Black Sun Rising

Chapter Fourteen

"Shhh!" Nina hissed, her finger pressed to her lips. "You'll get us caught!" She took Purdue by the hand and led him back toward their tent, then remembered that Julia Rose and Hunter would still be sleeping there. "Damn it, is there anywhere we can go for a bit of privacy? I'm fucking sick of all this communal stuff."

"After only a day," Purdue smirked. "Patience really isn't one of your virtues, is it, my darling? Might I have my device back now?"

Flushing slightly, Nina handed over the folding tablet. Purdue opened it to the size of his palm and reactivated the light, spilling a pool of illumination onto the sand. "This way," he said.

Nina followed him past their tent, away from the campsite — not toward the river this time, but in the direction of a rock formation about a hundred yards from the site. On the far side of the rocks, the ground dropped away to form a little hollow, large enough for them both to sit.

"How did you know about this place?" Nina asked. "Have you been out here before?"

"No," said Purdue. "There was no need. I am perfectly capable of remotely conducting all the reconnaissance I need on a place like this."

"But how? You can't exactly look a place like this up on Google Maps. I tried, back when you told me this was where we would be going. You can only zoom in far enough to get a distant aerial view, there's nothing at this level of detail."

"I think my methods might have been a little more sophisticated than yours, Nina. Look." He opened up the tablet to its full size, a little larger than a sheet of paper and about as thin. Nina had seen him do this several times before and she had wondered exactly what the device was made of. He had explained it to her, but Purdue always struggled to talk about his work in terms that a layperson could understand, and his talk of gelatinous properties, molecular scale electronics, and catalytic homopolymerization had gone over her head. All she knew was that it was infinitely flexible, incapable of running out of battery life, and sometimes struggled to get a signal in some of the rooms in Wrichtishousis, Purdue's home near Edinburgh.

He whispered an instruction to the device, which began a slideshow of images of Parashant. They covered the entire area in high resolution, picking out the tiniest details. Looking at these, Purdue would have known the place like the back of his hand before his arrival. "I surveyed the area thoroughly," he said, with a hint of pride in his voice.

"But how? Did you get someone to come out here and take these for you?"

"Nothing of the kind. I took them myself, from my desk at Wrichtishousis. Remote photography is increasingly easy if you have access to the right technology." The tone of his voice had tipped over from pride to smugness.

"What, you mean like a drone or something?"

"Precisely."

Not for the first time, Nina stared at Purdue and wondered what it must be like to be him. To have that perfect sense of entitlement, to live in a world where, for the right price, all problems had solutions, and to have the funds to take advantage of them… Once again, the thought of it made her uncomfortable. She focused on the images on the device. The nook in which they were now sitting was depicted in detail, from one angle after another. The river was shown so clearly that she could discern every pebble on its bed. Then there was the campsite itself. Seen from above, it was clear that it had been used for these purposes before — leftover stones and stumps gave away the positions of previous connection tents and teepees, more or less where they stood now. The shape of the fire pit was visible, its thin covering of sand not quite concealing it. And close by, a line in the sand…

"Is that a door?" Nina asked, pointing to the suspicious line. "Look, just there — it looks like a trapdoor or something, doesn't it?"

Purdue repositioned his glasses and peered through them. "You know, it does… " he mused. "I am surprised that I hadn't spotted that."

"What do you think, Sam?" Nina turned to look for Sam and noticed for the first time that he had not followed them. "Shit. Where is he?"

Sam was, in fact, right where they had left him — collapsed in the sand at the entrance to the connection tent. He had rolled onto his back and was now gazing at the stars, watching them squirm and dance. He felt as if he could reach out and touch them, so he gave it a try. First he plucked a single star from the sky (which, he was surprised to learn, had the texture of velvet.) Emboldened, he swept a large handful of them into his palm, then worried about the effects of messing around with the solar system and tried to reposition them. He tried to recall the layouts of the constellations, something he had not considered since his brief time in Scouts. Nothing looked right.

Oh well, he thought, nothing I can do about it now. Whatever it is, it'll just have to happen. He released the remaining stars, scattering them at random across the sky, and let his arm drop back onto the sand. He closed his eyes, suddenly exhausted, and let himself start drifting off to sleep. He felt a familiar, comforting weight on his chest. Must be Bruichladdich, he thought. How did he get here from Paddy's? Cats do that sometimes, I suppose. They follow their owners. I read that somewhere. They stow away. He's a good cat, coming here to find me. I wish he'd shift over a little bit, he's squashing my lungs… but he'll be so comfortable. I can't move him. I'll be fine. I'm so tired…

The next thing he knew, a black bird had swooped down and lifted him gently in its talons, cradling him as they rose into the air. It lifted him higher and higher, up toward the stars he had so recently rearranged. He could see them at close quarters now, much bigger than when he had held them in his hand, and was disappointed to see that they were nothing but large white buttons. But none of that mattered. The condor was carrying him into the brightness of the Moon. Soon the light would consume him, and he would be asleep, and everything would be as peaceful as the cat curled up on his abdomen.

"He's not here!" Nina looked frantically around the campsite. "If he's not here and he's not back in the tent, where is he?"

"It's only speculation, but perhaps he chose to sleep in another tent. He might be giving us a wide berth in order to avoid any possible confrontation with me."

Nina looked at Purdue with curiosity. Was he really jealous? It was so hard to tell how he felt — not just about her, but about anything. His anger was impossible to detect until it became white hot rage, which had never been directed at her but which she had seen at close quarters and been unnerved by. His happiness was likewise indistinguishable until it spilled over into childlike glee. Even in bed his reactions were difficult to judge. She always had the sense that he was constantly analyzing every experience, to the point where he could not simply feel an honest reaction to something without it being extreme.

