A Night Without Stars (48 page)

“You saved us,” Ry said, looking between Demitri and Kysandra. “The Liberty flights are wiping out the Trees. That's all that stands between us and annihilation.”

“We do what we can to help,” Kysandra said, feeling embarrassed at the worshipful gaze he was directing at her. “But it's not enough.” She turned to Paula. “The Fallers are going to win, and I don't know how to stop them.”

The farmhouse was perched close to the clifftop on the eastern side of the Honorato Estuary. It was a modest two-story building with rendered brick walls to withstand the battering it got from the wintertime weather coming off the Polas Sea. Several barns and smaller outbuildings sprawled around it, all in reasonable repair but due some maintenance—exactly what anyone would expect from a goat farm in such a rugged location. The windswept grassland that spread back behind the cliff was scattered with boulders and jutting rock outcrops. Its soil was too thin and poor to support arable crops; goats were about the only animals that could succeed commercially in such a location, and even they couldn't be said to thrive.

Kysandra had leased just over a thousand acres from the National Land Office, which had assumed ownership of all land on the Lamaran continent after the revolution. It was a typical joint enterprise venture, with the State Agriculture Board owning 35 percent of the business. According to their records, she had been at the farm for twenty-seven years; before that it had been run for fifty-seven years by “Larkitt,” who was actually Valeri, another ANAdroid; before that it had been Marek who had run the farm for nearly seventy years. Nobody from the board ever showed up to check. Eliters, under Kysandra's guidance, had acquired positions in every government office in and around Port Chana; they also formed a strategic part of the local Democratic Unity party. It was done with quiet efficiency, maintaining the urban myth that Port Chana was a hotbed of radical Eliters on the edge of society, while in fact they actually ran the county.

Port Chana itself was just visible from the farmhouse. Kysandra glanced at it from the second-floor-landing window as the sun sank below the horizon. It was on the other side of the estuary. There was no cliff over there, no stony plateau country, just rumpled lowlands that had once been an expanse of marshes and orango bushes, now long since drained to produce some of the most fertile farmland on the continent, with a geometric network of dikes keeping the rich black loam drained in winter and irrigated in summer. It was Bienvenido's fruit basin, with kilometer after kilometer of orchards and berry fields stretching all the way north to the edge of the Pritwolds.

Farm trucks rattled along the raised roads, their headlights casting weak beams in the twilight as they headed into town, where the silos and warehouses waited, wedged into the commercial sector between the docks and the railway station. Port Chana's streetlights were coming on, marking out the crooked web of roads, along with the more colorful neon signs of the waterfront clubs. At the end of the harbor wall, the lighthouse beam was flashing in an imperiously slow tempo. It was a flourishing little city that, from her vantage point atop the cliff, was easy to imagine being slowly, methodically encircled by the Faller hordes as their numbers grew.

She shook her head, angry with herself for letting the old doubts gain traction.
Paula's here now. She might know what to do.
The ANAdroids seemed to think so, anyway.

Florian was in one of the three guest bedrooms. Kysandra knocked on the door and went right in. Since they'd arrived back at the farmhouse, he'd had a very long hot shower, shaved, and spent half an hour in the medical chamber. Now he was lying on the bed, dressed in a white T-shirt and a pair of navy-blue shorts, eyes closed.

“Sorry,” she said as he stirred, blinking as though being woken. “Didn't realize you were sleeping.”

“I wasn't. I was accessing your files. I just can't access enough of the Commonwealth.”

“I know that feeling. What were you accessing?”

“The Starflyer War. The Primes…Wow, I know Laura Brandt was scared of them and they were invading us, but I didn't realize just how bad they were. MorningLightMountain took out entire Commonwealth star systems!”

She sat on the end of the bed and tucked some strands of hair behind her ear. “It's been a while since I checked those out. How's the ankle?”

