Whispers in the Dawn (18 page)

“I’m about to come,” he whispered before he let go of everything he had with such potency she was forced to grip his waist. Her world turned into a whirling storm of waves repeatedly cresting and crashing. When she fell from the precipice, Harley was already nearly over, but he came along with her, his breathing ragged, his face covered with a sheen of sweat, his eyelids shut tightly.

Still inside her, he scooped her into his broad arms and held her against his perspiring chest. She clearly heard his rapidly beating heart. Odessa had never expected a man to love her quite the way Harley did, with a tenderness that went beyond words. She began to cry.

“Oh God, did I hurt you?” He drew away slightly to gaze into her face. His lips were pressed together in a grim line and once again, his eyes were made of brown ice.

“No, no.” She swiped the back of her hand over her face in a fruitless effort to wipe her cheeks free of the trickling tears. “I never expected anything quite like that.” And very soon, this togetherness would end, and perhaps their lives too.

Harley growled as he withdrew from her. “Was it good or bad?”

He left an emptiness she could hardly bear. Odessa wet her suddenly dry lips and attempted a grin. “Good. Only good. I don’t think it could have been any other way, with you.”

A low rumble was her only reply. She tried to pull him closer, to give herself reassurance she wasn’t making a mistake as she had with Roland, but Harley refused to bend his head down and resume his former position with his arms wrapped around her. Abruptly, he’d become like stiff cardboard, hiding his emotions.

“Get some sleep,” he ordered. I have to figure how to get out before Pardua discovers where we are.”

As he hastily pulled his pants on, Odessa wondered what she had done to make him withdraw into that place where she couldn’t reach him. She’d thought she had made some progress in getting him to unwind a little, but he’d shut down again—in only a matter of seconds and with a few unintentionally misplaced words.

Chapter Sixteen

“That didn’t work out all that good,” Jason muttered under his breath. “Hey, Unc, when are you making apple pie again? I’m starving.”

“When someone cleans up the kitchen,” came Uncle Peter’s tart reply. “I thought I saw a roach in there this morning, sitting on my coffee cup and winking at me.”

Brody shook his head in disgust. “That’s impossible. There ain’t a cockroach in sight from here to Los Angeles.”

“You’ll have to watch for them there, son. Heard stories they can make a man choke in his sleep.”

That was news to Brody. He decided silence was the better part of valour and shut his mouth. Last night, after the unsuccessful call to the Department of Foreign Affairs and being connected to every automated answering service in the known section of the universe, he had half-heartedly tried to clean up the kitchen. It had been too nice a summer’s evening to spend inside, so he had sat outside with the old man in companionable silence, listening to the crickets chirp and studying the full moon as it blazed a trail through the heavens.

Now he stared at the crooked stack of dishes on the counter near the sink, another one on top of the stove, and yet another pile on the microwave. He’d bet if he turned around, he would find more dishes on the dining table waiting to be washed. He strolled out of the kitchen, down the narrow hallway and into Odessa’s bedroom.

She had opted for frilly pink pillows, a bedspread and curtains of the same eye-catching material. Teddy bears and a doll, whose cotton pinafore and long silk skirt had been washed threadbare, decorated the windowsill. The room was stuffy, so he threw the bears and the doll on the bed and raised the window sash. Immediately the room was filled with the scent of apples and good, fresh mountain air. He took a deep breath and let the sense of peace wash over him.

The feeling didn’t last long, but it did recharge his wound-down internal batteries. Somehow, he had to find Odessa. Apparently, it was up to him. Uncle Peter had regressed into his second set of teenage years and Jason had been gone by morning light, probably out into the orchards to check the apples weren’t being invaded by insects of one kind or another.

The doorbell rang.

“Will you get that, son?” Uncle Peter called up the stairs. “I don’t feel like company this morning.”

“Bet if Joanna Petrocheeni showed up unannounced, you’d be shaved and showered in less than two minutes,” Brody muttered with a bittersweet smile. He ran down the stairs, taking them two at a time. Maybe, just maybe, it was Odessa returned from her adventures. But why would she have to ring the doorbell?

