by John Daulton
“Ask her if she thinks it’s possible.”
“She already said she didn’t know. She didn’t say it wasn’t true. She just didn’t say it was.”
“It is. I just know it is.”
“But you don’t. And we don’t even know if life has anything to do with it. For that matter, we don’t even know if there is anything alive up there anymore. It might all be dead by now, what little there was. The life that was there might have become bound to him somehow.”
“Well, it would only take you two seconds to find out,” she countered, her chest swelling defiantly. “You could look up there like you always do, with a seeing spell.”
“But there wasn’t anything alive when we were there. I didn’t see a single thing.”
“I did. You can go and see if the lichens are still there.”
He didn’t recall any lichen, but he wasn’t going to argue the point. “Even if I saw them, how would I know they are alive? You’re the botanist, not me.”
“I will tell you. Just go look. Then come back and do that illusion like you did when you were showing the Queen the armies on the plains. The spell the Citadel mages do all the time in the concert hall.”
“Well, I never saw them. So at least tell me where to look.” He was trying not to let exasperation become apparent in his voice. There was no point in this.
“We were in the big jumble of rocks, not all that far from the first pit we jumped in. If you can get me close to that, I’ll show you where they were.”
He could tell she wasn’t going to relent, so it would be easier to oblige. Besides, he didn’t want to say no to her anyway. Not today. Not on a night like this. “Fine,” he said. “Let me go look.”
He closed his eyes and pushed himself into the mana, shaped the taut line that ran across the vast distances between his world and that from which Red Fire had once made his angry presence known. He found the place where they’d first had to learn to fall together, Orli operating the Higgs prism and the jets for both of them. He opened that vision up in his mind, saw the place, a narrow, natural corridor of broken stone, dark but lit well enough by the diffuse red light of the planet’s ever-present rusty atmosphere. He ran his vision up and down, looking for something that looked like the lichens he knew from Prosperion. There was a patch on one rock, a whitish flaky place, that might pass for that sort of thing.
He tethered the spell to that location, bound the view of it to a thread of mana and pulled back into his own mind again. He wound that thread around a globe of nothingness that he fashioned with a thought, like covering a ball with string. He wrapped it tightly around until it was a semi-solid thing. He opened it to the vision he had left upon the surface of dead Red Fire’s world, and then spoke the last word of the spell.
When he opened his eyes, Orli’s face was set aglow, her pale features washed in the red light of the illusion that hung above them and a single pace off the edge of the cliff. “Well, there it is,” he said. “That’s where we jumped. There’s something on that rock on the right that might be your lichen, though it doesn’t look like it’s doing well.”
She peered into the luminous sphere before her, leaning forward to study what was depicted in it. “Can you make it bigger?” she asked. “Like a close-up right on that?”
He resisted the urge to grumble. He reset the image again, much closer to the flaky patch on the rock, staring right down at it from what might be only a hand’s width away.
She clapped her hands. “You see,” she said. “It is still alive! I told you. Life didn’t die with Red Fire. Which means there really is a chance Yellow Fire can be saved.”
“I think that might be a very large leap from one to the other,” he said. He wanted to hope with her, but he could not. It was too farfetched. His expression flattened as he shook his head. “While I would love to believe it possible, I still think that the odds are so small they’re going to slip right through the net.”
“So what? I mean, what would it cost us to find out? What would it cost us to try? We could go to the Fruitfall system, find his world, find his heart and then transplant it. It really could be just lying there waiting for us. For her. There’s no risk. If I’m right, he might come back to her. How happy would she be if it were true? How happy could her ending be, like the rest of us, those of us who made it, get to have? And if I’m wrong, then nothing happens. Everything is the same. Blue Fire lives out her awful eternity all alone and miserable, for all of time, long after you and I live our happy lives and die. Just her alone. Forever in endless, nagging, horrible misery.”
Altin’s shoulders rose and fell with the currents of his exasperation. He didn’t try to hide it this time. Orli really was laying it on thick.
“Don’t sigh at me,” she said. “You know it’s true. Nothing changes if I’m wrong. But what if I’m right? Doesn’t she deserve a chance at happiness, just like we get? Isn’t it only fair to try? Isn’t it only honorable after what she’s done, and what she’s sacrificed? Humans aren’t the only race that matters, Altin. She fought with us. This is the right thing to do.”
He couldn’t help but nod at that. It wouldn’t be difficult, he supposed. They’d have to find the planet of course, but they’d done that sort of thing before, and they did know where Fruitfall was. But from there, well, then they’d have to … just do whatever they had to do. They’d have to figure it out. Make it up. Invent. It wasn’t like he hadn’t been doing that all his life. And Orli knew much more about this sort of thing than he did. Perhaps it was possible. Except there was one other thing. A huge problem. The thought struck him like a noxious odor that’s just blown through an open window. It turned the corners of his mouth down, brought them back to reality from where they’d been slowly rising as he thought through the hopeful possibilities. “What if we do it,” he said, “and it works, but it doesn’t work the way we want it to?”
“In what way?”
