Howling Stones (4 page)

“That’s good.” He knew he was staring, but he couldn’t help himself. Doubtless she was used to it, and too polite to point it out. But what else was he to do? A full head taller than himself, well over the ancient six feet in height, she was a physical amalgam of Hera, several vit heroines, and the female bull dancers of ancient Crete. Her face reminded him of the famous bust of Nefertiti in the Berlin Museum archive. In addition to the sapphire blue eyes, she had shoulder-length blond hair wrapped in four tails. Her skin was the color of new-forged bronze. She was utterly and completely overpowering.

No wonder the pilot had been amused. Where “local support” was concerned, his unknowing passenger had been displaying ignorance on a global scale.

It wasn’t Pulickel’s fault. No one had informed him, no one had warned him that he was going to be working with a goddess. What was someone like Seaforth doing running a xenological contact station in the wilds of a frontier world, even as comparatively benign a frontier world as Senisran? Socioanthropology being what it was, he expected he would find out.

It would be exceedingly rude to ask her, having just been introduced. Meanwhile he would treat her exactly as he would any other colleague, except that he would have to watch where he let his eyes linger rather more than was usual. No doubt she was used to that, as well.

She laughed again. “Well, I’m glad ‘that’s good.’ Bet you’re tired. We’re a long way from Ophhlia.” Stepping past him, she headed for his travel case. “What do I call you? Senior officer on site, Pulickel, Mr. Tomochelor, or just Pu, as in Winnie the?”

Following her, he discovered, was no less distracting than talking with her face to face. He made an effort. “Pulickel will do fine, since we’ll be working together for the foreseeable future.” He glanced to his left. “I’m sure there’s plenty of room for my stuff in your skimmer.”

“You travel light.” Her tone was approving, which shouldn’t have mattered to him but inexplicably did.

“Experience. The controls for the built-in hoist are located in a recess on the other end.”

“Glad to hear it. I’m not in a lifting mood.” She held out the chill-cup as they reached the case. “Want a sip?”

He eyed the protruding siphon. Mindful of her admonition to relax, he tried to make himself sound less officious. “What’s in it?”

“Fructosoid specimen number one twenty-six. Suaswana in the local lingo. There are about a thousand regional varieties of fruit and juice, some with conflicting names depending on the maturity or location of the relevant tree or bush. I’m still cataloging.” She thrust the container at him.

He shrugged internally. So long as it was cold and wet …

The frosty liquid detonated against his palate, blasting
out reminiscences of lime, pomegranate, and something almost intolerably sweet. Another exotic trade item, he thought as he passed the cup back. No wonder the big trading houses were salivating over development permits for Senisran.

“Very nice,” he admitted readily.

She downed a swallow. “There’s plenty more, some of it even better. You’ll taste for yourself. Come on.”

Using the case’s integral hoist, they maneuvered his gear up and into the open cargo bay of the skimmer. It had no canopy, only an adjustable windscreen forward.

“Don’t use the top much,” she replied in response to his query. “It’s back in the shed. I can reattach it when necessary.” Vaulting up into the open cockpit, she turned and reached down. “Need a hand?”

Shaking his head, he put both hands on the gunwale and pulled himself up and in. Nodding approvingly, she slipped a dirty, stained mechanic’s shirt on over her suit, settled into the pilot’s seat, and flicked contact pads. Humming with restrained power, the skimmer lifted off, leveled itself, and hovered a meter above the crimson sands.

He eyed his precious case. “What about clampdowns?”

She looked back over her shoulder and shook her head. “Shouldn’t need ’em. It’s heavy enough that it won’t blow out. You, on the other hand, might want to hang onto something.” She indicated the seat next to her own.

Moving forward, he gripped an available handbar and braced himself. “I’ve been sitting down most of the way from Earth and all the way from Ophhlia. I’ll stand, if you don’t mind.”

“Just hang on. Over open water this baby can fly.”

With a rising whine they rose to a height of three meters. Seaforth pivoted the craft until they were facing the
lagoon and gunned the engine. Sand flew and Pulickel nearly stumbled as the skimmer shot out over the water, accelerating rapidly. Beneath their shadow the placid surface of the lagoon rippled slightly.

