A World Too Near (5 page)

She put down her scotch. She didn’t want to talk about money. About life with Titus gone. “We need you, Titus,” she said, wanting to say instead,
I need you.
But she was the good sister-in-law. It was such pure shit.

She looked at him calmly, dropping her guard. “It isn’t working. Rob and me, it isn’t working.” Noting his frown, she said, “You want us to be happy with each other, I know. You want us to be a good family.” The bitterness in her voice surprised her. When Titus didn’t respond, she continued. “You want us to be what you used to be. Well we aren’t. We’re just Rob and Caitlin, and it isn’t good. It can’t ever be good.”

He shook his head. “I knew there were issues. Rob isn’t always—”

“Isn’t always what?” She let that hang in the air for a moment. “Isn’t you, Titus. He isn’t you.” The words were such a relief, she felt a mountain of tension leaving her body. No, Rob wasn’t a desiring creature, a striving creature, with quick, unholy passions and the drive for adventure. Just once in her life she’d like a man to make love to her as though he’d sell his soul to do it. She closed her eyes. God, it was all such a mess. When she opened her eyes, heavy tears stuck in the corners.

She wasn’t sure who moved first. They’d been sitting side by side, and now she was in his arms, with tears their excuse. To hell with the excuse. She wanted him to undress her right here on the couch.

“Please, Titus,” she whispered.

“Caitlin, Caitlin,” came his throaty reply.

She pulled her head away from his shoulder and kissed him. She couldn’t stop herself, and was glad she couldn’t. His hands raked through her hair, and he kissed her back. Titus was in charge, no question, and she would have done anything, wanted him to take her to the limit. His hands were on her, and she almost cried out at the pleasure of it.

Then he pulled back. He put his hands on the side of her face, looking at her with an intensity that froze her.

He stood up, turning away. “Jesus,” he whispered.

It was all clear to her in an instant. He was saying no. Of course he was.

He couldn’t be a son-of-a-bitch who’d bed his brother’s wife.

“Caitlin,” he said. “I can’t. We can’t do this.”

“Speak for yourself,” she said, catching her breath.

He looked at her, emotions warring on his face. “I am.”

She calmed herself, pulling her hair behind her ears. “Is it because of Johanna?”

“Because of Rob.”

She nodded. She wanted him to spell it out, wanted it to be clear now that he was leaving and might not come back. “Was I ever someone you could have loved?”

He looked at her, his face tight with emotion. “Christ, Caitlin, how can I answer that? How can you ask me?”

She knew it wasn’t fair. Either answer would make her miserable. She stood up, smoothing her outfit. “Well, just so long as I was someone you could have fucked.”

He grabbed her arm. “Jesus, that’s ugly.” “Not your fault.” Not his fault for being the charismatic older brother.

She knew it was. She smiled, and gently took his arms away. “I’m sorry, Titus. I’m a little out of my mind right now. We both are.”

He stepped back, composing himself as well, but not willing to let it go just yet. “Are we? Out of our minds? I could still throw caution away. Could you?”

“No,” she said, creating the hardest smile she’d ever faked.

He stood looking at her.

“You go now, Titus.” The sooner he walked out of there the better. She felt like tinder near a fire. She wanted to burn. But she was able to hope, too, that he’d just go.

“You and Rob . . . ,” he began. “I’m sorry.” “We’ll get by. We always do.”

He was still hesitating to leave. Finally he spoke the words that ended it all right there. “I’m not saying that you should stay with Rob. That’s none of my business, I know that. But if you don’t stay, I’m not in line, Caitlin. I can’t be and still live with myself.”

“I know,” she whispered. The awful thing was, she
did
know. She understood how it had to be. “Go bring that youngster home,” she told him. “Bring yourself home.” She still meant that with all her heart.

And then he was gone.

“She took it badly?” Lamar Gelde looked worried as Quinn climbed into the backseat of the company car, middle vehicle in a caravan of security.

“Yes.”

They pulled away, accelerating after reaching the smart surface of the arterial.

Lamar nodded. In his seventy-six years, he had never married, had never studied women’s behavior. But he said with elaborate weariness, “Women hate to say good-bye.”

“Yes.”

