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  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Mira no longer heard the men arguing. The younger one, Traylin, seemed intent on a course of action that plainly didn’t jive with his friend. They’d still been bickering when they returned, and apparently Traylin had won. He arranged to buy fuel from Jonah Cable and asked if anyone could drive his companion back to the observatory. When that was settled, he wrestled with the heavy twenty-liter gas cans until Luke, noble and selfless Luke, ran over to help.

  “Sorry about the circus around here,” Cable said, appearing behind her and wiping his hands on a rag. “As soon as these fellas vamoose, we’ll see that you get the most comfortable guest cot available.”

  “That’s okay. Honestly I’m not very tired.”

  “Know what you mean. For the last few months my old EKG machine has been running flatline, but then you showed up this morning. Result? Serious spikes.”

  “I hope that’s a good thing.”

  “You kidding? What I saw your brother do today … It’s weird, that’s for sure. But it’s also … scintillating.”

  “Nice word.”

  “Hey, I’m a writer. Or at least I was.”

  “You still are.”

  “That, little lady, remains to be seen.”

  Though she couldn’t see much of them in the darkness, Mira heard the muffled sounds of the men as they refueled the truck. Something about their tone made her uneasy. Jonah’s colleague Donner brought the Land Rover around in order to give Traylin’s friend a lift.

  “What about you?” Cable asked her.

  Even in the angled lighting, Mira saw the true concern in his eyes. Those were eyes that had witnessed more than the rest of him was letting on. “What about me? I spent the entire plane ride talking your ear off.”

  “I know, you’re here for Luke.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Is it? Believe me when I say that I know, really know how it is to feel responsible for someone who … who isn’t always capable of taking care of things for themselves.”

  “Your brother seems entirely self-sufficient to me.”

  “Oh, that’s a fact. He’s a one-man juggernaut and a royal, arrogant pain in the keister at times. He’s Ahab without the whale. But it wasn’t always like that. For a few years after the accident, yours truly was the only thing standing between Joe and a razor blade. But keep that under your hat.”

  Red taillights appeared, two animal eyes in the dark. The pickup drove away.

  “And so the mystery man departs,” Cable observed. “Hope he finds whatever it is he’s looking for. They say this desert is full of secrets just waiting to be dug up.”

  “I guess that’s why we came.”

  “You think?”

  “Sure.” Though naturally reluctant to give away too much of herself, she knew this trip was all-or-nothing. There was no longer any reason to be semihuman; it was time to unload everything she had. “Out of all the people in all the world, you’re the one that can connect with Luke on that level. You’re the key. I don’t know how or why. But he not only reads what you’ve written, he understands it. His mind works differently when he reads that damn Mars book. I know this because I feel it. This isn’t going to make any sense to you at all, but when he becomes freer, so do I. He’s one wing and I’m the other. We’re both just trying to get off the ground.”

  Cable chewed on this for a while, then looked at her in such a way that Mira suspected that he, too, had decided to lay it all on the proverbial line. “Before a rich man’s son drove his car into us when we were kids, we had no prospects. Then, with our daddy dead and Joe a paraplegic, the lawyers told us we were wealthy. Joe had the money to go to college and the time on his hands to study. He’s earned two master’s degrees, for God’s sake, he’s under contract with NASA, and for some reason I’m still hanging around, trying to decide what I want to be when I grow up.”

  “So you came down here to find out?”

  “Just like you, huh?”

  “Looks like.” She glanced around, but Luke had yet to return after helping haul the heavy gas can. Hands on her hips, Mira called his name.

  He didn’t respond.

  “We best go track him down,” Cable suggested. “Out beyond the lights, this place can disorient an Eagle Scout.”

  “Luke?” She and Cable left the sanctuary of the lighting racks and approached the storage container where Traylin had replenished his tank. “Luke, we need to get some sleep.”

  Though he still offered no reply, Mira wasn’t worried. This wasn’t the Byzantine congestion of Santiago. Outside the ACEF perimeter, there was literally nowhere to go.

