“I’m going to the Maritime Unit tomorrow,” she declared. “Michaela Hailwood has been after me since she got the Pod placed. Would have been out there a week ago, but for the mess down in the Number Three.”

When she glared at Shig, he avoided her eyes, lifted his wine to his lips in an effort to hide the smile.

Yes, that’s what she’d do. Dek had gotten himself into this mess, he’d just have to live with it.

Nevertheless, it rankled that Talina would get to play hero. And Dek had always had a thing for Talina.

Kalico could just wait long enough in the morning to ensure that Dek was made comfortable in the hospital. Get Raya’s take on the wounds and . . .

“I said,” she told herself, “that I’m going out the Maritime Unit in the morning.”

“Yes, you did.” Shig gave her that infuriatingly beneficent smile.

8

Throwing another chunk of broken aquajade onto the fire, Talina waited for the flames to catch and rise. Not that she needed the light. She could see just fine in the infrared and ultraviolet ranges. Another benefit—and curse—of her quetzal TriNA. The way the molecules had remodeled her ocular physiology gave her that alien look that spooked even her closest friends.

Rolling the syringe between her fingers, she studied it in the firelight. Should have put him to sleep in the beginning, but she’d had no clue how unsettling his utterances would be. Talina had always taken for granted that Kalico had the inside track when it came to Dek. Kalico was his kind of people. Came from Dek’s world. And they’d been spending a lot of time together when Dek was in PA.

Talina replaced the syringe in its case, returning it to her aircar. As she did, she took in the camp. Dek—no doubt with Chaco Briggs’s help—had picked a sound location. Surrounded by low chabacho, aquajade, and dwarf stonewood trees, the camp sat on eroded basalt bedrock, free of roots. But, taking nothing for granted, Dek had parked his airplane on a tarp to keep any questing roots from wrapping around the landing gear. Smart trick, that.

This was deep bush, maybe forty kilometers northwest of the Briggs homestead and mine. The canyon where Dek had staked his claim—and above which she had found his pain-wracked body—was a good two hundred meters to the west. Port Authority lay just over three hundred klicks to the east. About a four-hour flight by aircar in good weather. Hardly an hour in Dek’s airplane.

By rights, Derek Taglioni should have died.