Miran dabbed warm water on his face, making inroads on the accumulated grime. He was so involved with the task his mind dismissed the scratching sounds outside, a part of the homestead's normal background noises: the wind rustling the bushes and vegetables, the door swinging on its hinges, distant gurgling river water.
The clatter which came from the main room was so sudden it made his muscles lock rigid in fright. In the mirror his face was white with shock.
It must be another xenoc. But he had felt nothing approach, none of the jumble of foreign thoughts leaching into his brain.
His hands gripped the basin in an effort to still their trembling. A xenoc couldn't do him any real harm, he told himself, those pincer fingers could leave some nasty gouges, but nothing fatal. And he could run faster. He could reach the laser rifle on the grave before the xenoc got out of the door.
He shoved the curtain aside with a sudden thrust. The main room was empty. Instead of bolting, he stepped gingerly out of the alcove. Had it gone into the bedroom? The door was slightly ajar. He thought he could hear something rustling in there. Then he saw what had made the clattering noise.
One of the composite floor tiles had been forced up, flipping over like a lid. There was a dark cavity below it. Which was terribly terribly wrong. The homestead had been assembled on a level bed of earth.
Miran bent down beside it. The tile was a metre square, and someone had scooped out all the hard-packed earth it had rested on, creating a snug cavity. The bottom was covered in pieces of what looked like broken crockery.
The xenoc. Miran knew instinctively it had dug this. He picked up one of the off-white fragments. One side was dry, smooth; the other was slimed with a clear tacky mucus. It was curved. An egg.
Rage boiled through him. The xenoc had laid an egg in his homestead. Outsmarting him, choosing the one place Miran would never look, never suspect treachery. Its bastard had hatched in the place intended for his own children.
He pushed the bedroom door fully open. Candice was waiting for him on the bed, naked and smiling. Miran's world reeled violently. He grabbed at the doorframe for support before his faltering legs collapsed.
She was very far away from him.
«Candice,» his voice cracked. Somehow the room wasn't making sense. It had distorted, magnifying to giant proportions. Candice, beloved Candice, was too small. His vision swam drunkenly, then resolved. Candice was less than a metre tall.
«Love me,» she said. Her voice was high pitched, a mousy squeak.
Yet it was her. He gazed lovingly at each part of the perfectly detailed figure which he remembered so well—her long legs, firm flat belly, high conical breasts, the broad shoulders, over-developed from months spent toiling in the fields.
«Love me.»
Her face. Candice was never beautiful, but he worshipped her anyway. Prominent cheekbones, rounded chin, narrow eyes. All there, as delicate as china. Her soft smile, directed straight at him, unforgettable.
«Love me.»
Xenoc. The foetus gestating under his floor. Violating his dreams, feeding on them. Discovering his all-enveloping love.
«Love me.»
The first post-human-encounter xenoc; instinctively moulding itself into the form which would bring it the highest chance of survival in the new world order.
Its slender arms reached out for him. A flawless human ribcage was outlined by supple creamy-white skin as it stretched.
Miran wailed in torment.
«Love me.»
He could. That was the truth, and it was a tearing agony. He could love it. Even a pale monstrous echo was better than a lifetime without Candice. It would grow. And in the dark crushingly lonely hours it would be there for him to turn to.
«Love me.»
He wasn't strong enough to resist. If it grew he would take it in his arms and become its lover. Her lover, again. If it grew.
He put his hands under the bed and tugged upwards with manic strength. Bed, mattress, and sheets cartwheeled. The xenoc squealed as it tumbled onto the floor.
«Love me!» The cry was frantic. It was squirming across the floor towards him. Feet tangled in the blankets, face entreating.
Miran shoved at the big dresser, tilting it off its rear legs. He had spent many evening hours making it from aboriginal timber. It was crude and solid, heavy.
«Love me!» The cry had become a desperate pining whimper.
The dresser teetered on its front legs. With a savage sob, Miran gave it one last push. It crashed to the floor with a hideous liquid squelch as it landed on the xenoc's upper torso.
Miran vomited, running wildly from the bedroom, blind, doubled up in convulsions. His mad flight took him outside where he tripped and sprawled on the soggy ground, weeping and pawing at the soil, more animal than human.
A strained creaking sound made him look up. Despite eyes smeared with gritty tears, he saw the rock at the top of the grave cracking open. A tiny arm punched out into the air. Thin flakes went spinning. The hand and arm worked at enlarging the fissure. Eventually a naked homunculus emerged in jerky movements, scattering fragments of shell in all directions. Even the xenoc eggs had the ability to conform to their surroundings.
Miran watched numbly as the homunculus crawled down the pile of sandstone lumps to join the other two humanoid figures waiting at the base.
In the homestead the safest identity to adopt was a love object, cherished and protected. But outside in the valley survival meant becoming the most ruthless predator of all.
Between them, the three miniature humans lifted up the laser rifle. «Hate you,» one spat venomously. Then its fist smacked into the trigger.
Miran couldn't believe his own face was capable of expressing so much anger.
Timeline
Tropicana, 2447
The clatter which came from the main room was so sudden it made his muscles lock rigid in fright. In the mirror his face was white with shock.
It must be another xenoc. But he had felt nothing approach, none of the jumble of foreign thoughts leaching into his brain.
His hands gripped the basin in an effort to still their trembling. A xenoc couldn't do him any real harm, he told himself, those pincer fingers could leave some nasty gouges, but nothing fatal. And he could run faster. He could reach the laser rifle on the grave before the xenoc got out of the door.
He shoved the curtain aside with a sudden thrust. The main room was empty. Instead of bolting, he stepped gingerly out of the alcove. Had it gone into the bedroom? The door was slightly ajar. He thought he could hear something rustling in there. Then he saw what had made the clattering noise.
One of the composite floor tiles had been forced up, flipping over like a lid. There was a dark cavity below it. Which was terribly terribly wrong. The homestead had been assembled on a level bed of earth.
Miran bent down beside it. The tile was a metre square, and someone had scooped out all the hard-packed earth it had rested on, creating a snug cavity. The bottom was covered in pieces of what looked like broken crockery.
The xenoc. Miran knew instinctively it had dug this. He picked up one of the off-white fragments. One side was dry, smooth; the other was slimed with a clear tacky mucus. It was curved. An egg.
Rage boiled through him. The xenoc had laid an egg in his homestead. Outsmarting him, choosing the one place Miran would never look, never suspect treachery. Its bastard had hatched in the place intended for his own children.
He pushed the bedroom door fully open. Candice was waiting for him on the bed, naked and smiling. Miran's world reeled violently. He grabbed at the doorframe for support before his faltering legs collapsed.
She was very far away from him.
«Candice,» his voice cracked. Somehow the room wasn't making sense. It had distorted, magnifying to giant proportions. Candice, beloved Candice, was too small. His vision swam drunkenly, then resolved. Candice was less than a metre tall.
«Love me,» she said. Her voice was high pitched, a mousy squeak.
Yet it was her. He gazed lovingly at each part of the perfectly detailed figure which he remembered so well—her long legs, firm flat belly, high conical breasts, the broad shoulders, over-developed from months spent toiling in the fields.
«Love me.»
Her face. Candice was never beautiful, but he worshipped her anyway. Prominent cheekbones, rounded chin, narrow eyes. All there, as delicate as china. Her soft smile, directed straight at him, unforgettable.
«Love me.»
Xenoc. The foetus gestating under his floor. Violating his dreams, feeding on them. Discovering his all-enveloping love.
«Love me.»
The first post-human-encounter xenoc; instinctively moulding itself into the form which would bring it the highest chance of survival in the new world order.
Its slender arms reached out for him. A flawless human ribcage was outlined by supple creamy-white skin as it stretched.
Miran wailed in torment.
«Love me.»
He could. That was the truth, and it was a tearing agony. He could love it. Even a pale monstrous echo was better than a lifetime without Candice. It would grow. And in the dark crushingly lonely hours it would be there for him to turn to.
«Love me.»
He wasn't strong enough to resist. If it grew he would take it in his arms and become its lover. Her lover, again. If it grew.
He put his hands under the bed and tugged upwards with manic strength. Bed, mattress, and sheets cartwheeled. The xenoc squealed as it tumbled onto the floor.
«Love me!» The cry was frantic. It was squirming across the floor towards him. Feet tangled in the blankets, face entreating.
Miran shoved at the big dresser, tilting it off its rear legs. He had spent many evening hours making it from aboriginal timber. It was crude and solid, heavy.
«Love me!» The cry had become a desperate pining whimper.
The dresser teetered on its front legs. With a savage sob, Miran gave it one last push. It crashed to the floor with a hideous liquid squelch as it landed on the xenoc's upper torso.
Miran vomited, running wildly from the bedroom, blind, doubled up in convulsions. His mad flight took him outside where he tripped and sprawled on the soggy ground, weeping and pawing at the soil, more animal than human.
A strained creaking sound made him look up. Despite eyes smeared with gritty tears, he saw the rock at the top of the grave cracking open. A tiny arm punched out into the air. Thin flakes went spinning. The hand and arm worked at enlarging the fissure. Eventually a naked homunculus emerged in jerky movements, scattering fragments of shell in all directions. Even the xenoc eggs had the ability to conform to their surroundings.
