by Warren Dean
When he opened his eyes he saw two giants walking into the refectory. He blinked a few times, wondering if he was seeing things. Then he remembered what Ant had said about some of the Journeyman's children working at the Repository. Azee and Christina turned to see what had captured his attention.
"Oh," said Azee, "I guess you don't remember them either. The taller of the two is Kalakko, the Journeyman's son, and the other is Loradda, his granddaughter."
Kalakko was not quite as big as his father but had inherited the latter's broad shoulders, muscular arms, and tree-trunk legs. Despite his bulk, he strode through the refectory with a supple grace, weaving his way deftly through the densely packed tables and chairs.
The more slender Loradda followed her father on willowy legs; shorter than him by at least a head. Looking around, she spotted Azee and raised an arm in a friendly wave.
"His son and granddaughter?" said Christina. "So what Ant told us is true; other Constructors survived too."
"Yes," said Azee, smiling as she returned Loradda's wave. "Less than a hundred of them were still alive at the time you went into the black hole. Most of those were heavily dependent on cybernetic enhancements and more than half of them had died by the time you came back out. However, after the shift, the increased availability of yellow metal meant that they were able to have infusions more often. This boosted their vitality and gave them hope for the future.
"Most of the elders survived and the health of many of them improved. Some were able to have children. Those children grew up and had children. And they in turn have grown up and begun having children. Thanks to you, there are now three generations of young, energetic Constructors working at restoring their race to its former glory. They have a lot to thank you for."
"And Earth?" said Connor. "Ant told us that Earth survived. Is it really okay?"
Azee smiled again. "Earth is really okay," she said. "Well, as okay as it is ever likely to be," she amended wryly. "But don't take my word for it, go and see for yourself."
He looked at Christina, his expression anxious. "Will you come with me?"
She shook her head a little sadly. "There's nothing on Earth for me. I'll stay here with Azee and help her make sense of the shift. You go and see what you need to see."
He nodded. Hope warred with anxiety at what he might find and he decided he couldn't wait. There was no time like the present.
He stood up from the table, kissed Christina, hugged Azee, and headed for the roof portal.
ONE SMALL STEP
The portal still opened into the Parque de Maria Luisa in Seville. That much hadn't changed. Its surroundings were totally different though. The little stadium that had once hosted the arrival of the Journeyman's envoy was gone, replaced by an intergalactic portal station.
Connor emerged from the portal onto the smooth, tiled floor of a semi-circular reception platform. He stood still for a moment with his eyes closed. Once the worst of the wooziness had passed, he opened his eyes and looked around. The platform was enclosed by columned walls supporting an ornately decorated ceiling high overhead – to accommodate outsized visitors from the Thousand Systems, no doubt. Comfortable benches were spaced at intervals around the perimeter.
Resisting the urge to sit down until he had fully recovered from the jump, he crossed the platform to the open double doors at the far side. As he went through, what felt like a cool breeze blew across his body from one side of the doorway to the other. At the same time, scanners glowed redly from the door jambs on either side, crisscrossing him with laser light.
He had just been scanned for pathogens and weapons, he figured.
He found himself in a spacious waiting room with seats and couches of various shapes and sizes filling the near end of the room. They were all empty and he bypassed them, heading towards a scatter of brightly chromed desks which dominated the far side of the room. There were about a dozen of them, although only three of them were manned.
Two of them were manned, he corrected himself as he got closer. At the third sat a green-skinned creature with three arms, the middle one protruding from where its chest would have been had it been human. It had two large eyes set asymmetrically in an oval-shaped head. One eye sat atop a short protuberance in the middle of its face, the other was on the left-hand side of its chin. The central eye gave Connor the once-over as he approached. It appeared to operate independently of the lower eye, which continued reading from an interface set into the desktop.
Connor closed his mouth and tried not to stare; he had seen alien creatures before and was hardly a novice on that front. It was somehow more bizarre seeing one working at an office desk on Earth, however. Trying, and failing, to appear to be choosing a desk at random, he veered away from the oddity and seated himself before one of the human transit officers.
"Español? English? Française?" she asked him.
"English, please," he replied, relieved that he would not have to torture the young woman with his Spanish.
The immigration process was simple. She asked him where he had come from, how long he had been there – he decided to keep it simple and answer, 'the Repository, four months' – and which nationality he belonged to, efficiently punching the information into her desk interface. When asked for his place of residence, he gave his old home address in Dublin and took it as a good sign when alarm bells failed to go off. The address was still on the grid, at least.
It might still be in the family, even. His mother and father, and his brothers, would surely be long dead by now but he might get the chance to meet their descendants. He wondered what his many-times great grandnieces and grandnephews would be like and how they would react to meeting their legendary uncle Connor.
"Is there somewhere I can catch a flight to Dublin," he asked the officer when she signified that the process was complete.
