The Bonds of Orion

by Owen R. O’Neill

  “Bah!” James waved his hand at the double racks of clothing that filled the back half of this floor of the shop, which Mariwen had been eyeing when she made her comment. “Paris, Milan, Odessa. Gone to the dogs, the whole bloody lot of them. Bloody rag fair. Sack cloth and ashes.”

  Kris, gazing at the concentrated opulence of the rows and rows of “sack cloth and ashes” James had so summarily dismissed, could not hold back a grin. Lielle put a loving hand on his shoulder.

  “It does pay the bills, though” giving her husband an equally loving pat.

  James sniffed. Mariwen chuckled. James brightened.

  “Ah! But there is something you should see. Not this drab sorry lot.” Another dismissive wave. Then: “Sweetness. The door, if you would. And put out the sign.”

  Going to the door, Lielle applied the small sign, then closed and locked it. Satisfied, James made a herding motion with his short fingers. “Come. Yes, all of you. Now you will really see something.”

  Guided through the rack of clothes to an imposing door behind another tall screen, and through the door once James had opened its dual locks, they first saw a stairwell leading down; narrow and lit so as to induce a sense of foreboding. At the bottom, a tiny landing in which the four of them barely fit, and yet another door, very like the first. Again, the unlocking, done with a ritual air, and pushing it open with a metallic groan. A breath of cool, dry, scentless air and stygian darkness beyond.

  “Illuminate!” commanded James, and the chamber filled with a soft white glow.

  Mariwen bent close to Lielle’s ear and whispered, “Wasn’t it fiat lux last time I was here?”

  Lielle winked discreetly. “I prevailed upon him to change that.”

  “Come along!” James ushered them in, with a glance that suggested he’d caught at least the end of the exchange. They crowded through, he closed the door behind them and turned, rubbing his hands briskly. “There” gesturing grandly. “It is a prototype, of course. But one of a kind. Oh, yes. Very much so.”

  The object of James’ comments and the target of his gesture was a gown, set on a stand in the center of the room, in front of a large work table, now bare. At first glance, it seemed to Kris rather subdued compared to ranks of haute couture they’d waded through on the floor above. With a high collar, lace over the bust, a very deeply cut back, long tight lace sleeves and a moderate train, the gown was superbly well-designed, even classic, but not apparently one of a kind. Even the color, a lovely range of teals, did not seem at first blush to be particularly special.

  James, his teeth gleaming through the white of his beard, appeared to be savoring their polite bemusement. “Go on. Touch it.”

  Stepping forward, Kris and Mariwen stroked tentative fingers down the fabric.

  “Oh!” exclaimed Mariwen while Kris stifled her much less refined reaction. When touched, ripples of subtle shimmering color propagated over the cloth’s surface, exactly as they would over the surface of a pond. They both turned wondering eyes to James.

  “Lielle’s discovery. I take no credit. Well, perhaps I played the part of muse in some small way. But Lielle deserves the credit of it all. She’s been working on it for almost a year.”

  With that, Lielle explained the material was made of genetically modified spider silk into which they’ve grafted the genes of Veriform Gloriosa, a shape-shifting pseudomammal, native to Iona. The cells, although not strictly alive, retained the ability to exchange some information, which produced the striking ripple effect.

  How they had managed this, the beast being so rare, only a tiny handful of people had ever seen it (by a singular coincidence, one of those people was Kris), was not explained, nor would it have been proper to ask. But with the explanation concluded, James added, “The material is bio-aware and has the most striking refractive effects when worn. You must try it on.” Nodding at Mariwen.

  His look brooked no disagreement, nor did Lielle’s smile, so Mariwen slipped out of her dress and underwear, and together James and Lielle eased her into the gown. At once, the silk took on a sheen, and as it adapted to her body, it became strangely translucent, so as to give the appearance Mariwen was wearing, not something wet, but incredibly enough, something that reflected and refracted light exactly like the actual surface of a pool of water.

  “You must have it,” James pronounced, with Lielle’s enthusiastic agreement. “We absolutely insist.”