Miran watched numbly as the homunculus crawled down the pile of sandstone lumps to join the other two humanoid figures waiting at the base.
In the homestead the safest identity to adopt was a love object, cherished and protected. But outside in the valley survival meant becoming the most ruthless predator of all.
Between them, the three miniature humans lifted up the laser rifle. «Hate you,» one spat venomously. Then its fist smacked into the trigger.
Miran couldn't believe his own face was capable of expressing so much anger.
Timeline
2420 — Kulu scoutship discovers Ruin Ring.
2428 — Bitek habitat Tranquillity germinated by crown prince Michael Saldana, orbiting above Ruin Ring.
2432 — Prince Michael's son, Maurice, geneered with affinity. Kulu abdication crisis. Coronation of Lukas Saldana. Prince Michael exiled.
2428 — Bitek habitat Tranquillity germinated by crown prince Michael Saldana, orbiting above Ruin Ring.
2432 — Prince Michael's son, Maurice, geneered with affinity. Kulu abdication crisis. Coronation of Lukas Saldana. Prince Michael exiled.
Tropicana, 2447
The Lives and Loves of Tiarella Rosa
Tropicana had a distinct aura of strangeness, both in appearance and in those it gathered to itself. Eason discovered that while he was still on the flight down from orbit.
«There's a lot more islands down there than I remember from fifty years ago,» said Ashly Hanson, the spaceplane's pilot. «The locals must keep on planting them, I suppose. They're still pretty keen on bitek here.»
«So I hear.» Tropicana wasn't Eason's ideal destination. But that was where the Lord Fitzroy was heading, the only starship departing Quissico asteroid for thirty hours. Time had been a critical factor. He'd been running out of it fast.
Eason paused to consider what the pilot said. «What do you mean, fifty years ago?» Ashly Hanson was a short man with a wiry build, a lax cap of brown hair flopping down over his ears, and a near-permanent smile of admiration on his lips. The universe had apparently been created with the sole purpose of entertaining Ashly Hanson. However, the pilot couldn't have been more than forty-five years old, not even if he'd been geneered.
«I time hop,» he said, with the grin of someone relating his favourite unbelievable story. «I spend fifty years in zero-tau stasis, then come out for five to look around and see how things are progressing. Signing on with a starship is a good way to play tourist.»
«You're kidding.»
«No. I started way back in good old 2284, and now I'm on a one-way ride to eternity. There's been some changes, I can tell you. You know, I'm actually older than the Confederation itself.»
«Jesus wept!» It was an incredible notion to take in.
Ashly's soft sense-of-wonder smile returned. Beyond the little spaceplane's windscreen, the planet's horizon curvature was flattening out as they lost altitude. Up ahead was the single stretch of habitable land on Tropicana. A narrow line of green and brown etched across the turquoise ocean, it straddled the equator at an acute angle, eight hundred kilometres long, though never more than fifty wide. A geological oddity on a tectonically abnormal planet. There was only one continent sharing the world, an arctic wilderness devoid of any aboriginal life more complex than moss; the rest of the globe was an ocean never deeper than a hundred and fifty metres.
Once Eason had accessed the Lord Fitzroy 's almanac file, his initial worry about his destination slowly dissipated. Tropicana was surrounded by thousands of small islands, its government notoriously liberal. The one Adamist planet in the Confederation which didn't prohibit bitek.
It wasn't perfect, but it was better than most.
Ashly Hanson was increasing the spaceplane's pitch sharply to shed speed as they approached the land. Eason craned forwards to see the coastline. There was a big city below, a sprawl of low buildings oozing along the beach. They were trapped between the water and the mountains whose foothills began a few kilometres inland.
«That's Kariwak, the capital,» Ashly said. «Used to be run by a man called Laurus last time I was here; one bad mother. They say his daughter's taken over now. Whatever else you do while you're here, don't cross her. If she's only half as bad as her old man you'll regret it.»
«Thanks, I'll remember.» He actually couldn't care less about some parochial urban gangster. His immediate concern was customs. Three innocuous dull-silver globes the size of tennis balls were sitting in a small case among his luggage. He'd agonized for hours if he should keep them with him. Getting them on board the Lord Fitzroy was no problem, the Party had plenty of supporters in Quissico's civil service. The spheres were disguised to look like super-density magnetic bearings used by the astronautics industry, he even had authentic documentation files confirming he was a rep for the company which made them. But if Tropicana customs had sensors capable of probing through the magnetic casing . . .
Kariwak spaceport was situated ten kilometres outside the city. It gave Eason his first taste of Tropicana's architectural aesthetics. All the buildings were designed to be as naturalistic as possible, subtle rather than ostentatious, even the maintenance hangars were easy on the eye. But it was a surprisingly big field given the size of the population. Tropicana received a lot of rich visitors, taking advantage of the relaxed bitek laws to visit specialist clinics offering rejuvenation techniques. As with the surroundings, customs were discreet and efficient, but not intrusive.
Forty minutes after landing, Eason was on an underground tube train carrying him into the city. Lord Fitzroy was scheduled to depart in two days' time, after that it would be extremely difficult for anyone to trace him. But not impossible, and those that would come looking were fanatical. It was that fanaticism which originally made him question the Party's aims, the doubt which started him along this road.
He left the train at a station right in the heart of the city, its escalator depositing him on a broad boulevard lined with geneered sequoias. The trees were only seventy years old but they were already towering above the department shops, restaurants, whitewashed cafés, and Mediterranean-style office blocks. He slipped easily into the crush of pedestrians that thronged its length, case held firmly in one hand, flight bag on a strap over the other shoulder.
The boulevard led directly down to the main harbour, a circular two-kilometre-wide basin, with glistening white coral walls. Half of it extended out into the shallow turquoise ocean, while the other half ate back into the city, where it had been surrounded by a chaotic mix of warehouses, taverns, marine supply shops, sportsboat hire stalls, agents' offices, and a giant fish market. Quays stabbed out into the transparent water like spokes from a wheel rim. Right at the centre a sad cone of weather-dulled titanium rose out of the soft swell, the empty shell of a cargo lander that had swung off course two and a half centuries earlier as it brought equipment down to the newly founded colony. Ships of all shapes and sizes sailed around it, bright sails drooping in the calm air.
He stared at them intently. Ranged along the horizon were the first islands of the archipelago. Out there, he could lose himself for ever among the sleeping atolls and their quiet inhabitants. The boats which docked at this harbour left no records in bureaucratic memory cores, didn't file destinations, owed no allegiances. This was a freedom barely one step from anarchy.
He started along the harbour's western wall, towards the smaller boats: the fishing ketches, coastal sampans, and traders which cruised between the mainland cities and the islands. He was sure he could find one casting off soon, although a few brief enquiries among the sailors revealed that such craft rarely took on deck hands; they were nearly all family-run concerns. Eason didn't have much money left in his bank disk, possibly enough for one more starflight if he didn't spend more than a couple of hundred fuseodollars.
He saw the girl before he'd walked halfway along the wall. She was in her mid-teens, tall bordering on gawky, wearing a loose topaz-coloured cotton shirt and turquoise shorts. Thick gold-auburn hair fell halfway down her back, styled with an Egyptian wave; but the humidity had drawn out its lustre, leaving it hanging limply.
She was staggering under the weight of a near-paralytic old man in a sweat-stained vest. He looked as though he weighed twice as much as she did.
«Please, Ross,» she implored. «Mother'll sail without us.»
His only answer was an inebriated burble.
Eason trotted over. «Can I give you a hand?»
She shot him a look which was half-guilt, half-gratitude. He'd guessed her face would be narrow, and he was right: a small flat nose, full lips, and worried blue eyes were all cocooned by her dishevelled hair.
«Are you sure?» she asked hopefully.
«No trouble.» Eason put his flight bag down, and relieved her of the old man. He slung the old man's arm around his own shoulders, and pushed up. It was quite a weight to carry, the girl must be stronger than she looked.
«This way,» she said, squirming with agitation.
«Take my flight bag, would you. And the name's Eason,» he told her as they started off down the wall.
«Althaea.» She blushed as she picked up his bag. «Shall I take your case for you as well?»
«No,» he grunted. «I'll manage.»
«I'm really grateful. I should have been back at the Orphée a quarter of an hour ago.»
«Is it a tight schedule?»
«Oh no, but Mother likes to get home before dark. Visiting Kariwak takes a whole day for us.»
«Should he be sailing in this condition?»
«He'll just have to,» she said with a sudden flash of pique. «He does it every time we bring him. And it's always me who has to go looking in the taverns for him. I hate those places.»
«Is this your father?»
She let out a guffaw, then clamped her mouth over her mouth. «I'm sorry. No, he's not my father. This is Rousseau. Ross. He lives with us, helps around the house and garden, things like that. When he's sober,» she added tartly.
«Where do you live?»
«Mother and I live on Charmaine; it's an island out in the archipelago.»
He hid a smile. Perfect. «Must be a tough life, all by yourselves.»
