Harsh Oases Read Online Free PDF Page B

to his departure from the former British colony, so the rumor went, he had managed to divert three million pounds from the Communist government’s accounts to his own, without leaving a single prosecutable software trace. Naturally, his life was worth nothing back home, but he was relatively safe here.
    His boat was named the EFT .
    Salty droplets whipped by a brisk wind rained in my face like an angels tears. The sea was less calm than for the previous performance, and I worried that Nikki would have a rough ride upon splashdown.
    My nerves were twisted tight from the split with Jasmine and the anticipation of where Nikki and I would go with what we had. Next to me, two men I didn’t know were arguing in mild tones, and I listened to divert my attention from the sky.
    “You should have bought Empatrax stock when I told you.”
    “I know, I know, I’d be rich now. But I still say it’s due to plummet. It’s just a fad. Who wants to put up with wicked headaches just to feel the half-baked emotions of some bimbo or stud?”
    “It’s not going to always be this crude. You watch. They say a new release of the recording software is coming soon, and the actors are improving all the time. You can’t expect perfection from the start. Just watch.”
    “Hmmm …”
    I let my concentration drift from their banter. All I could think about was Nikki, the aurorae—and Jasmine.
    Suddenly someone hit the switch for the sky.
    The aurorae were back, resplendent as before, cosmic curtains and arcs of gassy luminescence, quivering like skywolves eager to be unleashed. I felt afloat in the galaxy’s wild heart. Nikki had dumped her elvish dust into the pre-excited ionosphere. Now she would be coming down.
    I didn’t let myself become fully enraptured this time by the display. Instead, I moved quickly to the control platform where Song Ping stood.
    The slight, jovial man had a glass in his hand. He smiled when I came up the ladder.
    “We’ve got to watch for her,” I said. “Can’t get distracted by the show.”
    He nodded, his silence hinting at a profundity that was really broken English he was ashamed of. We scanned the twisting skies.
    Shouts, and a searchlight snapped on, then another, two more, half a dozen. One caught Nikki’s capsule.
    It had no chute deployed. It was falling like a stone.
    “Damn it!” I yelled. “Get going toward where it’s gonna hit!”
    Song Ping seemed to move through an infinity of slow-motion frames, although it must have been only seconds. We raced toward the splashdown point.
    My eyes never left the plummeting capsule. I don’t remember what I thought. I recall with what agonizing slowness the backup chute opened. It didn’t slow the bullet of metal and glass and flesh by much.
    Nikki hit in a geyser.
    We weren’t even the first to reach her.
    By the time we pulled along, they were lifting her out. Mortal now, no goddess, she looked like something wrapped in crumpled tinfoil. I couldn’t see if she was still breathing.
    Laughter split the silence. Jasmine stood on the bow of Trollinger’s ship, hands on hips, like some grimly gleeful Valkyrie come to collect the dead.
    “Your little bird’s had her wings clipped,” she shouted across the water. “What a shame. But accidents will happen, won’t they?”
    A sudden crazed squeal of ionosphere-born static like the shout of Cronos being slain burst from all the ships’ radios. Above our heads, the aurorae seemed to mock us, like enormous serpents engirdling the globe.
     
    I went to visit Nikki in the hospital. They had her in an inflatable full-body cast in the intensive-care ward, a battery of monitors hooked to her. I knew she was pumped full of miracle drugs and wired with replacement parts. She was bald, even her normal stubble having been shaved for the operation. She looked like a mummy with nightmares, or the victim of some underworld vendetta dredged up from the river-bottom.
    But she was alive.
    “How’s it going?” I