Because Samuel L Jackson took me into the future and showed me the shattered wreck of my own street in Wales. “I was provided with reliable intelligence that showed approaching catastrophe. Inaction would have made me an accessory to history’s darkest tragedy. It would have been tantamount to genocide.”
“Stars above,” Haley breathed. “OK, we’re with you so far, Hal.”
“Paul wasn’t completely successfully,” Hal said, “but it’s fair to say that he changed the world, and that humanity’s future was a lot more secure, by 2033, than it otherwise would have been.”
Haley grinned at this. “Way to go.”
“Impressive,” Kiri agreed.
“However, the insane fundamentalist known as Julius,” Hal continued, “who Paul described earlier, threatened to destroy all of this progress. We are now on a mission to intercept him. I was duplicitous,” he admitted, “in our landing here, but I hope you can see that I had the greater good in mind.”
Kiri said, “So, once you’ve got the hypersleep technology to help you survive such a long journey, you’ll be leaving to intercept Julius?”
Paul nodded. “I have to,” he said.
“And after that you’ll return to your own time and continue helping your planet get better?”
“That’s certainly the plan. I have to cross a lot of space, and time, before that point. And I’d like to return to Takanli, if I possibly can, to visit some friends.” And maybe, if I’m lucky enough, marry one of them.
The two women edged away to the side of the room and began communicating rapidly. They seemed like opposites in some ways, the thoughtful, serene Haley with her beautiful red curls and pale, freckled skin, and the firebrand Kiri with her short, black hair and tanned, olive complexion. But one balanced the other, Paul decided. And in the circumstances, their reactions to his arrival were quite understandable. If the tables were turned, Paul could imagine himself being the one brandishing a big kitchen knife, demanding just what the fuck was going on.
Their conversation continued for perhaps half an hour. They gave Paul the occasional apologetic glance, but then turned back to their discussion. As he waited, Paul gave Hal the cold shoulder. The machine had acted uncharacteristically in keeping secret his true motives, and Paul felt this to be a terribly bad precedent. Their relationship, highly intimate and forged over the decades, was based on honesty and openness. It stung him, he reflected now, to feel that Hal hadn’t trusted him with something so important, and had left him ignorant of a larger plan, even as he struggled to make sense of what he was finding here on Triton.
At length, the two women stood together and approached Paul. Their hands were entwined and both grinning slightly, even the usually taciturn Kiri. “Paul, we’ve talked things through. And we have a question for you.”
“Go right ahead.”
“Do you think,” Haley asked, “that we could we find... a home... on your planet?”
Paul’s heart jumped in his chest. “Yes! Of course you could!”
“And we’d be welcome there?” Kiri asked.
“I’m certain you would be,” Paul replied. He tried to visualize their arrival amid the strangeness of human culture. But if they could adapt to life on this frozen, barren moon, he decided, they could probably handle Manhattan or London. “I believe you’d love it there.”
Haley approached him with outstretched palms up, inviting his touch. “Would you take us?” she asked. Their hands slid together and Paul felt a surge of relief and happiness. Kiri followed, a step behind, offering her own hands in what Paul now knew was the signal for acceptance and agreement.
“I’d be glad to,” Paul managed to say through his biggest smile in a long time.
Kiri beamed at him. Then she said, tongue in cheek, “Actually, I was hoping to quietly rot in a stagnating greenhouse on a frozen moon.” She held Paul’s hands and fixed him with eyes which showed, for the first time, a warm friendship “But traveling the galaxy and saving your planet sounds almost as good.”
As the three prepared dinner together and talked of Earth and its people, Hal was given new authority to ask the computer on board the Epsilon for any data he required. Soon, forager robots were cutting great chunks of Triton’s surface ice for raw material, and construction was quickly underway on a third hypersleep module.
