Dark Light

He stepped up onto the platform and took the can of cola she offered. By the time he was halfway through with it, his clothes were almost dry.

'Wow.' Sierra watched the process with amazement. 'I don't believe it. A minute ago you were drenched to the skin. Now your shirt isn't even damp.'

'Another weird effect of the quartz,' he explained.

He sat beside her. Together they watched the rain come down in sheets. An unfamiliar sensation settled softly on him. He had to search for the word, but when he found it, he knew instantly that it was the right one: contentment. He could not recall ever having felt content before in his entire life. It was a strange but surprisingly pleasant feeling. Wholly unwarranted, too, he reminded himself. He still had a drug ring to take down, a bunch of guys in motorcycle leathers had tried to roast them alive in his own house tonight, and there were at least two seriously dangerous alien devices floating around that could generate controlled beams of ultraviolet dissonance energy.

Still, sitting here with Sierra, watching the rain, he felt a soul-satisfying sense of contentment. He could stay here with her forever, he thought.

'How did you find this place?' Sierra asked.

'After I bought the house, I started spending as much of my spare time as possible down in the catacombs. The former owner was obsessed with charting the sector near his personal hole-in-the-wall. He left maps in his journal. He was a tangler, so he had already cleared the illusion traps. That meant I didn't have to bring one in to do the job.'

She nodded. 'I have a friend who is a tangler. She's a para-archaeologist. She loves going down into the tunnels.'

Tangier was the common term for an ephemeral-energy para-resonator, a person who possessed the psychic ability to resonate and control ephemeral energy.

Ephemeral energy was another form of alien psi. It was found in the catacombs in the form of illusion traps. For reasons known only to themselves, the aliens had set dangerous psychic snares throughout the tunnels. The shadow traps were frequently found in doorways and the entrances to chambers.

'The experts think the traps were intended as security devices,' Fontana said. 'If you don't have a natural talent for sensing them the way a tangler can, they're damn hard to spot. The only visible evidence is a faint shadow.'

'That's all?'

'It's usually enough, if you know what you're doing. The ambient psi light in the tunnels creates no natural shadows.'

'So if you see one, beware?'

He nodded and drank more cola. 'The problem is that shadows in the catacombs are easily missed, because we're all so accustomed to seeing them aboveground. People tend not to notice them in the underworld environment.'

She looked out at the driving rain. 'Are there any illusion traps in the jungle?'

'None have been found so far. Good thing, too, given that it would be impossible to spot them visually. The jungle is full of shadows.'

'You said you found the rain forest gate a few weeks ago. When did you discover this ruin?'

'I stumbled across it a few days later while exploring,' he said.

She gave him one of her deep, knowing looks. 'This place is very special to you, isn't it? That's why you haven't told anyone, not even Ray, about it.'

'I don't want to give it up to the para-archaeologists,' he admitted.

'It's a place of retreat for you.'

He thought about that. 'In a way, yes.'

'I think that's what it was for the aliens, too.'

Something in her tone made him look at her. 'Is that guesswork or your intuition?'

'Intuition.'

'I thought that only worked with people.'

She drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around them. 'Sometimes it also works in spaces in which people have invested a lot of emotion.'

'If there's any emotion left in this place, it's old. Maybe a few thousand years old.'

'I know.'

'And it would be alien emotion.'

She shrugged. 'I realize that. All I can tell you is that this little gazebo feels like a place meant for quiet contemplation and reflection. Maybe someone built it so that he or she could come here to meditate on nature.'

'A bioengineered nature?'

'But it's real. And don't forget, all the evidence indicates the aliens couldn't enjoy the nature on the surface. This was all they would have had.'

He lounged back on his elbows, intrigued by her quiet certainty. 'You think that the aliens who built all those sterile tunnels actually felt the need to commune with nature once in a while?'

She smiled. 'It makes them seem more human, doesn't it?'

Chapter 26

NIGHT FELL AS HARD AND FAST AS THE RAIN HAD EARLIER.

Sierra immediately discovered why Fontana had included a simple amber-crank lantern among the sled's emergency supplies. Unlike the opaque quartz that lined the tunnels, the crystal gazebo did not give off any illumination. Other things did, however.

The rain forest was drenched in night, but here and there a few small animals and certain plants glowed, glittered, or gleamed psi green.

Sierra sat on her bedroll and watched, fascinated, as a small, iridescent lizard slithered past the ruin. Its eerily shining body vanished into the undergrowth. Elvis watched, too, but not in wonderment. His attention was that of a hunter considering its prey. His second set of eyes popped open.

'Oh, jeez,' Sierra said. 'I think I'm about to witness the dark side of dust-bunny life.'

'They are predators,' Fontana pointed out.

He was sitting with his back propped against a pillar, one leg stretched out in front of him, the other drawn up. In the pale light of the lantern, his strong face was etched in savage shadows.

'Yes, I know,' she said. 'But I prefer that Elvis got his protein the same way I do, from a supermarket.' She picked up an energy bar and waved it invitingly at Elvis. 'Hey, King, how about another one of these tasty treats instead?'

Elvis considered the bar and politely declined. He chortled cheerfully and then hopped off the edge of the gazebo and disappeared into the undergrowth.

Sierra shuddered. 'I can only hope he doesn't feel the need to drag back a trophy to show me what a great hunter he is.'

'Has he ever done that before?' Fontana asked.

'No.'

'Then he probably won't do it tonight.'

'I'll cling to that logic.'

She looked at Fontana. He seemed a little remote and distant, as though his thoughts were a million miles away. Which was probably the case, she concluded. Some very nasty people had tried to kill them earlier. That kind of thing gave a person a lot to contemplate.

'Any idea how the Riders got their hands on that ultraviolet generator?' she asked after a moment.

'No, but I can tell you this much, it didn't come from the Guild labs.'

'And here I was getting ready to write an exposé on the secret weapons research being conducted by