, with yellow underwater lights illuminating the bubbles. Bedroom dominated by a king-sized bed with an antique brass rail headboard. He glimpsed that as she opened the door to it and said, “I’m going to change. Back in a minute.”

Saul, man of many worlds, nearly thirty years old, decently well off, reasonably experienced with women—didn’t have a clue what to do. He looked at the couches and cushion pile, at the fizzing Jacuzzi. Looked down at his clothes. Take them off? Maybe just the boots.

There he was, sitting on a big floor cushion, tugging off his farmer-in-the-city boots as devoid of suave as you could get when she came back in. He’d worried he might be nervous, that he’d had too much to drink, that he wouldn’t live up to her expectations and requirements. That the night would be a wash-out like … well not that many, but it had happened. But when he scrambled back up on his feet that whole plague of doubts vanished. Just looking at her in the provocative negligee she’d slipped into with its black silk straps and lacy panels that hinted at so much incredible flesh gave him the hardest erection of his life. Angela saw it, and smiled haughtily. She made him stand there while she stripped his clothes off, which in itself was an amatory torment.

When she was finished, and he was naked in the middle of the room, she paused; a manicured nail tapped against her teeth in theatrical indecision as she looked around the living room. “Where first?” she mused. “Rug in front of the fire? Jacuzzi?”

Saul couldn’t take any more, he roared as he leapt at her. Angela shrieked and giggled as they collapsed onto the cushions.

They spent five days in her house. Five days naked. Five days ignoring work except for authorizing payment to Massachusetts Agrimech. Five days talking and laughing (a lifelong Democrat, he was mildly shocked anyone so gorgeous had such Republican tendencies). Five days having every meal delivered. Five days of the hottest sex Saul had ever had. This was grown-up sex, he decided, and it was a wonderful revelation, they were adults doing as they pleased without consequences. This more than anything, more than the rows with his parents, finding the farm, blowing his entire inheritance on his dream,
this
was what marked being truly liberated. He was complete for the first time in his life.

“Why me?” he whispered into her ear sometime during the third night. They were lying on some cushions they’d taken out to the veranda, letting the warm nighttime sea air dry the sweat from their bodies. Making love outside with the possibility someone might see, even if it was the middle of the night, had excited him in a way that was surprising. So much youthful repression bursting like a dam that for once he’d impressed Angela with his enthusiasm. Now he held her close, relishing the touch of her skin down his chest and all the way along his leg. “You could have anyone you wanted, you know you could. Why me?”

She stretched out an arm and reached for the wineglass, taking a long sip before answering. “You’re me,” she said.

“Hardly. I don’t get it.”

“Me without the baggage. Me how I want to be. This farm you’ve got, that’s taking the leap I’ve been telling myself I’m going to take. You believe in yourself, you’re willing to take the risk. It’s been a long time since I believed in myself.”

He kissed her to stop her saying anything so sacrilegious, wanting to own her, wanting to belong to her. “I know what love is,” he told her. “It’s you.”

That enigmatic expression took over her face again. He never knew what kind of judgment she was passing; all he could ever do was hope it was a favorable verdict.

“You’re a good man, Saul Howard,” she said eventually. “I didn’t think there were any left.”

On the fifth day, when dawn’s sunlight was flooding through the open veranda doors, Saul got down both knees and gazed up worshipfully at his angel with the wild hair. With every ounce of courage, he made himself say: “Please marry me, Angela.”

“That’s very sweet—”

“Don’t!” He pulled her down so their faces were level, and he could see the consternation in her green eyes. “Don’t do the sweet routine, nor the we-don’t-know-each-other one. I have never been more serious. Marry me, come with me to the farm, help me make it the start of something fabulous. I’ll screw it up without you, without someone who can see all my mistakes. Damnit, Angela, I don’t even want to leave this house. I just want to be with you. Please?”

For a long moment she stared at him, and he finally understood that her enigmatic expression was really just a mask over sorrow and fright.

