Chapter Three: Twilight Hunting
Marlene fell into her bed as the sun was rising. Who knew catching up could be so exhausting? There has to be a better time for things like this. Her head hit the pillow, and for a few moments she contemplated the furniture of her hotel room. It began to get fuzzy, and her eyes closed at last.
The door flew open. Marlene shook, and would have cursed if she weren't too exhausted to do so.
"I've got to find out more about what happened!" Brian shouted. "Marlene, what's your problem?"
"Do what you want," Marlene muttered into her pillow.
"Are you--do you have a hangover?"
"Not exactly," his partner replied. "Out all night. Want to sleep."
Brian almost fell over, and had to catch himself in the doorway. "Were you out with a man?"
"Go find out the truth or whatever," she told him. "That's an order from your superior."
"You were with a guy!" Brian started laughing. Marlene pushed herself out of bed and stalked forward in her pajamas. Brian looked up to find her glaring at him.
"None. Of. Your. Business," she said, slapped him back into the hallway, and slammed the door.
"Wonder what's bugging her," Brian said, shoving his hands in his pockets and heading out for the library.
*
"It's friggin' deserted," Brian murmured as he entered the library. The only people there were a librarian listening to a radio behind her desk and a young woman sprawled on a couch reading a book.
Brian walked up to the desk. "Excuse me," he said, and the librarian pushed her headphones down to her shoulders. She gave him an annoyed look.
"May I help you?" She sounded insincere. Brian could hear her music from the other side of the desk.
"I'm looking for books about the second landing," Brian began.
"History is in the second aisle from the windows back there," the librarian replied before he could say another word.
"Um...thanks," Brian replied, giving her a look over his shoulder before heading back to the aisle she indicated. She pushed her headphones back over her ears and completely ignored him.
The books on the shelves seemed to be in no order whatsoever. He gave up on trying to find any kind of sense to their arrangement and started working his way across from the top left.
A few minutes later, the girl who had been sitting on the couch entered the aisle. She ran her finger quickly along the books on the opposite side of the aisle, occasionally selecting one and adding it to the stock she held against her chest. She seemed oblivious to Brian's observation of her actions.
Finally, she presented him with her collection.
"The selection here's not so good, so I'm giving you the best ones I could find." She put the books into his hands. "Not great, but you're not going to find much in a town like this."
"The...selection?" Brian murmured. He'd never been in a library any bigger than this one.
"Here, let me show you." The woman took one of the books back from the stack she'd given him and flipped through it. She handed it back to him, open to a page-sized photograph of a gigantic library. The ceilings were easily three times as high as those in this library, and there were shelves that reached to the tops of the walls, loaded with books. Brian read the caption aloud.
"The Library of Congress, two weeks before its destruction in the fourth world war." He looked up at the woman. "This was on...Earth, right?"
Her hair was cut unevenly, and had a tendency to fall into one of her eyes. Red highlights caught the light, stark against her black hair. "Yeah," she said, unbothered by his stare. "That book's mostly about Earth, but the last couple chapters are about the second landing."
Brian closed the book. "You seem to know a lot about this stuff."
She just shrugged. "Well, I was born there."
"You were? Really? Then, you came over with the fleet, right? Oh...but you must've been too young to remember." She didn't even look twenty-five, but she would have to have been at least that old to have come on the ships from Earth. "Are your parents in town? Can I talk to them?"
"My parents are dead," the girl said.
"Oh." Brian winced. "I'm sorry."
"Don't worry about it," she said. "Even if they were around, no one who came from Earth likes to talk about it. But if you want to understand what went on at the Second Landing, you have to understand Earth. That's my theory, anyway."
"Do you know about it?" Brian asked hungrily. The woman shrugged.
"As much as anyone," she said. "Enough to know that there are many rumors. Some say that only Vash the Stampede could have brought about such a catastrophe."
"Vash wouldn't do that!" Brian shouted, then winced, realizing that he wasn't supposed to raise his voice in a library. "The rumors about Vash are wrong," he said quietly. "People...died. Vash wouldn't kill innocent people like that."
"If he were indeed anything more than a legend," the woman replied.
"He was real," Brian said. "I work for the Bernadelli ST division. It's named for my famous forerunners, Meryl Stryfe and Milly Thompson. My partner, in fact, happens to be--"
"Vash probably wasn't involved," the woman interrupted. "The incident that brought down the flagship must have taken place on that ship."
"Hey--if you've made, like, a study of this, do you know about the Twilight?" Brian asked her eagerly.
"You're far too eager to create monsters out of nothing," she said. "The people raised on this planet have far too much faith in the infallibility of the 'lost technology.' Accidents happen. Even spaceships malfunction. It was a risk everyone was willing to take to escape Earth."
"I...never introduced myself," said Brian. "My name is Brian Darrow." He reached out a hand to shake hers, and all the books tumbled to the floor.
"I'm Sandhya," she replied, helping him to pick up the books, her lips curling into a smile. "Why do you care so much about the landing, anyway?"
"Because it's weird," Brian replied. "And...well, everyone came from Earth originally, right?"
"But we had reason to leave it behind."
"That doesn't mean I just want to forget about it," Brian said.
"That's smart of you. People are too eager to forget their mistakes, rather than remember and learn from them."
"You think so?" Brian said.
"No one likes to admit their own foolishness. We'd rather pretend nothing happened."
"Boy, I know what you mean...I work in insurance. People make up all sorts of stories to make it sound like things weren't their fault. Like this Dr. Fulton guy..."
