Sooner Dead (Gamma World) - Mel Odom [8]
“Perhaps I did.” Colleen shrugged and looked perturbed. “It’s this world, Dr. Pardot. Things just aren’t the same as they were back at the lab.”
Back at the lab. Not home. Those were distinctive word choices—revealing more insight into the tall, angular woman. As a general rule, Colleen Trammel was a closed-mouth person and not at all inclined to gossip. The security men gave her a wide berth as well, but it wasn’t out of fear, as their dealings with Pardot were. Rather, her personality was either vacuous or filled with ordinary snobbery for the hired help.
“Nonsense.” Pardot adjusted his glasses and pinned the woman with his harsh gaze. “You’re sensitive to these things, Dr. Trammell. You would have known. You would have felt them. That’s what you do.”
“There was … something. I felt it three days ago.”
Stampede stepped closer to them. “That was when Hella discovered the predator on our trail.”
Pardot didn’t look at the bisonoid. “And you didn’t think to mention this?”
Trammell shook her head. “That wasn’t the ripple we were waiting for, Dr. Pardot. Also, I couldn’t tell how far away this ripple was.”
“She’s a precog.” Hella whispered into the comm, low enough that no one around her could hear.
Stampede gave a slight nod to let her know he’d received the message.
A shiver passed through Hella. She didn’t care for precogs. Anyone with near-mystical ability to sense things or do things with forces of nature bothered her. Stampede had powers of his own that came from the same weird genetic cocktail that spread throughout the world. Hella’s nanobots were pure, definable science. They were quantifiable and she could depend on them.
Precog and psi powers tended to be somewhat unpredictable even in the hands of a master. Stampede struggled with his control at times as well.
Despite everything she’d seen, Hella had never met anyone in tune with the ripples. A skill like that could be worth a lot. Most people avoided the ripples because there was no telling what the time/world holes would vomit out. But she understood why Pardot didn’t lash out at the woman.
“Not telling me was a mistake, Dr. Trammell.” Pardot grimaced. “You know how I feel about mistakes.”
“Yes, Dr. Pardot.”
“Don’t let this happen again.” Pardot spun in a perfect half circle and left Colleen standing there.
Hella blew out a long, slow breath and spoke into the comm. “Tell me again why we need this job.”
“Because we’re no good lying around. We lose our edge.”
Hella snorted. If someone lost his edge in the Redblight, he was dead.
“And I’m interested.”
“One of these days, your curiosity is going to get us killed.”
Stampede smiled in the rain and the campfire glinted from his golden nose ring. “Maybe.”
Hella tended her wounds in her tent then, unable to sleep because the tent smelled of wet bisonoid fur and maybe because she was still irked at Klein Pardot, took a feedbag to Daisy.
The mountain boomer slept curled around a tree and was relatively dry. The lizard’s multicolored skin still gleamed wetly, though. That was how her hide always looked. She was four meters long, including her prehensile tail, which was half her length. When she stood on four legs, she came almost up to Hella’s shoulder. Her scales were mottled gray and green and brown, but black bands surrounded her neck and shoulders. Those distinctive patterns gave her species its name: collared lizard.
Daisy slept with her head propped on her forelimbs and looked almost childlike to Hella. When Daisy had first hatched, Hella had been able to hold her in one hand. But that was before the wild card mutation gene had kicked in.
“I know you’re not sleeping.” Hella ducked under a low-hanging limb to get to Daisy. “You breathe differently when you’re really sleeping.”
With obvious irritation, the lizard popped open one black eye and gazed at Hella.
“Be mad if you want to, but I’ll just take this feedbag back to the tent.”
Daisy stirred then, lifting her head and turning it toward Hella. The lizard chirped disconsolately. That was another