Page 24 (1/2)
"It&039;s the dust," Ben muttered, and shook his head "If the kelp has hiet out of here There are demons, Flattery&039;s peopl"
He doesn&039;t believe elled in front of her out of thin air, one of Rico wet and gasping in the cavern Rico tipped back his head and laughed, surrounded b friendly feelings It was a side of him she hadn&039;t seen Someone approached hi an ear, "they will be co up from the caverns"
"It&039;s the dust, Crista," Ben insisted, "it&039;ll wear off These are hallucinations We&039;ve got to find Rico and get out of sight Flattery&039;s peopl"
"re here," she said "They&039;re already here It&039;s not hallucinatio" she giggled, "t&039;s cellophane"
She had unraveled soures looking down from the clifftop Two of them She reeled her vision closer and saw that she knew them both from Flattery&039;s corossly misshapen With Nevi, it was his soul This she could see in the boiling black aura that seethed froht her out It sniffed the ith its black snout like a dasher on the hunt
She felt Ben pull her backward through the rip in the Flying Fish The bright sky trailing the storm forced her to squint and focus on a double rainbow that lazed in the sky above theht about the dust The pink of the rainbow&039;s arch blazed brightest of all the colors and it pulsed in time with her own pulse
"Do you see it?" she asked
"The rainbows?" Ben said "Yes, I do Give me your hand, I&039;ll help you down here"
"Don&039;t rainbows ?" she asked "A promise of some kind?"
"Supposedly God placed a rainbow in the sky as a proain," he said "But that was Earth, and this is Pandora I don&039;t knohether God&039;s proive me your hand"
The impatience in his voice just ht He doesn&039;t believe lare and scanned the cliff The clifftop was identical to the one in her vision, except for a void, a nothingness where she&039;d seen the ie of Rico, in the cavern He reached out for the kelp frond that had brought hihter at their feet He stood there, facing them, head cocked and hands on his hips It was as if he were i for them to make up their minds
"Look there," she said to Ben, "can&039;t you see Rico?"
She pointed to his ihter touched the sea He was ser
"I see the sun shining off the water," Ben said "It&039;s too bright to look at You&039;d better be careful of your eyes"
"It&039;s Ric"
"We&039;re dusted enough," Ben said
He stepped down froround and reached up for her
"Try not to touch the hylighter We&039;re probably safest scaling the cliff"
"No!"
The as torn from her throat before she could think about it
"Not the cliff," she said "I feel so there I saw them up there, Nevi and Zentz They&039;re after us"
Ben pulled her free of the wreckage and they stood on the unsteady footing of the slickrock beach
"OK," he said, and sighed, "I believe you If not the cliff, then where?"
She couldn&039;t help looking at the sea
"We can&039;t go there," he said "Please don&039;t ask me to take you there Maybe you can live in there, but I can&039;t"
He glanced quickly around theet to hihter draped over the foil Though a plant, and clearly dead, it e in herdistant about her childhood The kelp had protected her, nurtured her, educated her chemically in the custohter was fro the beach She knew Ben ise in sos, that she had to have faith in him Without the kelp&039;s cilia, she, too would have died in the sea Much was rushing back to her, in frag was to run to it, to bury herself in the kelp&039;s great body, death or not
That is selfish, soer acceptable
She had heard about the barrenness of the upcoast regions, and at first glance black rock was all she saw: sheer black cliff, then black rubble, then a foa the rubble Little bits of green squatted a,that spoke inside her head, pointed her upcoast
"There"
She took Ben&039;s hand and pointed out a huge black boulder with a single silver wihi clinging to its top It was about thirty meters upcoast, halfway between cliff and tideline
"That&039;s where ant to be"
That hen Nevi and Zentz stepped out fro their way across the rocks toward thehtened She heard Ben mutter "Shit!" under his breath and saw his head twitch quickly left to right, looking for a dodge But she kneasn&039;t necessary She knew
The reat conception All the world silenced itself - the waves, the breeze, the cautious footsteps of twoacross wet stones
"Hands on top of your heads, step away from the foil" Zentz delivered his orders with a shaky voice tinged with slobber
"Yes," Crista told Ben, "that&039;s where ant to be"
They clung to each other&039;s hands in the stone-still afternoon and watched the huge boulder lift itself back froround behind Nevi and Zentz It caes Neither
"Hands on your heads!"
The boulder laid itself carefully down behind them and out of the shadow beneath it cli nets
"Tell me you see it, too," Ben whispered "Tell me I&039;m not still dusted"
"It is as it should be," she whispered back, her voice a singsong "There is a greatabout the way Nevi&039;s gaze lance he sprang sideways, beachward, and whirled The first net was already settling over the surprised Zentz and another, poorly thrown, grazed Nevi&039;s arht down both netle When Nevi whirled back, Crista Galli stared down the business end of his lasgun Even at thirty paces it looked huge
"I&039;ll kill her," he announced, just loud enough for all to hear "Trust me I am very quick"
Everyone froze, and in the silence that ith this stillness Crista felt that they were all graceful subjects inside so She kneho the painter must be
Nevi half-crouched in careful aim, his colorful face unreadable, his eyes fixed only on Crista Galli She felt her head clearing, the return of wave-slaps against rock
But there&039;s so she hadn&039;t felt since she&039;d been dredged up fro familia
"Connection," she whispered
Ben breathed beside her and she felt it as her own breath They were one person, pulses synchronized with rainboaves and the great heartbeat of the void She knew the choices in his mind and marveled at the sacrifice he was prepared to et between her and Nevi, take the hit while the netht him down At the moment he elected to move, she touched his shoulder
"No," she said, "it&039;s not necessary Can you feel it?"
"I feel those sights onbetween us and -"
"Destiny?" she asked "There is nothing between us and destiny"
The i wildly to her, still s
Nevi came out of his crouch, moved carefully across the rain-wet rocks toward them She liked the smell of the rain, a different wetness than the ss but not as rich The scent of the sea, of the dead hylighter, lay heavily beside her like a sleeping lover
"Do you see?" she asked Ben, and smiled