Читать книгу Under the Ember Star - Charles Allen Gramlich - Страница 7

CHAPTER TWO

The Apple and the Worm

Ginn’s mouth tasted foul. She tried to spit, found she had no saliva. Then she tried opening her eyes. One worked. A moment’s rubbing got the other open too. Her head ached. Even the dim purplish sun coming through the skylight above was too bright, and the fact it was morning told her she’d slept a long time. She’d gone to Red Jac’s almost fifteen standard hours before the Ember Star was due to rise out of Night for its own fourteen day reign.

Sitting up, she thrust blonde hair back from her face, let her bleary gaze take in her surroundings. She was at home, in her own bed. She’d managed to get off her lenses, jacket, boots, and blasters, but little else.

Terror stabbed at her then. The vial!

She spun around in her tangled sheets. There. Open on the bedside table. The packet.

She grabbed it up, breathed a sigh of relief at seeing the vial and syringe still intact inside. Greenish liquid moved viscously within, but not as much as when she’d opened the packet hours before.

“Four more doses,” she muttered to herself. “Just four.”

She started to return the packet to the table, thought better of it. She peeled off her sweat-stiffened black t-shirt and tossed it on the floor, then removed the vial from its packaging and used a strip of dura-tape to fix it to her chest over her sternum.

Rising on unsteady legs, she made her way to the bathroom, had a morning pee and considered brushing her teeth. Even the thought made the bile rise and she spat it yellow into the sink. She rinsed her mouth, swallowed a cupped handful of water. Her stomach growled but there’d be no eating just yet.

Stepping free of the bathroom again, she pulled on a looser t-shirt, also black, and then gathered her holstered blaster from the floor and strapped it around her waist. Long habit bade her put on her light-lenses too. The BDUs were military surplus and were serviceable for a while yet. She sat on the edge of the bed to work boots onto her feet.

This apartment had once been the manager’s second story office in a factory that produced hovercycles. The factory had closed; the manager had gone. Ginn had moved in. She had two rooms, three if you counted the tiny bathroom. There was a bigger main office and a smaller storeroom that she’d converted into her bedroom with scavenged materials. There was no running water, no electricity. She’d rigged a small recycler tank on the roof to provide water for the sink and toilet. She used her light-lenses if she needed to see in the dark. And no one knew where she lived.

“Are you awake at the last?” a voice called from what served as her front room.

On Kelmer, you didn’t freeze if you wanted to live. The blaster filled Ginn’s hand as she spun her bedside table to the floor and dropped behind it. The tabletop was thin burr-wood, but for just such an occasion as this she’d plated the underside with leftover plastisteel from the factory below. Even a blaster wouldn’t cut it easily.

“There is no need for weapons,” the voice from the other room called again. “I mean no harm to you. If I had, I would not have awaited your awakening.”

The voice carried no accent, which she’d normally take to mean ‘human.’ But the tones were too soft, too lyrical, and impossible to type as either male or female. Maybe it wasn’t human. But its logic was still unassailable. In her hurry to get the vial home, Ginn must have failed to take her usual precautions. She’d left her perimeter open and someone had walked through.

She didn’t move.

“I have brought kaftee,” the voice added. “I imagined you could use a cup.”

Ginn cursed under her breath. She’d been stupid. Coming to her feet, she holstered her own blaster but plucked up the one she’d taken last Night from Red Jac’s guard. She stepped cautiously through into the outer room.

A being muffled in aboriginal robes sat at one side of the office desk, which Ginn had pushed into the middle of the room and used as a dining table. A turban concealed the being’s head. Its face was veiled, its two hands gloved. Ginn catalogued the fine weave of the dark purple robes, the thin threads of copper-like native metal twined through the fabric so that it draped artfully. The metal alone told her that her visitor had wealth. Metal was scarce on Kelmer. Local metal at least.

“I don’t remember inviting you home so I’m gonna need to know who the hell you are,” Ginn said. She waggled the blaster back and forth in her hand.

“I will be glad to tell you. First, will you not have a bit of kaftee?”

A gloved hand gestured to a tall, black plastic mug sitting in the middle of the desk, then pushed it a few inches closer to Ginn. The drink was capped but Ginn still smelled the deliciously potent aroma from it. She swallowed saliva that burst across her tongue but made no move to touch the mug.

Her visitor sighed, popped the lid off the mug and lifted it in both hands to its mouth. It took a long sip directly through its veil, leaving behind a thin wet line and a hint of foam on the soft material. Once again the mug was placed before Ginn. This time she picked it up, in her left hand, and held it a moment.

“Doesn’t mean much if you’ve already taken the antidote,” Ginn commented.

“Considering the vivum you have so recently consumed, I do not believe you need worry anyway.”

Ginn’s poker face was solidly in place. She betrayed nothing, but her mind filed away one more question about this being. Who was it? What was it? How had it found her? How did it know about the vivum? Most importantly, what did it want from her?

Sitting down on her side of the desk, Ginn took a long swallow of the kaftee. It tasted like faintly bitter molasses laced with creamed butter, chocolate, and caffeine. Kaftee was a native drink, made from the seed pods of a desert plant, but the name came from Earth. The first humans to taste it claimed it reminded them of coffee and tea together. Ginn didn’t agree. She also didn’t care. The stuff was incredibly good, and rich with nutrients. And, like coffee, it had a stimulating effect on the nervous system. Right now, that was a godsend.

Moving very slowly, the being across from Ginn slid one hand toward a faint bulge at its midsection, where natives often sewed pouches into their robes. Ginn watched the movement, her blaster pointed almost casually in the needed direction. The lower portion of the stranger’s veil wrinkled, as if with a smile. The hand slowed even further, but dipped just inside the pouch and emerged with a crimson fruit, an apple. It, too, was placed in front of Ginn.

“All for you,” the being said.

Ginn took another swallow of the kaftee, then set down the mug and plucked up the apple. She studied it for a moment, then bit and chewed. Her gaze never left her companion.

“Three hundred and fifteen solars to ship this from Earth,” she said finally.

“Three twenty-five.”

“So you’ve got money and you want me to know it. Why?”

“To hire you.”

“I’m listening.”

“I must make a journey. Through nomad lands. I am known among some of the tribes. Not all.”

“I’m guessing, not among the tribes where you plan to travel.”

“Not where I plan to finish. Also, the nomads I know cannot accompany me there. It is taboo for them.”

“Then it’s likely to be death for you. As well as for me if I decided to be stupid enough to take the job.”

“I have been there before and do not think so. Besides, there will be much vivum where we are going.”

Ginn’s heart stuttered; skin tightened all across her body. She was glad her clothing hid the goose bumps. She took another bite of apple to cover her reaction, chewed while her guest watched her from behind its veil.

“If you’ve been there before you surely don’t need me,” Ginn finally said.

“I did not go alone last time either.”

“Then hire the same people.”

“There are reasons I cannot.”

Ginn rubbed her mouth with the back of her hand. “So that must mean....”

She paused as she heard a whisper of sound that she shouldn’t hear. From outside.

“Who’d you bring with you right now?” she demanded suddenly.

“No one. I mean, they did not come into town.”

Ginn surged to her feet, the apple dropped and forgotten, the kaftee spilling to the desk. She filled her free hand with her second blaster. Her visitor recoiled, hands going up toward its veiled face.

“Then you were followed,” she snarled.

From below, in the abandoned factory, a door shished open. From the street outside came a sound like a sheet of paper tearing—a pulse weapon powering up.

Ginn hurled herself forward, one arm sweeping her robed companion with her to the floor.

The wall at her back exploded.