“I’m sorry, Hawk,” she read aloud. “Time, now. Inland for rites. Couldn’t tell you. Secret. I hope I will see you again. Kee.”
At this last sentence, Hawk turned a stricken gaze on us. “She’s been acting oddly for weeks, quiet, uncommunicative. I shrugged it off as Kee, as alien. She gets like that from time to time. Christ knows, it’s hard enough having a relationship with a human woman–”
“Tell me about it,” Matt quipped, earning an elbow in the ribs from Maddie.
“But Kee’s alien, and they do things differently.”
“Hawk,” I said gently. “You said you feared for her safety…?”
He took a deep breath and nodded. “In the early days, when we first got together… I wanted to know more about her, her people. I reckoned if I knew more about the Ashentay, then… I don’t know… then maybe it’d be easier to understand Kee, to work out how best to respond to her. I knew I was in love, whatever that means, and I wanted to keep her, so I quizzed her about her people, their rites and customs.”
He stopped there. Matt prompted, “And?”
“And I remember she once told me about a certain rite that each Ashentay has to undergo around the age of thirty. It’s one of the many they take part in throughout their lives.”
Maddie said in a small voice, “And how old is Kee, Hawk?”
He said, “Thirty.”
“And this rite?” Matt asked.
Hawk nodded. “It’s called smoking the bones.”
“Sounds… exactly like something the Ashentay would cook up,” I said. They were a strange race, with beliefs that made little sense to human observers.
“What does it consist of?” Maddie asked.
“The Ashentay are a hunter-gatherer people,” Hawk said. “They have been for hundreds of thousands of years. They hunt a certain animal… I forget what they call it. Anyway, they don’t hunt this beast for meat◦– it’s inedible, apparently◦– but for its bones.”
Matt echoed, “For its bones?”
“They kill the animal, strip it to its skeleton, dry its bones and smoke them. I don’t know whether they grind the bones to dust, or actually smoke the bones like pipes, but anyway, they smoke its bones and go into a trance. While in this trance, this altered state, Kee told me they’re granted a foretaste of the future, of their individual destinies.”
I said, “And Kee’s gone to take part in this ceremony?”
“I put two and two together: the Ashentay smoke the bones in their thirtieth year, at a sacred location inland of here: and in the note Kee said… she said she hoped she would see me again.”
Maddie shook her head. “But why shouldn’t she?”
Hawk hesitated, then said, “The effect of smoking its bones is sometimes lethal. Kee said that the fatality rate is often thirty per cent. And this is accepted by the fatalistic Ashentay as their destiny…”
I almost said something bigoted about primitive belief systems, but restrained myself.
Maddie reached out and took Hawk’s hand. Matt said, “Then there’s only one thing for it, Hawk, we’ve got to either try to stop her before she smokes the stuff… or be on hand afterwards to help her.”
Hawk looked bleak. He nodded. “I’ve been away almost a week, down past MacIntyre delivering a starship habitat to a rich industrialist. I don’t know when Kee set off.”
“Do you know where the sacred site is, Hawk?”
He nodded. “She’s mentioned it in the past. It’s in the central massifs, high up beyond a native village called Dar, about a hundred kilometres from here.”
“And was she on foot?” Maddie asked.
“That’s just it, I don’t know. She can drive, but rarely does. I checked, and she hasn’t hired a car locally. But she might have gone into MacIntyre and hired one there.”
Matt nodded and looked out across the junkyard. On the horizon, the bloated, blood-red orb of Delta Pavonis was lowering itself slowly into the ocean.
“It’ll be dark in an hour,” he said. “We’d never make it through the mountain pass. How about we get some provisions together, camping gear and food, and set off first thing in the morning?”
Hawk said, “I don’t know how Kee might take what she’d see as our interference… but we’ve got to try to find her.”
That’s settled, then,” Maddie said. “Right, we’re going back to the Jackeral for a meal, Hawk. Come with us, and I won’t take no for an answer.”
Hawk smiled, knowing better than to argue with Maddie. “That sounds like a civilised idea.”
As we climbed down from the ship and approached Matt’s ground-effect vehicle, Maddie said, “But David won’t be joining us, will you David?” She looked at me archly.
Hawk glanced my way. I’d forgotten all about my invitation for drinks from the one-time famous holo star, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to be reminded.
Maddie went on, “He has an assignation, don’t you, David? With a beautiful holo star.”
She regaled Hawk with the story as we drove back to Magenta Bay.
Hawk said, “That’s odd. I once knew her lover, the pilot Ed Grainger… I wonder what brought her here?”
“Maybe the same as what brought all of us here,” I said. “Maybe she’s fleeing the demons of her past.”
Maddie laughed. “Well, we’ll be relying on you to find out, David.”
Four
On the stroke of eight I rapped on the glass door and stood back, clearing my throat nervously.
The door swished open and the ex-holo star beamed at me. “Conway, how nice of you to come. And you’ve brought something; how sweet. Do come in.”
I passed her the bottle of Chardonnay and stepped into the lounge; the lighting was low and so was the music, something classical and… dare I say it… intimate?
I managed to drag my eyes away from Carlotta; she was not so much dressed as wrapped. In fact, sprayed on might be a better word to describe her faux chamois costume, a scant spiral of flesh-toned material which wound round her breasts, crossed her flat stomach and by some miracle managed to conceal her crotch. She was holding a long-stemmed champagne glass, and by the abstracted glaze in her eyes I guessed she’d been drinking for quite a while.
She swayed across to a bar and deposited the wine.
I looked around the long lounge. The first thing I noticed, much to my relief, was that we were not alone. Three guests stood chatting at the far end of the room, and standing beside them was the young woman I had yesterday assumed was Carlotta’s daughter. I wondered at the rivalry that might exist between the two women, for the younger was as beautiful, if not more so, than the older.
“Can I get you something, Conway?”
“Ah… a beer would be nice.”
While she poured an ice cold wheat beer, I looked around at the artwork on the walls. They were, I saw, stills taken from various holo-movies; it was half a minute before I realised that the women depicted were all Carlotta, in a dozen or so very different roles.
“I see you’re admiring the shots,” she said, passing my glass. “They’re the work of Ed Kalcheck, and needless to say they’re all originals.”
“Kalcheck?” I asked.
“The holo-movie director, of course. He directed most of my movies, and occasionally selected shots which he felt worked on their own merit. My favourite is this one,” she went on, indicating the shot of herself against the backdrop of a harbour, the full moon lighting her face. “It’s from the award-winning Charisma, of course, where I played a telepathic double-agent. I thought it my finest performance. You must know it◦– the telepath is tortured by the subjective truth she divines in the human soul. Her decision to turn against her former pay-masters symbolises her despair at ever learning what she craves: objective truth.”