Звезда Пандоры

It was every bit as bad as she knew it would be. The blood pooling over the white marble. The smell. His face perfectly intact, holding the expression of someone whose prayer had been answered.

Justine knelt beside him, though in truth her legs could barely hold her weight anymore. The wide puddle of his cold blood soaked into her expensive skirt. She reached out and touched his cheek with her fingers, fearful of what she would feel. Lifeless bodies she had seen countless times, including her brother’s. But Kazimir was a Guardian, he didn’t have a memorycell insert. This was genuine death, a life that had ended. She thought she’d left this barbarity behind centuries ago.

Later there would be anger. Fury. And a bitter, bitter remorse. For now she was just numb. Not understanding how this could have happened despite all her power and authority; all the orders and thinly veiled threats that nothing, nothing was to harm him. Now here he was, her beautiful young love: dead. Forever.

Justine heard a pair of heels clicking on the marble. Someone walking purposefully along the concourse toward her. No doubt who that would be. She smiled forlornly down at Kazimir one last time, then rose to her feet and turned around.

“Senator,” Paula Myo said. “My sympathies.”

Justine’s smile turned cruel as she glanced down at the dark blood staining her skirt. “I told them. I made it very clear to the navy. Kazimir was not to be hurt.”

“The navy didn’t do this.”

“You see, I always thought that I was right, that he was just a naive provincial lad with a head full of nonsense. I have to be right because I’m nearly four centuries old, and I live in mansions and penthouses and I have enough money to buy his world. I had to protect him from himself, from others who were using him.”

“You did everything you could.”

“Then why is he dead, Investigator?”

“There is a leak in the navy, probably more than one.”

“It is real, isn’t it,” she said with a kind of detached amusement. “Kazimir was right all along.”

“Yes, Senator, the Starflyer is real.”

…

Wind and current were acting in happy conjunction, pushing the Pathfinder along at a steady clip. In other circumstances, Ozzie would have been quite pleased about that. But not today.

“Isn’t there anything ahead?” Orion asked with a petulant whine.

Ozzie switched off his retinal insert’s zoom function, which he’d been using to scan that uncomfortably distant horizon. “No,” he said. Even he thought he sounded defensive.

Fifteen miles to starboard, and now slightly behind, the last island rose up out of the tranquil blue-gray water. The simple dark green cone was the fourth one they’d tried to reach. Once they’d left their original island behind, the sea’s current had picked up considerably. So much so that they had very little ability to steer. Even with Tochee angling the rudder hard over, they couldn’t vary their course by more than a few degrees.

They had missed the first island by over ten miles, standing on the raft’s creaking deck to watch despondently as it sank away behind them. It had been larger than the one they’d set sail from, with wide coves and extensive forests. Ozzie hadn’t seen any signs of habitation, even with his retinal inserts on full magnification, but it had looked very promising.

After the shock of missing landfall, they had swung around straightaway for the next island, thirty miles farther on. This time with near-constant rowing and the tiller jammed over, they’d got to within a couple of miles as the current swept them onward. Neither of the two exhausted humans had said anything, but they both knew that Tochee could have swum ashore if it wanted to. Their big alien companion had chosen to stay with them.

From then on there were fewer islands they could aim for, and the current strength had increased noticeably. And now, what might have been their last chance was receding at a respectable speed.

Ozzie sat down with his back to the mast, looking back trying not to appear too disappointed. The stiff square of sail was curved tautly as the breeze pushed against it. There wasn’t a lot of point having it up anymore. The surface of the sea was flowing as fast as a plains river. He couldn’t work out why it was doing that, either. Seas simply didn’t rush about, there was no hydrological mechanism he could think of that would produce such an effect. It was just one more anomaly that the planet had thrown at them. Ozzie worried that it might prove a fatal one.

“I might be able to tow us back over to the last island,” Tochee’s array translated.

Ozzie gave the big creature a dubious look. “You’re more likely to just wear yourself out. Let’s save acts like that until we get desperate.”

“And we’re not now?” Orion muttered.

“As long as we’re moving, we’re okay,” Ozzie said firmly. “There will be more islands over the horizon, or even the mainland. It’s when we stop moving that we’re in trouble.”