by Karen Lord
Rafi nodded for the third time, using it as an excuse to dip his head lower and lower in the hope that his wet eyes would not be noticed. He took the small credit chip Dllenahkh extended to him and folded it safely in his fist. He endured his aunt’s quick, fierce hug without breaking down.
‘I’ll write,’ he promised, and turned away slightly to blink the salt water out of his vision.
The Commander, who had far better control of herself, embraced her husband and spoke a few quiet words to her friends. When Rafi could look directly at them once more, he saw a row of faces as calm as masks – but Dllenahkh’s eyes were worried, Tarik’s anguished and Grace (the hardest to bear), her eyes kept that hurt bewilderment caused by his impulsive words.
‘Time to go,’ said the Commander, again with the gentle touch to his shoulder, steering and strengthening him.
Rafi gave one final nod in a weak attempt to reassure, then turned and walked away with the Commander, feeling mildly annoyed by the inadequate moment of farewell. He knew it was a turning point in his life – why did it feel so flat and mundane? His emotions were confused, but somehow dampened rather than heightened, as if he was afraid to feel. He wondered if he would revisit the memory in later years and find it more moving – weighty with significance and poignant with nostalgia.
In later years, Rafi remembered the embarrassing moisture on his newly purchased travel token when Commander Nasiha took it from his sweating hand. He recalled that his nerves were so shot she had to fasten her comm to his wrist herself when his shaking fingers took too long. He tried hardest to remember her words. ‘I am going with the pilots. I will send word when I can. May your aunt forgive me.’
He did not remember having the slightest inkling that he would be the last of the Dllenahkh homestead to see Commander Nasiha alive.
*
The drive to the Dllenahkh homestead was long enough for Ntenman to learn that Cousin Ivali of Tirtha, now Goodwife Ivaliheni of Sadira-on-Cygnus, was far more handy with a draughtcar than he was and much more cheerful and relaxed than Serendipity. The drive from the front gate to the main complex of the homestead was long enough to discover that she was as baffled by the situation as Ntenman and Serendipity put together.
The residents of the Dllenahkh homestead gave them a courteous welcome, but some very important people were missing, leaving proxies and relatives in their place. A man exercising in a field with a small group of young men introduced himself as Dllenahkh’s associate coach at the training hall, now seeing to the students in his elder’s absence. A woman walking slowly along the main entry road with a toddler proved to be a hired childminder, a new but temporary addition to the homestead, there only for the purpose of caring for the offspring of Lieutenant Tarik and Commander Nasiha.
‘I’ve never seen it like this,’ Ivaliheni said quietly to her cousin. ‘It’s half-dead here, and no one is giving us answers.’
It was true. Both sides were cautious with each other, neither telling the full tale of events on either side. At last, after participating in the somewhat bonding experience of unlinking Ntenman’s aerolight from the draughtcar and squeezing it into a half-cleared artisans’ workshop, the associate coach finally revealed to them where Dllenahkh and Grace Delarua could be found.
He did not mention Rafi’s name at all, but then again, neither did Ntenman and Serendipity.
Ivaliheni drove them to nearby Newbridge, the de facto political capital of Sadira-on-Cygnus and the location of the Council Hall, the Garden of Memory and buildings that housed various Civil Service ministries and affiliated organisations.
When they passed the Council Hall, Ntenman yelped out a garbled, ‘Stop!’ There was Grace Delarua, sitting on a bench outside the big double doors of the Hall, looking across the road at the small trees in the Garden of Memory with an expression that said everything and nothing and none of it good.
Ivaliheni veered onto the verge with an expert and stylish side-swerve. She looked at Serendipity. I want to know what’s happening, she told her in a firm, swift and silent mind-to-mind connection.
I’ll try, I will, Serendipity replied in like manner. Then she continued aloud, ‘Thanks for the ride. I’ll call you later.’
