Context (123 page)

Its
slender body was silver; the delta wings were of shining copper, crossed with
silver to match the fuselage. It hung, the mu-space vessel, high above a
startling green meadow in the pure Alpine sky. White buildings shone beneath
it.

A tiny drop-bug disengaged,
floated downwards from the ship like a dandelion seed upon the soft spring
breeze. Slowly, until it touched down lightly in a courtyard.

Its hatch puckered, opened, and a
lithe dark-suited figure jumped out.

‘Admiral.’ A young boy, also clad
in black, was there to meet her. ‘Welcome, ma’am.’ He saluted, and looked up at
her with his black-on-black eyes.

‘At ease.’ Ro grinned, then
tousled his hair. ‘How ya doin’, young Carlos?’

‘Great, ma’am.’ He grinned,
revealing a gap where a front tooth was missing.

Then he turned and scampered
inside.

Ro followed.

A passing nun nodded, walking
swiftly by. Behind her, two Asian lay-helpers, their faces strained, hurried to
keep up. Seven years before, they had come here as refugees, at the height of
the Changeling Plague.

They look more worried,
Ro thought,
every time I’m
here.

She walked from the courtyard to
the meadow’s edge. Beneath a spray of varicoloured flowers, a small grey
headstone stood.

Father Michael Aloysius Mulligan,
FSJ, PhD, DSc

13
^th
April 2076—10
^th
August 2154

Father of Dart and Ticky, husband
of Angela.

Latterly a Jesuit priest and
scholar.

Requiescat in pace.

So many deaths; so many family
she never knew.

Gramps had died nearly a year
ago, just before Ro’s thirty-fourth birthday. She thought of Dart, the father
she had never known, and wondered what it was that survived in mu-space. His
soul? It was nothing she would ever discuss, here or anywhere.

Ticky was the younger son: the
uncle who had never been, killed with his mother when he was very young; it was
that tragedy, or Gramps’ recovery from it, which had led to his ordination.

And he had been Mother’s sensei.

I miss you, Gramps.

She bowed to the gravestone.

In
the dojo, a small white-haired woman, in
gi
and split-skirt
hakama,
moved
at the centre of a maelstrom. Beefy UNSA officers tumbled in every direction,
and Ro winced as the tiny blind woman altered momentum and two heads collided
with an audible crack and both men fell, stunned.

In a gallery, ten youngsters clad
in black jumpsuits watched silently.

Mother. You just get better with
age.

After she had led the cool-down
and meditation, Karyn -Mother—bowed formally from the kneeling position,
forehead to floor, as her trainees did likewise. Then they shuffled off the
mat, covered in sweat, faces drained.

‘Mom!’ Two children ran towards
Ro.

She caught them around her waist.

‘You’re back.’ Karyn smiled,
silver eye sockets catching the sun. ‘For how long?’

‘Long enough’—with a rough hug—‘to
put these two through their paces.’

‘Ha. If you can keep up.’

Towelling off, Karyn headed
towards her quarters.

‘Ten minutes, and I’ll be
showered and ready for lunch.’

‘Yes, Mother.’

‘And they haven’t seen their
father.’

‘Good. And we don’t need his
money, either.’

They both knew that Colonel Neil
was a father in name only, and that his and Ro’s disastrous liaison was long
over. Anyone who performed a DNA check on the boys would soon find that out:
they were twin one hundred per cent McNamara clones, natural-born, with only
the gender chromosome altered.

They waited for Karyn to leave
the dojo, then exchanged mutual grins.

‘Colonel Neil’—Dirk imitated his
grandmother’s voice—‘is chasing lady officers in Pasadena. And we better not—’

‘—grow up to be like him,’
finished Kian. ‘Of which there’s fat chance, right?’

‘Right.’

Ro could tell them apart, but
only just. To everyone else apart from their grandmother, the twins were
indistinguishable, looking twelve years old though they had just turned ten.

‘So what have you two learned?’
Ro glanced at the dojo mat: teal green, holding the sweat of all that striving.

The twins slipped their shoes
off.

And then they were into it, a
sudden shift from stillness to blurred motion: jumping, rolling, using kicks
and elbows, moving in for body-throws—a wrist-throw, begun but deliberately
released (for both Ro and Karyn had decreed that locks and throws against the
joints were too dangerous for growing bones)—and the use of confusion,
attack-vectors which most fighters would never imagine, would have no reflexive
defence against.

Dirk and Kian stopped, small
chests heaving, and bowed in one motion towards their mother.

‘Very good, my warriors.’ Ro
bowed in return. ‘Very good indeed.’

There
were six hundred children seated in the assembly hall, wearing black jumpsuits,
looking up at Ro. There was a lectern, but she ignored it. Instead, she stood
with hands clasped behind her back, looking down at them all.

‘Ma’am?’ It was young Carlos,
speaking from the wing offstage. ‘All clear, ma’am.’

‘Thank you, Carlos.’

The nuns’ surveillance cameras
were now seeing images of Ro’s devising: a pep talk just scandalous enough—by
their standards—to stop them looking for a deeper truth.

Before Ro, the children waited.
They were aged between seven and twelve, but even the youngest sat attentively,
hands on knees, staring up at their leader with jet-black eyes totally sans
whites, like Ro’s own.

Pilots’ eyes.

Only Dirk and Kian were her own
progeny, but every child here bore a fragment of her DNA, her mitochondria, and
the unique organelles collectively termed fractolons. Each child had been born
in mu-space, to a host mother who had already signed her offspring’s parentage
over to UNSA, in the guise of a foundation headed by the still redoubtable Frau
Doktor Schwenger.

UNSA trainees were still being
virally rewired and stripped of their eyes, but the numbers per annum were
diminishing, and in a few years the first of these new Pilots would be ready to
take their place in the continuum they would make their own, at home in
mu-space as no ordinary human beings could ever be.

Would they be alone there? No-one
had seen a Zajinet for years: all ambassadors to Terra had been recalled, and
the world of Beta Draconis III was devoid of life; no-one believed any more
that it had been their homeworld. Among the higher echelons of UNSA, they knew
only that the aliens—the faction in power, at least—had not wanted true Pilots
in mu-space; and that encouraged them to back Ro’s plans.

‘Hello, everyone.’ Ro’s voice
carried clearly.

Above the ceiling, high above the
buildings, her delta-winged vessel hung huge and silent, waiting. Though there
were no skylights, Ro could sense its presence always.

‘Today, we’ll consolidate skills
which we don’t’—with a gentle emphasis—‘ever practise in public. Understood?’

Six hundred heads nodded in
unison.

‘Good. We don’t want to frighten
people.’

In Ro’s jet eyes, a small golden
light softly glowed.

‘After all...’

For a moment, nothing.

‘... they’re only human.’

And then, in every black orb, in
six hundred pairs of eyes, an answering spark began to glimmer.

<>

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