Paul chatted contentedly with the women, but his newfound happiness was tinged with a flicker of concern. There had still, he couldn’t help noticing, been no mention at all of the sleeping woman in the other module. They hadn’t asked Hal to build her a hibernation module, and no one had gone to tell her that Haley and Kiri would be leaving. It made, Paul decided, absolutely no sense.
But he would ask about it the following day. Tonight was for celebration.
***
Chapter 15: The Mistress of Serona
In high orbit around Serona, a Jovian gas giant
The silent ritual was entering its fourth hour, and still she had not moved. Around her were the constant, gentle air currents which made this space habitable, sweetly recycled and circulated in a refreshing breeze. She seemed to hover, motionless, a few inches above the floor of the broad, cylindrical compartment, her black robes draped gently around slender, pale shoulders. Eyes closed, she simply breathed; it was all that she did, in this place, and it was the only reason she had come here.
It was a station of Garlidan’s design, of course. Six identical modules were linked by a cube-shaped docking adapter; the engineers who designed Mir would have recognized it, although their model was constrained by the size and power of their rockets, whereas Eliria tolerated no such limitations. Six large families could comfortably have lived on this station, or perhaps four if the two farm modules were retained. In this place, Eliria eschewed Replicators, preferring to tend and harvest the two-acre plot herself. Indeed, not only was this retreat held in strict silence, it was also spent entirely alone.
Eliria existed in a deep meditative state. Through the steady practice of focusing purely on her own breath, she had learned to live in this endless quiet, and to open up mental space. Into this space she drew the breath – her reality, her unremitting focus – and this gave her the tools needed to do her work: an investigation of energy itself, the fundamental fabric of the Universe. She breathed in the cosmos, allowed it to nourish her body and brain; these were the beginnings of the life-long attempt at fusion to which – she maintained – every being should be dedicated.
A year had elapsed since her meeting with Paul on Takanli, a meeting so seminal and so powerfully charged with eroticism that its memory was sufficient to genuinely arouse her. The extraordinary connection they had found, even as she interrogated him mercilessly, was the sweetest human emotion she could imagine. Their coupling remained a pinnacle of her life’s work.
No thoughts of such love were permitted here, however. This proudly spinning station was a haven of peace, unencumbered by the past, by emotion or by sentiment. This was work, not play. When the breath was not her focus, she shifted her mind to another object possessed of continuity and grace: the giant planet which spun majestically beneath her orbiting home.
It truly was a jewel, a serene giant so large that it boasted a mini-solar system of its own. Beyond a fabulous and intricate ring system – and within it – lay nearly three hundred moons. The planet’s floating family was old enough for dozens of asteroids to become caught in its spell, but too young for them to have annihilated each other through impacts. Six were large enough to have atmospheres; three were inhabited by their own, entirely unique forms of indigenous life. None had ever been explored. This was perhaps the most remote major solar system in the galaxy, and so far Eliria remained its only visitor.
Probes had flown by, of course, but none had landed. Demand for deep-space information was so enormous, and the resources of the various exploratory organizations so overstretched, that even richly inhabited systems were reluctantly ignored for generations while other, still more exciting finds were confirmed. This
suited Eliria perfectly; no radio calls would pierce her silent world, and no visitors would interrupt her carefully balanced routine.
No visitors, that is, except the utterly exceptional.
Had it been a Hal-type quantum model, the ship’s computer would have been deeply shocked by her instructions. Never before had the station been asked to prepare for a second docking, a new kind of visiting ship and, most surprisingly of all, a second human inhabitant. It had followed its instructions, of course, forwarding data on the docking port to allow their visitor time to adapt his own ship’s mechanisms. By the time the mysterious vessel approached, all preparations were complete. And now, the ship approached slowly and inched its way to a perfect hard-dock.
Eliria heard the soft bird call used by the station to summon her attention; it had been used perhaps four times in her year here, including during one near-miss with an errant ring fragment, but this gentle alarm was intended to bring to an end to the deeply meditative condition in which she had existed. It was the only sound which could disturb her. This interruption was welcome, however, for she knew this visitor as well as anyone. In fact, she could barely wait to see him.