  Cable lent his voice to the effort. “Young master Luke! Return to base!”

  “Luke, stop messing around.” She found one of Jonah’s associates, Eduardo, snapping a padlock on the storage container. “Wasn’t my brother here helping with the gas?”

  “Sure. He helped me roll the barrel out.”

  “So where is he?”

  “Don’t know.” Eduardo looked around. “He was just here a second ago. I’ve been putting the siphon pump away. He couldn’t have gotten too far, right?”

  Now Mira let the worry sink its talons into her. “Luke, this is not funny!”

  “You take this neck of the woods,” Cable suggested. “I’ll try the other side.” He jogged away, calling Luke’s name.

  Mira stood there with the lights at her back and untold acres of stars overhead. Other than Cable’s voice and the retreating footsteps of the scientist, she heard nothing. Luke had a tendency to talk to himself when he was alone, telling stories based on the latest movies he’d watched, but he offered none of them now, no breadcrumbs to lead this fretting Gretel back to her other half.

  “Dammit, Luke, this isn’t the way I want to spend my first night on Mars!”

  He never played this trick on her. Though he was as pleased as any brother to pull a variety of pranks on his sister, he never went in for hiding. Experience had taught him that people assumed he was hurt or in trouble when he was out of sight too long. So to make them happy—and probably to keep them off his back—he made a point of sending out periodic vocal indicators, like a submarine’s ping.

  Mira realized then, in the absence of such a signal flare, that her brother was gone. Panic, that old dragon that had always dwelled best in darkness, breathed fire down her neck.

  “Luke!”

  * * *

  Gabe was trying to convince himself he wasn’t driving to his own funeral when a face appeared in the rearview mirror.

  He cried out and almost lost control. Planting one foot on the brake and the other on the clutch, he rammed the truck to a stop, his shoulder harness locking against his chest. Throwing the gearshift into neutral, he hit the seat belt release and looked back—

  The face was gone.

  After ramming down the parking brake, Gabe shoved open the door and managed to keep himself upright as he stumbled out. The meager dome light revealed nothing.

  Someone laughed.

  Gabe backed up, trusting the darkness to envelop him. “Who are you?”

  “I’m sorry!” A figure moved, causing Gabe to take several more steps away. “I didn’t want to scare you.”

  Whoever he was, he jumped out of the truck bed.

  Gabe almost turned and ran. Though he was tired, the muscles in his legs were Tesla coils, waiting to give him the voltage needed to sprint and survive. He’d spent his life bent over books and photometry results, but since seeing the blood on the Messenger’s head, he’d convinced himself that he was something more.

  “Mr. Gabe, it’s me. Luke Westbrook. You met me. We shook.”

  Gabe let this work its way past his pulse and reach the rational parts of himself. “Westbrook?”

  “Yep, yep, and more yep!”

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “I am H-E-double-hockey-sticks coming with you!”

  “Why? You don’t even know me.”

  “B
ecause. I want. To meet. The Martian.”

  Westbrook moved toward the open driver’s door, permitting Gabe to get a decent look at him, at least as decent a look as he ever got at anyone. He wore baggy cargo pants and what looked like a football jersey. He was several inches shorter than Gabe, but wider through the shoulder and hips. Facially he might have been anyone from Adonis to Arafat.

  “Mr. Gabe?”

  Gabe realized he was wrong. Luke Westbrook sounded much younger than he’d first assumed. The cadence of his words, his style of speech—he was probably no more than fourteen. The woman, whatever her name was, must have been his mother. “It’s not mister. Just Gabe. And you scared the shit out of me, by the way.”

  “Ben says shit is holy.”

  “Yeah? I guess sometimes it is.” He returned to the truck, a few of his nerves relaxing. “Get in and I’ll give you a ride back.”

  “But I’m here for the Martian.”

  “It’s not a real Martian, okay? I don’t know what he is, exactly, but he’s not from Mars.”

  “Then why do you want to see him?”

  “Because he … he hurt some people.”

