Starship Fall

One

I lead a quiet life here in Magenta Bay, on Chalcedony, Delta Pavonis IV; some might even call my existence boring. I read a lot, and walk, and swim in the bay, and sometimes I drive into the mountains to admire the fine views along the coast. Three or four nights a week◦– the highlights of my life, as far as I’m concerned◦– I meet my friends in the Fighting Jackeral; occasionally they come round to my place, the old starship situated on the headland north of the bay, or I visit them, and we while away the evening with a meal and drinks and conversation. My friends are Matt Sommers, the famous crystal artist; his partner Maddie Chamberlain, a wonderful Englishwoman who loves Matt to bits; Hawk, the piratical space pilot and his alien girlfriend, the fey and elusive Kee. They are more than friends to me now, five years after my arrival on the planet; they are family, and I love them all.

Autumn comes late to this latitude of Chalcedony, immediately after the tempestuous storm season, and it’s a wonderful period of long warm days◦– a slow sliding into winter which is never really cold up here. Autumn is perhaps my favourite time of year, when the tourist season is winding down, and the concessions along the front close up for another six months and the locals, after the work of summer, kick back and relax and enjoy their hard won gains. The silver shola trees become golden and the Ring of Tharssos, that girdle of shattered moonlets which encircles the planet, turns molten in the long hours of sunset.

I was looking forward to a few months of doing nothing, of reading the classics◦– I still prefer real books to the screens you can get these days: call me old-fashioned, if you like◦– of walking in the mountains and seeing my friends. Nothing much had happened in Magenta Bay for five years, and for all I knew nothing else would happen for another five. Not that I would be complaining.

That morning I woke at seven, as usual, then showered and went for a walk along the beach, around the bay and back again. I breakfasted on the balcony of my starship, the Mantis, looking out across the mirror-calm surface of the bay, watching the play of sunlight on the water, like restless sequins, and the dark shadows of the jackeral shoals as they came in from the ocean in search of food.

I was on my second coffee when I noticed the woman, and I wondered why I had failed to see her earlier. She was lying on the sands below the nose of the Mantis, so that only her long tanned legs showed. Curious◦– Matt claims that I wanted to ascertain whether or not the rest of this Venus matched what I had seen so far◦– I stood and looked down at the reclining beauty.

I’d assumed that she was sun-bathing◦– though why she might be doing so at eight in the morning I was at a loss to guess. But one look was enough to tell me that she was doing nothing of the kind. She wore a black evening dress, for one thing, and her head was twisted so that she stared back along the beach towards the township.

I hurried from the Mantis, wallowed through the fine red drifts of sand, and knelt before the stricken woman.

I realised that she was older than I had first thought; and though she possessed a striking beauty, it was not that vital pearlescent lustre of early womanhood but the more weathered glamour of early middle-age: I guessed she was in her mid-forties.

She was dusky and raven haired, and her mouth was a red slash that seemed almost, almost, too wide for her thin face so that at first it seemed disproportionate.

I judged that she was not asleep but unconscious, and reached out to take her pulse. Her tanned wrist was thin, but the pulse seemed healthy enough. I sat on my haunches, wondering what the hell to do, and took in this unexpected and beauteous jetsam.

Only then did I notice the smell; it was the scent of smoke, a certain type of smoke I had never encountered before. It emanated from her flesh, and as I inhaled and wondered who she was and what she was doing here, the woman opened her eyes and stared at me.

Her eyes were mahogany brown, and their light sent the shadows beneath them into stark relief; so that my first impression of her, conscious, was that she was ill.

“Of course, it’s wholly unfair; I was scaling the heights. And then that came along, and where was I then? I was good, great, but I could never compete with… with that.”

It came out in a rush, as if confided to a life-long intimate, and I was open-mouthed and quite at a loss to know what to say.

Then her eyes refocused suddenly, and she snapped, “And who might you be, if I might ask?”

“David,” I stammered. “David Conway…” I gestured back to the Mantis. “I live there.”

She sat up, wincing, a graceful hand bracing the small of her exquisite back. “Well, Conway, why don’t you make yourself useful and help me back to my place?”

I stood and reached out, not quite knowing where to touch her, for all the world like some flustered flunky at her beck and call. I grabbed her elbow and eased her upright. Perpendicular now, she stood a good few inches taller than me; her breasts fell a little and filled the material of her dress, and I was made more aware of her curves. (Maddie playfully accused me of sexism when I recounted this, but I set this down as an accurate account of my response to the woman. Recall, I had been alone and celibate for more than five years at the time.)

“Well, don’t just stand there gaping at me, Conway.” She pointed to a large villa a couple of hundred metres away around the curve of the bay. “Help me home, if you would be so kind.”

I slipped my arm around her waist; she leaned into me and I struggled with her through the shifting sands. Ten minutes later◦– she walked like a zombie on valium◦– we made it to the verandah of her expensive domicile and I eased her up the steps.

She opened a sliding glass door, shrugged me off and staggered inside. I had a glimpse of a dark lounge hung, I thought, with works of art. At the far end of the room, in the shadows, I made out a beautiful, dark-haired girl, and her similarity to the older woman made me assume it was her daughter.

“You don’t make a habit of sunbathing this early, do you?”

My words halted her progress into the room. She turned, and the look in her eyes could be described as venomous. “Don’t be so bloody ridiculous, Conway.”

I backed off and raised my hands in surrender.

She glared at me, then said, “You don’t have the slightest idea who I am, do you?”

I opened my mouth, doing a fair imitation of a landed jackeral.

Before I could agree that she was indeed correct, she said, “Of course you bloody well don’t!” and pressed a panel on the wall beside the door which swished a pair of curtains across the plate glass. The show was over, folks.

Smiling to myself, and wondering exactly who the hell she might be, I made my way home.