Ammonite Stars (Omnibus): Ammonite Galaxy #4-5

by Gillian Andrews

  “Does it have to be on Xiantha?” asked Grace.

  He shook his head. “All that is required is that it should be a journey of the spirit, a journey to attain colour.”

  “Well,” said Ledin slowly, “I don’t know where we will go, but we will do our best.”

  “Nothing more is required.”

  They took their leave of Mandalon, who actually looked very regretful at not being able to go with them. As they let themselves through the lock and out onto the airless terrace, they saw him disappear into thin air, transported back to his chambers by Arcan. Grace thought she saw him make the Sell cross in the air with his fingers as he was leaving. She smiled. That was kind of him.

  AS THEY STEPPED bare planet, Grace felt an immense sensation of belonging take over her. She was coming back to the surface of Valhai, this time with the person she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. She found herself remembering the lost girl who had wandered for the first time out onto the surface of this beautiful and inhospitable planet, and realized that girl had faded. The new Grace was perhaps a little more battered in parts, but she had so much more happiness than that distant little girl who had longed so much to fit in somewhere. She looked around her at the dark sky. The missing fingers mattered not a jot at that moment, and she felt such a sensation of happiness that her heart seemed to swell up, as if it was trying to reach out to the stars above.

  She gazed at the stars. The first time she had set foot on the surface of Valhai, it had seemed as if they were mocking her, mocking the Sellite race who were no nearer to interstellar travel then than they had been thousands of years earlier. But now … she turned in the sky until she could make out the constellation of the Giant Crab. It shone down on them from afar, and she could make out the multiple star system of Pictoris, which contained Pictoria. But she was seeing a Pictoria 30,000 years old; a Pictoria which hadn’t yet had its routine interrupted by visitors from the binary system, hadn’t yet had to fight against the Dessites. The light which was reaching her now had taken 30,000 years to weave its way through the sky to get to them. She shook her head. It all felt very strange.

  And here they were, on the surface of Valhai. The deep violet-blue of Cian seemed to light up the slate-gray of the planet’s surface, throwing deep shadows where there was any unevenness or rock formations. The rest of the stars shone down unblinkingly at them; there was only a very sparse atmosphere to cause aberrations of the light. Grace turned to pick out the Vanex constellation. That was only 13,400 light years away, and there she was now able to visualize a younger Dessia, perhaps with other species still enjoying the damp atmosphere, perhaps before the Dessites had decided they needed to take over the whole planet.

  With a start, she realized that the others were waiting for her. She went red. “I … I’m sorry.”

  The man who spoke to canths walked stiffly over to her, unused to the bodywrap which encased him. “Now I know why you love this planet,” he told her. “It is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen.”

  She smiled gratefully at him. “Thank you. I’m sorry; I must have gone into a sort of day-dream.”

  Six grunted. “You’re not kidding! We have been standing here for ten minutes at least.”

  Diva gave Six a push, and he nearly fell over.

  “What? Well, we have!”

  “You haven’t got a romantic bone in your whole body,” she hissed.

  “What’s romantic about standing staring up at a few stars?” he muttered back.

  “Of course it’s romantic!”

  “It’ll give you a crick in the back of your neck!” he said.

  Diva gave a sigh.

  “It is beautiful,” said Ledin. “Doesn’t it make you wonder how we can be seeing Pictoria so long ago when we have already been there?”

  Grace gave him a grateful look. “That’s exactly what I was thinking,” she said. “It doesn’t seem to make much sense, does it?”

  Six frowned. “I don’t see why not. We don’t travel the same way as light, do we? I mean, we use quantum decoherence when we go with Arcan; light has to go the long way round. What’s so surprising about that?”

  The visitor hummed. “For once I agree with Six. When you remember something that happened in your past you see the event as it was then, don’t you?”

  Ledin and Grace thought about it, and then nodded.

  “Well it is the same. You are looking at a memory of Pictoria, which has been stored in the sky you are looking at, instead of in your head. It is perfectly clear to me. The night sky is a museum.”

  Diva nodded. “Put like that,” she said, “it does seem to make more sense. But I think we should get on, because if we don’t we are all going to run out of mask packs before we have time to get the pair of you safely married off.”

  She began to lead the way to the ortholake, a little straggling group of tiny figures making its way across the dark silvery-gray surface of Valhai, under an immense sky. Grace and Ledin brought up the rear, walking side by side, and savouring each second.

  “Do you want to go to Xiantha for our journey of colour?” Ledin asked her.

  Grace shook her head. “I want to go to Kwaide,” she told him. “We are going to walk over the mountains from the black peak, and you are going to show me where Hanna died. I want to leave some flowers at her grave.”

  Ledin stopped dead in his tracks. “We can’t,” he said shortly. “That is impossible.” Behind the mask pack, his face had gone white.

  “Why not?”

  “Because.” His face was set. It was as if another person were speaking.

  Grace bit her lip, and then pulled him around to face the orange line which divided daylight from the night they were currently standing in; the curve of redness that showed that Almagest was on the other side of the planet. “That line there is the division between sunlight and the darkness,” she told him simply. “There is something like that inside you, and I don’t know why.”

