Starship Winter

— FOUR —

I spent all Saturday morning cleaning the Mantis. I have my friends around roughly once a week for a meal and between times I let my domestic duties slip. That morning I scrubbed and cleaned, re-arranged the furniture several times, and even played half a dozen different music-needles on the ship’s sound system◦– eventually selecting some mood jazz from one of the colonies. Afterwards I sat on the balcony with a beer and considered Hannah van Harben, slim and blonde and smiling in my mind’s eye, and wondered if I were investing too much emotion in the relationship at this early stage.

There was a time, a few years ago, when I might have held back from getting too involved with a beautiful woman. But I had been on Chalcedony for more than seven years now, with only one intimate relationship to boast of.

That brought me up short. What had Darius Dortmund said, just the other day, about my being lonely…?

That train of thought was interrupted by the chime of my com. I answered, dreading that it might be Hannah calling with some excuse not to visit.

Maddie smiled out of the tiny screen. “David. We’re going to the Jackeral for lunch today. Matt’s managed to drag himself away from the exhibition. We were wondering if you’d like to join us?”

“Well… Hannah’s coming up at midday. I’m not sure what we’ll be doing. I’ll see what she says.”

Maddie beamed at me. “Play it by ear. Come if she’d like to. We’ll be there around one.”

I smiled. “I’ll do that, Maddie.”

“Hannah’s a nice person, David. I hope it goes well.”

“I’ll second that. Catch you later.”

I cut the connection and scanned the section of the coast road observable from the balcony.

Thirty minutes later a silver two-seater drove into view, pulled off the road and eased itself to a halt beside the Mantis.

I left the ship and was approaching the car when Hannah climbed out.

She held out her hands to me and I took them. We kissed cheeks, my heart racing, and I backed off and swept my arm in a gesture taking in the squat bulk of the starship. “Well, what do you think?”

“As beachside domiciles go, David, it’s pretty damned striking. There was no mistaking it for any old villa when I came up the coast road. I like the colour scheme.”

I’d recently had it repainted in the red and silver livery of the Charlesworth Line. I told her this, and went on, “I often watched their ships take off and land at Vancouver spaceport.” I shrugged and slapped the ship’s flank. “This brings back memories. Anyway, come inside. I’ll show you around.”

We walked up the ramp and took the elevator to the second floor, which consisted of the bridge, now a lounge, a small kitchen and a couple of spacious bedrooms, which I guess had been the crew’s quarters back when the ship had flown between the stars.

She stood in the centre of the lounge and turned, wide-eyed. “David… why, this is magnificent. I love the décor.”

“All my own work,” I said. “Actually, that’s a lie. Maddie helped me out.”

On Maddie’s suggestion I’d repainted the bulkhead cream and the curving walls of the nose cone a pale jade; I’d hung the walls with tapestries and prints from all over the Expansion. A smoke sculpture from Yho, Betelgeuse III, played in one corner, and opposite stood a canted slab of emotion crystal, a gift from Matt.

Hannah tipped her head to one side, smiling her delicious, curved-lip smile. “Even the music’s wonderful. Isn’t it something from Tourmaline in Vega?”

“You like it? It’s among my favourites.”

“I love the stuff coming out of Tourmaline at the moment.”

We chatted about music for a while. I asked if she wanted a drink, and poured a couple of beers. We drank them on the balcony, looking out over the magenta sands and the calm circle of the bay.

She curled up on a recliner and smiled at me. “Tell me, David. How do you spend your time?”

Déjà vu…

Two years ago, Carlotta Chakravorti-Luna had asked me the very same question. I banished her ghost and answered, “I lead a simple life, Hannah. I walk, read, see my friends a lot.” I slapped my stomach. “I probably spend more time at the Jackeral than’s good for me.”

“A simple life’s good, David. That’s what I hope to find here.”

“I suspect it’ll be a bit quieter than Rotterdam, anyway.”

She nodded. “Much. Rotterdam was intense. Do you know how many murders there were on Chalcedony last year?”

I blew out my lips. “On the entire planet? The population’s what… ten million? I don’t know… Fifty?”

“Five,” Hannah said. “Five. Can you imagine that? There are fifty killings in Rotterdam alone every weekend.”

“No wonder you opted for the quiet life.” I paused, then said, “I just hope you don’t find it too quiet.”

