Darla came down and lay on her back beside me. She'd taken off her suit and was down to halter and briefs, golden skin exposed to whatever passed for solar radiation here. Darla could have been a blonde easily. The downy stuff on her arms and body was very light. And on the side of one shoulder, a heart-shaped port-wine mark, tiny one.
I shut my eyes and stopped thinking. Seabirds, or whatever they were, croaked above. I wasn't looking, wasn't thinking of looking. I just listened to their calls, heard combers wash the beach, an occasional engine sound, the distant rumble of the Skyway. My closed eyelids glowed red-orange. Gradually, I started to feel very warm in my leather jacket. I lay there for as long as I could stand it, then sat up and shed the jacket, took off my shoes (I still had no shirt), then turned around to lie down with my head next to Darla's. The sky was hazy, very light blue, hung with streamers of soft gauze. I saw the flying things. They were fish. Looked like fish, anyway, with flat silvery bodies and huge winglike pectoral fins made of thin translucent membrane stretched over a frame of sharp spines. They were soaring, really, not flying. I watched one ride an air current directly above, unmoving with respect to the ground, gliding on the stiff ocean breeze. It hung there for a minute or so, then lost lift and started a dive toward the water. Halfway down it folded its wings and stooped, plunging head first into the depths beyond the breakers. I heard the splash and lifted my head. Not far from where it went in another one launched itself from the water straight into the air, shooting up a good ten meters before it unfolded its wings with the sound of a parasol suddenly opening. It caught a good updraft and began to rise.
Then I noticed the wrecks. Hulks of abandoned vehicles awash in the breakers, all kinds, some with Terran Maze markings. More of them up and down the beach half sunk in the sand, some so covered-over and sprouting with beach grass mat I'd mistaken them for dunes. Apparently this planet had been a dead end for some time. Those without flying vehicles had been stranded here, left either to swim for it, bum a ride, or die. Surely there was some way off now. Or was there?
I let my head fall back. Of course there is. What's all this traffic about then? Everybody doomed? Stop thinking.
But I didn't stop thinking, and wondered about Sam. He was an hour behind us, at least. Would he shoot the potluck portal? Did he know I had? We might have been well out of scanner range, but then he must have tracked us to the Ryxx Maze cutoff and seen us go beyond it. I lifted my head again. I could see the ingress causeway from Goliath. We'd wait and see. I lay back again. I had fussed over everything of immediate concern, seen all there was to see, and right then I didn't care about Reticulans or cops or treasure hunts or even Teelies. Not at the moment, because a breeze was carrying cool salt air to lift some of the heat from my baking skin, Darla was beside me, things were quiet, and I didn't give a merte.
A shadow fell over my face, and I opened my eyes. It was Darla, looking at me. She smiled, and I smiled. Then she giggled, and I did too.
"Let George do it," she said. It was like repeating the punchline to a very funny joke. We couldn't stop giggling.
"Sic 'im, Fido," I managed to say between waves of mirth.
We broke out laughing, all the tension exploding away in an instant. Darla collapsed over me, helpless as I was, convulsed, two complete idiots on the shore. We were like that for five minutes. It was overreaction, an undertone of hysteria to it, the terror of it all hitting us, tearing out shrieks of laughter.
And when it was all gone it left us spent, breathless, and sober. We looked at each other, and for the first time I saw a hairline crack in that smooth, cool shell, saw vulnerability in Darla's face. Her mourn was half open, her lower lip quivering the slightest bit, eyes widened and searching for something in mine, looking for a cue. I'm afraid. Is it okay? Will you let me? I wanted to say. Yes, love, it's okay, you can let go, don't be afraid to feel fear when it's justified, and. yes, I'll be strong for you, just so that next time you let me have a turn… but suddenly she was wrapped up safe in my arms and there was nothing more to say.
Very quickly we were naked, her briefs and halter materializing in my hand somehow. Flimsy things they were, scraps of soft cloth, and the next thing I knew we were making love without a thought as to who was around. It was sudden, a little desperate, and more than a physical bonding. We needed to tell each other that we were still alive, still here, still able to feel, to touch, needed proof that we still had bodies all of a piece, warm and pulsing, bodies that lived and moved and tingled and glowed, that could feel pleasure and pain, exhilaration and fatigue. We had to convince ourselves that we weren't bits of lifeless stuff squashed up against some unimaginable object, that we weren't plain dead. And as it is after all brushes with death, there was a sense of the precious-ness of every moment, of every sensation, an awareness of the miraculous nature of life. We celebrated that, and celebrated ourselves.
Afterward, there was deep calm. Birdfish croaked their soaring song above. With my head on Darla's breast, I watched little crustacean things scuttle across the sand ― didn't look anything like crabs, more like tiny pink mushroom caps up on tripods. Not far from us, an animal with a brightly colored spiral shell popped partway out of the sand, shot a stream of water into the air in a neat arc once ― spritz! ― and screwed itself back into the beach. I noticed for the first time that the white sand under us had sparkling elements in it, millions of little glassy beads. Pure silicon tektites, probably, products of meteor hits long ago. Or maybe not so long ago. Something had altered the geology of this planet since the Roadbuilders had laid their highway here.
I heard a hum and looked up. An alien aircraft, climbing from its takeoff from the northern spur. Lucky bastard. Then I hoped for him that he knew where the egress portal was, and that the road to it was landable. Otherwise, he'd have to double back all the way here and go slumming among the ground-suckers. He probably wouldn't run out of fuel. With fusion, it's a rarity, but you do see some very primitive equipment on the Skyway now and then, belonging to races that you'd have to call overachievers.
After a long while I got up and stood over Darla, looking at her slim golden body. She opened her eyes and smiled. Then I looked up the knoll. The man in the loud blue jumpsuit was looking down at us, standing far enough away so that I couldn't tell if the curl tollis lip was a smirk or a friendly grin. I didn't care if he'd been there for the whole performance. Glad to oblige.
"How's the water?" I yelled up at him. "Safe?"
"Yeah, sure!" he shouted back. "Go ahead!"
Darla stood up, unashamed. I took her hand and we ran down to the surf, splashed in on foot a ways, then dove into the first breaker. The water was piss-warm but it was good to wash the sweat and sand off. My first bath in ― how long? Darla's too, I supposed, unless she managed to get one while I was.. -but of course she had ― at the Teelies' motel. Wait a minute. Had she gone there? She hadn't said. In fact, she hadn't gone into what had happened after she avoided getting fried out in the bush. I had assumed she went into town with the Teelies after the cops left with me, but I didn't know. She would tell me sooner or later, I guess. I ducked my head, came up sputtering, and rubbed myself down briskly, trying to get the jail smell off me. Institutional stink. The water was a buoyant, rich saline solution with a slightly slimy quality. It was like swimming in thin chicken broth. Darla was out beyond me in deeper water, backstroking lazily. Behind her and out a good distance, another birdfish rocketed from the water and took wing.