«We manage. It won't be for ever, though.» Her angular shoulders jerked in what he thought was supposed to be an apologetic shrug; it was more like a convulsion. Eason couldn't recall meeting someone this shy for a long while. It made her appealing, after an odd sort of fashion.
The Orphée was tied up to a quay near the gap in the harbour wall. Eason whistled in appreciation when he saw her. She was a trim little craft, six metres long, with a flat-bottomed wooden hull and a compact cabin at the prow. The two outriggers were smaller versions of the main hull, with room for cargo; all archipelago craft had them, a lot of the channels between islands were too shallow for keel fins.
Bitek units were dovetailed neatly into the wooden superstructure: nutrient-fluid sacs with ancillary organs in the stern compartment, a powerful-looking three metre long silver-grey serpent tail instead of a rudder, and a membrane sail whorled round the tall mast.
Althaea's mother was sitting cross-legged on the cabin roof, wearing a faded blue denim shirt and white shorts. Eason had no doubt she was Althaea's mother: her hair was much shorter, but the same colour, and though she lacked the girl's half-starved appearance her delicate features were identical. Their closeness was uncanny.
She was holding up an odd-looking pendulum, a slim gold chain that was fastened to the centre of a wooden disc, five centimetres in diameter. The disk must have been perfectly balanced, because it remained horizontal.
When Eason reached the quayside directly above the Orphée he saw the rim of the disc was carved with spidery hieroglyphics. It was turning slowly. Or he thought it was. When he steadied Ross and looked down properly, it was stationary.
The woman seemed absorbed by it.
«Mother?» Althaea said uncertainly.
Her gaze lifted from the disk, and met Eason's eyes. She didn't seem at all put out by his appearance.
He found it hard to break her stare; it was almost triumphant.
Rousseau vomited on the quay.
Althaea let out a despairing groan. «Oh, Ross!» She was close to tears.
«Bring him on board,» her mother said wearily. She slipped the disc and chain into her shirt pocket.
With Althaea's help, Eason manhandled Ross onto a bunk in the cabin. The old man groaned as he was laid on the grey blankets, then closed his eyes, asleep at once.
Althaea put a plastic bucket on the floor beside the bunk, and shook her head sadly.
«What's the pendulum for?» Eason asked quietly. He could hear her mother moving round on the deck outside.
«Mother uses it for divining.»
«On a boat?»
She pressed her lips together. «You can use divining to find whatever you wish, not just water—stones, wood, buried treasure, stuff like that. It can even guide you home in the fog, just like a compass. The disc is only a focus for your thoughts, that's all. Your mind does the actual work.»
«I think I'll stick with an inertial guido.»
Althaea's humour evaporated. She hung her head as if she'd been scolded.
«I'm Tiarella Rosa, Althaea's mother,» the woman said after Eason stepped out of the cabin. She stuck her hand out. «Thank you for helping with Ross.»
«No trouble,» Eason said affably. Tiarella Rosa had a firm grip, her hand calloused from deckwork.
«I was wondering,» he said. «Do you have any work available on Charmaine? I'm not fussy, or proud. I can dig ditches, pick fruit, rig nets, whatever.»
Tiarella's eyes swept over him, taking in the ship's jumpsuit he wore, the thin-soled shoes, his compact but hardly bulky frame, albino-pale skin. «Why would you be interested, asteroid man?»
«I'm a drifter. I'm tired of asteroid biosphere chambers. I want the real thing, the real outdoors. And I'm just about broke.»
«A drifter?»
«Yeah.» Out of the corner of his eye he saw Althaea emerge from the cabin, her already anxious expression even more apprehensive.
«I can only offer room and board,» Tiarella said. «In case you haven't noticed, we're not rich, either.» There was the intimation of amusement in her voice.
Eason prevented his glance from slipping round the Orphée ; she must have cost ten thousand fuseodollars at least.
«And the Orphée has been in the family for thirty years,» Tiarella said briskly. «She's a working boat, the only link we have with the outside world.»
«Right. Room and board would be fine.»
Tiarella ruffled Althaea's hair. «No need to ask your opinion, is there, darling. A new face at Charmaine, Christmas come in April.»
Althaea blushed crimson, hunching in on herself.
«OK, drifter , we'll give it a try.»
Orphée 's tail kicked up a spume of foam as she manoeuvred away from the quay. Tiarella's eyes were tight shut as she steered the boat via her affinity bond with the bitek's governing processors. Once they were clear, the sail membrane began to spread itself, a brilliant emerald sheet woven through with a hexagonal mesh of rubbery cords.
Outside the harbour walls they picked up a respectable speed. Tiarella headed straight away from the land for five kilometres, then slowly let the boat come round until they were pointing east. Eason went into the cabin to stow his flight bag. Rousseau was snoring fitfully, turning the air toxic with whisky and bad breath.
He unlocked the case to check on the spheres it contained. His synaptic web established a datalink with them, and ran a diagnostic. All three superconductor confinement systems were functioning perfectly, the drop of frozen anti-hydrogen suspended at the centre of each one was completely stable. The resulting explosion should one of them ever rupture would be seen from a million miles away in space. It was a destructive potential he considered too great.
The Quissico Independence Party had other ideas. It was the blackmail weapon they were going to use against the development company administration to gain full political and economic freedom for the asteroid. They had spent three years establishing contact with one of the black syndicates which manufactured antimatter. Three years of a gradually escalating campaign of propaganda and harassment against the development company.
Eason had joined the cause when he was still in his teens. Quissico was a highly successful settlement, with dozens of industrial stations and rich resources of minerals and organic chemicals. Its people worked hard and manufactured excellent astronautics equipment and specialist microgee compounds. That they were not allowed a greater say in how the wealth they created was spent was a deliberate provocation. They had made the founding consortium rich, paying off investment loans ahead of schedule. Now they should be permitted to benefit as the money cartels had.
It was a just cause. One he was proud to help. He was there giving beatings to company supervisors, taking an axe to finance division processor networks, fighting the company police. At twenty he killed his first enemy oppressor, an assistant secretary to the Vice-Governor. After that, there was no turning back. He worked his way through the Party ranks until he wound up as quartermaster for the movement's entire military wing. Over ten years of blood and violence.
He was already tiring of it, the useless pain and suffering he inflicted on people and their families. Gritting his teeth as the authorities launched their retaliations, erasing his friends and comrades. Then came the grand scheme, the Party's master plan for a single blow that would break the chains of slavery for good. Planned not by the military wing, those who knew what it was to inflict death; but by the political wing, who knew only of gestures and theoretical ideology. Who knew nothing.
A threat would never be enough for them. They would detonate some of the antimatter. To show their determination, their strength and power. In a distant star system, thousands would die without ever knowing why. He, the killer, could not allow such slaughter. It was insanity. He had joined to fight for people; to struggle and agitate. Not for this, remote-controlled murder.
So he stopped them in the simplest way he could think of.
Eason came back up on deck, and leant on the taffrail, allowing himself to relax for the first time in a fortnight. He was safe out here. Safe to think what to do next.
He'd never thought much past the theft itself; a few vague notions. That was almost as crazy as the Party's decision to acquire the stuff in the first place. Far too many people were acting on impulse these days.
Tropicana's ocean looked as if it had been polished smooth. The only disturbance came from Orphée 's wake, quiet ripples which were quickly absorbed by the mass of water. He could see the bottom five metres below the boat, a carpet of gold-white sand. Long ribbons of scarlet weed and mushroomlike bulbs of seafruit rose up out of it, swaying in the languid currents. Schools of small fish fled from the boat like neon sparks. Out here, tranquillity was endemic.
Althaea sat on Orphée 's prow, letting the breeze of their passage stream her hair back, a sensual living figurehead. Tiarella was standing amidships, staring at the islands ahead, straight-backed and resolute. Totally the ship's mistress.
Eason settled down in the stern, looking from one to the other, admiring them both, and speculating idly on which would be best in bed. It was going to be enjoyable finding out.
For three hours they moved deeper into the archipelago. Families had been planting the coral kernels around the mainland coast for over two centuries, producing their little island fiefdoms. They numbered in the tens of thousands now.
The larger, inhabited, islands were spaced two or three kilometres apart, leaving a broad network of channels to navigate through. Tiarella navigated Orphée around innumerable spits and reefs without even reducing speed.
Eason gripped the gunwale tightly as vicious jags of coral flashed past the outriggers. Most of the islands he could see had tall palm trees growing above the beaches. Some had just a few grand houses half-concealed through the lush vegetation, while others hosted small villages of wooden bungalows, whitewashed planks glowing copper in the sinking sun.
«There it is,» Althaea called excitedly from the prow. She was on her feet, pointing ahead in excitement. «Charmaine.» She gave Eason a shy smile.
The island was a large one, with a lot more foliage than the others; its trees formed a veritable jungle. Their trunks were woven together with a dense web of vines; grape-cluster cascades of vividly coloured flowers, fluoresced by the low sun, bobbed about like Chinese lanterns.
Eason couldn't see any beaches on this side. Several low shingle shelves were choked by straggly bushes which extended right down to the water's edge. Other than that, the barricade of pink-tinged coral was a couple of metres high.