  “He’s bad?”

  “More than you know.”

  “He’s bad and you’re going to stop him?”

  Gabe patted his pockets but found no crumpled pack, no last cigarette for the condemned.

  “Stop him like a hero?”

  Hero? In that single word, Gabe understood that he had no business here, tilting at this windmill that would only get him killed. This kid, Luke, pointed that out without even knowing it. “Yeah, you’re right. Fat lot of good I’m going to do out there. End up with my arms and legs pulled off, most likely.” He tried to smile at his own folly but didn’t quite make it. “Just get in. Your mom’s probably freaking out by now.”

  “My mom’s dead.”

  “Then who—” He waved it away. “Forget it. Let me just put my tail between my legs and call it a night, okay?”

  He started to climb into the truck, but he stopped when it was obvious that Luke had no intention of following his lead. Instead, the kid fumbled with the button of the big pocket on his pantleg. Tugging it free, he produced a bent paperback. In the light from the cab, he fanned through the pages with his thumb.

  Gabe could only watch and wait.

  Finding the correct page, Luke held the book close to his face and read: “‘Casting his shadow over the stalwart plants that had drilled their roots into rock, Lieutenant Dycar realized what had until then eluded him. If he were to survive the coming fray, he would have to make his heart like this soil, the stuff of ancient iron.’”

  Luke looked up, searching Gabe’s face over the top of the pages, then dove back into the scene. “‘This planet may have formed too far from Sol and thus missed its shot at water and white-tailed deer, but its story was no less worthy of being told, and the men who traveled it no less determined to defend it.’”

  Luke quietly put the book away.

  Gabe stared at him. He remembered, long ago, when he’d spent five bucks to have his fortune told at a Renaissance fair. The woman on the other side of the sequin-scattered table was likely a charlatan. Luke Westbrook seemed far more authentic. Then again, Gabe was subconsciously looking for a reason to avenge the fallen, a reason that was greater than his fear, so maybe it wasn’t Luke’s soothsaying that turned the final screw in his resolve but his own foolish desire to see that the Messenger’s story was told and his ghost defended.

  “Ancient iron, huh?”

  Luke nodded. “That’s what Ben Cable says. He wrote the book.”

  “Well, let’s hope he knows what he’s talking about.” Though bringing the kid along probably wasn’t wise, Gabe was running on instinct now rather than wisdom; letting Luke accompany him didn’t sound like the right thing to do, but it felt right. “Get in.”

  “All right!” Luke clapped twice and raced around the truck.

  Gabe slid behind the wheel, released the brake, and resumed his journey. Luke said nothing during the ride, just sat on his hands and evaluated the worth of the stars. Gabe could’ve been a proper tour guide, explaining the juxtaposition of constellations as seen from the southern hemisphere, but he couldn’t muster the nonchalance. He forced his grip to relax so that blood returned to his fingers. Maybe his iron wasn’t so ancient after all.

  Well, he would know soon enough. As he rolled to an easy stop, tiny bits of silica crunched under the truck’s wide tires. He estimated that Mentiras lay about two kilometers ahead.

  “I don’t see anything,” Luke said.

  “You will.”

  They got out and walked toward the unknown.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “Mira, calm down. We’ll find him.”

  “I am calm, Ben. This is my I-am-a-rock-I-am-an-island face. But we need to get a car and go after them.”

  “You’re assuming he left with that guy.”

  “Where else could he have gone?”

  Ben knew she was right. Luke couldn’t have accidentally hurt himself out beyond the limit of the camp lights, because there was nothing around but miles of empty ground. He wasn’t lying somewhere snakebitten; there were no rattlers, no pitfalls, no predators or ankle-twisting terrain. Why the young man had chosen to hitch a ride into the desert was a question that only Luke himself could answer.

  Jonah rolled back into the tent. “We scanned the area with infrared optics. I’m afraid there’s no sign of him.”

  “We’re thinking he left with the astronomer,” Ben said. “You have a vehicle we can use?”

