They did so, going in to the lounge where after-dinner drinks were being served. Guests were seated in the many conversational groupings, moving between groups occasionally to keep the conversation fluid. The only one who didn’t move was Shion, installed on another stone bench like a living statue. People went to talk to her, though, with a few chairs placed conveniently for conversation. Alex saw Min there, speaking to the enthroned chamlorn with a deference she would never have shown to the Lt, and that made him smile, inwardly.
Migan was across the room, talking with Bennet and looking a question over at Alex, as he returned from taking the call that was so important it had interrupted a royal event. He was not the only one to look at him for any clue as to what that had been about, but she was the only one he noticed.
His smile, though brief, assured her that everything was fine, and he began, with that, to work his way around the room, aiming to get to Migan without doing anything so boorish as to walk straight to her ignoring everybody else.
He was on his third conversational group when A/S Glyn took the opportunity to speak with him.
‘I wanted to tell you, sir – in person,’ he told him, as they walked together from one ornate sofa grouping to the next, ‘that I am considering…’ he hesitated, looking at the captain with apology and appeal in his eyes, ‘thinking of staying, sir.’
Alex could not have said he was surprised, and he certainly couldn’t blame him. Reconnecting with his family would have been a powerful experience for Owun, even without finding himself Glyn ip Glyn and a global celebrity. He had done what he had dreamed of as a boy, gone out and seen the stars. And now he was home, with so many wonderful options open to him. He would be a fool not to give that serious thought.
‘I understand,’ said Alex. ‘Though you may want to wait until we know where we’re going next before you make a final decision.’
He said that to evaluate just how firmly the rating’s mind was made up, and saw it, in Owun’s reaction. Owun knew perfectly well that what Alex meant there was that there was a chance they might go out to those coordinates and meet the Chethari. First contact, the biggest prize, the biggest thrill, in any spacer’s wish-list. But there was no longing, no uncertainty on Owun’s face.
‘I’m thinking of going to university, sir,’ he explained. ‘To study linguistics.’ He gave a little laugh. ‘Getting a doctorate. And the Diplomatic Corps has asked if I’d be interested in working with them on consultancy, getting ready for quarians to visit.’ He looked at Alex, the decision clear in his eyes – the appeal here was not for guidance, but for understanding – he didn’t want Alex to think that he was jumping ship.
‘Yes, of course,’ said Alex. ‘Both good choices, and I won’t be so selfish as to try to talk you out of it. Well done, Mr Glyn – you are, and I am sure you will continue to be, a credit to us. And there will always be a berth for you in the Fourth, should you ever change your mind.’
‘The ip Glyn looked as if he was going to cry there, for a moment,’ Migan observed, when he joined her a couple of minutes later.
‘And that was quite some handshake,’ Eldovan commented. ‘Thought he might hug you there, just for a second!’
Alex smiled. ‘He’s leaving Fleet service,’ he explained, at which Eldovan gave an exaggerated Tsk!
‘This planet,’ she said, ‘is like a black hole for Fleet careers. Get too close, let it suck you in, and vvvvp!’
It was, perhaps, this slightly tactless remark which caused Migan to comment, as they were on their way back to the croff, ‘That Eldovan… you two seem very friendly.’
‘We are,’ Alex confirmed, an equally insensitive remark which caused Migan’s eyes to narrow slightly.
She had no cause for suspicion; possessiveness was stupid when their time together was measured in days. But since when had that ever prevented pangs of resentment in a lover suspecting that their partner was moving on to someone else.
‘Just your type, too, I’d have thought,’ she said.
Alex had not really been paying full attention to what she was chatting about, till then, but he heard the tiny drip of acid in the apparently casual tone, turned his head to look at her in surprise, and laughed.
‘She’s a friend,’ he said. ‘And quite apart from the fact that I am in command authority over her right now so it would be grounds for court martial for us to breach that professional relationship, even setting all that aside, I would not be interested in Eldovan that way, and she would certainly not, ever, be interested in me. Or did you miss the fact that it was you she kept looking at?’
‘Oh.’ Migan said, and as that sank in, ‘Oh!’ She laughed. ‘Stupid!’ she apostrophised herself. ‘Never even thought.’ She gave him a look, then, which held apology for her momentary jealousy. ‘Am I allowed to ask,’ she queried, changing tack to safer ground, ‘what the call was that took you out of the dinner, or is it an ‘I would have to shoot you’ thing?’
Alex hesitated. She had been given eight ack beta security clearance, so he could talk to her freely about most things.
‘Fleet stuff,’ he said. ‘The Third Lord of the Admiralty has resigned in embarrassing circumstances. And that will be pretty much all that the Fleet is talking about, for sure, for months. So if you really don’t mind my not getting into all the ins and outs of it...’
Migan chuckled. ‘Ins and outs?’ She shook her head. ‘Really, Alex.’ And while he was still laughing, she assumed a prim respectability, ‘I am sure,’ she said, ‘that we can find more interesting things to talk about than Fleet politics.’
She was right.
Eighteen
Migan was with him next day, too, when they visited the Chambers.
