Valhai (The Ammonite Galaxy) (16 page)

“WHAT?”, GRACE HAD been in a heavy sleep; it was hard to wake up all at once.

“You have to come! Now!”

She lay with her eyes closed as the words gradually sank in. Then Cian! – that meant that Diva was at this moment gasping for breath. She leapt off the divan and struggled to get her bare planet clothes on.

“I’m coming, Six. Tell Arcan I will be there as fast as I can. Tell Diva to breathe slowly, not to use up all the air at once. I’m coming!” Her feet fell over each other in her haste, and she hissed at them through her teeth. “come on, come ON!” Then she was ready. Stopping only to grab the six mask packs she had put to one side, together with a spare bodywrap, she raced out to the back lift.

She had no hands free to try to reach Arcan in the lift, so she didn’t bother. He would presumably be pretty busy trying to help Diva. Grace spared a thought for her brother Xenon. This had to have been his order. How
could
he have ordered the death of another being? How could she ever, ever talk to him again? What was going to be the end of all this? She could see no long-term solution to any of it.

She nearly fell off the stairs trying to get bare planet. Again she hissed to herself. Then her boots touched the sand, and she was on her way to the lake. The stars were urging her on, it seemed. Her mask pack was working at the limit of its efficiency, but she couldn’t spare the time to stop and regulate her breathing. She just hoped that the valves wouldn’t go into autoblock.

As she came stumbling over the crest of the hill and saw the lake she was amazed. Arcan had moved the whole bubble to the shore, and was supporting it securely on the sand by a wall of lake. It was an impressive sight.

Not so impressive was the sign of an inanimate body slumped inside the bubble. She was going to be too late!

Grace threw herself down the slope to the lake, scattering sand and particulates to all sides. Please don’t let me be too late. Please don’t let me be too late, she intoned.

She reached the bubble; to her great relief she could see the thin body inside was still moving, the eyes were open, watching her. She waved a hand at the prone and gasping Diva, and then came up to a complete stop. How was she to get into the bubble? The walls must be too thick to let her through.

Not so. As she put one tentative hand to the surface of the bubble it thinned out and gave way, allowing her to push inside to where Diva was striving to breathe. First she put a mask pack on the girl.

“Here! Breathe normally. I have got you now. It’s all right!”

Diva nodded weakly, unable to talk.

“That’s all right. Don’t try to speak now. Just try to get a steady breathing rhythm back.”

Diva gradually began to regain some colour in her skin as the new source of oxygen kicked in. Then Grace carefully helped her into the bodywrap – she wouldn’t last even a minute without it in the unprotected slight atmosphere of Valhai. When they were ready Grace helped Diva to her feet, and the two girls touched the side of the bubble again. This time it burst, leaving them standing on the shore. The wall of lake retreated and sank slowly back into the inky surface. A shiver of iridescence propagated slowly along the surface.

They both collapsed onto the sand. They had done it! Grace concentrated on steadying her own breathing. They still had to get back to the skyrise. She was worried about the physical state of the girl who was sitting beside her. Diva had been operated upon and then left in a small bubble with no way to exercise for nearly two months. To top off the combination she had narrowly escaped asphyxiation. Grace just hoped that she would be able to make it as far as the skyrise. She didn’t think she would be able to carry Diva herself.

They lay there, panting. Gradually energy seeped back into Diva’s face, until she managed a weak grin. Then her eyes turned to the lake, the surrounding hills, and the myriad stars that were so much bigger than on Coriolis. She made a sign of amazement to Grace, who nodded.

“I know. I love it,” she answered. Diva nodded and pointed an index finger in her own direction.

“You too?” Grace felt absurdly pleased. “But then you just escaped from death by bubble. I guess anything would look good to you right now.”

Diva put her head on one side, began to shake it and then nodded. She gave a shrug.

“I know. It’s all very confusing. Don’t worry. As soon as you’re ready I’ll take you to your new home. You will have plenty of time to recover there.”

In answer Diva dragged herself to her feet, and made a sign for Grace to get up.

“OK. Let’s make a start. You’re right, we don’t want to take too long, even if we do have two spare mask packs each.” She put her hand on Diva’s elbow and the two girls set off in the direction of the skyrises, only pausing to give Arcan a wave of thanks. Grace wasn’t sure whether he could perceive it or not, but she would thank him properly once they were safe in the lift.

To her surprise they made quite good time. In a little over twice the time it would have taken her on her own they were standing on the terrace of the ground floor of the 256
^th
skyrise. Grace activated the biolock and ushered Diva in. Diva pulled off her mask, following Grace’s example. She looked around.

“Wow!”

“I know. Where do you want to live?”

“I have a choice?”

“Sure. There are currently 47 floors not being used. You can pick any of those.”

“You’re kidding me!”

“No. Seriously. It is part of Sell custom for each generation to build another floor to the family property. So the previous floors end up empty, except for the sarcophagi, of course.”

Diva’s eyes were like plates. “And you don’t use all that space?”

Grace shook her head. “No. They are just storage areas for each generation’s artifacts now. Though luckily for you the air system is still fully functional in them all. It helps to preserve some of the delicate art work that my ancestors bought.”

“So I get to pick my floor? What do you think?”

