Kay Kenyon by The Seeds of Time

Author:The Seeds of Time
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-04-08T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter 22

He wrapped a rough barracks blanket around her shoulders and slowly led her outside. In the brightness, Clio saw the world in all its parts: people, buildings, ground, trees and sky in a strange mixture of acuity and peace. They crossed the main yard, all silent around them. The smell of vegetable broth mixed with mud. A car waited, black, sleek. She allowed herself to be helped into the backseat.

The colonel took a seat in the front with the driver, leaving Clio alone in the backseat with its buttery brown leather and her reeking blanket. She clutched the blanket around her. The gates opened, guards looking after them, and they sped away from the Issaquah Quarry, the car running smooth as flight Through the shaded windows she watched the outside world slide by. Ordinary things had been out here all the while as hellish things had worked their course inside the quarry. That was the way of things.

Chaos and peace both commanded their realms without troubling, even, to contend with each other. And no one cares, the world doesn't care. Case in point: the Issaquah Quarry and this creamy smooth limousine.

The suburban countryside sped past the window at her elbow: gas-station signs perched on hundred-meter poles, freeway lane upon freeway lane bearing long, finned cars. Brown-tipped evergreens sagging under the invisible UV glare, sere grasses on vacant lots with signs to rent, build, buy, make hay while the sun shines. And as an antidote, perhaps, banners on homes proclaiming religious messages, and lavender-fuzzy in the distance, a church with its neon cross, proclaiming a better world in the next.

The car stopped, idling. Then the motor stopped. Clio tried the button on the window. Didn't respond. A blur directly outside her window resolved itself into a grasshopper, resting on the lip of the window ledge.

Its glistening, black body looked like it was struck from metal. Not a grasshopper. A piranha nymph. A fly that took the wrong moment to inspect the remains of an insect on the window was snatched up in an instant. The nymph's mandibles twitched. Then, leveraging with its huge hind legs, it jumped into the air and disappeared.

"Could call in a chopper, sir," the driver said.

"No, Lieutenant. They're a target, too easy. Better to melt into the crowd, eh?"

Eventually, a tap at the window. DSDE stop-and-search. The window rolled down.

"Driver's license, health certificates," the man said, while his eyes swept the inside of the car.

The lieutenant pulled down the visor, slipped out a card. "U.S. Army Command," he said.

The DSDE agent scrutinized the card, and frowned at Clio. "And her?"

The colonel leaned into the conversation. "My custody."

The agent's gaze took in the rank insignia. "Yessir. And we'll want her ID, just for the record." Looked back at Clio.

The colonel smiled, the briefest of stabbing smiles. "Negative, Agent... Kern. National security. Check with your HQ, then I'll expect clearance to jump this queue." The colonel handed forward his own ID card.

Clio saw the agent's name sewn over his breast pocket.

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