The cruiser newly docked to her station was of the latest design. This was only to be expected; her visitor’s gadgetry had often been found to exceed the latest technologies. She was emerging steadily from her focused state, swimming back to the raw ‘this-ness’ of the reality around her, the white and red and green of the module’s interior, the deep black of her robes, the reassuring scent of air recycled by her burgeoning, green space-farm. For the first time in three orbits of Serona – perhaps thirty hours on Earth – her feet touched the floor of the cabin, although they immediately lifted off again as the zero-G conditions sent Eliria spinning gracefully toward the ‘ceiling’ of the module. She smiled at the sudden variety of sensations, welcome after such stasis. Sensing the mild confusion of her inner ear, she applied at once the lessons learned in her periods of practice: accept all sensations as embodiments of reality; fight not against the inevitable. She kept her head still and allowed the discomfort to pass. Her body then relaxed seamlessly into the world of microgravity.
There was a soft ‘clang’ from far away in the station. Then another, softer sound which Eliria had never heard before: the opening of a door into the station by a guest. Her heart leapt slightly, her nerves elevated by this unexpected event. How should she greet him? What should she say? Should she change her clothes? The black robes were comfortable and ideal for meditation, but they revealed much. Would she appear too flirtatious?
He was floating down the docking module’s central tube, spinning slightly to his right. “You’ll have to forgive the lack of gravity,” Eliria offered as she entered the same tube, a red-orange tunnel which served as an airlock. “I’ve been... sitting,” she said. Garlidan knew enough to give his host time to collect her thoughts. He knew that it was best not to rush into conversation with someone who hadn’t spoken in weeks.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “It is the perfect place for the quiet nourishment of the mind.” They met in the center of the tunnel and linked hands. “And it is a very beautiful station.”
”Of the very best design,” she smiled.
Garlidan bowed slightly at the compliment. Eliria was known to be fantastically wealthy, and Garlidan cherished his ability to provide unique services to the super-rich; such connections were seldom unfruitful when pursuing his larger aims. He smiled as if praised in a way of which he was very fond. “You have my admiration, as ever, Eliria.”
She smiled and they spun briefly together while she asked about his trip. “I have been most fortunate to have the Telesto as my means of transport,” he admitted. “She is a very capable craft.”
The Cruiser-class vessel clung now to its new home. “Your own?” Eliria wanted to know, motioning to the graceful ship.
Garlidan followed her through to the airlock hatch, where they prepared to equalize pressure. “Not strictly speaking,” Garlidan drawled. “It was borrowed.”
She chuckled slightly and led him on a brief tour of the station, which had been slightly modified since Garlidan supervised its construction. Of the six modules, two were farms, three were habitation spaces for Eliria. One normally held additional fuel and supplies, but Eliria explained that, at present, it contained a payload for the Ministry of Science on Takanli.
“And I see that the Ministry is borrowing part of your station for its research?” Garlidan said, needling her in turn. They settled into padded couches which were arrayed on the walls of the central docking adapter. Once strapped in with a simple cord, they could talk without having to worry that they might float away, or their body language – to which both were highly sensitive – might be thrown off by the microgravity.
“I had a feeling you’d tease me about that, Garlidan,” Eliria said as they relaxed against the thin restraints of their seat harnesses. “Takanli needed the data, and found a way to get the equipment here. In exchange for being co-opted into the Interstellar Discovery Office for a month or two, I get to keep visitors out of this system. Quid Pro Quo: Takanli gets the science, and I get my privacy.”
“But surely if someone visited another of these planets, inhabited or not, you’d have no way of detecting them?”
Eliria waved a cautionary finger, just enough for Garlidan to see it move. “I see everything,” she said with her eyes closed. “I have spent these months,” she explained, “living amidst the fields of energy which comprise this system. I feel its contours, its bumps and grooves.” She drew a languid line with an outstretched finger, as if stroking the edge of such a field.
