Greenshift (4 page)

“What the hell was that all
about?” he asked.

David’s appreciation for Sean
backing him up evaporated as soon as the younger man opened his mouth.

“They just wanted to say
hi.”

“We’re not staying here a
couple of days,” Sean said. “We have to pick up Geir.”

“Geir’s good to go until the
end of the week.”

“We’re not staying
here,” Sean repeated as they walked down the boardwalk.

“I think that’s a decision
to be made by everyone. I know Kenon and Soli asked if it would be possible to
spend a little more time with their amours. And Mari likes any excuse to be
off-ship. I guess that leaves you with the only dissenting vote.”

“Do you think they’d vote
that way if they knew this was all just an opportunity for you to dick over
those contractors?”

David ignored Sean as they neared
the
Bard
. Mari’s gaze met them. Even with David standing lower than her
on the sloping gangway, she still had to look up at him slightly. She lightened
his mood considerably. “This the last one?” he asked.

“Last one,” she said.

David gave her a fast once over,
lingering on the bit of leg peeking between her short skirt and thigh high
boots. He quickly diverted his attention to her face. “We’re going to stay
the night.”

“Soli will be happy to spend
some extra time with Trala, especially since they’re expecting,” Mari
said. “Have you ever seen Kenon’s prime? Her name is Giselle. She’s blonde
and beautiful. A little snobbish, but Kenon doesn’t seem to notice. Of course
he has three amours total so when he gets sick of one he visits the others.
This will be fun, Sean, won’t it?”

“Not so much.” He
passed Mari on the gangway to head back inside.

“Sean. Supplies?” Mari
pointed to the final food pallet.

Sean said over his shoulder,
“I vote David unloads it.”

“He’s always so
pleasant,” David said.

“Really Sean’s a good guy.
He just has to get used to you.”

“I’ve been here almost a
month.”

“A month’s not long enough
for Sean. Are you hungry? We actually have food on board now. Well, most of
it.” Mari looked at the pallet waiting to be wheeled up the gangway.

“I’ll get that,” David
said. “Then maybe we could go out for dinner? I know a couple of great
restaurants along the bay.”

“Yes.” Mari barely let
David finish. “I’ll go change.”

She put her palm against his
chest in a formal gesture, but the warmth of her hand radiating through his
t-shirt didn’t inspire thoughts of propriety in David.

“Anyone else coming with
us?” she asked, her fingertips moving ever so slightly against the fabric
of his shirt. “I think I’ll wear that blue and silver dress you said you
liked. You remember which one, don’t you? I wore it during your first week
aboard when we all went out in Steckert City before Geir started his long-term
project there. I wonder how Geir is—”

“I remember the dress,”
David said gently. “And, I think it should just be you and me this
time.”

“Good idea.” She
brushed her lips against his, bringing the world to a screeching halt in that
moment. “Very good idea,” she whispered, her face so close to his he
could feel her breath dance across his cheek. Her proximity raised the little
hairs on the back of his neck in a way even his earlier confrontation couldn’t.

“See you in a bit.” She
pushed away from him and walked up the gangway, but he could hear her pace pick
up once she hit the grand staircase in the foyer. He was glad to know she was
as excited about tonight as he was.

Civvy life isn’t so bad
.

From their waterside table at the
Rose of Sharon, David watched the synth spiders draw rainbow lines through the
night air in time to the music they played. Like orchestral conductors their
metallic legs looped and jabbed, weaving swirls of greens and blues then
oranges and reds through the darkness above the reflective waters of Carrey
Bay. A mosaic of patterned lights fronted luxury hotels in the tourist zone,
enticing guests to come and stay or just drop by for a visit to shop and dine.