“Well, suppose it does bring him back to life, but the him it brings back is Red Fire? What then? While I totally agree with you that Blue Fire deserves a chance to be happy, I think that what we don’t know is dangerous. Suppose there is something in the arrangement of all those crystals in Red Fire’s cavernous insides. Imagine some sort of mechanism in all of that. What if once you place Yellow Fire’s father’s gift in it—or any father’s gift in it—it works exactly the way it was designed to work, the way it worked before? Think of a blacksmith’s forge for example. It is of little consequence who pumps the bellows, but simply that someone does. As long as they are pumped, the coals will be hot. How do we know that is not how it is with Hostile worlds? We could simply be bringing Red Fire back to life after so much effort was spent to get rid of him. And while I know that is less hopeful, I should think that it is at least as likely, if not more so, than hoping we can bring Blue Fire’s long-lost husband so easily back to life.”
Orli seemed to deflate at all of that, the sails of her enthusiasm drooping as Altin’s logic blocked the wind. “Well, we could still try,” she said, but there was not much heart in it. “We killed him once, you know.” That was true, but she didn’t seem to mean it, and he could tell he’d spoiled it for her. He saw it in her face and felt the fool. Why? Why had he taken it from her, snuffed the radiance of hope? What was wrong with him?
He stared off into the night for a time, confronted by the star of Hope and irritated with himself.
Eventually, his head began to move, the barest of motions, nodding as his thoughts settle themselves in place. “You’re right,” he said. “We could still try. And as you keep saying, there is hope, and perhaps more than a modest chance.”
She looked up, studied him, searching his face to see if he really believed that in his mind, for it seemed to her as if he’d said it with his heart. She knew how he was. How he’d do anything for her. But he was right, and his points were painfully true. But she did want to hope, and she wanted to help poor Blue Fire more than anything. Her mouth twitched a little f
rom side to side, then she queried him to see. “Do you really think so? Do you really suddenly think it’s possible?”
There was something in the way she said it that gave him pause, and he saw the scrutinizing angles of her eyes. “Why shouldn’t I?”
“Because I don’t want to get her hopes up if you really do think it’s dumb and dangerous.”
“It’s not dumb. But it is dangerous. And we’ll have to get permission from the leaders of both worlds before we do. We need to make sure we do it right.”
“They’ll never approve it,” she said. “You know they won’t. Which means we can’t tell them. We can’t even suggest it to them. If they think it’s remotely possible, they’ll do something horrible. I know they will.”
He straightened and locked eyes with her. “Orli, I want to help. I will help. But we are not going to put both worlds at risk again for this without running it by the Queen and the fleet. Not without preparing them for what might happen if Red Fire does suddenly come back. Imagine all those orbs coming back to life with him, all those dead things drifting between the planets around your sun? They’re not gone, you know, not the hundreds of thousands of little ones. Not all of them anyway. Roberto said the clean-up is going to take years. Which means until that is done, it is dangerous and requires that we tell the leaders of both our worlds. We must have them in agreement. And perhaps with their agreement, we can also secure their help. Anything less would be reckless. It’s not ideal, but it’s true.”
“They’ll never approve it. There’s no way.”
“I know.” He looked down, unable to watch the futility, the open sorrow that came upon her perfect face.
She slumped back down against the cliff and stared vacantly at her knees. After a while of mulling over what had been said, she finally spoke again. “And it’s not my world. Not anymore.”
He hid the smile that came upon his face. She sounded petulant, which he knew would lead to her return to normalcy. “Of course not. That is the greatest joy of my life.”
She crossed her arms and huffed, refusing to look at him, but he could see she was coming around just as he knew she would. They sat in silence once again, but after a time, her expression softened and she just looked sad. “I only wish she could be happy,” she said after a time. “It’s not fair.”
He watched her, ached for her, ached for Blue Fire too. He knew Orli’s heart was in the right place, that she cared and wanted to do the right thing. This was the part of her that had become the botanist, the part of her that had fought and survived a terrible disease, stayed strong to keep others alive no matter what. It was what made her so heroic in his eyes, even as she pouted against the cliff.
He watched her for a long time. He would watch her for eternity if he could.
“Orli,” he said after perhaps an hour had passed. He climbed to his feet. “There’s something I have to tell you.” He reached down for her with both hands. She gazed up and took them, curiosity obvious in her expression as he pulled her up.
“What is it?”
“I spoke to your father,” he began. “And he agrees with me.”
“About what?”
“About how you are the most amazing woman I have ever known. About how kind and clever and passionate you are. About how there is nothing that could make me happier than to spend my life with you. He’s given his permission,” he said. He paused, then knelt down before her, one knee firmly in the dirt. He clung to her hands and stared up at her, his green eyes bright beneath the light of the smiling moon. “Orli, marry me. I want to spend my life with you. I know you are thinking of the happiness of others right now, of Blue Fire’s, but I’m not. Not now. Now I am thinking of myself. I’m thinking of my own happiness.” He paused again, his lips pressing together for a moment, as if he’d suddenly realized something extra, something even he hadn’t expected before he’d begun. “Orli, before we go off doing, well, what I have a feeling we’re going to do, before we spend more time seeing to the happiness of everyone else in the galaxy, I want this for me. I want you. I need you. So, will you marry me?”
