A Night Without Stars (86 page)

“Do you think they'll take us?” Anala said nervously as they emerged from the capsule, holding hands tightly.

“Sure they will,” Ry said, with a lot more confidence than he felt. “We're exactly what they want.” He had to put sunglasses on, the light was so bright.

She puffed her cheeks out and exhaled. “Okay.”

A couple came out of the house to greet them—a beautiful young woman with the most carefree smile Ry had ever seen, accompanying a huge rotund man whose scowl was a classic counterpoint. He was wearing a shabby old toga suit, while she had a gauzy white cotton summer dress that seemed to glow in the intense blue-white sunlight.

“Hi,” she said, her smile growing even wider. “I'm Catriona. We've been expecting you. Come on in.”

The lounge on the house's lower level was lined with a rich honey-brown wood, giving the impression it was a cavern carved out of some mighty trunk. Windows overlooked the lakes at the far end of the garden, where a small waterfall ran down the stony ridge between them.

Ry was intrigued by the man waiting for them by the balcony door. Unusually for the Commonwealth, whose every citizen seemed obsessed with maintaining a physiological age of about twenty-five, he had allowed signs of aging to contaminate his body, with wrinkles on his face, and receding hair just starting to frost above his sideburns.

“Oscar Monroe?” a nervous Ry asked.

“Yes.” He shook hands and waved them onto a long settee. “I have to tell you, this is a bit unorthodox, even for us.”

“I know,” Ry said. “But thank you for agreeing to see us. We'd love you to consider us for your company.”

Oscar smiled softly. “Well, you do both have a very unusual résumé. You flew into space on a chemical rocket? Seriously?”

“Yes.”

“That must have been pretty…intense.”

“It was glorious,” Anala told him. She and Ry pressed together a little tighter.

“We're astronauts,” Ry explained. “That's all we've been and all we want to be. To get out there and explore the other side of the sky.”

“My company doesn't do a lot of outright pioneering; we tend to do follow-up science missions for the Navy Exploration Division.” Oscar mock-grimaced. “Plus a few off-the-file excursions.”

“Sounds fabulous,” Ry said.

“Yes, well. Your technical knowledge and skillset are a little behind what we need. If we do take you on, you'll have a headache for a year with the amount of information we'll have to cram in to bring you up to Commonwealth standard. That's not a metaphor; it will hurt.”

“If it means we fly actual starships at the end, it'll be worth it.”

“Great Ozzie,” Oscar muttered, blinking in surprise. “And you got married yesterday? Shouldn't you be on your honeymoon?”

“This is our honeymoon,” Ry explained earnestly. “What could be greater than an interview for this kind of job?”

“Wow. Okay; ordinarily I'd hold off a decision for a while, but you have Paula as your sponsor, so I guess: Welcome aboard.”

Ry and Anala whooped and hugged exuberantly.

“Do you know Paula, then?” Ry asked.

“Our paths have crossed.”

“Thank you so much for this,” Anala said. “We won't let you down.”

Oscar grinned wryly and sat back. “I know. Hell, you flew a genuine rocketship to fight enemy aliens attacking your planet. I don't know anyone else with so much Right Stuff.”

Only a few years ago, Florian would have been utterly terrified of the grand Welcome Ceremony thrown by the president of the Commonwealth in his official residence—a mansion that could've given the Captain's palace in Varlan a run for its money when it came to scale and opulence. There were four hundred planetary senators in the ballroom, along with representatives from every major Dynasty and Grand Family, with the Brandts taking center stage. Plus alien ambassadors, from the downright scary-looking to the bizarre. Then there'd been a swarm of media representatives, celebrities who'd managed to snag an invitation, officials, friends of friends…

President Timothy Baker had made a long speech about how the human race was now a complete family once more. Prime Minister Terese had made a bland response about the wonders of the Commonwealth. A bit rich, Florian had thought, coming from a politician who had spent her life suppressing anyone on Bienvenido who even mentioned trying to find the Commonwealth.

