Starship Winter

— ONE —

Winters are never harsh, here on Chalcedony.

There are no snowfalls, to which I was accustomed in my native Canada; no rainstorms or biting frosts. After the long, clement autumn, winter is presaged by the nightly passage of migrating swordbills flying south to hotter climes; then comes a long period, lasting some three Terran months, of cooler weather. It is never cold: I’ve never had to wear a coat on my evening outings to the local bar, the Fighting Jackeral, and during the day the sun shines constantly. Winter is the season when the Ring of Tharssos, the halo of fragmented moonlets which encircles the planet, sparkles silver at twilight, and the spindizzy bugs, those scintillating gyroscopic creatures, move from shola trees and fill the air above the coast with their kaleidoscopic light show.

Some tourists come to see the spindizzies, but for the most part the tiny settlement of Magenta Bay is quiet. The holiday villas are shut up for the season; most of the stores along the seafront are boarded up, and perhaps half the residents take the opportunity to move down to the capital city, Mackinley, for the winter, or visit family and friends back on Earth.

I always stay for the winter, enjoying the sense of isolation the season brings, that odd intimation, so common from childhood, of winter being an inimical time when wise people hole up for months and allow nature to take its course◦– even though, of course, nothing was ever inimical about winter on Chalcedony.

Nothing much happens during winter, but that year was different.

I met Darius Dortmund, the famous alien-empath, a week after his arrival on Chalcedony.

He was known throughout the Expansion as the man who single-handedly brokered the peace treaty between the colonists of Esperance, Groombridge III, and the native extraterrestrials. I say an “alien-empath”, but of course he was human. He had earned that title because he had the peculiar ability to read the minds◦– some said the very souls◦– of alien subjects. Little was known about the man, other than he shunned publicity and was secretive about his ability. No one knew for certain how he had become empathetic, or even if he were actually telepathic. Was it true that he had gained his unique powers during an encounter with a vicious Lyran sand-devil? Had he, as some claimed, absorbed the essence of that strange alien being, so that a part of him was in fact alien? Could he actually read human minds? Journalists and holo producers around the Expansion had been trying to answer these questions for years.

That morning was much like any other. I rose at seven, showered, and went for a long walk around the bay. I took my time, admiring the views. From the headland opposite my starship, the Mantis, I looked back along the scimitar sweep of red sands, backed by the tiny shapes of the beachfront A-frames and more exclusive villas. Inland, beyond Magenta Bay itself, the hills rose to the distant mountains, their purple summits concealed by mist. Even the golden column, the legacy of the Yall, could not be seen; only in winter, and at this hour, was the distinguishing feature of the planet hidden from view.

For some reason, that morning I was thinking back to my doomed love affair with the holo star Carlotta Chakravorti-Luna. It was over two years since her death and the events which surrounded it, and I was feeling melancholy and not a little lonely. The first six months after her passing had been the worst; a time made tolerable only by the constant presence of my friends Matt and Maddie, Hawk and Kee. Only infrequently since then had I been skewered by grief, and time had worked to make each jab of that skewer a little less painful.

Today, as I made my way back through the sliding red sands, I was wondering how my life might have been shaped had Carlotta lived, and we had married and settled down to domesticity aboard the Mantis. I suppose I was feeling sorry for myself, regretting the lonely hours between the times I met my friends.

As the sun rose higher, warming me and dispelling the mists, I told myself to snap out of it. I had always despised self-pity in others; there was no way I would allow myself to fall victim to that invidious emotion now.

I was almost back at the Mantis when I saw the stranger.

He was standing in the sand before the ship, hands clasped behind his back, staring up at the balcony which fronts the nose cone.

He was tall and thin, characteristics emphasised by his sharp white suit. I put him in his sixties or early seventies, with a thatch of white hair and a peculiar facial pallor which put me in mind of someone recovering from illness.

Seven years ago, after the events which led to our discovery of the true purpose of the golden column, visitors had flocked to Magenta Bay. At times the Mantis had been surrounded three-deep by curious onlookers. I had become something of a celebrity, and had sought refuge with my friends. Since then the furore had abated, and only the occasional visitor made the pilgrimage to Magenta Bay to gaze at the first starship to pass through the mysterious portal of the Yall.

I took the stranger to be just another curious tourist.