Seeing him squinting into the wind, she helpfully raised the transparent windscreen to a height sufficient to shield his face. The gesture went unremarked upon and she shrugged inwardly.
Prim sort of chap
, she thought. If that was the way he wanted it, it was fine with her. Deity knew there was plenty to be done.

She was mistaking his indecision for stiffness. An attractive woman he could have dealt with, but Fawn Seaforth was as much beyond attractive as a diamond was beyond coal. She was representative of the type one saw on the vit, a human being who existed only in virtual reality and not in real life. Yet there she was, sitting in the pilot’s seat not an arm’s length from where he stood and doing her best to relax him by making small talk. At which he was failing miserably.

He was only being realistic. He was not the sort, physically or personality-wise, who appealed to goddesses. It was a law of nature. Better that she see him as a tool sent to facilitate her work. His worst fear was that she would prove even friendlier than she seemed. In that case he was terrified he would freeze completely.

This is ridiculous, he told himself firmly. She was a contact xenologist, just like himself only with less experience and a shorter résumé. If he was going to let her mere appearance—though there was little mere about it—bother him, he wasn’t going to get any serious work done and his journey all this way would be accounted a failure. In his whole career he’d never had a failure, and he wasn’t about to start now. Exhorting himself thus made him feel better.

The wind was brisk and cooling against his face as they crossed over the reef. Glancing down as they made the transition, he saw a waterscape alive with jewels. Once beyond the protective barrier, she angled north and pushed the skimmer’s speed up another notch.

The reigning silence was becoming painful. “Interesting hairstyle,” he ventured lamely. “What’s that you’ve woven into the braids?”

She glanced over at him. “Kiswaa and socolo fibers. The plants are natural gold concentrators. As opposed to food, gardening Parramati grow them for decorative purposes like this, though they have no hair.”

He blinked. “Gardening?”

“Wait till you see a Parramati garden. They’re genuine works of art. Growing food is almost secondary to appearance.”

“I look forward to seeing in person everything I’ve only had the opportunity to study.” He turned to face back into the wind.

They’d long since left the huge atoll behind and were speeding along above open water. Islands sizable and small were visible in all directions, but Seaforth maintained their northerly heading, changing course only to avoid those islets that protruded a meter or more above the water. In the open passages between landmasses, strong ocean swells occasionally reached for the speeding skimmer, but none dampened its underside. High, chiseled, and overwhelmed by green, a cluster of larger islands loomed ahead.

“I didn’t expect full field uniform, but do you always meet the supply shuttle from Ophhlia that way?”

Seaforth glanced down at herself. “Something wrong with the way I’m dressed?”

“I didn’t say that. I just wondered.”

“Sure you did.” She kept her gaze forward and her attention on their course.

He struggled to recover. “It’s just that it’s been my experience that indifference to casual detail leads to sloppy work.”

“Does it, now?”

He gave up. “If you’re going to respond to everything I say with another question, we’re going to have trouble communicating.”

“You mean we’re not already?” Her gaze narrowed. “Tell you what, Pulickel. Wait till you’ve been here for a few weeks. Then talk to me about protocol, okay?”

“Fair enough.” He returned his attention to the view forward, blinking repeatedly. The tropical sun reflecting off the water was harsh against his pupils, and his eye-shades were still packed inside his travel case.

She was silent for several minutes, then sighed and reached into a side storage compartment. The goggles she handed him were similar to his own.

He accepted them gratefully. “I have several pair, but they’re packed away. I didn’t expect so long a ride from the pickup point to base.”

“So they didn’t tell you everything back on Earth.”

“There wasn’t much time. Normally I’m given more advance notice. I had to complete basic preparatory studies on the journey out from Earth.”

“Yeah, well, everyone’s in a hurry to get the situation here resolved.”

He nodded knowingly. “The mineral rights.”

“Among other things.” She swerved to avoid a coral pinnacle that rose high above the water. “Smell that air, Pulickel! Everything’s unspoiled here. Fresh, unpolluted, natural.”