But her title was honorary only now, and in a couple of weeks no one would remember her. The
Golakkoth
had delivered Bienvenido's citizens to Earth, where there were so many empty homes waiting for them. Apparently there were only about sixty million people living on Earth these days.
Only sixty million!
Those were the kinds of concepts Florian was struggling with even though it had been years since the space machine gave him the Commonwealth files. Their epic flight back to the galaxy had given him time to prepare himself. For the rest of Bienvenido, snatched to salvation without warning only to materialize in the New York reception center with a mere second of personal time-lapse, it was a shocking revelation. Everybody, Eliter or not, was struggling to adapt to the Second Great Transition.

Consequently, many Commonwealth citizens had generously volunteered to move back to Earth temporarily to help counsel the refugees as they acclimated to their new circumstances. Florian had been deeply touched. More than anything, that proved the Commonwealth was a society where he truly belonged.

ANA and the counselors were helping to reunite families and friends. They were also diplomatically separating Eliters from former PSR officers, as well as keeping an eye on known criminals. Once things began to calm down, people had to make a lot of decisions. Commonwealth medical treatments could rejuvenate them, their Advancer gene sequences could be repaired and upgraded; biononics was a strong option. Education packages and training were available (probably a necessity if you wanted to live in a modern technological society). Then, of course, they had to face their final decision: where to live.

At the Welcome Ceremony, the Commonwealth had formally offered the refugees their own planet so they could live among people they knew and preserve what remained of their culture. Florian still grinned at the idea of that—
Here, have an entire planet; we've got more than we need.
After all, the Raiel had already found an ocean planet for the Vatni; and the Macule Units had been delivered to a fresh world, where their gene banks could reestablish their entire biosphere. A New Bienvenido was tempting to many, although every existing Commonwealth world had extended an open invitation to the newcomers.

For himself, he hadn't quite decided what to do and where to go. He'd spent the last couple of months in London, occupying a grand apartment in Kensington overlooking Hyde Park, sharing its luxurious rooms with his mother; Lurji and his wife, Naniana; and his complete handful of a niece, Zoanne. It was a blissful and addictive happy family life he'd never known before, with Aunt Terannia and Matthieu in the apartment underneath. Commonwealth medical technology had swiftly repaired Matthieu's hands, and he was playing the guitar again. They'd all been avoiding thinking about the opportunities that now lay open to them, content with a quiet life.

However, the Welcome Ceremony had made him realize it wasn't a decision he could put off for much longer. There had been a moment when Timothy Baker had called Florian up onto the stage to shake his hand and present him to the assembled dignitaries. Apparently Baker was one of the oldest humans alive; a fact never more obvious than when you met him in the flesh. It had only been a brief handshake, a few private words, when the president had asked what he was going to do now. Florian had mumbled he wasn't sure, and just knew he was being
judged
for saying that. “The Commonwealth can give you a good life,” Baker had told him. “It's up to you, of course, but take my advice: Don't waste it.” And for an instant, the ancient man had looked terribly sad before smiling and greeting the next guest.

Florian had managed to duck out of the official reception after an hour or so. Laura Brandt had pleaded, teased, and coaxed him along to a nightclub in Paris—only three trans-stellar wormhole stations and a quick teleport away. Who knew that Mother Laura was actually quite fun, and sassy, and friendly, and a good dancer? So here he was in some kind of medieval cathedral, sitting in a big curving settee that seemed to vibrate like a purring cat, with music that was far too loud and weird semi-solid lightblobs that oscillated their way through the air like angry sparrows.

The sticky mauve cocktails with bubbling vapor that Laura ordered helped damp down the initial discomfort. By the third, he was quite chilled. It helped that Corilla had joined them on the settee. If anyone had learned how to embrace Commonwealth society, it was Corilla. She was busy telling them how she'd started her quantum physics degree at Oxford University when he caught sight of a tall blonde on the other side of the dance floor, wearing a very small black dress. She kept looking at him when the gyrating bodies parted. He was awarded a sultry smile.

“Justine Burnelli,” Corilla said with breathless excitement in his ear. “She helped get rid of the Void. She's even more famous than we are.”

