Until the harvest… whatever that meant or might one day mean.

Not much grew out here, just the peculiar woody tufts the locals called cactus grass, and even this looked dehydrated to Brians eye. But among the umber patches of cactus grass at his feet he spotted a place where something more colorful had taken root. He crouched to look, for lack of anything better to do. What had caught his attention was a red flower: he was no botanist, but the bloom looked out of place in this barren scrub. He put out his hand and touched it. The plant was cold, fleshy… and it seemed almost to cringe. The stem bent away from him; the flower, if it was a flower, lowered its head.

Was that normal?

He hated this fucking planet, its endless strangeness. It was a nightmare, he thought, masquerading as normalcy.

* * * * *

They came at last to the airfield off the highway, a couple of quonset-hut structures and two paved landing strips at contrary angles to one another, a bank of fuel pumps, a two-story adobe control tower with a radar bubble. Ordinarily the airstrips customers would have been oil company planes ferrying executives to and from the Rub al-Khali. Today there was just one plane visible on the tarmac: Turk Findley's aircraft, a sturdy little blue-and-white Skyrex baking in the sun.

The Genomic Security caravan parked in front of the nearest pavilion. Brian was a little shaky getting out of the car, his fears surfacing again. Fear for Lise, and under that a fear of Lise—of what she might say to him and what she might deduce, correctly or not, about his presence in the company of men such as Sigmund and Weil.

Maybe he could help her. He clung to that thought. She was in trouble, deep and perilous trouble, but she could still keep herself afloat if she said the right things, denied complicity, shifted the blame, and cooperated with the inquiry. If she was willing to do that, Brian might be able to keep her out of prison.

She would have to go back home, of course, forget about Equatoria and her little journalistic hobby.

Given the events of the last few days, though, she might not be so haughty at the prospect of a trip back to the States. She might even learn to appreciate what he had done, and was willing to do, on her behalf.

He hurried to keep up with Sigmund and Weil, who brushed past a cluster of airstrip employees and hurried down a makeshift corridor to the door of a tiny office guarded by an airport security guy in a dusty blue uniform. "The suspects are inside?" Sigmund asked.

"All four of 'em."

"Let's see them."

The guard opened the door, Sigmund went through first, Weil behind him, Brian in the rear. The two DGS men stopped short and Brian had to crane to see over their shoulders.

"Fuck!" Sigmund said.