Delarua’s attention had been caught by the sudden divert-and-stop of the heavy vehicle on the road, so she was already staring when Ntenman and Serendipity got out of the draughtcar and crossed the road. As they approached she continued to stare, fascinated and bemused, trying to place them. They were dressed in civilian clothing, not student uniform, but the faces were familiar. The boy . . . yes, she was sure she had seen the boy at the Lyceum. Tinman, Rafi called him. The girl . . . she was a lot less sure about the girl. Not the Lyceum, but somewhere . . .
She came to a conclusion and reacted accordingly. ‘You’re late,’ she said in a dry, flat tone, skipping all pleasantry and greeting. ‘He’s gone.’
Serendipity gasped. ‘Gone?’ she said in a voice so tragic that Delarua wondered if she thought Rafi was dead.
Delarua pointed her chin to the sky with an abrupt, truculent jerk of her head. ‘He’s in the orbital quarantine station.’
‘Ho. Ha.’ Ntenman exhaled, kept exhaling and dropped down beside her on the bench, his eyes wide with shock. ‘Wha?’
She gave the young man a look that was almost sympathetic. ‘You’re taking it well.’
Ntenman was too stunned to notice whether or not that was meant for sarcasm. ‘You let him go to—’
Before he could get any more words out, she flung up her hands to her head and let go a wail of frustration and fury. ‘Let? I did not let him!’
They blinked at her in utter helplessness while she struggled and seethed with emotion. Ntenman eventually reached out a hand to pat her shoulder in an attempt at calming. Serendipity stood with her hand to her mouth, frozen and speechless with dismay. Her poise had evaporated, blown away, a thin wisp taken by the wind.
‘The trouble with folk like us,’ said Grace Delarua, speaking slowly, deliberately and with desperate control, ‘is that we think we communicate so well when we aren’t communicating at all. And now here I am talking to relative strangers about matters that may not concern them. Why are you here? Why didn’t you stop Rafi from leaving the Lyceum in the first place?’
Ntenman flapped and fizzled, both indignant and off guard.
Serendipity saved the moment. ‘We didn’t know,’ she protested.
Delarua’s eyes narrowed. ‘Wait. I know you. You’re an Uplander from the monastery. That girl. Sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.’
Serendipity nodded, pleased beyond common sense with that slight, non-specific recognition. ‘I’m Serendipity. Tell us what happened to Rafi, please?’
Delarua looked away and went silent. Her expression was unreadable, but both of them could feel the rapid current of her thoughts and emotions in their own way, and they recognised when that current slowed and reached resolution a second or two before she turned to face them again.
‘No more need for secrecy as far as I can see,’ she said. ‘We were at the spaceport. He was supposed to take a flight to Vaya. He was supposed to keep out of the Lyceum’s way until he turns fifteen. I don’t know how he ended up on Stage One.’
She did not know, truly, but she could guess and it made her furious.
‘Stage One is as out-of-the-way as you can get,’ Ntenman offered. ‘Even government can’t halt the quarantine process once it’s started. Maybe he did the right thing.’
Delarua’s thoughts were a murky swell but her words were crisp and careful. ‘I don’t know. He may have done something to annoy two planetary governments. I don’t call that keeping out of the way.’
A wave of turmoil, both felt and heard, came through the Hall’s closed doors, making Ntenman flinch. Delarua watched him. ‘I had to get out,’ she said. ‘It was making my head hurt – and my stomach, too.’
‘What’s happening in there?’ Serendipity asked.
Delarua leaned fo
rward and spoke quietly, but with an air of sadness rather than conspiracy. ‘Insurrection, I hope.’ She addressed Serendipity. ‘There are stairs just inside that go up to the public gallery. You should go and listen. Your people are very much involved.’
Serendipity felt confused and apprehensive but Delarua’s steady gaze was insistent rather than reassuring, and so the young woman succumbed to the pressure and pulled open the door. Behind it was a high-ceilinged foyer embraced by the twin arms of two flights of stairs in fine architectural balance and symmetry. The far wall held another set of double doors, closed and stoically guarded by two young Sadiri. The air was solid with cacophony; bursts of rumbling and blaring dissent in male voices were occasionally punctuated by the higher chime and warble of a female elder. Disruption. Chaos. Insanity. Heavy emotions were roiling below the sound, and above it all a quick chatter of telepathic communication clicked along unimpeded, evidence that a handful of Uplanders were observing and commenting among themselves.
