Starship Fall (Starship Seasons, #2)(28)

Maddie said, “Carlotta...?”

I shook my head. “She... she entered the long-house,” was all I could bring myself to say.

Maddie held my hand. “David, there’s nothing you can do here. Go back to her, be there when she comes out, okay?”

“Are you sure?”

I was torn between waiting until the medics had assessed Hawk, and being there when Carlotta emerged from the long-house so that I could question her... I had so much I wanted to ask.

I nodded. “I’ll go.” I glanced at Hawk. He was unconscious, which eased my guilt at fleeing.

I hurried back to the waterfall and made the long descent. Here and there I saw slicks of Hawk’s spilled blood, black in the pale fungal light.

I came to the sacred cavern; only the stretcher-bearers were apparent, sitting off to one side of the long-house. A part of me expected to see Carlotta there, dazed after her session with the alien drug. I wondered, then, at how I might receive her, and her me.

The future was uncertain. I knew what I felt for the woman, but I feared learning that she felt nothing at all for me. More than anything I wanted to know if she had used me as no more than a puppet on the strings of pre-destination, if her apparent love for me had been no more than an act.

I sat cross-legged at the foot of the ramp, hung my head and waited. An age seemed to elapse. I drifted, catching myself with a start again and again as I almost fell asleep. I looked ahead, and saw Carlotta and myself together and happy in Magenta Bay, and I looked ahead and saw myself alone… I told myself that some residual smoke of the burning bones was seeping from the long-house, imbuing me with diluted visions of possible futures, but the fact was my fevered mind was producing these scenarios without the aid of any alien stimulant.

I looked up. There was movement in the entrance of the long-house. An elder, Grainger’s replacement, a slight figure upon whom the face-mask seemed disproportionately large, appeared on the threshold, then stood to one side and thumped his spear.

From nowhere Qah appeared at my side, and touched my shoulder. I tried to read the expression in her big eyes, but could not. She gestured towards the entrance to the long-house, and I looked up. The stretcher-bearers emerged, moving with circumspection as they carried the laden stretcher down the ramp. I glimpsed a fall of midnight hair.

And I knew then that all my questions, all my doubts, would never be answered.





Two weeks later I attended the private viewing of Matt’s latest art-work.

There were perhaps fifty people gathered on the red sand before his dome, standing in groups, drinking and chatting and anticipating the preview. I recognised the great and the good from Magenta and MacIntyre, and even one or two off-world critics among the crowd.

Kee stood off to one side of the group as, one by one, the effulgent spheres appeared as if by magic in the air above the sand. She was talking to Maddie, gripping a glass of sava juice and taking small sips from time to time. She looked, without Hawk by her side, smaller than usual, somehow diminished – which is a paradox because, when in Hawk’s towering presence she seemed a childlike, almost a waif-like, figure.

I was on my fifth beer, and I felt mellow.

I stood and listened to a couple of speeches; a Terran critic said a few words about Matt Sommers’ standing in the world of art, and then Matt stepped forward, characteristically reserved and modest, and said that his art didn’t need explanation: what mattered was the experience. He went on to say that in today’s world it was easy to succumb to despair; it was easy, he said, to allow one’s experience of tragedy and disappointment to colour one’s view of the world: the secret, he went on, was from time to time to be able to look beyond the personal…

He glanced my way as he said this, and I felt compelled to raise my beer in acknowledgement.

Then I caught sight of a tall figure emerging from behind Matt’s dome and edging towards the gathering. I liberated another beer from a passing waiter and moved towards the newcomer.

“Hawk,” I said. “Great to see you. Matt’ll be delighted.”

I embraced him, feeling his solidity, and handed him the beer.

I’d visited him in hospital in MacIntyre, once he was well enough to see people, but we’d avoided talking about what had happened in the Ashentay’s sacred cavern.

I led him towards the gathering. Kee looked up, and the light in her eyes was a delight to behold. She hurried over to him and they embraced.

A dozen spheres filled the beach, and Matt declared the preview open, and people moved towards the glowing globes, at first circumspectly, and then, having experienced one, moving with eagerness towards the next.

Kee skipped away and stepped into a sphere.

I held back and watched.

* * *

A while later Hawk fetched me a beer and we sat in the dunes overlooking the beach.

He chugged at his bottle, his movements a little stiff following the surgery to save his life.

After a period of companionable silence, I said, “What happened, Hawk, back then with Grainger?”

It was a while before he replied.

“He ran a small exploration company,” he said, watching the crowd, “just after the Telemass technology made the big concerns a thing of the past. He cut corners and worked on a shoestring and made things work. I applied for work as a co-pilot. Chalcedony was the second world we explored... We came crash-landed inland a few hundred kays from here – something in the nav-system malfunctioned, and the secondaries misfired. It was a miracle we landed in one piece. Grainger was okay, but I was in a bad way. We had precious little in the way of a surgical-AI onboard, the com-rig was shot, and the ship wouldn’t fly.”