Shiraz Dock came alive at night,
the officious Hub traffic from the day transforming into glittery party-goers. David,
sporting civilian dress pants and a green button down shirt instead of his
fleet uniform, felt like he fit in for once. He didn’t realize he would enjoy
being a regular citizen again. Several women gave him more than a passing
glance, even as they hung on the arms of their escorts for the evening.
Normally he would have been flattered, maybe thrown a smile or a wink their
way, but tonight his interest never strayed from Boston Maribu. He had only
called her by her given name the first time they met. The face she made said
she would prefer Mari.

She received more than her share
of interest, too, especially in the tiny silver and blue dress which skirted on
being a little too immodest for an establishment like the upscale Rose of
Sharon. But if she noticed any of the men trying to catch her eye, she never
acknowledged them.

“Soli and Kenon live
somewhere over there in Wright’s Landing.” Mari gestured toward the
not-so-far shore, whose rolling hills sparkled with glimpses of spotlighted
towers and multi-pitched roofs, a welcome-home beacon to those wealthy Hub
citizens who could afford the real estate. “Though nowhere near one
another. It’s a huge place.”

“I’m surprised Kenon would
be interested in scientific work if his family is so wealthy. He doesn’t
exactly strike me as the ambitious type,” David said, thinking about the
foppish man who never really seemed to
do
anything but hang out on the
Bard
and complain about his accomodations.

“I don’t think he likes
staying on-planet too long. He’d have to be around all his amours then.”
Mari winked. “At least that’s what Soli told me. And if anyone would know,
it would be Soli.”

David silently agreed. Solimar
Robbins was an Embassy-sanctioned archivist, which meant she had a duty to record
all events surrounding her for public record. Coming from the privacy of the
Armada, David hadn’t taken to Soli’s busybody nature quite yet, though she continued
to be very warm toward him. And she and Mari were close.

“The boats are taking up
anchor to view the light show already.” Mari looked around with those big,
beautiful eyes that always managed to captivate him. They owed their unique
coral color to a slight reaction to a childhood vaccine. The effect brought a red-golden
luminosity and intensity to her irises that he had never seen before. From the
time he first met her he wanted to see those eyes staring up at him from his
bed.

The fact that she seemed game,
eager in fact, should have thrilled him, but the more he got to know her
through stories of her family and her out-of-the-way home on Deleine, the more
she talked about her dreams and hopes for the future, the more
he
wanted
to take things slowly, maybe be a part of that future, as foolish as the idea
might sound. It took him this long before deciding to ask her out because they
had formed a true friendship, and it made him a little nervous to change that
dynamic. If things went wrong, not only would they feel awkward around one
another every time they passed on the small ship, but he’d lose the closest
friend he’d made since retiring.

Yet all he could think about was
how their friendship would only make a physical relationship that much more
satisfying, how he could easily see spending the rest of his days talking to
Mari, seeing life through her eyes.

What the hell is wrong with
me?

His thoughts made him feel like a
sentimental fool. Maybe his clock was ticking, that biological imperative to
find a prime and make some babies. It was a little early to be thinking of
marriage and a family, at least by Armadan standards—he had forty good years
before he even hit his century mark. But, nonetheless, he was finally feeling
that pull that his younger brother Ben had been describing for years. Had any
of Ben’s relationships worked out, he would have been happy to settle down in
his twenties, but as he followed David through his fifties, he’d probably just
wait until he retired from the fleet.

At a proper age, maybe eighty
or ninety, like Dad, not like me who couldn’t even stick it out until middle-age.

When he started on this path of
regret at having given up his fleet commission, David just remembered the
placid, stony look on Lyra’s face when she put a gun to his head and challenged
his control of the
Argo
Protector
. It had been the single most
heart-breaking moment in his life.

“Don’t you think so?”
Mari asked.

David hadn’t been paying
attention. Taking a fifty/fifty chance, he said, “Yes.”

Apparently it was his lucky night
because she seemed pleased with his response.

Once again she brought him back to
the present and grounded him. She would never know how grateful he was for
those times when just the cadence of her voice coaxed him out of that dark
place in his head. Just like her beautiful, shining eyes, Mari had become his
light.

