IV The Way Home
'That's it,' said Nathan breathlessly, after the last trip but one. That's the weapons part of it, anyway.'
'What's that you say?' Trask cocked his head on one side quizzically. 'What else is there?'
'Just someone who wants to say goodbye to you before she goes home for a while. And she's asked me to take her there - my way. But she wants to stop off here first.'
'She's asked you to -?' Trask drew air in a gasp. 'Nathan, wait .. .!' But too late, for the Necroscope had disappeared into thin air. A moment later he was back, setting down Zek on the floor as dainty as a dancer. And she passed from his arms into Trask's just as easily. Nathan was also carrying her suitcase.
'Zek doesn't seem to have your problem with it,' he told Trask. 'With the Mb'bius Continuum, I mean.'
'Ben.' She smiled, never giving Trask a moment to regain his equilibrium. 'I'm going home for a while. Back to Zante. I want a little time to think over what we talked about.'
David Chung coughed self-consciously and slipped silently from the room, but Nathan stayed. He knew what it was all about and felt no embarrassment.
'What we -?' Trask looked at her in his arms and drank her in. Zekintha Foener was beautiful; she always had been and Trask supposed she always would be. At five-nine, she was about an inch shorter than he himself, but where looks were concerned he had been at the back of the queue while she'd been right up front. Named by her Greek mother after Zakinthos, the island where she had been born, Zek was slim, leggy, blonde and blue-eyed. It was obvious from her colouring that she'd taken a lot more after her German father. Or maybe she'd taken after her Greek island birthplace itself, for Zakinthos was the Isle of Flowers. She must be, oh, some forty-nine or fifty years old now. Not that anyone would ever guess; she could just as easily be thirty-six or -seven.
Zek had her faults ... but they had always been there, and for Trask's money they only served to enhance her. It was these smallest of small flaws that made her perfect -perfect in his eyes, anyway. Her mouth, for example, with its soft, naturally moist lips just a fraction too full, which tended to tremble a little when she was angry. And the uneven jut of her jaw, also when she was upset, which seemed slightly more prominent on the right. ..
Abruptly, she brought him right back down to earth.
'Don't tell me you've forgotten?' Again her smile.
And Trask at once reddened up. 'No, I haven't forgotten. But... will you be safe back home?'
'Nathan is the one everyone is out to get,' she answered, her smile fading. 'Once he's gone, they'll forget about me soon enough. And probably about all of us.'
Two of the cavers came into the room to collect a bundle of arms and ammo. One of them paused a moment, looked at Trask and Nathan - and at Zek, wonderingly - and said, 'Anna Marie says it has to be soon. Well, we just want you to know: we'll be ready any time you are.'