He used the arm extension to pick up the Twisting Stone.
It was extremely valuable. There were collectors who would pay him handsomely for it.
He carried it to the airlock and set it inside.
It was a priceless relic of a long-gone people. Hell, it was a long-gone people…
The folk of sand and iron.
He closed the inner lock. Hesitated. Began to open it again. Then, with a curse, hit the pneumatics.
The pins shot into place and the air pumps began to evacuate the chamber. Donovan aborted the cycle. He wanted the chamber full of air.
When the outer lock swung open the air puffed out, taking the Twisting Stone with it.
“After all,” said Donovan, “this too is a home.”
It was two weeks down the Palisades Parkway from Hanseatic to Sapphire Point. For most of that time, Donovan watched the Twisting Stone tumbling away from the courier ship, maintaining the same forward velocity, but now with a lateral component. Now and then, he kicked up the magnification to keep it in view.
Donovan was traveling well under local-c, so the Stone passed through the first few lamina with no ill effect. But then it hit a layer of space whose local-c was less than its net velocity and in a wink it was gone. The ripple in space-time was minor. The next ship to pass would not even notice it.
Donovan continued to stare at the viewer, long after the impact site had fallen behind his craft. Then he resumed the pilot’s seat, checked that he was still in the groove, and wept.
An Iarfhocal
“And so it ends on a geantraí,” the harper says. “A joyous triumph after all.”
They have reached the bridge over the Bodhi Creek. The bridge is high-arched, and well known from souvenir art; but it is late and it is dark and no one is on the bridge but the scarred man and herself.
“Is it?” says the scarred man. He has stopped and has leaned his arms on the bridge’s rail looking down at the gleaming black water. A streetlamp is reflected there, like a drowned moon. “How do we know that Donovan ‘scuttled’ the Stone? How does Donovan know it? It may be only what the Stone wanted him to believe.”
“It’s been years since all that happened.”
“Stones are patient.”
“Then at least let’s enjoy this interval before the People of Sand and Iron come again.”
“Unless they already have, and this is only what they want us to enjoy.”
“No,” says the harper. “I would know.”
The scarred man shrugs. “That’s the end of my story. It all happened long ago, and maybe it never happened at all.” He looks at her. “Have you found the beginning of yours?”
“Maybe. What became of them in the end?”
“Those are other stories, and they require other prices.”
“But surely you have some news of them. You told me that they had come here, to the Bar. Much of what you told me, you could only know if they had come back.”
“Perhaps I made those parts up.”
The harper shakes her head, but not in disbelief. “What about Hugh? Did he and Bridget ban not have an adventure together?”
“Did she tell you that? Then, they must have.” He looks at her carefully. His gnarled hand reaches out and takes her by the chin. “And then one day she never came back,” he says, reading the auguries in her face. “That’s your quest, isn’t it?”
“There was another, as well.” She returns his gaze—and he is first to turn away. “And Greystroke?” she asks.
The scarred man shakes himself. “No one has seen him lately.” And he laughs.
“The Fudir, then. Tell me more about him.”
“Donovan, you mean. He continued on into the Confederacy, because he did not know what else to do. His struggle with the Stone had drained his entire will, as if he were a battery completely discharged. The Secret Names questioned him, with their wonted gentleness. Then they did something terrible to his mind. They diced it and sliced it until there was no ‘I’ remaining, only a ‘we.’ Fudir and Donovan and…others.”
The harper sucks in her breath and she looks at the scarred man with pity in her eyes. “That sounds like a terrible story,” she says.
“It is.” He stoops, picks up a smooth, round stone and hurls it out into the waters of Bodhi Creek, whence returns a distant splash. “But it is a story for another day.”