Orphée was heading for a wooden jetty sticking out of the coral wall.
«What do you do here?» he asked Tiarella.
«Scrape by,» she said, then relented. «Those trees you can see are all geneered citrus varieties, some of them are actually xenoc. We used to supply all the nearby islands with fruit, and some coffee beans, too; it gave the community a sense of independence from the mainland. Fishing is the mainstay in this section of the archipelago. Trees have a lot of trouble finding the right minerals to fruit successfully out here, even with geneering. There's never enough soil, you see. But my grandfather started dredging up seaweed almost as soon as the island's original kernel grew out above the water. It took him thirty years to establish a decent layer of loam. Then Dad improved it, he designed some kind of bug which helped break the aboriginal seaweed down even faster. But I'm afraid I've allowed the groves to run wild since my husband died.»
«Why?»
She shrugged, uncoiling a mooring rope. «I didn't have the heart to carry on. Basically, I'm just hanging on until Althaea finds herself someone. It's her island really. When she has a family of her own, they can put it back on its feet.»
The house was set in a dishevelled clearing about a hundred metres from the jetty. It was a two-storey stone building with climbing roses scrambling around the ground-floor windows and a wooden balcony running along its front. Big precipitator leaves hung under the eaves, emerald valentines sucking drinking water out of the muggy air. When he got close, Eason could see the white paint was flaking from the doors and window frames, moss and weeds clogged the guttering, and the balcony was steadily rotting away. Several first-floor windows were boarded up.
His situation was looking better by the minute. Two women, a drunk, and an isolated, rundown island. He could stay here for a century and no one would ever find him.
As soon as they walked into the clearing, birds exploded from the trees, filling the air with beating wings and a strident screeching. The flock was split between parrots and some weird blunt-headed thing which made him think of pterodactyls. Whatever they were, they were big, about thirty centimetres long, with broad wings and whiplike tails; their colours were incredible—scarlet, gold, azure, jade.
Rousseau clamped his hands over his ears, belching wetly.
«What the hell are those?» Eason shouted above the din.
Althaea laughed. «They're firedrakes. Aren't they beautiful?»
«I thought Tropicana didn't have any aboriginal animals; there isn't enough dry land for them to evolve.»
«Firedrakes didn't evolve. They're a sort of cross between a bat, a lizard, and a parrot.»
He gawped, using his retinal amps to get a better look at one; and damn it, the thing did look like a terrestrial lizard, with membranous wings where the forepaws should be.
«My father spliced the original ones together about forty years ago,» Tiarella said. «He was a geneticist, a very good one.»
«You could make a fortune selling them,» Eason said.
«Not really. They can't fly very far, they only live for about three years, only a third of the eggs ever hatch, they're prone to disease, and they're not very sociable. Dad was going to improve them, but he never got round to it.»
«But they're ours,» Althaea said proudly. «Nobody else has them. They help make Charmaine special.»
Eason walked into the ground-floor study the next morning. He was still kneading kinks out of his back; the bed in the fusty little back room they'd given him was incredibly hard. It was only for one night; Tiarella had told him he would be living in one of the grove workers' chalets.
The study, like the rest of the house, had dull-red clay floor tiles and whitewashed plaster walls. Several black and white prints of various sizes were hanging up. A big brass fan was spinning slowly on the ceiling.
Tiarella was sitting behind a broad teak desk. The only objects on the polished wood surface in front of her were a century-old computer slate, and a pack of cards with a fanciful design printed on the back—from what he could see it looked like a star map.
He sat in an austere high-backed chair facing her.
«About your duties,» she said. «You can start by repairing the grove worker chalets. We have a carpentry shop with a full set of tools. Ross doesn't use them much these days. Are you any good with tools?»
He checked the files stored in his synaptic web. «I couldn't build you an ornamental cabinet, but cutting roofing timbers to length is no trouble.»
«Good. After that I'd like you to start on the garden.»
«Right.»
Tiarella picked up the pack of cards and started to shuffle them absently. She had the dexterity of a professional croupier. «We are getting a little bit too overgrown here. Charmaine might look charmingly rustic when you sail by, but the vines are becoming a nuisance.»
He nodded at one of the big prints on the wall. It was of three people, a formal family pose: Tiarella when she was younger, looking even more like Althaea, a bearded man in his late twenties, and a young boy about ten years old. «Is that your husband?»
The cards were merged with a sharp burring sound. «Yes, that's Vanstone, and Krelange, our son. They died eighteen years ago. It was a boating accident. They were outside the archipelago when a hurricane blew up. They weren't found until two days later. There wasn't much left. The razorsquids . . .»
«It must have been tough for you.»
«Yes. It was. I loved him like nobody else. Ours was a genuine till death do us part marriage. If it hadn't been for Althaea I would probably have killed myself.»
He glanced up sharply, meeting a hard-set smile.
«Oh yes, it is possible to love someone that much. Enough so their absence is pure torture. Have you ever experienced that kind of love, Eason?»
«No.»
«I don't know whether to envy you or pity you for that lack. What I felt for Vanstone was like a tidal force. It ruled my life, intangible and unbreakable. Even now it hasn't let go. It never will. But I have my hopes for Charmaine and Althaea.»
«She's a nice girl. She should do well with this island, there's a lot of potential here. It's a wonderful inheritance.»
«Yes, she has a beautiful future ahead of her. I read it in the cards.»
«Right.»
«Are you a believer in tarot, Eason?»
«I like to think I can choose my own destiny.»
«We all do at first. It's a fallacy. Our lives are lived all at once, consciousness is simply a window into time. That's how the cards work, or the tea leaves, or palmistry, or crystals for that matter. Whatever branch of the art you use, it simply helps to focus the mind.»
«Yes, I think I've heard that already on this planet.»
«The art allows me to see into the future. And, thank God, Althaea isn't going to suffer like I have done.»
He stirred uncomfortably, for once feeling slightly out of his depth. Bereavement and isolation could pry at a mind, especially over eighteen years.
«Would you like to know what your future has in store?» she asked. The pack of cards was offered to him. «Cut them.»
«Maybe some other time.»
Rousseau walked him over to the chalet, following a path worn through an avenue of gloomy trees at the back of the house. The old man seemed delighted at the prospect of male company on the island. Not least because his share of the work would be considerably lessened. Probably to around about zero if he had his way, Eason guessed.
«I've lived here nearly all my life,» Rousseau said. «Even longer than Tiarella. Her father, Nyewood, he took me on as a picker in the groves when I was younger than you. About fifteen, I was, I think.» He looked up at the tangle of interlocking branches overhead with a desultory expression pulling at his flabby lips. «Old Nyewood would hate to see what's happened to the island. Charmaine's success was all down to him, you know, building on his father's vision. Half of these trees are varieties he spliced together, improvements on commercial breeds. Why, I planted most of them myself.»
Eason grunted at the old man's rambling reminiscences. But at the same time he did have a point. There was a lot of fruit forming on the boughs in this part of the jungle, oranges, lemons, and something that resembled a blue grapefruit, most of them inaccessible. The branches hadn't been pruned for a decade, they were far too tall, even on those trees that were supposedly self-shaping. And the snarl of grass and scrub plants which made up the undergrowth was waist-high. But that was all superficial growth. It wouldn't take too much work to make the groves productive again.
«Why stay on, then?» Eason asked.
«For little Althaea, of course. Where would she be without me to take care of things? I loved Vanstone when he was alive, such a fine man. He thought of me as his elder brother, you know. So I do what I can for his daughter in honour of his memory. I have been as a father to her.»
«Right.» No one else would take on the old soak.
There were twelve chalets forming a semicircle in their own clearing. Rousseau called it a clearing; the grass came up over Eason's knees.
«My old chalet, the best of them all,» Rousseau said, slapping the front door of number three.
«Shack, not a chalet,» Eason mumbled under his breath. Two rooms and a shower cubicle built out of bleached planking that had warped alarmingly, a roof of thick palm thatch which was moulting, and a veranda along the front. There was no glass in the windows, they had slatted shutters to hold back the elements.
«I fixed up the hinges and put in a new bed last week,» Rousseau said, his smile showing three missing teeth. «Tiarella, she told me fix the roof as well. With my back! That woman expects miracles. Still, now you're here, I'll help you.»
Eason paused on the threshold, a gelid tingling running down his spine. «What do you mean, last week?»
«Last Thursday, it was, she told me. Ross, she said, get a chalet fixed up ready for a man to live in. It was a mess, you know. I've done a lot of work here for you already.»
«Ready for me to live in?»
«Yes.» Rousseau shifted unhappily from foot to foot as Eason stared at him.
«Did she mention me by name?»
«No. How could she? Listen, I made sure the toilet works. You don't have to run back to the house every time.»
Eason reached out and grasped the front of Rousseau's vest. «What did she say, exactly?»
Rousseau gave him a sickly grin, trying to prise his hand loose. Sweat broke out on his forehead when he found just how implacable that grip was.
«She said there would be a man coming. She said it was the time and we should get ready. That's all, I swear.»
Eason let go of his vest. «The time? What did she mean?»