No such luck. A bulky man stood on the stoop, about to ring the bell again. “Patience, my man,” Brody said, making his presence visible beyond the dark screen.

“I’m Jake Bellingham,” the man said. “I was wondering if I could interest you in some new computer games for the discerning player.”

Brody instantly disliked the man. His hair was far too long and he didn’t look straight at Brody, but shifted from one spot to another. “We don’t play too many games of any kind around here.” No one did house call sales any more. That was a thing of the distant past.

“Do any of those include Joanna Petrocheeni?” Uncle Peter asked, from over his shoulder.

The salesman’s eyes lit up. Why did it appear every man on the planet was head over in heels in love with Joanna, except for Brody? He didn’t care much for her high cheekbones. Or her toothy smile, which reminded him of a horse’s. She was too tall for him, too. No, she wasn’t his type at all. Maybe he was the only man on the entire planet who wasn’t in love with the woman, but that was okay with him.

“That’s the great thing about this helmet,” the salesman said. “You can go anywhere you want, whenever you want.”

“That’s a bunch of balarky,” Brody said flatly. “It’s a known fact you can’t be in two places at the same time.”

“It’s not a pie in the sky promise. Why don’t you try it and find out for yourself?”

Uncle Peter’s eyes lit up. “You sure Joanna will be in there if I put that thing on?”

“Sure. And she’ll even schmooze with you if you want. It’s virtual reality technology taken to a whole new dimension.”

“Virtual reality?” Brody asked sceptically.

“Sure. You can make your dreams come true. Every single one of them. Just try it out. It won’t cost you anything.”

Uncle Peter’s face expressed the same doubt as Brody’s. “Sounds like a genie in a bottle to me.”

“Why don’t you try it out? It doesn’t cost anything,” Jake said.

“Naw,” Brody said, thinking the guy would sell his mother if he got the chance.

“Heck, if I can get me a good gander at Joanna’s legs, I’m all for it. And you said it doesn’t cost anything, right, son?”

“Right,” the man replied, looking Uncle Peter straight in the eyes.

“Uncle, before you try this…” Brody began to caution him.

“Hush, son. I’ve raised you the last twenty-something years. You should know better than to interfere with this old man.”

Brody shrugged. “Okay. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“Just wait here a moment, son,” Uncle Peter told Jake. The old man took Brody aside and out of the salesman’s hearing.

“I don’t want to see Joanna’s legs. Not really. Well, sometimes, but this is not one of those times. What we need is a communications device, you understand. Something to contact Odessa with. It’s free for a few minutes, isn’t it?”

“That’s impossible.” His uncle was crazier than he had figured. “That salesman is just playing tricks on us. There isn’t any such thing that can contact a planet or a station far away, or where you can actually get Joanna to schmooze with you.”

“I got this idea, son, but you have to bear with me. Remember that ad on TV with the bride who takes the phone from her garter belt and she makes contact with her alien lover?”

Brody didn’t exactly remember, but he nodded.

“How do you think she did it?”

Brody vaguely recalled seeing the commercial. The bride had used some kind of virtual reality videophone to contact her lover. “Uncle, this is the weirdest idea you’ve ever had.”

“There’s just no explaining some things to you, son, no matter how I try.”

“That’s what you’d like to think,” Brody murmured, heat rushing to his cheeks. Once his uncle got an idea in his head, there was no dislodging it. His uncle had raised his voice, so the man outside the screen door had quite possibly heard, too.

“That’s what I know, son. Time to try something new.” The old man winked. He had a way of obtaining information that would rival the methods of the best intergalactic spies.

“Go, Uncle, go,” was all Brody could manage to say.

Chapter Seventeen

Odessa finally fell asleep, long after she heard Harley’s light snoring. In her dream, she was once again wearing the polished black helmet, but this time she was enveloped in a foggy mist. When she tried to lift the confining headgear from her head, she couldn’t, no matter how hard she yanked on it. The volume had been turned up, but all she could hear was static cutting in and out and the faint chatter of what seemed like millions of people talking all at once. Once in a while she heard shrill laughter, and a distinct word here and there that sounded English. The voices mingled, rising and ebbing in a nightmare cacophony.

