The Galaxy Game

by Karen Lord

  He was ridiculously surprised and pleased at the spontaneous invitation. ‘I should say yes,’ he replied sadly. ‘I should say yes and thank you and how soon will you be able to receive us . . . but Galia and I have a special kind of tenure at the Lyceum, a tenure that does not permit us to travel beyond its gates.’

  It was her turn to show surprise and even more sympathy. It was strange how different she became when she was looking out at others rather than focused in on herself, and sad how rare that difference was. Why did people imagine that telepathy always led to closeness? He could see how her seemingly idyllic community had produced an example of such extreme self-absorption and introversion, victim of a runaway survival mechanism.

  After a final formality of courteous farewells, she stood up to leave but took only a few steps towards the door before she hesitated. Before he could ask her what was the matter, she turned and spoke. ‘We have a tradition in Tirtha, something they say we kept from the days when we first came to Cygnus Beta. Whenever we travel, we take with us a piece of home to make sure we return.’

  She approached his desk, put her hand into the side pocket of her tunic and drew out a small grey stone, slightly spheroid and river-smoothed. ‘Here is a stone from the monastery’s pool. When you and Mistress Galia visit the monastery, you must put the stone back into the pool.’

  He stretched out his hand to take the little gift. He rubbed his thumb over its cool surface and tried to find words. There were none to be found, so instead he gave her a grateful nod and, when he could manage it, a small smile that was neither sad nor faltering. She smiled in return, a crooked, self-conscious smile, and left his office for good.

  *

  Serendipity took so long I feared the old boy had taken her captive or something. Not that he looked the type, but . . . pretty little thing like her, schoolmaster who never gets out, it’s a crisis begging to happen, isn’t it? But she came out just as I was working myself up to barge back in, passing me like a queen as she walked quickly down the corridor. No use. I saw her face: calm, yes, but with sorrow-struck eyes.

  ‘Sad, Serendipity? Why? I thought you would celebrate to leave this place.’

  She threw me an exasperated noise, something between a cough and a snarl, and continued walking. I kept up. I always do.

  ‘It’s a long way home and you’re not expected till term-end. Want to come travelling with me?’

  That got me a full look, a look that told me where I could stick my presumption.

  ‘Tlaxce City, maybe even Sadira-on-Cygnus. We could do a mini-tour.’ I was waving my hands like a street thespian, blocking my own sight, so I ran into her when she stopped suddenly.

  ‘Do you know where he is?’ she whispered angrily. Why was she always angry with me?

  ‘I’m going to find out,’ I told her with sudden and complete seriousness.

  She started moving again, her walk slow and thoughtful rather than peeved and imperious. ‘I’ll come with you.’

  As if she would have chosen differently! ‘Pack light,’ I warned her, almost skipping in unashamed glee. ‘We’re flying.’

  *

  I planned my stops and journey times to make sure it was mid-morning when we reached the capital. Day-trippers take over the early-morning hours and I don’t like heavy traffic, ground or air. Not much private commuter air traffic is allowed within city limits, for obvious reasons, but Tlaxce does have the best floating runway in Cygnus Beta, and it’s all for aerolight play. I nearly cried the first time I landed there. The lake inlet was narrow, the buildings looked sharp and greedy and the wind felt far too high – but once you’ve actually done it, it’s easier than a squat in the desert, let me tell you. I expected Serendipity to be a little nervous, but if she was she didn’t want me to have the satisfaction of seeing it. Cruel Serendipity. Never any fun for me, or for herself.

  I had satisfaction enough, having her with me as we made our way to the address for Rafi’s sole legally registered parent. Yes, I liked Serendipity, but beyond that I knew everyone could see she had . . . poise? Dignity? Some indefinable quality which made it less likely that Abowen’s mother would call the police when she saw us? We entered the building easily with our IDs, found the right door and set our feet on the welcome mat. I smiled at the cameras and sensors with all the bright, beaming innocence I could muster as our information went swiftly to the occupants within. The door did not open, but a chime invited us to explain our presence further.

  I pitched my voice smooth, cool and neutral. ‘Good day. We are here to see Rafi Abowen Delarua. Is he available?’