He turned as I approached, and the first thing I noticed about his face was his piercing ice-blue eyes, in contrast to the deathly white of his flesh. My first impression of his character, gained from something in his lofty regard of me, was that he was arrogant: it was an impression that subsequent experience did nothing to dispel.

“I take it that you’re David Conway?” he said.

“That’s right.”

“And I understand you’re a friend of Matt Sommers, the artist?”

I chastised myself for feeling piqued that the stranger was seeking Matt, rather than myself. Then I felt relief, and curiosity. Something told me that the stranger was an off-worlder◦– maybe a rich gallery owner or collector?

I held out my hand. “Matt is a friend of mine, yes.”

He gave me a gimlet regard for a fraction of a second, before extending his own hand. His palm was cold.

“Dortmund,” he said. “Darius Dortmund.”

I didn’t know as much then about the man, or his reputation, as I was to learn over the next week, but the name was familiar. Wasn’t he some kind of expert on alien affairs who used his empathy with the other to settle interspecies disputes?

I wondered at his interest in Matt.

Dortmund indicated the Fighting Jackeral, a couple of hundred metres along the beach. “I know it’s early, but would you care for a drink?”

I said, “I haven’t had breakfast yet. The Jackeral does great coffee and croissants.”

We sat on the verandah, looking out over the bay. Dortmund ordered a double whisky on the rocks◦– at eight in the morning◦– and I a coffee with croissants and marmalade.

His first words, as he settled down with his drink and gazed out across the bay, were, “I can see that you have no idea who I am?”

I smiled to myself. I was glad that he was not looking at me; he was concentrating his regard on the sparkling Ring of Tharssos above the headlands. I noticed, then and in our subsequent meetings, that he only looked sparingly at the people in his presence. At first I assumed this was a characteristic of his natural arrogance; later I was to learn otherwise.

I took a sip of coffee. “The name is… familiar,” I said. I played dumb. “A fellow artist, a patron?” I suggested.

His expression remained neutral. The skin of his face, I noticed, was not only pale but seemed deficient of pigment, like a fresh canvas. His eyes narrowed as he stared at the arc of the Ring.

“I have been called an artist, Conway, but not an artist in any accepted sense. That is, not someone who creates works which represents their thoughts and feelings on the world around them. If I am an artist at all, then it is in the far more important sphere of facilitating the ability of individuals and societies to apprehend the subjective truths of their respective situations.”

It was a grand claim, and he sat in silence as I worked it out. At last I nodded. “I see…” I said. “And just how do you go about… facilitating this?”

He raised his glass to his lips with thin fingers and took a tight sip of whisky. “I apprehend the truth of a situation, of an individual or group, and dispense what I judge to be the appropriate recommendations. I am invariably right,” he finished.

I bit into a croissant, at a loss to know how to respond. After a growing silence, I said, “So… you mentioned Matt Sommers?”

He turned his head and looked at me. The effect of his piercing regard, coming as it did for the first time since we sat down, was disconcerting.

He said, “You are lonely, Conway.”

I stared at him, aware of holding a corner of croissant ludicrously before my open lips. “I don’t see what…” I began.

He raised a hand, as if to stall my objections, and turned his gaze out to sea. “I sense that you suffered loss recently, and use as a crutch the enduring friendship of those around you.”

“I wouldn’t call my friendship a crutch,” I said. I wondered whom he’d been talking to, to know so much about me.

“I sense”, he said again, with an air of pronouncement, “that your years on Chalcedony, after fleeing Earth, have been a period of withdrawal, almost of complacency. I would recommend a widening of your horizons, both geographically and personally◦– that is, you are a man in search of, in need of, love.”

I felt a curious ambivalence of emotions, then: first of all anger at the arrogant assumptions of this superior stranger, and then a gnawing apprehension that what he had said might contain a grain of truth.

Not that I would admit as much. “After what I went through on Earth”, I began, “I needed to get away. Matt and Maddie, Hawk and Kee… they’ve become my family.” As soon as I said this, I hated myself for feeling I had to justify my situation.

I said, “Anyway… I presume you didn’t come here to talk about me. You mentioned Matt?”

I was relieved when he nodded and said, “I take it he has returned to Chalcedony?”

“He came back last week.” He’d been away a month◦– on Epiphany, Acrab IV◦– a month away from Maddie, which he’d said was torture. He’d brought back a collection of what he called Epiphany Stones, which would be the centrepiece of his next work of art, due to be shown down at Mackinley in a few days.

