“I’ll drive,” answered Scorpio, tossing his bag into the very back. “Nice vehicle.”
“Actually, it belongs to a friend.”
And the friend has issued an arrest warrant against him for stealing it.
You’re surprised? thought Scorpio. He opened a door for Merlin, waited for his partner to find a comfortable position in a vehicle that was never meant for his species.
“Where’s the control?” he asked.
“This is the latest model,” answered Quintaro. “Put your thumb on the pad there … yes, that’s right … and now, as long as you keep your thumb there it’ll follow your orders, whether on land or water. That green button on the side of it will morph it into a boat or whatever else we need.”
Scorpio mentally ordered the vehicle to move forward slowly, down the crushed-stone path leading away from the tavern, and it was soon skimming over the muddy jungle trail.
“Got the hang of it?” asked Quintaro.
“Yeah,” answered Scorpio. “I’ve never driven anything as expensive as one of these VZ4’s, but I’ve piloted ships that responded to mental commands.”
“This is a goddamned vehicle, not a ship,” said Quintaro irritably. “Just remember that.” It was the first time his smooth façade had slipped, and Scorpio wondered why.
He’s scared to death.
Why?
We’re not going for a friendly ride in the park. Most people who go more than a few miles into this jungle don’t come out. That goes for my race, too.
Shit! We didn’t charge him enough.
I told you not to take it.
They’d gone a mile into the jungle when Scorpio saw something moving off to his left … something large. He stopped the vehicle and stared.
“What is it?” asked Quintaro nervously.
“I don’t know. Merlin, has Venus got something black and shaggy about the height of Tritonian lymix, only half again as long?”
It’s a herbivore.
Even herbivores can kill you when they’re that big. We’ll give him a wide berth.
“Well, what does he say?”
“He says yes,” lied Scorpio, partially to see the man’s reaction, but mostly to see if Sapphire would contradict him. He checked her reaction in a small dashboard screen, and saw that she was smiling in amusement.
“Well, as long as we’re going to be cooped up in this thing for a while, perhaps Sapphire will enlighten my partner and me about the history of the godstone.”
Why bother? thought Merlin. If she’s lying, and she probably will be, I won’t be able to tell.
There’s got to be a little truth to it. Maybe, like a famous detective of literature, we can construct the comprehensive whole from some of the disparate parts.
Oh, well, we’ve got nothing better to do.
“Miss Sapphire, ma’am?” said Scorpion.
“It is the greatest treasure on all of Venus,” she replied emotionlessly, as if by rote. “The man who finds it will become wealthy beyond all imagining.”
“What’s it made of?”
“I’m no meteorologist.”
“Neither am I,” said Scorpio. “But if I was spending all this money, and possibly risking my life, I’d sure as hell know what I think it’s made of.”
“Rare stones,” she replied. “Rarer than diamonds, than rubies, than emeralds. Stones that exist nowhere else in the universe.”
Possible? asked Scorpio.
I’m no gemologist. It seems unlikely, except …
Except?
Except why has she taken over Quintaro’s mind, and why is she risking her life by coming along?
“Are there any holographs of it?” asked Scorpio.
“Not to my knowledge,” replied Sapphire.
“Does it show up in any history books?”
“Of course. That’s how I know it exists.”
“Which ones?”
“I can’t remember.”
I don’t have to read her mind to know she’s lying, thought Scorpio.
I still can’t read it. All I get is a feeling of danger.
Let me know when it feels imminent.
You’ll know, replied Merlin with absolute certainty.
They were three days out from the tavern. The rain had diminished but not stopped, and Scorpio was inclined to think of his surroundings as a rainjungle, which in his mind was one step more impenetrable and uncomfortable than a rain forest. Finally they came to a river that didn’t have endless trees poking out of it, and he moved the vehicle onto it, where it floated smoothly and began picking up speed.
Overhead were a variety of avians—mostly bright red and yellow, a few blue, one large one that seemed to prey on the others a rich green, all of them seemingly impervious to the constant rain. There were myriads of water flowers of every imaginable shape and color, each reaching high and opening up its petals to the life-giving rain.
There were a few large beasts in the water. Most ignored them, and the vehicle, now a vessel, easily avoided the others. Scorpio found that he was actually relaxing and enjoying the trip when Sapphire leaned forward.
“Slow down,” she said.
“We’re not going that fast,” he replied.
“Nevertheless,” she said. “We’re going to leave the river and go back on land very soon now.”
Scorpio looked ahead. The trackless jungle bordering the river looked exactly the same as it had for the past fifty miles.
“Are you sure?” he said, frowning.
“Absolutely.”
“I can’t believe this area’s ever been mapped,” he continued. “What makes you think—?”
“Just do it!” she snapped.
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see her elbow Quintaro.
“Just do what I’m paying you to do and stop bitching,” he said.
“Yes, sir, right away, sir,” said Scorpio.
Subservience doesn’t become you, noted Merlin.
If you’ve got a quicker way to make the twenty grand we need to repair the ship, I’ll punch him out. Otherwise, we play the game.
“Here,” said Sapphire in another half mile.
Scorpio ordered the boat onto a sandy beach, paused until it had morphed back into a vehicle, and began driving it along a narrow animal trail, all the while wondering how Sapphire could know that this particular trail was the one she wanted, even if she’d had some treasure map and committed it to memory. The tides rose; they fell; and what was a trail today might have been an ocean bottom or an empty plain in antiquity, when the map would have been created, if indeed there was a map and a godstone at all.
They proceeded along the trail for three hours. Then, as the sun was starting to set, spreading a soft golden hue through the thick cloud layer, Scorpio brought the vehicle to a sudden stop.
“What is it?” demanded Quintaro, but Scorpio and Merlin, who had a better view of the trail, were out of the car and racing ahead on foot. They reached the object of their attention in seconds and knelt next to a blood-covered, thick-bearded man dressed in tattered rags.
Scorpio was about to pull him off the trail when he realized that there probably wouldn’t be another vehicle along for years, maybe decades, so he decided against moving the wounded man. Instead, he made a very crude pillow out of a stand of weeds and used it to prop up the man’s head, then opened what was left of the man’s shirt and began examining his body for wounds.
“Something with claws has ripped him up pretty badly,” he reported, as Quintaro ran up to them. “I’ve never seen paws on a herbivore, so it’s almost certainly a predator, and that means the claws were probably carrying half a dozen diseases picked up from victims.”