"Captain Cassels, we'd be honored if you'd attend a meeting of the Compact in two shifts' time, at one after shift-change," he said. "We'd like to talk to you about Jentry's Envy and about what it might mean to the local worlds to have a new cycler ring operating."
"I'd be delighted," she said. "Where?"
"Council Room Fifteen," he said. "The monks can give you directions. One after in two, then?"
"Ah, yes. Sure."
He walked away. Rue admired his military bearing; she wondered if she would ever walk that way.
They went up the stairs and to the elevators. "I'm not tired yet," she said impulsively to Mike. "Want to take a walk?"
"Sure. But where?"
"This place has a roof. Let's find it."
Despite the fact that they had lived in close proximity for some months now, this was the first time Rue had actually been alone with Mike Bequith. The only truly private spaces on Jentry's Envy were hostile to life. The halls of the great monastery seemed deserted, so she and Mike walked and talked, completely forgetting their surroundings or the various cares that had oppressed them.
Eventually, after wandering a labyrinth of carpeted hallways for a quarter hour, they found an exit onto a broad balcony that looked like it might wrap around the whole building. The roof sloped up steeply above them; it was festooned with gargoyles which, in true halo tradition, looked hand-carved.
The light was exactly the same here as when Rue had awoken. It was only night for one shift of workers; there were shutters over a third of the light wells of the city. She took off her sunglasses. "I suppose it looks dark here to you," she said.
Mike leaned on the balustrade. "Twilight," he said. "Very strange."
"Strange? Not beautiful?"
"Oh, very beautiful," he said, smiling at her. "I must confess I felt very underdressed when I saw you in that uniform earlier."
"I wanted a ball gown."
"Maybe next time."
There was an awkward pause. They stood very near to each other at the railing. Rue wanted to feel his hand on her back again, but what to say? He was always so polite, even distant, that she didn't know where to start with him.
"You've got a meeting tomorrow," he said.
"Yeah. Big time cycler captain stuff." She grinned.
"Dr. Herat wants to visit the autotrophs tomorrow. He will expect me to go."
"Oh… Well, I'm sure I'll be wrapped up all afternoon."
"You know, I've hardly ever seen your eyes."
Rue's heart started pounding. She looked up at him and bit her lip.
"You have beautiful eyes," he said, "but I can never tell what you're thinking, because they're always hidden."
"I'll have to make sure you see them more often," she said.
"Well," he said with an ironic smile, "I can only think of one way for that to happen— for us to be together with the lights off."
Why, the sly boy! She laughed. "I do believe you've just propositioned me, Mr. Bequith."
"Maybe." He took her hand and raised it to his lips. "I guess it was the eyes. What do you say?"
"I suppose the view will still be there tomorrow," she said and let him lead her back inside.
19
ICE RUSHED OVERHEAD. There were a million varieties of it— smooth and blue, white and decayed, soot-streaked, all whipping past just a few meters overhead. Michael stood on the top deck of the boat that Professor Waldt had provided and breathed deeply the scent of the ice.
Oculus had three levels of habitation: surface cities, like Lux; 'coastal' communities, which were really just caverns melted out of the glacial ice at its interface with the ocean; and 'deep' communities, which were similar but situated elsewhere on the planet where the bottom of the glacial continents lay kilometers below northern sea level. Luckily the autotroph settlement was not a deep community, because it would have taken them days of pressurization and acclimatization to be able to visit and days to depressurize, even with the help of their mesobots. The autotroph town was located just a few hours inland.
The network of tunnels they were skimming through was vast and mazelike; it helped that there were signs everywhere, saying things like KOROLEV 15 KM. or DRY-DOCK SIDING, NEXT STARBOARD. There was a lot of traffic, which was one of the reasons Michael was up top: Arcs of fizzing water from passing hydrofoils regularly drenched the lower decks. Herat didn't mind, of course; he and Professor Waldt were bundled in bright yellow rain-slickers. Herat kept leaning over the rail to stare into the quickly passing water.
The cold air was wonderful on Michael's face. More wonderful was to grip a rail that wasn't overlaid with the ghostly indicators of its ownership. Inscape was used in the halo, but sparingly. The manufactured objects here— buildings, cars, clothing— all seemed as feral and natural as the stone and ice to Michael, simply because he could see them without seeing ownership and ideology branded on them through inscape.
Rationally he knew he was more attuned to this reality today because of his new feelings for Rue. On the other hand, his depression since Dis seemed more and more like the result of his having cut himself off from the real world. It took an extraordinary person to be able to travel to the universe's most lonely spots and remain content. Dr. Herat might be able to do it, but it had never really been the life for Michael.
No. It wasn't that simple. The shadow of Dis was still on him and one night with Rue wasn't going to change the fact.
For now, though, just being with Rue was enough. She had a tendency to knock his mind off its tracks, which seemed to be a good thing. That 'supreme meme' idea of hers, for instance, kept coming back to him, like a rumor: How would you have to feel… He found he was half-thinking about that a lot of the time now.
A side-tunnel had appeared up ahead. Michael heard the engines throttle back and they began a turn toward the entrance. This tunnel was low and wide, recently rough-hewn into the turquoise wall of the main highway. Small white bergs bounced in the choppy water there and it was dark, unlike the highway which was lit by regular ceiling lamps.
For a few seconds it looked like they were going to scrape the ceiling; Michael actually had to duck as they slid into the opening. He found himself crouched within a boundary layer of freezing air that seemed to insulate the ice. It was tempting to try to reach up and catch a piece of that ice, which must be millions of years old; but they were moving too fast. He crab-walked back to the stairs and went down.
"Not long now," said Herat. "This was a good idea. It means we can expense this trip."
Michael had to laugh. Herat was so completely the academic. "Well, you're in a good mood this morning," said Herat.
He shrugged. "It's the fresh air."
"I see. No immediate plans to leave my employ, then? — say, to take up piloting a cycler?"
"No," said Michael curtly. He and Rue had talked for a long time after the banquet. She didn't know what she was going to do now that she had confirmed her ownership of the Envy. It was incredibly flattering to be considered a cycler captain and she felt very protective of her starship. At the same time, she longed to go home. She was in the grip of some internal conflict that she herself didn't completely understand; discussing the future simply made her unhappy right now. Since Michael didn't know himself what he was going to do after this expedition, he hadn't pressed the matter.
Herat turned back to ask Waldt something. Searchlights at the prow of the ship lit long fans of glittering ice on the tunnel walls, but the water was black and the glacial breath of the air had penetrated down here, too, so that both men shivered.