talks. The preacher bit also was very nice. And how she looked when she first touched Kernak…” Daniel smiled at the memory. “She was as happy as a child.”
Sygra looked calmly at Daniel. “Indeed. She was very happy. And she was not so when she left here. I told you that. Unfortunately, I have not had much time to speak with the Dandra ko Galem family. They either do not want to communicate, or they are too busy with other things to respond. I am sure that I know what you want to know, Daniel. Alas. I have no answer for you.”
Daniel nodded. “I understand. I can imagine that she feels bad about it all. That worries me. She is so…” he looked for a word. “I don’t know. So immature at times. So limited.”
Sygra frowned. “You are talking about Rayko Dandra ko Galem, aren’t you?”
“Indeed.”
“I just need to be certain we are talking about the same person. Let me tell you, Daniel. Rayko is not immature, nor is she limited. She is a special person, and her ways of doing things are not always the ones you would expect from a young lady of her standing.”
Daniel carefully thought before he spoke. “I am sure you know her better than I do, Sygra. It is how she strikes me. She even kicked my shins at that party.”
The senator nodded. “Yes, that was most entertaining.”
“You saw that?”
“It was very hard to miss. Mr. Slindris, may Nahmyo tend to his weary soul, also saw it, I am sure. He would have loved the attention of Rayko in that way.” Sygra had the biggest smile on his face.
Daniel buried his face in his hands. “I wonder what more I did to make all of this a mess.”
Sygra patted him on the shoulder. “There is no mess, Daniel. Remember what is written in the book I gave you. There are no challenges put on your path that are greater than you can handle. You need to look at them carefully and decided which of your strengths you will deploy to take up the matter.”
“I know. I have read that passage many times. But it is so easy to read it and so very difficult to actually do it.”
“Nobody said it would be easy, Daniel. You did the great things with great skill. Now do the small things with small skill. And improve that skill as you go along.”
“That sounds nice. I’ll think about it and give it a try.” Daniel leaned back against his chair. “I’ll put on the preacher’s clothes again and see if that helps.”
“You do that, Daniel. You do that. And you may find that it will actually do so.”
Later that evening, before he went to sleep, Daniel sat on his bed. He wore the brown clothes and the grey hood, and the book of Nahmyo was in front of him.
Daniel stood on the new airship. The floaters, all eight of them now, stood high above him. There was something odd about the construction. Aldrick had never mentioned the light Polychlon beams to keep the floaters up. Also the way the floater cables were connected to the airship was new to him. Curiously he wandered around the ship. Too many things were… odd… The steering wheel had gone though, which was an improvement. The cabin that held the steam engine was higher. And painted bright red.
“Now there’s a change we could do without,” Daniel muttered, wondering where Aldrick might be.
The colour screamed out load against the blue of the rest of the airship. Now wait… the first airship was blue, but this new one had been grey when he first saw it. How’d that become blue all of a sudden?
Slowly Daniel started to understand, as the dream wore off and he woke up.
The room was dark, so it was still night time. He reached for the matches and lit the candle next to his bed. He tried to recall what he had seen in his dream as he located a few sheets of paper and a pencil. As well as he could, he wrote down what he had noticed. He made crude drawings, and wondered if this was something he should show Aldrick. The inventor would probably die a happy man: laughing.
Daniel grinned at himself as he lay down in bed again, the candle still burning. After a few minutes of ceiling gazing, he picked up the hydger. No messages, of course. The noise of those would have woken him up. All the others would have the common sense to just sleep in the night.
“So, what are you going to do, Zacharias?” Daniel asked himself. “Stay here and help crazy Aldrick invent new forms of airships?” He chuckled at the idea of becoming as crazy as that man. At least that would make life here a lot more interesting, he assumed.
Maybe, he then thought, he could send another message to Rhonda. Ask her if there was any chance that he could be reinstated to something resembling his old position at star base. Or somewhere else, as long as it was not near Troy and his smelly command.
“Sure,” he mocked himself, “just because you managed to not get killed here a few times, that will be a clean bill to get back. Forget that.” He blew out the candle and lay down to sleep again.
59. Preachers and inventors
“This is not going to work.” Daniel had spent some time trying to go back to sleep and failed. Again he lit the candle and tried to decide what he should do about that. More reading? No, that was not the way to go. He’d done enough of that. He’d also run out of ideas for the airship.
“Fresh air. That usually helps,” he remembered. Quietly he dressed. As he was about to leave the room, he stood still for a moment, looking at the hydger. Better to take that along. Suppose it would make its noise and wake other people up. With the box in a pocket, he walked into the corridor and then left the house.
Two of the three moons of NGC6637-VIII were high in the sky and set the area in a very intense light. Daniel turned right and slowly walked up the slope. He knew that the view over the area and the bay was magnificent from there, and now he had the chance to see it in the moonlight.
The walk up the hill was good for him: he had to focus on where he stepped, as the trail was not often used. When he reached the summit, he breathed in the cool nightly air. A little further to the left he saw the rock he had sat on before. He claimed it as his again and looked down the hill. He could not see Sygra’s house from there, there were too many trees and high bushes growing. Finding it back would be no problem though, the light of the moons was abundant.
Daniel looked up at the smallest of the two moons. It was an oddly shaped moon, not round. There had been many meteors, he assumed, that had used that moon for target practice. Bites had been taken out of the shape and now it looked as if someone had thrown up a half-eaten cookie which had gotten stuck in orbit.
Then he stared at the constellations that he had gotten to know by now. The star base… he had no idea where that should be now. It could be anywhere in that vastness. Daniel lay down on the ground and looked straight up at the stars overhead. “Out there, my boy, is where you belong,” he told himself.
“Is that so?”
The voice made Daniel jump to his feet while his heart tried to jump from his throat. “Who are you?”
A man was sitting near a low hedge. Daniel had no idea how long he had been there.
“My name is not important, but for convenience sake you can call me Lundar. And do you have a name?”
“I’m Daniel Zacharias.”
“Ah. I am pleased to meet you, Seigner Daniel Zacharias,” the man said as he slowly got up. He walked to Daniel, holding out his hand.
Daniel frowned. The man wore dark clothes, and on his back hung something that looked like… “You are a preacher, aren’t you?”
“Yes. I am surprised you recognise this, you don’t look like someone who is from here,” Lundar said.
They shook hands.
“Some people have called me a preacher also,” Daniel allowed himself. He grinned as he said it.
“That makes you my brother, Daniel.”
Daniel noticed that Lundar immediately dropped the Seigner, which suited him fine. “I’m afraid I woke you up, Lundar. Please accept my apologies.”
“Not to worry, Daniel. I sleep lightly and short. I was about to go anyway as I like to travel at night, so this is a lucky coincidence. What is troubling you?”
