by Karen Lord
Raizven looked quickly at Hydlor and raised his hands helplessly. ‘We could work on creating a new transit for Ntshune to Terra.’
‘Is that what you are offering?’ the Patrona said sharply, her eyes on them once more while her fingers remained poised on the screen by her right knee. ‘Is that the best, the most effective course of action?’
The two Zhinuvians only stared back in terror, frozen like insects caught in amber. She gentled her voice a little. ‘We do not have much time. If there is a decision to be made, you must make it quickly.’
Hydlor got to his feet hastily. ‘Five days, Esteemed Patrona. You will have your answer in five days, I promise.’
Dissatisfied, but resigned, she nodded. ‘Five days or earlier, Hydlor. There is too much happening and we are falling farther and farther behind.’
She dismissed them both and looked tiredly towards Isahena and Serendipity. ‘Did I do too much?’
Isahenalaatye swallowed, unsure how to take this invitation to criticise. ‘That depends on the results, Esteemed Patrona.’
She smiled. ‘Well put, Isahena. That is true; it does indeed.’
Chapter Sixteen
It was a pleasure to sit on Rafi’s head to wake him up, just like the old days back at the Lyceum. He thrashed and kicked and threw me off, no longer the short and scrawny boy I could subdue in minutes. I landed on my backside on the floor, cursed him and laughed. I’d missed him.
‘Why are you waking me up in the middle of the night?’ he grumbled.
‘We’re going on an adventure, Moo! Your lovely Patrona sent me to collect you. Serendipity is already up. It’s the three of us once more! Will you please get up and cover your body with some garments appropriate to this quest? Or, to put it more directly, where is your flight suit and can you be wearing it within one minute?’
Rafi moaned and complained, but he gradually attained a vertical position, slowly went from slack-faced somnolence to a determined expression and muttered, ‘Yes, yes,’ nodding to himself. I thought he was a little unhinged until I noticed the new spidery tracing behind his ear, blue-black on dark-amber, still small and reasonably discreet.
He got dressed. ‘I assume you have been briefed?’ he said to me.
Pompous moujin. I answered in kind. ‘I have my itinerary and task list. It may not be the same as yours.’
‘Then let’s compare. We’re off to Zhinu A first, correct?’
‘Yes,’ I confirmed, pushing him through the door with my palm flat between his shoulder blades. ‘And that will be my first and last stop for a while. Given recent events, I plan to have some follow-up discussions with various magnates.’
‘Ah, well, it’s good to see you, however briefly. Because, if I understand correctly, I’m then off to Terra?’
‘You most certainly are!’
‘Zhinu A has a Terran transit?’
‘Kept secret for millennia! They are impressive, aren’t they!’
He shook his head, not in disagreement but as if he was trying to get too many facts to settle in his skull. ‘And I will meet Serendipity there. She is travelling with a backup mindship crew.’
‘Correct. Now hurry and let’s get to the transit dome.’
I love it when a judicious bluff pays off. Zhinu A was going all in, gifting their transit and base on Terra to the Transit Project to use as they saw fit to the benefit of the entire galaxy. Not for free, however, and I could not blame them. I was there to help start trade negotiations and talk them down from a giddy high of a sudden influx credit, but I could be realistic about it. They wanted concessions, they deserved concessions. The transit was fast, but we still needed Zhinuvian transport for larger cargo and passenger movement. None of us was saying it yet, but now we had better control over transport and communications, I was sure that the near-moribund Galactic Patrol would be next up for reorganisation and revival. I heard about what’s been happening on Terra, and we’re going to need some form of military reinforcement.
That’s someone else’s job, though. I’m happily occupied where I am.
*
The transit to Zhinu A had barely enough personnel for a Wall to be needed. Rafi and Oestengeryok were the only Vanguard runners. The remainder were their passengers – the Patrona, Raizven, Ntenman, Lian, Waneshianeso and Zariah Fa, the latter two now fully recovered from the mindship accident. On arrival, Ntenman promptly disappeared to ‘get a start on his task list’. The Patrona surprised Rafi when she said that she would be staying on as witness and facilitator to what Raizven was about to do, which was to allow them to go through the transit to Terra and then close it.
