by Karen Lord
Cygnus Beta had no objections. Sadira-on-Cygnus had no objections. New Sadira grudgingly offered no objections pending later authorisation by their government. The pilots applauded the move and pledged their support and assistance. After that, Zhinu A promptly offered no objections but the other Zhinuvian observers looked a little nervous, as if they were not sure what it all meant.
Then the Ntshune delegate explained the basis for the transit system and the huge hall rang with voices of alarm. I exhaled slowly, trying to control the urge to giggle. Serendipity’s face was a picture of bewilderment. I sighed. I wanted shock but she was clearly out of her depth.
‘Don’t you remember that the airspace over Sadira-on-Cygnus is restricted?’ I hinted. ‘Why is that, do you think?’
‘Because surface-to-surface transit isn’t permit— Ohhh.’
‘Exactly. Since the Great Galactic War, we’ve only allowed spaceships to come as close as orbit. We screen and process everyone before bringing them to the surface using our own transportation. The Ntshune want to resurrect the old surface transits.’
Finally some order was returned to the cacophony. One of the Zhinuvian observers had passed from mere nervousness to outright panic, seizing the floor to inform everyone what an incredibly dangerous and terrible idea it was. I smiled and watched him rant, and was more than satisfied when the Punarthai delegate, our own dear Patrona, took the floor next to inform the gathering that the technology and data the Zhinuvian cartels had taken by force from the Academes would inevitably allow said cartels to construct their own surface transits, with predictably bad results for everyone else’s commerce and security. Everyone looked at the Zhinuvians suspiciously, and the delegate for Zhinu A took the opportunity to calmly state that their position had not changed. Zhinu A would not offer any objections and, like the pilots, was willing to offer support and assistance. Splendid confusion amid the Zhinuvian observers! Smug insouciance from the Zhinu A delegate! I caught myself rubbing my hands together in glee, like a villain in an opera rustica. Serendipity gaped at me as if I was going mad, but it was pure entertainment!
The Ntshune delegate then spoke again, accepting the concerns raised and stating that to mitigate those concerns, they wished to make the new transit system a truly galactic project with input and oversight from every planetary government. To that end, they were inviting Punarthai academics, Sadiri pilots and the transportation specialists of Zhinu A to come to Ntshune and establish a base there which would be neutral territory, a true galactic port.
The Primary House buzzed again, less loudly than before but with a telling intensity as one by one delegates spoke their agreement and acceptance with such speed and equanimity that it was obvious pre-Meeting negotiations had taken place. The Consul of New Sadira and the Zhinuvian observers were helpless to intervene as they lacked any authorisation. I think they had assumed the Meeting would be all about the cartels. Ntshune was light-years ahead of them.
Serendipity laughed behind her hand, finally catching the adrenalin of the moment. ‘Has no one realised that the Ntshune delegate just got near-unanimous approval to create a galactic capital?’
I gave her a wide-eyed stare. I had not realised, and she had shocked me, not the other way around. We leaned against each other, giggling ridiculously as if the entire caper was some Lyceum prank we had cooked up ourselves. Giddy with our new camaraderie, I wondered whether I could persuade her to come with us to the new centre of the galaxy, to Ntshune.
*
Delarua raised her hand to touch the door, paused and let it drop. ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’
Rafi folded his arms and nodded firmly. ‘Yes, I’m sure.’
She examined his face for a long moment and sighed. ‘Very well.’
She pressed her hand to the door. Maria had disposed of the welcome mat – Delarua wasn’t sure why – and programmed the door to announce a very narrow range of visitors. She hoped she was still on the list.
Maria herself opened the door, already looking at her sister with a tired expression, but her eyes widened in shock as she noticed Rafi. For a moment she simply froze and stared at him as her eyes grew shiny with unshed tears.
‘You’ve grown so tall,’ she whispered at last.
‘Please—’ He stopped, swallowed. ‘Will you let me in?’
