Free Moonseed by Stephen Baxter Page A

exposed. All three plugs had been left with a sharp western face and a long, shallow eastern debris scarp. To Henry, musing, it looked as if some gigantic explosion had overwhelmed the area from the west, leaving these tails of debris, sheltered by the plugs.
    He walked to the west along Princes Street. The shops were full of the new radiation-proofed clothing lines, heavily advertised. Here was a Realtor—no, an estate agent —with a lot of properties price-hiked because they had cellars, or room for underground development.
    He passed the train station entrance and the roof of an underground mall, decorated with obscure statues of what looked like abseilers. He came to a steep road called the Mound, which twisted up the glacial tail to the Castle, a brooding pile on top of its own basaltic plug. The Castle looked as out of place, viewed from this glitzy plastic shopping area, as a bubo in the armpit of a supermodel.
    He thought about climbing up there, taking a look around.
    Or, he could go back to that little mall by the station, get under cover, and have a coffee.
    He went back to the mall.
    It turned out to be a complex of staircases and escalators and glass-walled elevators. It was brightly lit and crowded, though Muzak pumped out from too many places. There were fountains, with more of those bizarre stainless steel abseilers.
    At least it was warmer here. But he couldn’t find anything that looked right. What he’d really like to find, he thought, was a big out-of-town-style Barnes and Noble, lined with books, with a fat Starbucks coffee shop on the end of it. You’re getting parochial, Henry.
    He came to a shop called The World Store. It was just the kind of place you’d expect to find in a mall like this: full of bead necklaces, wooden carvings, bamboo curtains. At the back there were shelves full of rocks: sparse metalframes lit by spot lamps, the merchandise glowing.
    There was a girl behind a counter at the back, blonde and slim, sorting through some kind of box of samples.
    On impulse, Henry walked in. The girl looked up, took him in at a glance—so it seemed—and went back to her rocks.
    On her desk, there was a card. THE WORLD STORE. S. Kapur & J. Dundas, props. Telephone, fax and E-mail.
    Dundas. He remembered the rocks in the car, Mike’s crystal-gazing sister.
    Henry drifted past the wooden elephants and pan pipes and other New Age crap, and made for the racks of minerals. It was mostly the usual eye-catching commercial stuff, sliced geodes and quartz crystals and pyrite clumps. Some of it looked native, but most of it was polished, even dyed and carved. Here was a necklace of bottle-green beads, for instance. And he found a tiger carved from a shining black rock, covered in pale gray blotches.
    He looked sideways at the girl.
    She was older than Mike, maybe as old as thirty, but she had the same Nordic coloring. Blonde hair tied back, revealing a composed, thoughtful face. Strong hands. Blue eyes you could swim in. One hell of a set of cheekbones, the essence of beauty. No body parts pierced that he could see, which was a good thing. She was eating something. A rice cake, maybe.
    She glanced up and caught him looking at her. She put down the rice cake.
    He was holding the tiger; he fumbled and nearly dropped it.
    “You pay for breakages,” she said. Her accent was the same as Mike’s—soft Scottish—but her tone was cold.
    “Sorry.” He put the tiger back. “I was just thinking.”
    “What?”
    “You ought to put a best-before date on that tiger. Ultimately it’s going to turn gray all over—”
    “I know. In sixty million years. It’s snowflake obsidian.”
    He nodded, surprised, approving. “You know about rocks.”
    “I know my job.” Her eyes narrowed as she studied him. “You’re an American. And you just arrived.”
    He faced her. “Is it that obvious?”
    She looked him up and down. “Look at the way you’re dressed. It’s only February, for God’s sake.”
    “You