«I don't know.» Rousseau stroked the front of his vest down. «Tiarella, she's not . . . you know. Since Vanstone's death I have to make allowances. Half of what she says is mad. I wouldn't worry about it.»
After Eason finished sweeping the chalet's floor and washing fungal colonies from the walls he sat on the cot-style bed and opened his case. The three confinement spheres were still functioning perfectly. Of course, there were only two modes, working and not working. If one of them ever did suffer a glitch, he'd never know about it. That still didn't stop him from checking. Their presence was heightening his sense of paranoia.
Tiarella worried him. How the hell could she know he would be coming out to Charmaine? Unless this was all some incredibly intricate trap. Which really was crazy. More than anyone he knew how the Party members operated. Sophistication was not part of the doctrine.
It was no good terrorizing Rousseau, that drunken fart didn't know anything.
«I brought you some cups and things,» Althaea said. She was standing in the doorway, wearing a sleeveless mauve dress that had endured a lot of washes. A big box full of crockery was clutched to her chest. Her face crumpled into misery when he looked up, the heat of surprise in his eyes.
He closed the case calmly and loaded an access code into its lock. «It's all right, come in. I'm just putting my things away.»
«I'm sorry, I didn't think. I always walk straight in to Mother's room.»
«No trouble.» He put the case into his flight bag and slipped the seal, then pushed the whole bundle under the bed.
«I knew Ross would never think to bring anything like this for you,» she said as she began placing the dishes and cups on a shelf above the sink. «He doesn't even know how to wash up. I can bring some coffee beans over later. We still dry our own. They taste nice. Oh, you'll need a kettle, won't you. Is the electricity on here?»
He reached out and touched her long bare arm. «Leave that. Why don't you show me round the island?»
«Yes,» she stammered. «All right.»
Charmaine's central lagoon was a circle seven hundred metres across, with a broad beach of fine pink sand running the whole way round. Eason counted five tiny islands, each crowned with a clump of trees festooned in vines. The water was clear and warm, and firedrakes glided between the islands and the main jungle.
It was breathtaking, he had to admit, a secret paradise.
«The sand is dead coral,» Althaea said as they walked along the beach. Her sandals dangled from her hand, she'd taken them off to paddle. «There's a grinder machine which turns it to powder. Mother says they used to process a whole batch of dead chunks every year when Father was alive. It took decades for the family to make this beach.»
«It was worth it.»
She gave him a cautious smile. «The lagoon's chock full of lobsters. It fills up through a vent hole, but there's a tidal turbine at the far end to give us all our power. They can't get past it so they just sit in there and breed. I dive to catch them, it's so easy.»
«You must have been very young when your father died.»
«It happened before I was born.» Her lower lip curled anxiously under her teeth. «I'm seventeen.»
«Yes, I'd worked that out. Seventeen and beautiful, you must knock the boys dead when you visit Kariwak.»
Althaea turned scarlet.
«And you've lived here all your life?»
«Yes. Mother says the family used to have a plantation on Earth, somewhere in the Caribbean. We've always grown exotic crops.» She skipped up on an outcrop of smooth yellow coral and gazed out across the lagoon. «I know Charmaine must look terribly ramshackle to you. But I'm going to wake it up. I'm going to have a husband, and ten children, and we'll have teams of pickers in the groves again, and boats will call every day to be loaded with fruit and coffee beans, and we'll have our own fishing smacks, and a new village to house everyone, and big dances under the stars.» She stopped, drastically self-conscious again, hunching up her shoulders. «You must think I'm so stupid talking like that.»
«No, not at all. I wish I had dreams like yours.»
«What do you dream of?»
«I don't know. Somewhere small and quiet I can settle down. Definitely not an asteroid, though.»
«But it could be an island?» She sounded hopeful.
«Yes. Could be.»
Starship fusion drives twinkled brighter than stars in the night sky as Eason walked across the garden to the house. Only one of Tropicana's pair of small moons was visible, a yellow-orange globe low above the treetops and visibly sinking.
He went into the silent house, taking the stairs two at a time. When he reached Tiarella's bedroom door he turned the handle, ready to push until the lock tore out of the frame. It wasn't locked.
Moonlight shone in through the open window, turning the world to a drab monochrome. Tiarella was sitting cross-legged on the double bed, wearing a blue cotton nightshirt. The eccentric pendulum was held out at arm's length. She didn't show the slightest surprise at his presence.
Eason closed the door, aroused by the scene: woman waiting calmly on a bed. «You have something to tell me.»
«Do I?»
«How did you know I was coming? Nobody could know that. It was pure chance I bumped into Althaea back in the harbour.»
«Chance is your word. Destiny is mine. I read it in the cards. Now is the time for a stranger to appear.»
«You expect me to believe that crap?»
«How do you explain it, then?»
He crossed the room in three quick strides, and gripped her arms. The pendulum bounced away noisily as she dropped it.
«That hurts,» she said tightly.
He increased the pressure until she gasped. «How did you know I was coming?» he demanded.
«I read it in the cards,» she hissed back.
Eason studied her eyes, desperate for any sign of artfulness. Finding none. She was telling the truth, or thought she was. Cards! Crazy bitch.
He shoved her down on the bed, and glared down at her, angry at himself for the growing sense of vulnerability, the suspicion he was being manipulated. All this astrology shit was too far outside his experience.
«There's a lot more islands down there than I remember from fifty years ago,» said Ashly Hanson, the spaceplane's pilot. «The locals must keep on planting them, I suppose. They're still pretty keen on bitek here.»
«So I hear.» Tropicana wasn't Eason's ideal destination. But that was where the Lord Fitzroy was heading, the only starship departing Quissico asteroid for thirty hours. Time had been a critical factor. He'd been running out of it fast.
Eason paused to consider what the pilot said. «What do you mean, fifty years ago?» Ashly Hanson was a short man with a wiry build, a lax cap of brown hair flopping down over his ears, and a near-permanent smile of admiration on his lips. The universe had apparently been created with the sole purpose of entertaining Ashly Hanson. However, the pilot couldn't have been more than forty-five years old, not even if he'd been geneered.
«I time hop,» he said, with the grin of someone relating his favourite unbelievable story. «I spend fifty years in zero-tau stasis, then come out for five to look around and see how things are progressing. Signing on with a starship is a good way to play tourist.»
«You're kidding.»
«No. I started way back in good old 2284, and now I'm on a one-way ride to eternity. There's been some changes, I can tell you. You know, I'm actually older than the Confederation itself.»
«Jesus wept!» It was an incredible notion to take in.
Ashly's soft sense-of-wonder smile returned. Beyond the little spaceplane's windscreen, the planet's horizon curvature was flattening out as they lost altitude. Up ahead was the single stretch of habitable land on Tropicana. A narrow line of green and brown etched across the turquoise ocean, it straddled the equator at an acute angle, eight hundred kilometres long, though never more than fifty wide. A geological oddity on a tectonically abnormal planet. There was only one continent sharing the world, an arctic wilderness devoid of any aboriginal life more complex than moss; the rest of the globe was an ocean never deeper than a hundred and fifty metres.
Once Eason had accessed the Lord Fitzroy 's almanac file, his initial worry about his destination slowly dissipated. Tropicana was surrounded by thousands of small islands, its government notoriously liberal. The one Adamist planet in the Confederation which didn't prohibit bitek.
It wasn't perfect, but it was better than most.
Ashly Hanson was increasing the spaceplane's pitch sharply to shed speed as they approached the land. Eason craned forwards to see the coastline. There was a big city below, a sprawl of low buildings oozing along the beach. They were trapped between the water and the mountains whose foothills began a few kilometres inland.
«That's Kariwak, the capital,» Ashly said. «Used to be run by a man called Laurus last time I was here; one bad mother. They say his daughter's taken over now. Whatever else you do while you're here, don't cross her. If she's only half as bad as her old man you'll regret it.»
«Thanks, I'll remember.» He actually couldn't care less about some parochial urban gangster. His immediate concern was customs. Three innocuous dull-silver globes the size of tennis balls were sitting in a small case among his luggage. He'd agonized for hours if he should keep them with him. Getting them on board the Lord Fitzroy was no problem, the Party had plenty of supporters in Quissico's civil service. The spheres were disguised to look like super-density magnetic bearings used by the astronautics industry, he even had authentic documentation files confirming he was a rep for the company which made them. But if Tropicana customs had sensors capable of probing through the magnetic casing . . .
Kariwak spaceport was situated ten kilometres outside the city. It gave Eason his first taste of Tropicana's architectural aesthetics. All the buildings were designed to be as naturalistic as possible, subtle rather than ostentatious, even the maintenance hangars were easy on the eye. But it was a surprisingly big field given the size of the population. Tropicana received a lot of rich visitors, taking advantage of the relaxed bitek laws to visit specialist clinics offering rejuvenation techniques. As with the surroundings, customs were discreet and efficient, but not intrusive.
Forty minutes after landing, Eason was on an underground tube train carrying him into the city. Lord Fitzroy was scheduled to depart in two days' time, after that it would be extremely difficult for anyone to trace him. But not impossible, and those that would come looking were fanatical. It was that fanaticism which originally made him question the Party's aims, the doubt which started him along this road.