  “Only the Land Rover. Donner is giving that man a ride back to his observatory, so until he returns—”

  “That’s all you’ve got?” Mira asked. “One stupid car?”

  “There are only three of us stationed here, Ms. Westbrook.” Jonah used what Ben thought of as his Hannibal tone, the one used to drive elephants over the Alps. “We have absolutely no need for a used-car lot. Forgive me if we’re not equipped to serve as a taxi service for whatever strangers drop by in the night.”

  “Go easy, brother. She’s worried, that’s all.”

  Jonah flashed him a look.

  Normally Ben relented in the face of that glare. It had been cowing him since they were boys, back in a time when white movie stars were their idols and their biggest challenge was getting up early enough on Saturday morning to help their old man mow somebody’s lawn. Since then, Ben had heard the singing of many an “Auld Lang Syne” as the years turned to scrapbook pages. Still, he probably would’ve acquiesced had it not been for the woman standing beside him.

  “You met Luke,” he said. “You know it’s probably not safe for him to be driving out to parts unknown with a total stranger. Your people are packing guns, for the love of God, so you understand that it might be more dangerous out here than usual. It’s not safe for any of us, much less him.”

  “Since when were you afraid of guns?”

  “I’m not, but you know damn well what I mean. Luke could get himself hurt out there, and I’m not standing around here scratching my crotch while that happens.”

  “So what would you have me do? Pull a Cadillac out of my—” He caught himself and simply folded his hands in his lap. “We’ll have to wait until Donner returns with the Land Rover. There’s nothing else we can do.”

  Ben had no choice but to relent. His brother, as always, was right. He turned to Mira. “I’m sorry. I was hoping this trip would be fun and maybe even a little bit enlightening. I didn’t count on anything happening to Luke, not to mention the guns and the rest of the chaos. I apologize.”

  Mira might not have even heard him. As soon as it had become apparent that they couldn’t set out after Traylin, she’d sent her eyes once more to the darkness, hoping to see a familiar figure emerge from the gloom.

  Ben scraped together some courage and touched her shoulder. “Mira? It’s going to be okay.”

  She crossed her arms. “Is it?”
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  Before Ben could launch into his manifesto about rose-colored glasses, peace on Earth, and how all things worked together for good, Jonah intervened. “You must forgive my brother, Ms. Westbrook. He is often sloppy with his optimism, flinging it around like paint. Through the years he’s ruined more than one of my suits.”

  “Yeah, and I keep hoping you’ll stop taking them to Glass Half Empty Cleaners.”

  Jonah ignored him. With a gentle touch he turned his chair so that he faced Mira. “I stopped believing in that paint in 1979, which means ever since then I’ve left nothing to chance.” He sighed. “I suppose if you want to ensure that everything is indeed going to be okay, then we have no choice but to follow that truck.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “If you don’t have any other vehicles…”

  “We have one, but it’s not exactly what you would call street legal. Fortunately for us, we won’t be driving on any streets.”

  Ben grinned. “You have to be shitting me.”

  Jonah never looked away from Mira. “You’d think by now he’d know that I never shit anyone, at least not when it comes to ninety-thousand-dollar unpressurized prototype rovers.”

  Mira still seemed perplexed. “You mean … some kind of space car?”

  “It’s not half so grand as you might imagine, but yes, ACEF has a glorified dune buggy that provides an analog for what might one day be driven by planetary explorers.”

  “And we can use it?”

  “We use it quite often, actually. I considered mentioning it earlier, though I’m sure you understand my reluctance to volunteer an expensive piece of government-owned equipment. But I suppose I can’t see much difference in driving it to check on genetically modified barley and driving it to retrieve a lost visitor. I don’t imagine it will take long to fetch him and bring him back.”

  “My man,” Ben said, putting his hand on his brother’s shoulder, “there may be hope for you yet.”

  “Perhaps,” Jonah said, deftly spinning his chair away. “For now, let’s just worry about getting through the rest of this night. Then we’ll talk about hope.”