They could all see each other. Paula almost laughed at the way each of them looked around to check everyone else’s whereabouts on a regular basis. The comedy police were in town, and in force.
Leaning hard against the jeep’s door frame she told her e-butler to link her with the jeep’s array. One of its files contained a map of Stonewave’s layout. She began to feed in routes from the Grand Triad Adventures hangar, Jamas and Kieran to the garage, Anna to the store, Wilson out to the generator. Average times were easy to fill in. She then began to work out which of them could have run back to murder Adam and still completed their own job. It would be very tight, especially for Kieran and Jamas, who were only separated for a few minutes. On practicality alone, that made Oscar the main suspect.
“We’re done here,” Rosamund said.
Paula shunted the virtual vision map aside and looked up at the Guardian woman. Oscar was standing behind her, wearing a silver-blue flight suit that doubled as an emergency pressure suit. There was an understandably anxious expression on his face as he held the helmet under his arm. “Good luck,” Paula said, and held her hand out. It wasn’t the kind of garment she’d want to wear anywhere near a vacuum, but the armor suits they’d brought with them were far too heavy and bulky for the hypergliders.
“Thanks,” Oscar said. His grip was warm and firm, making her conscious of how clammy her own skin remained.
“Not him then, huh?” Rosamund said as she closed the door.
“I still don’t know,” Paula said. She’d shuffled over into the passenger seat. In front of her, the headlights swept across Oscar as he walked back to the ghostly white fuselage of the hyperglider.
“You’re looking better, you know. Not good, mind, but I can see you’re recovering. Some bug, huh?”
“Yeah, some bug.”
They drove south for five kilometers, then began tethering Anna’s hyperglider. Paula sat in the open doorway again. Visible. Dawn was another three hours away.
Wilson and Jamas eased the hyperglider down out of its trailer while Kieran wheeled the drill rig out. It turned out they’d chosen a patch of lava that had a high metallic content. The drill had a lot of trouble cutting through.
Paula ran the digital model of Stonewave a further two times, trying to draw up an order of probability. It couldn’t determine one effectively, there were far too many variables, especially if Wilson or Anna had run the whole time.
When the third anchor pole was finally sunk, Wilson and Anna embraced in front of the hyperglider. He checked over her silver-blue flight suit one last time. A final kiss and she climbed into the cockpit.
“I don’t know what the odds are of them all getting up there,” Rosamund said as they drove away south.
“Not good,” Paula said. She took another drink of rehydration mix and reviewed what she knew. She still stood by what she and Adam had decided earlier. Just thinking back to the time they’d spent together made her light-headed again. The whole time since she joined the train at Narrabri station she’d wanted to clamp his arms together behind his back and cuff his wrists. It was the kind of reflex that came easier than breathing. She supposed other people would feel some kind of guilt at Adam’s death; she didn’t. The closest right now to any real feeling was regretting he couldn’t give her any input on her current problem. He’d been her only true source of information on the three remaining Guardians.
No, she told herself. That’s not right. I need to prioritize. The most important thing now was to ensure the flight to the top of Mount Herculaneum was a success. She had to concentrate on Wilson, Oscar, and Anna.
Rosamund braked again. “Let’s hope this is a better rock than that shit we were on last time,” she said as she jumped out of the jeep to help tether the last hyperglider.
Paula didn’t move from the passenger seat. She found a bar of chocolate and toffee, and started chewing it very slowly, giving her stomach time to get used to solids again. It was no use trying to figure out which of the three had the opportunity to sabotage equipment in the Carbon Goose; that would be even worse than Stonewave. She had to concentrate on evidence from before, from their behavior prior to Far Away, and hope that could narrow it down. The most damning she could think of was Wilson’s relative failure in commanding the navy. If he’d just been a bit tougher…but that was so easily ascribed to politics. Circumstantial.
She thought back to the meeting she’d had with him and Oscar in Pentagon II. Both of them had been startled and deeply worried that the records had been tampered with and the implication of the Starflyer’s reach. Nothing abnormal there. There had been something else at that meeting, though, not relevant at the time. Oscar had claimed he had been contacted by the Guardians, quickly clarified as someone who claimed to be a Guardian. Why Oscar? Why did the Guardians think he would be sympathetic to their cause?
“Investigator,” Wilson said.
Paula turned gradually. Movement was still difficult; her muscles ached. He was standing in the jeep’s doorway, dressed in the same silver-blue flight suit as the others. The three Guardians stood around him. Their anger seemed to have toned down to something close to embarrassment. Working hard as a team would do that; it wasn’t an adjustment she could allow herself.
“I’m afraid I haven’t worked it out yet,” she said.
“Yes, well, we’ll stay in touch via normal communications bands now. Until the storm takes them out, anyway.”
“Very well.”
“I hope…Ah well.” His lips compressed in something like disappointment.
“Bon voyage, Admiral.”
Wilson turned and walked over toward his hyperglider.
“We’ve got an hour until the storm hits,” Rosamund said tightly as she clambered into the driver’s seat. “The tourist company crews don’t normally leave it this late to set up. According to the emergency file in the jeep’s array there’s a shelter spot at the base of Mount Zeus which we can reach in time.” She was already gunning the engine, racing around the tethered hyperglider in a fast curve. Its cockpit canopy was lowering. They roared away across the barren lava of the canyon floor. Paula leaned sideways, watching the hyperglider and the three abandoned trailers dwindle away quickly.
“We did it,” Rosamund said in a relieved voice.
“What do you mean?”
“I was talking to Kieran and Jamas. We reckon the odds are in our favor now. If two of them make it to Aphrodite’s Seat, and one of them is the Starflyer agent, what can they actually do? None of them have any weapons. And if all three of them make it, then the problem’s solved.”
“Tell that to Adam,” Paula said harshly.
Rosamund glowered at her, but said nothing.