Deathstalker 07 - Deathstalker Return

put an arm round his waist. "You always know the right things to say, my dear. But when this is all over, you're going straight into a regeneration tank, and we're getting rid of those awful scars."
    "They serve a purpose," said Lewis, his harsh features falling into familiar dark lines. "These scars are reminders—to be more careful, more thoughtful about everything I do, because I can be killed so easily out here, and so can you. If you were killed… I wouldn't want to go on living, without you."
    She kissed him, to stop him saying such things, and afterwards Jesamine looked at Lewis's face for a long time, tracing its harsh lines with a gentle fingertip. "You have a face like a force of nature, Lewis.
    Hard, unyielding, but not unattractive. You could have altered it—become anonymously handsome, like everyone else. Why did you never change it?"
    "Because then I wouldn't have looked like me anymore. It would have been like wearing a mask.
    Wearing a lie. With me, what you see is pretty much what you get. I never changed my appearance for the same reason Anne never changed hers. Because we're proud of who we are."
    They both turned away from the mirror at the same time, and sat down together on the end of the bed.
    There were things they needed to talk about, things they'd been putting off, but the time had come. They could feel it. Lewis jumped in first, as he always did.
    "We can't go to Haden. We're not ready, Jes. Not yet."
    "Yes."
    "Have you ever been to Lachrymae Christi before?"
    "God, no, darling! Can't think of many who have, by choice. It may not be a leper colony anymore, but it's still a desolate bloody place by all accounts, at the arse end of civilization, with no comforts to speak off and not a single theater worth playing. Whole planet is one big jungle, and they probably eat tourists on sight."
    "We have to go there, Jes."
    "I know, I know…"
    "Tobias Moon is still there—still alive, supposedly. The only remaining survivor of the Madness Maze, from the age of the Great Rebellion. Owen's companion, and his friend. If he's still alive, and if he'll talk to us, Moon could tell us things that no one else could."
    "Not the only Maze survivor," said Jesamine. "Samuel Chevron turned out to be really John Silence, remember?"
    "Was he? He claimed to be Chevron to us, and Silence to Carrion, but he also claimed to be dead. So I think I'll take everything he said with several grains of salt, until I've some way of confirming he is who he says he is."
    "Carrion recognized him as Silence."
    "Carrion has been living as an Ashrai for two centuries. After that long, probably all humans look the same to him."
    "But he might be John Silence. And he said we should go straight to Haden." Jesamine frowned, and shuddered suddenly. "He wanted us to go into the Madness Maze. I don't think I could do that, Lewis.
    Not ever. It might kill us, or make us something other than human, and I don't know which scares me more."
    "I think we're all scared of the Maze, Jes," said Lewis, kissing her bare shoulder reassuringly. "All the more reason to acquire as much dependable information as we can before we even think about going anywhere near Haden. Besides, Haden is the one place Finn will be sure to think we're going to. You can bet good money he's arranged a really nasty surprise for us there. No, first Tobias Moon, and then we'll think about Haden—and the Maze."
    "He could be dead. No one's seen Moon for years."
    "He was a Hadenman, before he went into the Maze. God knows what he was afterwards."
    "I don't think God has anything to do with the Maze," Jesamine said softly.
    Some time later, fully dressed and properly turned out, they went back to the bridge. Rose was sitting cross-legged on the floor in one corner, polishing her sword blade with long, easy strokes of the cloth.
    She didn't look up at their entrance. Brett was sitting slumped in the pilot's chair, scowling at nothing. He jumped up immediately when Lewis came in, and slouched over to lean against the far wall. Lewis hid a smile. He knew what was wrong with Brett Random. The con man had emptied the medicine cabinet of every drug worth taking, and never being one to plan ahead where his pleasures were concerned, had used them all up. Brett had spent the last several days entirely sober, loudly declaring it to be an unnatural state, and that he hated it. Even alien porn had lost its thrill. Although he would never have admitted it, Brett was actually grateful