That was the Finduri prince’s doing. The visit had originally been intended as a private trip with her as Alex’s escort, but the prince had, with great tact, made it known that she would not be in the least offended if Alex chose to visit the Chambers with Migan, instead.
Migan had, she’d been obliged to admit, never been. Despite having spent all her thirty four years on Camae with the Chambers the undisputed biggest attraction on the planet, she had never quite got around to going there, herself. And she would not, Alex sensed, have gone as much as five minutes out of her way to see it, even then, if it hadn’t been for the fact that she was going there with him.
He got an inkling as to why as the car they were in came slowly down to land at the visitor’s car park.
Tensions between religious and secular life on Camae had never been more obvious than they were right there on the slopes below the entrance to the Chambers. This was, for believers, the most sacred site on the planet, a relic of the time of Angels. There had to be, he thought, at least a hundred and fifty temples there, competing for the pilgrims who came here, every day, by the hundred thousand. Getting married at a Chambers temple was very popular, and there’d be at least three hundred weddings celebrated there on any ordinary day. The picnic site, too, was enormous – Alex took it for some kind of music festival, at first, before realising that that mass of people covering the hillside were actually families having their picnics. As they got closer it became apparent that some of them were celebrating weddings, with everyone in their best clothes, a floral arch for the happy couple to sit in and hundreds of white and gold balloons.
Fighting the temples and the picnic grounds for space, though, were other buildings, dominated by an aggressively ugly block which looked like offices. This was the headquarters of Camag Heritage, the historic authority which had site-ownership and management of the Chambers. They controlled access, and as far as they were concerned this was an archaeological site which they were responsible for protecting.
They certainly took their responsibilities seriously. There was only one entrance to the Chambers, across a wide concourse and through an impressive arch which had been built in front of the actual cave. There were barriers, here – ticket controls, air-blasts, shoe cleaning and security checks of a kind Al
ex hadn’t seen elsewhere on Camae. And even though arrangements had been made for their visit and they were smoothed right through all the gates, Alex could see that it might take a good half hour for people to get through them, even without the long queues which would form at busy times.
Once inside the cave, you were directed to platforms from which land-train carriages would take you the four and a half kilometres down into the mountain to the Chambers themselves.
The ride was very slow – fifteen minutes, during which the screens in the carriage played a holo about the discovery of the Chambers, two thousand, four hundred and eighty six years before. They had shown up in some of the earliest scans the Camag had taken of their world from orbit, long before first contact with the League. Hinted at first as a gravitic anomaly, they had been later defined by ground penetrating radar and subsequently entered by an army caving team.
Facts and figures came streaming out – the size of the Chambers, how many millions of homes could be stacked inside them, the science which had determined they had been formed four hundred and sixty thousand years ago, nearly half a million years before the human record began on this planet. Whether it was angels who’d made them or an unknown race pre-dating humanity, well, that was a matter for debate. But the word ‘angels’ did not appear in Camag Heritage’s visitor guides, any more than the word ‘aliens.’
The Chambers themselves were, as uncountable people had observed over the centuries, really nothing more than big holes.
Very big holes. An observation gantry had been built out into the first of them so that you disembarked onto a platform, walked through a deliberately low and confining tunnel, then emerged into immensity.
Alex stood looking at a hole in the rock which was more than three kilometres long and nearly two kilometres high. It was a perfect ovoid. Its surface was what geologists called country rock, the limestone of which these mountains were formed. But the first few centimetres depth of rock had been metamorphosed into a very much harder and shinier quartzite. The only natural process known to cause that metamorphic crusting was the passage of magma through a country rock. But there was no volcanism here, and nothing natural about these Chambers. The first one was pierced with oval openings midway up its sides, themselves large enough to fit a gunboat through, leading in to a further five chambers. This was not even the biggest.
The sheer size of it was awe-inspiring, to be sure, and the mysterious design was enthralling. Alex had come prepared to stand in wonder, trying to imagine who had made these Chambers, and for what purpose.
In the event, though, a wondering reverie really wasn’t an option.
For one thing, it was virtually impossible to see past the provision which had been made here for visitors. Walkways had been built throughout the Chambers, carefully cradled at any point they absolutely had to touch the ground. Lighting was provided from these gantries, with a continuously shifting series of spotlights illuminating the space. Air processing units hummed throughout, not only to provide fresh air for the visitors but to dehumidify the air from their breath and suck up any particles of dust they might shed. The walkways had been so placed that at any time they were close enough for even the longest-armed person to come close to touching a wall there was a transparent barrier between them, but even so they considered it necessary to have signs everywhere saying Please do not attempt to touch the Walls, along with others reminding people that eating and drinking was forbidden, and to please be considerate of others in the volume of their voices and their use of cameras.
Alex had not seen any other venue on Camae so strict and proscriptive, and the more the tour went on, the more convinced he became that Camag Heritage was like the Camag equivalent of the LIA. Not that they were an intelligence service, but culturally, there were striking similarities. Paranoia, for one, and an obsessive need for control. Even the modest hum which was being made by the few thousand visitors there at their arrival was making Camag Heritage personnel frown disapprovingly. Alex saw one of their people, in their distinctive yellow-ochre uniforms, hurrying over to a family with a shouty child, evidently with the intention of asking them to quiet the child, or leave. They had people everywhere, too, a ‘guide’ at every level of the walkway. Alex did not get the impression that this level of staffing, or the repressive atmosphere, was because of his visit. This was just how things were.