Serendipity took in a sharp, frightened breath. ‘What is happening?’ she said to herself. She went to the stairs on the left and ran lightly up, two steps at a time, to face the turmoil.
Chapter Six
The anger and tension in the Hall were directed outwards, not inwards. The Consul’s peremptory deportation of a valued colleague (and a female one at that, which made her twice-valued) was but one of several indignities that had been piling up for months. The Government of New Sadira restricted mobility, pressured certain young families (with daughters? with purer heritage?) to emigrate to New Sadira and made many fruitless attempts to police what they saw as ‘cultural deviations’ on the Sadiri settlement.
Then there was the taSadiri contingent, mainly represented by semi-adopted female Sadiri elders and a few young women, most of them new brides from Tirtha. The community of telepaths was now actively seeking full integration with Sadira-on-Cygnus with the option of a special relationship that would connect all taSadiri communities (subject to terms to be agreed on by the Cygnian government, of course).
Finally there were the pilots. They had no formal Council representation, and yet, somehow, at some stage months earlier it had become necessary to include them in the plans to develop Grand Bay. Then there were consultations on the effective oversight of the airspace over the settlement, and then it was a natural step to allow for a few ‘special representatives’ from the pilot community who could attend meetings, hold Council privileges and cast their vote.
It was messy and exhausting, especially for those who remembered the early days of settlement, when the Council was not much more than a few old men half-heartedly arguing procedure and trying not to fall apart, break down or otherwise go to pieces in front of the youngsters.
The majority opinion was clear. Sadira-on-Cygnus could not continue as the off-planet annexe of New Sadira. What new status it should have was a matter of debate. Several Sadiri Councillors were happy to become entirely Cygnian, with no conflicting loyalties. Most of the taSadiri Councillors were less eager to settle for the Cygnian citizenship they already possessed, and those from Tirtha were entirely sceptical, pointing to institutions like the Lyceum as proof that Cygnus Beta was still not ready to accept psi-based societies. The pilots, of course, were looking far beyond the planet and talking about maintaining old galactic networks and creating new ones – trade and science and transport from Zhinu to Punartam to Ntshune and farther yet. Grand Bay could become a new terminal, benefiting Cygnian and Sadiri alike.
The permanent presence of Sadiri mindships in Cygnian oceans was an open secret. The Sadiri knew, and they hoped with the strength of prayer that both human and mindship populations would flourish. The Cygnians said nothing, but they granted the settlement both autonomy and assistance with an abundance and generosity that only made sense if they were expecting some future dividend, perhaps in the form of a collaboration that would see Cygnus Beta finally get its own interstellar fleet.
Some of the Sadiri Councillors, still traumatised by their fall from the pinnacle of galactic society, were giddy at any potential opportunity for leverage and influence, and it made them misbehave a little during the formal debates. Eventually, Chief Councillor Edrasde recognised that they were feeding off each other’s high emotions in a vicious and dangerous loop. The meeting was adjourned until the following morning. When the inner doors were unsealed and opened, the grumbling, seething assembly rose up and walked out, carrying the bad mood with them like a trailing miasma.
The observers in the public gallery were also leaving. Serendipity joined them, going quickly down the stairs and into the busy foyer. She kept to the edges, careful not to bump into anyone, and dashed through the outer doors the moment there was a sliver of space to do so. She was so intent on not being noticed that she did not see when Dllenahkh turned aside from the general flow of the crowd and went up the opposite staircase to the place she had just left.
The public gallery was empty; the Hall below was empty. Dllenahkh sat on a front bench, seized the railing before him with both hands and tried to take the emptiness into his mind. Such a turbulent atmosphere – it drained him of strength and disturbed his equilibrium. He craved cool, deep breaths of quietness: either the chill, humid air of the forest uplands monastery, or the dry nip of the wind at the monastery in Montserrat. Both reminded him of early-morning meditation.