The city passed in a blur as the custom security vehicle eased into the automated flow of the freeway, where at need the chauffeur could override, pulling out of the linked formations of cars. Riding in the front passenger seat, a thin man with a ponytail kept nearby vehicles under surveillance, assessing armament with enhanced glasses made to look like sunglasses. The man on the beach hadn’t been armed, but the next interested party might be.

Quinn sank into the backseat, thinking about Caitlin. He kicked himself for not having known how she felt. For not knowing how vulnerable he was when a woman he found attractive offered herself to him. It had been three years since he’d been intimate with a woman, so he was a sitting duck for acts of kindness. A few acts of kindness spooled through his mind.

“Want to stop off at Rob’s?” Lamar asked.

“No.” Not even. He’d call Rob to say good-bye.

The cars sped onward toward the airport, the dashCom winking with traffic flow predictions. From there it was a short jaunt by hyperjet to the mid-Pacific space elevator. Time to go. High time.

Quinn murmured to Lamar, “You’re sure we’re ready for this?” Minerva had had only a few weeks to plan the mission. This time he would go armed into the Entire, something he hated, even if there was no choice.

Lamar nodded. “It wasn’t hard once they put their savvy minds to it. A bit of nan and the damage is done.” Lamar smiled, revealing good white teeth, the best money could buy. Quinn didn’t begrudge him his vanity. In his youth Lamar had been a handsome man. Lamar was now something better: a
good
man. The only man in the company who’d stood up for Quinn when he first came back from the Entire messed up, memory erased, family lost.
Gone over the edge
, said Stefan Polich. Lamar had been his only ally and got booted off the board as a result. These days he was Quinn’s handler because Quinn wouldn’t allow handling by anyone else.

Half of Quinn’s mind was still back with Caitlin. Pray God she didn’t hate him. Things he should have said crossed his mind, and then what he
had
said:
I’m not in line.
Ugly. Blunt. Maybe it needed to be.

“I’m sorry about where you’re headed,” Lamar was saying. “It’s damn dangerous. I owe your father more than to send his boy into this madness.”

“Is that what it is? Madness? They’re burning stars, Lamar. Beta Pictoris. The Trapezium Cluster. Hoping to do worse.”

Lamar sighed. “Sons of bitches. Like being eyeballed by a tiger for a snack.”

“My father would want me to go.” And then, mind back on Caitlin, moving to a safe topic regarding her: “But if I don’t come back, you take care of Caitlin Quinn. My assets go to her and her family, and you keep Stefan and Helice at bay, their hands off her, off her assets. Even if she and my brother aren’t together, Caitlin’s still family. Understood?”

Lamar raised an eyebrow. “Is that how it is?”

“Just in case, that’s all. They’ve already threatened her. Stefan will go after the boy. So will Helice. If they get paranoid and think I’ve betrayed them, they’ll squash her.”

“Stefan would, maybe. I’ll watch him.” He left unsaid,
Helice.

A heavy silence descended. The longer it stretched, the more uneasy Quinn felt. Was there something here he should know? Did Lamar not get Helice’s character? Or had she bought him out? He hated to be suspicious of Lamar, of all people. But Lamar still let it sit. Quinn was leaving his family in the man’s care, and now suddenly he didn’t feel perfectly at ease.

“Helice is young,” Lamar said. “She’s making the mistakes of the young.

She doesn’t like you; I recognize that. But you could win her over if you weren’t so goddamn stubborn.”

“I don’t want to win her over. She’s a vicious brat.”

“You never forgive, Titus.”

Quinn let it go that he’d called him Titus. He went by Quinn now, as Lamar damn well knew.

The car peeled off the freeway, went to the driver’s command, and under local control, sped toward downtown.

At Quinn’s inquiring look, Lamar said, “We’ve got one more stop. Hope you don’t mind. It’s the morgue.”

When they came to a stop, Quinn saw a figure standing, hands in coat pockets, hunkered against the wind now blowing sharp off the Willamette River.

Lamar let the window down as Stefan Polich approached, peering in.

He fixed Quinn with a gaze. “Think you’d recognize the man from the beach?”

He did. Even lying still, the sneer gone and the eyes closed. Yes, it was the man in the parka who’d known Quinn’s name, known the name of the Entire.

“That’s him,” Quinn confirmed. He pulled the sheet over the man’s face, covering the damage from a gunshot in the mouth.

“Killed himself before we could question him,” Stefan said. “He was armed, after all.”