The old man stared at her. There was a certain feline charm which complemented her calm, almost beatific smile. This was someone, he reasoned, who had taken the long and hard road to meditation: sittings that stretched for many hours; complete silence, except her own breathing; an utter and jealousy guarded solitude. But, he knew, there was more than one Eliria. There was the fastidious enlightenment-seeker, serenely orbiting this remote planet in her luxury meditation retreat – a ‘palace of the virtues’, Eliria called it. And there was something else: an animal self, a desirous, carnal woman who had deliberately locked herself away. And who, like a caged bird of prey, was desperate for flight.
And it was exactly this bird that he wished to unleash.
Eliria prepared food and they ate in companiable silence. As they finished, Garlidan caught her up on his recent travels. They were not inconsiderable. “Takanlians had been so,” he reached for the word, “accommodating during my time there,” he recalled fondly. “The misunderstanding with the Cruiser was simply a poor choice of resource allocation by the Council.”
Eliria smirked playfully. “You speak of theft and corruption as though they were the highest virtues.”
“Theft?” he whinnied. “I was involved in a critically important science experiment. Others did not see the true value of it.”
“And that would be...?”
“The survival of billions?” he tried.
Garlidan had become almost tired of explaining the utter necessity of Paul’s journey. He had been quizzed on it by every Takanlian he’d met; Paul and he were both household names – although for very different reasons – and the apparent theft of the Cruiser (from a neighboring system’s embassy, no less!) leant Paul’s departure a certain Robin Hood flare which only added to his interplanetary reputation.
In truth, when the time had come to arrange Paul’s onward travel, Garlidan had simply brandished his credentials, subtly bribed two docking station managers, and arranged for three dockside engineers to be very enjoyably entertained elsewhere. The ship departed Takanli on autopilot and, some weeks later, the sleek and uniquely suitable Phoenix was waiting for Paul upon his arrival at Holdrian.
She took his hand. “At least Paul’s journey was something a little more noble than your usual prurient self-interest.”
He feigned pain and grasped at an imag
inary arrow through his chest. “Dear lady, why must you wound me so!”
She laughed prettily. “Don’t tell me that you’re recent sojourn with Serpyter has clipped your mischievous wings? He may be a prince of cold, unfeeling logic, but after so long, I simply won’t believe that you’ve renounced pleasure?”
“You do me, and my erstwhile host at the Forest of Wonders, a great disservice,” he explained, hands raised and open in a request for patience. “The work going on there is central to the happiness of all beings. My cohort and I seek only universal love, peace and tranquility.”
Eliria snorted unkindly. “For you and your cohort,” Eliria snorted, “it’s only happiness if it makes you money, brings you yet greater power, or gives you an orgasm.”
Garlidan grasped her forearm with surprising strength and laid her roughly across his lap. Tingling with excitement, Eliria knew from their previous encounters just what to expect. “How dare you,” he chided, and then spanked her bottom with a resounding slap, “impugn the critical work” – slap – of the great thinkers” – slap – “of Clarion”. He pushed her off his knee and she fell slowly, giggling and red-faced, into a heap on the ‘floor’ of the module. “All of my work is to serve the greatest ends there could ever be. I am a steward of the general contentment, spreading goodwill, tolerance and learning as far as...”
She waved him away. “Two-thirds of the Galaxy is searching for you, either to throw you in jail, or to offer you a job. Or a presidency. Don’t you think you’ve entertained us with your particular brand of interstellar anarchy for long enough?”
“I think you’ll agree that I’m rather more than a brand,” Garlidan objected. “I admit that I’m given to moments of caprice. I’ll allow that there’s a great fascination for me in the unfolding of human drama, especially those in which I am permitted to play a part.”
Eliria scoffed at him again. “Paul has been dancing to your tune like a performing monkey ever since the Takanlians first laid eyes on him.”
Clarion: The Sequel to Voyage (Paul's Travels) Page 17