Xenon’s eyes slipped to those of Genna. They both shook their heads. “We have decided not to put that burden on our mother. She has been under sedation, you know, on Cesis, since Arcan transported her there, and it would only bring her paranoia back if she found out that we were speaking to you.”
Grace nodded, tears filling her eyes again, this time of sadness. “I understand,” she said, biting her lip. “How is your mother doing?”
It was Genna’s turn to speak now. “She is actually smiling again, and seems to be quite content where she is on Cesis. But the doctors there say that we must never ever refer to you, or to anybody she associates with you. They think that she can live a fairly acceptable life if we avoid making her remember again. The medication and the therapy will allow her to forget, and let her sleep at night. She is better off where she is now.”
“I am glad.”
“You need to know that neither of us wishes Arcan, or any of you, any harm,” finished Xenon 50. “And we are going to change the house name. Mandalon has suggested that we create an interplanetary house, studying how Sellites can begin to integrate with the other planets. It will be discussed at the Votation next year.”
“That sounds wonderful! But … where will you live?”
“We shall stay where we are. We don’t really need the first 48 floors …. we can continue building up, above that level. And when the agreement finalizes the skyrise will revert to us.”
“I … appreciate your coming. I wish you both great success.”
“Thank you. Mandalon 50 has even assigned one of his own tutors to us, and three of his personal bodyguards have agreed to let their wives act as house companions, until we are old enough to look after ourselves. He says that, since Aracely is working for Arcan, any women on Sell who want to may work.”
Grace had already spotted Aracely, standing modestly behind Genna, so she waved at her. “You have started quite a trend on Valhai, then?”
Aracely nodded with a wry smile. “So it seems. Some of the women on Sell must have been really bored with their existence, because quite a lot of them volunteered to help Xenon and Genna. You don’t need to worry about them anymore.”
“No. I won’t.” Grace smiled at the young Sellite girl, who was now almost single-handedly running Arcan’s foundation, and then realized that she had not come alone. Her brother, Vion, was standing beside her, together with his own life partner. Mercy was very obviously pregnant now and was clutching rather uncomfortably at her husband’s arm for support. Ledin came up to Grace’s side, and began to chat to Vion’s wife, asking her about her experiences on Coriolis, as Grace received Vion’s congratulations.
“I’m glad you found the right person, Grace,” he told her.
Grace found herself staring slightly at the doctor. There was no trace inside her of the feelings she used to have for Vion, and she wondered where that emotion had gone, and why it had disappeared so completely. It was another time, another life, and it might just as well have happened to a different person. She stared up into Vion’s eyes without a trace of embarrassment.
“Thank you. I am too.”
He shook her hand, and then moved off casually to chat to Xenon 50 and Genna. That was kind of him, thought Grace. But then, Vion had always been kind. It was part of who he was.
Aracely was still beside her, and so she turned to grin at her. “Having fun?” she asked.
“Have to thank you for livening up my life quite considerably,” said Aracely. “Even my father can find nothing wrong with my working for the foundation, now! Who would have thought?” She leant forward, and dropped her voice. “By the way, I have heard that Mandalon is proposing to abolish genetic engineering. They are to take a vote on it at the Second Valhai Votation.”
Grace’s eyes widened. “Really? That is a huge step for Mandalon to take.”
“I know. There is a lot of opposition from the older generation, but they say that the 50th may approve it. All Sellites would be like you, if that law were passed.”
Grace gave a thoughtful nod, and looked over at Mandalon 50, still only a boy of eleven. He caught her glance and smiled, then turned back to Tallen and Petra, who appeared to be having some sort of discussion with him.
Mandalon was looking with some interest at the two Coriolans. “So you admit to being thieves?”
Tallen stiffened. “And what is wrong with being a thief?” he questioned. “It is an honourable way of life.”
Mandalon looked doubtful, so Tallen took it upon himself to elaborate. “On Coriolis, the meritocrats are the only people who may own property, who may have a bank account, who may buy or who may sell. The rest of the populace must survive as best it can. Most work for the meritocrats or barter with them, scraping out a living where the rulers will let them. We do not. We are Namuri.”
The Sellite ruler’s eyebrows were nearly meeting his hairline. “So the Namuri steal.”
“We reposition wealth. It is a political statement.”
“Do the Coriolan meritocrats look at it like that?”
A fierce frown covered Tallen’s face. “They do not. But until the political system is changed on Coriolis, everything will continue as it is. As Namuri, we are prepared to wait. We do not believe in violence to attain our ends.”
Diva had overheard the last couple of sentences, and chose to interrupt. “Six and I are trying to change things.”
“This is a private conversation, Meritocrat. Go back to your friends,” snapped Tallen.
“Considering we are the only people trying to change things on your home planet you might talk to us with a bit more respect!” said Diva, her eyebrows curving ominously in towards each other in the centre of her forehead.
Petra tugged at her brother’s arm. “We are not thieves at this particular moment,” she explained to Mandalon. “We have undertaken other tasks, which occupy all our time.” She put emphasis on the word ‘all’, and pressed her brother’s arm to remind him of their current circumstances. He looked at her sideways, and then acquiesced.
