Forge of Heaven

by C. J. Cherryh

  "Horrid. You aren't. Everybody knows you're not."

  "I am. More than you'd guess. I just live my little life and buy my own groceries. It's my private fantasy."

  Ardath set her chin. "The fools on this station can't touch you. Nobody dares touch you."

  "Security doubts they would, at least." Salads showed up, deftly, quietly. "And you? How are you getting along?"

  "Oh, fine," Ardath said. "Really, very."

  "That's good."

  "Procyon, do you have to live at that stodgy nook address?"

  "It's comfortable."

  "Well, you lend it cachet. No question. They could forgo the rent. You should speak to the management."

  "I'm kept by the government, but don't spread that around."

  A laugh. "I always knew you'd do something sensible."

  Kekellen listened from time to time, but said very little. Unlike Marak, Kekellen observed no schedule, interrupting his sleep now and again, but mostly keeping his robots away and his relays quiet while he was working or in public, and he was glad of that.

  Drusus was on duty at the moment. They were back in the usual rotation. So he had a private life, such as it could be, with such ties as he had. He actually enjoyed the supper, feeling safe, in a way he hadn't expected. There were two kinds of security, one he'd kept by being nobody and quiet, and what he had now, a notoriety that made people shy of talking to him, let alone bothering him.

  That meant he could do what he'd never done, and go where he'd never go, and he didn't have any question he'd stay employed-not these days.

  He'd begun to settle in, was what. He'd found a means of living the life he liked.

  That wasn't at all bad.

  The air had a different smell, now, wet sand, wet rock, salt water; and the evenings had gotten much colder.

  Change, change, and change in the rules of the world. Marak took a steaming cup of tea, and Hati took one, and they listened to young Farai, who thought he'd seen a fish swimming at the surface of their new sea, and was excited.

  Marak himself doubted any fish could survive the plunge the watchers in the heavens described at the gates of the Wall. But who knew? He listened politely, and drank his tea.

  The long spine of the Needle Gorge was indeed likely to fail, so Ian said, and soon, taking their relay with it. Well that they were up on solid ground. And they might almost see it from here.

  Luz was back with Ian. The Ila had taken to her quarters, with the doors shut. They might stay shut for a while.

  Ian's latest rocket was a success. Ian was getting spectacular images from the Wall, which now stood as an island, and they got others, from the edge of the plateau. They sent them to the Refuge, but the Ila refused to come out of her chambers and look.

  Ian had tried to entice him to come back, meanwhile, but he was uncertain. Out here, he had no need of Ian's cameras. To see all the history of the waterfall in its glory, it seemed they had a choice, to go back to the Refuge, or at least trek as far as the waystation at Edina, to see Ian's images on a much larger screen.

  Meanwhile the shallow rim of their new sea steamed with fog, while the heart of it deepened. The waterfall at the Wall had diminished, the seas equalizing.

  As for Farai's precious fish, first would come the chemical adjustment of the water, the algaes, and the weed would take hold, and the one-celled creatures, and the floaters and the burrowers.

  Once the food chain established itself, then the fishes might come, long and sinuous, making their living on lesser creatures.

  Already the weather reports spoke of torrential rains in the highlands, water which would cut the gorge faster and faster toward the new sea, until it vanished altogether into a chain of islands. When the Needle did merge with the sea, it would sweep down its own different chemistry to a new estuary.

  Everything was a chain. And there were thousands of new things to learn.

  "I think Farai is imagining this fish," Hati said.

  "I all but know he is," Marak said quietly, but he never would deflate the boy's enthusiasm. And, who knew? One might have ridden out the chute.

  They were bound for the east, now, at a leisurely pace, while Meziq's leg mended. The watchers in the heavens were back at their posts. The ondat, the Ila's great enemies, had established their own tie to the watchers, but Procyon swore it was no great inconvenience to him; and meanwhile the ondat, like everyone else in the heavens, simply watched-absorbed, perhaps, in the news of a new sea, new weather, new wonders, in closer relationship with the world than before. There would be no war in the heavens, nor any more troubling by the Earth lord, who had settled into quiet, likewise touched by the ondat.

  Hati understood the close call they had had. His youngest watcher went on adapting, having the good sense to deal softly with the ondat, having all the joy of life in him since his return, describing all the images he saw of the incoming sea.

  He could hardly imagine where the boy was at the moment, in a building, in a structure, with this sister of his, at a celebration. Procyon was happy, and new as the morning: that was the bond they had between them. He had sons-he and Hati-sons and grandsons and great-grandsons in great number, besides their descendants; they were all familiar to him.

  This one held surprises. Like the desert. Like the sea. This one broke the rules wisely. Like him. Like Hati.

  Such a life was a treasure, when it appeared.

  The End