‘This transit on Zhinu A will now be linked permanently to Ntshune, and that is how I shall return,’ she said. ‘You will return to Ntshune via the Terra transit. If there are any difficulties, any at all, use the mindship backup.’
Oesten also remained with the Patrona, leaving Rafi the sole runner to transport Lian, Waneshianeso and Zariah Fa to Terra. ‘Easy run,’ he reassured Rafi. ‘The Wall keeps everything stable, so stay focused and you’ll be fine.’
Rafi nodded, trying to look unworried, especially in front of his passengers. ‘Of course, Oesten. Safe run to you.’
*
After the buzz faded, Rafi’s first impression was of dimly lit fog. The atmosphere was thick with mist and pools of water collected in every dip and crevice in the stone floor. He inhaled and coughed. There was enough oxygen, but there was something not quite right about the air. He detached himself, swung around to unlatch the passenger pods, then carefully made his way down the steps, which were already damp with condensation. The gravity felt weaker than on Cygnus Beta or Ntshune but stronger than Punartam. He did not try to test it with any bouncing.
Waneshianeso and Zariah Fa immediately put the geosensors on their wrists to work. ‘High levels of carbon dioxide,’ Zariah said. ‘Put your breathers on.’
Rafi obeyed immediately. He looked up and saw only more rock, uneven and stained in the dim light. He began to search for the source of the light.
‘This isn’t very exciting,’ Lian muttered. ‘Where are we?’
‘Give us a minute,’ Waneshi said, a slight edge to her tone. She went over to Zariah and they began to talk in hushed tones.
‘There you are! I thought I heard something.’ The familiar voice bounced happily off the rock, an incongruous intrusion into their moment of anxiety.
‘Naraldi!’ Rafi shouted, and added cheekily, ‘I thought you were keeping to the sidelines?’
‘I am not yet so jaded that I cannot appreciate a historic moment,’ Naraldi replied, walking with slow caution along a downward-sloping path. ‘Why are you lurking in the basement? Come up! It’s much better on the upper levels.’
Rafi smiled fondly to himself as they followed Naraldi up the path, understanding at last that this was the Patrona’s gift to him: his name on the records as the runner for the first modern transit between Terra and Ntshune. The light grew brighter and brighter until they came up into a vast empty space of cooler, drier air and pale blue light.
Naraldi stopped and looked around with great satisfaction. ‘This must be where the Ntshune perfected their ice-construction techniques. Very impressive.’
Rafi looked up at the ceiling of blue ice, slightly blurred by the familiar haze of a biodome’s boundary. He grinned. ‘It’s like Janojya!’
Zariah did not look any happier than before. ‘I appreciate their dedication to maintaining the transit and the dome but we’re near the South Pole. How much can we do from here? This is the harshest climate on Terra.’
Waneshi interrupted. ‘You’re bringing a Cygnian mentality to the problem. Remember Ntshune? Centuries of survival in an ice age? I don’t think they will see this place the same way you do.’
‘And this could be an advantage in terms of security,’ Lian pointed out. ‘We don’t have to worry about anyone stumbling over us accidentally.’
‘Where’s Serendipity?’ Rafi asked sudde
nly.
‘She’s waiting with my ship at the reservoirs,’ Naraldi said. ‘Speaking of which, do you have space to take her back with you? Since I’m here, I thought I might look around a little.’
‘Spy, you mean,’ said Rafi. ‘Do you really think that’s wise?’
‘Please, no more clashes with New Sadira,’ Waneshi added.
‘Can we go back now?’ Serendipity’s voice called out.
They looked around, baffled, until they saw her head ascending from another path leading to the lower levels. She looked reasonably alert, but tired and a little stressed.
Rafi smiled as she approached and took the opportunity to savour the moment. He was standing on the Earth of his ancestors, he had now seen five planets including all four of the crafted worlds, his childhood crush was about to join him in a transcendent experience which he would control using the talent he had once feared and hated . . . and it was simply part of a day’s work. It was thrilling that his dreams come true could be made so mundane, so beautifully ordinary, so ridiculously normal.
