No. At the top of his head was the thought of what he would say and do when Sapphire found him in Topaz's bunk.
Josh knew that he would not sleep for a single moment. He would lie all night in the darkness, waiting and worrying.
It was a great shock to open his eyes and find he was looking up into Sapphire's perplexed face.
"Where's Topaz?" she said. "This can't be what it looks like, because she's not here with you. What the hell is going on?"
There were times when a person could plead innocence and ignorance. This wasn't one of them. Josh pushed back the covers and sat up.
"I can explain everything."
"You sound just like Sig Lasker." Sapphire glanced down at him. "At least you've got all your clothes on and you aren't bare-ass naked. That's a good start."
"Of course I'm not!" Josh scrambled out of bed. He looked to where Amethyst and Ruby were still peacefully asleep. "Look, I'll tell you everything, but only if you promise not to tell Brewster."
"I wouldn't tell Brewster if his ass was on fire. Talk, Josh Kerrigan. Amy and Ruby usually sleep another hour, both of 'em. I want to know what's going on before they wake up—and keep the noise level down."
Josh's explanation, in the chilly orange light of dawn, sounded worse than stupid. Sapphire simply shook her head.
"She talked you into it, didn't she?"
"No, I don't think so."
"Well, I do. You have to know our Topaz. She'd talk a witch out of her broomstick. The question is, what are we going to do about it? Are you worried about your cousin?"
"I should be. But it's funny, I feel more comfortable than I expected, knowing the two of them are together."
"Funnily enough, so do I. But I guess we'll act as worried and puzzled as everyone else, and we don't tell anybody what happened to Topaz and Dawn. Except maybe Sig."
"Does he have to know?"
"If we don't tell him, he'll probably guess. He's smart."
Josh sensed that there were other reasons for including Sig, but he didn't pursue them. "What about you?" he said. "Do I have to worry about you?"
He didn't want to have to explain that question, but luckily Sapphire was ahead of him.
"No. You would have had to worry, four days ago." She breathed deeply, as though inhaling an invisible something into her lungs. Her eyes, like Winnie's, had black bags underneath them. "I feel like it's killing me, but it's for my own good."
"You don't have any more of it?"
"Not a single sniff." Sapphire smiled, but without a trace of humor, and her eyes wandered around the room as though seeking out hiding places where a small tube might have been mislaid. "Oh, hell. If I did have any, I'd be taking a whack right now. May I make a suggestion?"
"Anything."
"Good. Now you've fooled me for long enough, and told me how and why, get the hell out of here and back to your own bed. You probably think you look like Goldilocks. But I think Amy and Ruby will have a few questions if you're still here when they wake up."
Josh expected to be the one grilled most severely. In fact, it was the Karpov sisters who bore the brunt of Brewster's questions. Apparently Sol Brewster shared Aunt Stacy's view, that Dawn was a total retard, so nothing that she did could be expected to make sense.
Amethyst and Ruby were genuinely worried and puzzled, and only a little reassured by Sapphire's shrug and dismissal with, "Topaz knows how to look after herself. I'm not her keeper."
If Brewster had been more sensitive to relationships, he might have realized that Sapphire saw herself as exactly that. Instead he grumbled and threatened about what he would do when Topaz and Dawn came back.
"But the rest of you are going to work," he said. "You don't get away with anything, just because they think they can. Take your test kits. I'll tell you the areas where each of you will operate. I don't want you straying outside the places I tell you to be. This part of Solferino has natural hazards, but as I told you before: Do as I say, and you'll be in no trouble."
While Brewster was talking, Josh examined the rest of the group. He was no longer sure what he had seen the previous night. But if his eyes had not been deceiving him, who could it have been?
His first choice, from what he had seen recently, was Sig and Sapphire, sneaking off together. Since that wasn't the case, then who?
The twins were game for any sort of wildness, but they would surely have gone together, not one at a time. Ruby and Amethyst had been asleep when he crept into Topaz's bed. That left two people: Sol Brewster and Winnie Carlson. He grinned at the idea of those two going off together. He didn't believe it for a moment.
His pondering ended when he was given one of the test kits and walked by Brewster to the area assigned to him. It was closer to the fissure than he had been before—quite a bit too close, in Josh's opinion.
Brewster then moved him to a point thirty meters closer yet, well past the place where all plant life ended. "This is a little farther than you should go. It's perfectly safe here, but I can't vouch for what happens if you start fooling around here. Take a good look. Then go back up and get to work."
He left. Josh took a look, a very good look, and wished that he were back at the main compound, or Burnt Willow Farm—or anywhere else at all. From his position the ground sloped down, steeper and steeper, to become a vertical wall that dropped to the bottom of the fissure. The opposite side was a couple of kilometers away, and the length of the chasm stretched out of sight in both directions. A thin pall of yellowish smoke sat over the great rift in the surface. It never dispersed, even though Josh could feel a steady warm breeze on his face.