  He suddenly seemed to take on a haunted look. “I can’t tell you.”

  “You must tell me. You can’t hide that part of you from me. It isn’t fair.”

  He began to trudge after the others, obviously considering her request, but raw emotion running over his face. Grace stumbled after him, worried that he would never tell her. Finally, tears streaming down his face behind his mask pack, he began to speak, the words tumbling over each other, as if happy to escape after being bottled up all that time.

  “It was too icy to bury her. And I c-couldn’t leave her there for the hunting group to find. I couldn’t!”

  “Of course you couldn’t. I understand that.” She couldn’t even imagine what they had had to live through.

  “And she was so perfect, Grace.” His voice broke. “Her face was serene, and at rest. She just lay down and drifted into death. She had a half-smile on her face, as if she welcomed it, but her hands were stretched out, trying to find me. Except I wasn’t there for her.” His eyes stared unseeing up at Cian, far above them, and he took a ragged breath. “I didn’t want them to find her, didn’t want them to touch her. I couldn’t bear to think of them touching her.” More tears slid down his cheeks. “So I picked her up in my arms, and I carried her with me.” He stopped his story, reliving the memory again in his mind. “Only it was very cold. I was slowing down. The weight of carrying her body was slowing me down, and the hunting party was getting closer.” Ledin was shaking now; Grace could feel it through the bodywrap. The whole of his body was trembling as he forced himself to remember what had happened.

  “S-so I knew I would be caught—” he stared at Grace, and grabbed at her arms, “—that they would catch both of us, in the end.” He swallowed. “There is a cliff. It is known as the wall of death. I carried her to the edge, and said goodbye to her there. She was so beautiful; so untouched by the end of her life. I ruined that beauty, Grace. I walked with her to the edge of the cliff, and looked down all those hundreds of metres of rocky outcrop. Nobody
has ever been down into the Valley of the Skulls. There is no way to get down to the bottom. And, Grace,” he wailed, “I threw her down the wall of death, down onto the rocks below. I threw her into the Valley of the Skulls and I knew she would have been scared to be in such a horrible place.” He hung his head, and gave a sigh. “Then I saved myself – I escaped from the hunting party. So you see how brave a person you are marrying.” His voice was laced with sarcasm and self-loathing. He sat down on the silver-grey sand of Valhai, and put his head between his hands.

  Grace took a deep breath of air, and then sat down with him. “Then we will go and get her out of the Valley of the Skulls,” she told him quietly.

  He didn’t look up. “How are we going to do that?”

  “You are the best pilot I know. And we have shuttles now.”

  A ray of light seemed to pass over his face, and he raised his head. “You are right. But – even with a shuttle – it would be really hard to do. It is full of rocky gullies and clefts.”

  “We have to get Hanna out of there, and bury her properly – in some place with sunlight. You didn’t have any choice, you know. If you hadn’t thrown her over the cliff, they would have captured both of you. You said so yourself.”

  “There must have been something else I could have done.”

  “There wasn’t. But we will find her body and we will give her the burial she deserves. We’ll spend our journey of colour doing that.”

  “Wouldn’t you rather go to the Emerald Lake?”

  She shook her head. “You have been carrying this weight of guilt around with you for years. It is time to get rid of it. Then we can go to the Emerald Lake.”

  He managed a smile. “Do you really think we can find her? After all these years?”

  “Of course we can. We have to.”

  She pulled him up, and they began to walk quickly towards the ortholake, trying to catch up with the others. They didn’t want to be late for their own wedding.

  THE CEREMONY WAS unique. Grace tried to fix it all in her mind’s eye, so that she would be able to paint the picture she had promised her mother. Arcan, treating them to a flashing display of fountains inside fountains, which curled over and over, falling back down into the lake again in an infinite array of sparkling iridescent colours; a spray of individual drops, each of which glittered with its own minute rainbows of light. Six and Diva, standing close to each other, their faces happy and relaxed, their bodywrapped hands almost, but not quite, touching. The visitor, hovering overhead, spinning and shining happily. The man who spoke to canths, still uncomfortable in his bodywrap, but pleased to be officiating at the ceremony.

  All this below a sky studded with stars, with the rest of the ortholake shining platinum against the slate blackness of the dark side of Valhai. Grace found herself staring up at the sky, realizing how small they were against this backdrop of infinity. She took Ledin’s hand. He looked over at her enquiringly, then gave her hand a comforting squeeze. He was smiling a wide, infectious smile as if he could hardly believe his luck. Grace’s own face shone – a beacon of her true feelings.

  The canth keeper motioned to the couple to stand in front of him, and to their witnesses to move slightly to one side. Six looked sideways at Diva, making a wheeling motion with his right hand and raised his eyebrows expectantly, asking if the ceremony was going to be one of those long-drawn-out sort of things. Diva shook her head, and telegraphed an exasperated glare.

  Six signaled that he had merely been speculating on the length of the ceremony.

  She gave a ferocious frown directed directly at him that left him in no doubt of her meaning.

  He gave a shrug.

  She turned pointedly away, and concentrated on the ceremony.

