Part 39 (1/2)

He was crying like a child, staring where his once strong left arm had been. Thankfully, in what was left of the arm, she saw no signs of infection.

'Where's my arm, Lori?' he asked pitifully.

'You had a serious infection. I had to amputate it.'

He winced. 'Why didn't you give me medicine?'

'The medicine wasn't working.'

'But where is it?' he asked. Clearly, he still didn't comprehend the full meaning of his shortened bandage.

'It's gone. It was rotting. I had to cut it off.' She wanted more than anything in the world to be gentle, and yet she sounded cruel to her own ears. She lowered her head. There were no gentle amputations. 'I'm sorry, Gary.'

'You didn't tell me!' he cried. 'You didn't ask me!'

'You were unconscious. I did what I thought was best.'

'Get out of here! Go away! Just leave me alone!'

'I can't,' she said. 'We have to get out of here. We have to blast off. We need water, and the volcano's erupted. You have to get up to the control room'

'You're a monster!' he yelled. He was furious. He wanted to hurt her. He tried to sit up, but was too weak. 'Give me back my arm. I want my arm.'

'Gary. Please?'

He fainted. Lauren caught him as he slumped back. She took his pulse and found it thin and rapid. The green pus was gone and with it the fever, but he was nevertheless dying. If she didn't get liquid into his system soon, it was possible he wouldn't wake up again. She wasn't much better off. She couldn't swallow. Her head felt as if worms with teeth were chewing on the synapses in her brain. Her eyes were so shot with blood they scared her when she looked in the mirror.

Lauren reached down, pinched Gary's Achilles' tendon, and got no response. She debated giving him a stimulant, but feared the drug would cause him to have a heart attack. She tried to think of alternatives and her mind drew a blank. Almost a blank.

She wondered if it was time she started on her own diary.

A moonlit night. The trees shook in the harsh wind. Waves of white foam crashed on the glittery sh.o.r.e of the wide lake. She walked barefoot along the empty beach, wearing a long simple white dress, with a scarlet sash tied at her waist and falling over her hip. Her hair was long, partially braided, and it touched her breast as she moved. She felt and heard nothing. She only saw. All was silent. Her feet moved over the ground but left no prints. She walked in the steps of destiny. She was home.

She came to a gathering of people huddling in a thick of trees. They carried burning torches - the flames protested the windy night. Without effort she moved closer; nothing obstructed her. She recognized the spot. She was at Terry's cabin. Only now the cabin was nothing but a pile of ash. Three tombstones stood in the center of the mess. The people standing near them were all familiar to her. There was Daniel, Mr Russo, Jean and Stephen Floyd. She had never met the latter two, but that did not seem to matter.

Jean Floyd, holding two white roses, separated from the group and stepped to the first tombstone on the left. The light of her torch shone on the name carved in the stone: terry hayes, 1970-2006.

Weeping, Jean Floyd deposited her first flower, then moved to the next tombstone. It read: Jennifer wagner, 1992-2005. Here she also set down a flower. But Jean gave the third grave only a hasty glance, before making the sign of the cross and backing away.

Stephen stepped forward next. He carried a Bible. At Terry's and Jennifer's graves he paused and recited a prayer. Lauren could not hear him directly, but she could see what he was saying. Yet he also avoided the third tombstone.

Next came Daniel. He laid aside his torch and went immediately to the third grave. There he pulled a silver ring from his pocket with one hand and began to dig in the soil with the other hand. All of a sudden, though, Mr Russo grabbed him from behind and stopped him. His face was filled with fury. He shoved Daniel aside, and holding forth Ais torci, shouted curses at the third grave. Lauren couldn't understand exactly what he was saying. Daniel pleaded for him to stop, but Mr Russo turned and slapped the boy in the face. From beneath his coat Mr Russo removed a sealed wine bottle, which he raised in the air and then brought down on the cursed tombstone. The gla.s.s cracked. No wine spurted forth, however. It was blood. It dripped slowly over the front of the tombstone, almost covering the letters and numbers carved there, the name and dates Lauren had so far been unable to decipher.

Daniel continued to protest: Mr Russo went to strike him again. Lauren stepped forward to ward off the blow.

Then things got strange.

The torches died; it went pitch black. A huge hand blotted out the moon. Jean Floyd screamed, and with her Mr Russo, for something had reached from beneath the third grave, and was now dragging him into the deep. The others fought to free him, but the thing beneath the soil was too strong, its grip too tight. Soon Mr Russo vanished beneath the ground. Then a shrill laugh rent the darkness, and the letters and numbers on the third tombstone began to glow with a wicked red light.

LA UREN WA GNER, 1973-2006.

