Starlight's Edge (18 page)

*   *   *

David knew by the chip in his head that it was three
A.M.
He slid out of bed and dressed as quietly as he could. He never took his eyes off Zee. She was in deep sleep, one pale shoulder showing, the light of the oil lamp burnishing her hair to red gold. Ever since he'd met her, there had been something special about her, something he would never let go of. He looked at her a long time, then checked to see if the h-fax was ready. He took off the talisman he wore around his neck and dropped it gently into her open palm. It was time to go.

*   *   *

Zee woke before dawn. It was still dark, but summer birds were singing in the trees. She knew she was alone even before stretching out her hand to David's side of the bed. Then she realized there was something in her hand. She uncurled her fingers and looked. It was the gift she'd given David in their old life, the eagle talisman he'd worn on a leather cord ever since. She curled her fingers tight around it and fell back to sleep.

 

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THREE'S A CROWD

Zee was looking out the window when it happened. The villa was at the top of a low hill. What she hadn't noticed last night was that one of the bedroom windows, facing north, had a clear view of Vesuvius with its sharp, pointed, snowcapped peak. The day was warm already, and even muggier than yesterday. She was looking at the cool snow with envy and wondering if she should take a swim when a rush of white steam shot from the top of the mountain in a tall, narrow plume. It was a little after eight o'clock.

She stood at the window for a long time, waiting for something else to happen. Nothing did, but Zee remained on high alert. She ruled out the swim and dressed, putting David's eagle talisman around her own neck so she wouldn't lose track of it. Then she rounded up all of her things, and David's things, even his dead computer, and jammed them in with the stuff in her shoulder bag. She wasn't hungry but made herself eat a bit of bread. There was a canister of something that looked like granola. It was a mixture of toasted grains and seeds and some kind of dried berries, and it was much tastier than the bread, which was starting to get dry. When she was finished eating, she looked until she found a vat of oil and refilled all the lamps she could find. She took four of them down to the cellar hiding place, hoping she would never have to go down there again or use them. Without David, the place gave her the creeps and seemed more like a tomb than a pantry.

It was barely ten o'clock. She gathered the plates they'd used last night, but had no idea where to find water for washing them, or how to wash them without soap, so she left them in a neat stack.

With all the cleaning up done, she looked for something else to distract her. What did the people who lived here do to pass the time? Did they have games or hobbies? When were playing cards invented? Maybe they just sat and talked to each other. But Zee had no one to talk to. The air was silent. Even the birds who'd twittered in the morning darkness had flown off.

Finally she lay down on the couch in the atrium, pulling a lavender throw over her and wrapping her arms around herself, pretending they were David's arms and he was there with her. She had a whole silent conversation with him in her head. She began to feel much calmer, almost drowsy in the midday heat. Maybe nothing more would happen today, and there would be no reason not to have a swim. If David had left at three, surely he would be back soon. She stretched out, enjoying the feeling of being barefoot.

Then, with the loudest sound she'd ever heard, the earth seemed to split in two.

It took Zee a minute to realize it wasn't another earthquake. She ran to the bedroom and looked out. A column of dark gray smoke, thick and solid-looking, was rising from Vesuvius. She was fascinated in spite of her terror. The column rose and rose for the next few minutes. Within half an hour, it towered miles high, like the trunk of a giant tree. As the smoke at the bottom cleared, Zee saw that the entire top of the mountain, the snowy peak with its delicate point, was missing.

The gray column began to spread out, like an umbrella with a flattened top. Nothing had reached her. The air was still clear, without traces of ash. She tried to remember what she'd read about Pompeii in school when she was a child. Maybe it was only the north section of the city that had been buried. She was, after all, almost at the southern gate. Maybe the south side escaped destruction.

But then came more explosions, one after another, and the umbrella spread farther and farther out. Ash began to fall, not gently like snow but as cinders flung with force. Rocks fell too, some the size of cats and dogs. It was three in the afternoon and as dark as night. She could see fires burning across the city.

