“Are you ready, Mademoiselle?” Soulavier asked behind the door. To her credit she did not jump. He was early. No doubt he had been informed about her transmission; she was being a bad girl.
“Almost,” she said. “A few more minutes.” Hastily she packed her suitcase and tossed the slag into the waste basket. She washed her face in the bathroom, looked at herself in the mirror and prepared mentally for what might come.
She lifted the pistol from the dresser top and placed it in her jacket pocket. Slim, hardly a bulge. The nano on the dresser compacted and crawled sluglike back into the handle of the brush, an oily sheen on its surface; spent. It would need a nutritional charge to perform any more miracles: soaking the brush in a can of kola might do the trick, she had been told. Mary reassembled the hairbrush and stuck it into the suitcase, closed the lid, removed the chair from the knob and opened the door.
Soulavier leaned against the wall in the hallway, examining his nails. He glanced at her dolefully. “Too much time, Mademoiselle,” he said.
“Pardon?”
“We have waited too long. It is going to be dark soon. We are not going to Leoganes.”
If the second part of her message had gotten through it only made sense for the Hispaniolans to divert her to some other location. “Where?” she asked.
“I leave that to my instincts,” Soulavier said. “Away from here, however, and soon.”
She wondered how he had received his instructions. It was possible he had an implant though such technology was not supposed to be common on Hispaniola.
“I tried to make a call to my superiors,” she said. “I didn’t get through.”
He shrugged. All brightness and life seemed to have drained out of him. He inspected her with half lidded eyes, head back, mouth expressionless. “You were told that would not be possible,” he said, each word precise.
She returned his gaze, one corner of her lips lifted, provoking. Not a neutral flaw here. “I’d still prefer to stay in these quarters,” she said.
“That is not your decision.”
“But I wouldn’t mind going to Leoganes.”
“Mademoiselle, we are not children.”
She smiled. His attitude had changed markedly; no longer her protector. No need to reinforce the change by behaving differently herself. “I never believed you were.”
“In some ways we are very sophisticated, perhaps more than you can know. Now we go.”
She picked up her suitcase. He took it from her with some force and followed her down the hall. They passed Jean-Claude and Roselle standing in the dining room, stone faced, hands folded. “Thank you,” Mary told them, nodding and smiling pleasantly. They seemed shocked. Jean Claude’s nostrils flared.
“We go now,” Soulavier reiterated.
Mary put her hand in the coat pocket. “Are they coming with us?” she asked.
“Roselle and Jean Claude will stay here.”
“All right,” she said. “Anything you say.”
50
Sitting on the lawn in front of the IPR to eat would not be wise. Besides, a cool breeze was coming off the ocean. Carol and Martin left through the rear service entrance, passing on foot between walls of concrete and down a narrow asphalt path to the woods behind the building. Martin glanced at her back as she walked ahead of him through the eucalypti. She carried a sack of sandwiches and two cartons of beer. He carried a beach blanket. She casually, gracefully kicked at a few leaves in their path, glanced over her shoulder and said, “I order you to take your mind off work for a few minutes.”
“Tall order,” he replied.
“There should still be…There is,” she said triumphantly, pointing. An open spot between the trees, covered with dry unmown grass. This area was beyond the borders controlled by the IPR gardeners.
They left the path and spread the beach blanket on the grass, working in cooperative silence. They sat in unison and Carol unwrapped the sandwiches.
The ocean breeze had followed them. Cool puffs blew through the tall slender trees. They were lightly dressed and Martin felt goose pimples rising on his arms. He glanced with small apprehension at the nearby branches; they were prone to fall when stressed. “I can’t do it,” he said, grinning.
“What?”
“Take my mind off work.”
“I didn’t really expect you to,” she said.
“But it’s nice out here anyway. A break.”
“So why do you think I dragged you here?” she asked.
“You dragged me?” he said, biting the sandwich, glancing up at her speculatively. “Seduction.”
“We’re going to be more intimate than that soon,” she reminded him.
He nodded and replaced his expression of musing speculation with a pragmatic face. “We’re here to get things straight before we go in.”
“Right.”
“I’ve traveled with you three times. We’re very compatible in the Country.” He opened her carton of beer and handed it to her.
“We are indeed,” she said. “Maybe too much so.”
He pondered that for a moment. “Ice skaters. I know a married couple who are ice skaters. They’re tied together off the ice as much as when they work on the ice.”
“That’s wonderful,” Carol said.
“I always thought we could do that.”
She smiled almost shyly. “Well. We gave it a try.”
“You know, those ice skaters, they’re wonderful people, but they’re not exceptionally bright. Maybe we’re too smart for our own good.”
“I don’t think that’s it,” Carol said.
“Then what?”
“We’re simpatico deep inside,” she said. “I’ve never known that kind of thing with another person…Of course, I’ve never gone into human Country with anyone but you. The problem is, we have too many overlays between the selves we see in Country and what we see here, now. Outside.”
Martin had considered that many times, always trying to find arguments around it. Carol’s coming to the same conclusion saddened him. That meant it was probably the truth.
“In a dream…” she began, then paused to take another bite of sandwich. “Have you ever had a dream where you’ve experienced an emotion so strong, so true, that in the dream you start to cry? Cry as if all the pain you’ve ever felt was being released and you were being purified?”
Martin shook his head. “Not in my dreams,” he said.
“Well I think we had something like that in Country a couple of times. Working so closely, like brother and sister or anima and animus. I think the part of me that is male…closely matches the part of you that is female.”
“That should be good,” he said.
“It is…as long as they’re pushed up against each other. In Country. But you know your personality in Country differs from what I see out here, out front.”
“That’s inevitable,” he said. “Still, you’ve seen what I’m really like.”
She laughed then shook her head sadly. “That isn’t enough. The overlays. Remember them. You know as well as I what we’re made of—the whole ball of wax. Top to bottom, all the layers.”
He conceded that much. “But I don’t find them a hindrance…your overlays I mean. I always keep sight of the self I meet in Country.”
“Martin, I irritated the hell out of you.”
He gave her a startled look. “Isn’t that…”
“I mean I could tell I really bothered you.”
“I presume I bothered you, as well.”
“Yes. We just weren’t sympatico outside. We couldn’t get in the spin together. You know I tried, we tried.”