He emerges with a half-grin. I’ve pleased him, and that’s not an easy thing to do.
Later that day a bunch of us are working in the project room. Thorn is down with Nevada, who has offered to give him the rare writing lesson. Radius is on sentry duty, Bea has a bad headache and is napping, and Armonk’s downstairs repairing his bow.
I’m up here with Vesper, Jan and Blane, and tension is thick. Blane, who’s been poring over something on his laptop, comes over, slides Thorn’s stool toward me and sits on it. My traitorous body pricks to attention. He tries to see what I’m working on, but I cover it with cloth.
“Secretive, secretive!” he says.
“Tell me what you’re working on,” I dare.
He cocks his head in a quizzical manner. “You’d be surprised. It’s deep. You think you have a claim on deep, but you’re not the only one.”
Blane always manages to annoy me. He’s right that I’d be surprised if his project is deep. He seems more brutish than brainy. Then again, there’s often a crafty light in his gaze. As if he can meet me at any level. In that way, I guess he has the advantage because he knows I underestimate him.
“Blane is brilliant,” says Jan.
“His father was a brain surgeon, you know,” Vesper claims.
“His mother was a gene scientist,” Jan adds.
I want to tell them all to shut up, quit bullshitting and stay out of our conversation. In the midst of my disdain, I feel oddly possessive of Blane, as if Vesper and Jan don’t know the real Blane. This makes zero sense, as I don’t either. “Okay, why’d you come over to my workspace?” I tease. “Got something to tell me?”
“Since you’re so interested, I forgot to tell you before that I saw another hovercraft, a few days ago,” Blane announces loudly. And then, leaning in, he whispers in my ear, “The bearded man leaned out of it and asked me about our projects.”
“Is this a joke?” I ask. He makes an exaggeratedly insulted face.
“Ooh, Blane saw a hovercraft,” Jan echoes.
“With a hairy man inside,” Vesper cackles.
Blane’s told everyone about our earlier, private conversation? I could punch him, and for announcing this to the whole room. “Okay, so if you saw another ship, what color was it?”
“Pearl blue,” Blane answers. “And when I didn’t answer the guy’s question, the ship disappeared into thin air. I’m not kidding.”
“That’s absurd.” I shiver hard. Pearl blue! How could Blane know the exact color of the ship from my sick, coma dreams?
His eyes gleam. He’s found a cat toy and I’m the cat. “I’m giving you information like you asked me to. Want to go out to the field tomorrow and see if the bearded man comes by again? Do some target practice?”
I sigh and turn away from him. Jan’s rough laughter rings out, mixed with Vesper’s. Blane isn’t laughing though. If only Thorn was here, he might be able to pick out the lies from the truths. I’m not so good at it anymore.
I decide to search for a pearl blue hovercraft myself. When I get downstairs I’m tempted to go outside without my suit. It’s such a burden—ten tons of armor blocking out the light of day. But once I’m out there, I’m glad for it, because in the front yard next to the field of Fireseed and out further, among the dunes, the wind’s whipping up funnels of sand.
Nevada said nothing about a coming sandstorm, but if the wind keeps up, sand will cover the compound, the gliders and the yard, and the tarp will get dangerously heavy.
I mount a crescent shaped dune, hoping to feel a moment of radiance between blasts of sandy wind. Waiting, I lower the clear inner visor in my mask, to shield my eyes from the sting.
Peering upward, I scan the horizon. Nothing. I turn right, toward the western part of the fence. Look above it. Not even the usual passenger ship, cobbled together from old cars and copter parts. Turning left, I see only the darkening purples of an impending storm, filtered through grainy gusts.
I’ll have to come back out to search the sky after the storm. In the meantime, I hesitate here, hungry even a few minutes of solar energy. I’m not hungry for food, yet I feel weak, so needy of sun, as if my arms are branches that are withering.
Turning toward The Greening, I shiver to see Blane staring down at me from the Project Room window on third tier. He quickly turns away.