“I was lucky. The one you took out was faster.”
“You will pardon me if I refrain from accepting your facile but flawed proposition. Your reflexes are indubitably far swifter than mine and your training and conditioning far more recent.”
Laughed. “You don’t like people to make a fuss over you, do you?”
“Let us say that my reluctance springs from experience in dealing with praise, both that which has been bestowed when undeserved and that which has been withheld when deserved.”
“Don’t like people that much, do you?”
“I am as enamored of them as any rational being might be, but experience suggests that impartiality and wisdom are seldom exhibited at the same time, and even less frequently are actions meriting commendation recognized, let alone praised.” He coughed.
I could sense the pain, but he didn’t even wince.
“Have they discovered anything more below?” he asked.
“Nothing that they haven’t already found elsewhere.”
“Have you seen anything more of note?”
Managed a smile. “I’ve been using the scanners. So far they don’t show any straight lines in the megaplex.”
“That signifies more than mere artistic inclination, but I am without the insight or specific expertise to determine what the rationale for such might have been.”
“Could it be that straight lines were impractical for some reason?”
“Curves are often stronger, but with the strength of their composite materials, that wouldn’t…” Fitzhugh paused.
Waited for him to go on.
“Cultural patterns embody, either through affirmation or rejection, past lessons or perceptual requirements. The curved lines doubtless reflect one of those, if not both.” He smiled, another wry expression. “Since we know virtually nothing of their culture, their physiology, or how their anatomy enabled their perception, determining more might be somewhat difficult.”
Somewhat difficult? Couldn’t help grinning at the way he put it.
Abruptly, he closed his eyes for a long moment, then opened them.
“Can I do anything for you?”
“Dear Lieutenant, I would love a dark bock, the genuine brewed kind, or failing that, actual bergamot tea that has not been formulated. You have worked miracles, but I fear those are beyond even your powers.” He forced a grin, clearly fighting off pain.
Saw Major DeLisle moving toward us.
“I think the doctor is about to tell me you need rest, Professor.”
DeLisle nodded.
“I fear he is correct.” Fitzhugh’s voice was weaker. His eyes closed again.
Looked at DeLisle. Just looked.
“He’ll recover completely, Lieutenant. He will.”
Hoped so.
Morgan met me outside. “What did you find out?”
“You don’t give up, do you?”
“Would you, after everything that’s happened?”
“Wouldn’t be leaning on Fitzhugh. He’s in it just like us.”
“Did you find out anything new?” Commander’s voice was hard.
“He likes bergamot tea and chewy dark beers.”
“Sometimes, Chang…”
“I asked if he’d been an elite commando team leader. He wouldn’t tell me, not exactly, but he didn’t deny it, and he would, if he hadn’t been.”
“A frigging elite commando who’s kept himself in shape for twenty years without letting anyone know? In good enough shape that he took out a conditioned assassin without raising a sweat? We’re supposed to swallow that?”
“He’s a very private man, Commander.”
“You believe that?”
I did. More than clear enough.
“You like him? You never use a word when a syllable will do, and he never uses a word when a paragraph will do.”
What could I say? That Fitzhugh’s excessive verbal elegance was as much armor as my terseness? That Fitzhugh was a professor because he was the type to do what was right and necessary, whatever the cost to himself ? That he’d realized as much, that in the service too many commanders would have sent him to his death, playing on that weakness?
Could be I was guessing too much. Could be. Didn’t think so.
Smiled at Morgan, politely. “I’d better get back to the ready room, sir.”
Felt his eyes on my back when I walked away.
52
Barna
Once Liam Fitzhugh could have visitors, I’d stopped by sick bay. It was the least I could do. He was happy to see me, but embarrassed and tired, and I didn’t stay long.
After that, I had gotten around to thinking. I’d settled onto the stool in my work space and glanced at the racks built into the walls. I’d been working long hours. There were more than forty oil and light paintings that I’d completed, based on the images from my trip. That didn’t count the portraits of the pilots. The ones that showed scenes from Danann were good, but they weren’t enough. There was something missing, and I couldn’t describe it. I only knew that something wasn’t there.
I needed to get back down on Danann. Commander Morgan had said we’d be on the mission for a year. We’d been in orbit for two months. We’d had one attack from other warships and one attempt from within the Magellan. I didn’t see the attacks stopping. Sooner or later, someone else would find us. If enough hostile ships appeared, the mission was going to end. If it hadn’t been for Liam and Lieutenant Chang, we might already have been on our way back to Hamilton—or dead.
There was more to see on Danann, and I needed to see it.
For all that, I couldn’t have explained why my presence on Danann was important. I didn’t have to. When I told Commander Morgan I needed another trip down, he nodded and said, “I’ll let you know.”
Three days later, I was strapped back into the shuttle. All the way down, I asked myself if it had been a good idea. I wasn’t a scientist like Elysen or Cleon Lazar. I wasn’t an analyst like Liam. I was an artist who felt something was missing, and who had no idea what that might be or how to find it.
As soon as I could, I was studying the illuminated map of the megaplex, with the golden lines that showed the areas that had been fully mapped and explored, the green lines that indicated those that had been opened and quickly surveyed, and the red lines for the areas that had been opened, and scarcely more than looked at.
In the end, I selected a red-lined section to the “southeast.”
“Nuovyl, I want to go there.” I pointed.
“Ser Barna… that is a good stan by slider.”
I said nothing.
“If we leave now, it will be very late when we return.”
“Does it matter? There’s no sunlight here anyway.”
“As you wish, sir.” He wasn’t pleased, but I wasn’t there to make people happy.
Less than a stan later, we were seated on a slider; gliding over the frozen surface of the canal boulevard. Behind us, the base was an island of light in a world of darkness. The lights of the slider created a tunnel into the blackness, and a washed-out spray of illumination ahead and to the side, just enough so that the lower sections of the towers showed their silvered surfaces.
As we slipped through the endless night, heading southeast, I wrapped myself in the silence within my armor. Rather than staring at the silver towers and concentrating on their enigmatic similarities, I tried more to absorb not just the towers’ appearance but their feel. I wanted to experience them without classification, without judgment, without trying to fit them into the patterns of my past. I let the silvered shapes, illuminated only by the lights of our passing, blued in infinite variations, more hues than I’d realized, appear before me, slip past, and vanish behind the slider.