Event Horizon (Hellgate) (126 page)

The cold made him quicken his pace. He had stepped out for exercise while Travers slept late – Neil had earned it. In the small hours of the morning the sex was inspired, and repeated. Travers seemed to have energy to burn now. Many times he would smile as if for no reason, but Curtis knew what he was thinking.

It was
over
. They might never put on armor again, and if they did it would be for safety while they explored the environment on a world that had never known the tread of a human or Resalq boot, much less the
offense
of Zunshu weapons.

He took the back way into the house. The pathway led around the garage and down the side of the greenhouse, to an
airlocked
door where the outdoor winter gear was kept for human visitors. Resalq did not notice the thinness of the air here, and though they might grumble about the cold, it was only a minor inconvenience.

The greenhouse was hot, humid, and during the months of exile it had become a jungle. The drones had not been pruning and trimming, and most plants had overgrown, run to seed and begun a wild generation where anything was likely to be growing anywhere. An enormous job lay ahead of the gardeners. The whole structure smelt rank, but it was a natural smell, the scent of
life
. Marin had come to value it highly.

He hung up the outdoor gear, closed the locker on it and surveyed the glass-bound wasteland. It would be easiest to scythe the whole thing back to bare earth and start again, and he had no doubt Mark’s contractors would do just that – if the Sherratts returned to the town. If the Resalq were simply gone, these properties would lie fallow until they fell into ruin. Humans did not live up here, where the air was too thin to breathe and even high summer could suffer cold spells when the snowblowers would growl along the roadside before dawn.

Music and voices called him into the house. He heard Travers in the kitchen and Vidal further on, in the study, where he seemed to be arguing amiably with Shapiro about the relative merits of Rand over Marshall. The kitchen smelt of coffee and baking bread. Travers was flashing a plate of eggs and sausage, and as Marin appeared he walked into an embrace, collected a kiss.

“Your lips are frozen,” Neil observed.

“And my nose. It’s a glorious morning,” Marin said blithely.

“If you’re a penguin. Here.” Travers handed him coffee. “Go thaw yourself out. You’ve worked up an appetite?”

“Croissants,” Marin decided.

“Not without going down into Sark for them. Sausage and eggs?”

But Marin shook his head. “The bread smells very good.”

“Done in ten minutes.” Travers was rummaging for silverware.

Marin stopped in the doorway to watch, enjoying the sight of Neil Travers in an actual
house
, with cutlery in both hands rather than an assortment of weapons. He looked very good this morning, in soft black sweats, an old tunic of Mark’s, pale gold linen and rich blue embroidery, the sleeves caught up above his elbows, the hem loose about narrow hips. His hair was growing longer, curling around his neck; he spoke about getting it cut, but Marin hoped he would not. The longer it grew, the more it suited him – and the less military it looked. If Marin had one fundamental hope, it was that those days were over for both of them.

From upstairs Tor’s voice bellowed for Dario, and Dario shouted from one of the labs on the basement level. They were trying to find oddments misplaced long ago, when the whole community scrambled to evacuate. Mark appeared at the arched doorway where the dining room opened onto the lounge with the redwood floors and emerald rugs. He was working with a pair of handies, and wore a pained expression at the noise.

“Something’s wrong with the house comm system?” Alexis Rusch’s voice asked from the winged armchair by the hearth, where the fire might have been gas fed, but it was bright, warm.

“As long as they’ve been together,” Mark said resignedly, “they don’t use it. They shout.”

Roy Arlott snorted a laugh. “Shouting’s more fun. Besides, Leon’s up there somewhere. He’ll tell Tor to stow in, in the interests of his eardrums. Or mine,” he added. He was sitting on the rug by the hearth, leafing through an ancient, very precious book.

Marin knew the volume well. It was over a century old, a visual
catalog
of the relics, art, artifacts, uncovered in the Eternal City on Saraine. Over 600 pages of heavy plastex were printed in meticulously balanced color, with closeup images of any accessible Resalq texts and the best-guess translations of the day. Roy was unimpressed.

“These guys,” he was saying as Marin found a chair and lifted his feet up before the fire to thaw, “are way wide of the mark.”

“And they wouldn’t be corrected,” Mark said pragmatically. “It’s human nature, I suppose – Resalq nature, too. When you’ve worked a whole lifetime on a project, you can’t bear some newcomer casually strolling in and telling you the whole foundation your work is based on is shaky.”

“Where did they dream up this guff?” Arlott turned the book to show him an image, a wall painting incorporating an original memorial text. “This eulogy is beautiful. The translation is ghastly. Listen to this, Curtis. ‘Where the fires of night are burning bright, thou shalt sing to the glories of yore, And the future days of thy children’s grace shall your epitaph be evermore.’ That’s horrible. That’s sheer, unadulterated goo.”

Even the contemporary written Resalq language defeated Marin; the archaic form was little more than beautiful, abstract patterns. He scanned over the image of a young couple, killed in an accident. The memorial painting concealed the niche where their ashes were interred, in what had been a memory garden when the Eternal City thronged with Resalq.

“So what’s it actually say?” he asked.

“It says,” Arlott mused, working over the script, “and correct me if I’m wrong, Mark … ‘May the stars light your way as you return to your forefathers, and may your children carry your memory and name into a bright future.’” He looked up at Mark. “Close?”

