—This is not the first Ragnarok Council.
Even Sharp made a movement at this, perhaps an involuntary surprise reaction. Gavriela felt Roger take her hand as he asked:
—If we’re the second, what happened to the others?
Kenna paused for the duration of an inhalation, though her torso did not move.
—They perished in paradox.
Her words were resonant with overtones of sorrow, undertones of emptiness, as she continued:
—I will not allow you to fall that way.
Then she gestured with both hands, and Roger’s eyes turned up half a second before Gavriela felt reality pull away, dropping her back through hundreds of millennia to the nothingness of sleep.
FORTY-EIGHT
EARTH, 2147 AD
Six weeks into Rekka’s new role in Singapore, she was still waiting for Simon to give her the date of his moving here, of his relocation from Arizona. Instead, the daily calls had become weekly, their manner increasingly tightened, even stilted. Perhaps it was just that Rekka suspected UN Intelligence might be eavesdropping.
Here, so long as she avoided Google Li, work remained compelling: the challenges of strengthening the mutual linguistic understanding with Bittersweet, working with colleagues like Randolf who proved to be very smart, and even conducting occasional short conversations with the six male Haxigoji who seemed to be here as Bittersweet’s bodyguard more than anything.
But Google had dropped further hints that Rekka should pressure Mary Stelanko, back in DistribOne, to spill the beans regarding Amber Hawke’s location. The threat of decommissioning Amber’s ship had been repeated in various ways. To be a Pilot, blind in this world and without a chance of returning to mu-space, was surely not the life that Amber wanted. But neither, it seemed, did she want to hand over baby Jared, natural-born Pilot, or even tell UNSA of the boy’s existence.
They’re not spying on me. I’m being paranoid.
More precisely, maybe someone was eavesdropping on her communications, but if so, the operation would be amateurish, contrived perhaps by Google herself. If UN Intelligence really wanted to track down a missing Pilot, they surely had the resources to do so.
Halfway through a Wednesday morning’s session in the xeno facility, cramps caught Rekka’s mid-section, and her arms began to tremble. The disconnection was the strangest and most frightening thing: the vibration of her limbs had nothing to do with her, would not stop at her mental command.
‘Rekka—?’ called someone, probably Xin.
‘It’s OK.’ Randolf, his pale bearded face a blur, was beside her. ‘Here, sit down.’
The chair he guided her into was stiff with newness, smelling of new-grown upholstery straight from the vat. Her shaking grew worse.
‘All right.’ His hands helped her rise. ‘Come on. You need to get out of here.’
He half-carried her from the xeno area to the lifts, held her as they descended, then let her lean on his arm as they walked out through reception. Outside, in the hot sauna-damp air, he led her to a European-style coffee shop. Inside, coolness shivered across her skin, and she felt better as he sat her down in a corner booth.
‘I’ll get you something calming to drink,’ he said.
‘H-how did you know?’
That this was doing her good, she meant. That she needed to calm down.
‘I’ve seen hypertension before. Besides, my wife’ – his voice softened – ‘gets migraines from time to time.’
Did Simon’s voice change that way when he talked about her, Rekka?
Does he talk about me at all?
It was not a question she would have asked herself six weeks earlier.
‘Thank you,’ she said, taking the tea that Randolf brought back. ‘Thank you so much.’
She sipped, and it helped a little more. Jasmine, camomile, with a maybe a touch of something synthetic underlying the added honey.
‘And I got this.’ Randolf held out a small, soft silver ovoid. ‘It’s the brand my wife uses.’
She took it from him and ran it across her forehead.
‘Better. Yes.’
Closing her eyes, she leaned back against the upholstered booth.
Breathe the way you know how.
Years of yoga and she was behaving like this. It was embarrassing, but even the thought of that embarrassment was causing her breathing to quicken, her temples to pulse—
Let it go.
After a while, she opened her eyes.
‘I could call for a medic,’ said Randolf. ‘But you’re looking much more relaxed.’
‘I am, thank you.’
‘Then why don’t we take an extended break? The almond cookies here are wonderful, if you want something light. And some more honeyed tea.’
His kindness made her want to cry.
‘Yes, please,’ she said.
They talked about Singapore and a little about Randolf’s upbringing in Germany. They drank tea and ate croissants as well as cookies. It was an hour before he said: ‘Bittersweet will be worrying about you, you know. She has a caring personality.’
Rekka blinked.
‘I thought no one else had noticed.’
‘Because you’ve been working so hard.’
‘Oh.’
‘So how are you getting on,’ he said, ‘with finding a place?’
Her hotel was upmarket. On first arrival, as soon as she had walked through the entrance, she had received a cool drink from a pretty young staff member, while the inbuilt system registered her automatically and a porter came to take her bags. But that had been six weeks ago, and she had two more left before UNSA would stop paying the bill.
‘I’ve not really been … looking.’
Because she had planned on viewing properties with Simon, at least with him on the other end of a real time link. Because in trying to forget that, she had immersed herself in work to the extent of making herself ill.
‘Come to dinner tonight. My wife will be able to offer advice.’
‘Oh.’ The invitation surprised her. ‘I … would love to come. Thank you.’
‘So.’ Randolf held up his infostrand and tapped it, causing her strand to chime. ‘You have my details, and everything is organized.’
‘Alles in Ordnung?’ It was one of the few phrases Rekka knew. ‘Did I get that right?’
‘Exactly correct.’ He smiled. ‘Time to get back to our inscrutable friends.’
‘Not so inscrutable,’ said Rekka.
Rekka rode up in one of twelve lifts that followed helical paths through the braided tower, where apartments were stacked like corn-on-the-cob given a twist. She wondered whether she could live here, if there were vacancies, and how much it would cost.
Imagined herself living alone.
No. It’s just the pressure, making him act weird.
If she could suffer from shaking hypertension, why would Simon be immune?
According to the text-and-map Randolf had sent, his wife’s name was Angela. Rekka had assumed, with her basic knowledge of German, that the name would have a hard g, pronounced An-gay-la. But the woman who opened the door was oriental, and when she introduced herself as Angela it was in the English fashion.
Over dinner, Rekka learned that Angela was native Singaporean, that she had met Randolf in an art gallery during his first week here – he had been a researcher at the University of Singapore before getting a post at UNSA – and that Randolf laughed a lot in Angela’s presence.
‘Come sightseeing on Saturday,’ said Angela. ‘Randolf will be hanging out with his old colleagues on campus.’
He seemed to belong here, with connections that extended beyond the closed world of UNSA.
‘Definitely,’ said Rekka.
On Saturday, they sat in a pavilion in Stanley Park; explored the resurrected Raffles Hotel with its airy white corridors and ceiling fans and Sikh doormen; saw the harbour and the sea-lion statues and, in another park, a group practising in the designated ‘tai-chi area’; and watched shoppers buying smartfabric and biotech off the stalls in Chinatown. There, Angela frowned as a young oriental couple walked off with a new configurator, smiling, while the proprietor was blank-faced.