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It was all very awkward and clumsy, but sincere, and when he was done the
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water in her eyes was from joy, not pain. She seemed enormously (how else?)
pleased with him. He was so unstrung he actually fell asleep for a few
minutes, pillowed on her body.
He woke up laughing.
* * *
"You really do have the most elegant cheekbones," he told her, tracing their
line with one finger. She leaned into his touch, cuddled up equally to him and
the water pipe. "There's a woman on my ship who wears her hair in a sort of
woven braid in the back it would look just great on you. Maybe she could teach
you how."
She pulled a wad of her hair forward and looked cross-eyed at it, as if trying
to see past the coarse tangles and filth. She touched his face in turn. "You
are very handsome, Admiral."
"Huh? Me?" He ran a hand over the night's beard stubble, sharp features, the
old pain lines . . . she must be blinded by my putative rank, eh?
"Your face is very . . . alive. And your eyes see what they're looking at."
"Nine . . ." He cleared his throat, paused. "Dammit, that's not a name, that's
a number. What happened to Ten?"
"He died." Maybe I will too, her strange-colored eyes added silently, before
her lids shuttered them.
"Is Nine all they ever called you?"
"There's a long biocomputer code-string that's my actual designation."
"Well, we all have serial numbers," Miles had two, now that he thought about
it, "but this is absurd. I can't call you Nine, like some robot. You need a
proper name, a name that fits you." He leaned back onto her warm bare
shoulder she was like a furnace; they had spoken truly about her
metabolism and his lips drew back on a slow grin. "Taura."
"Taura?" Her long mouth gave it a skewed and lilting accent. ". . . it's too
beautiful for me!"
"Taura," he repeated firmly. "Beautiful but strong. Full of secret meaning.
Perfect. Ah, speaking of secrets . . ." Was now the time to tell her about
what Dr. Canaba had planted in her left calf? Or would she be hurt, as someone
falsely courted for her money or his title Miles faltered. "I think, now that
we know each other better, that it's time for us to blow out of this place."
She stared around, into the grim dimness. "How?"
"Well, that's what we have to figure out, eh? I confess, ducts rather spring
to my mind." Not the heat pipe, obviously. He'd have to go anorexic for months
to fit in, besides, he'd cook. He shook out and pulled on his black
T-shirt he'd put on his trousers immediately after he'd woken; that stone
floor sucked heat remorselessly from any flesh that touched it and creaked to
his feet. God. He was getting too old for this sort of thing already. The
sixteen-year-old, clearly, possessed the physical resilience of a minor
goddess. What was it he'd gotten into at sixteen? Sand, that was it. He winced
in memory of what it had done to certain sensitive body folds and crevices.
Maybe cold stone wasn't so bad after all.
She pulled her pale green coat and trousers out from under herself, dressed,
and followed him in a crouch until the space was sufficient for her to stand
upright.
They quartered and re-quartered the underground chamber. There were four
ladders with hatches, all locked. There was a locked vehicle exit to the
outside on the downslope side. A direct breakout might be simplest, but if he
couldn't make immediate contact with Thorne it was a twenty-seven-kilometer
hike to the nearest town. In the snow, in his sock feet her bare feet. And if
they got there, he wouldn't be able to use the vidnet anyway because his
credit card was still locked in the Security Ops office upstairs. Asking for
charity in Ryoval's town was a dubious proposition. So, break straight out and
be sorry later, or linger and try to equip themselves, risking recapture, and
be sorry sooner? Tactical decisions were such fun.
Ducts won. Miles pointed upward to the most likely one. "Think you can break
that open and boost me in?" he asked Taura.
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She studied it, nodded slowly, the expression closing on her face. She
stretched up and moved along to a soft metal clad joint, slipped her claw-hard
fingernails under the strip, and yanked it off. She worked her fingers into
the exposed slot and hung on it as if chinning herself. The duct bent open
under her weight. "There you go," she said.
She lifted him up as easily as a child, and he squirmed into the duct. This
one was a particularly close fit, though it was the largest he had spotted as
accessible in this ceiling. He inched along it on his back. He had to stop
twice to suppress a residual, hysteria-tinged laughing fit. The duct curved
upward, and he slithered around the curve in the darkness only to find that it
split here into a Y, each branch half-sized. He cursed and backed out.
Taura had her face turned up to him, an unusual angle of view.
"No good that way," he gasped, reversing direction gymnastically at the gap.
He headed the other way. This too curved up, but within moments he found a
grille. A tightly-fitted, unbudgable, unbreakable, and with his bare hands
uncuttable grille. Taura might have the strength to rip it out of the wall,
but Taura couldn't fit through the duct to reach it. He contemplated it for a
few moments. "Right," he muttered, and backed out again.
"So much for ducts," he reported to Taura. "Uh . . . could you help me down?"
She lowered him to the floor, and he dusted himself futilely. "Let's look
around some more."
She followed him docilely enough, though something in her expression hinted
she might be losing faith in his admiralness. A bit of detailing on a column
caught his eye, and he went to take a closer look in the dim light.
It was one of the low-vibration support columns. Two meters in diameter, set
deep in the bedrock in a well of fluid, it ran straight up to one of the labs,
no doubt, to provide an ultra-stable base for certain kinds of crystal [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]