  During the highly technical discussion which followed, James and Lielle concluded that to properly tailor the gown would require an hour or so. While Lielle applied herself to taking the necessary measurements, Kris found James appraising her something he’d been doing off and on since they arrived. It was obvious to all that he considered Kris prime “fashion model” material, but Mariwen had put a quiet word in Lielle’s ear about Kris’ feelings on the matter, and most especially about dresses. Yet, when he invited Kris back upstairs, it was not impossible he was wavering.

  “Pah,” he said, detecting the nascent yet indubitably shared suspicions of the three women. “I perfectly apprehend the young lady’s feeling.” Then, focusing on Kris. “If you will accompany me, my dear, I believe I have just the thing to suit you. And if in the event I’m wrong, I’ll shave my beard.”

  That carried conviction, and Kris followed him as they trekked back upstairs, whereupon James went into another back room and rummaged in a series of crates, bent perpendicular and muttering all the while.

  “Yes! Here,” he cried in final triumph, rising up and brandishing a pairs of trousers made from dark-blue twill. “There are few enough things in this world that deserve to be called timeless, but these” shaking them at Kris “are among them. Jeans. See here.” He showed Kris a date on the waistband, unspeakably ancient. “Some articles do not admit to improvement, whatever you may hear. I believe these to be your size. Do try them on.”

  Kris, who’d been expecting something much more terrible, removed her boots, skinned off her loose beige cargo pants and tugged on the jeans. To her astonishment, they fit like a glove and were surprisingly comfortable when she stretched in them.

  “Goodness!” Mariwen’s voice came unexpectedly from behind her as Kris bent to re-lace her boots. Kris looked back to assess the quality of Mariwen’s grin and found it a trifle wicked.

  “Do you like them?”

  “I think they look fabulous. How do you feel?”

  Kris straightened and considered them critically. “They’re not bad.”

  James crossed his arms and looked smug. “I shall keep my beard.”

  * * *

  With an hour to kill, James and Lielle suggested they visit the jewelers next door, a new establishment: Brosemere-Arvandis. “Some spectacular pieces,” said James. “Truly excellent,” said Lielle. And so Kris and Mariwen found themselves in the large open gallery, surveying untold magnificence.

  Despite the minimalist setting the place was done in various shades of cream, and there wasn’t a sharp angle anywhere in it and various pieces being displayed in solitary splendor, Kris found it a tad too much. While Mariwen wandered, she stayed near the front of the gallery, where the more modest items were displayed in cases. Admiring one of these a deceptively simply necklace with a gold chain no more than three millimeters wide made of tiny ellipsoids engraved with triskels, and joined with what she took to be filigree seahorses or perhaps elaborate gothic ‘S’ shapes, supporting a central disk incised with three interlaced prancing horses, two mares and a stallion, or so it appeared, all superbly rendered in a style that recalled the artwork of her native colony Kris heard Mariwen give a soft Oh! of pleasure.

  Lifting her head, she saw Mariwen near the back, grinning at her and beckoning. Walking over, she found an alcove, and within the alcove, on a quite simple stand lit by three small sunlights, a most astonishing piece of jewelry. As Kris came up beside her, Mariwen clutched her arm and whispered, “Have you ever seen anything like it?”

  It would have been curious indeed if Kris had s
een anything like it, as Mariwen well knew, there almost certainly being nothing else like it to see. It was a sort of half-cape made of an intricate mesh of jewels, reminiscent of a spider’s web if the spider had a genius for Celto-Iberian interlace sensuously mated with Art-Deco coming to a deep, tapering point in front and spilling in a scallop-edged fall down the back, with a high choker-like collar and two shoulder caps of filigreed dragonflies, all worked with extraordinary cunning. The teardrop jewels themselves beggared description: some were blue, and some were green, but the blue were every shade from the deep cerulean that follows sunset to the bottomless blue-black of midnight while the green glowed with an unearthly inner fire, almost hypnotic.

