The parents were patting and stroking it with their arms as it charged about in circles. Then it caught sight of Ione.
<>
Ione blinked against the sudden wash of jumbled emotions and frantic questions that seemed to be shouted into her mind.
<> Tranquillity said drily.
The baby Kiint butted up against Lieria’s flank, hiding itself from Ione.
<>
Ione caught the briefest exchange of mental images that the adult Kiints directed at the baby, an information stream more complex than anything she’d known before. The speed was bewildering, over almost as it began.
She stopped with her feet in the warm, clear water and gave the adults a small bow. <>
<> Lieria said. There was a suggestion of lofty amusement behind the mental voice. <>
<> Ione told the baby, projecting as much warmth and delight as she could muster. It came easily, the little Kiint was so cute. Very different from the solemn adults.
Haile pushed her head comically round Lieria’s neck, huge violet-tinged eyes looked steadily at Ione. <>
There was another fast mental communiqué from one of the adults. The baby turned to look at Nang, then back at Ione. The tumult of emotions leaking into the affinity band began to slow.
<> The thoughts stopped abruptly, almost like a mental gathering of breath. <>
<>
<>
<>
<>
<>
Haile squirmed round excitedly, water frothed around her eight feet. <>
<>
<>
<> Tranquillity said.
<>
Haile surged forward, ploughing the water aside. She still hadn’t quite got the hang of walking, and her rear pair of legs almost tripped her up.
This time Ione could understand the adults’ warning perfectly. <>
Haile stopped a metre short of her. Warm breath exhaled from the facial vents smelt slightly spicy, and the tractamorphic arms waved about. She held her hand out, palm facing the baby, fingers spread. Haile tried to imitate the hand; her attempt looked like a melted wax model.
<>
<>
Haile emitted a burst of shock.
Ione giggled. <>
<>
<>
<> Haile said wistfully.
<>
Haile bent her neck almost double to look back round at her parents. The fast affinity exchange which followed made Ione feel woefully inadequate.
<> Haile asked tentatively.
<>
<>
<> she said, surprised.
Haile’s arms hit the water sending up a giant plume of spray. Ione was instantly drenched. She pulled the wet hair from her eyes, sighing ruefully.
<> Haile asked anxiously.
<>
<>
<> Tranquillity said. <>
“Joshua!” Ione shouted. Too late she remembered Kiint did have auditory senses.
Haile’s arms writhed in alarm. <> She shied back from Ione and promptly fell down.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Ione splashed towards her.
Nang and Lieria came up and slipped their arms under Haile’s belly, while the baby Kiint coiled an arm tip around Ione’s hand. She tugged.
<> Haile asked as she regained her feet and stood swaying unsteadily.
<>
<>
Ione opened her mouth—then thought about it. Away at the back of her mind Tranquillity was registering a serene hauteur.
Ione closed her mouth. <>
It was almost an infallible rule that to be an Edenist a human must have affinity and live in a habitat; certainly every Edenist returned to a habitat for their death, or had their thoughts transferred to one after death. Physically, the bitek systems integral to their society were capable of sustaining a very high standard of living at little financial cost: the price of steering asteroidal rubble into a habitat maw, the internal mechanical systems like starscraper lifts and the tube carriage network. Culturally though the symbiosis was much more subtle. With the exception of Serpents, there were no psychological problems among the Edenist population; although they displayed a full emotional range, as individuals there were all extremely well adjusted. The knowledge that they would continue as part of the habitat personality after bodily death acted as a tremendous stabilizing influence, banishing a great many common human psychoses. It was a liberation which bestowed them with a universal confidence and poise that Adamists nearly always considered to be unbridled arrogance. The disparity in wealth between the two cultures also contributed to the image of Edenists being humanity’s aristocrats.
Edenism, then, was dependent on habitats. And bitek habitats were only to be found orbiting gas giants. They were totally reliant on the vast magnetospheres of such worlds for power. Photosynthesis was a wholly impractical method of supplying a habitat’s energy demands; it necessitated the deployment of vast leaf-analogue membranes, and the numerous difficulties inherent in doing so from a rotating structure, as well as being unacceptably susceptible to damage from both particle impact and cosmic radiation. So the Edenists were confined to colonizing the Confederation’s gas giants.
