leg and burrowing into his well-sunscreened flesh. Corvus hadn’t changed much since her time with him.
Li had been waiting for her at the other side of the decon tent. They’d given him back his clothes, but he looked deflated, much less in control of things than he had when she’d first met him early in the day.
“You okay?”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
But they both knew the decon procedure, for all its official aura, didn’t do much other than make people feel better. It was to make the military appear useful. Whenever you were doing something , you were solving the problem, and the decon made the subject of its gentle ministrations feel as if something was being done. It was a flurry of action intended to give some blanket of security.
Tara knew she should be worried about whatever radiation she had been exposed to, what damage it may have done to her cells as it silently worked throughout her body. Yet, she couldn’t summon any fear. Instead, she felt numb to the possibility of further harm to her body, indifferent. Maybe it was because a few unseen synchrotron particles bouncing under her skin seemed so much less hazardous than the scars crisscrossing it. She’d survived the reality of those; the invisible force of radiation didn’t seem real in comparison.
Involuntarily, she thought of her mother, of the radiation she’d been bombarded with to stop the spread of cancer. It seemed difficult to fear anything that couldn’t be seen, and even harder to expect that something so invisible could cure cancer.
Tara shrugged into sweats and tucked her feet under the bedspread. It smelled vaguely like mothballs, but anything was better than freezing and smelling like dish soap. A portable printer whirred on the nightstand, connected to her laptop computer. She’d worried spit had damaged the camera’s memory card, but the card reader had managed to pull all the images she’d captured from the scene. She pulled a sheaf of papers out of the printer and began to page through them.
They weren’t her best work. Taken from bad angles, with the camera covered in a plastic bag, some details were indistinct. The seams of the bag sometimes got in the way, creating glare and blur. But she had managed to get several decent shots of the caldera, the ruined accelerator, and Magnusson’s office, though the lighting was very poor. She scanned them from margin to margin, looking for details she’d missed in her distracted state of claustrophobia.
She drew one from the pile, a decent shot of the caldera, spreading from end to end of the shot. A white-garbed figure was walking away from the camera. Something about the landscape, the ebb and flow of the jagged edges of it, seemed familiar. Her intuition prickled, and she climbed out of bed to open her luggage.
Her Tarot cards, still tied carefully in her mother’s scarf, were tucked in the lining of her bag. Her Tarot journal and pen were safely wrapped beside it. She took them to the bed, the cards still cold from being in the back of Li’s car all day. They warmed as she flipped through them, faceup, searching for the image that seemed familiar. She wiped her mind clean of thoughts, fanning the intuitive flash that had begun to take root. Some bit of information was lodged in her subconscious, and perhaps the cards could shake it free for her.
There. She pulled out the Eight of Cups, placed it beside the photograph of the caldera. The card depicted a cloaked man, his shoulders slumped in despair, leaving behind eight stacked chalices. He fled into the night across a desolate landscape, leaving those golden treasures behind. The jagged edges of the gray landscape appeared very similar to the edge of the caldera, and the man walking away from the camera had much the same set to the shoulders as the man in the card.
She contemplated the card, jotted it down in her notebook:
Eight of Cups. . . disillusionment, abandonment of unfulfilling efforts.
She thought about
Li had been waiting for her at the other side of the decon tent. They’d given him back his clothes, but he looked deflated, much less in control of things than he had when she’d first met him early in the day.
“You okay?”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
But they both knew the decon procedure, for all its official aura, didn’t do much other than make people feel better. It was to make the military appear useful. Whenever you were doing something , you were solving the problem, and the decon made the subject of its gentle ministrations feel as if something was being done. It was a flurry of action intended to give some blanket of security.
Tara knew she should be worried about whatever radiation she had been exposed to, what damage it may have done to her cells as it silently worked throughout her body. Yet, she couldn’t summon any fear. Instead, she felt numb to the possibility of further harm to her body, indifferent. Maybe it was because a few unseen synchrotron particles bouncing under her skin seemed so much less hazardous than the scars crisscrossing it. She’d survived the reality of those; the invisible force of radiation didn’t seem real in comparison.
Involuntarily, she thought of her mother, of the radiation she’d been bombarded with to stop the spread of cancer. It seemed difficult to fear anything that couldn’t be seen, and even harder to expect that something so invisible could cure cancer.
Tara shrugged into sweats and tucked her feet under the bedspread. It smelled vaguely like mothballs, but anything was better than freezing and smelling like dish soap. A portable printer whirred on the nightstand, connected to her laptop computer. She’d worried spit had damaged the camera’s memory card, but the card reader had managed to pull all the images she’d captured from the scene. She pulled a sheaf of papers out of the printer and began to page through them.
They weren’t her best work. Taken from bad angles, with the camera covered in a plastic bag, some details were indistinct. The seams of the bag sometimes got in the way, creating glare and blur. But she had managed to get several decent shots of the caldera, the ruined accelerator, and Magnusson’s office, though the lighting was very poor. She scanned them from margin to margin, looking for details she’d missed in her distracted state of claustrophobia.
She drew one from the pile, a decent shot of the caldera, spreading from end to end of the shot. A white-garbed figure was walking away from the camera. Something about the landscape, the ebb and flow of the jagged edges of it, seemed familiar. Her intuition prickled, and she climbed out of bed to open her luggage.
Her Tarot cards, still tied carefully in her mother’s scarf, were tucked in the lining of her bag. Her Tarot journal and pen were safely wrapped beside it. She took them to the bed, the cards still cold from being in the back of Li’s car all day. They warmed as she flipped through them, faceup, searching for the image that seemed familiar. She wiped her mind clean of thoughts, fanning the intuitive flash that had begun to take root. Some bit of information was lodged in her subconscious, and perhaps the cards could shake it free for her.
There. She pulled out the Eight of Cups, placed it beside the photograph of the caldera. The card depicted a cloaked man, his shoulders slumped in despair, leaving behind eight stacked chalices. He fled into the night across a desolate landscape, leaving those golden treasures behind. The jagged edges of the gray landscape appeared very similar to the edge of the caldera, and the man walking away from the camera had much the same set to the shoulders as the man in the card.
She contemplated the card, jotted it down in her notebook:
Eight of Cups. . . disillusionment, abandonment of unfulfilling efforts.
She thought about
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