"What's the matter?" Joona asked.
"What?" He looked up to see her frowning in concern. Several other walkers had come over to see if they needed help. "Did you say what's the matter?"
"Yes." She looked confused.
"You gave me a piece of a fucking animal to eat, and you ask me what the fucking matter is. An animal! A living creature. You're fucking crazy, that's my problem. You fucking... oh hell. How long have I been eating this shit?'
Her expression became pained. "You've lived our life with us, Lawrence. What did you think we ate?"
"Fuck it." He thought he was going to vomit again. The muscle reflex was certainly there, the inside of his mouth sopping wet, but by now there really was nothing left to bring up. He smeared some more snow against his head and slowly rose to his feet.
"Lawrence." Her voice was urgent, becoming shrill. She held out a hand to steady him.
He twisted from her reach. "Stay away from me. You hear? Stay away, for fuck's sake." He stumbled away from her, then managed to get his legs under control and picked up speed. Joona took a few paces toward him. "Lawrence!" she cried. "Lawrence, I love you. You can't go."
He started jogging down the track of compacted snow. "Don't call. Don't come after me. It's over." He stopped and turned to face her. "Over! Do you understand that? It's over. And I am leaving." He glared at their small bemused audience. "Thank you, and good-bye."
By now he'd regained almost full coordination. He ran. Ran down to the zigzag section of the path. Slowed slightly as he pounded over the slippery loose rocks and scree. Kept on jogging until he was long past the stream running down the cleft. Even then, when he was exhausted and dizzy from effort and shock, he kept moving fast along the final descent.
He took his bicycle from the rack at the visitor center, and pedaled to the train station in town. From there he caught the late-afternoon train to Glasgow. Changed for Edinburgh Waverley, where he could get an express to Paris. He had to wait two days in the French capital until there was a seat on a Z-B flight back to Cairns. He spent most of it drunk, moving from cafe to cafe in the old artists' quarter, trying to blot out the memory of the madwoman and everything he'd eaten at the cottage.
He never tried to contact Joona again. There was never any message from her, either.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Ebrey Zhang had finally imposed a ban on Z-B personnel leaving their barracks after eight o'clock in the evening. It had been yet another fight in a marina nightclub, resulting in another squaddie with serious stab wounds, that had eventually forced his hand. He knew it was going to be unpopular and bad for morale. But he didn't have any choice. No matter how well supervised the platoons were (and his first diktat had been that they had to be accompanied by their NCOs when they went out), there was always a disturbance of some kind, invariably resulting in injuries, and property damage, and worsening public relations—not, he was the first to admit, that they could get much worse.
So he'd called a staff meeting and announced his decision. Predictably enough, the officers had voiced their concerns. He'd said he understood, and that as compensation they could increase the amount of drink available in the bars of the hotels they'd taken over as barracks. Platoons on night patrol, though, were now under orders to arrest any Z-B personnel they found outside.
That one order had completely wrecked Hal Grabowski's life. Memu Bay was bad enough when he was allowed to get out and blow off steam every few days. But this was like the end of the world. Bringing more beer into the hotel bar was no use at all. Hal had never been one for getting wildly drunk every night, and certainly it was no substitute for getting out He hated being in the same building the whole time, with the same people, bitching about the same things, eating the same menu day after fucking day. The barracks hotel was worse than prison.
But he might just have managed to tolerate that if it hadn't been for the one thing completely absent from his life. What he wanted most, as he told everyone who would listen, was pussy. And lots of it. Their current existence was like being fucking tortured. Every day when he was out on patrol, the streets would be full of girls wearing next to nothing in the bright hot sunlight. Laughing, smiling, having a good time right in front of him. He wasn't supposed to say anything to them: the Skin meant he couldn't even smile on the off chance he earned a smile back. And now his single opportunity to get to meet a girl had been snatched away. The sarge had been sympathetic, but he said he couldn't bend the rules for anyone. Sorry. Hal thought his head was going to explode; right after his dick. He didn't even care about the order, that was nothing. The fact that it had to be broken was obvious. His only problem was how.
He had to wait until eleven o'clock when the hotel's main kitchen had finished for the night and the staff had all gone home. A squaddie from Wagner's platoon, a guy his own age and with a similar problem, had told him about the route out. The kitchen had a door that opened into a small backyard. There was only one security sensor covering the area, a motion tracker wired straight into the AS. Armed with the codes, which the squaddie had also provided, Hal spent half an hour that afternoon infiltrating the sensor's management program. He hadn't shut the little unit down; that would have put everyone's life on the line. Instead, he'd altered the diagnostic routine, making it repeat two hundred times instead of its usual once; the check that normally took three seconds now took over three minutes, with the sensor itself inactive while its support circuitry was analyzed. The diagnostic automatically ran at twelve minutes past the hour, every hour. His alteration would operate for that night only, then wipe itself after 3:00 a.m., allowing the program to revert to its default setting.
There was nobody left in the kitchen. He made his way past the stainless-steel benches and waited by the back door until the clock function on his bracelet pearl read twelve past eleven. He opened the door and stepped outside. There was no alarm. The yard measured three meters by fifteen: it was used as a store, with empty boxes and beer barrels stacked up against the walls ready for collection. Hal hurried down to the far end and scrambled up the boxes, to peer over the top of the wall. Nothing moved in the dark alley on the other side. He swung over and dropped down.
His luck was in. A taxi was parked on the side of the road twenty meters from the alley. The driver was reading something on his media card; but the yellow vacant light was on. Hal opened the back door and sat down.
The driver looked up, examining Hal in the mirror. "Where to, sir?"
"Marina district." Hal pulled his collar up, hoping it hid the valves on his neck.
"Sure thing." The driver spoke to the car's AS and they pulled away from the curb. His hands rested lightly on the wheel, allowing the AS to steer.
"Hey, er, you know this town pretty well?" Hal asked.