“What about…?” I gestured to the far side of the vehicle.
She smiled. “They’re having their fun, Pierre. We won’t be disturbed, okay?”
I could only nod, all thoughts of asking what had become of Skull forgotten.
She took me by the hand and led me into the hovercraft. We moved down a warren of tight corridors, past tiny stinking cubicles where her crew slept, and a rack containing the canisters of water we had traded with her. We ducked through a hatch into a larger chamber — evidently the engine room where the dangling leads of the solar arrays were coupled to banked generators.
Samara’s room was beyond this.
I stopped on the threshold and stared.
The room was twice the size of the lounge back at the truck, and sumptuous. A vast bed occupied the centre of the room. To the left was a small window, looking out onto the sea-bed. Through thin curtains I made out the flare of the fire and the sound of voices, loud and drunk.
Then I saw, in the far corner of the chamber, a clear perspex kiosk. I crossed to it, then turned to Samara with a question.
“A shower,” she said.
I repeated the word.
She smiled. “It’s a water shower,” she said.
I looked at her. “But how can you…?”
“I make sure we’re well supplied, Pierre. And of course it’s recycled after I’ve used it.”
I could hardly conceive of the luxury of having sufficient water to use for bathing.
She took my hand and pulled me towards the bed. We kissed. She reached behind her, unbuttoned her dress and let it fall. I stared like a fool as she rolled onto the bed and smiled up at me.
I pulled off my shirt and dropped my shorts. Samara laughed.
I reddened. “What?”
“I see that you have more than one weapon in there, Pierre.”
I struggled to explain the presence of the pistol. “Ed… he said I might need it.”
“A wise move in these times.” She reached out and pulled me onto the bed.
We made love, Samara urging me to slow down, take my time, as she opened herself to me.
Time was obliterated. I had no idea how long might have passed. I lost, too, all sense of self. It was as if I were an animal, indulging in primal appetites, oblivious of anything else but the pleasures of the flesh. Samara was ferocious, biting me, scratching. I felt a heady sense of accomplishment, almost of power, that I could instil in her such a display of passion.
Later we lay in each other’s arms, slick with sweat and exhausted. She sat up, left the bed and padded to the shower. I watched her, overcome with the sight of her nakedness. She gestured for me to join her.
We stepped into the cubicle and stood together, belly to belly. She touched the controls and I gasped. Cool water cascaded over our heads, and I experienced both a sense of pleasure at the silken warmth of the water, and guilt at the profligate use of such a resource.
She passed me something, a small white block. “Soap,” she explained. “Rub me with it.”
I did so, surprised by the resulting foam, and we made love again.
We dried ourselves and lay on the bed, facing each other. I stroked her cheek. Even then I knew that this was a passing pleasure, unexpected and delightful but hedged with danger.
Then, as if reading my thoughts, Samara traced a finger across my ribs and said, “You can stay here, if you wish. Leave the others, travel with me. The life is hard, but I have my comforts.”
I stared at her, at her hard eyes, her cruel mouth. Even then I had wits enough to wonder if she harboured ulterior motives.
I said, “And leave my family?”
“You’d have me, Pierre,” she said. “We’d want for nothing. We’d eat well.”
I wondered if she had a hydroponics expert aboard. I’d seen no evidence of things growing in my brief passage through the hovercraft.
She leaned on one elbow, staring down at me. “And things will get better, believe me.”
I shook my head. “How?” I asked, wondering suddenly if she had information about a thriving colony somewhere.
“We’re heading to Tangiers,” she said.
“There’s a colony there?”
She smiled. “There was once a successful colony at Tangiers, Pierre. It died out, I’ve heard, a few years ago.”
“Then…” I shrugged. “Why go there?”
She paused, stroking my chest. “The colony was religious — one of those insane cults that flourished as civilisation died. They called themselves the Guardians of the Phoenix.”
I shook my head. “I’ve never heard of them.”
She looked at me. “But you’ve heard of Project Phoenix?”
“Edvard told me about it,” I said. “A ship was sent to the stars, hoping to find a new Earth.”
She was smiling. “That was the plan, anyway.”
“The plan? You mean…?”
“I mean the ship was almost built, in orbit, before the end — but the funding ran out, and governments lost control. The project became just another dead hope–”
“How do you know this?”
She rolled from the bed, crossed the room to a small wooden table and returned with a sheaf of papers.
“A read-out,” she said, curling next to me. “I obtained it years ago from a trader. It’s an official report about the winding up of the Project, and the resources that remained.”
I leafed through the papers. They were covered in a flowing script that made no sense to me.
Samara said, “It’s an Arabic translation.”
I laid the papers to one side. “And?”
“And it contains information about the spaceport at Tangiers. It’s a copy of the so-called sacred papers on which the Guardians founded their cult.”
“I don’t see…”
“Pierre, the Tangiers spaceport was where the supply ships would be launched from, before the departure from orbit of the Phoenix itself.”
“Supply ships,” I said, suddenly understanding. “You reckon they’re still there, the supply ships, full of everything the colonists would need for the journey — food, water.”
She laughed suddenly, disconcerting me. “Oh, I’m sorry, Pierre! You are so naïve. No, the colonists would not need such supplies as food and water.”
“They wouldn’t?” I said, puzzled.
“The supply ships at Tangiers, some dozen or so, were full of the colonists. But they were frozen in suspended animation, and would be for the duration of their trip to the stars. Five thousand of them.”
I stared at her. “Five thousand? That’s… that’s a city,” I said. “Christ, yes… With so many, we could start again, rebuild civilisation.”
Samara brought me up short. “Pierre, you’ve got it wrong. We couldn’t sustain a colony of five thousand. How would we feed them? What about water? Pierre, face it — the Earth is almost dead. It’s every man for himself, now.”
“Then…?” I gestured at the print-out. “What do you mean? You said there were colonists?”
She stroked my jaw, almost pityingly. “Of course there are, but we couldn’t just revive them to… to this. That would be… cruel.”
“Then what?” I began.
She jumped from the bed and crossed the room, kneeling beside a curtained window and gesturing for me to join her.
Bewildered, I did.
She eased the curtain aside and inclined her head towards the revelry outside. A dozen men stood around a blazing fire, singing drunkenly. They were swigging from plastic bottles and eating something.
I turned to Samara. “What?”
Her hand, on my shoulder, was gentle. “The fire,” was all she said.
I looked again at the fire, at the spit that stretched across the leaping flames, and at what was skewered upon the spit.