“Oscar, that puts you in the clear,” Paula said. “If you were the Starflyer agent you would have taken him captive.”
“Yes, I guess so.”
“What are you saying?” Wilson asked.
The jeep rocked to one side as it was struck by a sudden gust of wind. Paula tightened her restraint webbing. “It’s either you or Anna.”
“Oh, come on! We’re all navy, we’ve know each other for years. We already decided it’s either you or one of the Guardians. We’re flying to the summit, no matter what you say.”
“You were all on board the Second Chance,” Paula said. “Oscar, what did you tell Wilson when you went to him with the evidence? Did you tell him you were contacted by the Guardians?”
“Yes.”
“All right, Wilson, you knew there was a connection between Oscar and the Guardians. Did you tell Anna?”
“This is ridiculous.”
“Did you tell her?” The jeep was swaying about continually now as the winds picked up. Sand was scudding along the ground.
“I…I don’t think so. Anna, do you remember?”
“What did you say to her? Did you discuss the Second Chance data?”
“Anna?” Wilson entreated.
“She handled the sensors on Second Chance, that gave her easy access to the satellites and the dish. They were her systems; it would be easy for her to cover up any unauthorized use.”
“Anna! Tell her she’s talking crap.”
“Did you tell her Oscar had found the dish deployment?” Paula demanded.
“Anna, for God’s sake.”
“Did you?”
“Yes,” Wilson moaned.
“Anna,” Paula said. “I know your carrier wave is on, please respond.”
“She’s my wife.”
The jeep wobbled badly. Rosamund fought the wheel. “We can’t take any more of this,” she grunted. “We’re not going to reach Anna.”
“Damnit,” Paula said. “It can’t be much farther.”
“Investigator, we are going to die if we carry on.” Rosamund’s voice was emotionless. “That’s not going to accomplish anything, is it?”
“All right, turn around,” Paula snapped. Halfway into the turn another gust slammed into them, and she thought they really would flip over this time. Rosamund spun the wheel violently, countering the tilt. Outside, gray light was seeping into the sky to reveal a thick low cloud base that was moving at a daunting speed toward Mount Herculaneum. The jeep steadied. Rosamund was taking them straight toward the base of the canyon wall.
“Anna, respond please,” Paula said.
“Wilson,” Oscar said. “Oh, shit, I’m sorry.”
“She can’t be!” Wilson said. “She can’t. Damnit, she’s perfectly human.”
“I worked with Tarlo for years,” Paula said. “I had no idea.”
“Work?” Wilson spat contemptuously. “I married her. I loved her.”
“Wilson, Oscar, you have to decide what you’re going to do now. I know this is hard, Wilson, but I expect she will try to crash into one of you.”
“We’ll leave a gap between unhooking from the tether,” Oscar said. “That way she can only go after one of us.”
“That sounds viable.” Paula desperately wanted to offer some practical advice, but she couldn’t even think on how to improve Oscar’s suggestion. She saw the edge of the canyon approaching fast. There was sand under the tires again. Big worn outcrops of rock were cluttered along the base of the canyon wall. Rosamund steered them around a dark jag of abraded lava and braked in its lee; she raised the suspension so the rim settled on the ground. “I hope this is deep enough,” she said as she switched on the jeep’s emergency anchors. The screws on the chassis started to wind down into the hard-packed sand with a strident metallic whine.
“Good luck, both of you,” Paula said.
Rosamund cut the mike and faced Paula. “You didn’t tell him you know about Abadan.”
“Oscar has enough to worry about right now. I didn’t want to impede his effectiveness. He’ll find out if he survives.”
“I don’t know about the Starflyer, but you frighten the living crap out of me.”
“She didn’t know.” Oscar repeated the phrase like a mantra; he’d lost count of how many times he’d said it now. The emptiness of human silence was oppressive and demoralizing as the furious wind rose in counterpoint around the hyperglider. A sense of isolation was folding around him like the caress of interstellar space. Anna: lost beyond redemption goodness knows how many years or decades before. While Wilson had withdrawn into a private hell of anguish and grief. “The human part of her was drawn to you. That’s still alive.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Wilson answered curtly. “I’ve had wives before.”
“Not like this, man; we saw flashes of the real Anna. She’s still there. Lost. She can be re-lifed and her memories edited.”
“After we kill her now. Is that it?”
Oscar winced. The whole conversation was made even more disquieting by the little emerald symbol shining in the corner of his virtual vision showing that Anna was still on the air, receiving everything they said. Maybe silence is best. “What do you want to do?” he asked warily. Wisps of fine sand were drifting past the cockpit, whipped up from the wet desert out beyond the gaping canyon mouth.
“Get to Aphrodite’s Seat. That’s what we’re here for. That’s what we do.”
Oscar resisted letting out a long breath of relief. At least his friend was starting to focus. That was the thing about Wilson, an ability to put the human element aside while he made choices. It was probably what made him so good at command. The parallel between that and Starflyer agents was one Oscar didn’t like to think of.
“We’ll get there,” Oscar said. “After all, there’s not that much she can do.”
“You think?”
Oscar was very close to turning his radio off and just keeping the hyperglider on the ground while the storm raged. The universe can survive without me, surely? Just this once. If he could just do what Wilson did and turn off his emotions.
The hyperglider shook as the wind strengthened around it. Overhead, the gray clouds had merged into an unbroken rumpled ceiling above the stark canyon. “Whatever you want to do, I’m with you,” he told Wilson. It was a cop-out and he knew it, transfer responsibility to someone else. But then that’s what he’d been doing ever since Abadan.
He checked the weather radar with its false-color mating jellyfish patterns. The whole cockpit was juddering now, wobbling the images on the little screen. It showed him a salmon-pink tide of wind channeled by the overbearing walls of Stakeout Canyon and reaching close to a hundred miles an hour. Somewhere in the invisible distance ahead of the hyperglider’s nose, the stormfront had reached the base of Mount Herculaneum.
“Confirmed go status,” Wilson responded with toneless dispassion.
Oscar smiled tenderly at the absolute professionalism; in his own fashion Wilson was showing him the way. Okay, if that’s what it takes to do this, I’m game. “Roger that. I’m beginning ascent phase.”
He brought his hands down on the console’s i-spots, gripping the concave handholds. Plyplastic flowed over his wrists, mooring them into place for the flight. His e-butler reported a perfect interface with the hyperglider’s onboard array.
Oscar put Anna aside and allowed the memories to come to the fore. Not his memories, but the skill belonged to him now, merging him with the hyperglider. A red and violet virtual hand gripped the joystick that had materialized in front of him. His other hand skipped across the glowing icons.
The plyplastic wing buds began to flow, extending out from the fuselage into a simple delta configuration. Oscar was rattled from side to side in the cockpit as they caught the wind. He disengaged the forward tether lock, and the hyperglider leaped about wildly. His own sparse piloting knowledge buoyed by the recent skill implants helped him counter the movement with relative ease, keeping the craft as level as possible.