"Look, Dave… " Nina twisted her fingers together awkwardly. "I know it probably looked a bit suspicious, waking up and finding that Sam and I were both gone, and then coming out here and finding the two of us together. But honestly, there's nothing going on. I just couldn't sleep and I was feeling trapped in the tent and wanted someone to go for a smoke with."

He nodded. "I know."

"You do?" She scoured his face for any clue that might tell her what was going on. She found nothing.

"Oh, yes. Or if there was, you would be concealing it remarkably well. It's true that your hair is a little disheveled, which could be consistent with an act of passion, but you do not seem guilty. You aren't blushing, you have not been touching your throat, which you always do when you have something to hide. There is no flush across your chest, which I would expect to see if you were sexually aroused, and the smell of your sweat is unlike the scent that you give off in those circumstances."

Nina was perplexed. On the one hand, his analysis was absolutely accurate, and it was certainly preferable to an unwarranted jealous scene. She could only imagine what her ex, Steven, would have made of a situation like this. But on the other, it was infuriating to be read so calmly. Surely a normal human being would have at least a slight flicker of jealousy. She tried to imagine how she would have felt if she had caught Purdue out here with Julia Rose, or perhaps with Sara. She couldn't make the image work in her head. It was too unlike him. She had no doubt that if Purdue felt the need to look outside of their relationship, he would simply tell her. In all likelihood, he would probably ask her to join in.

This is not a helpful train of thought, she told herself firmly. Setting it aside, she gave Purdue a brief recap of what she and Sam had witnessed in the connection tent. "I don't know what was in the steam, but I've been to a couple of parties where people have been using poppers and the smell sort of reminded me of that. They were throwing a lot of herbs around, but what I was smelling wasn't entirely natural. I think Sam got more of a lungful than I did — he was up a bit higher. I was crouched down with my head about here, where the air was clearer. What if he's wandering around somewhere, high as a kite? We should find him."

"I doubt that we can," said Purdue. "Look around. We have nothing but desert. You and I, searching together with just a single light source between us, would cover these dunes and hollows slowly. Besides which, Sam's reaction to the drug would have to have been considerably stronger than yours to send him off on such addled ramblings, and that seems unlikely. Come back to bed. I would be prepared to bet that Sam will reappear in the morning, having spent the night in another tent — and if not, we can mobilize the entire group to search for him."

He held out a hand to Nina. Suddenly she felt weary. Purdue was probably right. Things had been a little weird between Sam and her thanks to her relationship with Purdue, and it made sense that he would have made himself scarce. Dawn was just a few hours away. They would find out what had happened to him then. She let Purdue take her hand and lead her back toward their tent, where she lay in the darkness, his arm around her, unable to sleep.

Sam, on the other hand, slept soundly and dreamlessly. When at last he woke up, he was drawn gently back to consciousness by a soft voice speaking his name.

He opened his eyes to see a white ceiling above him, lit by gently glowing white lights. He turned his head and felt a soft pillow beneath his cheek. As he shifted his body, he felt a light blanket move with him. The place smelled clean, slightly chemical… medical. The gentle voice belonged to Sara, who was sitting at his bedside dressed in a silk trouser suit in pale gold.

"There you are, Sam," she smiled, laying a cool hand on his forehead. "You had us worried! How do you feel? Cody, give him some water."

"I'm fine," Sam rasped, gratefully accepting the glass of ice water. The liquid soothed his parched throat as he swallowed. "I think."

"You were lucky," she said, and held out a handful of half-mangled leaves for him to see. "We found these in your hand. I would assume that you recognize them, but if you got the leaves from someone who didn't tell you what they were, perhaps you don't. It's salvia. Salvia divinorum, to be exact. I guess you found them down by the river? Or did somebody give them to you?"

Sam's head ached as he tried to remember. He could not recall anything to do with leaves, and he said so.

"It's ok. People often don't remember what they've done when they are under the drug's influence, or recently released from it. Since these have obviously been chewed, I guess you were chewing them last night — in which case you were lucky to end up down here. A little while ago we had someone get high on salvia during a Vision Quest and he wandered out into the desert. By the time we found him he was extremely dehydrated and had to be airlifted to a hospital. So even though it's a legal high, we don't advise using it while you're here — or any other mood-altering substance, for that matter." She closed her fingers, crushing the leaves.

"Where is this?" Sam asked.

"This is our medical facility," Cody spoke up, leaning on the back of Sara's chair. "It's kind of basic, but we've got everything we need for cases such as yours."

"But… where is it?"

"Right beneath the connection tent!" Cody said. "No, it's ok, there's no need to look so weirded out. You didn't know it was here, and that's because we didn't tell you. We try to keep this place a secret so that all the delegates can feel like they're getting the authentic Parashant experience, hundreds of miles away from anything. They're not gonna feel like they're out here on their own if they know they've got this right downstairs, are they?" He flashed Sam a conspiratorial grin. "So don't go telling everybody, ok?"

Still bleary and half-awake, Sam agreed to keep the secret. Cody and Sara left him for another half hour, with strict instructions to finish the pint of water on the table beside him. When Cody returned, he got Sam back on his feet and led him down a white corridor to a kitchen, and between the two of them they carried that morning's breakfast up to the connection tent, ready for the delegates to start filing in.

Well, Sam thought, as he looked at the ovens, fridges, and microwaves lining the kitchen walls, that solves the mystery of the food. Maybe at some point I'll figure out what the hell happened last night and solve that one, too.