Andromeda Day and the Black Hole (6 page)

“I do not know. But they would certainly
have renewed hope—something we have not known for some time.” Clios met his
gaze openly. “The return of the Star would be the only way we could grant your…
request.”

Andi frowned. Request? Did she mean the
Quartz, or something else? “Has anyone tried to find the Golden Star?” she
asked.

“I have sent as many soldiers into the
Black Hole as I can spare, but none of them has returned. Lydia was very strong
and courageous. But perhaps she is dead now. Or as good as.” A single tear fell
from Clios’s left eye and trickled down her cheek. She made no attempt to wipe
it away, as proud of her sorrow as she was of her courage.

“Would the Hoshaens not have recovered the artifact
themselves when they captured Lydia?” Andi asked. “They must know how important
it is to you.”

“Lydia would never let that happen. She
would keep it in a safe place.”

“You mean that perhaps she hid it before
she was captured?”

Clios’s face was unreadable. “Possibly.”

Deneb was leaning on the table and Andi
looked down, shocked but not surprised to see that his knuckles were white
where he gripped the edge. A sinking feeling inside her made her wonder if her
metal heart had detached itself from the rest of her body and was drifting
slowly to her feet. She knew the look on his face, knew it of old. Deneb the
white knight in shining armor, always ready to rescue the damsel in distress. She
caught his arm, shook her head. “No, Dad. We can’t.”

He looked at her as if seeing her for the
first time and then straightened, his eyes clearing. “I know,” he said gently. He
turned back to Clios. “I sorry for your loss. Sorry to taken your time.”

Clios looked tired, as if all the weeks of
sleeping rough, snatching an hour here and there, had suddenly taken their
toll. “We don’t have much that you can take. There are precious few relics here—everything
of value has been buried.” Her eyes burned fiercely. “We will not let the
Hoshaens come in and take our history as if it is yellowcorn ready for the
picking.”

She turned and walked away from the table
towards a small door at the back of the hall. After a few paces she turned and
beckoned to them to follow her. Deneb did so, pulling Andi with him. When they
reached the door she opened it and stepped back to let them through.

Deneb walked into the small room and Andi
followed. It was a store room, filled with boxes and junk, but here and there
she could see the odd statue, chipped and broken; books lying open, their
covers ripped at the spine; unidentifiable metal objects, bent out of shape.

“It’s not much,” Clios said, “but you can
take what you like.” She and Deneb exchanged a look and she opened her mouth as
if she were about to add something, but then she turned on her heel and walked
off, back to the table of maps and plans.

The two of them stood there for a moment,
silent, looking at the door. Then Deneb turned and looked around the room. “Let’s
see what’s worth taking,” he said. His voice was rough.

Andi glanced around her. She couldn’t see
anything of the sort of quality that they had been hoping for. And somehow,
taking these broken things seemed wrong. They seemed pitiful, as if they had
been hoping to find a pedigree dog, but had instead come upon a dirty mongrel,
mangy and flea-ridden, that had been beaten by its owner. She didn’t want to
take any of these things that would remind her of the pile of bodies lying out
on the flagstones. She just wanted to leave this place.

“Let’s go,” she said, not touching
anything.

“I’m not leaving without something,” Deneb
said stubbornly. “I’m not going to waste our journey and come away with
nothing.” He began to fling aside boxes, looking for something, anything worth
taking back to the
Antiquarian
.

Andi remained where she was, a little
frightened. She knew he felt exactly the same way as she did, and could tell by
the red patch on his cheeks that he was ashamed of his actions. “Is it bad?”
she asked suddenly. “The money, I mean.”

He stopped what he was doing for a moment,
looking down at the large box he was rummaging through. Then he glanced over at
her. “What do you mean?”

“I know there’s something wrong. I saw your
face when you asked Clios what we could have. You looked… desperate.” She could
see that he was struggling to deny her accusations. “Stop treating me like a
child!” she snapped. “You heard what Clios said. I’m fourteen now and nearly an
adult.”

He stared at her, shocked. His eyes were
hard. “You’re not Ruvalian,” he said through gritted teeth, “and you’re my only
daughter, the only thing left in my life that I can protect. When I think you
need to know my business, I’ll tell you.” And he went back to rifling through
the box.

Andi wanted to tell him that she didn’t
need protecting, that she wanted to share everything with him, but she kept
quiet, sensing that he wouldn’t listen, not now, anyway. Eventually, he became
uncomfortable with her silence, and he stood, cursing, holding a small chipped
statue in his hands that looked as if it could have been made of marble. “This
will do,” he said curtly, and made his way out of the room.

Andi sighed and followed him out.

*

Later, after returning to the
Antiquarian
and spending some time alone in her rooms thinking about their trip to Thoume,
Andi went to Deneb’s quarters. They had joint access to each other’s rooms
unless they specifically coded the privacy as red, and although they usually
requested entry to each other, when Andi had pressed the button several times
to no effect, she opened the door and stood in the doorway, looking in.

Deneb’s rooms reflected him very closely,
she thought—stylish, quite flamboyant with their bright colors, and decked out
with the occasional artifact that he couldn’t bear to be parted with: an old
book from the first press on the primary Mars colony; a piece of jewelry from
the Proximians; a beautiful ceramic pot from Old-Time England’s medieval
period. The chipped Ruvalian statue rested on a table in the corner, forgotten,
dull in the starlight.

Deneb sat in a chair over by the window,
staring out at the stars that wheeled around them in their continual, rather
beautiful dance. At night most of the crew lowered the shutters, which blocked out
any sunshine from nearby stars, but Deneb’s were still open, giving him a
panoramic view of the local system. Andi doubted that he was actually seeing
the constellations, however. She knew that look on his face and guessed that
his brain was seeing pictures drawn from memories rather than the scene before
him.

