The Seeds of Time (52 page)

“Oh my God,” Clio heard, thinking it was her own voice until she saw Richardson next to her, huddled into the small of her back. “Oh my God.” A ball of light rolled before their eyes as a pulse weapon lobbed a molten missile off to their right. Amid the roaring of the vegetation, burning and hissing in the rain, she heard Pequot cry, “Cease fire! Sir, I think they’ve fallen back.” And Tandy responding, “Close ranks!”

Tandy was dragging her by her elbow up from the ditch. “Are you all right?” Clio was covered in mud, almost the color of blood.

“Yessir, fine.”

Pequot shouted, “Radios are out, sir. We’ve lost contact with the rear of the line. Front ranks are closed in and we took some hits.” Sheets of rain swept over them, blurring the world.

Tandy released Clio’s arm, turned toward the captain. “They’ll be repositioning now that they’ve drawn out our fire. Establish a perimeter around that tree,” he ordered.
Pointed to a massive tube tree fifteen meters out from their position.

Tandy helped her up and they ran for the tree, as a tight unit of three soldiers laid down cover fire. When they were halfway across the small clearing, the main attack hit.

One moment Clio was running in sync with Tandy; the next, she was falling backward and, impossibly, upward in a strangely quiet explosion. Then she was falling, a long fall down, landing on her shoulders and back of her head, deaf and paralyzed. For a few moments she could smell burnt sugar, as when long ago she’d left the fudge pan on the hot stove all night. She opened her eyes to see a peach-colored smoke slide across her face, then gagged and passed out.

When she opened her eyes, a face was pressed close to hers. “Clio. Can you hear?”

She could, barely, through the torrential rain. But couldn’t tell where the respective parts of her body were. As she moved those respective parts she guessed that she was lying on a hill, head pointing down.

“Can you move your feet?” It was Ashe. He was whispering to her.

“Yeah.”

“Let’s see.”

Clio moved them.

“Try again.”

Moved them again, she figured.

“OK, I’m going to move you a little. Don’t cry out, they’re nearby.”

She bit on the insides of her cheeks. Around her, gunfire in regular doses, and the awful smoke scraping at her chest.

“We’re going to make our way to that rock outcropping. Lean on me.” An explosion threw them to the ground again, and her ears faded out. The jungle lit up with a fluorescent glare, showing a split-second image of a dozen soldiers moving in a wave some twenty meters from them. Tight caps on their heads and vests studded with light. The dimness returned. The jungle roared. Thunder, she realized,
as the braying of the storm repeated itself, then receded into the forest depths.

He helped Clio to stand and she swayed against him, struggling to clear her head.

“It’s just over here,” Ashe said.

“Over where?”

Clio held her hand in front of her as though to part the curtain of water now lashing down on them.

“I can’t see.”

“Hold on to my arm.”

She gripped him tightly and struggled to find footing, then found herself roughly pulled to the ground. Ashe put his hand over her mouth, whispering, “Hush.” Then she saw the boots and legs of someone creeping by in the fog. Clio stifled a cough, freezing against Ashe’s side. As the boots disappeared into the murk she noticed they were regulation army. “One of ours,” she whispered, then knew it for a damn stupid comment, doubting now that Ashe ever saw U.S. Army as one of
his
.

Then they were leaning, panting, against sharp rock. Again, the jungle brightened and reverberated to an eruption of thunder. Clio hid her face in her arms against the rock, burying her body from the sheer noise of this storm, which seemed to be trapped within the jungle canopy itself. As the thunder rolled away, gunfire continued, off down the hill. She could see nothing except Ashe’s arm, pulled tight around her shoulders.

“Let’s move behind the rock,” Ashe said. He guided her up a slope and behind the outcropping. The smoke thinned. Wisps slid by like miniature cirrus clouds. They leaned against the stone face where the rain eased its pummeling. A flood of water swirled past their boots and on down the hillside. They crouched down, backs against the rock. Clio closed her stinging eyes.

When she opened them she saw an apparition. The figure stood some ten paces away, fading in and out behind the smoky curtain, torn by the rain. Armed and bearded. The apparition had seen them. Was, in fact, aiming its weapon directly at them.