“Perfect. There's nothing wrong with it.” He glanced down at his foot and moved it around. “I can't believe it. I thought the kit Joey gave me was good, but your medical capsule…”

“It can handle a damaged ankle easily enough. You need to keep your weight off it overnight; that'll allow the cells to knit back together properly. But the capsule is getting a bit quirky now. It came from Nigel's starship two and a half centuries ago. He left it behind for me when he flew into the Forest.”

“So is that why you—” He flushed slightly, avoiding eye contact. “Well, you look—you know—amazing, actually. If I didn't know, I'd have said you were younger than me.”

“Yeah, not bad for a girl over two and a half centuries, huh? If I say so myself.”

“Yes.” He swallowed, still unable to look at her.

Knowing she was being terribly unfair—and rather enjoying it—she leaned in a fraction closer. “It's mainly biononics that keep me like this, but a few colleagues do use the capsule for rejuvenation when they have to.”

“Uh, right. How many people are in your organization?”

“
Organization
is a strong word. Let's just say I know people I can rely on. And, Florian, I count you as one of them now.”

“Really? I mean, yes. Yes, you can count on me. Of course you can.”

“Oh, you've already proved yourself. Keeping Paula safe like that with every PSR officer on the planet hunting you…And the Fallers, too. That was remarkable.”

He gave a not-very-modest grin and propped himself up on his elbows. “You did the same thing.”

“Hardly. Nigel was fully grown, and he arrived with the ANAdroids and a starship. I was just a junior member of the organization he put together.”

“Organization? You mean the revolution! What was it like, overthrowing the Captain? And you went through the Great Transition, too.”

“One was terrifying, and one was awful. I'll leave you to guess which was which.”

“I don't believe you were just a junior. You're the Warrior Angel. Everyone talks about Mother Laura's sacrifice that day, but you fought the Prime, too. You're our savior as much as her.”

She ran a hand back through her hair and chuckled. “Giu, but you're young.” His crestfallen expression was enough to make her grin. “I wasn't complaining, Florian. Quite the opposite.”

“Oh.”

“Fate's a strange thing. I often wonder what would have happened to me if Nigel had landed at the next farm along. Actually, I know what was supposed to happen, and it wasn't anything nice.”

“What?”

“Arranged marriage. My mother had a lot of…debts.”

“That's awful. Did that kind of thing really happen back then?”

“Yes. And what about you? What would have happened if the package came down in the next valley?”

“It did, actually. I was there rustling sheep.”

“Florian.” She laughed. “You're very literal, aren't you?”

“I guess. Sorry.”

“Don't be. It's quite cute. But tell me this: You do know there's no going back for you, don't you?”

“I knew that the moment the space machine arrived.”

Kysandra cocked her head to one side and studied him. “Interesting; there's more to you than meets the eye. I don't know why I'm surprised by that. I'm just used to egomaniacs with loud opinions.”

He shrugged.

“This is a different life we live here, Florian. And it's coming to an end now, one way or another.”

“I understand.”

“Do you? Then answer me this: Would you like me to stay here with you tonight?”

His mouth parted, but it took him a moment before he finally managed to croak: “Yes.”

She stood up and began to unbutton her blouse. “One thing.”

“What?”

“Your poor ankle. You're not to put any weight on it, so that means I get to go on top.”

It was midnight when Kysandra giggled.

“What?” Florian asked.

She'd been staring out the window at the terrible emptiness of the night sky, trying to remember what the nebulae had been like in the Void. Without secondary routines activating some correctly filed memories, it was difficult now. So she snuggled up a bit closer, and stroked his chest gently. Seven years of manual labor as a forest warden had given him a nicely muscled frame, which she'd spent an enjoyably long time exploring. “I don't get many chances to relax like this, that's all.”

“Oh. Okay.”

But she'd felt his abdomen tense up anyway, so she took his hand and guided it to her breasts. Once again she felt his breathing quicken.
Men, always so simple.
“You do get that this is just fun, don't you?”

“Yes.”

“It doesn't finish with us walking off into the sunset. For a start, I'm ten times older than you.”

“Your body is younger. And I've probably got as much memory loaded into my storage lacuna as you now.”

