“What the fuck!”
“Just get the harness on her!” Tholan bellowed.
I moved in quickly, not so much because he ordered it, but because I didn’t want him blowing away more of the creatures. Tameera was at first lethargic, but then she began to get the idea. Harness on, I moved aside.
“Anders!”
Anders had obviously seen, because she drew the line taut through greenery and began hauling Tameera upward, away from sheq who were now beginning to nose in confusion toward their second dead member. Stripped-off line cladding fell like orange snow. I reached out, shoved the dead sheq, once, twice, and it tumbled down the slope, the rest quickly scrambling after it.
Tholan was moving aside, looking up at me. I gestured to a nearby mount with a flat top on which we could all gather.
“Got her!” Anders called.
Glancing up, I saw Anders installing Tameera in the other claw frame. “Over there!” I gestured to the mount. Within a few minutes, we were all on the small area of level stone, gazing down toward where the five remaining sheq had caught their companion, realized it was dead, and released it again, and were now zipping about like wasps disturbed from a nest.
“We should head back to the blimp, fast as you like.”
No one replied, because Tameera chose that moment to vomit noisily. The stench was worse even than that from the glutinous yellow stuff all over her.
“What?” said Anders.
“They fed her,” I explained.
That made Anders look just as sick.
Finally sitting up, then detaching her arms from her claw frame, Tameera stared at her brother and held out her hand. He unhitched his pack, drew out her Optek rifle, and handed it over. She fired from that sitting position, bowling one of the sheq down the distant slope and the subsequent vertical drop.
“Look, you can’t-”
The barrel of Tholan’s Optek was pointing straight at my forehead.
“We can,” he said.
I kept my mouth shut as, one by one, Tameera picked off the remaining sheq and sent them tumbling down into the mist-shrouded river canyon. It was only then that we returned to the slab campsite.
Blue again, but I was certainly ready for sleep, and felt a surge of resentment when the blimp cabin began shaking. Someone was coming up the ladder, then walking round the catwalk.
Shortly, Anders opened the airtight door and hauled herself inside. I saw her rioting with some surprise how the passenger cabin converted into living quarters. I was ensconced in the cockpit chair, sipping a glass of whisky, feet up on the console. She turned off her oxygen supply, tried the air in the cabin, then sat down on the corner of the fold-down bed, facing me.
“Does it disgust you?” she asked.
I shrugged. Tried to stay nonchalant. What was happening below didn’t bother me, her presence in my cabin did.
She continued, “There’s no reason to be disgusted. Incest no longer has the consequences it once had. All genetic faults can be corrected in the womb…”
“Did I say I was disgusted? Perhaps it’s you, why else are you up here?”
She grimaced. “Well, they do get noisy.”
“I’m sure it won’t last much longer,” I said. “Then you can return to your tent.”
“You’re not very warm, are you?”
“Just wary-I know the kind of games you people play.”
“You people?”
“The bored and the wealthy.”
“I’m Tholan’s PA. I’m an employee.”
I sat there feeling all resentful, my resentment increased because, of course, she was right. I should not have lumped her in the same category as Tholan and his sister. She was, in fact, in my category. She had also casually just knocked away one of my defenses.
“Would you like a drink?” I eventually asked, my mouth dry.
Now I expected her righteous indignation and rejection. But Anders was more mature than that, more dangerous.
“Yes, I would.” As she said it, she undid the stick seams of her boots and kicked them off.
Then she detached the air hose from her throat plug, coiled it back to the bottle, then unhooked that from her belt and put it on the floor. I hauled myself from my chair and poured her a whisky, adding ice from my recently installed little fridge.
“Very neat,” she said, accepting the drink. As I made to step past her and return to the cockpit chair, she caught hold of my forearm and pulled me down beside her.
“You know,” I said, “that if we don’t report what happened today, that would make us accessories. That could mean readjustment, even mind-wipe.”
“Are you hetero?” she asked.