“Oh God,” Clio moaned. Then, bitterly, to Ashe: “One of your friends?”

“One of
yours?”
he responded.

The figure moved toward them, coming into focus. The grimy fatigues, headband, and tattered vest gave him the look of a street bum. Except he was armed with a rifle.

Clio looked into his blue stare, and down the length of the rifle, and knew him. “Harper Teeg,” she said.

He cocked the rifle. “Welcome home, baby.”

Torchlight flickered off the passageway walls as Teeg herded them into the sudden silence and darkness of the underground cave. From above, a muffled turbulence reached them. Clio’s wet fatigues now clung to her like a lifeless, cold second skin. She shivered. The breath of decay on the tunnel’s breezes wafted to meet them.

“OK, stop,” commanded Teeg. He circled around them, holding both rifle and torch, making him maybe a good target, but Clio passed on it. Size him up first. He thrust the torch close to Clio’s face. Peered closely. “It’s you all right!” He spun around once in front of them. “Damn, if it isn’t you!” His voice surrounded them, as though disembodied. The smile left his face as he shoved the torch now into Ashe’s face. “And who’s this son of a bitch?” He surged closer. “Eh?”

“He’s a crew member. Got lost with me in the battle. Name’s Ashe.”

“Ashe-trash. ’Bout right for a name, Ashe. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust!” He shoved the torch back at Clio. “Don’t try to distract me!” He jerked her arm, pushing her ahead of him down the corridor. Something chittered at them from the ceiling. Teeg purred a fair imitation back at the thing. “Left!” he commanded when the passage bisected, and they felt the floor slope down, and saw in the strobing firelight the passage widen and widen again until they entered a space where the firelight fell away to blackness.

“Know why I knew you’d come back?” Teeg started to giggle. “Know why?” He shoved at her with the odd-looking rifle.

“No, tell me why you knew I’d come back, Teeg.” The cavern was warmer than the corridor had been, and Clio’s teeth stopped chipping away at each other.

Ashe leaned in. “He’s crazy. I’ll find a way to overpower him.”

“No talking!” Teeg swung the torch in an arc at them. Bits of flame and smoke flew away to the upper reaches of the cave. “What was I saying?” His foot came up and hammered Clio in the stomach, sending her flying backward to land on her back, hard. “Don’t try to confuse me!” he screamed. “I’m too smart for you, for you and your tricks!” He advanced on her, then pivoted in an instant as Ashe lunged from the side. A shot rang out from the rifle and its echoes filled the space into a thousand recesses. Ashe stood frozen, like a cave bear, swaying from side to side. Then he staggered back, holding his left arm.

“Bull’s-eye!” shrieked Teeg. “Got ya!” He danced in front of Ashe, waving the rifle.

Ashe fell to his knees, lowering his head as though he would topple. Blood soaked his sleeve in a dark, expanding blotch.

“Ashe …” Clio began.

“Ashe-trash-crash!” Teeg intoned.

Clio moved toward Ashe.

“Leave him! Nobody move, or I’ll take out the trash!” Teeg was moving into raging hysteria, jumping and swaying before them.

“You got him, Teeg,” Clio said. “That’s enough.”

“
I’ll
decide what’s enough, woman.”

“Right. You decide, Teeg.”

He stood in front of them, glancing from Ashe to Clio and back again. Then he pointed the rifle into the dark. “Move,” he said.

Ashe slowly rose, cradling his limp arm. He moved to Clio’s side and they trudged forward into the darkness. Ashe was quiet and Clio made no move to help him, unsure whether she wanted to help him, or could.

“Can’t get the jump on old Teeg, no,” Teeg was muttering. “No, and those that tries, dies.”

Clio moved to steer him off that course of thought. “You were saying how you knew I’d come back … how’d you know that?”

“Keep moving,” he said. “Because you never left, that’s why.”

“I never left?”

“I see you in the cave, oh you’ve been around. I got eyes don’t I?”

“Tell me about it, Teeg.”

“Later!” The rifle in the back, and they hurried their pace, now making their way down a reeking corridor that lightened perceptibly, turning to grayish murk.

Clio felt something run over her foot. “Rats,” she said.