“I would pick between fifteen and twenty-nine. Sort of middle of the range, you know?”

“Fine. Let’s make it twenty-one, then. That is when they give you an of-age party on Coriolis, and that may be as near as I will get to it.” She sighed.

“Don’t be sad. You are safe, now.” Grace thought again. “Well; moderately safe. We will have fun. I’m glad you are here.”

“Me too!”

“Come this way, Honourable Visitor! I’ll show you around your new home!” Grace escorted Diva to the lift. “If you want to chat to Arcan you can always call him from here.” She showed how she was placing her hands against the lift wall.

“Grace! Are you all right? Diva?” The walls of the lift erupted into speech.

“We are fine. Tell Six, will you?”

“Done. How is Diva?”

“I am fine Arcan. Thank you for saving my life. I owe you.”

The lift wall shimmered. “Yes. You do. I will . . . call it in one day?”

Diva laughed. “That’s fine, Arcan. I see Six has been teaching you a few things.”

“Very few. I find I often don’t understand his way of thinking.”

“Nobody does! Don’t worry about it. Six has an original way of looking at the rest of the world.”

“In that he emulates me. I am an original.” Arcan pointed out.

“You are THE original!” Grace signed.

The lift came to a halt on the twenty-first floor, and with a quick ‘bye’ to Arcan the girls tumbled out. When she saw the size of the place Diva gave a slow whistle.

“Thank Lumina!” she said. “I was terrified I would have to go back into another bubble.”

“No, you have four thousand and fifty square metres of area to get lost in. It is enough, you will see. Come.” Together the girls wandered over the twenty-first floor. The private areas first: eating, study, family, sleeping and viewing, which took up fifteen hundred and seventy-four square metres. Then the impressive voting room with its four high chairs. Diva gave a squeal of delight and insisted on climbing up the tallest one.

“Don’t push any buttons on the top, whatever you do.” Grace laughed. “You would cause havoc. It would mean that one of my predecessors had come out of his tomb to vote!”

Diva snatched her hands back.

Grace continued with the tour. The music room, four hundred square metres in its own right. Then the visitor’s chamber, and then the tanato and adjoining medical chambers. That only left the running track, which ran all the way around the outside of the chambers. The only interruption in its smooth outer walls were the two lifts, and four doors - one leading to the main terrace and the other three to minor vantage points on the other three sides of the building.

“Now I can see why my people think the Sellites are Gods!” Diva exclaimed. “Until now I have only seen the worst of them.”

“You can say that again!” Grace agreed. Then she softly touched Diva’s arm. “I must tell you something.” She licked her lips. “It was my brother, Xenon, head of house, who ordered your death.”

“I thought it must have been. Don’t worry, Grace. You have saved my life, and I won’t forget. If you think about it, it was my father who got us all into this mess by falsifying my exam results. Families!” And she shrugged.

“He lives upstairs.”

“
Does
he now? Interesting. So I had better not wander about too much on my own, hmm?”

“I wouldn’t like you to bump into him in the lift.” She thought. “Or his wife, Amanita, either.”

“Poisonous, is she? I know the sort.”

“She is not my favourite person,” admitted Grace. “I don’t trust her. I think she wants to get rid of my mother and me – send us to Cesis, perhaps.”

“Your mother?”

Grace told her the story of her father’s death, and how Xenon 49 had had to take over the house immediately. How her mother had had some sort of a crisis. How Grace herself was being pushed to make up her mind about university.

“I’m sorry.” She suddenly realized that she was talking to somebody who had lost their home, family, future and prospective children. “I didn’t think. I . . .”

Diva touched her hand. “It is nice to know who
you
are, Grace. After all, you know an awful lot about everything that has ever happened to me!”

“If you put it that way . . .”

“Definitely. I would really like us to be friends. And that means being able to talk about everything. In any case, I just spent two months lying on a bed feeling sorry for myself, and I made a promise when I saw those stars that I would leave all that behind me with the bubble. By the way, can’t I go out to look at the stars?”

“You can go onto the three vantage points; they are glassed in and so you don’t need biosigns to get in and out. None of the Sellites ever use them: our race has developed a fear of open spaces or views.”

“Then that is where I shall sleep. Will you help me move a sleeping pallet into one of them? Which one shall I choose?”

“The one near the back lift would probably be best. You could talk to Arcan if you get lonely and you would be able to hear the lift if it came with anybody else in it.”

“That one, then.” Between them, they managed to drag a heavy sleeping pallet to the closed door to the vantage point. Diva held the door open and Grace dragged the pallet inside. The space was small, about the size of the bubble, but there was quite a patch of sky visible, studded with stars.

“You can’t see Cian from this side,” Grace told her, “that’s why they build the biggest terrace on the other side of the lift.”

“That doesn’t matter. It’s space and the stars that I need to see.”

“I’ll show you the bathing area, and the wardrobes. The clothes are always kept so there should be something you can wear.”

When she saw the available wardrobe, Diva opened her eyes wide. “Sacras! You could clothe a whole town!”

“And you would call up your food here.” Grace took her back to the eating area. “But we can’t use the food lift because they would know somebody was here. So I will dial up some extra food upstairs, and bring it down for you every day.”