“We are currently acting as bodyguards,” he told Mandalon loftily. “So this is not relevant. When the Namuri are under a blood pledge of loyalty they temporarily abandon all civil disobedience of a political nature.”
“Big of you!” Diva sounded disgruntled. She was a bit tired of being criticized by these two young Coriolans.
“So I don’t need to worry about your stealing anything from me?” asked Mandalon.
Petra looked horrified. “Of course not! We only steal from Coriolan meritocrats! We are honourable members of our clan.” She held herself up proudly.
Diva gave something very like a snort.
Mandalon grinned to himself. “Then no doubt you make good bodyguards.”
Both brother and sister now straightened up to their full height. “Namuri make the best bodyguards in the system,” they said together.
“And out of it,” added Tallen, which earned him a displeased glance from Diva, and a warning touch on the arm from his sister, afraid he might say too much. “I mean, we would be the best bodyguards in the whole Ammonite Galaxy!” he hastened to add.
“I wish all my bodyguards were as loyal as you!” said Mandalon, whose mind had gone back to Gorgamon, the guard who had very nearly managed to kill him only a few months earlier.
Tallen nodded. You couldn’t expect a Sellite to compare to a Namuri, he felt.
Diva looked across the room, to where Six was talking to Ledin easily about the Kwaide Orbital Space Station. The two of them looked comfortable with who they were, somehow at ease with themselves and each other. She had a moment’s vertigo, as if the floor of the skyrise had tilted, and she actually clutched out at a nearby pillar to try to steady herself. Then she looked back at Tallen and Petra, still aware of the scathing disdain of two people who regarded her as one of the enemy.
Suddenly a door in her mind snapped shut. She could almost feel the thud as it closed. A final acceptance flowed inexorably ov
er her. The world she had grown up accepting as normal on her own planet was fatally flawed, and she would never be able to look at it again without seeing that. Although she had recognized the contradictions in Coriolan society before, especially after she had been forced to see it through Six’s eyes, she had never really seen the parallels with the Kwaidian Elders, or the Sellites. We, the meritocrats, are the tyrants. Her ancestors seemed to gasp in horror as that realization hit her, and she shuddered; in some profound way she knew that she would never be quite the same person again. She frowned, and began to twitch at a lock of her hair, turning it over and over in her fingers. She felt absolute fury at somebody, probably herself, possibly Six.
Then a couple of mangled hands went around her, and Grace gave her a hug. “Do you remember when you first came here with me,” she whispered, “when Arcan managed to get you to the shore, and I brought you here?”
Diva managed to give a passable nod, and struggled to get her wayward feelings under control.
“A lot has happened since then, hasn’t it?” Grace gave her another hug. “By the way, Ledin and I will be going to go back to Kwaide with you two when you go. We are going to spend our journey of colour there.”
“You are? Where?”
It didn’t take long for Diva to get their proposed destination out of Grace. When she heard just what it was that they were going to look for she gave a definite nod.
“We will be coming with you,” she said.
Chapter 23
ON KWAIDE, THE weather was reasonably good, and the shuttles came down into the Valley of the Skulls out of a clear blue sky on a chilly but bright day.
The first one hovered for some time, as its pilot tried to find a safe place to land, and it shone darkly against the sunlight that never reached all the way down into the valley.
At last the pilot seemed satisfied with his position, and the small pod gently descended until it touched the broken rubble which lay strewn over the floor of the valley. There was a pause, and then the hatch was opened from inside, and a tall figure stepped slowly out of the hatch, and negotiated the rungs down the fuselage and onto the floor of the valley. He sighed as he stepped from the last rung; he was the first Kwaidian ever to set foot here, but he didn’t feel that it was an honour. Ledin looked around at the dark and damp valley with disfavour.
Grace was the next down, and then she turned to watch as Diva and Six brought their shuttle in to land. The two newlyweds had tried to convince their friends not to come with them, but there had been no gainsaying them. Diva appeared to be under the illusion that the two of them would get themselves lost forever in the mountains up beyond the black peak, and Six was determined to pay homage to Ledin’s sister by helping his friend out in this.
“After all,” he had said, “we have had quite parallel lives, you and I. It could easily have been me who was being chased across the peaks, and it could easily be one of my sisters lying in the Valley of Skulls now. In a way I feel as if Hanna had been my sister too. It was a part of all of our lives, and I owe this to you, to her, and to that old Kwaide we were forced to live in.”
Ledin had stared at him for a long moment, and then clapped him on the back. It was true, he realized. Things had changed so much on Kwaide in such a short time, that this was a way to honour all the no-names who had perished at the hands of the wildest factions of the Elders.
“We will put her to rest wrapped in the flag of New Kwaide,” he said suddenly.
The others nodded. “Yes, of course,” said Grace. “She would have liked that.”
“They all would have.” Ledin’s eyes were far away.
Six pursed his lips for a moment, and then his eyes shone. “We should put up a monument to the previous generations of no-names,” he said. “Then they would never be forgotten.”
“Yes!” Ledin was pleased. “But what, and where?”