  The welcome mat hummed lightly under our feet as invisible eyes and ears considered us. Time passed. I nudged Serendipity to say something.

  ‘It is of utmost importance that we speak to your son.’ Her voice was firm – too firm. The mat emitted a lower, less welcoming chime, a warning to step off.

  ‘No, wait! We’re not government. We’re his friends.’

  Her words had little effect. The warning chime paused for the space of two calm heartbeats then returned with increasing volume. I skipped quickly to the side, but Serendipity stood for a while glaring at the door. I pulled her away before we accidentally summoned the residence security.

  ‘Appeal to authority has failed; appeal to emotion has failed. I am open to your suggestions,’ I told her.

  She was still glaring, all paralysed with puzzlement, so baffled at being denied. ‘She didn’t even open the door to face us,’ she muttered.

  I thought to myself that if I had spent years of my life living with an inveterate and unrepentant mind-controller, I wouldn’t be too quick to open doors either. ‘She doesn’t know us, Serendipity. What do you expect?’

  Serendipity turned quickly to look at me, suddenly smiling. ‘Of course. Let us go and ask someone who does know me.’

  There was no reason for me to feel worried, no reason at all, but her sharp swerve into enthusiasm was unnerving. In fact, so enthusiastic was she that no further wait would be tolerated. We had to leave for Sadira-on-Cygnus before sunset. She had a cousin, or maybe it was a friend’s cousin, quite close, shared quarters on a three-week trek and didn’t fall out once, and this person, this friendly relative or relative’s friend, was now living a newly-wed life in Sadira-on-Cygnus very near to the Dllenahkh homestead.

  I wasn’t sure where Serendipity’s new energy was coming from, but I was glad to hear she knew a neighbour we could question. Even before we left the Lyceum, I had been sending out multiple comm messages to Rafi’s aunt, messages which remained unanswered. That was a good reason to worry. Grace Delarua did not strike me as a woman who hid behind closed doors until inconvenient visitors went away.

  Of course, we couldn’t leave immediately. I had to draft a new flight plan and submit it to the Tlaxce Airspace Authority, so I coaxed Serendipity into being seen with me in a booth at a traveller’s restaurant where she could eat and relax (or rather, fret) and I could access the tech I needed. It took me a bit longer than I expected, which meant it took a lot longer than her patience could stretch. She ate quickly, ordered several pots of fresh, hot tea to replace the cups I sipped then neglected and began to hover at my back trying to get inside the privacy cone of the monitor. As if she could understand the least little bit of what I was doing! For the first time in our acquaintance I grew genuinely irritated at her.

  ‘Do you want to help?’ I asked her. Ignoring the bad-look she gave me in answer, I continued, ‘Find out from that cousin of yours how long airspace over Sadira-on-Cygnus has been restricted.’

  Curiosity erased her anger in a flash as I pushed my handheld over to her. She wrote for a longish while and finally sent off a message. I’d given up on the flight plan and started researching the cost of hangar space and a groundcar instead. I wasn’t pleased. I was even less pleased when I learned that city regulations required me to have five years of groundcar experience and full taxpayer status, neither of which I had, and which was completely ridiculous
since the nav and autopilot do better than most human drivers and city groundcars are almost impossible to steal.

  ‘Unless you’re as handy with cars as you are with elephants, our choices are getting meagre. We could use the slow, utterly legal and far too traceable public transport, or we might be able to beg or bribe the driver of a private car going in the right direction. Perhaps if we find a driver who likes the way you smile. You do smile sometimes, don’t you, Serendipity?’

  Her face twisted with a combination of worry, distaste and that special grimace she saved for my wit.

  ‘Might need some practice on that,’ I teased her, but it was a weak effort. The monitor pulled away my attention – no, not the monitor, the flight plan I couldn’t use. I stared at it for a long minute, slowly drew nearer, and slowly began to input new data. The results were slightly – very, very slightly – encouraging.

  ‘Would your cousin be willing to meet us halfway?’ I asked. ‘Can she handle a draughtcar?’

  ‘I should think so. She lives on a farming homestead.’

  I began to smile. ‘Ask her to reserve one, my credit to cover the cost. I’ll send her the information if she agrees.’

