Beyond Heaven's River (22 page)

Beyond Heavens River

Forty-Five

Jason DiNova leaned over the body of Oomalo Waunter and shook his head. “My God, what happened here?” he whispered. The man’s neck had almost been cut through. He picked up the slender piece of metal near Waunter’s hand and examined it.

“What’s that?” Kondrashef asked.

“A Crocerian weapon. Illegal, I think.”

“What were they trying to do?”

“Kill Anna. They must have tried to kill her.” DiNova looked at the dome entrance, then at the surrounding ruins. “I don’t believe all this.”

Oliphant’s voice came over the radio in Kondrashef’s environment pack. “We’ve found Anna. We need a medical unit and transport.”

“Is she hurt?” DiNova asked, standing beside the body.

“Not physically, no. But she’s half out of her mind. Keeps calling for Alae Waunter. She found Kawashita —”

“How is he?”

“Dead,” Oliphant said. “Somebody killed him with an altered cutting tool.”

“Why?” DiNova asked, dazed.

“Two crazy independents,” Kondrashef said.

They brought the medical unit and a second cart out of the dome and followed a clear stretch between the ruins. Kondrashef helped pick up Kawashita’s body and put it in the back. The medical unit floated ahead.

Oliphant stood by Anna Nestor. She was clutching a tapas pad, silent, looking at the ground. DiNova joined them and urged Anna to return to the ship as soon as possible. She walked away without argument, climbing into the cart, reaching out to touch the bag that held her husband.

“We’ve got to find Alae Waunter,” DiNova told Oliphant.

“Not a trace of her,” the young officer said. “I’ve had two men with sensors out tracking for an hour, ever since we arrived. Nothing.”

“What about the buildings? Where did they come from?”

Oliphant shrugged. “They must have been here all the time. They’re stripped, nothing but extrusions of the concrete.”

DiNova shook his head, not for the last time that day. “I don’t believe all this.”

Addendum to this record:

“Yoshio, I’m ninety now. Sixty-one years I’ve been coming to this planet, once a year, to visit you. I still think about you … about what you found. Theywere wrong, you know. You were proof by example. They left us nothing but the old shells of abandoned laboratories, where they must have examined millions of others, as they did you — for how many millions of years? We may never know.

“But they were wrong. If it takes my whole life, I’ll prove them wrong. I vow this each time I visit you. Well, I haven’t found them yet. But in the end, when all is said and done, we’ll meet them on equal ground. And I hope we still know how to sneer.

“I think they’re still around. You knew they were. But my advisers look upon that view as unworthy of comment. Old, rusty Anna still ticking over about past grief. No matter.

“Dear Yoshio, each time … You’ve got me crying again. I miss you very, very much. I’ve put a piece of ribbon in your shrine. You arekami to me now.

“And every day I say ’Hello!’ ”

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Table of Contents

Beyond Heavens River

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Thirty-Five

Thirty-Six

Thirty-Seven

Thirty-Eight

Thirty-Nine

Forty

Forty-One

Forty-Two

Forty-Three

Forty-Four

Forty-Five