Perhaps there has been an accident on one of the fishing boats,she suggested.
Then the grief should be shared, as is proper.
Yes.
Pernik hides behind a facade of correctness.
Is Eysk available?
One moment.
Syrinx felt the voidhawk’s mind reach out, then Eysk was merging his thoughts with her. Still the same old kindhearted family elder, with that deeper layer of toughness that made him such a shrewd businessman.
Syrinx,he exclaimed happily, we were wondering where you had got to.
Did you think I’d skipped out on you?
Me?he projected mock horror. Not at all. The arrest warrant we had drawn up was a mere precaution.
She laughed. I’ve brought your cases of Norfolk Tears.
How many?
Sixty.
Ah well, my family will be through that lot before the week’s out. Are you coming down tonight?
Yes, if it’s not too late.
Not at all. I’ll have some servitors lined up to unload your flyer by the time you get down.
Fine. Is everything all right on the island?
There was a moment’s hesitation, a thought-flash of bemused incomprehension. Yes. Thank you for asking.
Is Mosul there?
Sex, that’s all you young people think of.
We learn by example. Is he there?
Yes. But I don’t think Clio will welcome an interruption right now.
Is she very pretty?
Yes.he generated an image of a girl’s grinning face, half hidden by long dark hair. She’s bright, too. They are on the point of formalizing the arrangement.
I’m happy for him, for both of them.
Thank you. Don’t tell Mosul I said so, but she’ll make a splendid addition to the family.
That’s nice. I’ll see you in a couple of hours.
I’ll look forward to it. Just remember, Mosul learnt everything he knows from me.
As if I could forget.she broke the contact.
Well?Oenone asked.
I don’t know. Nothing I could put my finger on, but he was definitely stilted.
Shall I ask the other islands?
Goodness, no. I’ll find out what’s troubling them once I’m down. Mosul will tell me, he owes me that much.
Hooked into the flyer’s sensors, Syrinx couldn’t be sure, but Pernik appeared aged somehow. Admittedly it was darkest night, but the towers had a shabby look, almost mouldered. They put her in mind of Earth’s Empire State Building, now carefully preserved in its own dome at the centre of the New York arcology. Structurally sound, but unable to throw off the greying weight of centuries.
Thirty-two years old, and you see everything in such jaded terms, she told herself wearily. Pity that Mosul had formed a permanent attachment, though. He would have made a good father.
She clucked her tongue in self-admonition. But then her mother had conceived two children by the time she was thirty.
There’s always Ruben,Oenone suggested.
It wouldn’t be fair to him, not even to ask. He’d feel obligated to say yes.
I would like you to have a child. You are feeling incomplete. It upsets you. I don’t like that.
I am not feeling incomplete!
You haven’t even prepared any zygotes for my children yet. You should think about these things.
Oh goodness. You’re starting to sound like Mother.
I don’t know how to lie.
Rubbish!
Not to you. And it was you who was thinking of Mosul in that light.
Yes.syrinx stopped trying to argue, it was stupidly blinkered. What would I do without you?
Oenone wrapped her thoughts with a loving embrace, and for a moment Syrinx imagined the flyer’s ion field had leaked inside the cabin, filling it with golden haze.
They landed on one of the pads in the commercial section. The electrophorescent-cell ridge around the metal grid shone with a strong pink radiance. Few of the accommodation tower windows were lit.
It looks like they’re in mourning,syrinx said to Oxley in singular engagement mode as she walked down the aluminium stair. They had flown down alone so that the little flyer could carry more cargo, but it was still going to take three trips to bring all sixty cases down.
Yes.he glanced about, frowning. There aren’t many fishing boats in dock, either.
Eysk and Mosul walked out of the shadows beyond the ridge.
Syrinx forgot everything else as Mosul sent out a burst of rapturous greeting, mingled with mischievously erotic subliminals.
She put her arms around him and enjoyed a long kiss.
I’d like to meet her,she told him. Lucky thing that she is.
You shall.
They stood about on the pad, chatting idly, as the island’s lizard-skinned housechimps unloaded the first batch of cases under Oxley’s careful direction and stacked them on a processor-controlled flat-top trolley. When all eighteen cases were on, the drone trundled off towards one of the low warehouse domes ringing the park.
Do you want me to bring the rest down tonight?oxley asked.
Please,eysk said. I have already organized sales with other families.
The pilot nodded, winked at Syrinx, who was still standing with Mosul’s arm around her shoulder, and went back into the flyer. Sitting in the command seat he linked his mind with the controlling processor array.
Something was affecting the coherent magnetic-field generation. It took a long time to form, and he had to bring compensator programs on-line. By the time he finally lifted from the pad the fusion generator was operating alarmingly close to maximum capacity.
He almost turned back there and then. But once he rose above a hundred metres the field stabilized rapidly. He had to cut the power levels back. Diagnostic programs reported the systems were all functioning flawlessly.
With a quick curse directed at all Kulu-produced machinery, he ordered the flight computer to design an orbital-injection trajectory that would bring him to a rendezvous with Oenone.
See you in three hours,syrinx called as the sparkling artificial comet performed a tight curve around the accommodation towers before soaring up into the night sky.
Three hours!oxley let his groan filter back down the affinity link.
You’re professionals. You can handle it.
He put the flyer into a steep climb. One thing about an oceanic world, there was no worry about supersonic-boom footprints stomping all over civic areas. He was doing Mach two by the time he was fifteen kilometres away.
Pernik vanished from his affinity perception. Ordinarily a contact would simply fade with distance until it was no more. But this was different, like steel shutters slamming into place. Oxley was over a hundred and fifty years old, in his time he’d visited almost ninety per cent of the Confederation, and he had never known an Edenist habitat to react in such a manner. It was alien to the whole creed of consensual unity.
He switched in the aft sensors. A luminous red pearl haunted the horizon, sending shimmer-spears of light dancing across the black water.
“What is . . .” The words dried up at the back of his throat.