Context (31 page)

They were in a small reception
room, with a young junior administrator—a civilian—behind the main desk, trying
to look busy, constructing a FourSpeak report amid a sheaf of holoplanes, while
avoiding Neil’s gaze. Ro clasped her arms around herself and looked outside. On
the tarmac, despite the late morning heat, fit-looking men and women in white
jumpsuits were running past in cadence.

Pilot Candidates.

She turned away.

In the grey-walled corridor
beyond Reception, a white-haired woman with a deep tan was walking briskly
past. She was dressed in a pale blue suit: business-conservative cut, but
expensive shot-silk fabric. Two nervous-looking aides stumbled along behind her,
trying to keep up.

‘I’m sorry.’ Neil was at Ro’s
shoulder. ‘I can’t believe they brought you all the way out here for this.’

Behind the desk, the young
administrator swallowed and said, ‘I think the, er, Mrs Haverley’s condition
changed suddenly.’

‘A medical emergency?’ asked Ro.

Neil frowned, and Ro heard his
subliminal repressed remark as though he had shouted it aloud:
There will be
if someone’s not careful.

‘The person you were about to see’—Neil
glared at the receptionist—‘is off home because his wife’s giving birth. I don’t
know—’ He stopped, then added: ‘I’m not fully briefed on this. You were here
for counselling?’

‘Not as far as I know.’

Which begged the question, why
was he here to escort her?

To observe me.
She was suddenly sure of that.
But
why?

‘My God. It was your roommate who
was killed in DistribOne, wasn’t it?’

‘Her name was Anne-Louise.’

‘I’m sorry ...Ah, they probably
had you seeing Dr Haverley to check you’re OK.’

‘Concerned about me?’

‘Or avoiding a lawsuit. I— Were
you close, you and Anne-Louise?’

‘I’d only just met her that
morning.’

But I saw her there, bruised
corpse with a dark swollen tongue...

Neil’s hand was guiding her to a
seat, and she held a comforting certainty that his concern at least was real.

‘You should go home,’ he said, ‘to
DistribOne.’

‘No.’ Ro felt suddenly calm. “There’s
something I’d like to see.’

Open
to the sky: blue mats, broken white walls. Perhaps it was a mistake to come
here.

It felt like sacrilege, wearing
her boots, but Ro walked to the mat’s centre, knelt down and sat back on her
heels.
Seiza
position. She could feel the echoes of warrior training: so
many hours—hundreds of thousands of hours—filled with effort and energy.
Ancient fear pheromones still lingered: faded scents of sweat, of occasional
spilled blood.

Mother had trained here, and
Gramps had been her sensei.

Ro clapped her hands in the
traditional manner, and bowed to the dojo-spirit.

Some of UNSA’s own military
police had kicked down one of the walls, according to Neil, after demolition
cranes had pulled the roof away. No-one trained here any more.

Fifteen years earlier,
aikido/Feldenkrais—spatial awareness training—had been in vogue for all serious
athletes. Now, although Zürich Hight School still sent its most promising Pilot
Candidates to be taught by Karyn McNamara, most UNSA centres were phasing out
the practice.

Ro bowed once more, palms on the
ripped blue mat, then stood up.

She walked away without looking
back.

Neil
was waiting for her, on a vacant red-sand lot between two dark glass buildings.
Sweat patches showed on his uniform.

‘Sorry,’ said Ro. ‘You should’ve
gone inside.’

‘No problem. Actually, I have
heard about your mother. Something of a legend around here.’

Ro smiled.

‘And,’ Neil added, ‘in the aikido
world too, is that right?’

‘Ranked
judan
by the Kyoto
Honbu.’

Neil whistled, and Ro was
impressed that he understood. Where other arts had abandoned the old belt
rankings—after so many self-awarded high grades had rendered the whole concept
laughable—aikido had reverted to traditional practices, and typically it now
took a decade of hard work to earn a first dan. As for tenth dan, there were
three tenth-degree black belts in the world, and Mother was one of them.

‘UNSA service’—Neil gave a
self-effacing grimace—‘is a family tradition for me, too.’

Ro just looked at him.

‘My brother Neal,’ he said, ‘was
a fighter-shuttle pilot.’

Ro smothered her reaction with a
tight cough: easy enough in the hot dry air.

‘Neal Neil?’ she asked.

‘Yeah. Did I mention my first
name’s Armstrong?’

‘Oh, God.’

‘Exactly. Come on, let’s get
inside.’

As they walked together, boots
scrunching softly on the sand, he added: ‘I had a Puritan ancestor called
Punishment. Joined the militia, never got promoted beyond two stripes.’

Ro gave a small groan.

‘And his cousin Trauma, got as
far as maj—’

‘Thanks,’ said Ro. ‘I think I’ve
got that one.’ She stopped before the glistening black glass door. ‘So you were
kidding about your brother.’

Their two reflections, distorted,
stood together in the glass.

‘Oh, no.’ Shading his eyes, Neil
looked back towards the dojo’s broken shell. ‘That’s all true.’

‘You said he
was
a pilot.’
Something in Neil’s tone made Ro ask the question: ‘What happened?’

‘His name’—Neil’s smile switched
on, then off—‘made him fast with his fists ...and his brain. Excellence-grade
honours from VirtU, then a masters from Jakarta. But he wanted to be a top gun.’

Ro held her breath.

‘It was a training run.’ Neil
stared into the distance, but his thoughts were focused inwards. ‘Mach nine,
and he ploughed into the Tibetan Alps, for no good reason that I ever learned.
End of story.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Neil held up his hand, and the
black glass door slid open.

‘He was twenty-six years old.’

They went inside, into cold air.
Ro shivered as the door slid shut behind them.

In
the high-ceilinged museum complex, a space capsule hung, the exact colour of an
old copper coin, protected by its covering of clear laminate. It was an Apollo
craft, rescued from the Smithsonian’s ruins—three decades before, during the
Week DC Burned—and Ro could not imagine the bravery of the men who had flown
inside.

Beyond another display, Ro saw
the woman she had spotted before: tanned, white-haired, with a pale blue suit
of understated elegance, undoubtedly expensive.

‘Your mother’—beside Ro, Neil
pointed to another exhibit—’went up in something like that.’

Dear God.

It was not the full ship: just
the Pilot’s cabin, cut open to the public gaze. Freed of the foamy cocoon
material, its revealed interior was cold and spartan. The
VO
ports were
two plain sockets in the turquoise ceramic bulkhead—and the Pilot would have
been plugged in via high-bandwidth fibres attached in place of her eyes.

The tanned woman was walking
towards her, but Ro’s attention was riveted by the display.

I was born in one of these.

Ro shivered.

Slender robot arms, like praying
mantis forelimbs, were angled against the cold bulkhead. For no good reason,
the sight unsettled Ro.

‘Myosin-activation strips.’ The
woman’s hand was elegantly manicured, though her fingers’ knuckles, as she
pointed at the loose-hanging strips, were swollen with age. ‘In lieu of
exercise. Not too different from today’s setup.’

Her voice was crystal clear,
devoid of accent.

‘It looks,’ said Ro, ‘like a
medieval torture chamber.’

‘I suppose so.’

The woman emanated a sense of
presence, and when she laughed Ro found herself smiling in response.

‘My name’—the woman held out her
hand for Ro to shake— ’is Ilse Schwenger. I worked with your mother.’

Neil, behind Ilse Schwenger, was
standing almost to attention.

‘Not a Pilot, then,’ said Ro.

Neil winced. Whoever this
Schwenger was, he knew her. Was aware of her importance.