But Barbage had not moved from where he stood.
Chapter Fifty-five
The best ways between the stars were not always the direct ways; and the fastest route for Hal to the Dorsai turned out to be to accompany Rukh to Kultis, transship and proceed from there to his own destination.
So it was that he landed once again at Omalu. There, in the terminal after the long trudge across the landing pad, through cool air and the blinding sunlight from the white-hot dot in the sky that was Fomalhaut, he found someone waiting for him. It was Amanda; and he felt a sudden, great, rush of relief and love as without planning, thought or warning, his arms went around her.
Her body was slim and strong and real against him. In almost the same second, her own arms wrapped his body and she held him, strongly. They pressed together wordlessly, ignoring the rest of the universe. He had not realized until this moment how transient and uncertain by comparison were almost all the other things of his life. He did not want to let her go. But he could not, after all, stand in the middle of a busy terminal forever, holding on to her. After a long moment, he released her. She released him, and stepped back.
"How'd you know I was coming?" he asked, incredulously.
"The captain of your ship sent word you were aboard when he called in from solar orbit," she told him. "You're a passenger who's noticed, nowadays."
"I am?" he said. He had not been aware of the Exotics aboard the ship affording him any special notice. But then Exotics were hardly likely to fuss over anyone.
"Yes," she told him. She turned and they moved off through the terminal together. She was wearing a knitted dress of brilliantly white wool that clung to the narrowness of her waist. At her throat was a necklace, small, coiled with seashells, also a clean white outside, but with a delicate pink rimming the inner lips of each shell opening.
"You're dressed up," he said, with his eyes on her.
She smiled, looking straight ahead.
"I had some business in Omalu today, to get dressed up for," she answered. "You brought luggage, this time?"
"A travel case, that's all."
She walked with him toward the baggage delivery section; and they did not quite touch as they went, but he was conscious of the living warmth of her body beside him.
"I wrote to Simon Khan Graeme - the senior living Graeme - about you," she said. "He's still on New Earth doing police organizational work; and his estimate was that he hasn't more than another few months before the influence of the Others squeezes him out of a job, even there. But he'll be staying as long as he can earn interstellar credits. Of the other two left in the family, the younger brother - Alistair - is consulting on Kultis, and their sister, Mary, is on Ste. Marie for some border dispute, so the place is still empty. But Simon said you're welcome to stay there anytime you're on Dorsai."
"That's good of him," said Hal.
She opened the small hand-case she was carrying and passed him a thumb-stall with a fingerprint reproed on the end.
"You can use my print to unlock the front door," she said. "But you'd better register your own when you get there, so you won't need to carry a copy of mine. You'll find the lock-memory just inside the front door to the left - look under the sweaters and jackets hanging up there, if you don't see it at first."
He smiled at her and took the stall, putting it in a breast pocket of his gray jacket. She moved along beside him, appraising him gravely as she went.
"You've come into your full size," she said. "The house will feel right, having you there."
There was a moment of silence between them.
"Yes…" he said. "Will you thank Simon Khan Graeme for me?"
"Of course. But it's nothing unusual, his inviting you to stay," she smiled again, an almost secret smile. Her white-blonde hair was longer now; and she shook it back over her shoulders as she walked. "Hospitality's a neighborly duty, after all. Besides, as I say, I told him about you. There's hardly a Dorsai home that wouldn't put you up."
"With its people not there?"
"Well… maybe not with their people not there," she said; and smiled back at him.
"I appreciate your thinking of my staying there," he said slowly. "I may not get another chance."
She sobered, looking away from him, toward the baggage area.
"I thought you'd want to," she told him. "Have the flyer you hire take you right to the house. There's no need to go in through Foralie Town unless you want to; and people there are busy. Everyone's busy, right now."
They walked on in silence. When they reached the baggage area, luggage from the ship Hal had come in on had not yet been delivered.
"When you're done in Omalu, today, you'll come by and visit me?" he said.
"Oh, yes." She met his eyes squarely for a moment. "Here comes your luggage, now."
The wall had dilated an iris in itself, to give entrance to an automated luggage carrier. It drove up to the distribution circle before them and the baggage began to feed off from it into the chutes that would sort their contents into the stalls where the passengers waited. Hal slid his passage voucher into the sensor slot of the stall in which he and Amanda were standing. Seconds later, the check stub attached to his case having shown that its torn edge matched the torn edge of Hal's voucher, the case slid up through a trapdoor before them, onto the floor of the stall.
Hal picked it up and moved away toward the local transportation desk. Amanda went with him. They did not talk as they walked. Hal felt himself full of words that would not sound right, said here and now.
But at the local transportation desk it developed that all the long-haul jitneys based at the spaceport had already been put under hire for the day. He would have to take ground transportation to Omalu and pick up one at the Transportation Center, there.
"We can go to town together, then," he said to Amanda, feeling suddenly as light as a reprieved prisoner. She frowned.
"I hitched a ride out," she answered. "I shouldn't - on the other hand it's your interstellar credit, if you want to buy me a seat on the bus."
"Of course I want to," he said firmly.
They rode in together, sitting in adjoining seats three rows back in an otherwise empty surface bus. He put his hand on hers, and she squeezed his fingers briefly, then slid her arm through his and brought their hands together again, so that they sat with forearms on the armrest between them, arms intertwined and hands clasped. Their forearms pressed against each other, he thought, like those of two people about to take a blood oath, mingling the fluid in both their veins with the single cut of a knife.
But the knife and oath were unnecessary, here. It seemed to Hal, as they sat holding to each other in this unremarkable way, as if the life-sustaining conduits of their flesh had long since been joined into one system; so that each beat of his heart sent his blood through her arteries as well as his; and that each of hers must direct that of both of them back through his own body.
There was still a great deal to say but no hurry to say it now. The silence of the moment was itself infinitely valuable. He watched her clean profile etched against the windowed view of the countryside through which their vehicle was passing. There was a glow of a quiet peace and happiness in her that had not been present when he had been here before, a warmth independent of and at odds with the season of his coming. His last visit had been at the crisp end of summer. The second time, a year and a half later, he was arriving early in the spring. Beyond the windows of the bus it was cold, clear and bright. The unsparing illumination of Fomalhaut lit all the landscape like a late and final dawn.