He stared along the steepest line of descent. Nothing grew or moved, except at the very bottom where a dark something churned and smoked. In daylight it was all blacks and grays. He knew from the previous night that when the world was dark, the fissure bottom glowed with its own dull red fire. If it were not hot enough to make the rocks molten, it was close to it. A human who fell to the fissure floor would not survive more than a few seconds.
He heard a sound beside him, and turned in alarm. It was Amethyst, peering down toward the fissure bottom.
"Brewster told me I could," she said defensively "I'm working just up from you, but this is a lot more interesting. Do you know how hot it is down there?"
"No. But if you look at it at night it glows a sort of dull red."
A mistake—Amethyst might ask him how he knew. Instead she merely said "Interesting" again, craned forward, and added, "For something naturally black, like the rocks there, a dull red heat means it must be at least five hundred Celsius. Fall down there, you'd be burned to a crisp."
A fact that Josh had no wish to hear again—Topaz had said almost exactly the same thing. But Amethyst was apparently marking time on the way to her real subject, because she added, still without looking at Josh, "You know where Topaz went, don't you?"
"No, I don't."
It was literally true, but it didn't work. Amethyst said, "All right, maybe you don't know where. But I bet you know why she went. And I bet I do, too. She's gone off with your cousin. They're looking to catch a rupert."
"Why would you think a thing like that?"
"I don't hear you denying it. I'm not an idiot, you know. You've been babbling about ruperts ever since that first night at camp. You try to give everybody the impression that you're totally cool and you don't care about anything, but Topaz says that's not true, inside you care an awful lot. You really want to prove you're right about the rupert. Saph says you hide your feelings like this because of the way you were brought up, with your mother and everything. You've learned not to let things show, 'specially when you care a lot."
"Have you finished? How I feel about things is my business, not yours. And what I said was true. I don't know where Topaz is."
"I believe you." Amethyst sighed, heavily and artificially, and oddly it reminded Josh at once of his mother. "Topaz is so lucky, you know. The rest of us really envy her. She can talk anybody into
anything." She studied Josh as if she had just discovered a new Solferino life form. "You seem to have your head screwed on the right way, but you went along with it. Do you mind my asking, what did Topaz do to persuade you?"
Josh did mind. He minded this whole conversation. He was saved from having to answer by a bellow of rage from farther up the hill.
"Are you two going to stand there and bullshit all day long? I said a quick look at the fissure. Get working."
"Topaz is so lucky. Talks anybody into anything," Amethyst started back toward her assigned territory. "Except maybe for horrible old Frankenstein's monster up there. I'd like to do something to his fissure. He's immune to all human feelings. Nobody mentioned him when Saph asked us if we'd like to go to Solferino. If she had, we might have stayed home. At least we'd have thought about it twice."
Chapter Sixteen
THE work with the test kit was interesting at first. You picked a likely looking piece of plant, popped it into the top, and waited. After a while, the yellow light came on. That was the trouble. Yellow, yellow, yellow. No matter how much you willed the red or blue light to appear, it never did. And after a while, what had started out interesting became just boring.
The day was warm. It was easy to imagine that half the heat came from the hidden fires of the Avernus Fissure, only a few hundred meters away. The red disk of Grisel crept across the sky with terrible slowness. As the hours wore on, Josh found he had plenty of time to think and plenty to think about.
Where were Topaz and Dawn at the moment, and what were they doing? They were probably miles and miles away. He was sure they wouldn't have stayed near the fissure, where the other trainees were working and Brewster might find them. They would surely have gone the other way, up to the heights surrounding Avernus. That's where the shape of the land suggested you might find plants—and animals—more like those in the Barbican Hills.
By now he'd bet that all the other trainees knew what had happened to Topaz and Dawn. He'd as good as told Amethyst, and she wouldn't have kept it from Ruby. And Sig would know, too, because Saph seemed to tell him everything. And Sig would have been bugged by Hag and Rick, and he had no reason not to tell them whatever he knew.
So they all knew—except for Sol Brewster and Winnie Carlson. It was curious that those two had not grilled everyone harder about Topaz and Dawn's disappearance. Maybe they had worries and secrets of their own. Josh still hadn't come up with a plausible explanation for the two dark figures he had seen while he waited in the dark for Topaz.
Brewster was far more focused now that they were at the Avernus Fissure. He had stopped running people off their feet in pointless work, or shipping them off somewhere before they'd even had time to settle in. He was purposeful and organized. And even Winnie Carlson seemed less of a sad sack here, in the scary volcanic region surrounding the fissure.
Were all these things connected? It seemed odd to Josh that they would be testing plants close to the edge of the fissure, and not in the forests where growth was more abundant. That's where you would expect to find more plant types.
Maybe he ought to talk things over with the others, especially Amethyst—old bulge-brain, Topaz called her (but not when she was there). Maybe Amethyst would be able to put everything together and make sense of it.
