“I don’t want your excuses, either.What good are excuses to her?”
“Stop it,” Kane said.“Wake up. Curtis killed her, not me. He’s trying to protect something, and I don’t even—”
“Kane?” Takahashi stood in the open doorway, his eyes narrowed against the shadows.
Hanai turned on him fiercely.“What are you doing here?” she demanded in Japanese.“Why are you by yourself ?”
“I followed you,” Takahashi said in English, with an innocence that failed to convince Kane.“No one stopped me.” He looked at the dead woman and then back at Kane, nodding slightly. He recognized her, Kane realized. He must have seen her last night. Just how much did Takahashi know?
“Aren’t you going to call somebody?” Kane asked Hanai.“Or are you just going to leave her there?”
Hanai glared at him, then snatched the phone from the wall. She listened for a second and then dropped it in disgust.The receiver battered the wall and then spun on the tightly coiled cord.“Come on,” she said. “I’ll have to find another phone.”
“No,” Kane said.
“What?”
“I’m not coming,” Kane said.“Are you going to force me? Do your orders go that far? I don’t think so.”
“You’re a visitor here,” Hanai said, the words squeezed flat by the pressure of her teeth.“There are courtesies...”
“I’m walking out,” Kane said. From the way she moved he knew she could handle him easily if she chose to, would probably have been dangerous even if he’d been in peak condition and used to the lighter gravity. He was conscious once again of the weight of the gun in the back of his trousers, even though he dared not use it. He walked toward the door.
“Kane...” Hanai’s voice was indecisive and Kane kept walking.
A few seconds laterTakahashi caught up with him.“You took a big risk.”
“You don’t approve, of course.”
“Maybe I just don’t understand.”
“It’s the way of the warrior,Takahashi.When there’s a choice, you choose death.You should know that. It’s bushido.”
“Is that supposed to be a joke? You’re a two-bit mercenary and a corporate flunky, not without your uses, perhaps, but you’re no samurai.”
“If that’s all you see, then that’s all my uncle has let you see.The view’s not that good when you spend your life behind a desk, anyway.”
“You’re in over your head,”Takahashi said.“I wonder if you’re going to find your way back out.”
“So that’s the way it is,” Kane said.“How much do you know about what’s going on? How deep are you?”
Takahashi shook his head, It could have meant anything.
“I had to get away from there,” Kane said.“Curtis is hiding something and I want to know what it is.”
“And you think he’ll tell you?”
“I don’t know. But I have to try.”
They were back at the central complex. Kane stopped a boy of about ten and said,“Curtis.Where is he? Has he got an office?”
“Upstairs,” the boy said.The pressure of Kane’s fingers seemed to frighten the boy more than hurt him, as if the mere threat of physical injury was shattering, unheard of.
Kane was beyond local taboos. He climbed the stairs inside the center and opened a door labeled “Governor” in English, Russian, and Japanese.A man behind a desk looked up from his bank of monitors.
“I’m looking for Curtis,” Kane said.“Is he here?”
The man shook his head.Again Kane saw recognition and curiosity, tinged with fear:“I haven’t seen him.You could try him at home.”
“Where’s that?”
“Center house, first row south of here.” The man’s eyes swept over the dozens of screens, as if for some kind of reassurance. Kane left without shutting the door, taking the stairs two at a time, barely in control of his balance.Takahashi stepped out of his way at the bottom, and Kane steadied himself against the braised aluminum railing.
“Not there,” Kane said.“You coming?”
“No,”Takahashi said.“I don’t think you’re going to find him until he’s ready for you to. Besides, I’ve got some work to do in there.” He pointed his thumb back toward the sick bay.“I can get into the main computer from there, I think.”
“Okay,” Kane said, and took hold of the door.The air pressure inside the center was Earth normal, 1000 millibars, three times the pressure outside, and he could feel the differential in his arms as he leaned back to pull it open. He could feel exhaustion eating into his anger, but beyond the adrenaline and fatigue poisons, he could still hear those faint, high voices urging him on.
He pulled up his mask and stepped into the sunlight. Curtis’s house was just ahead of him, at the end of a short path.
He felt a powerful sense of imminence, of some kind of storm about to break.The sky, he realized. It was the wrong color for daytime. It reminded him of the dark skies in Texas before tornadoes or floods, provoking the same subconscious responses.
He pressed the button next to the door of Curtis’s house and watched the camera mounted in the eaves turn automatically to focus on him.A few seconds later Molly’s voice came through the speaker grille.
With one hand on the doorframe to steady himself he said,“I’m looking for Curtis.”
“Come on inside,” she said.
He nearly asked for Curtis again, hearing in her voice that Curtis was not there, but instead he let another awareness move through him, a memory of her touch and scent that brought a dizzying sense of lightness to his groin.
His sudden erection seemed the focal point of a binding force, pulling him inevitably, inexorably, toward Molly. He pushed his way inside, let the pressure suck the door shut behind him.
Molly stood on the far side of the living room, retreating from Kane’s presence.The thin white cotton of her nasa undersuit revealed her body clearly; her nipples were slack, her muscles relaxed.“Sit down,” she said, and Kane sat on the edge of a long, low sofa.“Do want something? Coffee? A drink?”
“No,” he said. She could feel it too, he saw, the sexual symbolism of his having penetrated her house; she revealed it in the quick, nervous gestures of her hands.“Where’s Curtis?” he said.
“Out,” she said, holding his eyes for a moment, and then suddenly turning away.The room was crowded with plants: bamboo, palms, grasses, and ferns.The air smelled rich, primordial.
“Out where? I have to see him.”
“I’m afraid,” she said, her voice strained, unnatural,“he can’t be disturbed right now.”
Kane moved to his feet, took her by one wrist.“What are you saying? Where is he?” He felt as if he were reading the words; he was only aware of the nearness of her body, the heat of it.
“He...he keeps one of the abandoned houses with power and air. He’s there right now with Lena.”
Kane let go of her wrist.‘‘I’m sorry,” he said. She took another step deeper into the hallway.
Lamps over the plants carved the curtained half-light into spaces that excluded Kane. He moved toward Molly again, drawn by her electric field, sensing their exchange of quanta as a tingling along his skin.As he touched her lightly on one arm, her current surged low in his spine.
“Kane...” she said, almost a plea, but he wasn’t sure for what. He sensed her uncertainty and fear, but they broke harmlessly over the momentum of his need.
She turned to face him. His palms followed the sides of her breasts to the long, smooth latissimus muscles along her sides. She gripped his elbows, her eyes losing focus.
In her bedroom the smell of her was stronger, warm and sweet. She turned and faced him again, tearing loose the velcro fasteners and exposing her breasts almost defiantly, pulling her arms free of the sleeves. Kane tugged at the knot in his belt, unwilling for just that instant to go on with it, the inevitable coupling and climax, preferring instead the complex emotional ambience of the seduction itself, the currents of power tinged with weakness and guilt, the hesitation, the surrender.