THE PLACE HE COULD WORK OPEN WITH HIS TEETH
1563 4D
Ezzar held her hand up toward the light, and the cicadal opened two pairs of wings each the length of her little finger, flapped them lazily once, then, speeding the wingbeats to a blur, hummed down the understreet away from the Aswar Nagrasai crossing. She watched it go. Forty-three years between hatchings, her mother had told her, and most of them would hatch this year. The only one Ezzar had seen before was the husk her mother had found and saved five years before Ezzar was born.
Standing next to her with his feet slightly apart, Rennie nibbled at a beamer cartridge, his bloodshot eyes locked in a dead stare across Aswar Nagrasai at some motionless point in the distance. How had they gotten here, to stand sentry duty far underground, when she had tried so hard to stay away from this place and keep moving outside, keep Rennie happy?
She remembered the grove on the way up to Engrammatic from the ore yard, when Rennie had gathered her up and laid her on a bed of springy leaves hidden from the road, when she had teased off her clothes and danced for him, when they had made love until their sweat had stripped away the dust and the grime, and they had rolled, her brown against his pink, until they buried themselves in the greenery and its oily sweet fragrances, coming out laughing and fresh and filled with each other. Yes.
She sighed and watched Rennie chew on the edge of his damn cartridge. She’d take him back there after this city let them go, they’d escape back to the grove and back to Monford and back to — no, not back, but on ahead to a new place.
If only she could have his baby. She’d be so happy to swap the smoky tang of empty andro semen for the sweet chloride clench of the real thing, and a big belly, once again, and then again. And she wouldn’t be killing and running, and she could forget those dying faces yawning at her, and all the ones she’d sent to death before them; and she’d remember her lost babies and gather her new little ones in her arms.
The cartridge sparked, and Rennie jerked his head back just as a fountain of fire erupted between his fingers. The cartridge spiraled away from him and broke open with a flash and a pop. He blew on his fingertips. The herbal scent of the plants took on a singed, metallic edge. He found another cartridge and started prying at its rim with a fingernail, feeling for the place he could work open with his teeth.
“Do you have to do that? You know it makes me crazy to see you chew on those things.”
“Quit watching me, then. You always watch me when you think I’m getting over the edge. That makes me crazy.” He found the place he wanted, and put the little cylinder to his teeth.
“Over the edge is right, if one of those really blasts off up your nose. I’d laugh. Ha, ha.” She made a sour face at him, folded her arms and looked back down the understreet. A light gleamed in the distance. Small noises came from the helm hanging by her; she looked at it. A red point of light flicked on and off inside its eyeshield. Suddenly wary, she fumbled it, clamped it on and said, “Angie, what’s hitting?”
The warm male voice said cheerfully, “It’s Ellichik. He has a few words for you. Here.”
“Ezzar, Grendel, where in fucking bugsuckers are you? If I don’t hear from you personally instead of those rotcock helms of yours, I’m gonna rip your skins off with a rockmuncher.”
“We’re here,” Ezzar said, motioning Rennie to get his helm on. “We’re up at Aswar Nagrasai and everything’s quiet.”
“Ah, well, not quite,” Angie said in her ear.
She glanced back at the crossing. A rumble and a flash, and red signals from her helm: beam bursts, out one thousand five hundred. A flight of birds, bats and insects came boiling out of the far exit from the crossing to circle the dome in confusion.
