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Chapter 25

FONTANA CAME AWAKE TO THE FAMILIAR LOW ROAR OF A jungle downpour. He sat up abruptly and shoved his fingers through his hair. He contemplated the rain with grim resignation.

The warm deluge was coming down the way it always did in the jungle, in a relentless torrent. The atmosphere bordered on steamy. He couldn't see more than a couple of feet beyond the edge of the gazebo.

"Figures," he said. "Given my luck lately."

"You're awake." Sierra came toward him, holding out an energy bar. "How do you feel? Are you hungry?"

She had put on his shirt. It looked good on her. Not that she wouldn't look good in anything or, preferably, nothing at all, but the fact that it was his shirt that she was wearing gave him a sense of satisfaction. His woman in his shirt. And he was stuck here with her in the crystal ruin while the rain forest did its thing. Maybe his luck wasn't so bad after all.

"Starved," he said. He took the energy bar, ripped off the wrapper, and ate almost half of it in one bite. "I'm always hungry after a heavy burn," he explained around the mouthful.

Elvis chortled a greeting and scampered over to say hello. Fontana patted him in the vicinity of what should have been the top of his head. "How's it going, King?"

Elvis bounced a little.

Fontana popped the last of the energy bar into his mouth, got to his feet, and stretched.

"How long has it been raining?" he asked.

"An hour, maybe longer," Sierra said.

"Well, one thing's for sure. We're going to be here for a while. You can't move in the jungle in these conditions. The really bad news is that by the time the rain lets up, it will probably be night. We sure as hell aren't going to try traveling after dark."

"But it was nearly three am when we left your house. It's late morning now."

"Not down here, it isn't. This place is on a different, artificial schedule. I'll be right back," he added, stepping off the platform into the rain.

"Wait, where are you going?" she asked anxiously.

"Where do you think I'm going? I need to take a leak."

She turned pink. "But you'll get soaked. You're already soaked."

"I'll dry off fast once I'm back in the gazebo."

He didn't have to go far to find the privacy he thought he probably needed, not for his sake, but for hers. You just didn't take a leak in front of a woman you had only known a couple of days, especially a classy lady like Sierra.

When he returned a moment later, she was sitting cross-legged on the second bedroll, a can of Curtain Cola in her hands. She had poured some of the cola into a cup for Elvis.

"Want some?" she asked. She held up a second can. "It's the only caffeine I could find."

"Underground you can't keep a fire going long enough to heat water for coffee," he explained. "Another side effect of the heavy psi."

He stepped up onto the platform and took the can of cola she offered. By the time he was halfway through with it, his clothes were almost dry.

"Wow." Sierra watched the process with amazement. "I don't believe it. A minute ago you were drenched to the skin. Now your shirt isn't even damp."

"Another weird effect of the quartz," he explained.

He sat beside her. Together they watched the rain come down in sheets. An unfamiliar sensation settled softly on him. He had to search for the word, but when he found it, he knew instantly that it was the right one: contentment. He could not recall ever having felt content before in his entire life. It was a strange but surprisingly pleasant feeling. Wholly unwarranted, too, he reminded himself. He still had a drug ring to take down, a bunch of guys in motorcycle leathers had tried to roast them alive in his own house tonight, and there were at least two seriously dangerous alien devices floating around that could generate controlled beams of ultraviolet dissonance energy.

Still, sitting here with Sierra, watching the rain, he felt a soul-satisfying sense of contentment. He could stay here with her forever, he thought.

"How did you find this place?" Sierra asked.

"After I bought the house, I started spending as much of my spare time as possible down in the catacombs. The former owner was obsessed with charting the sector near his personal hole-in-the-wall. He left maps in his journal. He was a tangler, so he had already cleared the illusion traps. That meant I didn't have to bring one in to do the job."

She nodded. "I have a friend who is a tangler. She's a para-archaeologist. She loves going down into the tunnels."

Tangier was the common term for an ephemeral-energy para-resonator, a person who possessed the psychic ability to resonate and control ephemeral energy.

Ephemeral energy was another form of alien psi. It was found in the catacombs in the form of illusion traps. For reasons known only to themselves, the aliens had set dangerous psychic snares throughout the tunnels. The shadow traps were frequently found in doorways and the entrances to chambers.

"The experts think the traps were intended as security devices," Fontana said. "If you don't have a natural talent for sensing them the way a tangler can, they're damn hard to spot. The only visible evidence is a faint shadow."

"That's all?"

"It's usually enough, if you know what you're doing. The ambient psi light in the tunnels creates no natural shadows."

"So if you see one, beware?"

He nodded and drank more cola. "The problem is that shadows in the catacombs are easily missed, because we're all so accustomed to seeing them aboveground. People tend not to notice them in the underworld environment."

She looked out at the driving rain. "Are there any illusion traps in the jungle?"

"None have been found so far. Good thing, too, given that it would be impossible to spot them visually. The jungle is full of shadows."

"You said you found the rain forest gate a few weeks ago. When did you discover this ruin?"

"I stumbled across it a few days later while exploring," he said.

She gave him one of her deep, knowing looks. "This place is very special to you, isn't it? That's why you haven't told anyone, not even Ray, about it."

"I don't want to give it up to the para-archaeologists," he admitted.

"It's a place of retreat for you."

He thought about that. "In a way, yes."

"I think that's what it was for the aliens, too."

Something in her tone made him look at her. "Is that guesswork or your intuition?"

"Intuition."

"I thought that only worked with people."

She drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around them. "Sometimes it also works in spaces in which people have invested a lot of emotion."

"If there's any emotion left in this place, it's old. Maybe a few thousand years old."

"I know."

"And it would be alien emotion."

She shrugged. "I realize that. All I can tell you is that this little gazebo feels like a place meant for quiet contemplation and reflection. Maybe someone built it so that he or she could come here to meditate on nature."

"A bioengineered nature?"

"But it's real. And don't forget, all the evidence indicates the aliens couldn't enjoy the nature on the surface. This was all they would have had."

He lounged back on his elbows, intrigued by her quiet certainty. "You think that the aliens who built all those sterile tunnels actually felt the need to commune with nature once in a while?"

She smiled. "It makes them seem more human, doesn't it?"