However there was one exception, one terracompatible planet which they settled successfully: Atlantis; so named because it was a single giant ocean of salt water. Its sole exports were the seafood delicacies for which it was renowned across the Confederation. The variety of marine life below its waves was so great that even two hundred and forty years after its discovery barely one-third had been classified. A vast number of traders, both independent and corporate, were attracted to it; which was why Syrinx flew Oenone there right after their navy duty tour finished.
Syrinx had decided to go straight into the independent trading business once her discharge order came through. The prospect of years spent on He3 deliveries depressed her. A lot of voidhawk captains took on the tanker contracts for the stability they offered, it was exactly what she’d done when Oenone started flying, but the last thing she wanted was to wind up in a rigid flight routine again; the navy had given her quite enough of that already, a feeling the rest of the crew heartily shared (apart from Chi, who left along with all the weapons hardware in the lower hull).
Although some doubts lingered obstinately in her mind, it was a big step from the precisely ordered navy life she was used to.
On seeing her daughter dithering, Athene pointed out that Norfolk was approaching conjunc
tion, and spent an evening reminiscing on her own flights to collect the planet’s fabled Tears. Three days later Oenone left the maintenance station dock at Romulus; new cargo cradles fitted, a new civilian registration filed, licensed by the Confederation Astronautics Board to carry freight and up to twenty passengers, crew toroid refurbished, and crew-members in a tigerish frame of mind.
It emerged from its wormhole terminus a hundred and fifteen thousand kilometres above Atlantis, almost directly over the dawn terminator.
Syrinx felt the rest of the crew observing the planet through the voidhawk’s sensor blisters. There was a collective emission of admiration.
Atlantis was a seamless blue, overlaid with rucked spirals of pure white cloud. There were fewer storms than an ordinary world, where continental and sea winds whipped up high and low air fronts in unceasing turmoil.
Most of the storms below were concentrated in the tropical zones, stirred by the Coriolis effect. Both the polar icecaps were nearly identical circles, their edges amazingly regular.
Ruben, who was sitting in Syrinx’s day cabin in the shape-moulding couch beside her, gripped her hand a fraction tighter. <>
Syrinx knew she was still too tense after every swallow manoeuvre, alert for hostile ships. True navy paranoia. She let the external image bathe her mind, soothing away the old stress habits. The ocean had a delightful sapphire radiance to it. <>
<>
She laughed at the memory of the time he had taught her how to wind surf in that beautiful deserted cove on a resort island. Four—no five years ago. Where did the time go?
Oenone descended into a five-hundred-kilometre orbit, complaining all the while. The planet’s gravity was exerting its inexorable influence over local space, tugging at the stability of the voidhawk’s distortion field, requiring extra power to compensate, a degradation which increased steadily as it approached the surface. When Oenone reached the injection point, it could barely generate half a gee acceleration.
There were over six hundred voidhawks (and thirty-eight blackhawks, Syrinx noted with vague disapproval), and close to a thousand Adamist starships, sharing the same standard equatorial orbit. Oenone’s mass-sensitivity revealed them to Syrinx’s mind like muddy footprints across snow. Every now and then sunlight would flash off a silvered surface betraying their position to the optical sensors. Ground to orbit craft were shuttling constantly between them and the buoyant islands floating far below. She saw that most of them were spaceplanes rather than the newer ion-field craft. There was a quiet background hum in the affinity band as the voidhawks conversed and exchanged astrogation updates.
<> she asked.
<> Oenone replied. <> it added with apparent innocence.
<>
She sensed the affinity link to Eysk opening. They exchanged identity traits. He was fifty-eight years old, a senior in a family business that trawled for fish and harvested various seaweeds then packaged them for transit.
<> Syrinx said.
<> Eysk replied. <>
<>
Mental laughter followed. <>
<>
<>
<>
<>
<> She felt his mind close up slightly as he considered her request.
Ruben crossed his fingers and pulled a face.
<> he declared eventually.
<>
<>
<> She could sense the dismay tweak of the crew at that blasé statement. They had all pooled their navy severance pay, and taken out a big loan option from the Jovian Bank, in the hope of putting together a cargo deal with a Norfolk roseyard-association merchant.