When a chunk of pumice the size of a bed pillow crashed through the roof tiles and landed in the atrium, Zee grabbed her shoulder bag and David's knapsack and ran to the cellar room. She crouched in the cellar for what seemed to be hours, knees drawn up to her chin, her face buried in her arms. Shock wave after shock wave tore at the earth. The crocks of cheese and milk and oil tumbled from the shelves around her. In the first hour she'd lit one of the lamps, but the smoke, trapped in such a small room, made her feel like she was suffocating, and she extinguished it. The noise from the shock waves and the eruptions was deafening. Each time she heard the crash of falling debris, she imagined it piling up around the villa, slowly burying her alive.

It was too late. Even if David returned now, he could never free her.

She began to think about her life. How ironic it was that she'd fought to follow David to New Earth but was now going to die in a much older Earth, and much sooner than she'd imagined. She thought about how much she'd loved being an empath and how she felt she was starting to get the knack of divining using Major Dawson's new method. Like Major Dawson, she'd discovered that there was technology you could live without. She'd almost given up finding David when Arrius took her cube, but she'd found him anyway, just as Mrs. Hart had said, using her heart and her art. It was too bad she wasn't going to get to write that up for Major Dawson—he'd appreciate Ellie Hart's wit. She thought about little things, too. She'd take Pompeii's grilled fish over New Earth's nano hamburgers any day of the week, and hoped Marc was on his way to starting his own quiet food revolution. She hoped Melisande would become New Earth's most famous designer and Piper would have the baby she wanted.

Most of all, she hoped David would live. She hoped he would find someone who loved him as much as she did, and someone he would love back. Tears slid from the corners of her eyes. She couldn't help it. With all her heart, she wanted him to be happy, but it hurt to want it. It hurt to leave.

The earth was rocking again. She felt she was being slammed back and forth between giant hands. The pig swung and slapped her in the face.

The rocking stopped, but the pounding noise continued. Something landed against the door with a thud. Probably a giant boulder.

“Zee! Zee, are you in there? Can you open the door?”

David!

Zee lunged to where she thought the door was but hit one of the shelves.

“Hang on,” she said. “I'm looking for the door.” She found it and yanked it open. The ambient glow of fire filtered through the cellar windows, lighting David's face. “How did you get to me?”

“I wrote down the coordinates of the cellar before I left.”

She glanced down and saw Paul's body at David's feet.
He
was the boulder that had thudded against the door.

“Yeah,” David said. “He put up a fight. I don't think Lorna's influence has quite worn off yet. Fortunately, he had one of Mia's handy little stunners on him. I had to put him under. We have to get out of here fast, though. The air is getting worse, and I'm pretty sure we're trapped down here.”

“How are we going to get back?” Zee asked. “We've only got two h-faxes and no computer capacity at all.”

“Paul had an extra one with him. I thought he might. The man always overprepares. But the volcano is still playing havoc with the magnetic fields, and it took more energy than it should have to make it back, so the sooner we leave, the better.”

David was already unfolding the three human faxes. The first and second began to hum and glow, even though their indicator numbers were dropping. The third one never revved.

Zee looked at David. “It's dead.” David said nothing but immediately shut down the other two before more energy was wasted. “What are we going to do now? Is there anything you can do another energy transfer from?”

David shook his head. “Even if we had an energy source, we don't have that kind of time. So you're going to take Paul home. I'll stay here.”

“I told you before. I'm not leaving without you.” Zee took a deep breath. The air had begun to taste faintly of ash. “Take Paul home, get Mia to do a remote transfer from the base. I can come back alone.”

David considered for a minute, then shook his head. “Way too risky.”

“I shouldn't have followed you here, and you shouldn't die because I did,” Zee said firmly. “Only one of us needs to stay.”