Quietly laughing at the cosmic joke, he looked at Serendipity and said, ‘Let’s go.’
*
A new hall had been constructed in a patch of wilds between the Haneki domain and the Transit Project domain. It was a veritable glass palace with trees, shrubs and creeping plants pressing greenly against the walls as if peering in at the spectacle. Globes of sun-like light floated high above the room, roofless as was the custom, and it felt open and airy in spite of the number of delegates, observers, recorders and spectators crammed into the space.
The Galactic Consortium Meeting was in session, the second extraordinary meeting of the post-Galactic War era.
Serendipity marvelled at the ability of the Ntshune recorders to transcribe overlapping voices with ease. She was trying to learn to listen but she knew she was cheating, using light touches of telepathy when her ears became overwhelmed. She was keeping records for the Union of Pilots, which had recognised her commitment to the mindships and accepted her as an auxiliary member. There was so much of importance to report.
Given the advances in the new transit system, Ntshune was the natural choice for the Meeting. The results were mixed. Cygnus Beta, Ntshune, Sadira-on-Cygnus with the Union of Pilots and Zhinu A formed a comfortable bloc of shared interests and approaches. Punartam was trying to re-enter the game as a newly formed Zhinuvian–Punarthai alliance, an entity which most delegates did not take very seriously. The cartels, thwarted by the closure of the only known working transit and stymied by local sabotage in their efforts to reopen it, were scrabbling to legitimise themselves in some other way. Regardless, Punartam was experiencing a steady haemorrhage of academics and personnel by means unknown (or at least unreported), to the enrichment of research centres on Ntshune and Cygnus Beta. To add insult to injury, Ntshune had opened another transit well beyond the reach and influence of the Metropolis in the small city of Saro, now listed as the fastest growing urban development in the galaxy.
The delegation from Zhinu A, which consisted of both governmental and commercial representatives, was known to be holding private negotiations with observers from other Zhinuvian planets and colonies. The Patrona predicted that within the year, the galaxy would see either a new Zhinuvian conglomerate to rival the cartels, or a multi-planetary authority with Zhinu A at the head, or both.
The Union of Pilots did not have much to say, preferring to rely on Dllenahkh and Lanuri for representation. However, the invitation to the pilots of New Sadira to join the Union raised some eyebrows – and some hackles. Primed by the sting of the perceived insult, the accredited delegate for New Sadira spoke heatedly about ‘the incident on Terra’, demanding explanations for the Union pilots’ failure to honour the embargo. The documentation permitting Dr Daniyel and her colleagues to travel to Terra to conduct small-scale research was produced again and argued over vigorously. When the question was eventually turned back to New Sadira, they dismissed their presence on Terra as ‘a small team of pilots and scientists, exploring the feasibility of stabling mindships on Terra given recent problems maintaining mindship population in the hostile marine environment of New Sadira’. After that and a range of other excuses of varying credibility from the Zhinuvian observers, the meeting went rapidly downhill with no resolution to what was now being called ‘The Terran Problem’.
Finally, New Sadira withdrew in protest and departed with their non-union pilots. The Meeting was brought to a formal though unsatisfactory conclusion, and transit staff began the chore of ferrying the delegates home.
Serendipity emerged at last from the fog of intense focus, checked her messages and regretfully declined an invitation from Rafi to share a meal with him and his uncle. There was still so much to do and she was needed at the port to assist with those travelling by mindship or taking a hop to a larger transport via orbital shuttle. She’d make it up to him later.
*
Dllenahkh could see that Rafi was very proud of his new apartment in the Haneki domain. He was also proud of his flight suit, the decorative traceries on his forearms, the functional tracery behind his ear and his new name. He explained about the kin contracts and begged Dllenahkh to make Grace understand it was not a rejection of his home and heritage.
‘It will actually make it easier for me to come to Cygnus Beta. As far as Central Government is concerned, I’m no longer their problem. I’m Ntshune, and there are plenty of people stronger than me to keep me in line.’