“What about the others?”

“Police are looking. But we’re looking too. I don’t think they’re as eager as we are.”

Yes, eager. And not for Emily’s sake, but because the man had said that the Entire didn’t belong to Minerva. That might be true in the larger sense, but not in the Minerva sense.

“So who was he?”

“His name’s Leonard Garvey. A sapient engineer, down on his luck. A drinker. We don’t see a connection with the major companies. Pray God he was on his own.”

“That’d make a pretty good prayer. ‘Please, Lord, secure my bottom line.’” He brightened, getting into the baiting of Stefan Polich. “But then,
that
is
your religion, isn’t it?”

Lights gleamed off metal trays, waiting to receive the dead. They were alone in the basement lab, except for Leonard Garvey, failed sapient engineer, failed kidnapper.
Think you’re the only one wants to have that nice, big life?
By that did he mean long life? If so—and Quinn fervently hoped it wasn’t so—then quite a lot was known out there about the Entire. Some knew the very thing that inhabitants of the Entire most feared would be known. That nice, big life.

“What’s this about, anyway?” Quinn asked. “You didn’t need to come to the morgue.”

“No one knew I was coming here. I needed some privacy.” Then, with disarming honesty: “I don’t trust everyone at Minerva.”

“Really.”

Quinn’s sarcasm killed the conversation for a minute as the two men sized each other up. They despised each other, and being on the same side hadn’t changed that. Quinn had once had a thriving career as a captain of an interstellar ship. It was a risky job and paid accordingly. But Quinn would have done it for nothing. When his ship broke up in the Kardashev tunnel, Stefan couldn’t get past the fact that Titus Quinn was apparently the only one who survived. Quinn couldn’t get past it either, but that didn’t mean he forgave Stefan for firing him or for putting him in a badly maintained ship in the first place.

“The truth is,” Stefan continued, “someone talked. Someone in my group. That’s why Garvey came after your niece; that’s why there’s movement afoot to figure out what the Entire is. Where it is. Everything we’ve worked for and which will only be solely ours for a little while longer. We’d hoped for a few months. Anyway, it’s why you’re going early.”

“You can’t keep the place secret for forever.”

“No. But they’d stop you, Quinn. They wouldn’t trust a renegade pilot running loose with military nan in the other place. Why would they? They don’t have the background or the trust. They might accuse us of making up a threat. We have to act before the feds or the companies make an issue of it. Before fighting over the Entire obscures what needs doing. You see where it could go?”

Quinn did. He thought the secret worth keeping to prevent public mayhem. There were no useful precautions, no shelter from the holocaust. The only refuge, the Entire itself. With humans decidedly unwelcome, an exodus in that direction was suicide.

This wasn’t a decision Quinn would leave up to a summit of corporations. So once again, and against his instincts, he found himself aligning with Stefan Polich.

Stefan looked around, scanning the scrubbed-down room, smelling of antiseptic and toxic fluids. But Quinn no longer had heightened capabilities of smell. Originally implanted so that he could avoid ingesting toxins in the new land, Quinn had found that some enhancements were impossible to live with. Millions of years of evolution hadn’t prepared humans to detect smells like a predator. He’d had the Jacobson’s organ removed from his mouth. Sometimes plain human was enough.

Looking up, Quinn noticed that Stefan had taken something from his coat pocket and now held a small box covered in gray velvet.

Quinn knew what it was. The weapon. The nano device.

Stefan opened the case, revealing a silver chain. “A cirque. The designers call it a cirque. It goes on your ankle.” Pushing the box back into his pocket, Stefan held the cirque with exaggerated care. “It’s live. Loaded, you understand?”

Quinn did. It was lethal now—its contents sequestered in three chambers, each one with only partial instructions of how to digest an industrial complex the size of New Hampshire. He gazed at the burnished metal chain. It was attractive, like an antique Rolex.

“The code is four, five, one,” Stefan said. “A total of ten. You press the first indent four times, the second one five times, the last one, once. Each indentation is a different width, beginning large and ending small. Once the code goes in, the cirque opens, comes off your ankle. Then you press the links again, in reverse sequence: one, five, four. Active, good to go.” He eyed Quinn. “When you make the placement, hide it. The nan needs time to share information. Give it an hour. Once fully enlivened, it will spread as fast as a forest fire under a stiff wind.”