Dortmund nodded. “Has Sommers told you anything about why he was on Epiphany, Conway?”

I decided to play my cards close to my chest. Matt had said something about the Stones he’d brought back, but I had no intention of telling Dortmund this.

“No. It’s all a bit hush-hush.” I hesitated, then said, “I’m eager to see the exhibition on Thursday.”

He inclined his head. “As am I, Conway. As am I.”

He finished his drink, rose to his considerable height, and inclined his head at me. Again his regard made me uneasy: I gained from the cold look in his eyes the idea that he was merely gazing upon me to confirm the negative impression he had already formed.

“I will see you at the exhibition,” he said, and stepped from the verandah.

I watched him walk across the sands, around the Fighting Jackeral, and disappear from sight.

I was about to order another coffee when a heavy hand fell on my shoulder. I looked up. “Hawk!”

I stood and embraced him, feeling the occipital console that spanned his shoulders like a yoke, and the spinal jacks which he used to interface with his starship.

He was wearing his faded black leather jacket and his piratical face was unshaven. All he needed to complete the image was an eye-patch◦– and perhaps a voluble parrot on his shoulder.

“How was the trip?” I asked. He’d taken Matt to Epiphany, via the golden column, and I hadn’t seen him since his return.

Maddie was behind him. “They had a great time,” she said. “I wish I’d gone with them.”

After the frosty presence of Darius Dortmund, it was nice to be in the company of friends. We ordered coffee. “No Matt? And where’s Kee?” I asked.

Hawk laughed. “Where else? She’s tending her garden.” Kee kept a small plot of beautiful native plants at Hawk’s shipyard.

“Matt’s down in Mackinley,” Maddie said. “The exhibition’s taking up his every spare minute. But it should be something special.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” I said. I loved Matt’s opening nights, when I could watch my friend relax, after months or years of hard work, and bask in the rewards of creation.

“So…” I said to Hawk. “The trip.”

He said, “Epiphany was… well, magical sounds lame, but it was. It’s a pastoral planet; the aliens there are hunter-gatherers. Rainforests with trees miles high, and flowers the size of sails◦– the gravity’s much less strong there, you see. And there’s something about the air… as if it’s infused with a drug. Every breath is invigorating.”

I’d seen Matt briefly on his return, and he’d mentioned the Epiphany Stones in passing. It was a project he’d been working on for a year or more, but before the trip he’d kept tight-lipped about it lest the art world got to know and a publicity leak pre-empted the announcement of the exhibition. From Mackinley it was due to go on to Earth, where it was booked to show in Paris, London and Manila.

“Matt said that the stones were magical, too?” I fished.

Hawk smiled. “Matt wouldn’t tell me why exactly they were so special. We were taken by the equivalent of a bullock cart from the spaceport and into the mountains. From there it was a two-day trek through the rainforest to their◦– the Elan’s◦– holy city, more of a great, sprawling township, really. I spent the next day wandering around, admiring the views, while Matt was in conference with the Elan’s holy elite.”

“Requesting the stones?” I said.

Hawk nodded. “And he was successful, obviously. With one condition.”

I took a mouthful of beer. “Which was?”

“That the stones be accompanied at all times by a member of the Elan’s holy orders◦– an Ambassador.”

“So you brought the Ambassador back aboard the ship?”

“He’ll be at the opening night on Thursday.”

Maddie said, “I’m more than curious to see the alien. He’s been holed up with the stones at the exhibition centre all week..” Cut: Won’t leave them for a minute.”

I looked at Hawk. “What do they look like? The aliens, I mean.”

Hawk shrugged his great shoulders. “Small, just over a metre high, very thin and delicate, and furred. It’s the colour of their fur that’s odd, though. They’re turquoise.”

I tried to envisage these creatures. “They sound fascinating. And they’re friendly?”

Hawk nodded. “Extremely so.” He thought about it. “I suppose you’d call the Elan innocent, guileless.” He shrugged. “Matt was over the moon when they agreed to loan him the stones. This is the first time any have been allowed off-planet.”

I looked at Maddie. “What did he do to get them to agree?”

“The Elan were aware of his work,” she said. “Matt had an exhibition of crystals on Epiphany about ten years ago, and the Ambassador attended it. He was bowled over, apparently.”