There was too little time, always, even for a breath. Slow steps approached – only slow, not hesitant. The emptiness was filled with a growing sense of presence. Not ominous, but implacable . . . yes . . . even stubborn. He would not escape this talk though he had tried for many months to preserve his innocence. The bench rocked slightly under added weight as the presence settled in beside him and waited patiently. Dllenahkh exhaled and relaxed his grip, letting his hands fall palms-upwards into his lap in resignation.
‘You’ve changed,’ he muttered to his hands. ‘The younger you appear, the more familiar your face becomes to me, the more I realise that you are very far from the pilot I knew in the days before.’
‘Too much has happened,’ Naraldi said softly. ‘We are both changed, but my friend – those worlds, those lives! You have not seen what I have seen, the best and the worst of what could be!’
‘Do you think you can direct fate?’
Naraldi laughed, a bitter, indignant huff of air. ‘Please, Dllenahkh. Directing fate is a pilot’s vocation – or, if you prefer, directing our path around fate’s immovables. It’s the same thing. You must start thinking like a pilot; you’re almost one of us already.’
He stretched out a hand and matched it to Dllenahkh’s, curving his fingers around the hollow of his friend’s hand as if keeping space for a sphere therein. ‘See? Together we preserve Sadira, together we hold and protect our world—’
Dllenahkh cut off his poetry with bluntness. ‘You want me to lead a rebellion.’
‘I want you to be the foundation and centre from which others will lead.’ Naraldi collapsed the empty sphere with a quick clasp of Dllenahkh’s hand, then withdrew and quickly changed the subject. ‘The pilots have petitioned for title to the lands around Grand Bay. The Cygnian Government is in agreement. I believe they have chosen to focus on the benefits to the settlement rather than scrutinise our motives.’
‘How unusually pragmatic of them,’ said Dllenahkh. The words suggested sarcasm, but he sounded tired and heavy.
Naraldi was taken aback by his tone. ‘Old friend, do not tell me you are disappointed in me.’
Dllenahkh struck his fist on the railing. ‘I am disappointed in all of us! Tell the truth, Naraldi. We are not preserving Sadira – we are breaking it apart.’
‘It broke apart some time ago, Dllenahkh. Help me to preserve the best of it.’ He spoke with a deep, sincere sadness that was harder to bear than a simple plea.
‘I have to think it over,’ Dllenahkh said finally.
‘Think, then, but not for too long. Events are moving on without us and there is no time.’
The bench shifted again as Naraldi stood and left. Dllenahkh stayed a while longer, trying to fully restore his equilibrium, but the sight of the Hall brought him no peace. He could still see ghostly imprints of debating representatives moving in the space below and their voices clattered in his memory with an echo that was almost audible. Eventually, he gave up and went to find his wife.
*
When Serendipity emerged from the crush of people exiting, Ntenman asked Delarua for a ride back to the homestead and explained why.
‘You parked an entire aerolight in our workshop?’ she said, shaking her head. She was not feeling hospitable, not today.
‘Pardon me, but I have called my cousin and I must go with her,’ Serendipity said. Perhaps it was a courteous withdrawal in response to Delarua’s stressed tone, but her eyes were turned away, seeking out others from Tirtha.
Delarua noticed and made a mental note to follow up later, but for the moment she merely replied to Serendipity’s polite goodbye and focused on Ntenman once more. ‘I still don’t understand why you’ve been tracking down Rafi so diligently. Is the Lyceum sending students out as spies now?’
Ntenman answered absently, watching Serendipity leave. ‘Oh, the Lyceum doesn’t know he’s missing yet – and if anyone should call and ask, tell them that Rafi is recovering nicely but will be contagious for a while longer.’
Delarua questioned him with a stare.
‘Chickenpox,’ Ntenman clarified.
‘Well, thank you, I think. So you’ll fly back tomorrow, then?’ She was pushing him to be gone. Dllenahkh was approaching, there was a lot to decide and do, and she did not want this strange boy and his murky motives hanging around.
He gave her a reproachful look. ‘Rafi’s my friend, and I don’t have many friends. I know that cap wasn’t doing him any good. And if I were a spy, it would not be for the Lyceum.’
