Ammonite Planets (Omnibus): Ammonite Galaxy #1-3 (49 page)

Grace nodded. “Don’t worry. Amanita has just kicked me out of the skyrise. It suits me to let her think she has succeeded because I was packing anyway when she came.”

“Where are you going?”

“I,” she said, tipping her head back and closing her eyes momentarily, “am going to Kwaide. There is going to be a big battle – and this time I want to be in the thick of the fighting.”

“That is too dangerous. Grace, you can’t go!”

There was a telling silence for a long moment, and then she swiveled on one foot, and looked him defiantly in the eye. “I didn’t take house management,” she said. “I didn’t go to university. I am not about to let someone who won’t form a life contract with me dictate to me what I can and can’t do.”

Vion took a step back, as if he had been slapped. “I thought you said you understood!”

“I do. But I don’t think you understand me at all! I am no longer the girl who was just trying to look after her mother, and who asked you for help. I am a part of this war, and I will fight – or try to – for what I believe in.”

“I just said that it was too dangerous. You should stay at home.”

“Home?” Suddenly she was infused with a wave of anger. “I have news for you. I am not the Sellite stereotype; I don’t have a home anymore.”

“I meant that you shouldn’t be in the thick of the fighting.”

“I know exactly what you meant, Vion. Maybe at heart you are just a typical Sellite man. You want a wife and a family, and you want to maintain the status quo.”

“I thought you said you cared for me!”

“I did. I do. That doesn’t mean I have to like everything you do. And I am not the person you are looking for. I want to go to other worlds, I want to travel. I want to fight and I want to see change happen. I feel smothered here on Sell. It is an arid society; it has nothing to give me.”

“I don’t know you.”

“I don’t think you do. Sometimes I don’t even know myself. But I will not settle for anything less. I am going to fight for the things I believe in, and I am going to try to change the things which are wrong.” She gave a deep sigh. “Thank you for what you said, Vion, but it makes no difference. Find a nice girl who will agree with everything you say and think, and marry her. She will give you your next generation for the medical skyrise. I won’t.”

She stood looking down, chest heaving. She wasn’t quite sure where all of that had come from, or who she was any more, but she was certain that she would never marry Vion. The whole thing had suddenly evaporated, had been burnt into dust by the flames of her own anger. She shook her head, and her eyes filled with tears. Even so, he hadn’t deserved the tirade she had just submitted him to. None of it had been his fault. She felt terrible.

“I see.” Vion’s tone was gruff. “I will say goodbye then.”

“Goodbye, Vion. I … I am sorry.”

“You said what you felt. There is no need to be sorry.” He moved towards the ortholift, and stepped inside. The lift took him away.

ARCAN TRANSPORTED GRACE to Kwaide, together with the rest of the possessions that she wanted to save from Xenon and Amanita. Grace no longer felt guilty at taking a few things from her home. So what if it did all belong to Xenon? He had tried to kill her, and she knew that trying to kill your own sister in some way invalidated your right to withhold her own prized possessions, claiming they were your own. The Sellite laws which would uphold Xenon when he claimed ownership of every single thing in the skyrise were absurd. She would no longer be bound by such clearly archaic laws. She would take her own personal property, neither more nor less. Arcan had already returned all the artifacts Six and Diva had ‘saved’ after the Sellite attack.

She had added her mother’s paintings of Xiantha, her own canvases, and a few odds and ends which she thought might come in useful.

Arcan deposited her in the shack she was to share now with Diva, and hung around as Diva and Six helped her to distribute her few belongings.

Grace was appalled when she saw the Spartan conditions. Her mother’s living quarters had been positively luxurious in comparison.

“Goodness, Diva, this is worse than I thought!”

“I know. Not exactly a home from home, is it?”

Grace shivered. “And it feels like an ice-box in here.”

“That? You’ll get used to that. Six thinks it keeps us from getting soft!”

“No kidding! We will be frozen hard as rocks in here!” giggled Grace, watching as her fingers started to turn blue. “A really fun place, then?”

“A laugh every minute,” promised Diva. “I am not sure I will be able to fit you into my busy agenda. As you can see, we are out wining and dining every moment.”

