"It depends on the wine you serve with it," she said over a mouthful. She held up a can of beer to show me.
I looked over at her. "When we get out of this," I said, "I will buy you the biggest fucking lobster in Arizona. And the best bottle of wine I can afford. Until then, I don't want to hear about food. "
"You're on," she said. "With any luck, that'll be tonight."
"Really?"
She nodded. "Weather scan shows the cloud has dissipatedor spread out too thin to register on the scope. There were strong winds last night. The main body of the cloud passed us by around three in the ayem. Oakland says the last of it is still breaking up over Sacramento. They got a couple inches of cotton candy-but nothing like we got. There's also a chance of rain-with all these dust particles in the air, it's a very good chance. Weather service is adjusting their model now-but I'm betting that it rains before they can bring the new simulation up and running."
"Mp," I said.
Assuming that the puffball clouds hadn't left a permanent pink haze in the air, we still had to address the real problem. The chopper was buried in this crap. How were we going to get out of the ship? If we were under more than two meters of dust, we might as well forget it.
And that suggested another problem. Just how extensive were these drifts anyway? I already knew from experience that we wouldn't be able to move very far through them. No, it was too unlikely that we could get to clear ground-they were going to have to pick us up here.
And then there was the problem of Duke.
I sucked at a water bulb and looked at Lizard. She was lost in thought as well.
She caught me looking at her. "Yes?"
"How are we going to get Duke out of here?"
"You've gotten that far with it, huh?"
"Uh, I haven't gotten anywhere. I just figure that Duke is the hard part of the problem. If we can handle that, the rest takes care of itself."
She said, "I think we're going to have to wait for outside assistance. Right now, the best solution I can come up with is a Sikorsky Skyhook. It could just pull us out-if we could get the grapples in place."
I said, "If any part of the parafoil is accessible, they can hook onto that, can't they? They could use that harness."
"Hey! That's not bad-"
"Thanks."
"-except it won't work." She explained, "It's not your fault. The problem is the Sikorsky. No chopper can rescue us. It'll stir up too much dust. It'll ruin its own engines. They'll come down right on top of us."
"I wonder if this stuff could be washed away? My great-grandmother once tried to teach me a rain dance. You said there's a chance of rain. I'll call it down here."
She smiled sourly, "That'll turn this stuff into mud-and then it'll harden into concrete."
"But it's just-cake flour!"
"You ever try to eat a stale bagel?"
I threw up my hands in despair. "I concede the point."
"Got any other ideas?" she asked.
"Well, we know we can burn it away...." I said it unenthusiastically.
"Now that's a thought," Lizard replied brightly. "You and Duke have already proven the dust is flammable. And this chopper is tiled. It'll make a wonderful oven." She grinned at me. "Do you like brick-oven cooking?"
"No thanks." I picked up the flashlight, switched it on, and swiveled forward. I stared at the pink barrier on the opposite side of the windshield. "I wonder what they do on the planet Chtorr?"
"They probably don't fly in cotton candy weather."
"Yeah, they probably have candy warnings."
"I can imagine the forecasts," Lizard said. "Tomorrow will be mostly fair with scattered high candy and a twenty percent chance of lemonade."
"Not lemonade," I corrected. "Wrong color. More likely strawberry soda."
"And instead of snow, they get syrup? Sounds like a good way to get your wicket sticky?"
"Actually," I mused, "that might not be so far from the truth. Everything is edible to something else. We're just another kind of snack to the worms. Maybe their own planet is one great big smorgasbord to them. It's all point of view. Maybe this is the season of candy."
"Well, we could sure use a couple of worms with sweet tooths along about now," Lizard said.
"Uh-I'm not so sure they're not already here," I replied very slowly.
"Huh?"
"Turn your seat around and look. I think something's moving out there."
TWENTY
"WHERE?" SAID Lizard.
"There. Up near the top."
"I don't see anything."
"Keep looking. It was just a flicker-right there. As if something's moving on top of the dust."
We stared and waited. Nothing.
After a moment, Lizard said, "Well, I don't see it."
"I'm sure of what I saw." There was an edge of anger in my voice.
"Yes, I'm sure you are," she replied quietly. "Last time you were that sure, you disrupted a conference."
I ignored the knife between my ribs. "And I was right, wasn't I?"
Lizard shrugged. "Being right is rarely a victory."
"Huh?"
"Never mind." She anchored one foot on the console, grunted, and swiveled her seat to the back again. "If there's really something out there, we'll see it soon enough."
I muttered something unprintable and grabbed the flashlight. I climbed past her to check on Duke again. The medi-console said he was stable. He looked a little less gray. I wished I'd taken more pre-med courses. I wasn't sure how to interpret any of this.
"Uh--Colonel?"
"Yeah?"
"Do you know anything about first aid?"
"A little."
"Come here and listen. Duke's breathing sounds funny."
She came to the back and squatted down next to Duke. She listened. Then she smiled. "His breathing's fine."
"But that wheezing-"
"He's asleep," she said. "He's snoring."
"Are you sure?"
Lizard looked me straight in the eye. "I know what a man's snoring sounds like."
"Uh-right. Thank you." I picked up the flashlight and went to the back of the tail to look and see if I could see anything out of the rear bubble. The cotton candy seemed a little more translucent there. I could feel my face burning.
How long would it be till we really started getting on each other's nerves? I wondered if I could get angry enough to kill her. I was afraid I might find out.
I climbed into the bubble seat, folded my arms across my chest, and faced the back.
What is it about women anyway? Why do they all seem to think that life is about challenging men? And then they wonder why the men are so touchy-
I was staring at it for several minutes before I realized what I was seeing. I came out of the chair so fast, I bumped my head on the Plexiglas. "Holy shit!-Owww!"
"Are you all right?" Lizard called.
"No-"
"What happened?"
"I bumped my head-" I could still feel the ringing. "Come here!"
"Why? You want me to kiss it?"
"I want you to see something. Come here!" I started coughing then, and couldn't think of anything for a minute. Every paroxysm was agony. I forced myself to stop, I don't know how.
When I opened my eyes again, Lizard was looking up at me with a concerned expression. She was holding out a bulb of water. I took it gratefully. "Thanks."
She came climbing past Duke with a sigh. "All right, what do you want me to see?"
I pointed at the window. "There is something out there."
She looked. She frowned. She looked confused. Then her eyes widened.
The entire surface of the bubble was alive.
It was still a solid pink mass-but we could see something through the pink. It was like looking through a layer of suds. There was something flickering behind it; the whole surface was flickering.
It was a seething movement, but the eye couldn't resolve a pattern. As we watched, the movement grew more pronounced than ever. The flickerings became scratchings.