She shook her head. “I never liked big cities. The coast here ha s everything◦– great scenery, big-enough towns and cities, galleries and a thriving artists’ community. And if the Jackeral is as good as you claim…”

“It’s my spiritual home, Hannah. Speaking of which… Maddie called earlier. She and Matt and the others are having lunch there. I didn’t know if you’d want to join them…?”

“Why not? That would be lovely. But afterwards, David, would you drive me into the hills and show me the falls?”

“I’d be delighted,” I said, feeling just about as wonderful as it was possible to feel. “Right, I hope you have an appetite.”

Matt and Maddie, Hawk and Kee were already at the Jackeral when we arrived. They’d claimed the corner table on the patio overlooking the bay and had started on the beer.

“David, Hannah,” Matt said. “Great you could make it.”

“Try keeping us away.” I dragged up a couple of chairs. “We haven’t been out as a group at the Jackeral for ages.”

“That’s my fault,” Matt admitted to Hannah as she sat beside him. “I dragged Hawk and Kee off to Epiphany over a month ago.”

Kee leaned forward, staring large-eyed at Hannah. Kee was in her thirties, but looked about fifteen. For the most part, Hawk’s liaison with a member of the native aliens was accepted by humans and Ashentay alike; only the occasional off-world tourist had commented adversely.

Now Kee said, “But it was magnificent, Hannah! I think Chalcedony◦– or rather Ashent, as we call it◦– is beautiful, but then it is my planet, yes? But Epiphany might even be more beautiful.”

“Then it must be some place,” Hannah said.

I raised my glass. “To old friends,” I said, and smiling at Hannah, “and to new. Cheers.”

We drank, and Maddie fell into conversation with Hannah while I asked Matt how the exhibition was going. “We were there last night. Had to queue to get in.”

“It’s been the most popular thing I’ve done for years,” he said. “It’s just a pity that Dortmund’s shown up.”

Conversation around the table ceased at the sound of his name. “What is it with him?” I asked. “He was there again last night, sampling the stones for a few seconds then moving on.”

Maddie said, “Apparently he’s been doing that all day today too.”

“Maybe”, Hannah said, “despite his protestations he secretly admires the exhibition?”

Matt frowned. “I don’t know about that. He always was an odd character.”

I looked at him. “Always? This isn’t the first time you’ve met?”

Maddie flapped a hand, as if to say, Don’t get him started on that subject!

Matt sighed. “For my sins, I knew Darius Dortmund on Earth forty years ago. We were both students at Bonn Academy of Art.”

“He was an artist?” I said.

“Well, he thought he was. He had a certain… raw talent, let’s say.”

Hannah sipped her drink and asked, “What was he like, back then?”

Matt shrugged. “Similar in character: intolerant, prickly, a loner who thought everyone else lacked not only talent but intelligence. I’ll give him this◦– he always was intellectually gifted. He saw to the heart of everything; his conversation could be brilliant. But he lacked… let’s just say that he lacked… heart, for want of a better word. Spirit. Humanity.” Matt laughed. “He was a pessimist, when pessimism wasn’t the fashion. Space was opening up; new worlds, new races, new philosophies were being discovered◦– but Dortmund claimed that there was nothing new under the sun and that the truth, in every field, could be found in materialist reductionism.”

Hannah frowned, “But how does that tie in with his obsessive sampling of the Epiphany Stones?” She shrugged. “I don’t know, but he looked like a man in search of something.”

Matt gestured with his beer bottle. “I can’t answer that, Hannah. Maybe he’s changed, left his nihilistic materialism behind… but somehow I think not.”

Hawk asked the question on the tip of my tongue. “So what happened to him? I mean, there he was in Bonn, the death of the party, and then he becomes famous years later as… what did the media call him? An alien-empath? How did that happen?”

Matt laughed. “He dropped out of the Academy before the final year, and to be honest everyone was glad to see the back of him. Over the years since, I kept hearing about him◦– though never in art circles; he never made it as an artist. About five years after I left Bonn, I heard from a fellow student that he was working for the European government, troubleshooting on colony worlds where there were problems. Not long after that a friend said they’d bumped into him at the Paris Telemass station, just back from Meridian◦– but Dortmund was too wrapped up in himself to acknowledge the guy.”

Kee said, “But he wasn’t empathic then?”

“Not to my knowledge. I’ve heard he became augmented about ten years ago.”