Pink Luria sparkled in the tears that filled her eyes, her bosom swelling and her whole body animated by the sudden flare of inner radiance. “Of course I will marry you. Of course! Of course!” She nearly leapt with glee, bouncing joyously on the balls of her feet, every cell that made her charged instantly with so much energy. “I’ve been waiting forever, hoping you would ask. I’ve waited and waited.” She pulled him to his feet, stared up into his gleaming green eyes, glistening with joy as hers were, and poured forth all the love in her heart, all the gratitude, the wonder, the admiration, even the fear that somehow he’d been lost to her more than once over the last two and a half years. She sent it all forth, let it gush into him in the moments of that precious gaze. “I love you so much. Yes, of course, I will marry you.”
They kissed, and for a long time after, they held each other, savoring the warmth and rapture of the moment. They did so for so long that eventually Taot came awake, scenting the pheromones blowing heavily upon the breeze that blew into his lair. He recognized them immediately and filled Altin’s mind with ravenously carnal images as he had so often done before, an unabashed appreciation and visualization of what he knew to be the natural eventuality. Normally such vivid physicality embarrassed Altin into blotchy shades of red that blushed from cheek to jaw. But this time, Altin did not fend the images off at all. He welcomed them, sent them back to the dragon, reflected intact, in agreement with Taot’s assessment and with what sufficed as a nod between them. He let the dragon know that he had in fact finally chosen himself a mate and that he was happy. With that news imparted, he then forcefully, if affectionately, shoved the dragon out of his head. With the dragon’s lustful thoughts gone, Altin was left with just his own.
He and Orli remained pressed together for a long time afterward, perhaps two hours or more, though time had no measure for them in that moment so sublime. Orli just leaned against him and listened to his heart, savoring the purest happiness she could remember in all her life as she stared out into the stars beyond his embrace. It was funny how long she’d been waiting for him to ask her, how long she’d known he would, expected and anticipated, and yet, somehow he’d managed to surprise her too. She was so happy it nearly hurt. They both were.
They might have remained there for another two hours to come had not a thought struck her about what he’d said while he’d proposed. It struck her like a shot. She tipped away from him a little and looked into his beautiful, amazing face. “Hey,” she said. “You said that there was something you had a feeling we are going to do, about us seeing to the happiness of everyone else in the galaxy. Does that mean what I think it means? That you’ll help me get Yellow Fire back for her?”
He smiled. “Yes,” he said. “For her. And for you. Anything for you.”
Chapter 53
Her Majesty was outraged when she got the news that her Galactic Mage intended to be married on another world. “Impossible,” she proclaimed, looking as if she might hurl her scepter at any moment across the open spaces of the throne room. “I forbid it! It must be here. There is no other possibility.”
This of course, opened up a huge argument about propriety and the customs of the land, which were at the heart of the decision for the couple to be married somewhere else. Altin and Orli simply would not wait two years, and there were no such “archaic restrictions” on planet Earth. They even suggested that Her Majesty might take this opportunity to set such tradition aside, but that was equally unthinkable. The scandal that would arise should Her Majesty sanction such a hastily arranged marriage would undermine the respect not only of the monarchy, which existed almost entirely for the preservation of social structures—of which two-year engagements were but a small part—but of the social structures themselves. It was rather a long and uncomfortable lecture they had to listen to, and it may or may not have been true, but true or not, neither Altin nor Orli cared. They simply re
fused to wait any longer than a month at most. They insisted that it was so, and they would absolutely not be moved. “Not by any force known on any world that we have found.” Those were Altin’s very words.
Which, of course, put her Majesty in a precarious place. She could hardly imprison them for insolence, though she threatened them with it twice in the course of making her arguments. But what other options did she have? “I shall have you both in jail,” she shouted at them at one point, “and you as well.” This last was directed at Orli’s father, apparently on account of his having sired her. “And you’ll be lucky if it’s not the headsman’s axe for the lot. Such is the crime of theft in these lands, and you are stealing this opportunity from me and from my people. Your wedding is bigger than just the two of you, you know.”
Fortunately for everyone, she relented on that, and eventually agreed to a compromise, a solution that came from the tactical mind of Colonel Pewter, who did nothing but wish his daughter happiness. His solution: they were to be married on a fleet ship to avoid controversy on Kurr. It could be done in orbit above Prosperion, so as not to be very far from her kingdom, but upon the deck of a ship, making it the territory of planet Earth, a place free from the laws and customs of Kurr. The reception, of course, would be at the Palace. As would be the rehearsal dinner the night before.
It was eventually agreed, and it was on that first grand occasion that they were all given quite a surprise. Director Bahri had just given a fine speech to a rousing round of applause, when there came the thud-thudding of the herald’s staff echoing into the dining hall from the vicinity of its wide double doors. This sounded at the same time a messenger came sprinting along the shadowy edges of the room and around the back of the dais upon which the planetary rulers and the bridal party sat. Tiptoeing up behind Her Majesty, the man whispered into her ear just as the herald’s announcement rang out for all to hear.