  He rolled his eyes, and fell still, stifling a yawn.

  At that moment Arcan brought Cimma herself in, surrounded by a protective bubble of orthogel. Although she was still obviously weakened by her recent experiences, she held herself proudly, and smiled happily at them all.

  The canth keeper was speaking. “… I believe that this girl in front of me has one of the most important names in the binary system, because she is one of only two people who have ever been named by the canths. When they told me to take them to her, they referred to her as the girl who found their past, and they speak of her being built of pearl.”

  Grace looked surprised, but Ledin gave a nod. This came as no surprise to him; he had always thought Grace was the most important person in the universe.

  The canth keeper went on. “She has decided to share her life with this man,” —he indicated Ledin with one hand— “who is the only other person ever named by the canths.”

  It was Ledin’s turn to raise an eyebrow; he seemed amazed that the canths would even know who he was. Grace turned a conspiratorial smile on him.

  The canth keeper continued. “He is referred to by the canths as the man who witnessed the future, because he was merged mentally with the first canth to journey to Pictoria.”

  Ledin shifted on the sand, uncomfortable, and Six nodded with feeling for a fellow-sufferer. He thought the thing was going on too long, too. Diva gave him a nudge with her elbow.

  “What now?”

  But she shook her head and refused to answer.

  The man who spoke to canths was speaking again. “Both are known to me to be strong, and true. They are deserving of their present colours, and worthy of future progression.”

  He made a sign in the air, then extracted a tiny swatch of material which had been tied around one of the spare mask packs at his belt. This he opened carefully, and then stepped forward. He motioned to Grace and Ledin to hold forward their hands, and spread the piece of material over them.

  “By the colours vested in me, I announce that the girl who found the past and the man who witnessed the future will share their colours from this moment on, for as long as they both may live.” He smiled at them both, and then stepped back. The ceremony was over.

  Six brightened. “That was all right,” he said cheerfully. “Only about five minutes. Not bad at all.”

  “You have the attention span of a two-year old,” Diva told him severely.

  “I know.” He grinned.

  They stepped forward to congratulate the new lifesharers, then the moment was over, and Arcan transported Cimma back to the 21st floor of the 256th skyrise. The others turned reluctantly away from Arcan, changed their mask packs, and began the long hike back to the skyrises, the visitor weaving exultantly between them.

  It wasn’t until they reached the first rung of the ladder up to the skyrise that the visitor took his leave, glinting and shimmering against the dark surface of Valhai.

  “I need to spend more time on Pictoria,” he said. “Neither I nor the trimorphs are quite ready to travel these astronomical distances yet. But we will be soon. I wish you luck in your lifesharing, Ledin and Grace, and I would like to thank all of you for rescuing me from the Dessites.” He flushed darkly. “If it weren’t for you I would have been terminated by now. I owe you all my life.” He flashed a brilliant white. “I can’t believe that at last I can make up my own mind, that I don’t have to do the bidding of anybody else. I never dared hope that my mind could be free of Dessite control. I hope to be worthy of the trust you have put in me, even if you are only 3b species.”

  Six opened his mouth.

  The visitor glowed and seemed to give a pulse of light. “—Although,” he admitted, “you seem to be progressing.”

  “About time you gave us our due,” said Six.

  “Not as high as me, of course,” scintillated the visitor. “I am nearly a category 1 entity now, you know!”

  Six took a step in the visitor’s direction. But the small being flashed, and then vanished, winking out of existence as Six neared its position. Six could have sworn he heard a laugh as the bimorph left.

  WHEN THEY REACHED the skyrise, the small group were taken aback to find rather more people than they had expected waiting to gree
t them on the 21st floor. Standing a few feet behind Cimma were Petra, Tallen and Bennel. But Mandalon was standing beside Cimma too, waiting to wish them well, and Grace opened her eyes wide as she saw who was standing next to him.

  “Xenon! Genna!” Amanita’s children were standing stiffly beside the head of Sell, looking self-conscious, but both were trying to smile at her. Grace ran forwards.

  “Thank you!” She looked around at Ledin, and went pink. “You don’t know how much this means to me!”

  “We came to wish you well, Aunt Grace,” said Xenon. His eyes slid across to Mandalon, who seemed to be watching them closely.

  Ledin wondered whether the head of Sell had exerted himself to convince Grace’s niece and nephew to forgive her. When he intercepted a small nod of approval from Mandalon, he realized he was right. Ledin smiled at Mandalon. It was the best wedding present he could have given Grace. Then he realized that Xenon 50 was still speaking.

  “We wanted you to know, Aunt Grace, that … that …” the boy looked at his sister, and then went on, “… that we don’t feel the same way our mother did. We do know that you didn’t have any intention of bringing ruin on the family; that you were just trying to help your friends.”

  Grace felt a load lift off her shoulders, and a shiver of relief ran all the way down her spine. “Thank you! I know you can never forgive me, but I do want you to know that I am sorry that my actions should have ruined your lives.”

  Xenon shook his head. “Genna and I will build our own lives back up now, Aunt Grace. You don’t need to worry about us.”

  “Could … Could I see you … from … from time to time?”