He didn’t look over as she entered. His
hand was resting on a glass of an amber liquid, and she saw the familiar bottle
of Lagavulin Islay malt whisky next to him on the floor, one of the many bottles
he had stolen from an Earth supplier before fleeing his home planet.

She leaned against the doorframe, watching
him for a moment, twisting inside to see the sad look on his face. She knew
without asking that he was thinking about her mother. He always looked like
that when he thought about her, and the whisky was always present in his hand
then, too.

“I’m going to bed,” she said eventually,
when she realized that he didn’t even know she was standing there.

He looked over. His hair was ruffled where
he had taken off his hat and hadn’t bothered to brush it, and he looked younger
than his thirty-seven years. “Goodnight,” he said. “I hope you sleep well.” He
didn’t rise to kiss her as usual and Andi’s bottom lip trembled in an
uncharacteristic display of emotion.

“Are you angry with me, Dad?”

He smiled then, the fierce, rather angry
look in his eyes dissipating, and he held his free arm out. She came over,
knelt beside his chair, and hugged him.

“Of course not, love. Why should I be angry
with you?”

“I know that you wanted to go and get the
Golden Star, and I said you shouldn’t.”

“It was only common sense, Andi. You were
right.”

“I suppose. I just don’t want anything to
happen to you.”

“I know.” He kissed her on the top of her
head.

She got to her feet and went back to the
door, turning once more to look at him before she left. She bit her lip, then
blurted out: “I miss her too, Dad.”

Deneb stared at her. “I know,” was all he
said.

Outside the window, Andi watched the
purple-blue orb of Thoume rise and begin to block out the starlight, and
Deneb’s face fell into shadow. He looked back out at the stars, his eyes
distant, and took a large swallow from the glass before raising the bottle to
pour out some more whisky.

For a moment she hesitated, wishing they
could share their loss because it might make it easier for both of them. But
she sensed that Deneb didn’t want to talk about his grief. For him it was still
too deep, too dark, to share.

Quietly, she left the room and let the door
slide shut.

*

Andi opened her eyes. It was still dark. She
checked the clock by the side of the bed. It was just after two a.m.,
ship-time. She knew that outside the shutters the
Antiquarian
would now
be in daylight, orbiting a short distance from Thoume on the side of its sun, but
the ship always ran on Earth time, and the Waiter had not yet lifted the
shutters that covered the Carbex windows. She raised her head from the pillow
and rubbed her eyes, yawning. What had awoken her?

She frowned, sitting up. Something had
definitely roused her. She swung her feet over the bed and put on her soft
shoes, then pulled her robe closely around her. Had the noise come from Deneb’s
quarters, just down the corridor? She remembered that he had been drinking when
she left him. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d woken her by throwing a bottle
at the wall and smashing it, angered, as always, by visions of the past that
plagued him.

She walked to her door and pressed the
green button to open it, then peered out. The corridor was quiet. There was no
sign of anyone. She ran down to Deneb’s quarters. The red light was on,
indicating that he did not want to be disturbed.

She pressed for entry anyway, and held down
the communicator button. “Dad?” she asked. She waited, but there was no reply. “Dad?”
She waited for a few minutes, then knocked loudly on his door, but he still
didn’t answer. Getting worried now, she stood there biting her nail as she
wondered whether she ought to try and enter his room without his permission. He
would be angry if he was there and she burst in. But what if there was
something wrong, if he had drunk too much, and was ill?

Quickly making a decision, she reached into
her pocket and took out the small screwdriver she had put in there for this
very purpose. She used it to lever open a small panel next to the entry pad,
revealing the circuitry of the door.

She jumped a little as a low voice said:
“What are you doing, Andi?” It was the Waiter, who was observing her on the
cameras that were stationed at various points throughout the ship.

“Nothing to concern you, go back to sleep,”
she muttered. “Clearance code Alpha November 239.” It was her own personal code
that she had programmed into the Waiter—unknown to Deneb—that allowed her to do
pretty much whatever she wanted.

“Yes, Andi.” The Waiter fell silent.

Carefully, she loosened the green wire
leading to the lock and then, using a pair of pliers, also from her pocket, she
cut it.

The door slid back silently, and stayed
open. Andi held her breath, expecting a sharp reprimand, but none came, so she
peered into the room, then stepped inside. It was empty. She crept through the
lounge area, noting, to her surprise, that there was still an almost full
bottle of whisky beside the chair, and went through to his sleeping room. She
peeped around the corner.

The bedcovers were straight, and obviously
hadn’t been slept in.

Andi stared at them, wondering in her
sleepy state where he had gone. Down to the mess to get something to eat? Up to
the bridge to check the flight path? And then her eyes fell on a notepad on a
nearby table, the blue light at the top flashing to indicate that there was a
message to be read.

Hesitantly, she picked it up, pressing the
button to bring up the waiting message.

Dear Andi (it read)

If you’re reading this, then you’ve
disobeyed the red light on the door and come into my room! Don’t worry, I’m not
cross. I knew you’d find a way in when I didn’t appear, and that’s why I’ve
left you this note.

Don’t be angry with me, although I know you
will be, but I’ve gone back to Thoume to try to find the girl with the Golden
Star. I know you think it’s because of the ship’s account, but it’s not just
that. I keep thinking of her in that awful place, and I know I’ve got to do
something to get her out, something to help Clios and her people.

Give me five days. If you don’t hear from
me by then, you’ll know that something’s gone wrong. If that happens, please
forgive me, and know that I was only trying to do the right thing. Head back
for Earth, Andi love, and contact the ORC. They’ll help you decide what to do
with your life.