Ammonite Planets (Omnibus): Ammonite Galaxy #1-3 (37 page)

“Grace,” he acknowledged. “I hope you are well?”

Grace nodded, and put her head slightly on one side, waiting.

“I … err … I am calling to …” he looked down for a moment at the console in front of him, “to tell you that I am going to Coriolis.”

Grace could feel time slowing down. The air molecules around her seemed suddenly rarified. She took a shaky breath, but it didn’t seem to transfer any oxygen to her blood. Her head felt a little light and dizzy. “I … I … s-see,” she managed to get out.

“I thought I should let you know.” Vion appeared strained.

“Err … yes, thank you. That is, I h-hope you have a good journey. H-how l-long will it take you?”

Vion sighed. “Look, Grace, it is all for the best,” he said. “There could be no question of …”

Grace shivered; it had gone suddenly cold in the voting chamber. She made an attempt to prompt Vion back into speech.

“… of?”

“… of anything.” His voice was sad, but firm. “It would be out of the question. My family means a great deal to me, and I owe myself to them. You have to understand.”

Grace felt hot tears welling up in her eyes, but brushed them away crossly, and gave a shake of her hair. I am NOT going to cry, she determined. Diva would NEVER cry if she were in the same situation. As quickly as they had started, the tears thankfully dried up, and she was able to face the tridi screen with at least a trace of normality.

“I u-understand,” she bit her lip. “Naturally you can’t be seen to talk to somebody like m-me.”

“Personally I don’t give a Xianthan roach for political correctness,” he went on, “but my family do, and I am honour-bound by a certain duty to them as well.”

“Of course you are,” Grace managed to agree. “I … I wish you luck, Vion. May the heavenly triangle watch over you.”

“Thank you, Grace. I … I will miss you.”

“Goodbye, Vion.” Grace cut the connexion with a frozen finger, and looked blindly about her. She had never felt so alone in her whole life. All forty-nine floors of the 256
^th
skyrise were reinforcing that emptiness, their hollow spaces echoing her solitude. It was a physical force pushing down on her chest, bending her with the pain.

She dragged herself down from the high chair, and her footsteps resounded on the magmite floor as she stumbled out to the vantage point near the back ortholift. At least the stars would keep her a certain kind of isolated company. She sat for a long time, simply gazing at the black sky through the rexelene. Nothing had been said. She had no reason to feel hurt. Vion had broken no promises, crossed no lines. She was to blame, perhaps for having hoped a little where no hope could be allowed. She was a fool.

She sat like that, unmoving. The unchanging sky outside echoed her mood. There was no sunrise on Valhai to indicate the breaking of a new day. There would be no new dawn.

DIVA STARED UP at Mount Palestron on Coriolis and enjoyed the feel of Sacras warm on her face. Four months of Kwaidian mist in the frozen wastelands of the north were enough for anybody, she thought. It was great to be back on a planet at a reasonable distance from the yellow sun. She wondered if she would be able to wallow in a Mesteta wine bath at her mother’s palace. What bliss that would be! She grinned to herself. It was indeed a long time since she had taken such things for granted. She turned to her companion.

“I hope they come,” she said.

“Of course they will.” Six was leaner than he had been all those weeks before. Already the camp had grown to five thousand people, and at the rate they were arriving, they would soon be talking of hundreds of thousands. Necessity had forced him to concentrate on other things, but Diva knew that he had not forgotten his sister, and was still counting on an opportunity to find her. She sighed, her eyes searching the horizon for a sign of Arcan or Grace, due to meet them for a meeting with her mother and other Coriolan dignitaries.

“There they are! Look!” Diva waved excitedly and the small figure of Grace could be seen jumping up and down on the spot in the distance, and waving frantically back.

When the two groups finally coalesced, Grace flung her arms around Diva’s neck. “Oh, I have missed you!” she said. “Life has been much duller without you around! It will be great to have a few days together here.” Then she moved across to Six and hugged him tightly. “I missed you too, Six,” she said, “I heard about everything you and Diva have done on Kwaide, well done!”

Six disentangled himself with difficulty. “Thank you Grace.” He sounded constrained, but he still gave her a smile of welcome.

