Starship Fall (Starship Seasons, #2)(15)

After a period of silence, Hawk said, “You don’t know what torture you put me through, girl.”

It was a few seconds before Kee replied. “It had to be done. It was ritual, the way my people do things. If we do not have ritual, then what do we have?”

We did not respond; it was one of those impossible, alien statements to which there are no correct answers.

Hawk asked, “But was it worth it? I mean, was it worth the risk to your life?”

Again Kee was contemplative, before saying, “Risk? What is risk? I knew what I was doing. If I died, then that would have been my destiny. It would have been a fact that had to be accepted, the way of things.” I had heard her say this before, and thought it almost Buddhistic. The way of things...

“And did you see the future?” Hawk asked at last. I felt that he was straining to keep the sarcasm from his voice.

“I beheld many images,” Kee replied quietly.

“But specifically?” Hawk asked, obviously frustrated.

“Specifically?” she returned.

“I mean, did you see... me and you, how things might go between us?”

She inclined her head. “Me and you. Yes. I saw the future, me and you.” She paused, then went on, in a whisper, “We were together until the very end.”

I looked at Hawk; he had his mouth open to ask the obvious question, but decided otherwise. Perhaps now, in company, was not the right time.

We came to the Ashentay village, and here Hawk and Kee elected to return together in the bison, while Maddie, Matt and I drove back in Matt’s ground-effect vehicle.

“Well,” Maddie said as we were under way, “I suppose you’d call that a happy ending.”

“Christ, but I thought she was dead,” I said.

“Me too,” Matt agreed. “God knows how Hawk would have coped.”

I thought about the ritual. “I wonder what it must be like, to be granted visions of supposed future happenings? I mean, what must reality be like for a people who believe this?”

Matt said, “They’re alien, David. We’ll probably have no idea how they perceive reality.”

Maddie said, “How do our fellow human’s perceive reality, Matt? That’s a hard enough question to answer, without trying to fathom the psychology of aliens.”

We arrived in Magenta Bay towards late afternoon and parked before the Jackeral to say our goodbyes: Hawk and Kee were heading off down the coast.

As we were about to go our separate ways, Kee left Hawk’s side and embraced first Matt, then Maddie, and then me. She raised herself on her toes and, hugging me, whispered in my ear, “David, I must see you. I must tell you something, okay? I will be in touch.”

She withdrew, and the look in her eyes counselled me to remain silent. I merely smiled like an idiot and watched them drive off.

I said goodbye to Matt and Maddie and made my way home, lost in thought.





The following evening I met Matt and Maddie in the Jackeral.

It was late; we’d finished our meals and were enjoying a drink on the verandah. Hawk, not surprisingly, had called Maddie and explained that he wouldn’t be joining us tonight: he was spending the evening with Kee, who was exhausted after the ritual.

“You’re pensive, David.”

“I was thinking, Maddie – what it must be like to live with someone who’s glimpsed the future.”

Maddie pursed her lips. “Well, I wouldn’t say Kee so much glimpsed the future, as… What did she say? That she’s seen images of the future. I don’t know, but perhaps those images are like the ones in a dream: elusive, fragmentary. Hard to make much sense of.”

Matt pushed a hand through his greying curls and smiled. “Perhaps, like dreams, they need interpreting.”

“I just hope that it doesn’t come between Hawk and Kee,” I said. “You know Hawk, Mr Practical. There are no shades of grey with our space pilot.”

Maddie said, “They’ve been through worse than this and they’re still together. They’ll be fine.”

We watched Delta Pavonis lower itself into the sea; the fiery globe was so vast and molten that I expected to hear the sizzle as it touched the horizon. I was forever reminded, at sunset on Chalcedony, of that passage in Wells where the Time Traveller visits the far future and beholds the bloated sun straddling the horizon.

I suggested another drink, but Matt and Maddie made their excuses and departed. I watched them step down from the verandah and walk hand in hand through sands as red as cayenne pepper, and around the bay towards Matt’s place.

I thought of Hawk and Kee, cosy down in the junkyard, and I suppose a maudlin introspection came over me, a reflective mood taking in the past and my failed marriage, and the fact that I was alone now. At least, I am stating this with the benefit of hindsight: perhaps I overstate my self-pity in order to excuse – or explain – what happened later that evening.

I regarded my glass, which was almost empty. Being someone who finds it hard not to indulge, I have always considered an almost empty glass to be a wonderful thing, with its promise of more to come. It was only my third beer that evening, so I made my way to the bar and ordered a fourth.

I returned to the verandah; I would watch the sun ease itself into the sea, and as its apex vanished then I would meander home. I judged that event to be at least another beer away.