Chapter 27: Biophysica Priori — Part 8

Aside: Regine Caspaire
The Tale of Heath’s Bag, Twenty Years Before the Storm

Part 4: Interment

Gina’s run from Kia’s house is desperate and direct. She has finished her goodbye letter, is packing it into its envelope while drinking a cup of coffee, thinking about where she can go to keep Kia safe. Even though she doesn’t think seeing Kia is a mistake, she knows she can’t come back here. She hears the car come up to the driveway, and at first wonders how Kia got back so soon. After the car comes to a stop, Gina hears two doors close, and she is certain that Kia will not be coming through the door. Gina smiles gently, sips the last of her tea.

This will not turn into a mistake, she can out-think this moment. Mathematical processes drive Gina’s mind, and she is already in the mode of calculating what must happen next. Somehow, she thinks, her hunters have tracked her here, and she must lure them away from the house. Gina is dressed and in the kitchen when the men in suits knock, less than politely, she thinks, on the door. She answers the door, and is surprised to see Paul in a matching suit, another man standing with him. It changes her strategy only slightly.

“Gina, it’s time to come back in.” Paul says gently.

“I’ll come with you.” Gina matches his tone, sounding beaten.

“The formulas will come as well?” Paul asks. “You don’t want to have to redo all that work.”

Gina thinks about running out the back, remembers Kia’s pistol sitting on the bar stool by the door, but the calculations in her mind see Kia in prison if she kills two men in her home. The Feds, she knows, won’t care about alibis with a rez-girl; they’ll just throw her in a dark cell until she dies of loneliness. The path of the pistol, therefore, has been nullified. Symbols and outcomes flash into Gina’s mind, vectors settle, and a condition is met.

“I’ll take you to them.” Gina says. “They are where we had our honeymoon together.”

Paul smiles and Gina is guided gently into the back seat of a car with its door locks active but disabled by a man who would rather kill her than fight with her. Paul’s weakness, she knows, is nostalgia. Gina wonders if she, or even Paul will be left alive once the formulas are recovered. She doesn’t have enough information to know the answer for certain, so she’s cautious, waiting to identify more vectors of causality. Two agents have been killed, after all, and for all they know, she was the one who did the killing. Those who have taken her are talking behind sealed glass, and think they cannot be heard. But she can read lips, almost as well as somebody who has to. She can see her husband’s lips in the right side mirror. The conversation as a whole is unimportant; though a couple of phrases chill Gina.

“No, uh, she’s not needed if we have the formulas — We know they work, her arguments are flawless — I saw the proofs — if that’s what you have to do, she’s got nothing more to give us — killing her? — Why would I stop you? –”

Wow, way to be a husband, Paul. Gina feels a rush of calm come over her; adrenaline giving her the power to mask all but only the most essential of emotional expressions.

Paul has stopped talking. The other man, she thinks, must have stopped as well. The pistol, left back at Kia’s house, burns in her memory. Then it passes. The plan is fixed now. Her honeymoon, taken near an edge of the Grand Canyon, in a portion of Arizona that looks like it has been scooped from another planet and dumped onto the remains of a used up part of this one, is a perfect place to hike. Paul will know where she is headed. He is nostalgic and simultaneously psychotic, apparently. Gina hates him now; there is no stopping the equation, as the vectors in her head play out.

Gina taps on the glass, pointing. “Turn on the next access road.” She says, knowing they can hear her even if she can’t hear them.

Paul nods and the man complies. They drive along the dirt road until it ends in a camping spot near the southern edge of the canyon. Gina is let out of the car, and makes a point of stretching.

“We’ll need flashlights.” Paul says, smiling innocently.

The man gets a couple of ‘interrogator’ style metal flashlights from the trunk of the car, hands one to Paul. Gina really wants to get her strength back, and the antibiotics are in her pants pocket. She doesn’t know if she will need them after this, but she’s hopeful. Her calculations aren’t without risk, after all. Both men are wearing ties, the vector of the tie is important. She isn’t taking Paul into the canyon he will know from his honeymoon, but she’s counting on his not remembering the details. She walks north, the men following, keeping a steady pace while they struggle behind her. She walks the edge of the canyon, staring down its side looking for what she knows is there. The men are just now catching up.

Beneath Gina by about ten feet is an entrance either to a cave or a mine. She and Paul had found a similar cave while hiking many years before, but this one she found with Kia. Paul will think she would hide the formulas in the cave. She turns quietly to face the men, her back to the canyon edge. She puts her arms out and smiles. Paul’s eyes widen, the other man’s eyes turn to slits. He goes for her, but too late, she has jumped, reaching out to snag the man’s tie as she does.

She misses the tie, or it slips, but the tie tack is snapped lose, and as the man scurries to the side to see what has happened, his tie is dangling. Gina jumps up and snags the stranger’s tie as he leans over, to look for her, and he is pulled off balance. He can’t hold her weight and stay on the edge, so he reaches out to Paul, snagging Paul’s pant leg. Paul falls to his butt, and the two are dragged across the eroded edge and fall toward the ledge Gina is on. But Gina is quick to shove as they hit the ground.

The stranger strikes face first on the ledge, his flashlight falling from his hand, and doesn’t have a chance to regain his senses before he’s falling again. Gina’s hard shove has thrown him completely off the side of the canyon. The drop to the bottom is a long one, but he’s too dazed to scream, even as he bounces against a rock’s edge, and then bounces again when he hits a sandbar with a crunching thud that is only heard by Gina some several seconds later. There is karma in that impact, Gina believes.

Paul is clinging to the ledge. He’d been dragged down feet first, but his feet missed the narrow ledge of stone, and now he is trying to grasp for Gina’s legs. Gina is out of reach, so he’s digging his fingers into the dirt and rock, clinging to life, the ledge seeming relatively unconcerned with his survival. Like the stranger, his flashlight has fallen loose and lies just out of his reach.

“You have to save me, Gina.” Paul says. “We made vows.”

“You annulled them on the drive up here.”

Paul’s eyes go wide, but he isn’t talking now. He’s scrabbling desperately, gaining some ground, getting a hint more weight on the safe side of the ledge. He’s betting on being stronger than her, if he can get his footing. She pushes him back with her foot, too quick for Paul to grab her. Paul’s scrabbling again, desperate, anger getting the better of him. He looks up at her, knowing he’s been caught out. He tries for a lie, but Gina knows better than to believe him.

“He’s not my friend.” Paul says quietly.

“Nor am I.” Gina kicks Paul in the nose.

Gina watches him hit the bottom, turns away. “Thus ends the age of martyrs, sinners, and slaves.” She sounds as if tears will take her at any moment.

Gina doesn’t know if she’s relieved or discomforted by the fact that Paul missed the rock spire that had its way with the stranger. She can feel the blood flowing sluggishly from her wound, can feel nausea creep up on her. Hungry things will smell her if she stays in the open. The human predators will get her if she returns to the city. Her time with society, she knows, is over. Kia, she knows, will be safe. Gina has to heal, but she cannot go back the way she came. For a brief moment she considers joining her husband at the bottom of the canyon. Until she remembers the cave, remembers the flashlights, and completes her equation.

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