Rarities Unlimited 04 - The Color of Death

distracting sway andshine of her unbound hair. And her hands in her hair, rubbing, sliding, just the way he wanted to do. She was making him nuts and she didn’t even notice. “Are the mines you’re talking about private or government?”
    She rolled her head on her shoulders. “It varies, but in the end it doesn’t matter.”
    Sam looked at the machinery and told himself he was an idiot for being aroused by something as simple as a woman with a headache. But there it was, and he was stuck with it. He wished he’d put his jacket on when he got up earlier—it was long enough to cover the woody he was fighting against. And losing.
    “Why doesn’t it matter?” he asked.
    “Government is always the choke point of trade,” Kate said. “In some countries armed soldiers confiscate stones dug by miners and call it taxation. In others, the bandits are running things, which makes them a government of sorts. Then the taxation is direct and brutal. In those countries Joe Schmuck is a man who sweats his balls off year after year in hope of digging out a stone big enough to hide and retire on.”
    “Does it happen?” Sam asked, looking back at her.
    “Sure.”
    “Often?”
    “The odds of finding that big stone are slightly worse than those of winning a big state lottery and then running naked through a gauntlet of thieves and tax collectors to get your prize to the bank.”
    The corner of Sam’s mouth kicked up.
    She wanted to lick it, so she looked away.
    “Most of the time,” she said, rubbing the back of her neck so that she wouldn’t reach for him, “the miner just finds a stone big enough to get himself drunk or laid with enough left over to buy food for the next week of gambling. Only instead of going to the corner convenience store to buy another lottery ticket, these Joe Schmucks go back to the mines and gamble in unsafe pits and die young.”
    “But not without hope.”
    She sighed and clipped her hair loosely at the base of her neck.The hair wouldn’t stay put that way for long, but the way Sam was watching it—and her—was making her pulse kick.
    My problem, not his, Kate told herself bitterly. Federal robots don’t think with their dicks. In fact, I wonder if they even know they have one.
    “You’re right,” she said. “In nearly all cases this is voluntary rather than slave labor. It’s just that I’ll never forget the first time I saw mining in Brazil. Or Thailand. It was a real shock for this First World girl. Of course, that was before I really understood the first axiom of buying rough gems.”
    “What’s that?”
    “The closer the mine, the more likely you’ll buy synthetics.”
    Sam laughed and wished she hadn’t tamed her intriguing hair with the clip. It was making things easier on him, but sometimes easy just wasn’t as much fun as hard.
    That was something else he wasn’t going to think about.
    “No joke,” Kate said.
    Her dark glance drifted over him. Pale shirt with sleeves rolled up. The weapon and harness she’d been afraid to touch when she tucked him into an uncomfortable bed on her couch. Dark jeans that hinted at long legs and bluntly stated that he was male.
    And aroused.
    Okay, so he’s not a robot. So what? Healthy men get hard over toothpaste commercials.
    And from where she stood, that was one healthy male.
    “At mine sites I found synthetic rough mixed with so-so real rough,” Kate said, looking everywhere but at him. “A hundred yards away, I found synthetic locally cut stones mixed with batches of so-so natural locally cut gems. I found buckets of synthetic stuff in local jewelry stores whose owners assured me they carried only natural gems lovingly set in eighteen-carat gold. Yeah. Sure. And I’m the Queen of the Damned.”
    “So the closer the mine, the better the chance of fraud?”
    “That’s my experience.” She wondered if it was safe to look at him again and then decided it might never be safe. “Someone whogoes to the backwaters of any country figuring to score big on a stone purchased directly from ‘ignorant’ miners or country folk is going to get taken for a real expensive ride.”
    “Voice of experience?”
    “I bought my share of crap,” she said wryly. “I think of it as the price of learning a business. Now I buy my rough through reputable wholesalers. I pay them a markup, sure, but travel isn’t cheap and neither is experience.”
    Sam walked over to one of the worktables and stared down at the mysterious equipment.