He eyed her thoughtfully. “Is that why you’re here?
I’d think someone like yourself would miss the excitement of a developed world, or at least the comforts of Ophhlia.”

She turned to him so quickly that he started. “Someone like me? For a guy I met less than an hour ago, you presume a lot.” Her darkened eyescreens prevented him from seeing her eyes. “For a supposed specialist with a fancy reputation, you show a disappointing tendency to fall back on unsupported assumptions.”

He hastened to make amends. “I’m sorry. Let’s start over, okay? I’m Pulickel Tomochelor. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Pardon me if I don’t shake hands. I’ve got to steer this air skate.” But she smiled, and he was relieved.

“It’s not that I dislike parties and civilization,” she went on, “but you can get used to peace and quiet. Even,” she added coolly, “someone like me.” After a moment she added, “Leastwise, it’s peaceful and quiet most of the time.”

“Trouble with the locals?”

“More frustration than trouble. You’ll see.” Reaching down, she pulled the hem of her overshirt out in front of her and eyed the stains. “I guess you’re right. This
could
use a wash. Especially now that I have company.”

If she was waiting for him to demur, she’d have a long wait. It was unfortunate if his attitude put her off, but he felt it necessary to establish from the start who was in charge and whose work philosophy was to prevail. She might be the one with on-site experience, but within the Department he easily ranked her. Convincing her to do some personal laundry was a relatively painless way of reminding her of their respective positions. Once she accepted that, their working relationship would improve.

Maybe she enjoyed going native, or playing beach-comber, or whatever it was that had happened to affect her attitude, but relaxation and indifference weren’t going to solve the problems at hand. She might be in love with Parramat, but all he wanted was to fix what he’d been sent out to fix, receive his commendation, and get out. Goddess or no, he wasn’t about to let her stand in the way of that goal.

About then she took a deep breath and stretched, causing him to temporarily forget everything related to his admirable work ethic.

Ten minutes on found them weaving between the larger, heavily vegetated islands. The southernmost reaches of the Parramat archipelago, Fawn informed him. Thereafter they were never out of sight of high peaks and their cosseting clouds. The sheer sides of many of the islands and the heavy waves breaking on their fringing reefs showed why she had traveled to the sandy cay in the lagoon to pick him up. There was no protected touchdown site here for the aerial transport.

One especially striking crag was several hundred meters high, a jungled spire rising sheer from the ocean floor. Flocks of unidentifiable flying things roosted in its hollows and ledges. Showing no inclination to reduce their speed, Seaforth guided the skimmer skillfully past.

As they entered an area of open water between two smaller islands, he found out why the spectacular beauty through which they were traveling needed to be taken with a grain of sea salt.

Something beeped on the instrument panel. Moving faster than he’d yet seen, Seaforth sat up straight and began checking her readouts.

“What …?”

Before he could finish the query, she slammed the
steering guide hard aport and yelled out, “Hang on!” Water rooster-tailed to starboard, an artificial geyser.

Following which she shouted something so unexpectedly obscene that he found himself rocked from two quarters. If nothing else, it permanently killed the goddess image he’d assigned to her.

“Damn! There’s a whole school of the slimy bastards. They’ve come in from the deep ocean. Passing between islands.” The skimmer lurched heavily to starboard as she threw it in the opposite direction.

“A whole school of what?” Making sure of his grip on the hang bar, he turned and leaned over the side to have a look at the sea.

“Hey, are you crazy? Don’t do that!” A hand reached out and grabbed the waistband of his shorts, yanking him backward.

As he stumbled awkwardly in her grasp, a narrow stream of water shot skyward, passing through the space where he’d been leaning over the side. The fountain glittered in the bright sunshine, intense enough to suggest the presence of something more than just water.

Trying to maintain his dignity, he stumbled as he spun out of her grip. “What the devil do you think you’re doing?”

“Saving your ignorant life, Tomochelor.” She flung the steering guide hard over and he nearly fell down. Her gaze was focused on the instrument panel as well as the water ahead. “When passing over something dangerous, you don’t lean over for a closer look at it.”

He steadied himself as the skimmer twisted beneath him. He was more upset at the ease with which she’d pulled him away from the side than the manner in which she’d addressed him.