“Yeah. Even the orthobubbles are beginning to look good, aren’t they?”

“Warmer, certainly. You see those wide cracks over there, in the wall?”

“Hard to miss them.”

“Six put those there, just to make sure the north wind could visit us every night. It is the Kwaidians idea of ‘air conditioning’.”

“I did not! Not my fault if the timber was warped. Nothing to do with me!”

“I saw the smirk on your face, no-name!”

“That must have been a twinge of pain because of my arm,” Six informed her, holding his injured arm towards her like a bird with a broken wing.

“When warthogs fly! Your arm is perfectly all right now, you – you malingerer! You were delighted to see that sleeping here would be practically impossible!”

“I may have thought that it would help you adjust to adverse conditions, is all.”

“Sure. And you may just have to adjust to some adverse conditions yourself if you don’t wipe that smug grin off your face!”

“You wouldn’t hit an injured man!”

“Only to try and get my circulation running again.”

He shook his head. “No staying power. No sense of enjoying sleeping rough.”

“Rough I can cope with. It is the frostbite which bothers me.”

“Frostbite! What an exaggeration!”

Grace looked at her blue finger, and gave silent thanks that she had thought to bring a couple of full bodywraps. They could sleep in them. Diva pummeled Six in the good shoulder, and they all turned to Arcan.

“So what happened at your ‘first contact’, Arcan?” said Six.

“They have proposed that I visit their homeworld,” Arcan told him. “I am considering whether to accept or not.”

Six frowned. “That might be dangerous, don’t you think?”

A shadow passed through the bubbles Arcan was using as his physical presence. “That, Six, is the reason why I am thinking about it.”

“Perhaps we should come with you?”

“That might be a wise precaution. I intend to question the visitor about the type of planet I would find there. It would be a very great occasion for his people.”

“And yet you are only a 2b!”

“Indeed. I can’t help thinking that their system of nomenclature is ill-founded. It is clear to me that quantum transportation must be ranked much higher than mere quantum communication. I have suggested to the visitor that they consider inverting the classification.”

“Quite right too. And tell them to up our category too, while they are about it!”

“I am unable to see what is wrong with your classification.”

“They have us down as 3b. We should be ‘a’ too!”

“In your case I cannot help but agree with their conclusions. You have, unfortunately, remarkably few accomplishments.”

“You are wrong. Even Diva here is very talented.” Diva looked like a snake that had swallowed its own tail, unsure of just how to take that ‘even’. Six went on regardless. “I think you should beware of these new alien friends. We don’t know anything about them.”

Grace agreed. “I
do
know that your so-called traveler is only a collection of brain cells floating about in a tank of nutrients,” she said.

“There you are then,” said Six. “You want to be a bit careful, if you ask me, mate.”

“I do not ask you.”

“Well, perhaps you should!”

“I will let you know what happens,” Arcan told them. “How is Vion, Grace?”

Everybody looked at Grace, who blushed, much to her annoyance. “He is fine,” she said, pretty unconvincingly.

“Only I have seen very little of him recently. I know he has been helping out here, but that is all. I shall always be indebted to him for his timely warning about the attack Mandalon was planning last year. I would have been badly damaged if it had not been for him. I trust he is well?”

“Spiffy.”

Diva looked curiously at Grace, and then across at Six. Of one accord, they began to distribute Grace’s few belongings around the bleak shack.

THE NEXT MORNING Grace struggled out of the bodywrap and made her way over to her mother’s class, to join the rank and file of the rebels who were preparing for the next armed combat. Her mother looked tired, but was no longer using the orthosupport Arcan had fashioned specially for her. She gave a welcoming smile to her daughter, and then treated her no differently to the rest of her pupils. Grace was grateful for the anonymity. She just wanted to fit in and be unobtrusive.

She found the exercises very relaxing, very warming too. At last she could feel her blood running through her veins, instead of seeping slowly through them in a lethargic reaction to the cold. She was paired off with a nice no-namer who was quite skilled with the Kwaidian dagger he wielded. He made her fight very hard to maintain her position, but was not given to talking. She smiled her thanks to him.

She had been there for about an hour when an envoy came running in and skidded to a halt in front of Cimma.

