The Telemass Quartet
Page 32
“She’ll come to love you,” he said.
They were silent for a time, and then Hendrick said, “Do you know what I want to do when we get back to Earth?”
“Go on.”
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing. The past few years . . . they’ve been hell. I’ve seen enough of the Expansion to last me a lifetime. I want to find somewhere quiet and secluded, spend time with you, watch Sam grown up, and appreciate what I’ve got.”
“That sounds good to me, Matt.”
The thought of doing nothing for a while, simply enjoying life in the company of the people he loved most—it wasn’t too much to wish for, was it?
Mercury pointed through the sliding window. “Anyway, I came to say that it’s dinner time. Pascal has rustled up something beamed in from Paris a few days ago. And I’ve moved the table so you can look in on Sam as we eat.”
Hendrick glanced through the window, to where Pascal and Akio were sitting on rattan chairs, drinks in hand, chatting and staring out over the lake.
He followed Mercury outside and joined his friends on the verandah.
In the morning they took a flier to the spaceport, Samantha still sedated on a stretcher. The doctor was in attendance as she was transferred onto the shuttle, and Hendrick thanked Pascal, said farewell, and followed Mercury up the steps.
He sat next to his daughter as she slept; across the aisle, Akio was telling Mercury how much he was looking forward to returning to Tokyo.
Hendrick held Samantha’s hand and stared through the port at the lake-dappled jungle of Beltran as the shuttle powered up and took
off.
“Daddy.”
He turned quickly. Samantha was smiling at him. “Daddy, Mummy is dead, isn’t she?”
He hesitated, then said, “You know?”
“She told me what was going to happen, but I really didn’t want her in my head.”
He squeezed her hand. “She isn’t in your head, poppet. Or rather, what is in your head are . . . are pleasant memories of her.”
She smiled at him. “Where are we going?”
“Earth,” he said, “and then . . .”
“Yes?”
“Wherever you would like to go, Samantha.”
She frowned, sleepily, as the biomonitor at her temple kicked in and administered a sedative. “Mmm . . . I think I would like a holiday on Mars,” she said, and closed her eyes and slept.
A month at a resort on the slopes of Olympus Mons, he thought. Why not?
He stared out at the rapidly diminishing jungle, stared out at the undulating green mass of treetops and brilliant blue lakes. He considered the Vhey, who had brought his daughter back from the dead, and who had killed his ex-wife for their own inscrutable ends.
He watched his daughter as she slept, then looked across the aisle at Mercury who was smiling at him.
He returned her smile, then closed his eyes and sat back as the shuttle carried him away from the planet and the Vhey, for ever.
ERIC BROWN began writing when he was fifteen while living in Australia and sold his first short story to Interzone in 1986. He has won the British Science Fiction Award twice for his short stories, has published over fifty books, and his work has been translated into sixteen languages. His latest books include the SF novel Jani and the Greater Game, the collection Strange Visitors, and the crime novel Murder at the Chase. He writes a regular science fiction review column for the Guardian newspaper and lives near Dunbar, East Lothian. His website can be found at: www.ericbrown.co.uk.
Famadihana on Fomalhaut IV copyright © 2015 by Eric Brown
Sacrifice on Spica III copyright © 2015 by Eric Brown
Reunion on Alpha Reticula II copyright © 2016 by Eric Brown
Exalted on Bellatrix 1 copyright © 2017 by Eric Brown
All rights reserved by Eric Brown. The right of Eric Brown to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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