She gave him a peculiar look. "A 'flight'?" she asked, giving the word an inflection which suggested she had never heard it used in the context of travel before.
"Er, what I mean is, I need to go to Dublin?"
She smiled and extended an arm towards a set of doors beyond the desk area. "Through there, turn left, and then follow the signs for the European connections."
"Thank you," he said, standing up and heading for the doors.
"Guud evening, zur," said the green-skinned officer in a surprisingly deep, plummy voice as Connor walked past its desk.
"Good evening, er…" responded Connor as politely as he could before scurrying away. Going through the doors, he found himself in a large, high-ceilinged hall reminiscent of an old-fashioned train station. The hall sported arched doorways, perhaps two dozen in all, spaced along its walls. Alongside each doorway were rows of miniature chevrons depicting the flags of various countries.
There were a few travellers, all of them human, moving around the hall, but it was not very busy.
He went left and passed a number of doorways until he spotted the chevrons depicting European flags. Most of the flags were familiar, but there were two or three he didn't recognise. He turned into that doorway and found himself in a long corridor, which itself had doorways spaced at intervals along both walls. Alongside each doorway was a single chevron, bigger than the ones in the main hall. He walked down the corridor until he found the Irish one.
Entering that doorway, he found himself in another portal room, much smaller than the one he had arrived in. The room was empty but for another transit officer, a young woman with decidedly Irish features, who was sitting behind a semi-circular reception desk.
"Travelling to Ireland, sir?" She asked him his name and tapped away at her desktop when he gave it to her. "I don't seem to have you on my manifest. Does Dublin know you're coming?" Her accent had something of an Irish brogue to it, but otherwise sounded very cosmopolitan.
"Sorry, no," he said, "I've just arrived from off-planet. Should I have made a booking or something?"
"Oh, you're intergalactic," she said, her face brightening with interest. "Bee
n anywhere exciting?"
"You could say that," he said.
"It's no worry, just put your finger on the reader over there… no, the finger which has your chip ID… you don't have a chip? That's a first for me; I take it you were born off-world? No worry, I'll put you on the system manually." She punched his name and address into her desktop, "There you are, sir, all done, you can go through when you're ready."
"Thanks," he said. "I don't need to go through security or customs or anything?"
She laughed. "You say the funniest things, sir. I hope you enjoy your stay in Dublin."
He went over to the portal and stepped through.
On the other side was a portal room very similar to the one he had just left, except that the transit officer was a young man. He looked down at his desktop briefly, politely greeted the new arrival by name, and then went back to whatever it was he had been doing.
Connor went out through the door, crossed a small waiting room, and walked out of the building. He looked around and realised he was in Bride Street, a little way down from St Patrick's Cathedral. Unsure of what Dublin's transportation system might have evolved into, and having no money on him anyway, he decided to walk to his parents' old mansion in Ailesbury Road. He estimated that it was only about five kilometres away.
After being cooped up in the Repository for four months, not to mention being cooped up in a much smaller space before that, it was extremely pleasant to spend time in the open air. Looking up at the cloudless sky, he was struck by how blue it was. The silvery atmosphere of the Repository was beautiful in its own right but not a patch on the sky of Earth, he decided.
Although many of the buildings he went past were unfamiliar, having been replaced, rebuilt, or refurbished in the centuries since he had last been in town, some of the city's landmarks remained. He walked past St Stephen's Green and the National Concert Hall, then stopped in surprise to see that the Royal Victoria Eye and Ear Hospital had been replaced by a towering entertainment centre, all chrome and glass. Computer games were more important than doctors in this day and age, it seemed.
He crossed the Grand Canal and sauntered down Donnybrook's leafy High Street. Turning into Ailesbury Road, the first thing he noticed was that none of the old mansions were occupied by foreign embassies anymore. Perhaps the advent of portal travel had streamlined international relations to the extent that such services were no longer needed.
His steps slowed of their own accord as he neared his parents' mansion, or at least the mansion that had once belonged to them. He had no idea who might own it now. When he got to the massive wrought iron gates at the entrance, he was surprised to find them standing ajar. Perhaps security was no longer a major concern either. He looked for a bell or intercom but saw nothing of the kind.
So he walked down the drive and up the steps to the front door. He used the brass knocker to rap on it. There was no response and he knocked again and then again. He stood and waited, looking around at the gardens he and his brothers had played in as children. They were landscaped differently to what he remembered but were familiar all the same. Like the house, they too appeared deserted.
He tried the door and it opened. He went in; he couldn't help it, he had come a long way and the place still felt like home. And what was the worst that could happen? He might be accused of being an intruder and have to call Azee to vouch for him.
Walking through the entrance hall into the sitting room beyond, he was surprised to find that the place hadn't changed that much. The furniture was unfamiliar and the décor different, but the layout of the rooms was the same. So was the feel of the place. He went from room to room with a growing certainty that the house was still in the family.