“That’s a good literal translation,” Mark agreed. “The poetic form is a little more florid. ‘The stars light us home, where
equeros
lie dreaming, while our children race onward, their future is gleaming.’” He tilted his head to see the book, the painting. “The old language
is
very difficult. The common term for ‘your children’ was compounded of older words involving the bearers of names, the carriers of memory. I can quite understand how human linguists had, and still have, enormous problems with it. Contemporary Resalq are speaking it less and less often. Some,” he added, “are speaking Slingo preferentially, and a handful don’t speak a word of the mother tongue.”

Dario and Tor continued to hold a conversation from one end of the house to the other, but Marin was indulgent. They were packing what they had left before, and no one knew when they would be back. They would be on the
Wastrel
until the Lai’a project was complete, after which plans became sketchy.

The smell of hot bread and fresh coffee preceded Travers into the lounge, and Marin looked up the moment before a tray landed on his lap. The bread was roughly torn, right out of the oven, with preserves and butter on the side rather than the salt-pickled plums and horseradish the Resalq would have chosen for breakfast. Marin smiled his thanks, and with a pleasured groan Travers settled at his feet on the rug.

Vidal and Shapiro had fallen quiet, and he heard the muted sounds of the threedee. They were watching CNS, and Curtis caught the thread of it without actually listening. Twenty worlds were applying for membership in the Commonwealth, some halfway back through the Middle Heavens, others over the frontier, in what was technically Freespace.

“It’s starting,” Travers said quietly. He was watching the fire, content to laze the morning away. “We knew worlds everywhere would come in for trade deals and safety in numbers as soon as the Confederacy was thrown out.”

“There’s going to be a whole lot more worlds signatory to the Commonwealth charter than belonging to the Confederacy,” Shapiro said in a voice rich with satisfaction. “The Confederacy isn’t going to like it, but they’ll have to play nice now. They’re outnumbered, as well as outgunned. You know Chandra Liang managed to talk at least a couple of their minor dignitaries to the conference table?”

Marin had heard the news, but was
skeptical
. “The way I heard it, it turned out to be just a couple of trade representatives. Apparently, there’s a flow of certain rare materials the Confederacy just can’t do without, and it’s stopped. They’re willing to do deals via the backdoor to get it started again. It’s closer to shonky business protocol than peace talks.”

“Still,” Shapiro mused, “it’s a place to start. They’re
talking
. If raw materials are going in one direction, Confederate credits are coming in the other. A dialog is open, they’re ready to pay for what they want. A year ago, all they wanted to do was batter us senseless and take anything they needed. You don’t think it’s an enormous stride forward, Curtis?”

“When you put it like that,” Marin admitted, “I suppose it is.”

“Patience,” Mark counselled. “It’s supposed to be a virtue. Give it another year, and these backdoor deals will have turned into a full-blown trade agreement. Ten years, and people will have accepted the fact the colonials refused to play the Confederate game any longer.
Twenty
years, and a whole generation of homeworlds people will have grown up, to whom the Deep Sky Commonwealth was
always
there. We’ll just be part of the landscape – and a highly exotic part, at that.”

“Exotic?” Travers angled a glance up at him. “Us?”

“When the Veldn arrive,” Mark said thoughtfully, “it ought to be safe for the Resalq to show our faces. We’re so much like humans, at least superficially, we’ll be quite accepted as almost
normal
. In the light of what we know of the other intelligent alien species, embrace the term! Then, the Zunshu data will be published very soon. There’s four intelligent species in our cosmos, Neil, of which humans and Resalq are similar enough to be so normal, we’re boring. The Zunshu, the Veldn – now, these are alien races! Place yourself in the position of a brilliant youngster growing up on Earth or Mars. The study of the universe is your passion. You dream about communicating with alien minds. This is the cosmos we live in, you and I. Those young minds will be coming out here to find us in ten or twenty years, and the Confederacy can only suffer for what was once known as a ‘brain drain’.”

He made a good point, and Marin was fascinated to see that future become reality. “The Resalq are coming out, are they? When?”

“Soon enough,” Mark said evasively. “This is one of many things we need to talk about – as of late this evening, local time, we’re on our way to rendezvous with the
Freyana
. It’s the oddest thing – Joss can’t get a squeak out of it. There’s been no data from the ship in the last ten days, though the big colony transmitters are still working. If they had an emergency, we’d know about it. But the
Freyana
itself has gone dark. Or has
gone
.”

“Which is reason enough to investigate,” Rusch judged.

“Oh, yes. Emil Kulich has been itching to chase down the
Raishenne
, see if he can find the old Resalq colony ship that vanished without trace. And I’m fully aware the
Raishenne
was his base ship, at the time he and Midani were trapped inside the Kjorin stasis chamber, so I’m just hoping Emil hasn’t taken the
Freyana
and gone hunting.

“That ship ought to be standing by the colony! If he’s gone hunting, I’ll carve a slice off him. The
Freyana
is not his ship. He was given command of it, loaned it, specifically to found a new colony, but it’s a piece of history in its own right, and so precious, he’s
not
going to take it out
gallivanting
! And in any case,” Mark added as he adjusted the gas jets and the fire burned a little lower, “we’re headed to the new world to offload the stasis chambers. Five Zunshu stasis chambers … and
whatever
is inside them.”

As he finished, Dario and Tor arrived from the stairs. They plunked down onto the couch beneath the window, where the blinds were open to the blue sky, and great flurries of snow were plucked off the trees by the rising wind. “The stasis chambers,” Dario grumbled. “I’m having bloody nightmares about them.”