“Rats?” He giggled from deep in his belly. “You’d
wish
they were rats, if you had to sleep with them, like I do. All in good time, all in good time.”

The stench of sewage rose up to meet them. Teeg’s own wastes, no doubt—perhaps beyond smelling from his standpoint. Clio stole a look at Ashe as the corridor lightened further and a freshening breeze announced the cave entrance. Ashe’s face was set in a deep scowl of pain. The shirtsleeve looked wetter and redder than before, although it might have been the brightening light around them as they now approached the burning entrance to the cave. She squinted hard against the white hot sun, which was rapidly drying the sandy ledge before the great cave.

“Teeg,” Clio said. “I’m real cold. You got any clothes?”

Teeg doused the torch in the soil of the cave floor. Rummaged in a pile, watching them off and on. Found a man’s fatigue jacket, brought it over to her, and helped her on with it, one arm at a time. “Button it up to the top,” he said, “or you’ll catch cold.” He sat down on a ledge near the cave wall. “You don’t want to catch cold. No. That’s what happened to Liu, caught a cold, and fffftt, gone.”

Half of Teeg’s face was lit by the light from the entrance. On the half that she could see, rain or spittle hung from his beard, and his eye trembled in its socket like a trapped critter. Here was the formerly handsome Harper
Teeg, once the copilot of the pride of Biotime, the
Starhawk
.

“You been hiding out a long time, Teeg,” Clio said. “You must be pretty lonely here, all by yourself.”

“All by myself! Hah!” He rocked back and forth on his ledge, drawing his knees up to his chest with the rifle cradled next to him. “Got my critters, don’t I? Got my Voo Doo men. Got you.”

“You almost came home with me, that time. You could have come home with the crew,” Clio said.

Clio and Ashe sat in the center of the cave anteroom. The noon sun now parted the storm clouds and sliced off the blackness of the cave at the entrance. “You could still come home,” she said.

“This is home. Land that I love, God bless New Merica, my home sweet home. Could have been your home sweet home, the plans I had. Now going to be different.” He tugged on his beard. “Way different.” He sprang up. “You,” gesturing at Ashe, “get over there.” Ashe followed his pointing, into the corner.

Teeg ordered Clio into the opposite side of the cave and made her lie face down. He tied her right foot with a rope attached to the wall.

He patted her foot. “Payback time, Clio. Payback time.” He settled back onto his ledge.

“Can’t you see, Teeg, it’s
you
that turned against us. Not me. You said this was Paradise, and we should all stay. But most had families, and wanted to go home.”

“Home sweet home.” He swung the rifle toward Ashe. “I see you over there. Trying to hide. I know you’re planning to escape, so I think I’ll just kill you now.”

“Teeg!” Clio said. “Don’t punish him for what I did. He’s just a man like you, working for Biotime, just like you used to. Hasn’t figured out all the things you’ve figured out. But you can teach him.”

He kept the rifle aimed at Ashe. “So who are you, Ashe-trash?”

“I’m a man like you.” Ashe was resting his back
against the wall, and facing the cave entrance, his face merely a blur in the faint haze of light.

“You in love with Clio Finn, here?” Teeg cocked his head. “Don’t lie to me!”

A pause from the back wall. “Yes.”

Clio’s heart sank. Wrong answer. Competition for Teeg. “Teeg …” she began.

“Shut up! She lead you on like she did me?”

“She confused me. Maybe that was my fault.”

“You’re a pussy.” Teeg scrambled to his feet. “Meowww.” He advanced on Ashe with the rifle. “You don’t have what it takes to live in New Merica.” He stood over Ashe, pointing the rifle. “Lie on your face, so I can tie you up.”

“Teeg, I’m cold,” Clio said. “Starting to shake.”

He ignored her. “Lie on your face.”

Ashe slowly did so. Teeg raised the butt of the rifle and brought it down on Ashe’s head. “Till I decide what to do,” Teeg said. Placed a solid kick into Ashe’s side. He lay unmoving.

Teeg unlooped a coil of thin-gauge rope hooked to his belt and tied Ashe up. “If they come,” he said, “I’ll be ready. Got plenty of ammo, especially because I’m a hot shot. Hot shot. You remember, Clio?”