  The metal of the settings, the filigreed shoulder caps and the collar, and of the mesh itself, falling from elegantly swept, finely chased plaques that were meant to accentuate the wearer’s collarbones in front and lie across the scapulars behind, was a gleaming white-silver that caught the light in unexpected ways, shading here and there to a subtle shimmering gold that gave off a soft molten glow, almost as if it were alive a thought which Kris, with her recent introduction to lithomorphs, was unwilling to dismiss out of hand.

  “What is that?” she asked Mariwen, tearing her gaze from the piece. Mariwen, seeming almost as enthralled as herself she was biting the knuckle of her left index finger; an absurdly endearing gesture responded with a little shrug. “The metal, I’m not sure. Maybe treated palladium? Those green stones are Venusian fire opals, though kind of like Martian opals, but a lot rarer and the blue ones I’m sure must be Neptune sapphires.”

  “Sapphires from Neptune?” Kris asked, slightly suspicious. How exactly one would find mineral inclusions in an ice giant like Neptune was beyond her.

  “They aren’t stones,” Mariwen explained, correctly interpreting the look. “They’re hyper-compressed frozen gases. They mine them from the mantle a few thousand kilometers down where the pressure gives them those optical properties and treat them somehow so they’re stable at room temperature. I don’t know how they do it. It takes really special equipment to work with them.”

  “I guess so,” Kris muttered, marveling that such things were even possible.

  “They’re really quite durable. Not like carborundum, though, and you don’t want to break one.”

  “What happens?”

  “I’ve heard they explode.” Mariwen turned to the associate, hovering a tactful distance away, and gestured at the half-cape, which was not protected by a case of anything Kris could detect. “May I?”

  The associate, a young woman and quite attractive, who had in these last two minutes concluded she really did have a famous and famously reclusive celebrity in her gallery, beamed a welcoming smile and nodded. “Of course, ma’am.”

  Mariwen returned the smile and held up the large central pendant stone. “This a Samhaldonich creation. Look.”

  “Samhaldonich?” Kris asked, peering close as Mariwen turned it this way and that. The back and edges of the setting were engraved with tiny interlaced designs whose reflective properties seemed to be what gave the surface that stirring effect.

  “Mireille Samhaldonich. She’s a Belter. She does all her work by hand with an old-fashioned optical microscope. Look really close.”

  Kris did, bending down to do so. The designs appeared to be all stylized outlines of women entwined as if “Are you kidding me?” Kris whispered, raising her head and catching the impish gleam in Mariwen’s dark eyes.

  “Not at all.” Mariwen’s lips curved in a telling grin. “It’s her trademark. You should see it under high magnification.”

  “Would you like to see it on?” the associate asked politely, sensing her moment. Kris glanced between her and Mariwen. The girl was shorter than Mariwen by a few inches and had dark honey-colored hair instead of Mariwen’s rich sable and lighter skin, but her build was similar, and Kris believed her imaginative forces were enough to close the distance

  Mariwen arched a questioning eyebrow, and Kris replied with a shallow nod.

  “Certainly,” Mariwen assured the young woman. With an answering smile, she came over and deftly lifted the whole glimmering mass from the stand. “I won’t be a minute,” she said and disappeared through a curtained doorway on opposite side of the gallery.

  She wasn’t. In what seemed like mere moments, she returned and positioned herself under the light, where the cape would show to best advantage. It was hardly necessary. The girl had been quite pretty before, but the cascade of jewels and living metal that flowed over her body like a lover’s hands made her magnificent. Against her fine, tawny skin, they seemed to take on new life and fire, incredible to behold, but nothing like the vision Kris’ imagination now presented to her of Mariwen in that thing, those same liquid-glowing jewels lying across her warm, dark, exquisite torso

  “Of course,” the associate said, “it’s stunning over clothes, too,” making a slow pirouette that called the assertion into question, for she wore nothing but the jewelry and a pair of stylish pumps.

  “Of course,” Kris echoed, her voice slightly thick because her mouth was more than slightly dry. She looked over at Mariwen, who returned the look benignly.

  The girl noted the interchange. “I’ll leave you to talk it over,” she offered with a slight dip of her chin, and when Kris and Mariwen nodded their acknowledgement, she turned with a smiling backward glance and exited through the curtained doorway, swaying her beautifully molded hips with such a precisely calibrated balance between artlessness innocence and wanton invitation that as the curtain swooped closed, Mariwen covered a lascivious grin.