*
He had come back to say I love you and goodbye. Delarua understood that. It had taken her a while to forgive him for not using the comm to contact her, and for timing his message so badly and addressing it so vaguely that it had arrived days after they left for Tlaxce City and was probably still sitting at the Grand Bay clearing house in a general pile for ‘the Dllenahkh homestead’. But when she calmed down enough to seriously consider what kind of future he would have on Cygnus Beta, she understood that he could not and would not stay.
Delarua watched Maria gazing at Rafi as he played a game with Gracie and swiftly, painfully realised that Maria did not understand.
She spoke a little louder than usual, to catch everyone’s attention. ‘When will you be leaving for Ntshune, Rafi?’
He was startled. ‘Ntshune?’
Delarua softened her voice. ‘Yes. Didn’t you know? Or . . . will you be staying here?’
He bowed his head. Maria looked bewildered, then distressed. Gracie glanced fearfully from face to face, understanding nothing.
‘If that’s where my friends are going, then yes,’ he said. Before Maria had time to react, he said to her, ‘You could come with me, both of you. Please?’
Delarua saw the moment when Maria’s yearning towards her son met her antipathy against all psionically gifted societies. The opposing desires struggled briefly, then the antipathy won with a visible recoil. ‘It’s not a place for people like us,’ she said stiffly.
Rafi’s face fell.
Delarua felt a pang and knew it was partly guilt for raising the topic, standing aside and seeing what would result. She rushed to tell the rest of the story. ‘Don’t worry, Maria. He’ll be travelling a lot in his job, and I’m sure we can expect to see him occasionally.’
‘Of course,’ Rafi agreed hastily, looking at her worriedly. What travel in what job? his eyes asked her frantically.
If you paid attention to things you would know, her exasperated expression replied. She had seen him sitting near the Patrona and the Dean for a short while during the morning session, which had led to her finding him minutes later in the corridor and taking him by the scruff of the neck, to the amusement and bemusement of various onlookers. She had been present for part of the earlier negotiations with Ntshune delegates, Punarthai academics and the pilots of Grand Bay. He had enough time to tell her about his training as a nexus and how that related to transits. For a young man with direct access to a lot of information, he was incredibly bad at connecting the pieces.
‘I’d like to visit Ntshune,’ Gracie said suddenly.
Rafi laughed, his face brightening with relief. ‘You will, Gracie. Sooner than you realise. Soon everyone will be able to go anywhere they want to, faster than any Zhinuvian transport.’
‘Don’t get carried away,’ Delarua muttered, but she could not help smiling.
Chapter Fourteen
‘The modern ice age on Ntshune has been of such intensity and duration as to rival anything that the worlds of the civilised galaxy, crafted or bioformed, has seen. Ice covers the entirety of our planet’s land mass. Even at the equator the ocean remains oozy with slush and crowded with icebergs. Nevertheless, Janojya, our capital city, stays warm and lively within the shelter of a massive biodome. We are located several metres under ice at the base of a tamed shield volcano. A steady outflow of water is heated by the city’s excess energy and poured into the nearest sea where it keeps a channel ice-free for mindships and orbital shuttles to splashdown.
‘This has been an era of change. Improvements in bioforming technology, emigration to Punartam, even the Great Galactic War – it all came from this ice age. The Ntshune
know what it means for a civilisation to lose what we most take for granted: a stable and favourable planetary atmosphere.’
It was fine diplomatic language, but Rafi was only paying partial attention to their guide. He had arrived mere weeks earlier, the city was busy and there was a lot to see. Janojya boasted a more homogeneous population with the expected traits: curly hair, dark long-lashed eyes and average frames. There were no broad-boned Sadiri, and none of the long-limbed giants Punartam sometimes produced, although he did catch a glimpse of something that could have been a distant cousin of the ostrich-like creature he had seen once on his first day in the Metropolis and never again. He wondered if they were bioengineered, and if they were pets, companions or more.
The architecture was interesting, but logical considering the protection of the dome. Most buildings were U-shaped, cradling small gardens within their curves. There were no roofs, and walls and floors were often translucent and sometimes transparent. People moved like tiny shadow-puppets within their lit honeycombs, and each glowing cell added to the ambient brightness.