“And how did that happen?” I said. “If reports in the media are to be believed—”

Matt held up a hand. “They’re not. He wasn’t bitten by a Lyran sand-devil, nor absorbed into the consciousness of some telepathic beast somewhere, then spat out. And he wasn’t taken over by an alien…”

“So what did happen?” Hannah wanted to know.

“He worked for Berlin as a troubleshooter. When the neuroscience of empathy came in, he was one of the first lined up for the cut. Some say he became even more nihilistic following the operation. Think about it◦– would you like to be privy to the workings of the human mind, and do it for a living? If you read the wrong sort of person again and again, the criminal, the insane, it’d be enough to turn anyone into a sociopath.”

“So he’s actually telepathic?” I asked.

Matt wobbled his beer bottle. “I’ve heard he’s what’s called an enhanced empath◦– he can read emotions, surface-level thoughts, stray mental emanations, but nothing deep or comprehensive.” He shrugged. “But that’s only what I’ve heard. Who knows?”

I said, “From the way he acts, he gives the impression of being a mind-reader…” I thought about his assessment of me the other day as lonely.

“That might just be acute intuition based on his empathy,” Maddie said,

Hawk grunted a laugh. “I don’t like the idea of the bastard reading my thoughts, I must admit.”

Matt said, “Around eight years ago the news broke that he’d brokered a peace deal between the colonists of Esperance and the hostile aliens there. I must admit that all the media adulation stuck in my craw. Call me shallow, if you like.”

“That’s a human reaction,” I said. “You don’t know how I felt when my ex-wife made a million from some art deal shortly before I moved here.” I laughed at the thought.

“What do you think he’s doing here, Matt?” Hawk said. “Has he come just to view the latest work of an old acquaintance?”

Matt shook his head, his brow buckled in thought. “I don’t know. I haven’t asked him, directly.”

Maddie clapped her hands and passed around the menus. “Enough of Dortmund!” she demanded. “Let’s think about our stomachs instead.”

Hannah ordered a local fish with braised Chalcedony salad, and I went for a winter bouillabaisse. Thirty minutes later we were eating in silence. I glanced at Hannah, to see if she was enjoying her meal. Her eyes grew huge above a forkful of vegetables; she had a magical way of communicating her delight without using words.

“What do you think?”

“Mmm!” She mopped a spill of oil from her chin, laughing at her clumsiness. “Wonderful! It’s great, David.” She reached out and squeezed my fingers. “Thanks so much for inviting me.”

I grinned adolescently. “My pleasure.”

We were settling back, replete yet contemplating dessert, when Matt’s com chimed. He excused himself and took the call, standing by the balcony rail and staring out across the waters of the bay.

He stiffened, his brow furrowing. I heard a fraught, “What? What the hell…”

He moved away from the rail, more to work off frustration by striding back and forth, I guessed, than from the desire not to be overheard. A hurried conversation ensued. Mild-mannered so much of the time, he seemed animated and angered now.

Maddie was watching, her expression concerned.

A minute later Matt returned to the table. “I’m sorry. You’ll have to excuse me. There’s been some trouble down at the exhibition—”

Maddie stood and touched his arm. “Trouble?”

Matt shrugged. “Something about the power supply to the stones◦– at least, I hope it’s that. I’d better get down there and sort it out.”

“I’ll come with you,” Maddie said.

Matt kissed her forehead. “Thanks, but there’s nothing you can do. Stay here and enjoy yourself. I’ll be back in an hour or so, okay?”

She consented, but with obvious displeasure. As Matt hurried from the patio and made for his hover-car in the lot, we debated ordering desserts. In the end only Kee went for something sweet; the rest of us opted for beer.

I smiled at Hannah. I wondered if she detected my sadness. I often have this feeling when good friends are called away from the group, or cannot make it to a gathering: a kind of minor-key melancholy at their absence. I suppose it was because for too many years I had not enjoyed the amity of such a close-knit group of friends.

Conversation turned to other things. Kee asked Hannah how she was liking life on Chalcedony. She said she loved the slow pace of life, and how friendly people here were…

I was the first to notice the arrival of the long white limousine. It was a hired vehicle◦– a chauffeur with a peaked cap was at the wheel◦– and two figures sat in the back seat. The limousine pulled off the coast road and glided to a halt beside the Jackeral, perhaps fifty metres away.

“Hello,” I said. “I think we have company.”

As I spoke, a small, blue-furred figure opened the vehicle’s rear door. The Elan’s feet didn’t touch the ground as he turned on his seat, and he had to jump the last few inches to the tarmac.