“Really?” News that the Void had transcended had always seemed slightly unreal to Florian—just another aspect of living in the Commonwealth, with ten impossible things happening every day.

“Very rich, too,” Corilla said in a slightly slurred voice. “You should go over and say hi.”

“Don't,” Laura said. “She's like a thousand years old. I remember her from before we left the Commonwealth. Looks like a seraph, but she's a real hard-ass. Her whole family is hardwired that way.”

“Thanks for letting me know,” Florian said—and now he, too, seemed to be slurring somehow. He'd almost said:
Thanks, Mother.
But he'd made that mistake with Laura once already today at the Welcome Ceremony, and it wasn't something you repeated. Besides, he couldn't quite see her in the wholesome matronly terms history lessons at school portrayed; in her new re-life body, Mother Laura looked absolutely stunning, especially in a clingy scarlet dress with so many interesting splits. Shame she didn't seem to like Corilla much. For some reason they were acting like rivals.

“So do you know where you're going yet?” she asked.

He shrugged. “No idea. Still catching up with my brother. We hadn't seen each other for years, you know. I like family life.”

“Awww.” Corilla smiled at him, her hand squeezing his leg in a sisterly fashion.

He smiled back as she wobbled in and out of focus. A bot held up another silver tray of the mauve cocktails for them.

“Cheers!”

The three of them
chink
ed their glasses and drank. Corilla downed hers in one. Laura took a long sip, giving Florian an intimidatingly level stare over the bubbling vapor. He found it impossible to look away, unless it was at one of those splits in her dress. Which, he began to realize, were very exciting in a bad, bad way.
With Mother Laura?
He was abruptly sober. And her smile widened in recognition.

“There's no need to rush a decision,” she said. “You should take a while, look around to see what the Commonwealth can offer you. Maybe find someone who could show you.”

“That'd be a blast,” Corilla said merrily. “Hey, we could scope it out together. What do you say, Florian? I've only been to nine planets since we got here.”

“Nine?” he asked slightly enviously, which judging by Laura's expression was the wrong way of saying it.

“Oh, wow, is that her?” Corilla demanded, gazing at something over his shoulder. “For real?”

Florian turned to see Paula leading a teenage girl over to them. Except it wasn't quite Paula as he remembered. She seemed to have aged ten years.

He stood up and peered forward as Paula pushed through a scarlet-and-emerald lightblob. “Paula?” There was a lot of quizzing in his tone.

She produced a wry smile. “Yes, Florian. I'm the original. Pleased to meet you, finally.”

“Uh, right. Likewise,” Florian knew he was blushing; his cheeks were terribly hot when she gave him a very Parisian kiss on both of them.

“And this,” Paula said in a slightly pained voice, “is Mellanie. We go back together all the way to the Starflyer War—though it seems longer sometimes. Okay, you've been introduced; favor repaid. I'm out of here.”

“Er, hello,” Florian said automatically to the teenager with long golden hair. Paula was turning to leave. “Wait,” he blurted. “What's going to happen?”

“Happen?”

“Well, there's two of you. I know that's a huge no.”

She grinned knowingly, and it was reassuringly familiar, even though she wasn't
his
Paula. “Trust me, Florian, there's only one Paula Myo. And that's me.”

“But—”

“I've assimilated my Bienvenido memories. My spare body will be put in storage.”

“
Will
be?”

“Ah, you are quite sharp, aren't you? I remember.”

He shrugged, for what could you actually say to that?

“She has one last thing to do,” Paula said. “Which is fair enough; I always finish my cases.” She chuckled. “And as you looked after me so well…if Mellanie asks you to go for a walk with her, think very carefully before agreeing.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

He turned around to face Mellanie, and decided she was probably the sexiest girl he'd ever seen. He had no idea how she did that; her nose was long and her chin too prominent to be classically beautiful, but the way she carried herself, the wayward self-confidence, impish smile…There was something primal about her, as if she'd just walked out of a Pliocene forest.
Okay, strange first impression.
And for some reason Laura and Corilla were spiking her with disapproving looks.