He left the train at a station right in the heart of the city, its escalator depositing him on a broad boulevard lined with geneered sequoias. The trees were only seventy years old but they were already towering above the department shops, restaurants, whitewashed cafés, and Mediterranean-style office blocks. He slipped easily into the crush of pedestrians that thronged its length, case held firmly in one hand, flight bag on a strap over the other shoulder.
The boulevard led directly down to the main harbour, a circular two-kilometre-wide basin, with glistening white coral walls. Half of it extended out into the shallow turquoise ocean, while the other half ate back into the city, where it had been surrounded by a chaotic mix of warehouses, taverns, marine supply shops, sportsboat hire stalls, agents' offices, and a giant fish market. Quays stabbed out into the transparent water like spokes from a wheel rim. Right at the centre a sad cone of weather-dulled titanium rose out of the soft swell, the empty shell of a cargo lander that had swung off course two and a half centuries earlier as it brought equipment down to the newly founded colony. Ships of all shapes and sizes sailed around it, bright sails drooping in the calm air.
He stared at them intently. Ranged along the horizon were the first islands of the archipelago. Out there, he could lose himself for ever among the sleeping atolls and their quiet inhabitants. The boats which docked at this harbour left no records in bureaucratic memory cores, didn't file destinations, owed no allegiances. This was a freedom barely one step from anarchy.
He started along the harbour's western wall, towards the smaller boats: the fishing ketches, coastal sampans, and traders which cruised between the mainland cities and the islands. He was sure he could find one casting off soon, although a few brief enquiries among the sailors revealed that such craft rarely took on deck hands; they were nearly all family-run concerns. Eason didn't have much money left in his bank disk, possibly enough for one more starflight if he didn't spend more than a couple of hundred fuseodollars.
He saw the girl before he'd walked halfway along the wall. She was in her mid-teens, tall bordering on gawky, wearing a loose topaz-coloured cotton shirt and turquoise shorts. Thick gold-auburn hair fell halfway down her back, styled with an Egyptian wave; but the humidity had drawn out its lustre, leaving it hanging limply.
She was staggering under the weight of a near-paralytic old man in a sweat-stained vest. He looked as though he weighed twice as much as she did.
«Please, Ross,» she implored. «Mother'll sail without us.»
His only answer was an inebriated burble.
Eason trotted over. «Can I give you a hand?»
She shot him a look which was half-guilt, half-gratitude. He'd guessed her face would be narrow, and he was right: a small flat nose, full lips, and worried blue eyes were all cocooned by her dishevelled hair.
«Are you sure?» she asked hopefully.
«No trouble.» Eason put his flight bag down, and relieved her of the old man. He slung the old man's arm around his own shoulders, and pushed up. It was quite a weight to carry, the girl must be stronger than she looked.
«This way,» she said, squirming with agitation.
«Take my flight bag, would you. And the name's Eason,» he told her as they started off down the wall.
«Althaea.» She blushed as she picked up his bag. «Shall I take your case for you as well?»
«No,» he grunted. «I'll manage.»
«I'm really grateful. I should have been back at the Orphée a quarter of an hour ago.»
«Is it a tight schedule?»
«Oh no, but Mother likes to get home before dark. Visiting Kariwak takes a whole day for us.»
«Should he be sailing in this condition?»
«He'll just have to,» she said with a sudden flash of pique. «He does it every time we bring him. And it's always me who has to go looking in the taverns for him. I hate those places.»
«Is this your father?»
She let out a guffaw, then clamped her mouth over her mouth. «I'm sorry. No, he's not my father. This is Rousseau. Ross. He lives with us, helps around the house and garden, things like that. When he's sober,» she added tartly.
«Where do you live?»
«Mother and I live on Charmaine; it's an island out in the archipelago.»
He hid a smile. Perfect. «Must be a tough life, all by yourselves.»
«We manage. It won't be for ever, though.» Her angular shoulders jerked in what he thought was supposed to be an apologetic shrug; it was more like a convulsion. Eason couldn't recall meeting someone this shy for a long while. It made her appealing, after an odd sort of fashion.
The Orphée was tied up to a quay near the gap in the harbour wall. Eason whistled in appreciation when he saw her. She was a trim little craft, six metres long, with a flat-bottomed wooden hull and a compact cabin at the prow. The two outriggers were smaller versions of the main hull, with room for cargo; all archipelago craft had them, a lot of the channels between islands were too shallow for keel fins.
Bitek units were dovetailed neatly into the wooden superstructure: nutrient-fluid sacs with ancillary organs in the stern compartment, a powerful-looking three metre long silver-grey serpent tail instead of a rudder, and a membrane sail whorled round the tall mast.
Althaea's mother was sitting cross-legged on the cabin roof, wearing a faded blue denim shirt and white shorts. Eason had no doubt she was Althaea's mother: her hair was much shorter, but the same colour, and though she lacked the girl's half-starved appearance her delicate features were identical. Their closeness was uncanny.
She was holding up an odd-looking pendulum, a slim gold chain that was fastened to the centre of a wooden disc, five centimetres in diameter. The disk must have been perfectly balanced, because it remained horizontal.
When Eason reached the quayside directly above the Orphée he saw the rim of the disc was carved with spidery hieroglyphics. It was turning slowly. Or he thought it was. When he steadied Ross and looked down properly, it was stationary.
The woman seemed absorbed by it.
«Mother?» Althaea said uncertainly.
Her gaze lifted from the disk, and met Eason's eyes. She didn't seem at all put out by his appearance.
He found it hard to break her stare; it was almost triumphant.
Rousseau vomited on the quay.
Althaea let out a despairing groan. «Oh, Ross!» She was close to tears.
«Bring him on board,» her mother said wearily. She slipped the disc and chain into her shirt pocket.
With Althaea's help, Eason manhandled Ross onto a bunk in the cabin. The old man groaned as he was laid on the grey blankets, then closed his eyes, asleep at once.
Althaea put a plastic bucket on the floor beside the bunk, and shook her head sadly.
«What's the pendulum for?» Eason asked quietly. He could hear her mother moving round on the deck outside.
«Mother uses it for divining.»
«On a boat?»
She pressed her lips together. «You can use divining to find whatever you wish, not just water—stones, wood, buried treasure, stuff like that. It can even guide you home in the fog, just like a compass. The disc is only a focus for your thoughts, that's all. Your mind does the actual work.»
«I think I'll stick with an inertial guido.»
Althaea's humour evaporated. She hung her head as if she'd been scolded.
«I'm Tiarella Rosa, Althaea's mother,» the woman said after Eason stepped out of the cabin. She stuck her hand out. «Thank you for helping with Ross.»
«No trouble,» Eason said affably. Tiarella Rosa had a firm grip, her hand calloused from deckwork.
«I was wondering,» he said. «Do you have any work available on Charmaine? I'm not fussy, or proud. I can dig ditches, pick fruit, rig nets, whatever.»
Tiarella's eyes swept over him, taking in the ship's jumpsuit he wore, the thin-soled shoes, his compact but hardly bulky frame, albino-pale skin. «Why would you be interested, asteroid man?»
«I'm a drifter. I'm tired of asteroid biosphere chambers. I want the real thing, the real outdoors. And I'm just about broke.»
«A drifter?»
«Yeah.» Out of the corner of his eye he saw Althaea emerge from the cabin, her already anxious expression even more apprehensive.
«I can only offer room and board,» Tiarella said. «In case you haven't noticed, we're not rich, either.» There was the intimation of amusement in her voice.
Eason prevented his glance from slipping round the Orphée ; she must have cost ten thousand fuseodollars at least.
«And the Orphée has been in the family for thirty years,» Tiarella said briskly. «She's a working boat, the only link we have with the outside world.»
«Right. Room and board would be fine.»
Tiarella ruffled Althaea's hair. «No need to ask your opinion, is there, darling. A new face at Charmaine, Christmas come in April.»
Althaea blushed crimson, hunching in on herself.
«OK, drifter , we'll give it a try.»
Orphée 's tail kicked up a spume of foam as she manoeuvred away from the quay. Tiarella's eyes were tight shut as she steered the boat via her affinity bond with the bitek's governing processors. Once they were clear, the sail membrane began to spread itself, a brilliant emerald sheet woven through with a hexagonal mesh of rubbery cords.
Outside the harbour walls they picked up a respectable speed. Tiarella headed straight away from the land for five kilometres, then slowly let the boat come round until they were pointing east. Eason went into the cabin to stow his flight bag. Rousseau was snoring fitfully, turning the air toxic with whisky and bad breath.
He unlocked the case to check on the spheres it contained. His synaptic web established a datalink with them, and ran a diagnostic. All three superconductor confinement systems were functioning perfectly, the drop of frozen anti-hydrogen suspended at the centre of each one was completely stable. The resulting explosion should one of them ever rupture would be seen from a million miles away in space. It was a destructive potential he considered too great.
The Quissico Independence Party had other ideas. It was the blackmail weapon they were going to use against the development company administration to gain full political and economic freedom for the asteroid. They had spent three years establishing contact with one of the black syndicates which manufactured antimatter. Three years of a gradually escalating campaign of propaganda and harassment against the development company.