Contrary to the firmly seated Adamist belief, the Jovian Bank did not hand out money to any Edenist on request. Between them, Oenone’s crew had only just scraped together enough fuseodollars for a cash collateral.
<> Eysk said. <>
<>
<> Cacus chipped in.
<> Edwin said eagerly.
<> Eysk said. <>
<>
<>
The affinity link faded.
Syrinx clapped her hands together. Ruben kissed her lightly. “You’re a marvel,” he told her.
She kissed him back. “This is only half the battle. I’m still relying on your contact once we get to Norfolk.”
“Relax, he’s a sucker for seafood.”
<> she called. <>
Joshua hadn’t expected to feel like this. He lived for space, for alien worlds, the hard edge of cargo deals, an unlimited supply of adventurous girls in port cities. But now Tranquillity’s drab matt-russet exterior was filling half of the Lady Mac’s sensor array visualization, and it looked just wonderful. I’m coming home.
A break from Ashly moaning about how much better life was two centuries ago, no more of Warlow’s grumpiness, an end to Dahybi’s fastidious and perfidious attention to detail. Even Sarha was getting stale, free fall didn’t provide an infinite variety of positions after all—and once you’d discounted the sex, there wasn’t much else between them.
Yes, a rest was most definitely what he needed. And he could certainly afford one after that Puerto de Santa Maria run. Harkey’s Bar was going to resemble a pressure blow-out after he hit it this evening.
The rest of the crew were hooked into the flight computer via their neural nanonics, sharing the view. Joshua guided the ship along the vector spaceport traffic control had datavised to him, keeping the ion-thruster burns to a strict minimum. Lady Mac’s mass distribution held no mysteries now, he knew how she would respond to the impact of a single photon.
She settled without a bounce on the cradle, and the hold-down latches clicked home. Joshua joined the rest of them in cheering.
Two serjeants were waiting for him when they came through the rotating pressure seal connecting the spaceport disk with the habitat. He just shrugged lamely at his openmouthed crew as the bitek servitors hauled him towards a waiting tube carriage, all three of them skip gliding in the ten per cent gravity field, his shoulder-bag with its precious contents trailing in the air like a half-inflated balloon.
“I’ll catch up with you tonight,” he called over his shoulder as the door slid shut.
Ione was standing on the platform when it opened again. It was the little station outside her cliff-base apartment.
She was wearing a black dress with cut-away sid
es and a fabulously tight skirt. Her hair was frizzed elaborately.
When he stopped looking at her legs and breasts in anticipation he saw there was a daunting expression on her face.
“Well?” she said.
“Er ...”
“Where is it?”
“What exactly?”
A black shoe with a sharply pointed toe tapped impatiently on the polyp.
“Joshua Calvert, you have spent over eleven months gallivanting around the universe, without, I might point out, sending me a single memory flek to say how you were getting on.”
“Yes. Sorry. Busy, you see.” Jesus, but he wanted to rip that dress off.
She looked ten times more sexy than she did when he replayed the neural nanonic memories. And everywhere he went people were talking about the new young Lord of Ruin. Their fantasy figure was his girl. It just made her all the more desirable.
“So where’s my present?”
He almost did it, he almost said: “I’m your present.” But even as he started grinning he felt that little spike of anxiety inside. He didn’t want anything to foul up this reunion. Besides, she was only a kid, she needed him. So best to leave off the crappy jokes. “Oh, that,” he murmured.
Sea-blue eyes hardened. “Joshua!”
He twisted the catch on his shoulder-bag. She pulled it open eagerly. The sailu blinked at the light, looking up at her with eyes that were completely black and stupendously appealing.
They were described as living gnomes by the first people to see them, thirty centimetres fully grown, with black and white fur remarkably similar to a terrestrial panda. On their home world, Oshanko, they were so rare they were kept exclusively in an imperial reserve. Only the Emperor’s children were allowed to have them as pets. Cloning and breeding programmes were an anathema to the imperial court, they lived by natural selection alone. No official numbers of their population were given, but strong rumour suggested there were less than two thousand of them left.
Despite the bipedal shape, they had a very different skeleton and musculature to terrestrial anthropoids. There were no elbows or knees, their limbs bent along their whole length, making their movements incredibly ponderous. They were herbivores, and, if official AV recordings of the Emperor’s family were to be believed, clingingly affectionate.