gaian consortium 05 - the titan trap (30 page)

The off-hand compliment made her cheeks heat a little, and then she shook her head. “No, I don’t think that was it. He wasn’t giving me
that
kind of look, if you know what I mean.”

“If you say so.” He shrugged. “Did he see which vehicle you got in?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then we’re fine. We’ll put some distance between us and the depot, and then we’ll find a place to park and rest for the night. The GPS shows a wood of some sort about twenty kilometers from here. That’s probably a good sheltered spot.”

She nodded, mostly because she didn’t have any arguments she could offer at the moment. Something about the encounter with the stranger still felt off to her, but she decided to keep her misgivings to herself. After all, she was so on edge right now, she was probably reading something into what had really been an “oops” moment, and nothing else.

At least, she had to hope that’s all it was.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

They’d found shelter in a stand of trees, too meager to be called a real forest, but it was enough to hide the aircar from anyone who might be passing on the highway. One of the items Cassidy had bought at the depot was a portable sanitation unit, and so, although it wasn’t quite the same as having a fully equipped bathroom, neither was it nearly as bad as having to go behind a tree and use a leaf or something equally uncomfortable.

Dinner had been a couple of the SRPs, washed down with pouches of water. Afterward, they sat on the open tailgate of the ’car and gazed at the stars. Before the Cloud, this wouldn’t have been possible; China’s skies had been far too choked with pollution. But now the heavens above them were clear, the stars and planets and satellites blazingly bright.

“So that’s the Milky Way,” Cassidy murmured. Somehow, her head had ended up on his shoulder, but Derek didn’t mind too much.

“You’ve never seen it before?” he asked, surprised. Surely it should’ve been clearly visible from anywhere she traveled within the Solar System.

“Of course I have.” She lifted her head then, gaze fixed on the velvety-dark skies above them. “I guess that’s not what I meant. It’s just that I had no idea what it would look like from down here on Gaia.”

“And?”

“It’s the same…but it isn’t. Not as bright, but at the same time it feels as if it’s shimmering more.”

“Atmospheric disturbance, I would guess.”

At that reply, she shifted so she could give him a mock-severe look. “You scientists — always taking the romance out of everything.”

“Everything?” he inquired, and she grinned.

“Well, not everything.”

She reached for him, pulling his mouth down to hers, and that was enough for him. They’d already laid out their sleeping gear in the back of the vehicle, laying down the seats to give themselves enough room, and he pushed her onto that soft surface now, hands finding the fasteners of her clothing, fingers moving over her soft warm flesh once it was freed of its shirt and jacket. She did the same, pulling off his garments and tossing them over into a corner somewhere, and then by some unspoken agreement their bodies were locked together, no foreplay this time, only a joining brought on by mutual need, as if they didn’t want to waste any time before coming together again, reaffirming their decision to be with one another.

Afterward, they slept, undisturbed the sound of the wind in the trees, or the night birds calling to one another from far away. A hundred more kilometers into the waste, there wouldn’t be any birds, save the ones brought in to slowly start repopulating the area, but here all was safe, the air still clean enough, the trees and grass growing as if nothing had ever come along to change the very face of the landscape.

Bright dawn woke Derek first, slanting in through the ’car’s windows. He stirred, blinking, and then felt Cassidy stretch and yawn against him.

“Did we really sleep the whole night through?”

“Looks that way,” he replied, adding mentally,
Good thing, too…we’re going to need all the energy we can get today.

After levering herself up to a sitting position, she said, “Will we make it to the station today?”

“Maybe, if we get an early enough start.” He glanced at the chronometer that was still strapped to his wrist. “We’re doing well. It’s not even six-thirty yet.”

She made a face, looking more adorable than she probably intended, with her sleep-mussed hair, the blanket pulled up to cover her nakedness. “That’s way too early in my part of the universe, but I’ll do what I can. Have you seen my underwear around here?”