The downstairs guest wings were dusty and disused but the main living areas were clean and looked lived-in.
He came back to the entrance hall, still without having encountered anyone, and decided it would be best to leave the house before someone caught him inside. It would avoid any misunderstandings and he could always wait at the gate until someone turned up. He was about to match thought with deed when he heard a noise coming from upstairs. Or he thought he did; perhaps his imagination was giving him an excuse to go and investigate.
Again, he couldn't help himself. He ascended the wide wooden staircase which ran from the hallway up to the second storey of the house. On the upper landing he recognised one of his father's favourite paintings still hanging on the wall. The memories it triggered brought a lump to his throat. He blinked to clear something from his eye, a speck of dust maybe. He couldn't be feeling disappointed, he told himself; he hadn't come here expecting to see his father or mother alive. It had been five hundred years, after all.
He stood still and listened for a moment but heard nothing. He had probably been imagining things. Even so, he walked across the landing – automatically avoiding the floorboard which used to squeak – and down the corridor which led to Patrick's old study. He stopped outside the beautifully carved old wood-panelled door and smiled. He remembered when it had been installed. He had been ten or so and his younger brother Gerald about eight. They had hovered in the corridor, getting in the way of the good-natured workmen who had removed the old door and fitted the new one. It was odd to think that what he still thought of as the new one was now so old. Despite its age, it was in remarkably good shape, suggesting that it had been refurbished regularly over the years.
The door was closed and he decided not to go in. If the study hadn't changed much, like the rest of the house, the sight of it might trigger stronger memories than he was ready to deal with. Aside from a few clashes during a short-lived rebellious teenager phase, he and Patrick had always been good friends. Patrick had loved regaling his eldest son with tales of the treasures he had sought and found, and the boy would always respond with enthusiastic imaginings of how he would one day match, and surpass, his father's adventures.
That much he had definitely achieved, he thought.
The study had also been the place where Patrick and Molly had sat him down and told him the astounding story of the diamond map. He still regarded that as the moment he had come of age.
And the room had been where he and his parents had said goodbye for the last time. He had told them of the mission he was about to embark on, deliberately downplaying the risks involved and emphasising how he was sure that everything was going to turn out alright. Patrick hadn't said anything, but Connor remembered how the look in the older man's eyes had conveyed that he wasn't fooled and was prouder of his son's bravery than he could say.
Connor had studied his father's face, thinking that it might be the last time he would see it. Then he had walked out and shut the study door behind him – the same door that was in front of him now. The handle was different, the original brass fitting having been replaced by some shiny alloy he didn't recognise, but the door was the same.
Although he had made up his mind not to open it, his hand reached out and turned the knob. The latch released smoothly and the door swung open. He stepped inside. He had been right; the room hadn't changed much. Its walls were still lined with bookcases of varying vintages and he even recognised some of the dusty old books they held. An ancient metal filing cabinet, in which Patrick used to keep hard copies of his old research files, still stood in a corner, joined by much newer twin.
The ornately carved wooden desk that once stood in the alcove on the right hand side of the room was gone, though. In its place were two upholstered recliners. Warmth and light streamed through a frameless bay window beyond them. The window was new; having replaced the old cottage-panes he remembered.
An old man, who had been lying asleep on one of the recliners, awoke and sat up to see who had walked in. But for the white hair and age-lined face, he was the spitting image of Patrick and for a second Connor thought that this must be some great-grandson of his father's. But then he recognised the hauntingly familiar hazel eyes and chiselled features – they were those of Patrick himself.
&nbs
p; "Dad?" said Connor incredulously.
"Connor?" The old man looked as though he was seeing a ghost. "It can't be. You're dead."
"I could say the same of you," replied Connor. "It's been five hundred years; how are you still alive?"
"Infusions," said Patrick. "Your mother and I have been having them for centuries."
"Mom's still alive too?"
The old man waved a wizened arm in the vague direction of the street. "She's gone to the shops," he said as if it was perfectly obvious. "She should be back any minute."
They stared at each other in mutual astonishment.
"You… you look…" stammered Patrick.
"Like I haven't aged a day since you last saw me?" Connor finished for him.
Patrick was so shocked, all he could manage was a nod.
Connor grinned. He closed the door behind him and walked over to the vacant recliner. "Boy, have I got a story to tell you," he said.
----------
It was almost twenty-four hours later when Connor arrived back on the roof of the Repository.
He had spent hours with Patrick and Molly, catching up and recounting his exploits, before spending the night in his old room. He slept a lot longer than he intended to, exhausted by the emotional reunion. When he awoke, he told them that he needed to get back. They treated him to breakfast and he promised to come back soon.
He didn't need to go looking for Christina; she was sitting at the edge of the roof looking out over the city of shapes.
She looked up at his face and knew what had happened. "You found your parents? They're alive?"