She felt the trembling of his muscles straining to carry her. She heard the labor of his breathing. Babu took the steps slowly, often pausing to rest. They had walked for days to come to this place in the big city.
She kept her eyes squeezed shut, not wanting to admit the reality of this moment, but when Babu said, "Almost there," with such a terrible struggle to utter it, she opened her eyes. She saw the great African Space Elevator towering behind the local buildings of this residential neighborhood. She pulled back to look at Babu Muenda's leathery brown face which glistened with sweat. His eyes were closed and his face was wrinkled with pain. The world started to tilt. The old man's eyes opened and saw her. He smiled as he made a last feeble effort to turn himself and become a cushion for the fall.
They fell. They fell onto soft green grass. She fell on top of him, the impact knocking the breath from her lungs and flipping her onto the green lawn. She started to cry out because of the shock and pain but the sight of Grandfather silenced her. Babu Muenda lay too still.
The door to the future opened behind her.
"Where did you go?" Pan asked.
"I..." Fidelity was trapped. They knew she saw something inside of her. How long did she sit here with her mouth open and her eyes seeing nothing? They didn't know how impossible it was! "There was a child," she uttered slowly. "An old man. The African Space Elevator!" She took deep breaths, as if to make up for not breathing for several moments.
"What child?" Pan asked. "Samson?"
She shook her head. She started to reply me, but stopped. Pan retreated a few steps and waited for her to speak. What explanation did she owe these men? They were only famous. Anyway, the images were already slipping away from her conscious, as though they were forbidden to keep. Rafael resumed painting and gasped when Fidelity started to get up.
"No, please, sit down!" both men said in unison.
/
Fidelity handed the sketchbook to Pan and sat down, subdued, in some way further changed. Rafael was disturbed, because the change he saw was too great. How could he hope to capture the truth of her on canvas when the truth was unknown to all of them? Quite obviously Fidelity herself didn't know who she was. This was the case for both of them, Fidelity and Pan. Rafael didn't have the time to wonder at what deeper meaning this pairing of lives in flux had for them. He didn't have the inclination to examine his own hypersensitivity to the people suddenly thrust into his hermit's existence. He would be fortunate to live long enough to finish this impossible portrait!
"You must stay long enough for Rafael to capture your image," Pan begged the admiral. "You must understand what an honor it is. Rafael is, in my opinion, the greatest living artist, and possibly one of the greatest artists in history."
That broke Rafael's concentration just long enough for him to wave his brush negatively at Pan. "You don't measure it, you just endure it! Totally subjective."
Fidelity tried to smile at that and almost succeeded. "Perhaps I'll stay a bit longer," she said. "I don't think I can go back, feeling the way I do."
"Thank God," Pan said.
"Amen," Rafael added.
1-12 Endarkenment at Fudlump's Bar
"Do you have the image?" Jarwekh inquired.
"What image?" Daidaunkh muttered, a glass of beer still at his mouth.
Jarwekh paused briefly to reconsider his motives. The primary motive sat across the table, slowly getting drunk on beer. Daidaunkh had been his commanding officer before the War. He had been a superb officer and he still felt loyal to him, even though they were reduced to the status of equals on this vacant home world of their former enemy.
"The image I should be wearing at my throat but haven't for many years," Jarwekh explained.
"Not since Pan killed you, eh?" Daidaunkh said.
The noble-born Daidaunkh, perhaps without realizing it, reprimanded Jarwekh for a failure in this long evening of their lives. Because he hesitated to follow Daidaunkh's lead, Pan had killed them both. Only later, when they were revived, did Daidaunkh admit he misapplied the Principle of Justice upon Pan. Jarwekh always understood the Rhyan Principle of Justice was simply a Royalist phrase that meant revenge. Jarwekh didn't need revenge. Still, even if Daidaunkh was misguided, Jarwekh had failed him, if not by defending him physically, then by not arguing him away from his errors of logic. Daidaunkh had failed to realize Pan wanted public safety on Earth more than he wanted to settle a personal argument with him. Jarwekh needed to atone for his failure to help Daidaunkh. He wanted some resolution for the broken life of his former commander.
