Approaching Oblivion (Jezebel's Ladder Book 4) (28 page)

“I’ll try to set up a blind by the
plantation and use a telephoto lens whenever we hear activity. Does anyone know
why that rogue male walked by me this morning?”

“No,” Red admitted. “Since we have
photos, we can do comparisons against other sites and look for patterns.”

“Why do so many different males
come through the tribe?”

“Most males departing the group
leave on a raft. Eventually, someone new arrives to replace them,” Red replied.

“Keep an eye out. Tomorrow,
Oleander and I scout the avalanche site,” Toby announced. “It’s within a
kilometer of the north outpost, and we haven’t seen an aborigine in that region
yet. It should be a quiet little hike by comparison.”

“Can I come along?” Yvette asked.

Everyone paused. Red asked, “Uh . .
. why?”

“We need more experts in
xenobiology. I’m a nurse, and Toby can train me. With only eight hours of
daylight, we need as many hands at the dig as possible.”

“Too dangerous without the armor,”
Oleander decreed.

“You walk around without it,” Toby
countered.

Oleander said, “To reach a safety
shell, and I don’t go past the secure perimeter.”

“So I’ll build a tent at the site,
camouflage, and add sensors.”

“Sounds like a lot of effort,”
Oleander grumbled.

“This could tell us a lot about
their technology, diet, biochemistry, and culture,” Yvette said.

Stunned by Yvette siding with Toby,
Zeiss said, “We’ll give it a trial run. Set up a safety shell first and then
the tent. Oleander, take the rifle. The north shell is fairly high up the
canyon wall. You should have a clear shot at any predators that wander by, but
don’t shoot the aborigines. Yvette, take the Taser.”

“Until we up the power, that’s just
going to make the pandas mad,” Toby said.

“It isn’t for the pandas,” Red
explained.

Out-of-body, Oleander
spent the first morning at the avalanche site looking for natural cover. Once
she located a suitable crevasse, Toby hauled native-looking materials there in
a wheelbarrow to construct a shelter. He finished the framing of a three-person
bolt-hole by midday and recharged the shimmer suit’s batteries while he ate
lunch in the coolness.

“Herk
used your helmet-camera shots to design a custom door,” Oleander told him over
the radio. “He should have it down to me in another two hours.”

“Roger.
I’ll grid off the site and prepare it for digging. I can bring back the
skeleton and spear in the wheelbarrow.”

“What
will you do if you run into Blutarsky and the Beastie Boys?”

“The
carrier is ceramic. I’ll detach the wheel and blow the rest.”

“Stone
Age
Mission Impossible
,” Oleander joked.

“The
show or the movies?”

“The
old series with Leonard Nimoy. I loved the master of disguises. That was before
computer graphics did everything. Barbara Bain even looked a bit like my gran.
When I was ten, my brother and I used to sneak everywhere on covert missions.”

“Who
knew you were really training for Labyrinth?”

“Damn
it, Baatjies, sometimes you’re
almost
human,” Oleander muttered.

Late
that afternoon, he discovered that the frame he’d installed was crooked because
the pieces of wood hadn’t been exactly the same length. While he tried to
wrestle and pound the door into place, Oleander called him again. “We sighted
Blutarsky!”

“Here?”
Toby asked, crouching.

“No,
he’s poling down the river on one of those rafts,” Oleander replied.

“Somehow
he walked for a day and found a raft on the banks?”

“He
has a sack of food, too.”

“Now
that
sounds like Blutarsky, but I didn’t see a tool belt on that boy. Do
you have live satellite feeds on him?”

“For
a few more minutes.”

“Backtrack
upriver for the next . . . thirty klicks and see if you see a corner store.”

She
relayed the request while Toby brushed the bones of a ribcage clean. The dead
panda had been pinned by the legs and either bled out or starved. Most of this
corpse was under shallow ground cover. He dictated notes with zeal. “This isn’t
a shirt like I first surmised; rather, it appears to be the remains of a
leather backpack. The hide has been cured. I’ll take samples to detect the
method they used to treat the animal skin and which animal it might have been.
This is a stone adz, used for shaving wood or scraping hides. Any food has been
rendered unrecognizable from decay. However, soil samples should turn up the DNA
of the grains or meats enclosed. Here is a set of small ivory darts. They
appear similar to the toothpicks I always see the males with. Perhaps this is a
sign of wealth or status.”

