“What happened to the rain?” asked Quintaro. “It’s like there’s an invisible wall, and nothing’s falling on this side of it.”
“I don’t know,” replied Scorpio. He glanced at Sapphire. “One of us doesn’t seem surprised.”
She offered no reply, as he had known she wouldn’t, and he continued moving forward. The path, which was once again a trail, remained thoroughly muddy.
That’s damned strange, he thought.
What is?
The rain’s stopped. Yet the trail’s as muddy as if it has been pouring for weeks, right up to a minute ago.
I have no answer.
I’ll settle for a guess. I don’t feel good about this.
Scorpio waited for a comment from anyone, even Quintaro. When none was forthcoming, he sent the vehicle forward. He proceeded for three hundred yards, then four, then five—and then he heard it, like the loudest kind of thunder, but it was coming from ahead and below, not above.
“What the hell is that?” demanded Quintaro nervously.
“A waterfall,” said Scorpio. “Like it or not, this is the end of the line.”
“Not quite,” said Sapphire. “Keep going.”
“Those falls can’t be a mile away,” protested Scorpio. “Just where the hell do you want me to go?”
“I’ll tell you when to stop,” she said.
What do you think?
You might as well, answered Merlin. One way or another we’re going to her destination. Why walk?
Scorpio began moving the vehicle very slowly. He’d gone another quarter mile when two slightly older, less elegant, mud-covered vehicles came into sight off to his right.
Quintaro pulled a pulse gun out of his pocket and started to take aim when Sapphire brought the edge of her hand down on his wrist, so hard that Scorpio could hear the bone crack even over Quintaro’s scream of pain.
“You goddamned bitch!” he bellowed. “I’m trying to protect our fucking interest!”
“You don’t even know what our interest is,” she replied, her voice thick with contempt.
“I know what mine is,” he snarled, “and no one’s going to double-cross me!”
He turned and took a swing at her with his uninjured hand. Scorpio didn’t see what happened next, but an instant later Quintaro collapsed, unconscious, on the floor of the vehicle.
Suddenly, Sapphire reached forward and handed Scorpio a wad of bills. “Here is what he owed you,” she said. “You know, of course, that he had no intention of ever paying it.”
“I know,” said Scorpio, pocketing the cash.
“He is of no further use to us,” she continued. “Stop the vehicle.”
Scorpio came to a stop, and she opened a door and shoved Quintaro’s body out into the mud.
“Is he dead or alive?” asked Scorpio.
“One or the other,” said Sapphire. “Now proceed.”
“To where?”
“Do you see that tall skeleton of a dead tree ahead of us?”
“Hard to miss. First dead tree I’ve seen since we started.”
“That is our destination.”
“We’ve come all this way for a barren tree?” said Scorpio.
“Do not appear a bigger fool than I think you to be,” replied Sapphire.
“Are we trying to beat the other party to it?”
“It makes no difference, for they are the same.”
Scorpio frowned. Does that make any sense to you?
None.
Scorpio drove to within fifty feet on the tree and came to a stop. He and Sapphire got out immediately, and he walked around the back, unlatched it, and helped Merlin to the ground. The Venusian was still unsteady on his feet, but he walked by his partner’s side, trying his best to ignore his pain.
The two other vehicles had stopped also, and Scorpio observed them closely, waiting to see just how much this other blue-skinned woman resembled Sapphire—but when she emerged from the second vehicle, he stared, blinked, rubbed his eyes, and stared again.
They could be twins! he thought.
Or somehow even closer, answered Merlin.
“There will be protections, of course,” said Sapphire.
The woman Scorpio now thought of as The Other Sapphire uttered a terse command, and two men who had been driving the vehicles walked cautiously toward the tree, weapons in hand. When they got within five feet of it there was a sound of static and both men collapsed, one screaming, one unconscious or dead.
“Now it is our turn,” said Sapphire.
“I’m not going to walk right up to it,” answered Scorpio. “I just saw what happens to men who do that.”
“Nevertheless.”
“It might help if you tell me what I’m looking for.”
“You already know,” she said.
“Is the tree the godstone?”
“Of course not.”
“Then what is it, where is it, and what does it look like?”
“The stone is irregularly shaped, perhaps a foot in width. Do you see that hole at the base of the tree?”
“Yeah. Looks like some animal has burrowed in.”
“Eons ago, one probably did. But now that is where the godstone is. You will approach on hands and knees, hopefully below the tree’s ability to see or detect you, and bring it back.”
“That’s suicidal,” said Scorpio.
“Perhaps not.”
“I’ll prove it to you,” he said. He reached into the vehicle, pulled out Quintaro’s pulse gun from where it had fallen, bent over, and hurled it sidearm at the hole. It was never more than eighteen inches above the ground—and it burst into flame when it was within three feet of the tree. Scorpio straightened up. “Like I said, suicide.”
“It must be retrieved,” she said, and for the first time he detected a trace—more than a trace—of emotion in her voice.
“Oh, Merlin and I can get it for you,” said Scorpio. “I’m just trying to come up with a price.”
“You’ve been paid.”
“I’ve been paid for taking you here. Risking our lives to retrieve a protected treasure wasn’t part of the bargain.”
“You will get it now!” she demanded, her face suddenly a mask of fury.
“I’m thinking,” he said. “I’d ask for this vehicle, which would certainly bring a healthy price once we clean it up, but we both know it’s stolen property. And something tells me that you’re not going to share the godstone with me, no matter what you promise. You’re really not in a very good bargaining position, Blue Lady.”
“I can kill you right now,” she said. “You know that, don’t you?”
“I’m a little harder to kill than you think,” said Scorpio. “But even if you can, you’d better be sure you know how to get the stone without me.”
She glared hatefully at him but said nothing.
“Okay,” he said after a moment’s consideration. “There’s got to be a black-market dealer who’s not too fussy and has a market for a VZ4. I’ll take the vehicle once we’re done here. Do we have an agreement?”
She nodded.
“All right.” He pulled out his laser pistol and aimed a beam right at the tree trunk, about ten feet above the ground.
“What are you doing?” demanded Sapphire.
“It’ll take a lot more than this to melt a stone,” said Scorpio. As the trunk began smoldering, then burst into flame, he trained his beam on a low-hanging branch. “Damned good thing it’s not raining here. No way I could set it on fire if it were.” He turned to Sapphire. “Somebody on your side has a hell of a lot of powers but very little brain.”
In seconds, the branch was aflame, and Scorpio trained his weapon on another branch. As he did so he leaned down, picked up a heavy stick, and hurled it at the opening. Nothing happened, except that the stick bounced off the trunk.