Ixiaral abruptly veered from the path, apologising hastily to their guide as she grabbed Rafi’s arm. ‘You must see this,’ she said, almost childlike in her eagerness.
This was a huge grassy mount almost at the centre of the city’s dome, whether natural or artificial, Rafi could not tell. It took time to ascend the steps cut spiral around its sides, but Rafi saw no other option and Ixiaral did not offer any. When they reached the top, she tumbled onto her back and raised an arm to point at the apex of the biodome.
‘Do you see that? Where the ice is transparent?’
He lay down beside her and squinted along her pointing finger. The biodome surface was faintly purple and the ice showed mainly blue, but there was a faint pattern like water rings pushing out from the lightest patch of blue.
‘That’s the thinnest point of ice,’ she said as proudly as if she had made it herself. ‘It appeared twenty Standard years ago. The ice is melting.’
His gaze flashed from the pale blue window to her excited face. ‘How many more years?’
‘Less than five hundred. We could make it sooner, I suppose. Most biotechs don’t like to tamper too much with crafted worlds. They’d rather experiment somewhere else, just in case.’
Rafi looked again at the translucent spot. Serendipity had said something about Ntshune positioning itself for a rise in galactic importance. Five hundred years sounded like a good stretch of time to plan and carry out a long-term domination so gentle and gradual that it would be nearly undetectable, and thus unstoppable. He could imagine the expansion and strengthening when Ntshune finally regained their land surface. And yet . . . they were so quiet. Their way of living was unusually simple, with all major technology saved for the maintenance of the city and for research. Essential needs were taken care of, but there were no open expressions of personal luxury or extravagance.
He sat up and glanced down at the city. Their guide, temporarily abandoned at the foot of the mount, walked back and forth and looked up occasionally, but he was waiting, patiently and courteously, until they returned and needed his services once more, or until they gave him a proper farewell. He could have been an ordinary citizen whose most significant work was to flip the switches on the sewage treatment plant, or a retired scientist of great renown who felt like strolling through the city and decided to take along some newcomers as a gesture of kindness. It was difficult to tell. In some respects, the concept of hierarchy was so absent in the society that it was considered rude to introduce yourself with the accomplishments of your line and your name. In other ways, hierarchy was part of everything, unconscious and automatic. The social credit was there, but it was never discussed, like any gross but necessary function of human existence not to be mentioned in polite company. Rafi wondered if the Ntshune were secretly ashamed of not having yet achieved a fully egalitarian and currency-free civilisation.
Farther out, the view told more tales about the society. Buildings encircled gardens, but clusters of buildings were themselves encircled by parks, thin stretches of wilderness where the Ntshune fought to preserve the original flora of pre-ice days. Each cluster was a domain dedicated to a particular dynastic or industry, and sometimes both. Their own cluster, the new site for the survivors of Sadira’s mindship fleet and Punartam’s seized Academes, stood far from the centre, but still auspiciously placed as a matter of courtesy and an expression of hope for the success of the Transit Project.
Ixiaral shot up suddenly, her face serious. ‘The Patrona needs us. Let’s go.’
Rafi regarded her jealously. Punartam audioplugs were as useless here as Cygnian comms, but Ixiaral still had some kind of connection via the tracing on her skin. They hastened down the mount and took time to thank their guide and bid him farewell before rushing to the nearest canal transport. Janojya was compact enough to travel by foot, but going cluster to cluster was easiest via the waterways in the wilds.
The Patrona had chosen a huge workroom with clear walls and floor. It was too large to feel like a glass cage, but it did give most people a sense of vertigo, something Rafi suspected the Patrona secretly liked and used to her advantage. At the moment, she was sitting on the large, thick mat of the central dais, surrounded by hanging screens and a chatter of disembodied voices speaking schedules and logistics into the air. She looked far calmer than he would have expected.
‘Rafi, Ixiaral, take a seat,’ she said, waving at the floor.