Eason had joined the cause when he was still in his teens. Quissico was a highly successful settlement, with dozens of industrial stations and rich resources of minerals and organic chemicals. Its people worked hard and manufactured excellent astronautics equipment and specialist microgee compounds. That they were not allowed a greater say in how the wealth they created was spent was a deliberate provocation. They had made the founding consortium rich, paying off investment loans ahead of schedule. Now they should be permitted to benefit as the money cartels had.
It was a just cause. One he was proud to help. He was there giving beatings to company supervisors, taking an axe to finance division processor networks, fighting the company police. At twenty he killed his first enemy oppressor, an assistant secretary to the Vice-Governor. After that, there was no turning back. He worked his way through the Party ranks until he wound up as quartermaster for the movement's entire military wing. Over ten years of blood and violence.
He was already tiring of it, the useless pain and suffering he inflicted on people and their families. Gritting his teeth as the authorities launched their retaliations, erasing his friends and comrades. Then came the grand scheme, the Party's master plan for a single blow that would break the chains of slavery for good. Planned not by the military wing, those who knew what it was to inflict death; but by the political wing, who knew only of gestures and theoretical ideology. Who knew nothing.
A threat would never be enough for them. They would detonate some of the antimatter. To show their determination, their strength and power. In a distant star system, thousands would die without ever knowing why. He, the killer, could not allow such slaughter. It was insanity. He had joined to fight for people; to struggle and agitate. Not for this, remote-controlled murder.
So he stopped them in the simplest way he could think of.
Eason came back up on deck, and leant on the taffrail, allowing himself to relax for the first time in a fortnight. He was safe out here. Safe to think what to do next.
He'd never thought much past the theft itself; a few vague notions. That was almost as crazy as the Party's decision to acquire the stuff in the first place. Far too many people were acting on impulse these days.
Tropicana's ocean looked as if it had been polished smooth. The only disturbance came from Orphée 's wake, quiet ripples which were quickly absorbed by the mass of water. He could see the bottom five metres below the boat, a carpet of gold-white sand. Long ribbons of scarlet weed and mushroomlike bulbs of seafruit rose up out of it, swaying in the languid currents. Schools of small fish fled from the boat like neon sparks. Out here, tranquillity was endemic.
Althaea sat on Orphée 's prow, letting the breeze of their passage stream her hair back, a sensual living figurehead. Tiarella was standing amidships, staring at the islands ahead, straight-backed and resolute. Totally the ship's mistress.
Eason settled down in the stern, looking from one to the other, admiring them both, and speculating idly on which would be best in bed. It was going to be enjoyable finding out.
For three hours they moved deeper into the archipelago. Families had been planting the coral kernels around the mainland coast for over two centuries, producing their little island fiefdoms. They numbered in the tens of thousands now.
The larger, inhabited, islands were spaced two or three kilometres apart, leaving a broad network of channels to navigate through. Tiarella navigated Orphée around innumerable spits and reefs without even reducing speed.
Eason gripped the gunwale tightly as vicious jags of coral flashed past the outriggers. Most of the islands he could see had tall palm trees growing above the beaches. Some had just a few grand houses half-concealed through the lush vegetation, while others hosted small villages of wooden bungalows, whitewashed planks glowing copper in the sinking sun.
«There it is,» Althaea called excitedly from the prow. She was on her feet, pointing ahead in excitement. «Charmaine.» She gave Eason a shy smile.
The island was a large one, with a lot more foliage than the others; its trees formed a veritable jungle. Their trunks were woven together with a dense web of vines; grape-cluster cascades of vividly coloured flowers, fluoresced by the low sun, bobbed about like Chinese lanterns.
Eason couldn't see any beaches on this side. Several low shingle shelves were choked by straggly bushes which extended right down to the water's edge. Other than that, the barricade of pink-tinged coral was a couple of metres high.
Orphée was heading for a wooden jetty sticking out of the coral wall.
«What do you do here?» he asked Tiarella.
«Scrape by,» she said, then relented. «Those trees you can see are all geneered citrus varieties, some of them are actually xenoc. We used to supply all the nearby islands with fruit, and some coffee beans, too; it gave the community a sense of independence from the mainland. Fishing is the mainstay in this section of the archipelago. Trees have a lot of trouble finding the right minerals to fruit successfully out here, even with geneering. There's never enough soil, you see. But my grandfather started dredging up seaweed almost as soon as the island's original kernel grew out above the water. It took him thirty years to establish a decent layer of loam. Then Dad improved it, he designed some kind of bug which helped break the aboriginal seaweed down even faster. But I'm afraid I've allowed the groves to run wild since my husband died.»
«Why?»
She shrugged, uncoiling a mooring rope. «I didn't have the heart to carry on. Basically, I'm just hanging on until Althaea finds herself someone. It's her island really. When she has a family of her own, they can put it back on its feet.»
The house was set in a dishevelled clearing about a hundred metres from the jetty. It was a two-storey stone building with climbing roses scrambling around the ground-floor windows and a wooden balcony running along its front. Big precipitator leaves hung under the eaves, emerald valentines sucking drinking water out of the muggy air. When he got close, Eason could see the white paint was flaking from the doors and window frames, moss and weeds clogged the guttering, and the balcony was steadily rotting away. Several first-floor windows were boarded up.
His situation was looking better by the minute. Two women, a drunk, and an isolated, rundown island. He could stay here for a century and no one would ever find him.
As soon as they walked into the clearing, birds exploded from the trees, filling the air with beating wings and a strident screeching. The flock was split between parrots and some weird blunt-headed thing which made him think of pterodactyls. Whatever they were, they were big, about thirty centimetres long, with broad wings and whiplike tails; their colours were incredible—scarlet, gold, azure, jade.
Rousseau clamped his hands over his ears, belching wetly.
«What the hell are those?» Eason shouted above the din.
Althaea laughed. «They're firedrakes. Aren't they beautiful?»
«I thought Tropicana didn't have any aboriginal animals; there isn't enough dry land for them to evolve.»
«Firedrakes didn't evolve. They're a sort of cross between a bat, a lizard, and a parrot.»
He gawped, using his retinal amps to get a better look at one; and damn it, the thing did look like a terrestrial lizard, with membranous wings where the forepaws should be.
«My father spliced the original ones together about forty years ago,» Tiarella said. «He was a geneticist, a very good one.»
«You could make a fortune selling them,» Eason said.
«Not really. They can't fly very far, they only live for about three years, only a third of the eggs ever hatch, they're prone to disease, and they're not very sociable. Dad was going to improve them, but he never got round to it.»
«But they're ours,» Althaea said proudly. «Nobody else has them. They help make Charmaine special.»
Eason walked into the ground-floor study the next morning. He was still kneading kinks out of his back; the bed in the fusty little back room they'd given him was incredibly hard. It was only for one night; Tiarella had told him he would be living in one of the grove workers' chalets.
The study, like the rest of the house, had dull-red clay floor tiles and whitewashed plaster walls. Several black and white prints of various sizes were hanging up. A big brass fan was spinning slowly on the ceiling.
Tiarella was sitting behind a broad teak desk. The only objects on the polished wood surface in front of her were a century-old computer slate, and a pack of cards with a fanciful design printed on the back—from what he could see it looked like a star map.
He sat in an austere high-backed chair facing her.
«About your duties,» she said. «You can start by repairing the grove worker chalets. We have a carpentry shop with a full set of tools. Ross doesn't use them much these days. Are you any good with tools?»
He checked the files stored in his synaptic web. «I couldn't build you an ornamental cabinet, but cutting roofing timbers to length is no trouble.»
«Good. After that I'd like you to start on the garden.»
«Right.»
Tiarella picked up the pack of cards and started to shuffle them absently. She had the dexterity of a professional croupier. «We are getting a little bit too overgrown here. Charmaine might look charmingly rustic when you sail by, but the vines are becoming a nuisance.»
He nodded at one of the big prints on the wall. It was of three people, a formal family pose: Tiarella when she was younger, looking even more like Althaea, a bearded man in his late twenties, and a young boy about ten years old. «Is that your husband?»
The cards were merged with a sharp burring sound. «Yes, that's Vanstone, and Krelange, our son. They died eighteen years ago. It was a boating accident. They were outside the archipelago when a hurricane blew up. They weren't found until two days later. There wasn't much left. The razorsquids . . .»
«It must have been tough for you.»
«Yes. It was. I loved him like nobody else. Ours was a genuine till death do us part marriage. If it hadn't been for Althaea I would probably have killed myself.»
He glanced up sharply, meeting a hard-set smile.
«Oh yes, it is possible to love someone that much. Enough so their absence is pure torture. Have you ever experienced that kind of love, Eason?»
«No.»
«I don't know whether to envy you or pity you for that lack. What I felt for Vanstone was like a tidal force. It ruled my life, intangible and unbreakable. Even now it hasn't let go. It never will. But I have my hopes for Charmaine and Althaea.»
«She's a nice girl. She should do well with this island, there's a lot of potential here. It's a wonderful inheritance.»