In
the middle of Toby’s inventory, Herk interrupted. “Toby, you were right. We
found another bamboo plantation about twenty-six klicks from the first.”

“So
the male walks upstream a day to the nearest plantation, obtains or builds a
raft, and then rides back downstream to the tribe. We’ll call this male Huck
Finn. The workers load whatever crop they just harvested onto the raft. Then
Huck and a buddy pole downstream for an L week or so till they get to
Meteoropolis,” Toby deduced.

“Yeah,
for Huck to walk a thousand kilometers back to his tribe would take a lot
longer.”

“With
seven hours of ambling each day and an hour for siesta, Huck would take about
four L weeks to hump back. No wonder they have such a high male turnover in
camp. I’m thinking the female pickers might have the better end of the deal,”
Toby mused.

“Sexist
pig,” Oleander objected.

Herk
laughed. “Any other revelations?”

“Just
that I examined the source of the avalanche. The aborigines know how to use
wedges and levers.”

“Meaning?”

“These
pandas were buried alive on purpose. Yvette shouldn’t be allowed near this site.”

“Now
you want to protect her?” Herk asked sarcastically.

Oleander
intervened. “Actually, chief, my ex-roomie is a little sensitive about these
things, especially if any of the bodies Toby finds are toddlers or infants.”

“Roger.
Base out.”

Persisting
at the dig until the sunlight was gone, Toby collected one complete skeleton,
minus ankles.

****

When
Toby returned to the mesa, he stripped out of the dusty, sweat-drenched armor.
Risa hosed the armor off outside while he sealed himself into the utility room
of the distillery. There he picked up a pile of clean clothes that Oleander had
left for him. The one perk of this job was someone else doing his laundry. They
provided fresh camos every day so his smell wouldn’t give him away.

First
Toby labeled and stacked the day’s samples in airtight lockers, and then he
stuffed his clothes into the decontamination bin. He was scrubbing in the
chemical-hazard shower when someone slammed the inner door shut behind him.
Expecting a blanket party, he let go of the pull handle, and the room fell
silent except for the odd drip of soap foam coming off his body.

Then
he saw Yvette, her face contorted in rage. Ripping off her breathing mask, she
said, “How
dare
you cut me out of scout duty?”

Okay,
having a blanket thrown over him and being pummeled by marines would have been
preferable. Her anger hit him like a lash, but God she was gorgeous in those
tight hiking shorts. Her cheeks were pink from emotion, and her dirty-blonde
hair was braided like a sixteen-year-old. He had to close his eyes. “Oleander
agreed.”

“Am
I able to hammer out tin panels for that solar boiler Risa, Nadia, Rachael, and
Herk are working on? No! In fact, other than gardening, I have nothing to do
around here until someone does something stupid and hurts themselves, which at
this rate is going to be you.”

He
crouched on the floor, hugging his knees. “Sorry.”

Realizing
his discomfort, she blinked. “Why won’t you teach me to wear the sneak suit so
I can become a xenobiologist like you? I want to be useful,” she said more
softly.

“You’re
not strong enough.”

“I’ve
been doing exercises. You want me to wait until I pass the high-g physical?
Fine. But then you have no excuses.”

“I
mean mentally. Oleander and I have to be prepared to kill things or watch them
be killed every day. You couldn’t do that.”

Yvette
narrowed her eyes. “You didn’t lie, but that wasn’t the whole truth.”

“If
anything happened to you, it would be the death of me—literally—within months.
We’re pair-bonded.”

“What
do you think happens to me if you head off Lone Ranger style and die? Of all
the people at Elysium, you should be grounded here. You need to design the
plant defenses and analyze things other people bring back. Your expertise is
wasted out there.”

The
French accent, worse when she was mad, tickled the hairs at the back of his
neck, and her smell gave him an erection. If she touched him, he might pass
out. In a strained voice, he said, “Stop flattering me. Why are you here on
Labyrinth? I know it wasn’t for me.” He remained on the floor. Her voice
stirred him, even with his eyes closed.

She
must have sensed his arousal because she pulled the handle to finish rinsing
him with the water, which was only a few degrees cooler than body temperature.
“Finish up and get dressed. It’s a long story.”