Grace looked him over carefully and hid her dismay at what she was seeing. He was still haunted by his sister being taken to Benefice, then. She turned quickly back to Diva. “I hear they call you
Valhai
Diva,” she joked. “How are you, your ladyship?”

Six rolled his eyes. “Getting on my nerves!” he grumbled. “It’s ‘Six do this … Six do that’ all day every day. She’s worse than your mother, and between the two of them they don’t give me a second’s peace and quiet.”

“That is so not true!” Diva was offended. “You can hardly blame me if you prefer to laze around all day instead of getting things done.”

“Laze around?” he spluttered. “Well, I like that! Chance would be a fine thing! I haven’t stopped since we got the first group back to the base camp.”

Diva cuffed him from behind, and he pretended to cower away, making Grace laugh.

“And Arcan?” he said.

“I am here,” the orthogel entity replied. “How are you, Six?”

“Fine. Thank you for helping us to take supplies over from here to Kwaide.”

A shadow passed through the hazy figure which had appeared next to Six. “I owed you, Six. But remember that this is only a temporary arrangement. I will not act as a supply train for all the planets in the system. My experience in the Valhai Voting Dome taught me that I must separate myself from transients in general. They do not show respect.”

“I know. We are truly grateful. We hope to sort something out soon.”

“That is acceptable. Have you found out where your sister is being held yet?”

Six froze. “No.”

“Well, when you do I will be happy to help you.”

“Thank you. I will take you up on that.”

“I don’t think you could take me anywhere, Six, especially not up. Our relative sizes and your primitive structure would prevent that.”

“See!” said Diva. “Even Arcan thinks you are primitive!”

Six rolled his eyes. “Drop it, Diva, will you? I forgot about being literal. Sorry. I mean I will be happy if you help me.”

“Naturally. I am very generous.”

The Kwaidian gave a chuckle. “Yes, that is what I meant. Thank you.” He looked around. “Now, shall we see what has happened to the guard of honour that was supposed to come to meet us?”

THEY WERE ESCORTED into the presence of Diva’s mother by the same guards who had been sent to meet them. There seemed to be a surprising number of other Coriolans present at the meeting.

“Daughter.” Diva’s mother inclined her head, showing no discomposure at the sight of the tenebrous figure of Arcan which glided into her chamber in the wake of Diva and her friends. “It is agreeable to see you.”

“Mother,” Diva acknowledged, showing no inclination to approach closer. “I had understood that you were retiring from public office?” She looked at the surrounding Coriolans with a raised eyebrow.

“Indeed.” Diva’s mother gave the briefest of smiles. “My retreat from Coriolan Society, alas, proved only fleeting. As you can see, many of Mesteta’s inhabitants have chosen to join me here, malcontent with the way your father has been mismanaging things. I have hardly had time to … enjoy my retirement.” She looked wistfully in the direction of her guards, meeting the eyes of the tallest of them.

Six dug Grace in the ribs. “See,” he hissed, “I knew I was right! I told you so!”

“Shut up, Six! They will hear you!”

“Did you see the way she looked at him? Exactly like a Xianthan crocodile that has seen a fish. Poor man!”

“Why? He looks happy enough. He probably adores her.”

“Yeah, like a mouse adores a snake!”

“I don’t think she is at all scary. She saved our lives! In any case, he looks like he can take good care of himself.”

He thought about it. “That’s true. I suppose you may be right. I still wouldn’t like to be in his shoes though!”

“Well, you’re not likely to be, so shut up, will you?”

Diva’s mother was continuing. “While it is most gratifying that members of both the commonality and the meritocracy should deem me a suitable plenipotentiary, I had not anticipated such loyalty to my personage.”

“All those long words! Being in retreat hasn’t stopped her speaking like an encyclopedia.” Six sounded resigned. “She can lose my attention faster than anybody else I have ever met!” Then he thought of something. “If all these people have come here to be with Diva’s mother, does that mean that she is now considered to be the ruler of Coriolis by some of them?”

Grace didn’t know. “She is obviously very influential. I don’t know if a repudiated wife can unrepudiate herself or not.”

Six remembered his last encounter with Diva’s portly parent. “She might not want to,” he pointed out. “She might prefer to stay here with her guard.”

Grace surveyed the guard in question. “Hard to be less fun than Maximus, when you think about it. Don’t know how she managed to put up with him for so long.”

