“Wait.” Kullervo pushed up out of his seat. “By the Render, you are on edge. Are you leaving?”
“Yes,” he answered, frowning, without turning back.
“So am I. Leaving,” Kullervo said. And when Gundhalinu did not respond, “On edge …”
Gundhalinu turned back. Kullervo was gazing moodily at the display on the desk behind him. “What are you working on?”
“Nothing,” Kullervo said, with sudden bitterness. “A dead end.” He ordered the display into oblivion before Gundhalinu could get more than a glimpse of the constructs drifting through its screen. Gundhalinu stared at the suddenly empty desktop; he glanced up at Kullervo’s face, expecting to find the same impenetrable surface. But stark, unexpected hopelessness filled Kullervo’s eyes.
Gundhalinu hesitated as Kullervo abruptly looked away; knowing that he had seen that look before … seen it in the mirror. “Reede, do you want to talk about it?” he said quietly. “Can I help—?”
“No,” Kullervo snapped. He looked up again, as if he realized how it had sounded, and muttered, “But I appreciate the offer.” Something that could have been gratitude, or even longing, showed fleetingly in his eyes. But he shook his head. Don’t waste your time; it’s too valuable. I’ve wasted enough of my own. There are some mistakes that can’t be erased. You just have to live with them….” He turned away, striding toward the door; stopped, looking back at Gundhalinu. Waiting.
Gundhalinu accepted the invitation uncertainly, and followed him out of the room. They went up through the security levels and out into the fetid embrace of the night.
Kullervo hesitated, as Gundhalinu stopped just beyond the dimly glowing screen of the Project’s entrance to say a perfunctory good-night. “Share a ride?” Kullervo asked.
Gundhalinu shook his head. “I feel like walking tonight.”
“That’s a hell of a walk,” Kullervo said, looking surprised. “Or aren’t you going home?”
“I’m not going home.” Gundhalinu glanced away, mildly annoyed by Kullervo’s uncharacteristic impulse to camaraderie. He gazed out across the starkly ht artificial landscape, the deceptively open grounds that separated the Project’s semi-subterranean fortress from the old Company town. “There’s someone I have to see.”
“A woman?” Kullervo raised his eyebrows. “Personal?”
“Yes,” Gundhalinu said, growing more annoyed by the second. “Not what you’re thinking.”
Kullervo stared at him, his eyes shadowed by the night. “Then would you mind if I walked with you awhile?”
Gundhalinu hesitated; realized that he was trying to think of a way to refuse. His mind remained stubbornly blank, and so he nodded. “If you like,” he said, resigned
They crossed the gentle vagaries of the parklands together. Gundhalinu looked up at the sky, able to see it for once; seeing an unremarkable scattering of stars on the utterly black face of the moonless night. He remembered Tiamat, where the stars were like glowing coals, where once he had seen his own shadow at midnight. … He looked down again, watching his steps as he felt himself stumble.
Kullervo walked beside him, looking down intently, with his hands pushed deep into the side pockets of his loose-fitting blue overshirt. Gundhalinu thought of a boy searching for lost coins; not an image he would have associated with Kullervo before tonight. It occurred to him again, as it had occurred to him before, how young Kullervo was. But then, most geniuses burned their brightest when they were young
“So it’s not a tryst we’re going toward. …” Kullervo looked up at him, watching him back. “Are you married?”
Gundhalinu shook his head, watching his steps, suddenly uncomfortable again
“Ever?” “No,” he said softly. He glanced up at the sky. “How about you? Are you married?”
“Yes.” Kullervo looked straight ahead now, as if he were remembering someone’s face. “Gods,” he said fiercely, “I want to finish this, and get back to her!” His hands made fists inside his pockets. “She’s my life—”
“How long have you been married?” Gundhalinu asked, trying to keep the incredulity out of his voice.
“Not long … forever,” Kullervo murmured.
Gundhalinu realized that he had never seen Kullervo look twice at a woman in all the time he had been here. He tried to imagine what son of woman could hold Kullervo’s quicksilver temperament in that kind of thrall, when he knew that years would have passed for her before they saw each other again. What kind of woman … He looked up again, at the stars. “Is she Kharemoughi?”
Kullervo laughed once. “What? No! She’s on—from Ondinee. No offense, but Kharemoughi women aren’t my type.”
Gundhalinu glanced back at him. “No, I suppose not,” he said, a little shortly. “But we’re not all of us dead from the neck down, Kullervo.”
Kullervo bent his head, meeting Gundhalinu’s half frown with a mocking smile. “But you’re married to your work. There’s really nobody waiting for you out there, somewhere? No lovers—no regrets?”
Gundhalinu felt his throat tighten; he swallowed, and the ache slid down into his chest. “Yes,” he said at last. “There is a woman. There was. There is. And a lot of regret … Maybe I’ll see her again. After all this is finished.”
“Where is she?”
“On Tiamat.”
“Tiamat!” Kullervo said, incredulous. “Ye gods … Tell me that you did all of this just to find a way to get back to her—” He grinned suddenly, waving a hand at the Research Project behind them. “Go on, surprise me.”
“I did it all to get back to her,” Gundhalinu said, feeling a faint smile turn up the corners of his mouth.
“Liar,” Kullervo said, and his grin widened.
Gundhalinu shrugged. “Have it your way.” The warm night breeze kissed his face.
They entered the maze of streets that led into the old part of the town, the part that had been there as long as the Company, maybe longer. Cracked, time-eaten walls showed the scars of battle with the inhospitable climate. Here, beyond the protected parklands, mottled graygreen creepers and fleshy, spined shrubs left the jungle’s spoor everywhere; its living fingers, working with infernal patience to undo what humans had made. Gundhalinu had found the town and everything about it depressing the first time he had seen it; he still found it depressing. The streets were better-lit at night now, and the nighttime diversions more varied, although they held no more appeal for him than they had three years ago. The streets were noisier and more alive, too, because the credit flowed more freely. More outsiders passed them as they walked than the residents of this place had probably ever dreamed existed, before the Project had come into their lives.
“Who are we going to see?” Kullervo asked, looking from side to side with mild interest.
“Hahn—the sibyl who brought me to meet you.”
Kullervo glanced back at him. “Why now? It’s late for a social call.”
“There’s something I need to give her before we leave.” Gundhalinu indicated the heavy container he carried in one hand.
“What’s in it?” Kullervo asked, when he did not elaborate.
“Something that belongs to her daughter.”
Kullervo frowned slightly, either annoyed or trying to remember something. “You said her daughter was a sibyl too … but she wasn’t meant to be? Does that “lean she’s—” He gestured, his hand fluttering, touching his head. Crazy.
“Yes,” Gundhalinu said abruptly, looking down. The sibyl virus caused wearable mental breakdowns in people who were not emotionally stable enough to become sibyls.
“How did it happen? I thought the choosing places rejected anyone who wasn’t suitable material to become a sibyl.”
“She was rejected; but she wouldn’t accept it. Her mother infected her.”