  “So what do y’think?” Kris asked, noting to grin and watching the oscillating curtain with an unusual degree of color in her cheeks. “Would’ja like to ask her?”

  “Ask her what?” Mariwen countered, studying her lover’s face attentively.

  “Well, y’know,” Kris began, an unexpected shyness shading into her tone, “I just thought that since this is kinda special occasion, you might like to . . . y’know.”

  This was a side of Kris Mariwen had never seen before. She put a hand gently on Kris’ arm. “Kris, are you seriously suggesting that we ask her ?”

  Kris shrugged, the shy look intensifying. “Sure. I mean, why not? It’d be nice, don’t ya think?” She dropped eyes. “But I’ve never done anything like this so, um . . . I’m not really sure how, y’know, how you . . . go about this stuff. Here.”

  Only the habits born of years as a model kept Mariwen from gaping, and while she tried to think up a response to this most unexpected development, she noticed Kris was holding her wallet. Her train of thought came to an abrupt halt and lurched almost painfully in another direction entirely.

  “Do you mean buy it?”

  “‘Course,” Kris said with a pinched brows. “What were ya thinking?” Mariwen dissolved into helpless giggles, and Kris looked on, exasperated. “What’s so funny?”

  “I am,” Mariwen got out between fits. “For a moment I thought oh, never mind. But you can’t be serious.”

  “Why not?” Kris frowned. “You like it, don’t you?”

  “Kris! That’s an original Samhaldonich! Did you see the asking bid for it?”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  “That’s a few years’ salary!”

  “So?” Kris consulted at her wallet. She kept about eighty percent of her repatriation assets in the funds along with her prize money, where they earned modest but regular and fully secured interest, and the rest in her cash account along with her pay. Displaying that account’s balance, she held it up. “Isn’t that enough?”

  “Good lord, Kris!” Mariwen gasped, putting her hand over the screen. “Don’t flash numbers like that around!”

  “Huh?” Kris looked around the empty gallery as the associate re-entered through the curtain, again demurely attired, and made her way to the front after a single discreet glance. Mariwen piloted the wallet firmly back into Kris’ pocket. “You mean you really think we sh
ouldn’t get it? I was thinkin’ . . . well, you deserved it.”

  “Oh, Kris.” Mariwen leaned in to kiss the blushing cheek. “That’s so . . . sweet.” Kris shrugged self-consciously. “But let’s hold off for now. Okay?”

  “Okay.” And they walked to the front of the gallery, hand in hand.

  The girl had accurately gauged the tenor of the exchange and adopted look of polite resignation. She’d tried very hard not to get her hopes up that was by far the most expensive and exclusive item the gallery had ever handled almost impossible to find a buyer for an extraordinary coup that they been allowed to offer it but it was Mariwen Rathor, and if there was anyone who might have purchased it . . . Her small sigh as they approached was entirely internal, but Mariwen’s practiced eye detected it anyway.

  “We’re afraid not today. But thank you so much for showing it to us.”

  The girl bowed her head graciously.

  “Do you have a card, by the way?”

  “Certainly.” She produced one. Mariwen took it, looked at the name and swiped it over her xel. She checked the info that came up and showed the girl. “Is that your private address?”

  Puzzled, the girl nodded. Mariwen opened her own account, stroked off a number of cash vouchers and tapped the girl’s address. “For your time. We really do appreciate it.”

  The girl, wide-eyed, moved her lips soundlessly for a moment. Mariwen had just given her a full ten percent of the cape’s asking price. If it had sold, she would have only made seven and a half.

  “My pleasure ah . . . Ms. Rathor.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Mariwen smiled. She turned to Kris, who was looking over at the case with the gold necklace in it. They both followed her gaze, and the associate, still bemused, ventured cautiously, “Is there anything else I can help you with?”

  “Yeah,” Kris said, pointing. “That necklace with the three horses on it.”

  “Would you like me to get it? The design is by the same artist, you know.”

  “Sure.”