“Do you remember how you
started ordering everyone around your first day on the
Bard
?” she
asked.

“And how they all just
snickered and walked away? Yeah, I do.” David could laugh about it now,
but at the time he’d been pissed.

“Except for me,” Mari
said.

“Except for you,” David
agreed. “You were always there to help, even when I didn’t need it.”
He smiled to let her know he was joking.

“If you’re talking about
that time I
accidentally
sent all your clothes to the cleaners and you
had to borrow Geir’s stuff for two days….”

“That’s exactly what I was
thinking about.”

“You looked good in those
tight t-shirts,” she said.

The blush that crept into her
cheeks made David want to touch her, to see if her skin felt as flushed as it
looked.

She got a little shy then and
worried her bottom lip between her teeth.

I can do that for you.
He
was mesmerized by that plump, wet lip.

She stared at him like she knew
his thoughts. The blush grew a little deeper. This time she lowered her eyes
and moved the food around on her plate with her fork, but she couldn’t hide her
smile.

She did this often, being bold
and forward as though coming on to him, then pulling back demurely at the last
second. It drove him crazy…in an absolutely wonderful way.

As they finished up dinner, she
talked about each detail surrounding them on the waterside patio. From the Rose
of Sharon’s iridescent purple and green canopy overhead to the string quartet
warming up in the main dining room, she was excited by it all.

Her swooping hand gestures
punctuated her enthusiasm and made the matching silver cuffs she wore on her
small biceps glitter in the magenta glow of the candlelight. The design of
delicate vines weaving around her arms in silvery swirls couldn’t have matched
her personality better—not just that she liked shiny jewelry and anything that
had to do with plants, but because she was so lithe and wispy and easily wove
her conversation from one topic to the other. He could imagine her wearing
those cuffs and nothing else as he studied the facets of her animated face.

“The gardenias along
Wright’s Landing will be blooming in a day or two,” she said. “They’re
supposedly an heirloom variety native to here, but I don’t believe it. In this
climate? They have to be hybridized with a heartier strain, probably gened up
in a lab. But it’s still breath-taking to see nothing but white flowers
stretching all along that side of the bay, and the smell is wonderful.”

He couldn’t imagine anything
smelled better than Mari. Even when she wasn’t around him, he swore he still
caught a hint of citrus and flowery notes from her scentbots. Maybe the
pheromones which those bots also released through her pores were working
overtime on him. He envisioned pulling her close and breathing her in, tasting
the scent on her lips and every patch of skin. He’d start with her neck and
take his time there until he could feel her pulse race against his mouth. Then
lick his way down to her breasts.

For most of the evening, he’d avoided
looking directly at her perky nipples pushing against the silky fabric of her
dress. But now his gaze kept drifting as more racy thoughts swept through his
mind, bringing the expected reaction down below. At least there was a dinner
table hiding him. He needed to think of something else.

“The gardenias are
nice,” he said. “I’ve seen them a couple of times here before. But, I
have to say, they pale in comparison to spring in the Koley Mountains. The
rhododendron and laurel bloom the same time as most of the wildflowers. The
forest is painted for kilometers in brilliant color. From my lake house, the surrounding
mountains look like one of those pixel paintings. Do you remember those? They
were popular a few years back.”

Mari shook her head no.

So maybe it was more than a
few years back.

“They were an odd fad. The
artists would only put a dot of color every so often on a solid colored canvas
to give the impression of distance.”

Mari rested her chin in her hand
and looked at David with a lazy, wistful expression. “I’d like to see that.
Your lake house, not the paintings. There weren’t many lakes where I grew up on
Deleine. At least not ones that weren’t chemically polluted or had a river of
acid mine drainage pouring into them. Do you have a boat?”

“Everyone in the family
does. It’s the easiest way to get around Cheat Lake.”

“I bet it’s like paradise. When
we studied all the eco-systems on Yurai in school, I always said I’d go there
one day. Koley is in the Sparta Territory, isn’t it?”