A brief search turned up the discarded garment shoved into a corner, and she pulled on her panties and her shirt, sans bra, then slid out of the back of the vehicle, no doubt intent on using the sanitation unit. He knew she’d want some privacy for the next little while, and so he stayed where he was, scrabbling around his own discarded clothing until he located his handheld. No messages from their benefactor, which he assumed only meant that he or she was waiting in the background, not bothering to intervene unless necessary.

He pulled up the map function and did some quick calculations. If they left in the next half hour or so, then they should make it to his former research station…and the processing plant…by late afternoon. His plan was to cut off the main road before then and come in from the south, rather than the northeast, and get as much video as he could in a short period of time — say, no more than twenty minutes or so. Yes, he wanted the evidence, but he also knew the longer he and Cassidy lingered, the greater the chance that they would be caught. It should be clean enough. This vehicle shouldn’t be on anyone’s watch list, and as long as he didn’t let anyone get close enough to recognize him, they should be fine.

Should
. There was the operative word, and he knew there had been a disconcerting number of “should”s in his mental processes.

Cassidy returned, looking freshly scrubbed, the ends of her hair damp where the water she’d splashed on her face had caught them. “Well, I’d still kill for a hot shower, but I’m starting to feel almost human,” she said, reaching up into the back of the ’car for her suitcase.

“You got coffee, right?” That was all he needed to feel human, or at least functional.

“Still in the bag.”

He rooted around, found the pre-filled container, then flicked the tab to heat it up. This kind of coffee was only about two steps up from rocket fuel, but it did the trick. The gourmet espresso would have to wait until they were back in civilization.

While he was pulling out some clean clothes of his own, Cassidy prepped her own coffee, took a sip, and then made a face.

“I know,” he said.

She just offered him a rueful grin and forced down another swallow. “Whatever doesn’t kill you, I suppose.”

Although she’d meant the remark as a joke, Derek couldn’t help experiencing a sudden wave of foreboding. So far, quite a lot of things had tried to kill them. He could only hope no more were waiting on the road ahead.

Seeming to sense his mood, Cassidy remained silent after that, getting dressed quickly and pulling her hair back in the same clip she’d worn the day before. The sun began to rise, burning off some of the morning mists that had settled around them, and Derek could feel the beginnings of what promised to be a damp, hot day. He wondered if Cassidy had any experience with humidity.

Of course not. Up until now, every place she’s lived has been rigorously climate-controlled.

It crossed his mind to warn her, but he decided against it. She had enough to worry her, and maybe the day wouldn’t turn out to be as hot as he feared. Besides, the heat would only be a problem when she went outdoors, as their rented vehicle had very good cooling control.

They climbed into the ’car, and he turned off the self-navigation system. He wanted to be in control in case they came across anything the vehicle’s admittedly limited computerized brain couldn’t handle. It was designed for a multitude of road and weather conditions, but armed pursuit was something quite outside its programming.

Cassidy remained silent for some time, watching the green landscape outside pass by. At length she remarked, “I’d thought it would be dry and dead.”

“It was, once,” he replied, keeping his eyes on the road, which had narrowed down to one lane in either direction. This was all the area required, as hardly anyone came this way anymore. “The Cloud devastated the vegetation in the area as well. But it’s bounced back better than we’d hoped. It’s helping to clean the air just as much as our equipment is.”

“If that’s the case, why is it all still empty? I’d think that if there’s enough decent air here to support plants — ”

“Well, the plants want CO
₂
, not oxygen. Besides that, there are still some heavier elements around that can play havoc with human respiratory systems if they’re exposed to them for too long. Even those of us stationed here couldn’t be here indefinitely — we had to be rotated in and out every eighteen months.”

A nod, and she fell silent again, watching the landscape pass by. The bright green of the semi-tropical vegetation had to look even more alien to her than the desert landscape outside Tucson or the scrub junipers and live oaks growing around Barstow. At length she asked, “Is that why you’re not worried about running into Liam? The eighteen-month rotation?”