  So, you see, there was actually a good reason why we drove into the Dllenahkh homestead in a heavy-duty hauler holding my aerolight disassembled and tucked in tight. There was actually a good reason why we were so damn late.

  *

  Two days after the clandestine night swim with a baby mindship, and two days before the unexpected visit of Ntenman and Serendipity to Sadira-on-Cygnus, Rafi found himself once more in Tlaxce City. Hours of driving from the homestead, twenty minutes of travel through the city, ten minutes of waiting for the Consul to acknowledge their presence, seven minutes of sitting outside the Consul’s office with Aunt Grace while Nasiha, Tarik and Dllenahkh tried whatever last-minute persuasion they could find in the depths of their uncomplicated, non-duplicitous Sadiri souls, and there was still no way to stop his hands from sweating. He crumpled the hem of his tunic in his fingers for the tenth time, shifted in his chair and tried not to look furtive.

  ‘Are you all right, dear?’ Aunt Grace asked him, her tone and expression all solicitude. ‘You look like you’ve eaten something indigestible.’

  ‘No, I’m— I—’ He stuttered into silence, already empty of excuses, and tried diversion instead. ‘It’s . . . well, it’s sad, isn’t it? Don’t you feel sad?’

  Grace Delarua, eternal optimist and warrior against grim realities, looked bleak. ‘Yes, it is, and I do. Not that we didn’t expect this would happen, but . . . everything is so uncertain now. It feels like a sentence, not a posting.’ She belatedly bit her lip after the last, hushed words.

  ‘What is Uncle Dllen—?’

  ‘Shh. Not the time or the place.’ She looked past him. There was a small balcony at the end of the corridor, scant standing room for a few people beyond a prettily etched glass door. She stood and went to it, slid the door open and looked back at Rafi.

  He joined her. The rail of the balcony was sun-warm under his hands but the breeze was cool and so was the view – several metres of green garden between the Consulate and the nearest road and a broad stripe of lake blue at the horizon. There was urban noise, but it was not much louder than the breeze and he did not have to strain to hear his aunt’s voice.

  ‘Never mind about Dllenahkh,’ she said. ‘Let’s talk about you. You haven’t really told me what you’re doing. You do know your mother hasn’t cooled off yet?’

  ‘Mmhm . . . yes . . .’ he admitted unwillingly.

  ‘And I am not letting you wander around the City by yourself. You’re not a Tlaxce collegian, not yet.’ She shuddered slightly at collegian, as if glimpsing a terrible fate.

  ‘Um, no—’

  ‘So what am I to tell the Lyceum when they finally notice you’re missing?’

  ‘All I need is time. Can’t we dodge them for a few more weeks? Then I’ll have the freedom to go where I want.’

  His aunt stared silently at the dual-blue horizon for a long moment before answering. ‘After today I don’t know if I’ll ever see Nasiha again. Freyda wants to go to Punartam no matter what Lanuri says, and though she hasn’t told me, I know she’s been discussing the possibilities with people at Qeturah’s research institute. Tarik’s been talking about going to one of the taSadiri communities of Masuf Lagoon . . . that’s in Vaya where Joral is, near Piedra. I don’t know what to do. Everyone is scattering. Everyone’s trying to find a place where they can do as they want and go as they please. Remember when we said we’d travel the world together?’

  He felt helplessly sad after her depressing summary. ‘Whatever I do, wherever I’m going, I’ll write,’ he said weakly.

  She eyed him, clearly vexed, but at the situation rather than at him. ‘I’ll hold you to that. I know there’s no good news being spoken in the Consul’s office, so please God may your words be more than an empty promise.’

  She exhaled a long breath, straightening her back and relaxing her shoulders as if shrugging off a burden. ‘Very well. Go and become an adult. Make some choices, make some mistakes, but survive as best you can. If you need help and I can’t come to you, I’ll send help.’ She gave him a look of fond pride, but it was quickly taken over by a frown of slow-dawning understanding and concern as he scrubbed his palms dry on his tunic yet again. ‘You’re scared. We all are. I’m sorry.’

  He gave a bitter laugh. ‘I want to blame somebody, but it’ll never be you.’

