Fade Away and Radiate Read Free Page A

inside Billy's arms. “As
long as I just do my work and don’t cause any trouble, I don't
think any other corporation can get through FortuneCorp's sectors.
FortuneCorp runs the whole show out here.”
    “ It's not safe. It wasn’t
safe for Roberto, surrounded by his brothers. It’s not safe for
you, out here all alone. I came to get you out of here.”
    Anika cried then, remembering. Billy
just held her, his silence saying so much more than words ever
could. The tears slipped away after a while, though she knew, like
the tides they’d return. They rolled in every night, as she
stretched out on her cot, her fingers touching the blaster for
courage.
    But that time was done, now that Billy
was here. He could still leave in the morning. If she had her way,
he'd go when daylight came, free and alive. Free of his obligation
to her. But everything had changed because he had found her. Even
after he went back to his life, Anika would remember that he had
come.
    “ One night,” Anika insisted.
“Stay the night and you’ll go in the morning. Just like I first
said. And as long as I stay here working, and as long as you don’t
poke the powers that be and just go your way, we should both be
okay.”
    Billy’s smile flashed across his face,
banishing the shadows. “I got the Murphy's luck, Annie. Too late to
stay out of trouble, too late the day I was born. But I’m here.” He
knew as well as she did that a night could last forever, that
anything could happen between this moment they shared, and
daybreak.
     
    #

    Reunions are funny, time-bending
things. After only a few minutes more, Billy and Anika had
recovered from their emotion. Anika took Billy into the jungle, for
just a few minutes, to show him her artistry.
    She beamed her arc-light torch skyward
and dappled shadows filtered through the broad leaves stretching
over their heads. “Those are tiny weeds back at home,” she
whispered. “My technology grows crabgrass into trees, clovers into
climbing vines. I grew this jungle in a single growing season. It
would take fifty years, a hundred, for any other
terraformer.”
    Anika crouched down and dug around in
the sandy dirt until she found what she was looking for. She pulled
the black tube out of the ground to show Billy. “This is what the
trouble is all about,” she said. “The Bowman eco-drive.”
    “ Could anybody just take it
and grow stuff?”
    “ You need the expertise of
course. But if you had the secret of it…”
    She left the rest unspoken. Such a
technological revolution was worth espionage, murder. To steal it,
to control it, or at least to stop it.
     
    #
     
    They shared their dinner, eating
picnic-style on the floor by the side of her bed, leaning against
it. Anika took a sip of protein gel. It didn't taste like much, but
it did the job of nourishing her. And all she cared about was
Billy, anyway. Getting as much of him as she could before he had to
go away again.
    She was hungry for the human contact,
for the simple pleasure of talking to somebody. But it was more
than that. This was Billy, the man who populated her secret dreams
and kept her company in her memories. As Roberto faded away, Billy
became more vivid, and she held on to him like a talisman, like a
soldier’s good luck charm.
    Never mind that he had the
Murphy-backwards luck he mentioned. She wanted all of him, that
lopsided smile, that incandescent stare that made the rest of the
universe disappear. It sounded idiotic, but she wanted to protect
him. And if she couldn't protect him by staying away from him, she
wanted to give him a place of sanctuary, where he could let go of
the banter, let go of the war, and find a peaceful garden to lay
his head.
    But it wasn’t that simple.
    Anika put these thoughts away. Here
with Billy, she was Annie, not Anika, and for the moment she could
leave the beleaguered scientist behind, and be Annie, Billy's girl,
at least for a single night.
    “ So how did you get from the
Jobs Prize to planet