“This was my lucky shirt,” he said. “Got it when I was doing field-work at the Burgess Shale; I brought it all the way from Earth.” He looked at her. “And you wrecked it.”
The upper hole was merely a rip; the lower one was now badly stained by oil.
Lakshmi took on a desperate tone. “Please, tell me which way to head.”
“It doesn’t make any difference,” I said. “You won’t get anywhere near the dome before your air runs out. At least if you stay here, we’ll know where your body is, and can come back and give you a decent burial.”
“You bastard,” said Lakshmi.
“I’m just telling you the truth.”
Rory looked around, getting his bearings. “That way,” he said, pointing in a direction somewhat more northerly than what I would have guessed but not so much so that I doubted his word. “Walk that way.”
“Thank you,” she said to Rory. Then, to me: “You’re going to die, too, Lomax. Yes, you’ve got more air than I do—but it’s still nowhere near enough.”
I smiled. “It wouldn’t be if I were going to walk it. But I’m not.”
“You expect a rescue?” She looked relieved. “Then I’m waiting right here with you.”
“Oh, no. I’m heading out, too. But Rory’s going to carry me.”
“I am?” said Pickover.
“You are. Bend over a bit.”
He did so, putting his hands on his knees. I climbed onto his back piggyback style. It was easy for him to take the weight—the combination of low gravity and a transfer’s strength. “And you’re going to run,” I said. I thought about digging in my heels as if they were spurs and yelling, “Giddyap,” but I didn’t think the paleontologist would appreciate that. So instead I simply said, “Let’s go.”
Lakshmi looked furious, but Pickover did indeed start running, leaving her behind. It took Pickover a hundred meters to find the right gait with me on his back, but he finally did. The horizon went up and down as he ran along, his powerful legs sailing from one footfall to the next. Holding on to him wasn’t difficult. The miles and miles of miles and miles shifted one by one from being in front of us to behind us, and soon enough Lakshmi’s cursing faded away as we moved out of radio range.
TWENTY
Dr. Pickover and I reached the vicinity of New Klondike by mid afternoon. To his credit, Rory had taken a straight path all the way back, with no attempt to disguise the route. Polarizing the fishbowl at night had rendered me almost blind, but here in broad daylight it just made looking out at the world comfortable—so I now had a rough idea of where the Alpha Deposit was.
“Almost there,” said Pickover, via radio. It was astonishing listening to someone who had been running at high speed for hours but wasn’t out of breath. I looked at my air gauge; I still had twenty-odd minutes left. I’d never thought of the dome as pretty before, but it sure looked that way as it came into view, glistening in the sunshine.
“Okay,” I said to Pickover. “No point in making a spectacle of ourselves. Let’s walk the rest of the way.”
The scientist stopped and bent his knees, lowering himself a bit. I hopped off his back. It felt good to not be bouncing up and down anymore.
“We have to go back for her,” Pickover said, as I fell in beside him. “Get more bottled air, get another buggy. Go rescue her.”
I reached over and held his forearm with my suit glove. “Rory, she’s dead by now. She has to be.”
“But if—”
“If what? She had less air than me, and I’m almost empty. Even if she did manage to conserve her oxygen, there’s no way she could still be alive by the time we got back out there.”
“Yes, but…”
“But what? She tried to kill both of us.”
“I know. I just don’t want it on my conscience, I guess.”
“I had mine removed years ago,” I said. “Makes things easier.”
We walked on in silence. The dome in front of us was an impressive feat. Building it would have been impossible even forty years ago, but nanoassemblers had constructed the whole thing molecule by molecule, extracting the source silicon dioxide from the Martian soil, modifying it into ultraviolet-opaque alloquartz, and laying it down in the pattern Howard Slapcoff’s engineers had programmed. Its rim was anchored into the permafrost, and its great weight was borne by curving struts and the central support column, all made of carbon nanotubes.
We went through the airlock, and I returned the surface suit. The person who had rented us the suit wasn’t on duty anymore—which was a good thing, since I would have felt obliged to clock him for having revealed the radio-encryption key to Lakshmi. Adding insult to injury, Pickover lost his damage deposit because of the chip out of my helmet.
I collected my little tablet computer, phone, shoulder holster, and gun from the locker, put the tab in my right hip pocket, slipped the phone around my left wrist, placed the pistol in the holster, and draped the holster over my shoulder. My clothes were clean, but Pickover was covered with dust, and he’d gotten a fair bit of it in the exposed workings of his face. I used the john while he went through the cleaning chamber, where air jets blasted dust off him, and vacuum hoses sucked up the stuff that wouldn’t blow away.
When Pickover was done, we headed out onto Ninth Avenue. “What now?” he asked.
I gave him an appraising look. “You’ve been missing most of your face for God knows how long, and you’ve got two holes in your chest. I’m thinking it’s time you visited NewYou.”
He shuddered. “I get so angry when I think about what they did. A bootleg copy of me!”
“I know. But the people who did that are gone, and so is the bootleg—and you do need to get fixed up, and they’re the only game in town.”
“All right,” he said. “But will you come with me?”
“You’re the client; I charge by the hour. You really want to pay someone to hold your hand?”
“Please, Alex.”
I’d been hoping to go home, have a shower, change, and then maybe go see Diana. But I said, “Okay.”
“Thank you.”
I made Pickover wait for me while we stopped at a shop so I could buy a sandwich; the ones I’d bought before had gone up with the buggy. Meat was synthesized directly—no need for messy, smelly animals—and the place we went into printed a passable roast beef on an algae bun. I ate it as we walked along. We had to cross right through the center of town, since NewYou was on Third and about halfway out to the other side of the dome. Before we went in, I think Pickover would have liked to have taken a deep breath to steel himself—so to speak—but he couldn’t.
We were greeted inside by Horatio Fernandez, he of the massive arms. “My God,” he said, looking at Pickover, “what happened to you?”
I spoke before Pickover could answer. “Little accident with some climbing gear.”
“And your face?” asked Fernandez.
“Cut myself shaving,” Pickover replied.
“Jesus,” said Horatio. “Let’s get you into the workshop.”
Pickover looked at me. “I’ll wait,” I said. “Don’t worry.”
Fernandez called out, “Reiko!” A woman came through a doorway to mind the store. Fernandez headed into the back, and Pickover followed.
I remembered Reiko Takahashi from the Wilkins case, and so I went over to say hello. She was petite, about twenty-eight, and very pretty for a biological.
“Hello, Mr. Lomax,” she said, smiling perfect teeth.
I was pleased she remembered my name. “Alex,” I said.
“Alex, yes. Hi.”
“Hi.”