“If you please, Magestra, First Six is to come immediately to the conference centre.”

Grace caught her mother’s eye and nodded. She went to find Six, who was still in the intermediate class because of his injuries, and gave a sign to Diva, who was with the most advanced group. They all left to make their way to the conference centre.

Grace looked at another bleak shack, identical to the one she and Diva now shared. “Conference centre?” she queried. “Somebody was a bit optimistic there, weren’t they?”

Six glared. “It is a case of protocol,” he assured them. “All self-respecting cities must have a conference centre.”

“Oh,
protocol
. That’s all right then,” Grace assured him, rolling her eyes secretly at Diva, who giggled.

“Come on you two! It must be important if they have pulled us out of exercise time.”

They hurried up the timber steps and opened the ill-fitting door to the shack. Six stopped in the doorway, blocking the progress of Grace and Diva.

“Shift over, no-name, I can’t see … oh!” Diva, too, stopped.

Grace saw that there were several people sitting around the small room. She recognized two – Jalana, Six’s sister, and her husband Calab. She crept into the room behind Six and Diva, and leant with her back against the wooden wall.

Six’s sister looked up as they came in.

“I have come to beg you to stop all this stupidity,” she said, with a cool tone. “I am empowered to tell you that if you stop now the Elders will grant a full pardon to all those who are implicated in this illegal rebellion.”

“Saving Kwaide is not a stupidity,” Six told her grimly. “You of all people should know that, Seven.”

“And don’t call me Seven! I am no longer a no-name!”

“You will always be a no-name to me. I looked after you for ten years, remember?”

“As if I could ever forget! They were cold and bitter years.”

Six went pale. “We survived. We were only children.”

“And now that we have made something of ourselves, you want to take it away from us.”

Six shook his head. “I just want justice for the untouchables. Surely you can understand, Jalana? Surely you can’t be with the Elders on this?”

“My son is an Elder, Six. Remember that. You are taking his heritage away from him. You are ruining his life.”

Diva stepped in front of Six, as if trying to protect him from enemy fire. “You sure don’t take much after your brother, do you?” she demanded.

“What do you mean, Coriolan?”

“Nothing,” Diva said lightly, “it just seems to me that he must have got the majority of the brains going around when you all were conceived.”

“How dare you!”

“Just stating a fact.”

“You are calling me stupid!”

“Well, let’s face it, you have about the same brain power as a Xianthan turkey bird!”

“I do not!”

“No, perhaps not. After all, they are considered to be quite intelligent avians.”

“You … you …”

“Not a patch on your brother.” Diva turned away, to examine the wall with some interest.

Grace threw her an exasperated look. “She … err … doesn’t mean that.” A slight sound from Diva belied that sentence, but Grace battled on. “You really need to come to us. You are in dreadful danger in Benefice. If the Elders are in collusion with the Sellites, then they might hand you and your son over to the Sellites without a qualm. I urge you to come over to us.”

“To live as an outlaw in some isolated camp with no heating? Or bring my son up in a place he can’t go outside? I thank you, no. You are quite wrong. We are both safe in Benefice. We are established members of the Elder community now.”

Diva made another noise.

“Tell that rude girl to go away!” said Jalana.

“I’m going,” Diva snapped. “And your brother is worth a thousand of you, you silly thing. Just don’t think we are going to come running over to rescue you when your ‘wonderful’ Elders break down that front door of yours and drag you out of your heated flat, because we are not!”

“I don’t need your help – or your advice. Who do you think you are, anyway?”

Diva glared. “Divina Senate Magmus of Coriolis,” she informed the girl haughtily.

“From Mesteta?”

Diva inclined her head.

“Huh! They encapsulate people in Rexelene blocks in your town, lady, so don’t come the enlightened bit with me! I have lived in Rexel, you know. We know where the Rexelene goes, and why.”

“Whereas now, ‘
lady
’, you live right next to the effluent conduits in the wastelands of Benefice, in a flat about the size of handkerchief, you slab-faced daughter of Sacras! A real aristocrat!” Diva’s lip curled.

“Slab-faced? Slab-faced?” The girl spluttered. “I’ll give you slab-faced you—”