  The Consul’s door opened, gliding silently on well-lubricated tracks. He saw the motion from the edge of his vision, heard the footfalls on the corridor’s tiled floor and noted how the tension returned to Aunt Grace’s shoulders. She nudged him, urging him back indoors, and slid the balcony door shut behind them.

  For a while no one moved or said anything. If Aunt Grace was tense, the three Sadiri standing in the corridor were almost brittle with masked emotion. One touch and Tarik would snap, one word and Nasiha would crumble, and judging by his aunt’s deep and careful breathing, Dllenahkh was on the verge of flying into a fury. When Dllenahkh’s voice broke the silence at last, it was deep and slow, with a vibration that was not the least calming. It frayed the nerve endings like the sizzle of incipient lightning.

  ‘Let us be on our way. The Consul has very kindly provided a driver to escort Commander Nasiha to the spaceport, and we shall go with her to say our farewells.’

  *

  The transit to the spaceport was too long for silence and staring at the back of the driver’s head and too short for getting scattered thoughts in a sensible row. Rafi sweated. He sweated and he worried and he tried to catch his aunt’s attention, but she was staring at her feet with wide, glazed eyes. Tarik and Nasiha sat in the very back, hands and heads touching, occasionally whispering to each other in voices that held no trace of tears. How long had they prepared for this day? Was it easier to have warning of one’s leaving, or to go without anticipation or anxiety like the irrevocable shift of sudden death?

  He had never been inside the spaceport before. He wished for a wrist comm that could be compass and map in the bewildering twist and sprawl of buildings, channels and walkways that coiled around the sky-stabbing spire, a spire so tall it dominated both the Tlaxce skyline and the littoral so that whether you looked at it from amid buildings or over water, it similarly met the viewer’s scrutiny with an immediate sense of falling and fear. It did provide a kind of falling, falling upwards, past cloud and hazy sunshine to the invisible presence of the orbital quarantine station, casually known as Stage One.

  They disembarked from the car at a terminal entrance from which no pedestrian egress would be allowed and watched as the Consulate driver departed. Then, with one obligatory neck-craning glance at the terminal’s tip, they went into a high-ceilinged hall.

  To Rafi’s homesteader eyes, all was confusion. There was a wealth and variety of technology he had never used nor even seen used, and people walking with busy p
urpose from one place to another. As he stared, he felt a hand settle on his shoulder. When he looked up, half-expecting it to be Aunt Grace, it was Commander Nasiha. She gave him one questioning look; he replied with a slow, hesitant nod. He felt his heartbeat pounding in his throat.

  She bent to his ear. ‘Stay close by me,’ was all she said, but it calmed the painful beat from a gallop to a canter. Resolve strengthened, he nodded again and followed in silence.

  The crowd grew more densely packed farther into the hall. Small groups in the throes of goodbye stood at the margins while the larger mass ambled patiently in line along a broad causeway running under an arch. The raised floor flashed with coloured lights; travellers checked their wrist comms to find a match and dutifully selected their allotted route out of several that branched off into the passenger hall beyond the grand arch. Many were destined for the other side of Cygnus Beta on sub-orbital flights, some for a period of work or recreation on an orbital installation, and the remainder for Stage One, gateway to Punartam, the nearest galactic travel hub.

  ‘Aunt Grace,’ he said. ‘I’m going to leave now with the Commander. I’m going to another province. Maybe Vaya, since Joral’s there.’

  She breathed in, sudden and sharp, and gave him a look of pain and shock. Of course – after bracing herself for her friend’s departure she had no reserves for this fresh bond-breaking, a possibility discussed barely an hour before. ‘Now?’ she whispered, the word faltering under the weight of emotion.

  He nodded, unable to trust his own voice.

  Dllenahkh drew closer to his wife and placed a comforting hand on her back. ‘You have credit?’ he asked his nephew.

  Rafi nodded again. ‘A little . . . my student allowance.’

  ‘Don’t use it. That can be easily traced,’ he explained. ‘We can pay your fare out of the homestead’s Cygnian credit account. We always have people travelling in and out; they deposit galactic credit into our account and we make purchases on their behalf with the equivalent credit in Cygnian. It will not be noticed.’