«Yes, she has a beautiful future ahead of her. I read it in the cards.»
«Right.»
«Are you a believer in tarot, Eason?»
«I like to think I can choose my own destiny.»
«We all do at first. It's a fallacy. Our lives are lived all at once, consciousness is simply a window into time. That's how the cards work, or the tea leaves, or palmistry, or crystals for that matter. Whatever branch of the art you use, it simply helps to focus the mind.»
«Yes, I think I've heard that already on this planet.»
«The art allows me to see into the future. And, thank God, Althaea isn't going to suffer like I have done.»
He stirred uncomfortably, for once feeling slightly out of his depth. Bereavement and isolation could pry at a mind, especially over eighteen years.
«Would you like to know what your future has in store?» she asked. The pack of cards was offered to him. «Cut them.»
«Maybe some other time.»
Rousseau walked him over to the chalet, following a path worn through an avenue of gloomy trees at the back of the house. The old man seemed delighted at the prospect of male company on the island. Not least because his share of the work would be considerably lessened. Probably to around about zero if he had his way, Eason guessed.
«I've lived here nearly all my life,» Rousseau said. «Even longer than Tiarella. Her father, Nyewood, he took me on as a picker in the groves when I was younger than you. About fifteen, I was, I think.» He looked up at the tangle of interlocking branches overhead with a desultory expression pulling at his flabby lips. «Old Nyewood would hate to see what's happened to the island. Charmaine's success was all down to him, you know, building on his father's vision. Half of these trees are varieties he spliced together, improvements on commercial breeds. Why, I planted most of them myself.»
Eason grunted at the old man's rambling reminiscences. But at the same time he did have a point. There was a lot of fruit forming on the boughs in this part of the jungle, oranges, lemons, and something that resembled a blue grapefruit, most of them inaccessible. The branches hadn't been pruned for a decade, they were far too tall, even on those trees that were supposedly self-shaping. And the snarl of grass and scrub plants which made up the undergrowth was waist-high. But that was all superficial growth. It wouldn't take too much work to make the groves productive again.
«Why stay on, then?» Eason asked.
«For little Althaea, of course. Where would she be without me to take care of things? I loved Vanstone when he was alive, such a fine man. He thought of me as his elder brother, you know. So I do what I can for his daughter in honour of his memory. I have been as a father to her.»
«Right.» No one else would take on the old soak.
There were twelve chalets forming a semicircle in their own clearing. Rousseau called it a clearing; the grass came up over Eason's knees.
«My old chalet, the best of them all,» Rousseau said, slapping the front door of number three.
«Shack, not a chalet,» Eason mumbled under his breath. Two rooms and a shower cubicle built out of bleached planking that had warped alarmingly, a roof of thick palm thatch which was moulting, and a veranda along the front. There was no glass in the windows, they had slatted shutters to hold back the elements.
«I fixed up the hinges and put in a new bed last week,» Rousseau said, his smile showing three missing teeth. «Tiarella, she told me fix the roof as well. With my back! That woman expects miracles. Still, now you're here, I'll help you.»
Eason paused on the threshold, a gelid tingling running down his spine. «What do you mean, last week?»
«Last Thursday, it was, she told me. Ross, she said, get a chalet fixed up ready for a man to live in. It was a mess, you know. I've done a lot of work here for you already.»
«Ready for me to live in?»
«Yes.» Rousseau shifted unhappily from foot to foot as Eason stared at him.
«Did she mention me by name?»
«No. How could she? Listen, I made sure the toilet works. You don't have to run back to the house every time.»
Eason reached out and grasped the front of Rousseau's vest. «What did she say, exactly?»
Rousseau gave him a sickly grin, trying to prise his hand loose. Sweat broke out on his forehead when he found just how implacable that grip was.
«She said there would be a man coming. She said it was the time and we should get ready. That's all, I swear.»
Eason let go of his vest. «The time? What did she mean?»
«I don't know.» Rousseau stroked the front of his vest down. «Tiarella, she's not . . . you know. Since Vanstone's death I have to make allowances. Half of what she says is mad. I wouldn't worry about it.»
After Eason finished sweeping the chalet's floor and washing fungal colonies from the walls he sat on the cot-style bed and opened his case. The three confinement spheres were still functioning perfectly. Of course, there were only two modes, working and not working. If one of them ever did suffer a glitch, he'd never know about it. That still didn't stop him from checking. Their presence was heightening his sense of paranoia.
Tiarella worried him. How the hell could she know he would be coming out to Charmaine? Unless this was all some incredibly intricate trap. Which really was crazy. More than anyone he knew how the Party members operated. Sophistication was not part of the doctrine.
It was no good terrorizing Rousseau, that drunken fart didn't know anything.
«I brought you some cups and things,» Althaea said. She was standing in the doorway, wearing a sleeveless mauve dress that had endured a lot of washes. A big box full of crockery was clutched to her chest. Her face crumpled into misery when he looked up, the heat of surprise in his eyes.
He closed the case calmly and loaded an access code into its lock. «It's all right, come in. I'm just putting my things away.»
«I'm sorry, I didn't think. I always walk straight in to Mother's room.»
«No trouble.» He put the case into his flight bag and slipped the seal, then pushed the whole bundle under the bed.
«I knew Ross would never think to bring anything like this for you,» she said as she began placing the dishes and cups on a shelf above the sink. «He doesn't even know how to wash up. I can bring some coffee beans over later. We still dry our own. They taste nice. Oh, you'll need a kettle, won't you. Is the electricity on here?»
He reached out and touched her long bare arm. «Leave that. Why don't you show me round the island?»
«Yes,» she stammered. «All right.»
Charmaine's central lagoon was a circle seven hundred metres across, with a broad beach of fine pink sand running the whole way round. Eason counted five tiny islands, each crowned with a clump of trees festooned in vines. The water was clear and warm, and firedrakes glided between the islands and the main jungle.
It was breathtaking, he had to admit, a secret paradise.
«The sand is dead coral,» Althaea said as they walked along the beach. Her sandals dangled from her hand, she'd taken them off to paddle. «There's a grinder machine which turns it to powder. Mother says they used to process a whole batch of dead chunks every year when Father was alive. It took decades for the family to make this beach.»
«It was worth it.»
She gave him a cautious smile. «The lagoon's chock full of lobsters. It fills up through a vent hole, but there's a tidal turbine at the far end to give us all our power. They can't get past it so they just sit in there and breed. I dive to catch them, it's so easy.»
«You must have been very young when your father died.»
«It happened before I was born.» Her lower lip curled anxiously under her teeth. «I'm seventeen.»
«Yes, I'd worked that out. Seventeen and beautiful, you must knock the boys dead when you visit Kariwak.»
Althaea turned scarlet.
«And you've lived here all your life?»
«Yes. Mother says the family used to have a plantation on Earth, somewhere in the Caribbean. We've always grown exotic crops.» She skipped up on an outcrop of smooth yellow coral and gazed out across the lagoon. «I know Charmaine must look terribly ramshackle to you. But I'm going to wake it up. I'm going to have a husband, and ten children, and we'll have teams of pickers in the groves again, and boats will call every day to be loaded with fruit and coffee beans, and we'll have our own fishing smacks, and a new village to house everyone, and big dances under the stars.» She stopped, drastically self-conscious again, hunching up her shoulders. «You must think I'm so stupid talking like that.»
«No, not at all. I wish I had dreams like yours.»
«What do you dream of?»
«I don't know. Somewhere small and quiet I can settle down. Definitely not an asteroid, though.»
«But it could be an island?» She sounded hopeful.
«Yes. Could be.»
Starship fusion drives twinkled brighter than stars in the night sky as Eason walked across the garden to the house. Only one of Tropicana's pair of small moons was visible, a yellow-orange globe low above the treetops and visibly sinking.
He went into the silent house, taking the stairs two at a time. When he reached Tiarella's bedroom door he turned the handle, ready to push until the lock tore out of the frame. It wasn't locked.
Moonlight shone in through the open window, turning the world to a drab monochrome. Tiarella was sitting cross-legged on the double bed, wearing a blue cotton nightshirt. The eccentric pendulum was held out at arm's length. She didn't show the slightest surprise at his presence.
Eason closed the door, aroused by the scene: woman waiting calmly on a bed. «You have something to tell me.»
«Do I?»
«How did you know I was coming? Nobody could know that. It was pure chance I bumped into Althaea back in the harbour.»
«Chance is your word. Destiny is mine. I read it in the cards. Now is the time for a stranger to appear.»
«You expect me to believe that crap?»
«How do you explain it, then?»
He crossed the room in three quick strides, and gripped her arms. The pendulum bounced away noisily as she dropped it.
«That hurts,» she said tightly.
He increased the pressure until she gasped. «How did you know I was coming?» he demanded.
«I read it in the cards,» she hissed back.
Eason studied her eyes, desperate for any sign of artfulness. Finding none. She was telling the truth, or thought she was. Cards! Crazy bitch.
He shoved her down on the bed, and glared down at her, angry at himself for the growing sense of vulnerability, the suspicion he was being manipulated. All this astrology shit was too far outside his experience.