And even if he had been able to look beyond that and find some inner quiet to contemplate this marvel, he was not allowed to do so. The Director of the Chambers site had been waiting for them and was giving them a personally conducted tour. He had barely paused for breath since they got out of the car. Facts and figures flowed from him like a visitor-information interface which had got stuck on ‘regurgitate all known facts’ and could not be interrupted now that it was going.
Alex had a headache by the time they re-emerged into the daylight. And it was ten minutes, even then, before he could get the Director to stop saying goodbye to him.
He and Migan retreated over the concourse, walking quickly.
‘Don’t look back,’ said Migan. ‘Or he’ll come after us.’
Alex didn’t laugh, or speak, but he reached out for her hand and picked up the pace just a fraction, making her chuckle as they made a break for it.
Heading back to where their car and driver was waiting for them, though, Migan slowed.
‘Come on,’ she said, with a grin, ‘let’s go join a picnic.’
Alex chuckled. Migan had been reduced to hooting hilarity by his informing her that he had brought a lunch basket so that the two of them could enjoy the picnic which was evidently part of the Chambers experience. Any family, she said, seeing one or two people sitting down at a picnic site like that, would gulp them up immediately – this just wasn’t a venue where a couple might be left to themselves.
‘All right,’ he said, and knew better by then than to suggest they might take their own lunch basket, or offer to share it with their hosts.
‘We’ll drop in on a wedding, okay?’ Migan said, already towing him along the path which fragmented out over the hillside. There were green lawns and paths as far as the eye could see, though practically every square metre of green seemed to be covered by people having picnics. ‘Strangers are lucky at weddings.’
They walked for a while, till Migan picked a wedding party that she liked the look of. Had this been any other world, security would be having fits by now. They were red-zoning, and then some, walking through a very large crowd like this. But Alex had already learned that Camag security would consider this normal. And the crowd, too, those who saw them, merely smiled and pretended not to realise who they were. They were rather more curious, Alex noted, about Migan than they were about him. The media had revealed that Captain von Strada was spending time with a local woman, but that she preferred to remain private, so there was keen interest in seeing the lady who was walking with him, holding his hand. But even at that, they were very polite, very discreet, with sidelong glances and smiles, no open staring or talking about her.
They were made very welcome at the wedding, too. They introduced themselves to the head of the bride’s family, an affable man who was already beaming with pleasure at the success of the picnic. Such events could be a nervous time, with heated wrangling over preparations and some tension over whether various disreputable relatives could be trusted to behave themselves. But it had all come together in the end, both families were behaving as well as he could have hoped, the food was great, the young couple was happy and the verdict on the day would undoubtedly be that it had been lovely.
Alex thought it was, anyway. Picnics on Camae were an all year, all weather event, and they were well equipped. A groundsheet was laid down, big enough for the whole family to sit on. If it was cold, windy, raining or too hot, inflatable sides and canopy roof could be set up as required. They even brought their own portaloos, picnic toilets in pop up tents.
Beyond that, the gear was typically eclectic – inflatable and
folding picnic chairs and tables, chillers, grills, family sports gear and toys – lots of toys, always, scattered about as if there were at least five times the numbers of kids actually there.
For a wedding like this, the food set out on the folding buffet tables was a step up from the salads and pies which were normal picnic fare, and the buffet table itself was adorned with wedding-themed tablecloth and a host of the ubiquitous balloons. And over at one end there was a floral arch with a love-seat for the happy couple.
Alex and Migan kissed the young newlyweds for luck, helped themselves from the buffet and sat down where there was space at a table. As Alex had come to expect, now, nobody asked any questions. But they were all, also as he’d come to expect, keen to tell their guests about themselves and their own lives. Great Great Uncle Gernt, indeed, finding a brand new audience for his family stories, would have rambled on happily for hours.
Alex would have let him, too. This kind of family life was as alien to him as any exo-planet, and he had the true traveller’s zest for a genuine, full immersion experience, meeting local people and finding out about their lives, the way they saw their world. The visit to the Chambers themselves had been a disappointment – a headache inducing disappointment – but he would never forget this picnic, the radiant couple, the tasty food – even Great Great Uncle Gert’s wedding stories, like the time the bus broke down, the time the bride didn’t show up, and that time Little Ger – now a solid, suited office worker – had widdled on the flowers.
‘I think,’ said Alex, when they had thanked their hosts and were strolling up to Temple Ridge, ‘that you may have a problem – an issue, anyway,’ he grinned at her, ‘something to bear in mind when working out your statistical projections of future housing needs.’ They had already talked about the numbers of visitors Alex himself was predicting, as worlds within easy reach heard about Silvie’s visit and the liner companies raced in ships to meet demand. ‘If you make people this welcome,’ he observed, ‘A significant number of them are just not going to leave.’
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