She became a familiar sight to nocturnal travelers, who were startled by her slim form, passing across the packed snow under the hard moonlight, wrapped in a long silver cloak.
And, as everyone had supposed would happen, there came a night when she did not return. They found her in the spring, at the foot of the escarpment that now bears her name.
Today, townspeople claim that her spirit continues to wander the high country. And more than one villager, returning late to his home, has seen the lovely apparition. She stares at the sky, it is reported, and asks a question, which is always the same: "O Friend, is there news yet of the Corsarius?"
DELLACONDA Is A small, heavy, metal-rich world circling the ancient, brick-red star Dalia Minor. In relatively recent times—about twenty thousand years ago—it is believed to have been involved in a near-collision, possibly with the object that is now its moon. Today it describes an erratic looping orbit around its central luminary, much as its own satellite rolls in a wild ellipse. (The moon will break free eventually, but that event is still ten million years away.) The orbit is gradually correcting itself, and current estimates are that within several hundred thousand years the world will have acquired a pleasant, backyard sort of climate.
In the meantime, the habitable parts of Dellaconda are afflicted with brutal winters, blazing summers, and a capricious weather machine punctuated by terrifying storms. People tend to live inland, well away from the cyclonic winds that regularly rake its coasts. It is a world of rock and desert, of vast plains frozen during much of the year, of impenetrable forests and impassable rivers.
The cities are protected by gantner fields, though some people still claim they prefer the old days ("when you got a real change of seasons"). It’s all too predictable now, they say: every day is twenty degrees and pleasant. Ruins the young people. But the occasional measures introduced into Council to disconnect are always resoundingly defeated.
There were one hundred seventeen listings in various Dellacondan cities under the name "Scott, Hugh." I called them all. If any of them was the Scott I was looking for, he didn’t admit to it.
I tried the Grand Bank of the Interior, which held the account into which the proceeds from the sale of the house had been placed. They listened politely, and explained that they regretfully could not provide an address. Furthermore, it was against their policy to take a message.
So I was left to search a planetary population of thirty-odd million for a man who didn’t want to be found.
The most likely place to start was Christopher Sim’s home. It’s a museum now, of course: a modest, two-level permearth house in Cassanwyle, a remote mountain town whose population during the Resistance was about a thousand. It isn’t really a whole lot bigger today, excluding tourists.
Still, this tiny, exposed collection of well-kept but ancient buildings constitutes the lodestone of the Confederacy. The great symbols are here: the harridans haunt its forested peaks; the Signal glows forlornly in an upstairs window of Sim House; and (in Tarien’s modest cottage across the wooded valley) a computer still carries within its memory early versions of the phrases that would eventually find their way into the Accord.
I got there late in the afternoon. To maintain old world charm, the Dellacondans had, at that time, refrained from erecting a shield over the town. That’s no longer the case, as you may be aware; but when I visited it during the late spring, in the Dellacondan year 3231, it was exposed to the elements. It was a brisk day, as I recall, with a temperature that, in mid-afternoon, could get no higher than twenty below. There was a steady current of frigid air across the mountain slopes, and through downtown Cassanwyle.
But the visitors came, wrapped against the weather, and generally subdued in this holiest of Confederate shrines. The Dellacondans had built a tourist shelter several hundred meters downslope of Sim House. From there, people were ferried by airbus to all the major historical sites in the area.
But the wait at the holding station could be long. I was there almost an hour before a group of about twenty of us were taken the final distance over a field of hard-packed snow to our transportation.
Sim had lived in a three-story farmhouse with an enclosed veranda on two sides. Our bus circled the area while we looked down at the various points of interest: the little cemetery in back where Maurina was buried; Sim’s own skimmer, now permanently moored beneath a gantner shield just north of the property; the Bickford Tavern, visible at the foot of the east slope, where the first strategy meetings had been held after the fighting broke out.
We stayed aloft until everyone in a previous airbus had loaded; then we descended to our assigned place on the landing pad. The guide informed us we would have ten minutes inside, and opened the exit doors.
We filed out and, despite the severity of the climate, most people paused along the walkway in front of the house to absorb the moment, and to look up at the bedroom windows. It was the middle of the day, so the Signal was not particularly evident, but the soft yellow glow was visible nonetheless in the curtains.
We moved inside. The veranda was heated, and furnished with rockers and thick-armed, heavily padded chairs. A chess board had been set up, and a bronze plate explained that the position had been taken from a recorded game actually played between Christopher Sim and one of the townspeople. I gathered from the comments of the visitors that Sim, who had the black pieces, had the stronger position.
The view from the veranda was stunning: the long valley with its wandering frozen river; broad white slopes broken only by occasional houses or patches of forest; the cold peaks, lost in wisps of cloud; and the warm defiance of Cassanwyle, its hundred or so buildings clustered against the wilderness.
The interior of Sim House is stiff and formal, in the manner of its era: richly embroidered rugs and vaulted ceilings and boxy, uncomfortable furniture. A central hallway divides the living room and library, on one side, from casual and dining rooms on the other. As so often happens in historical buildings, the intended effect of preserving a sense of another age, of how it must have been, is lost; instead there is only the mustiness of arrested time. Despite the photos and personal items and books placed carefully about to suggest that the owners had just stepped away (perhaps to discuss the wisdom of intervention), there is no life.
A visitors' log had been placed in the library. I scrolled quickly through it, throwing its pages on the monitor, and drawing the attention of one of the security guards. He wandered over to ask whether he could be of assistance.
I replied pleasantly that, for me, the visitors' log was always the highlight of a visit. "You can learn a great deal from what people have to say about a place like this," I observed, searching the remarks columns for pithy comments. There were observations on the quality of the food at the various inns, and suggestions that the bathroom facilities at the tourist shelter were inadequate. "Just married" appeared beside one couple’s name, and "Kill the mutes" beside another’s.
"I know," said the guard, losing interest.
Well back in the entries I found what I was looking for: Hugh Scott’s name! How long ago had he been here? The dates were written in the Dellacondan calendar, which I cranked into my commlink: I was, at most, four months behind him.
In the section reserved for his address, he had marked "Dellaconda." And the comment block was blank.
I’d have liked to look around the house a bit, but the tour completed its rounds and headed for the door. The guide signaled me toward the exit, and I reluctantly fell in with my fellow visitors.