Starship Fall (Starship Seasons, #2)(17)

“And?”

“And then it stopped.”

“The parts stopped coming?”

She regarded me as if I were an insect. “Where have you been for fifteen years, Conway?”

“I lived a quiet life in British Columbia,” I began in my defence.

“The industry collapsed,” she went on. “No one wanted to make holo-movies any more, when for a fraction of the cost a small team could use the images of real life people and make, construct, holo-movies on computers.”

“Ah,” I said, comprehension dawning; I’ve never been the fastest.

“I did a bit of acting here and there, a little stage work. But never enough. I sold my image, just to keep my persona out there – in the vain hope that holo-movies would make a comeback and I’d still be bankable.” She shook her head. “I’ve seen some of the computer-generated films ‘starring’ Carlotta Chakravorti-Luna, and they’re appalling. They have no heart, no emotion, no humanity… They’re dead, and that’s because they don’t use human beings any more. They’re dead. And for a long time I thought I was dead, too.”

It was a bravura cameo, and I felt like applauding. I even thought I detected the shimmer of a tear in the corner of those amazing eyes.

She sniffed, and sipped her drink, and then smiled at me in a strangely confiding way which said don’t-mind-my-histrionics without quite saying so.

“And while I’m being so honest, Conway, shall I tell you the real reason I came to Chalcedony?”

I blinked. “The real reason?”

“The real reason,” she repeated.

“I’d be... honoured,” I said, and meant it.

She looked around, as if suddenly realising where she was and not liking the venue.

“But not here, okay? How about we go back to my place, hm?”

I looked at her, and something within my gut flipped like a landed fish.

“Yes... yes, that’d be great.”

We finished our drinks, slipped from the verandah, and walked along the beach. She was more inebriated than I’d assumed, and I gripped her arm to assist her through the dunes that fronted her place. By the time we climbed the steps my arm was around her waist and she was leaning against me, her perfume filling my head.

The glass door slid open at her approach; low lighting came on and music began to play. I was glad to see, as we entered the low lounge, that we would not be joined by the holographic ghosts tonight.

Though in that I might have been mistaken; as she fixed me a beer and herself a gin sling, she asked, “Have you ever seen a holo-movie called Starship Fall, Conway?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think I have.”

She swayed over to the wall console, handing me the beer en passant, and touched a dial. “We needn’t watch it, as such. It really is trite and sentimental, but it will help to explain something.”

I nodded, at a loss to comprehend this latest twist.

At the back of the lounge, evidently the area set apart for the projection of films, a small starship travelled slowly through the void of space. I recognised it from my childhood forays to Vancouver spaceport: a Class II Stryker exploration vessel.

Luna curled herself into a sofa and patted the cushion beside her. “Sit down, Conway, and I’ll tell you all about it.”

I obeyed, and she leaned against me, folding her legs beneath her bottom and sipping her gin. I was pleasantly drunk, and I recall feeling none of the trepidation of two nights ago. Luna was a beautiful woman, and I’d been alone for five years, and that was all that seemed to matter.

She said, “Just after my third marriage ended in disaster, Conway, I met a dashing man called Ed Grainger. He was a starship pilot. He’d worked for the Greatorex Line piloting exploration vessels, years before we met. And then along came Telemass and he was out of a job. When I met him he was making the most of the situation; he’d earned enough over the years to buy his own small ship…” She pointed with her glass, sloshing gin, towards the screen: the Class II Stryker was now orbiting an unidentified planet. “He ran a small exploration business, reconnoitring the out of the way planets the Telemass organisation were too busy to bother about. There wasn’t much work around, but it satisfied a craving.”

I nodded and watched the film. The ship swooped low over the alien world, roaring silently across miles and miles of empty grassland.

“I met him around the time my own career in holo-movies was crashing down around me. I think we felt a mutual empathy, though of course he could still practice his trade... I was reduced to appearing in third-rate plays in bug-f*ck nowhere, Idaho.”

She sipped her drink and looked suddenly bitter.

I suppressed a belch and said, “What happened?”

“What happened?” Her eyes became distant. “We fell in love. I was ecstatically happy for a year. I thought I’d found it at last, the real thing, a man I could love and who genuinely loved me.”

I winced, waiting for the punchline, the betrayal, the acrimony...

“But Ed…” She fell silent, lips pursed and held off-centre as she considered something long gone.

“Luna,” I said, “if you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine.”

She looked at me and smiled. “No, I want to tell you. That’s why I dragged you here, Conway. So I could spill the beans.” She stopped and laughed suddenly at her use of the odd phrase.