Lauren woke to a roar of sounds, her pulse pounding in her head, and the Hawk shaking from a series of miniature quakes. She groped to her knees and looked out of a porthole. It was night again; she had slept away the day. The edge of the plateau was on fire. Now lava poured from the mouth of the cave itself. Geysers of steam rocketed into the air. Far above, the caldera of Olympus Mons spewed forth a shower of fireworks. Incandescent globs of mud riddled the sky. If just one of those ma.s.sive sparks. .h.i.t the Hawk, she thought, the s.h.i.+p could explode. She climbed to her feet and staggered down to the bas.e.m.e.nt. She vaguely recalled having had a terrible nightmare.

Gary was unconscious. It was now or never, she decided. Turning to her medicine cabinet, she prepared a shot of methedrine and stuck it in his vein. His eyes, covered with a dark film, opened a minute later.

'Gary,' she said. 'Wake up. This place is on fire.'

He nodded faintly and closed his eyes. Lauren slapped him across the face. 'Gary!'

His eyes reopened and focused on her. 'Lori, I had a beautiful dream filled with flowers.'

'Olympus Mons is erupting. We have to get out of here.'

'Erupting,' he whispered, not understanding.

Lauren unwrapped his bandage. There were still no signs of infection. Gary looked where his arm was supposed to be. He just looked.

'I'm sorry,' she said again. 'If there had been some other way.'

He touched her trembling chin with his remaining hand. 'You did the right thing Doc. The cold is gone, and the nightmares. The beautiful dream started when the cold left. I wish I could remember it better so that I could tell you about it.'

'You don't hate me for what I did?' she asked.

Gary smiled peacefully, and went back to sleep. He was going to die, she knew, within the next couple of hours, unless she got him water. In despair she slumped beside the bas.e.m.e.nt porthole and stared at the approaching river of fire. It would reach Jim's grave before it got to them. But perhaps the next expedition would know to bury Gary and herself beside Jim. Then they could have three tombstones on Mars, all in a row.

Tombstones.

Then Lauren remembered.

I can't reprimand him. I still have my bottle of 'eighty-nine French wine.

A bottle of wine! None of them had considered drinking from the Karamazov water supply for fear of contamination - especially after Ivan had turned out to be a f.u.c.king zombie. But Dmitri's wine - no one had known about the bottle except him. It was hidden, no doubt, but she could probably find it if she looked for it.

Lauren had her pressure suit on in ten minutes. Pa.s.sing through the airlock, she climbed into Hummingbird. The craft's fuel tanks were low, but the Russian lander was not far. She slowly hovered out of the Hawk's garage and then shot across the plateau at sixty miles an hour, the steam whirling about her. Twice she flew directly over huge lumps of flaming mud that burned on the snowy land like barbecues on the plains of Antarctica.

Soon she was standing on the high platform that led into the Russian s.h.i.+p. The controls responded to her touch, but the airlock door opened only partially. The quakes had tilted the Karamazov slightly off balance, stressing the hull and putting unusual pressures on the doors. Lauren was barely able to squeeze inside. She cried out loud from the pain the squeeze caused the cracked ribs.

Lauren went to Ivan's and Dmitri's bedroom. She searched the desk but did not find the bottle. She crossed to the bunks, skirting the blood on the floor, and tore through the mattresses. No wine. With the touch of a b.u.t.ton she was inside the bedroom locker. On the floor, beneath clothes, she found an old-fas.h.i.+oned chest. She dragged it into the center of the room. The sides were screwed shut. She hurried to the level below, to the laboratory, where she retrieved a knife. She had the chest screws out in a couple of minutes.

The bottle lay at the bottom of the chest, wrapped in blue felt; a deep red wine, '89 - a very fine year indeed. It was full, and from the intact seal, it had obviously never been opened.

Lauren returned to the Hawk. Before she went inside, however, she visited Jim's grave. If she'd had the strength, and the time, she would have dug through the stones and gravel and returned his body to the s.h.i.+p. What fools they had been to fear that he might rise to haunt them. His death had been their only decisive warning. In the pit Jim must have been given the opportunity of decision - immortality or oblivion. He had chosen the latter, to let them know for certain what they were up against. Lauren hoped his end had come easily. Perhaps his heart hadn't betrayed him after all, but had spared him worse tortures.

Lauren draped the crucifix she had made over the cold rocks. Then she said the prayer she hadn't been able to say at his funeral. She believed there was a chance G.o.d heard it.

Lauren stood by Gary's side, waiting for the stimulant she had just administered to take effect. Finally he opened his eyes. She bent over him and uncorked the top of the bottle.