He shook his head even as he slowed the vehicle slightly to navigate around a two-meter sinkhole that had opened up in the road. Aircars could manage some ground perturbations, but it was always better to give them a wide berth when possible. No one was coming toward them in the other lane; in fact, he hadn’t yet seen a single vehicle. That didn’t strike him as particularly unusual, as sometimes days would pass before any visitors came to the GARP facility where he’d been stationed. The Consortium actively discouraged traffic in this part of the world. The stray thought reminded him that they’d be coming up on a checkpoint in an hour or so. The personnel there were switched out often enough that he doubted they’d run into anyone who might recognize him, but he still wasn’t looking forward to running that particular gauntlet.

Eyes still fixed on the road, Derek replied, “My mother told me that Liam had requested a transfer while I was awaiting trial. Too many bad memories at the facility, I suppose. Anyway, last she’d heard, he’d gone to the monitoring station in the Antarctic.”

“Well, that’s one way of getting away from it all.”

“You might say that.” Under normal circumstances, Cassidy’s wry tone might have made him smile, but now, doing so only would seem to mock Liam’s pain at his husband’s death. Derek could only hope that Liam had managed to move on during the intervening years. “Even if he’s not in Antarctica anymore, it’s safe to assume that he won’t be anywhere near the GARP station, or the processing plant. In fact, I have a feeling that they reassigned everyone and brought in new staff, just to be certain there wasn’t anyone around with any connections to me or the work I was doing.”

“Typical scorched earth, I guess,” she commented, before lifting her pouch of water from where it sat in the center console and taking a sip.

“Exactly.”

They fell into another silence after that, and sometime later she reclined her seat slightly and shut her eyes, dozing as they ate up mile after mile. He supposed that was for the best, although he knew, were their situations reversed, that he wouldn’t have been able to do the same. It could have been the cheap caffeine still coursing through his veins, but he was keyed up, tense. He’d come from the edge of the Solar System to this place, and now their destination was less than half a day away.

But there was still that checkpoint to get through….

Cassidy awoke as she felt the ’car come to a halt. Had she really slept so long that they’d made it all the way to the GARP facility?

Blinking, she focused on the landscape outside the vehicle’s windows, then realized they still seemed to be out in the middle of nowhere. The only signs of civilization were a cluster of prefab huts, far too small to house a group of scientists and engineers — let alone all the equipment required for their various projects and tests — and, on either side the road, another pair of even smaller huts. A shimmer across the road showed where the electronic fence had been set up, and approaching the vehicle was a hard-faced woman wearing the drab gray-green of Consortium ground forces.

Cassidy shot Derek a frightened glance, and he gave her the barest shake of his head, murmuring, “Checkpoint. It’ll be fine.”

Somehow she doubted that, but there wasn’t time to reply, only to get her seat up to a more dignified position and to tug at her clothing so it was more or less lying where it needed to be. Luckily, she’d pulled her hair back that morning, and it seemed to have stayed in place. She could only hope nothing about her appearance would raise any alarm bells.

Derek pressed the button to roll down the window, had his I.D. and credentials showing he was with the network ready. As the guard stopped outside and looked at him expectantly, he said, “Good afternoon, officer.”

“Afternoon,” she replied briefly. “Your business in the Zone?”

“Documentary for NBN,” he said. “Here’s my I.D.”

He passed the card to her and she took it, then scanned it through the reader hanging from her hip. From where Cassidy was sitting, she couldn’t see the light on the reader glow green, but since the guard nodded and handed Derek his I.D. after a brief pause, she had to assume everything was all right.

“Credentials?”

Derek handed those over as well. They were actual paper documents, barcoded with the particulars of their fake “documentary” assignment. No reason why they shouldn’t pass muster as well, but Cassidy found herself trying not to bite her lip in worry as the guard scanned those, too.

“And you?” the hard-faced woman asked, peering past Derek to where Cassidy sat. “I.D.?”

She gave it to Derek, who relayed it to the guard. A repeat of the scanning process, during which Cassidy made sure she remained quiet, expression bland, as if she did this sort of thing all the time in various locations around the globe.