Killing Time

CHAPTER 31

Although the need to get to France quickly outweighed that of staying hidden from the warplanes of America and her allies, it nevertheless made sense to take what precautions we could to avoid detection during our voyage east. Malcolm and Eli therefore set about creating a new radar signature for our ship, to ensure that any anomalous readings picked up by long-range stations on the ground would fail to match those that the Americans and English had no doubt put on file following our encounters in Afghanistan and over the North Sea. This undertaking made it necessary for someone else to man Eli's monitoring post in the turret; and since that was a job with which I'd already become at least somewhat acquainted, it seemed logical for Larissa to suggest that I be the one to take over. Yet had logic dictated some other course, she would, I think, have found a way to refute it: the more time I spent with her, the more she seemed to want me around, a situation that was, as I told her, utterly unprecedented in my experience.

"Why?" Larissa asked with a laugh, linking her arm in mine and marching me through the ship's corridors in that inimitably martial yet alluring way of hers. "Have your romantic choices really been that bad? I can't believe it — not the brilliant Dr. Gideon Wolfe!"

"Sarcasm is a genetically inferior form of humor, Larissa," I said, grabbing her around the waist and squeezing hard. "And whatever women may say about respecting men who are devoted to their work, that doesn't mean they want them around, particularly."

"Nor should they," Larissa answered with a definitive nod. "Every worthwhile woman deserves more than her fair share of attention."

"How fortunate," I mused with a smile, "that returning to my former life is out of the question — what with there being a price on my head and all."

Larissa suddenly stood still and turned to me, looking unhappily surprised. "Gideon — you don't mean to say that you've thought about it."

I shrugged. "Not really. But it's only natural to wonder."

In the time I'd known her I'd seen uncertainty flit into and out of Larissa's features only occasionally; yet now it seemed to linger there. "Oh" was all she said as she looked down at the deck.

"Larissa?" Perplexed, I put a hand to her face. "It's not as though I've planned it — I've just wondered." She nodded and, for the first time I could remember, said absolutely nothing. There was something so unutterably ingenuous and sad in her silence that I couldn't help but wrap my arms around her and pull her in very close. "I'm sorry," I said quietly.

Of all people, I told myself contritely, I should have known better than to make such a stupidly random crack. Someone with a past like Larissa's could not have allowed herself many moments of true emotional vulnerability; and during those exceptional episodes she would have been, would still be, very alive to the possibility of betrayal. In dealing with such personalities no comments about abandonment, however offhand, can be considered anything other than callous. I therefore kept my mouth shut and continued to hold her, hoping that my embrace would be enough to undo the obvious effects of my thoughtlessness but fairly certain that it wouldn't.

As was so often the case during my time with Larissa, however, I was wrong. "It's all right," she finally said, quietly but with real conviction.

"You're sure?" I asked.

"I do sometimes enjoy being childish, Gideon," she replied, "but that doesn't actually make me a child. I know you didn't mean to hurt me." Of course she was right; and as I considered this latest reminder that she was unlike any other woman I'd ever known, I couldn't help but let out a small chuckle, one that she automatically picked up on. "What's so funny, you unimaginable swine?"

"Well, it does have a certain ridiculous dimension," I answered quietly. "The idea that I would run out on you"

"True," she said, her lovely self-possession rebounding. "Now that you mention it, the idea's absurd."

"Okay," I said, shaking her gently. "No need to go to town with it."

She pushed her face harder against my chest, saying, in a voice so low that I wasn't sure that she intended for me to hear it:

"You won't leave me, Gideon."

Had I known that this was to be the last of the uncomplicated moments that Larissa and I were able to steal from our extraordinarily complicated situation, I would have been far more assiduous about prolonging it. I might, to begin with, have tried to ignore the ship's Klaxon, which began with typically poor timing to sound at that very instant. But as we stood there, all danger seemed in my foolish mind to be emanating from, and be directed toward, matters other than my relationship with Larissa; and so I loosened my hold on her, utterly failing to give the moment the terrible importance it deserved. I can now recognize, of course, that this was just one of several bad mistakes that I was then in the process of making; but such understanding does little to dull the pain of the memory.

Several minutes after the alarm began to throb, Larissa and I, once again moving along the corridor, heard footsteps coming toward us from around a corner. We soon found ourselves face-to-face with Colonel Slayton at the bottom of the ladder that led up to the turret.

"We still haven't generated the new signature," he said with something that vaguely — and uncharacteristically — approached dread. "Too late, too late—have you caught sight of them yet?" His wording seemed to indicate that he'd already asked the rest of the team the same question; yet he neither explained what he was talking about nor waited for Larissa or me to reply before scaling the ladder. "They can't have built the things," he said as he ascended. "Not even they could be so stupid!"

We followed the colonel into the turret, where he immediately went to one side of the structure and, putting his hands against the transparent shell, fixed his eyes on the darkness above and behind our ship. I could see nothing of any note on the arching horizon of the stratosphere; and Larissa, scanning the same area, came up with a similar result.

"Colonel?" she said. "What is it, have you picked up something on the scanners?"

Slayton nodded, a motion that quickly turned into a disgusted shake of his head. "A flock of birds — that's what they read as. I'd love to believe it, but what the hell kind of birds can survive up here?"

I moved around to his side. "Maybe you could back up a little, Colonel. What exactly do you think is out there?"

Slayton kept shaking his head. "Death may be out there, Doctor. And the worst part of it is, it may be a death of my own design."