Then she smiled cautiously. “Yes.”

“Yes? Yes what?”

A sigh of exasperation. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”

“Really?”

“Oh!” She pushed at him.

Saul pulled. And proved he was stronger. The kiss lasted a long time.

They did Vegas, flying out that afternoon. Saul couldn’t believe that part of it. Nobody got married in Vegas, not really. But there they were, by themselves, trying not to laugh as they walked down the aisle of the Lord’s Passion Chapel at eleven o’clock at night, Angela looking bad-girl stunning in a vamp’s wedding dress hired for an extra $87, taking the cost (including three-girl gospel-style choir) to $778 and 12 cents, plus the $500 state license.

The honeymoon was two days spent in a high-roller suite in the new Battersea Hotel on the Strip. Saul would
really
have liked it to be longer, but the machinery from Massachusetts Agrimech was now ready for delivery and shipment, as Angela told him several times. And as Noah’s increasingly frantic calls reminded him, the planting season was fast approaching. And if we don’t make that, chief, you’ve blown it beyond redemption.

So a reluctant Mr. and Mrs. Howard flew down to Miami, where they booked into a waterfront hotel for one night. Which was when they finally made the call to Saul’s startled parents, informing them they had a new daughter-in-law. The next morning saw the happy couple travel through the Shenadoah gateway to begin their fresh-start life on New Florida.

T
HURSDAY,
M
ARCH 21, 2143

Vance Elston woke early and pulled on one of his standard issue gray-green HDA T-shirts. It was the same one he’d worn yesterday, and the creases showed that, as well as the whiff. But at that it was the cleanest he had. Laundry over the last few days hadn’t exactly been his top priority. He slathered the tamiopozine cream over his red itchy feet before his last fresh pair of socks went on. One invasion of honeyberry spore was enough. He hadn’t ever realized until he found his shins and calves covered in the sticky ejecta fluid one evening. Ever since, he’d worn full-length trousers and gaiters. Just like Angela always did.

He went out into the idiosyncratic light that now ruled St. Libra’s atmosphere. Borealis cascades teemed across the sky, dripping fluidic globules down across the dark jungle. Just visible through them in the south, the ghost crescent of the rings glowed pallid silver, their influence waning before the interloper. Also deteriorating were the camp’s network links. The core cells and processor hubs were connected with fiber optics, which was immune to electromagnetic interference, but the standard bodymesh links were suffering from increasing dropouts and low bandwidth as the charged atmosphere vented its static plague in the form of blanket electromagnetic screams. As he looked about he could see thin strands of lightning crackling around the local mountaintops as insubstantial clouds scudded about.

“Dear Lord grant us your blessing,” he appealed in a troubled murmur. “For I have looked upon the Zanth, and seen the face of the devil.” The astonishing light show was all a little too close to Zanth rifts for comfort.

Antrinell walked over, the lines on his round face emphasizing his dismay. “I hate this weather,” he grunted. “I almost wish it would rain again.”

“It’s about to get worse,” Vance told him quietly. “I talked to Vermekia. The satellites they pushed into Sirius orbit confirmed the sunspots are affecting the entire star. And the things are still erupting. The oldest are about a hundred thousand klicks across now.”

“Any Zanth activity?”

“None.”

“That’s something.”

“I’ve accessed the worst-case scenarios the situation center’s Sirius task force has put together. They’re taking about a big climate change.”

“Climate change?”

“Possible. Let’s just wait and see, shall we.”

Most of the camp personnel were now out of their tents, standing around waiting for the dawn. It was getting lighter in the eastern sky, not that it diminished the cold borealis flames. Vance hated the mood of his people, to the point at which he felt responsible. The Daedalus explosion yesterday had spooked everyone as much as it shocked them. It made it very clear just how tenuous their connection to the rest of the trans-stellar worlds had become. Right now they were feeling hugely isolated and vulnerable, and there was nothing he could do to alleviate that sensation.