“That’s easy,” Grace told them. “The single most evocative thing of the hard life of the no-names on Kwaide is the waterfall over the black peak, the one which turns all objects hung in it to stone. That symbolizes the impossibly difficult life you all had to lead perfectly – even the water you drank was so hard it petrifies things. All we have to do is to add a small shrine to one side, and place one or two significant things inside the waterfall, where they will be petrified. The rest we can leave to time.”
They had all agreed, and spoken to the new president of Kwaide about it. He had liked the idea, and a volunteer group was already building what was to be the small shrine. The president had come up with an idea of his own: there was to be a cabin added close by, so that the New Kwaidians could go into retreat there for a few days, and live for that small time fasting and drinking only the rock-hard water. It would be a way of remembering past lives, past friends and past history.
They had left Cimma on Valhai. Vion had recommended at least a week’s complete rest before she resumed her duties on Kwaide, so they had asked Tallen and Petra to look after her, left Bennel to take care of all three of them, checked with the man who spoke to canths that the journey of colour could be shared with other people, and then left for Kwaide, transported to the space station by Arcan.
Now they stood, eyes narrowed, examining the floor of the Valley of the Skulls. There were crags all around, sheer black rock that glistened with moisture. It was imposing and overpowering, leading to a sensation of distaste, of fear.
Ledin pointed to the northernmost point of the valley, where the black rock seemed to crash together in a massive overhang, probably 600 metres above the ground. Grace bent her head forward again, and massaged the back of her neck. It hurt to crick her neck that far back. She breathed in slowly. There was an unpleasant odour about the valley. It was dank and musty and gave rise to a rather unpleasantly tart taste in the back of her mouth.
They began to pick their way across the rubble to the northernmost edge of the valley, Ledin and Grace leading the way, and Six following, talking to Diva.
Six gave Diva a sideways look. “You know,” he said, “I’m not sure I should go back to Coriolis with you, even for a few days. I’m feeling quite settled here. I might stay on Kwaide.”
Diva looked up quickly. “Oh?”
“It really is about time that we decided what we are going to do – with our lives, I mean.” He looked casually in another direction. “I thought I might stay around here for a bit. You know, see the shrine finished, give a couple of classes at the university; that sort of thing.”
She had become suddenly alert. “On … on your own, or … accompanied?” she asked.
“Do you care?”
“I—”
“Because you were the one who said that – even when we were consorts – we would be free to have relationships with other people.”
“Yes. I know I did, and of course, that is true, but—”
“You really ought to make up your mind, you know, Diva.”
“I thought you would come back with me to Coriolis. My mother is about to proclaim the new changes. I thought you would want to be there. After all, you will be reinstated at the same time. I will declare resumption of consort privilege.”
He stopped, and stared at her. “Ooh!” he said in a sarcastic voice, “what a treat!” Then he raised his eyes heavenwards. “And what will that give me?”
She looked confused. “You will become consort again. You will get your palace and your stipend back.”
Six gave her a pitying look. “I’m not a pet monkey,” he said. “I don’t do sitting around in luxury. You know that.”
Diva’s eyes flashed. “Well you won’t have to sit around in luxury for very long, no-name! I’m only suggesting you come over to witness the signing of the new laws. Just for a few days. And it was your idea in the first place. If you have too many … commitments … over here in Kwaide, then we’ll say no more about it.”
Six brightened. “Good. Glad that’s settled.”
Diva restrained herself from hitting him over th
e head. She counted up to ten, and then she brushed a few specks of invisible dust off her sleeve. “Of course, you would be playing right into Tartalus’s hands.”
He gave a frown. “What do you mean?”
Well, if you don’t turn up to reclaim consort privilege, then I will be declared officially single again, which means that there will be many pretenders to the post – like Tartalus.”
“That posturer!” Six was aware of the heat of an uneven anger, spreading out from somewhere in the centre of his chest. “So? What could he do about it – you wouldn’t have anything to do with him.”
“No, but one of our children is already an acknowledged future Elder, and by law requires a male consort to oversee his or her upbringing. If I am declared officially single, and refused to marry again, the meritocrats might assign a consort to me—”
“Over my dead body!”
“—Who would then assume the privileges of full consort rights – including the right to becoming legal father to all fifty children on Xiantha.”
Six turned white. “You are making that up!”
Diva thought quickly, examining her nails. “No. Why would I do that?” she asked. “Oh, look, I’ve chipped a nail!”
“I don’t give a bat’s ear for your nails!”
Diva opened her eyes wide. “Six!”
“—Or your cutis, or your white teeth, or your interminably long legs, or your terrible character—”
“—Excuse me? Terrible character?” Her eyes flashed.
He gave her a look. “Well, you have, Diva! You are cranky and overbearing and proud and haughty and generally totally impossible.”
She tossed her hair back, and faced him with her hand on her scabbard. “Take that back!”
“Why? It has the merit of being true.” He faced her head on, and they both glared at each other. “And now we’re on the subject, you can’t take criticism either. You come from a long line of meritocrats who throw anybody that doesn’t agree with them into the pit, and you are just like them.”
Ammonite Stars (Omnibus): Ammonite Galaxy #4-5 Page 30