Josh took a break from his musings and turned to look at the sun. It was lower in the sky. Night was only an hour or two away, and he had long since eaten everything in his food packs. He had been testing for what felt like forever. Maybe Brewster had forgotten all about them. On the other hand, maybe he hadn't. Josh didn't relish the notion of being the first one back at the camp, and alone with Brewster.
He glanced idly at the test kit—and stopped dead. He had been wandering along on autopilot, working without thinking. Suddenly, while he was not looking, the blue light had started to blink.
Blue—anomaly. Only once in ten thousand times, Brewster had said. But there it was, as bright and beautiful as you could ask. There was a temptation to run screaming and shouting up the hill toward the camp. Josh damped that urge. Suppose he had somehow screwed up (though he didn't see any way that he could have). Then the more he shouted and waved, the bigger idiot he would look when he was proved wrong.
He backtracked to the place where he had taken the last sample, pulled another piece from the same plant, a stem this time rather than a saw-edged leaf, and dropped it into the test kit. The wait seemed endless, though it was probably no longer than usual.
It came at last—blue again, unless he had developed a sudden case of color blindness. As casually as he could manage, Josh strolled back up the hill.
Of course, that raised problems of its own. He had to walk right past Rick Lasker.
At first the fair-haired twin took no notice of Josh. He was squatting close to the ground. In one hand was his test kit. In the other, near the test kit's opening, Rick held some kind of fat black worm that wriggled to escape.
As soon as he became aware of Josh's approach, Rick put the worm down and stood up.
"I really wasn't going to." He stared at Josh uneasily. "See, I was just wondering. Wondering what it would feel like."
"That doesn't look like a talking worm. It won't tell you. Stick your finger inside the test kit, if you're that keen on knowing what it feels like."
Rick looked at Josh doubtfully. "You don't mean that, do you? You're joking."
"No, I'm not. In fact, you can stick any part of you in there that you like, and it would suit me fine." Josh started to walk past, up the hill toward the camp, but it was no good. As dusk approached, the flashing light became harder to conceal.
"You've got one!" Rick came to Josh's side and bent to peer at the test kit. "Blue light. Didn't Brewster say that's the best kind of all?"
Before Josh could respond, Rick shouted loud enough to carry to the camp and a mile past it, "Over here! He's got one! Josh Kerrigan bagged a blue!"
So much for the idea of a quiet walk back to camp. It had never occurred to Josh that the work was any kind of competition, but apparently Rick and Hag saw it that way. Hag came running over from a spot farther along the fissure. He peered, turned, and shouted, even louder than Rick, "Hey! Josh has one! He found an enorm-ally."
Other people popped up from nowhere, Saph and Sig and Amethyst and Winnie. Most surprising of all, Brewster emerged from the main building of the camp—and he came running toward Josh and Rick across the uneven, ill-lit ground. Brewster, who never went anywhere faster than a stately walk! For the first time, Josh had the feeling that he might have discovered something truly important.
"Aha!" Brewster grabbed the test kit out of Josh's hand and held it close to his face. "Yes, yes, yes. So far, so good. Now let's see just what we have."
He turned the test kit around, took something like a blunt screwdriver from his jacket, and poked it into half a dozen small marked pits. The kit beeped, and three of the pits glowed white in the dusk.
"Perfect! The best three." Brewster handed the kit back to Josh and rubbed his hands together. "Show me exactly where you found it. Quickly, before it gets too dark."
Josh knew that he would be able to find the plant just as well in the morning, and anyway the test kit was supposed to have its own accurate locator. However, he wasn't about to get into an argument with Sol Brewster, even when the man was in a good mood. With everyone trailing along behind, Josh led the way to a sparsely covered piece of ground. He pointed to the plant that he had used. Brewster broke off a couple of purple leaves, grabbed a different test kit from Sig Lasker, and dropped them in.
Josh held his breath. If the whole thing was just something wrong with his test kit . . .
After another endless wait, the indicator light on the other unit flashed blue.
"That's it!" Sol Brewster knelt down and peered at the ground. What he could see in the fading light was beyond Josh, but apparently it satisfied the other man because he took the blunt screwdriver again from his jacket and drove it effortlessly into
the hard earth to mark the spot. He leaned back on his haunches.
"Excellent. Your work is over for the day, and a good day it's been. You can all head back to camp now. I'll stay here for a few more minutes, I have additional tests to carry out." And, when everyone hesitated, interested to see what he would do next, "Have you gone deaf? I said move. This isn't a circus, and I don't need an audience."
They headed reluctantly back up the hill. When they had gone about thirty yards, Josh turned for a last quick look. Brewster was still crouched in the same place. Rather than doing anything to the clump of plants, he seemed to be digging in the ground next to them, with another tool that looked from a distance like a curve-bladed trowel.
What was he doing? Josh asked Winnie Carlson, but all she did was shake her head and act vaguely worried. And when Brewster swept back in, half an hour later, no one had the nerve to say anything.
Putting Up Roots Page 18