Angered by her inability to get the helmet off, she jerked harder, but it stuck fast to her head. She couldn’t bear to continue listening to the people in the helmet. Where were they? What were they saying and feeling? How many were there? From desperation, tears rolled down her cheeks before she thought to look around. She spun in a full circle, but there was nothing to see except for the cloying mist. How she yearned to be back in her uncle’s three-storey house, breathing in the scent of his pipe and listening to the gliders of his rocking chair creaking on the wood of the porch floor.

One voice emerged from the others, a repetitive litany of “Can you hear me? Can you hear me?” For a moment it sounded like Brody, but the voice was lost in the massive throng. Homesickness swathed her in poignant shades of cheerfulness and sadness. The tears came faster. She couldn’t shut out the crescendo of voices. Madness was merely a heartbeat away.

That was before she heard a faint male voice in snatches of monologue. “Come home…distressing…we miss you…”

Another voice overrode the first. “Stop, old man…hurt you…cannot get back…trapped on Romaydia…no chance to get there in time.”

Odessa listened intently for the two voices, but once again there was nothing but the combination of millions of voices. Hope unfurled like a rose petal within her. Had the first voice been her uncle’s? The second had appeared to be that of Roland Baylon. Had Roland been communicating with her uncle? How and why?

She snorted. Uncle Peter would never have worn a helmet, no matter how much anyone tried to bribe him. “The helmet,” she could hear him say in her mind, “is for bikers, in their tight black leather pants and jackets.”

Odessa heard the first voice again and leant forward intently, as if it would help her to hear it better. “‘Dessa, how can we…get to…we need to know….”

The second voice snickered. “She can’t…get back to…old man…prisoner.”

Shocked, she heard the voice she believed was Roland’s drift in and out before the other sounds obscured it. She now remembered what had happened the first time she’d worn one of these helmets. She had to wake herself up, to tell Harley and implement her idea. The fog refused to dissipate. She shrieked in an irrational attempt to free herself. But here on Romaydia, in the mist, there was nothing rational. Nothing at all.

Murrach Pardua stamped back and forth through his luxurious chambers. His well-laid plans were going awry. He paused at the wall and stared at the gilt-edged painting of an artist’s rendering of the Milky Way galaxy, as seen from Earth. The galaxy, along with the rest of the universe, was going to be his. No one would take that away from him. He had worked too long and hard to make Romaydia a friendly, safe space station to land on. The fact that was a lie hardly mattered. On Romaydia, Galaxians could associate with one another and buy the Gr’iis Pardua had concocted as part of his plan to win the universe.

He turned on his heel and gazed into the mirror. A strong, healthy man looked back at him. And ambitious. He had gone out of his way to ensure that he was perceived as a charismatic leader. Only his inner circle of men might guess he was other than he appeared.

Filled with restless energy, he strode over to his ornate desk and seated himself. This was his dream. He had come from nothing—he’d been a pipsqueak on an unremarkable planet. By the time he ruled the universe, everyone would know he came from Pardue, a planet as dry as a rock. He had climbed from nowhere, annihilating anyone who stood in his way. After years of hard and determined work, he was going to lose it all—unless he found Harley and dealt with him.

Roland Baylon was a minor glitch in the state of affairs. Pardua laughed mirthlessly at his pun. He had always thought Baylon would be his most major problem, with his all-encompassing greed and his yearning for more and more wealth. No one could rival Baylon when it came to greed.

Except for one man—Pardua himself.

But Pardua wanted more than wealth. He wanted power, and plenty of it. With wealth and power he could eradicate the devastating poverty of his youth. He would always have more food, more luxuries, more of anything than he could truly use. No longer would he be forced to struggle to survive.

But now Harley had endangered everything he had worked for.

How could he have trusted the GDA agent who had ingratiated himself into Pardua’s powerful organisation? It had to be Ralph’s fault. He slapped a button on his comspeaker and barked for his son. Traitors had to be done away with. One at a time.