DIVA’S MOTHER INCLINED her stately head in Arcan’s direction when she was presented to the orthogel entity.

“You have caused much confusion on my world,” she told him.

“I am aware of this. Maintaining the status quo would appear to be of prime importance to your society.”

“Indeed.” She bowed again. “It is true that our customs have become ingrained. I do not agree with my ex-consort on this matter. It seems to me extremely short-sighted not to enlist such a valuable ally as a friend, and yet – as far as I am aware – no such move has been made.”

“It has not.”

“Then I hope that you will accept my hospitality as an indication of the benign and amicable intentions held by myself and my household towards you.”

Arcan shimmered a little. “Very well,” he said.

Six opened his eyes wide. “She has got him eating out of her hand!” he said. “That took her less than a minute. She is good!”

“She is the first dignitary to be nice to him. She caught him by surprise.”

“Yes, and may have made a friend. A very important one.”

“She is a very clever woman.”

Grace nodded, and grinned. “Yes, and—” She saw somebody out of the corner of her eye and her heart gave a violent leap in an attempt to jump out of the rib cage surrounding it.

“What?”

“N-nothing.” She fought down the feeling of panic.

“Hey – look Grace, its Vion!”

“Is it? I hadn’t noticed.”

Six strode over to the Sellite, and touched fingers, and then waved at Grace to join them.

Grace looked up to find herself face to face with Vion. She had not expected him to be at Mount Palestron. Even though she was aware he was to be found on Coriolis she had assumed he would have made his base in Mesteta itself. She raised her fingers automatically.

“May your sun never flare, Vion,” she managed.

“May the heavenly triangle protect you, Grace.” Their fingers touched, and Grace snatched hers back immediately, not wanting to expose them to any stray energy surges this time.

Six looked from one to the other strangely. “What’s up with you two?” he demanded.

“That’s the way we Sellites greet people,” Grace told him.

“Oh, sure! And I’m a Cesan catumba!”

“Excuse me.” Grace waved in Arcan’s direction. “I must hear this part of the conversation.” She walked away, leaving a suspicious Six staring after her. That was most unlike Grace. And Vion was just standing there imitating a puffer eel. Something was fairly obviously up, but it wasn’t his business, so he turned back to Vion with an inquiring smile, interested to find the Sellite doctor on Coriolis, and eager to contract his services for Kwaide, if that were possible.

THE BANQUET LATER on was one of celebration. Many deals had been made, to general satisfaction. Arcan would continue to transport goods from Coriolis to the untouchable camp on Kwaide, at least for the near future. In exchange Kwaide would provide Coriolis with rexelene. Cimma had organized squads of refugees to survey the badlands, and they had found deposits of rexelene. Although the deposits found could not compete with Rexel itself, there was enough to make a mining operation worth a small initial investment, which was to be supplied by Diva’s mother, Indomita.

The medical centre run by Vion would attend any sick refugees on Kwaide in exchange for a small quota of rexelene which he had already arranged to trade on Coriolis for magmite. Six felt contented. They had succeeded in creating a supply chain which would make the northern Kwaidians completely independent from Benefice and the flatlands.

His reception on Coriolis had been pleasant. The irony of the situation was not lost on him. Only months ago he had been about to die on this very planet. He wondered what his reception would have been if he had not been able to command the support of the orthogel entity.

Arcan, he saw, was conversing with Diva’s mother. He grinned. He would have liked to be privy to that conversation.

“Hey, Grace?” Diva called across the table to get the Sellite girl’s attention.

“What?”

“Want to go for another Mesteta bath after this?”

“You bet!”

“We can’t take Six, because he might chug back all the bath water,” said Diva.

“Quite right too,” said Six. “What a waste of good wine!”

“It’s good for the cutis,” said Diva.

“Not noticeably,” replied Six, and then ducked as a sweetfruit and a bread-roll were lobbed in his direction.

DIVA’S MOTHER WAS finding conversation with an alien rather more strenuous than she had envisaged.

“And how do you like our planet, Arcan?” she began.

“I find it poisonous, thank you.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Poisonous. It does not agree with me. I can only send small portions of myself over here, and it is necessary to recycle cells frequently back to Valhai.”

“I am sorry to hear that. If there is anything we can do …?”