"I need to get going," Sandhya interrupted.
"Wait! I...I would really like to talk to you. You seem to know more about this than anyone else..."
"Not right now. Some other time, perhaps?"
"Um...are you doing anything later tonight?" Sandhya shook her head. "Do you want to, like, go to dinner with me?" Brian asked nervously. "I mean, I can pay and everything, I'm not just going to sap your knowledge for nothing..."
"Hey, if you're paying, it sounds good to me," she replied. "Where and when?"
"How about...the Dragon Jade Flower Drum on Fourth Street? At, like 6:30?"
"That will be fine."
Brian knew that he must be grinning like a fool, but Sandhya either didn't notice or didn't care. She waved good-bye to him and left.
*
Val and Spike entered a different hotel, still several hundred iles from June City. "Room for one, please," Val told the hotel receptionist.
"That'll be forty double dollars," the lady behind the desk replied, and Val shelled out the money. "Thank you." The receptionist handed Val a key. "Room 231, near the west staircase on the second floor."
"Thanks," Val replied. She looked back and saw Spike following her.
"I'm with her," Spike told the receptionist cheerfully, and the two women received a skeptical look.
"What are you doing?" Val demanded of her partner.
"I don't have enough money to get a room of my own," Spike explained.
"That's not my problem."
"I won't bother you, I promise! I'll sleep on the floor, and I won't go through your stuff, and I'll pay you back, I promise, and I—"
Val groaned. "If you really don't want to bother me, you would shut your mouth!"
"Okay, okay, I can shut up," Spike said. Val rolled her eyes, and Spike kept her mouth clamped conspicuously shut.
The silence was eerie. Spike would almost forget, and open her mouth, then remember she was busy shutting up and clamp her lips back together. Val unwrapped the cross and polished it, and Spike sat on a chair, swinging her legs and staring out the window. She made an odd face and reached for the pad of paper, found a pen, and pulled the cap off with her teeth. She started scribbling, and then showed the paper to Val.
"Can I hum?" it said.
"I don't care if you talk, Spike," Val groaned, "I just wish that you could keep it to a minimum."
"I'm sorry that I bother you," Spike replied, sounding rather sincere.
"Don't worry about it…"
"Really?" Spike brightened.
"It's an expression," Val explained, twitching.
*
"Hey Marlene..."
"Hey what?"
When Brian returned to the hotel, he found his partner typing away at her typewriter. She didn't even look up from her work to reply.
"Guess who's got a date tonight?"
"I haven't a clue. Certainly not my partner."
"Ha-ha! I met a girl at the library. She knows a lot about the second landing and Earth and stuff and she's going to meet me at the Dragon Jade Flower Drum tonight."
"So it's a business dinner."
Brian pouted. "No, it's a date cleverly disguised as a business dinner," he corrected her. "You have to see her, Marlene. She's really pretty."
"I'll take your word for it," Marlene replied, still typing away. "It's really a shame, though..."
"What? What's a shame?"
"I already made us plans for dinner tonight. But if you're not going to be able to join us, that's a shame."
"Sorry, Marlene, but given a choice between you and this girl--wait a second, what do you mean, 'us'?"
"Oh, nothing. I can see that you have more important plans."
"Marlee-ene!" Brian stamped his foot. "I hate it when you do this to me!"
"And I hate it when you whine. Fine, then. We were supposed to have dinner with Vash the Stampede, but since you're busy--"
"Wha-a-at?" Brian gasped, suddenly hovering over her. "You're kidding, right? You've got to be kidding."
Marlene shook her head. "No kidding. My family's kept in contact with him over the years, but I hadn't seen him since I was a little kid. I was surprised he recognized me when we ran into each other yesterday."
"You-met-Vash-the-Stampede?!" Brian could feel his brain going into overload. "You-actually-know-him?! Why didn't you tell me?!?!"
"Probably because I knew your reaction would be something like this," Marlene groaned.
"Like what? Are you saying I'm overreacting? I'm not overreacting! This is Vash the Stampede we're talking about."
"If you're going to act like this, it's better if you don't come. You'd be an embarassment to all of us."
"No, I can be calm," Brian plopped down onto the bed and concentrated on taking slow, deep breaths. "I'm calm. I'm calm. I'm--oh my god, I get to have dinner with Vash the Stampede!"
"That's funny. I thought you were going on a date?" Marlene noted.
Brian finally sobered. "Oh, man, you're right! I have to choose...Vash or Sandhya? Vash or Sandhya? Marlene, how can I choose?"
His partner rolled her eyes. "I suppose, since you say this date of yours is an authority on the second landing, we could always invite Vash along to that Jade Drum Flower May Dragon Phoenix Lily, or whatever it's called."
"Dragon Jade Flower Drum," Brian corrected her, brightening a bit.
"It won't be a romantic dinner for two, but at least no one will get stood up. Does that work for you?"
"Oh yeah!" Brian looked so sparkly and happy that Marlene couldn't help but catch a bit of it and smile. "Marlene, you're the best partner ever and I love you!" He hugged her tightly, almost knocking over her chair.
"Take it easy, kid," Marlene told him. "Dinner's still hours away, and in the meantime a pile of paperwork is calling our names. I've got about half the Fulton case done, but that pile there still needs to be filed away."
For once, Brian didn't even whine. "Anything for you, ma'am," he said. "I owe you so much!"
"I know," his partner replied. "Don't think I'll let you forget it."