The alien approached the restaurant patio, clutching something rectangular and silver in his tiny hand.

“It’s Fhen,” I said. “Dortmund’s aide.”

I looked back at the car and as I did so the remaining figure in the back seat leaned towards the window and stared out. It was Dortmund himself.

The Elan stepped onto the patio and approached our table. A silence fell as the other diners stopped eating and stared at the alien.

His long, thin lips were stretched in an imitation of a human smile. “Friends,” he said in his fluting voice. “Mr Dortmund instructed me to give you this. A formal invitation.”

He passed the envelope to Maddie, who was closest to the alien, and she opened it. “Darius Dortmund”, she read, “extends an invitation to Mr Matt Sommers and friends to attend a Sunday Soirée at Ocean Heights, beginning at two tomorrow.” She looked around at us. “The invitation extends to staying the night. Well,” she went on, smiling at the alien. “Isn’t that nice? I’m sure Matt will be delighted.” I smiled at the irony in her tone. “Matt and I will be going◦– how about the rest of you?” Blindside of the Elan, she put on a comically pleading face.

I looked at Hannah, who nodded. “We’d love to,” she said.

“Hawk, Kee?” Maddie prompted.

“Well, seeing as the rest of you…” Hawk began.

“Excellent,” Maddie said, and turned to the waiting alien. “Please tell Mr Dortmund that we’ll be delighted to come.”

The alien performed an odd little bow and hurried back to the limousine. He climbed into the back seat and relayed our acceptance; a second later Dortmund leaned towards the window and gave an effete wave.

Moments later the limousine wafted away.

Hawk suggested another round of beers but I declined the offer. “I promised Hannah a trip to see the waterfalls,” I said. “See you all tomorrow. I just hope Dortmund’s hospitality extends to lavishing us with plenty of alcohol.”

Hannah hit my shoulder as we moved away from the table.

I drove through the foothills of the inland mountains, heading south-east out of Magenta Bay towards Mackinley. Half an hour later we had climbed to four thousand feet and beside me Hannah gasped as she looked to her right at the precipitous fall of the land towards the straits.

“Oh, David, it’s so beautiful!”

“Wait till you see the falls and the lagoons.”

She leaned her head on my shoulder as I took the looping bends, heading ever higher. Ten minutes later I turned off the main road, which would have led, eventually, through the mountains towards the golden column, and took a twisty minor road south.

Minutes later the silver and crystal townscape of Mackinley came into view far below, hugging the scalloped coastline. To our left a great silver waterfall tipped itself into a circular lagoon, the spray scintillating in the sunlight.

The overflow from the lagoon fed into a smaller, rock-encircled lagoon beneath, and it was to this lagoon that I was taking Hannah. I parked the car beside the waterfall, took her hand and led her through a thicket of greenberries, down a precipitous slope, and around a shola tree to the calm, quiet lower lagoon.

Hannah gasped. “It’s… Oh, it’s idyllic, David.”

She stood at the edge of the escarpment, where this lagoon overflowed into the one below, and so on until they reached the coast. Below us several villas owned by the planet’s seriously rich◦– holo stars and politicians◦– nestled behind stands of shola trees.

Hannah pointed. “Isn’t that the place where Dortmund is staying?”

I made out a terracotta tiled villa in extensive lawned grounds, complete with swimming pools, tennis courts and a skyball pitch.

“I read that he’d taken the place for a month,” she said. “There was a picture of the villa in the paper. And look, it seems he’s getting ready for the soirée.”

I laughed. “Well, his flunkies are.” A dozen liveried servants were erecting a silver mylar marquee on the front lawn and setting up laser barbecue pits nearby. Others were arranging trestle tables before the villa’s open French windows.

“Looks like he’s planning some do,” I said.

Hannah walked to the water’s edge, knelt and peered into the brimming depths. “Hey, there are little fish here.”

I joined her. The water boiled with tiny darting slivers of silver. “They’re called picayne. They nibble dead skin and dirt from you◦– Chalcedony’s own natural cleaning agent.”

“Well, I think I’ll have a little dip,” she laughed.

“But you haven’t brought a…”

But she was already stripping off. In seconds she was naked and dancing with high-steps into the lagoon. My heart thudding, I stared at her startling nakedness, her slim back, her perfect bottom.

Knee-deep in the water, she turned and smiled at me. “What’s wrong, David? You never seen a naked lady before? Take off your clothes and come in!”

She smiled and held out her arms.