'We have three bungalows here,' Malya explained as she slowed the cart and gestured toward the small buildings that almost grew out of the rock and grass and low trees of the ridge. 'Captains usually take the one on the knoll. It's a shade quieter, not that anything's noisy here. The path over there goes to the overlook. You can see Ribbon Falls from there. It's only about two hundred meters along the path.'
We stood and stretched, then took our small duffels from the cart bin.
'The quarters are stocked with anything you'd need, but if you need something, use the console and link.'
'Thank you.' Berya and I spoke almost simultaneously.
'I'll be the one picking you up day after tomorrow,' Malya called as she turned the cart and headed back down the ridge path.
'Guess we get settled,' I offered.
'Right. I'm tired.' Berya nodded and carried her duffel to the dark-stained wood structure at the far end.
I stifled a yawn and made my way to the bungalow on the knoll. Light flooded the quarters, illuminating an open area that held a hearth, a kitchen/formulator area, and a sitting area. A sliding permaglass door separated the sitting area from a deck overlooking the trees on the slope below. To my right, a half dozen steps climbed to a sleeping area and a fresher.
In a way, I wondered about the almost luxurious nature of the quarters. Then I shook my head. Needle pilots held the human Galaxy together. Each ship was close to prohibitively expensive. Understated luxury was cheap by comparison and an easy way to ensure well-rested and fewer unnecessarily stressed pilots.
Not wanting, somehow, to settle into the quarters at that moment, after setting the duffel inside the door, I followed the packed clay path past a cultivated circular area filled with flowers, all of them blue and short-stemmed, and through the low trees to the overlook. The overlook itself was but a rectangle of local red stones. To the west, the trees had been removed to allow a clear view of the falls.
A ribbon of white spray cascaded out of the vine-covered cliff and arched down toward the churning water of a pool a good three hundred meters below. More spray wreathed the pool, enough so that I couldn't make out where the river wound through the valley forest below, except that it must have gone westward, since the valley sloped in that direction.
Sounds percolated through the foliage, but whether they were from insects, birds, or local fauna like the replizards there was no way to know.
The light breeze out of the north held a trace of chill. I turned and watched the clouds forming around the distant snowcapped peaks. How long I watched, I wasn't sure, but eventually I blinked and looked back at the cascade.
Fersonne would have liked Actean.
My eyes burned, and I blinked again, several times, before turning and walking back toward the empty bungalow.
73
Beware of those who truly garden ... for they see people as plants.
Cerrelle had wanted a garden, though I suspected she had asked as much to please me as for herself, but gardens were something I did know from my years in Dorcha, and it was the least I could contribute since she wouldn't allow me to transfer more than a small fraction of my rapidly growing free account balance to her credit, even though I'd effectively moved in with her.
So I was determined to make the garden special. The hardest part of a garden is to visualize what kind of garden will suit a location, and how it will fit so that it appears it would have grown there naturally, even though no garden is natural.
The early-spring sun was hot, almost like summer, as I moved stones to create the back wall. Without realizing the leverage, I twisted my elbow moving one of the larger stones. After a moment, the pain subsided, and I shook my .head. I had felt the agony, knew that I'd overstrained both my own capabilities and even those of my reformulated miniature rebuilders. I still had trouble dealing with the idea of an entire mechanical universe inside me, and one of those problems was that my musculature was comparatively stronger than my skeletal system, although the rebuilding I'd undergone to become a pilot made the discrepancy less than that enjoyed by most Rykashans.
I hoped the garden would become one of my pastimes when I wasn't Web-bound, but even training, transport, and gardening couldn't keep my mind from occasionally going back to Henvor or Mettersfel ... or Hybra ... or -less and less - Foerga. At times, I didn't think of Foerga for weeks, or months, and those memories had faded into pleasant reminiscences, mostly, reminiscences of a kind of childhood that I hadn't realized was childhood. After a deep breath, I concentrated on the small yew, and where it would bring together the harmony of the stones. Dzin helped.
'Tyndel? Are you all right?' Cerrelle's voice was quiet, pitched barely above the whisper of the late-afternoon breeze through the pines behind the chalet.
'Fine.' I squatted, studying the stones I'd already moved and set in place.
'I saw you wince. You're trying to do too much. I didn't want a garden overnight, you know?' She glanced at the line of stones, each massing at least a good seventy kilos, then at me. You're pressing it.'
I didn't look her in the eye, instead glanced downhill toward the lake, glinting in the early-spring sun. 'A garden takes years, but I wanted to get it set up.'
You could take a few days ...' She favored me with a smile.
'I haven't acted when I should have before ...'
'That was different. You're different now.'
'I'm glad you think so.' Are you? How do you tell, when you consider everything from the subjectivity of personal observation? I shrugged. At times, I still wondered why she'd insisted on saving me despite myself, why she'd enlisted Andra, Aleyaisha, and Alicia in the effort. Because no one born in Rykasha understands the need for and agony of honesty? 'Do you want to take a swim? It's still cold.'
'Cold water I don't mind. As long as you walk to the beach.'
I stood and stretched, then walked toward the chalet to change.
Afterward, after the chill of water and air that had helped the elbow and muscles, the breeze across the small terrace was just cool enough, with the scent of pines, for us to sit and sip the tea I'd brewed from a kettle and not heated with a reformulator.
You people all do make good tea.'
'I'm glad I can do something well.' I grinned, and she laughed, and I poured more tea. Friend, monitor, lover, and whatever else, she was honest, and for that I was glad, a gladness I was finally coming to embrace.
Before long, I'd have to get ready for the Mambrino and the next trip across the Web, the next separation that took days for me and months for Cerrelle. Maybe that was why I needed to create a garden, a manifestation of one aspect of me, to leave behind, something more permanent against the impermanence of dreams.
74
Human beings presume questions have answers; the universe does not address such presumption.
A young woman in a tight-fitting silver singlesuit kept trying to catch my eye, both at the operations building in Runswi and after we boarded the shuttle for Orbit Two. I politely kept my eyes elsewhere, which wasn't hard, worried as I was about the abrupt schedule shift that had the Mambrino set for a 'DTBA.' Any 'destination to be announced' wasn't reassuring.