Engineman - Eric Brown [218]
They paused at our table.
Roberts cleared his throat. "Mr Bartholomew..."
The artist looked up, irritated at the interruption. "Yes? What is it?" His gaze took in the unlikely pair without any sign of consternation. At the sight of Roberts' diffidence and the chauffeur's bruised face, my stomach turned sickeningly.
"Mr Bartholomew... I'm afraid there's been an accident."
"Elegy?" Bartholomew's face was expressionless. "Where is she?"
"If you'd care to come with me," Roberts said.
Ralph took Bartholomew's elbow and we followed the doctor down the descending escalator, across the concourse and through the main gates of the Oasis.
"What happened?" Bartholomew demanded.
Beside us, the chauffeur was tearful, shaking from the delayed effects of shock. "I took the bend too fast... There was nothing I could do. I tried to..."
Outside the gates stood the open-top, two-seater Mercedes, its flanks buckled and scraped, the windshield mangled as if it had taken a roll. The hairs on the nape of my neck stood on end. I expected to find Elegy - the small, sun-browned girl I'd first seen yesterday in the holo-cube - lying dead or injured on the front seat.
To my relief the Mercedes was empty.
Bartholomew cleared his throat. "Where is she?" he asked.
"I'll drive this car back to the scene of the accident," Roberts said. He beckoned the chauffeur. "You'll have to direct me. Standish, you bring Perry in my pick-up." He indicated a small truck in the parking lot.
While Roberts and the chauffeur climbed into the Mercedes, we shepherded Bartholomew across the tarmac towards the truck. Outside the air-conditioned confines of the complex, the heat was merciless.
Ralph took the wheel and Bartholomew sat between us. We lurched from the car-park and along the straight, raised road after the battered Mercedes.
Bartholomew sat with his hands on his knees, staring into the shimmering heat haze ahead of us. I wanted to yell at him that he could show some sign of emotion, that we would fully understand.
"Why didn't the driver bring her back?" he said at last, as we bucketed over the uneven surface. "Even if she were dead, he should have returned with her body..."
In the driver's seat, Ralph gripped the wheel and stared grimly ahead. I said, "Roberts wouldn't be coming out here if she'd died..." I felt faint at the thought of what injuries Elegy might have sustained.
Ten minutes later the road began to climb into a range of low hills, no more than an outcropping of rocks and boulders, the only feature on the face of the flat, wind-sculpted desert. The surface of the road deteriorated and the truck lurched drunkenly from rut to pot hole and back again.
We rounded a bend. Ahead, the Mercedes had pulled into the side of the road. As Ralph eased the truck to a halt behind it, Roberts and the chauffeur climbed out, crossed the road and walked out onto a flat slab of rock. The chauffeur pointed to something below him.
"Christ," I said, unable to stop myself. "She's down there."
I jumped from the cab and ran across the road. The result of the Mercedes' prolonged skid was imprinted on the tarmac like double exclamation marks. Crystallised glass and flakes of paint littered the great anvil of rock across which the car had rolled.
Roberts was kneeling over a narrow fissure. The rock, perhaps the size of an Oasis dome, had split into two uneven sections. One section comprised the greater part, while the other was no more than a sliver, perhaps a metre thick.
I joined Roberts and the African and stared into the crevice. Ten metres down, wedged upright and illuminated by a bright shaft of sunlight, was Elegy Perpetuum. Her head was turned at an unnatural angle, clamped between the two great slabs. She was staring up at us with an expression that comprised both terror and entreaty.
Ralph and Bartholomew joined us.
Ralph, in a gesture of