Hawk said, “Matt visited Epiphany back then and heard about the stones. He became aware of the Elan’s reaction to his exhibition only later, and that’s when the idea formed to use the Epiphany Stones in an artwork.”

“Did you see the stones?”

Hawk nodded. “I was allowed to accompany Matt into the underground chamber where they’re housed.” He shrugged. “They’re nothing special, visually. About this long, by this…” His big hands described the approximate shape of a gold ingot. “And pale blue.”

“Why are they so special?”

Matt had said something about their somehow communicating aspects of Elan history when I saw him the other day, but I think he’d wanted to save the surprise for the opening night.

“Well, Matt was cagey when it came to describing the stones,” Hawk laughed.

“Cagey?” Maddie said. “He wouldn’t even tell me!”

“He did say something about the stones being…” Hawk shrugged. “They were somehow recordings of, or in some way stored, details of Elan ancestors. The Elan don’t have a written history. Apparently it’s all in the stones.”

I considered my encounter with Dortmund earlier. “Do either of you know anything about someone called Dortmund? Darius Dortmund? He seemed very interested in Matt’s exhibition.”

Maddie opened her eyes wide and stared at me. “Dortmund? So he’s been hounding you, too?”

I smiled. “I saw him this morning for the first time. He’s an odd character.”

“Odd?” Hawk exclaimed. “The guy gives me the shivers. He was nosing around the yard a couple of days after I got back, wanting to know all about our trip to Epiphany and the stones.”

Maddie said, “He called on me yesterday with so many questions…”

I looked at my friends. “Excuse my ignorance, but just who the hell is he? He spun me a line about being some kind of… of facilitator between peoples, societies.”

Maddie smiled. “You haven’t heard of Darius Dortmund, the alien-empath? Where have you been for the past ten years, David?”

“Alien-empath?” I repeated. “He looked human enough to me.”

Maddie laughed. “He is human, though from his manner I do wonder… No, he has some kind of empathetic ability which enables him to read the emotions and feelings of certain people and aliens. He uses this to settle disputes between antagonistic factions around the Expansion.”

I frowned. “And how did he become… empathetic?”

Hawk leaned back in his seat, hands clasped behind his head. “I’ve heard a number of stories. The most prosaic is that he was found to have a mild psionic ability and underwent an enhancement operation, back on Earth.”

Maddie leaned forward. “And the not-so-prosaic story?”

“Well, there’s the frankly daft, media-driven story that he was on Lyra VII, in the desert, and he was savaged by a sand-devil. The story goes that it stopped short of killing him and that when he came round he found himself inhabited by the consciousness of the beast.”

I laughed. “I think I’d go for the enhancement operation,” I said.

“According to some sources I accessed”, Hawk went on, “Dortmund is not only empathetic, but telepathic.”

I shifted uneasily in my seat, recalling the man’s manner this morning, his disinclination to look at me during our conversation◦– his disinclination, or the fact that he did not need to look at me to discern my reaction to his questions.

I recalled his assessment of me as lonely, and I shivered at the thought of my mind being so open to the stranger.

I said, “What makes you think…?”

Hawk looked at me. “Well, for one thing the way he asked questions but never seemed to follow them up◦– as if the initial question was merely a prompt to get me thinking about the subject he wanted me to consider, and then he read the rest. The way he rarely looked me in the eye, as if not needing to do so.”

I nodded. “I noticed that, too.”

“And something else,” Hawk went on. “He said something about me and Kee which no one knows about◦– so it wasn’t as if he could have found out by asking anyone. And the thing was, I’d been thinking about Kee just before he turned up.”

Maddie said, “He asked me questions about Matt, his latest work… but like you said, Hawk, he then dropped it as if he’d found out all he wanted.” She shivered. “I didn’t like the man at all.”

I nodded. “Me neither. And I don’t like the idea that he might be telepathic.”

Maddie said, more to herself, “But I wonder why he wanted to know about Matt and the stones?”

“Well, he’ll be at the opening night of the exhibition,” Hawk said. “I don’t know how he managed to wangle himself an invitation, but we might be able find out more then.”

Hawk then suggested we make a session of it and ordered a round of beers. I sat back and stared out across the bay, considering Darius Dortmund and the imminent exhibition.