Daidaunkh pulled a black disk on a gold chain from inside his loose shirt and tossed it into the spilled beer on the table top. Jarwekh flipped the black disk upright and tapped it. A pale hologram flickered to life. He stared at it for a long time, studying the image but also studying the chain of cause and effect that would lead onward from an act of revenge. There was death in that chain, more than one death, one of which would surely be his own. There was further injustice in it, particularly in the form of disloyalty to his most honorable benefactor, Pan. His regard for Pan was higher than for Daidaunkh, but Pan had never chosen a formal bond of friendship with him, and Daidaunkh was a better friend, now that he accepted their expatriate comradeship as equals.
He studied Daidaunkh through the ghost of the ancient hologram and saw only the dying shell of the warrior he once admired. Failed revenge would crumble such a ruin of a man but it should provide a joyful glory in its attempt, successful or not. Daidaunkh was mostly dark-skinned, patched here and there with lighter desert skin - a scaly and shiny surface which protected most of the body of a lower-class desert person like Jarwekh. The nobility possessed traits of both the Desert Folk and the Ocean Folk. Daidaunkh's flat nose was adapted for ocean diving. His slightly webbed fingers massaged the handle of his beer tankard as a sign of impatience. His eyes, small coal-dark irises mounted in large gray orbs, like all Rhyan eyes, bored into Jarwekh's, waiting impatiently. He was a mean drunk.
Jarwekh tapped the disk again and the image doubled in size. The head of a dark Earthian female slowly rotated in vaporous translucence. Jarwekh placed another small device on the table a short distance from the hologram. Another image sprang to life, brighter and more solid, more lifelike: the image he had secretly recorded of Admiral Fidelity Demba.
"Compare," Jarwekh said.
"Very close," Daidaunkh said with interest. He threw back a swallow of beer. "But we've seen close matches before. Images prove nothing."
"This one is Navy," Jarwekh said.
"Even better. If she isn't the one, we can still kill her."
"Kill whom?" a voice called out in the flood of light from an opening door.
She filled the room, as she always did, with her shining hair and brilliant, lying smile. The door closed and all the feeble light in the dusky saloon rushed to illuminate the paleness of the woman when the door closed, and all the shadows pooled beneath those tragic eyes. The War was fought because of creatures like Denna, beautiful Earthian women who were irresistible to ugly Rhyan males. The slave trade in Earthian women, small though it was, was used to justify the Union's escalation of its war preparations. How appropriate, that an Earthian female - Commodore Keshona - was the instrument that felled the Rhyan Empire.
She sat down and grabbed Daidaunkh's beer from his hand.
"I haven't killed anybody in at least a week," Denna complained. She took a gulp, wiped her mouth, put the beer back in Daidaunkh's hand. "Her?" she queried, staring at the pair of holograms.
"You've never killed anyone," Jarwekh said to Denna.
"Humor," Daidaunkh explained. "That one is Commodore Keshona," he explained to Denna. "This is a Navy admiral who looks like Keshona. Where did you get this image of the Keshona look-alike?" he asked of Jarwekh.
"She's a guest of Pan," Jarwekh answered. "I got the image from Pan's security system. There's also another Navy officer, a captain."
"Why are they here?" Daidaunkh asked.
"I
don't know. I couldn't get much information out of Pan. He seemed disturbed. I don't think the woman is regular Navy. Maybe she's investigating something for the EPA. She had a child with her that Pan wanted me to remove back to Rafael's house. The boy was very upset to be taken away from her."
"Is she at Rafael's residence?" Daidaunkh asked.
"As far as I know. The other officer is at Pan's residence."
"A boy?" Denna always spoke slowly. The breath of her voice whispered around her words, adding emphasis, even yearning. "There is a boy, a child? How old? What does he look like?"
Jarwekh sensed the error he was about to make, but too late to stop his tongue. "Very young and injured."
"Injured?" she gasped. "And you want to kill his mother? Have you seen the boy?"
"Don't think about the boy!" the half-drunk Daidaunkh demanded.
"How is he injured?" Denna persisted, almost begging. "Is it a serious injury?"
"Stop talking about the boy!" Daidaunkh ordered, slamming his beer mug on the table.
Denna didn't react to the loud sound or to the beer that splattered on her. She ignored Daidaunkh, as though he said nothing at all.
"If I tell you the child is badly injured," Jarwekh replied, "yet free of pain and full of spirit, will you put your mind at rest and leave the subject?" Jarwekh waited to see how Denna would react. He chastised himself for mentioning the child in her presence. His mistake was almost
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