He looked around, grabbed a large cushion and sat on a smaller dais in front of her. Ixiaral found a small mat and sat cross-legged beside her mentor and boss.
‘I am completing the list of Punarthai for the Recorder of the Ntshune dynasties. Are you from Punartam, or are you from Cygnus Beta?’
Rafi could not hide his confusion. ‘I am originally from Cygnus Beta, as you know, Esteemed Patrona.’
‘Yes, Rafi, we do know, but you must choose a single place of origin while you are here,’ Ixiaral explained.
Rafi sat and pondered. On Cygnus Beta he had the benefit of adult status, but on Punartam he had the benefit of not being on the government’s wanted list. ‘Punartam,’ he said firmly. ‘That makes sense. Ixiaral’s still my nexus, isn’t she?’
‘Things are different here,’ Ixiaral said. ‘I no longer have my old networks, and I need to see where they will place me in the new structure.’
‘In other words,’ the Patrona said, ‘Ixiaral’s speciality is spotting opportunities to make money off the Game to fund our research, and that skill isn’t needed now. The dynasty has work for her in another area, if she is prepared to take it up.’
Ixiaral tensed, as if bracing for either good news or bad. The Patrona simply smiled at her, a small but proud smile, and Ixiaral glowed, apparently understanding the unspoken message and finding it very much to her liking.
‘But you, Rafi, have a skill that makes you a valuable part of the Transit Project research team,’ the Patrona continued. ‘It is to our credit to claim you as ours.’
‘Claim me. Would that entail a kin contract?’
The Patrona looked a little amused and a little surprised. Ixiaral laughed and said, ‘What do you know about kin contracts?’
‘Not much,’ Rafi admitted. ‘I had some very basic guides and a not very helpful friend explain them to me, and I thought at first they were the same as marriages. But I’ve done more research since then and I realise they can be adoptions, or business partnerships, or diplomatic allegiance.’
The Patrona nodded cautiously. ‘And to whom do you wish to be contracted?’
‘Well, you, I suppose. Is that all right?’
Ixiaral cast down her eyes and folded her lips, whether in contemplation or suppressed laughter, he could not tell. The Patrona merely stared at him for a while before picking up a stylus and tapping something into a screen.
‘Let us put you down as “under consideration for full kin contract to the Haneki dynasty, on limited kin contr
act for five years”. You still have a lot to learn, Rafi. When you have learned it, you may begin the process of application to the Haneki dynasty.’
*
Of course I had to tease Rafi about his new status . . . after I stopped gaping and choking and flailing about in disbelief. I was relieved to discover that he now knew enough about kin contracts not to embarrass himself, but completely discombobulated when he told me he’d offered himself to be contracted to the Patrona. ‘You?’ I said, then thrashed about on the floor of his studio in an extended seizure of near-death dramatics. He picked up a cushion and hit me a few times, but half-heartedly.
‘For how long? Five minutes? For what purpose? To tidy her workroom?’ I laughed loudly until he thumped me with more vigour.
I tried to get hold of myself. ‘But seriously, Moo, the Hanekis are big on Punartam because they’re big on Ntshune. Don’t be the callow Terran homesteader about this. You’ve been useful to them in the past and if you can be useful to them now – well, good. Make sure it’s all to your credit, but be sensible and don’t overreach yourself.’
He gave me a sceptical frown. ‘You’re one to talk. Why do they want you to go to Zhinu A?’
I smiled proudly. ‘I, too, can be useful, my dear Moo. All my below-ground shadow-market shenanigans are bearing fruit with the Zhinuvians – who, by the way, are less keen about doing business in the shadow of cartel-occupied Academes. Some of my old colleagues have relocated to Zhinu A, and so our little galactic enterprise continues to expand.’
I saw he looked uninterested, so I made it clearer. ‘Trade, Moo. There are always commercial aspects to transits, especially when speed matters far more than quantity. You might say my padr and his rivals pioneered what could become the standard for micro-merchandise logistics. The Patrona is going to negotiate some kind of agreement with the planetary authority while I and my colleagues will be allowed to feel out the microtech magnates.’