Talk died away as Sirius rose above the horizon.

“Oh My Lord,” Vance whispered, unable to help himself. The exclamation was thankfully lost amid the gasps from the rest of the watchers.

Sirius, the giant star that burned with nuclear blue-white intensity, was tinged a gentle salmon pink.

“How many sunspots are there?” an intimidated Antrinell asked.

“Just under four hundred now,” Vance told him. “There’s no astrophysical theory that can explain it. The event is completely unprecedented.”

“It’s not coincidence. It can’t be.”

“I agree. But I’m beginning to believe this is beyond mortal understanding.”

While the rest of the camp lined up for breakfast, Vance walked over to his office in the Qwik-Kabin and sealed the door. The e-Rays were suffering badly from the particle assault on the upper atmosphere. Although designed to function through the irradiative carnage of a Zanthswarm, they were susceptible to degradation from the barrage of lightning strikes. Their operational altitude left them particularly exposed. Systems decay was becoming a real concern for the AAV teams operating them as components suffered from surge burnout.

However, there was still sufficient bandwidth for a secure link between Abellia and Wukang.

“Good morning, Major,” Vice Commissioner Passam said as soon as the link was established.

“Ma’am. We’ve just had sunrise. Sirius has redshifted.”

“Yes, I’ve been accessing the images directly from the satellite cluster. It’s most unsettling. Solar infall on St. Libra is fifty percent down on a week ago.”

“I see. I didn’t know that. Have you confirmed what caused the Daedalus explosion yet?”

“Yes. It was definitely sabotage, though that’s not what we’re telling the media; as far as they’re concerned it was a maintenance issue. We’ve established that a binary compound explosive was placed in the central undercarriage well. They tell me that was a good place; it immediately ruined structural integrity as well as ripping open the bioil tanks.”

“Oh Lord.”

“Yes. And we were warned, which is the oddest part of this. Someone called us from an untraceable transnet address. They claimed it was Zebediah North’s followers.”

“What does Zebediah North say?”

“Nothing. Nobody knows where he is. Nobody can find him.”

“I see. What now?”

“Whoever warned us claimed he was in Abellia. Resources will be increased and targeted accordingly. We have to locate him.”

“Good. So what will happen with the Daedalus fleet and our supply flights?”

“Ah. Obviously we’ve grounded all flights until each remaining Daedalus can be thoroughly inspected. Two of them are here at Abellia, which we believe makes them more susceptible to sabotage. As of now, no civilian crews will be allowed access to any expedition vehicle. HDA crew will be conducting the inspections. Major, that instruction also covers all helicopters at Wukang. You have to get your flight engineers to clear them before they’re flown again. That includes a complete software reboot as well—we just can’t take any chances. There’s no way of knowing what Zebediah’s followers have prepared for a follow-up. Software bugs could have been downloaded months ago.”

“Right. Okay, that makes sense. So when will the replacement tanker get here?”

“There is no schedule on that as yet.”

“What? We can’t function without a tanker. I always thought it was stupid, only having one.”

“Once the HDA appraisal of a potential Zanthswarm is over, then a replacement tanker will be considered. Until then we’ll have to make do with the standard Daedalus. I’m told they can be reconfigured to carry additional tanks, so the loss isn’t critical.”

“I see.” Listening to her talk her politician talk, Vance began to worry about how she could use the situation to cover herself at the expense of the mission goal. “What about my Legionnaire reinforcements, what’s their ETA now?”

“I’m sorry, Major, but the GE has closed the St. Libra gateway to all traffic. The Legionnaires never came through.”

“They can’t close it to HDA personnel. Those troops had already been deployed.”

“They have been temporarily reassigned to the GE Border Guard. There’s some concern that Highcastle’s population might overrun Newcastle if they surge through the gateway. Obviously, allowing them through would have to be subject to negotiation. If it is allowed, it will have to be with our consent and under our conditions.”