“I'm not sure if that's gallant or crazy, but I appreciate the thought you put into it.”

“You're welcome.”

“Ooh, smugness. Tell me, did you really spend seven years alone in that valley?” Although she already knew the answer to that. He'd been so endearingly inexperienced. At the start of the night, anyway.
Crud, I'm growing old disgracefully. Thank Giu.

“Yes,” Florian said.

“Why?”

“My life was a pile of crud. I didn't see any other way out. I just wanted to be away from people.”

“You poor thing.” She traced her forefinger along his chin. “That's some discipline you've got there to stick it out for so long. I guess that's something else we have in common. But I'm glad you're out of it now.”

“Me, too. What's going to happen next?”

“There's some very naughty positions I'm going to teach you just as soon as you're hard again.”

“Uh, right. Um, actually—”

She laughed. “Giu, you're so easy to tease. I love that.”

“I don't want tonight to end. Not ever.”

“I know. I also know what you meant. So: We wait until Paula hits her late teens at the end of the week, then we find out what she suggests.”

“That's what I don't get. You have biononics like her. The smartcore you've got here has more data stored in it than a thousand Advancer humans. And you know this world; you're the Warrior Angel, for Giu's sake. You're the one who should be deciding what to do. Why don't you just march into Varlan and take charge? I saw what you did at Hawley Docks. You could be prime minister if you wanted.”

“Been there, done that. It finished up with Nigel dead and that psychotic lunatic Slvasta running the world. Bienvenido was a bad place after the Great Transition, Florian. Government was in chaos, and the Trees were flying down into the Ring formation. And nobody realized how bad the nest situation was.

“I was being hunted by Slvasta's people and Laura Brandt seemed to be turning things around, so I just waited while things settled down. Then the Prime came: That was an utter crudding disaster. After Laura sacrificed herself, we didn't have many options, so we decided to push Laura's plans forward. They made a lot of sense back then. Laura had already taught them to build atom bombs. Demitri went undercover and showed them how to build their space rockets. The Liberty flights worked. We thought it was just a matter of time—and biononics eliminate time as a problem for me. So we sat back and waited for the Trees to be wiped out. The thinking went that once the Fallers are gone, society won't be on this permanent war footing. Humans will be able to start progressing again, just like they always do when they're not constantly living under a threat. Bienvenido would evolve into a real democratic society. And when that happened, we'd be here with the seeds of advanced technology. We'd go back into space and build starships again. That was always Laura's goal, to make contact with the Commonwealth.”

“Why don't you just release the technology now?”

“Even if I released it universally, the Eliters are the only ones who can utilize it effectively, at least to begin with. The general population would have to undergo gene therapy, or receive OCtattoos, to interface with Commonwealth technology. And those concepts would trigger every PSR paranoia going. Society as a whole has to change, to liberalize. Plus, Commonwealth-level technology can be badly abused. The Captains showed that, and they only had a residual number of functioning systems.” She let out a long sigh. “In any case, I was wrong to take this course, and it's too late for me to correct now. Liberty missions are irrelevant; the Fallers are too well established. They have nests everywhere. We think they're already dominant across the rest of the planet.”

“The Faller Apocalypse,” he said gloomily. “How could we have let that happen?”

“My mistake.”

“No! You can't blame yourself for everything.”

“You're so sweet. And actually I don't. The Captains and Slvasta have a huge responsibility with their Lamaran isolationist policy. I just didn't make the effort to try and break that convention. I've done the best I can, Florian, I really have. But it's not good enough, and I don't know enough to try anything else. That damn revolution haunts me every crudding day. We never had a plan for what happened afterward, because Nigel was so ridiculously confident the Void would be destroyed and the Commonwealth would come zooming in to help. But that didn't happen. We were left hanging on by our fingertips. That's the world I really grew up in. Biononics gives me a lot of power, but I do not know how to change the path of a whole society; I don't have that experience—ironic, considering I'm over two hundred and fifty years old.”