“Wait a minute,” Paul said, coming to. “This was all my fault in the first place. If anybody has to stay, it's going to be me. Can somebody help me up? I feel a little out of it.”

Startled, Zee and David both put out a hand and pulled him to his feet. His touch on Zee's palm was cool, without any of the fever she'd felt before.

“Hello, Paul,” she said. “Welcome back.”

“Lovely town you have here,” he said. “But I outrank both of you, so if anyone has to stay, it will be me. And
none
of us is staying. Is that clear? We are three smart people, and we will get ourselves out of this. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” David and Zee said.

“Then we'd better think fast.”

After a moment of silence, Zee turned to David.

“Hold me.” She put her arms around his neck and swung her feet off the ground.

“What are you doing, Zee?”

“I'm not that big, am I? Hold me, step onto the pad, and it will fax us both home. Even together I don't think we weigh more than some people.”

David set her down. “Human faxing doesn't work by weight, Zee. It's about molecule count. The more molecules, the more energy it takes.”

“Oh.”

She looked down at her voluminous dress. All those little fibers woven together, all those particles. She wished she had some nano clothes. They were just one big molecule fused together.

But no one said they had to go back in any clothes at all.

“Wait a second,” she said. “Maybe the volcano isn't eating as much energy as we think. Maybe it's also our clothes. The ones we got here. All those woven natural fibers. And our sandals and your knapsack. Why can't we just leave them here?”

David and Paul were looking at her like she was crazy. Then David jerked his tunic off over his head. “It's worth a try.”

Zee rummaged in her shoulder bag until she found the clickstick with her computer on it. She took everything else off except the eagle talisman and left her clothes in a heap beside David's.

While Zee and David were stripping down, Paul removed one of the power cells from his fax and clipped it into theirs. “Just a little booster,” he said. “You've still got more molecules to transport than I do.” Then he took off his clothes too.

David opened the faxes again. Zee put her arms around him and clung to him, the clickstick clutched in one hand. She hoped no part of her extended beyond the range of the fax beam. At the last minute, as the lights were beginning to strobe, she glanced back at her clothes and saw the little pouch attached to her discarded belt.

“Mrs. Hart's diamonds!”

“We don't need them, Zee,” David said, holding her tight. “And they're a lot of molecules. Someone will find them someday.”

“You're right. And even if they don't—” But she didn't finish because the flames of transmission began creeping up her legs.

The last things she felt were David's arms around her.

The last thing she heard was Mrs. Hart's voice in her head.

Now THAT was well done, Zee.

 

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE TRUTH OF CONSEQUENCES

Zee had to hand it to the Time Fleet Admiral. He never blinked an eye when three Fleeters without their clothes showed up in his transport room. He turned to Mia, who was standing beside him.

“Aariak, find them some clothes. Then all four of you report to my office. Clearly, we're in new territory here.”

“Sorry about that,” Mia said after he'd left the room. “He saw your incoming chip signals and got curious.”

She left the room and came back in less than two minutes with T-shirts and drawstring khakis. She'd even gotten socks and boots. For the first time in her life, Zee was glad to see her. Leaving their clothes behind had seemed natural in the race to escape, but now that they'd arrived, she felt very naked.

“How did you get these so fast?” Paul asked Mia, pulling on the tee. “I thought you'd be hung up in requisition for a good half hour. Rules and regulations, you know.”

Mia snorted dismissively. “Who bothers with rules and regulations? Sometimes you just see a job and do it.”

Zee felt better once she had clothes on.

“Let's go,” David said. “Don't want to keep him waiting.”

Zee hoped she'd have a chance to say good-bye to David before they sent her to the deportation unit. And she hoped she could make a convincing argument about why he shouldn't be punished as severely as she was. David, Mia, and Paul might get kicked out of the corps, but as a trainee she was sure she'd be sent to some punishment zone or other. Maybe back to Pompeii, just to make their point.

Admiral Walters's questioning began with Mia, who freely admitted she had transported both David and Zee without orders.