Still
dripping, Toby put on clothes while Yvette waited on the bench. When he sat
beside her, she related the whole sordid tale about the Magi exiling her.

He
responded, “So it wasn’t you that sent me the Plato note?”

“What
note?” she asked.

He
whispered, “Someone using the alias Plato told me that the Magi have not only
bugged Mercy and Yuki, but are hiding secrets in Meteoropolis. I thought you
were Plato, so I started investigating.”

Her
eyes lit with excitement. “What did you find?”

She
was turning to him for help again. There was hope. “From what you’ve told me,
we can’t trust Sojiro either.”

“He’s
never done anything wrong.”

“Really?
Why did he change from painting the ceiling to the walls of the barn? How could
he put a brush to that material and not know it was shimmer ceramic? When I saw
Yuki in the medical bay, she was splattered with paint. The last time she
touched paint was to take Sojiro’s to the barn. He never completed his Mount Fuji mural, yet he never complained about the missing airbrush. We never found
splatter anywhere. Who cleaned it up?”

Her
mouth fell open and looked so kissable. “You’re good at this criminal
deduction. I never suspected.”

“I’ve
had practice covering up, while you haven’t,” Toby admitted. Yvette turned
away, remembering her captivity. “I’m sorry.”

“Why
would Sojiro betray us?”

“He
might not see it that way. He may view it as helping us pass the test. Red’s
friend spends a lot of time merged with the ship. It may be skewing his point
of view.”

“Are
you working for the Magi?” she asked.

“No.
God, no. I know how much you hate them.”

“Then
you’re the only one apart from Z that I can trust, and he can’t act.”

“I
think we can rely on your roommate Oleander as long as we keep it
need-to-know.”

“Right.
I’ll have to ease her into that. What else have you discovered?” Her voice was
intimate and full of promise.

“I
have to bar the door so no one else sees. Is that okay?”

Obviously
tensing, she nodded.

Shoving
a wooden wedge under the door to block it shut, he dragged the set of lockers
to the side. Behind them, on the wall, he had layered dozens of close-up
pictures of the lake area in a circle. “I had to be indirect. I requested over
two hundred photos zooming in on suspected plant life in the desert and deep
water that can survive the flares. Every photo in this region came back with no
gravity-sensor data. Without those readings, it’s just white clouds or blue
water.” Pointing to the empty center, he said, “Snowflake doesn’t want us to
know what’s there.”

When
she stood on tiptoes, he could see the very bottom of her perfect ass. The
physical exertion of Labyrinth had made her legs more toned than they’d ever
been in her life. It was torture.

“But
we could never get there,” she complained.

We.
It was
we
now.
He trembled. Planning a crime had been fun. Plotting one with Yvette was
erotic. He stood behind her and pointed at the river. “Actually, someone could
stow away on a raft and get there in a week.” She was listening to him, rapt.
He could feel her attention soak in like the Everclear Lou had once described.

She
leaned back against him idly as she said, “The hard part is finding a window
where the Magi won’t be watching the lake.”

Panting,
he replied, “It has to be when
Sanctuary
closes the radiation shutters.
Whenever Daedalus flares, the ship will be completely out of contact for
several days. Yuki said we should have a few weeks’ warning by watching the
planet’s magnetic shift. As long as I take a spacesuit, the deep water should
protect me.”

Turning
and planting a kiss on his cheek, Yvette shouted, “You’re a genius!”

He
bit his lip, trying to hold back his reaction. This was what he’d been waiting
for, but he’d given his word not to touch her.

“What’s
wrong?” she asked.

“Could
I hold you?” Toby begged.

“You’ll
help me find out what those monsters are hiding?”

He nodded, unable to speak.

“Just a hug,” she allowed.

Tears pouring down his cheeks, he
clung so tightly to her back that her shirt came untucked. When his breathing
calmed to the normal range, he didn’t let go of her. “I love you,” he sobbed.

“People are going to think that I
beat you,” Yvette said, flushed from sharing the experience.

“Can we do this again some time?”
he asked. “Touching?”

“Maybe when we find a way to get
back from the lake without being seen by the natives.”

Some part of him knew he was being
used as a weapon, but she wasn’t so revolted anymore. Yvette needed him. That
was close enough to love for now.