Dllenahkh acknowledged this fact and promised soberly to convey the message to Grace. ‘And your work here satisfies you?’
‘Absolutely! I know I fell into it, but I couldn’t have chosen anything better if I tried.’
‘Good, very good. Perhaps I could pay my respects to your employer, the Patrona?’
Rafi eyed Dllenahkh warily. There was something a little too bland, a little too innocent in his responses to Rafi’s news. ‘Haven’t you negotiated together before or something?’
‘Well, yes, but I am talking about meeting her as Rafi’s uncle, not the Governor of Sadira-on-Cygnus. I am sure you can appreciate the difference.’
‘Very well,’ Rafi replied, still wary. ‘Let me take you to her workroom.’
‘No need,’ said Dllenahkh blithely. ‘I know where it is. Send word ahead that I am on my way and meet me outside the workroom in a half-hour.’
Rafi stared sternly at Dllenahkh. Dllenahkh looked back, immoveable.
‘I will not lie to my wife when she asks me how you are,’ he said.
Rafi sighed and sent the message.
*
The first half of the meeting with the Patrona was spent discussing the recently concluded Meeting, commenting on the progress made with the Transit Project and admiring the architecture and design of the Haneki domain. From that final topic, Dllenahkh stretched and took a stepping stone to what he really wanted to say.
‘I could not help but admire the accoutrements my nephew is now wearing, especially the particularly fine filigree vambraces. The last time I saw such work, it was on the favoured husband of an Ntshune matriarch.’
‘Such patterns have become very popular recently now that Wallrunning is seen as more than a game. I thought, with his background, it was appropriate.’
Dllenahkh absorbed the deflection and the slightly teasing tone and tried again. ‘Rafi mentioned kin contracts. I have only a little knowledge of the practice. Have you been involved in any . . . serious contracts?’
The Patrona laughed at the hint in his voice and gave an answer as oblique as the question. ‘I have had three spousal contracts. Lovely individuals, but they couldn’t keep up.’
Dllenahkh smiled at the Patrona’s dry humour and slipped in an edged statement amid the lightheartedness. ‘Do you think Rafi can keep up?’
The Patrona gave him a sober look, a look between equals. ‘He has potential but he is still young.’
‘He is,’ Dllenahkh agreed diplomatically.
&n
bsp; ‘And how many more years will you have with your Cygnian wife, Dllenahkh?’ It was more than edge; the Patrona had mastered the art of the verbal stiletto.
Dllenahkh bowed his head very slightly and raised a hand in surrender. ‘Esteemed Patrona, I would always have peace between your domain and my homestead.’
‘That is also my wish,’ she replied with sweet sincerity.
‘In that case, may I know your name?’
She looked a little surprised, as if she had expected him to ask something else. ‘My name is Ixiaral. It comes from the word “believe” in one of our many dead languages . . . that is to say, one who has the power to make others believe. Several of the daughters of the Haneki dynasty, including my own, bear that name or some variation of it. When my own Mother retires, and if I am found worthy, I will be the new Matriarch of the dynasty, and the few who are still permitted to call me Ixiaral will do so no more.’
‘How sad,’ Dllenahkh murmured. ‘There should always be someone who will call you by your name.’
‘To be called Mother is not such a bad replacement. The important thing is that both are said with love.’ She smiled. ‘I have heard Rafi call you by your name, but he also calls you uncle. I can see why.’
Disarmed, Dllenahkh bowed again. ‘I know we are allies, Esteemed Patrona, but I believe we will also be friends.’
‘We are,’ she said, rising from her dais to help him to his feet. She held his arms in a comrade’s clasp for a moment. ‘Call me Ixiaral while you still can.’
*
Rafi sat outside the Patrona’s office and nervously flexed his fingers. At last Dllenahkh emerged. Rafi searched his face and he appeared genuinely relaxed and calm. He sighed and let some of his own tension flow away. He knew better than to ask for details of a conversation from which he had been dismissed. Instead he approached his uncle and reached into the pouch at his waist.
