Fires of Eden by Dan Simmons

Author:Dan Simmons
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2013-07-03T16:00:00+00:00

FIFTEEN

Fire-split rocks strike the sun;

Fire pours on the sea at Puna;

The bright sea at Ku-ki’i.

The gods of the night at the eastern gate,

The skeleton woods that loom.

What is the meaning of this?

The meaning is desolation.

—Hi’iaka’s chant to Pele

It was after five when Byron Trumbo got to bed, tumbling in beside Maya for an hour of half-sleep before getting up and showering. He had a seven o’clock working breakfast with the Sato Group.

The scene at the construction shack had been out of one of his adolescent fantasies. Bicki had met him at the door—naked—and had leapt for him even before he could close the door or window shutters. The hot tub had been bubbling on the seaside veranda, and Trumbo had carried the diminutive rock star to the tub and dropped her in, peeling off his clothes to join her. She had pulled him in before he’d gotten his undershorts off.

Trumbo never underestimated his own libido or stamina, but ninety minutes of Bicki passion on top of the evening with Maya and the trying day had him ready to slip beneath the hot tub bubbles. Finally he had extricated himself, dressed himself, given Bicki the spiel about Caitlin trying to ruin the Sato deal—a spiel lost on the young singer: Bicki took no interest in Trumbo’s dealings—and tried to convince her to leave in the morning.

“Awww,” pouted the seventeen-year-old, “I just got here.”

She draped one long, mocha leg over an oversized pillow and said, “Did ah surprise you, T?”

“You surprised me,” said Trumbo, buttoning his Hawaiian shirt. “And don’t call me T.”

“OK, T,” said Bicki. “Ah won’t call you T. Why do you-all want me to leave?”

Trumbo paused. Bicki was from Selma, Alabama, and he usually enjoyed her unself-conscious southernisms. Tonight they grated on him as badly as had Caitlin’s damned New England vowels and Maya’s fake British accent. And, in the height of passion, he’d forgotten her goddamned pierced tongue and tried to French-kiss her and almost leapt out of the hot tub when he’d encountered two tiny metal balls in there. “You distract me, kid,” he said. “I need my wits about me for this deal.”

Bicki ran her thigh up and down the pillow. “Ah’m not interested in your wits, T.”

It’s mutual, thought Trumbo. He said, “I know, kid, but this is a sensitive deal.”

Bicki ran long fingers up his thigh. “But ah know about sensitive things, T.”

Trumbo intercepted her fingers, kissed them, grabbed his radio and the 9mm Browning from the floor, and went for the door. “I’ll check in on you in the morning, kid. But tomorrow you head back to Antigua.” At least Bicki preferred sleeping alone.

“Tomorrow,” drawled Bicki, “is anothah day.”

Trumbo paused at the door, shook his head, and jogged through the dying drizzle toward the golf cart, where he jumped half a foot in the air and reached for the Browning in his belt as a figure as dark as the night stepped out of the jungle and seemed to float toward him.

“Shit,” said Trumbo, sliding the Browning back in his waistband with shaky fingers.

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