When the stewards came by to serve the mid-voyage meal, the old man waved them away, accepting only a bulb of water from their trays. When the gondola slowed, and docked at Diamond Summit, the passengers found themselves weightless. The stewards helped them from their couches, and guided them to the nose of the gondola, to the airlock that led to the Diamond Summit entry way.
Once onboard Diamond Summit, Lien led the old man to the main body of the station, which rotated around the central hub, providing artificial gravity to the environs. At a large reinforced panoramic window the pair stopped.
In front of them, a few thousand kilometers off, they could see the last of the Treasure Fleet departing for the red planet Fire Star. Below them stretched the blue curve of the Earth, and the glow of the sun limning the far horizon with pale fire. They could see even as far as the edge of the western hemisphere, and the northern continent which McAllister had once called home. Nearest them was the Muslim colony of Khalifa on the coast, founded in centuries past by admirals of the Dragon Throne. Beyond that, off towards the blazing sun in the east, rose the lands of the Commonwealth of Vinland.
'There,' Lien said, supporting the old man with one arm, pointing towards the distant horizon with the other. 'That is what I wanted to show you. First to let you see what your labor those many long years was for, and second to give you a final look at your lost home. There, on the horizon. That is your… that is our homeland. Vinland.'
The old man was trembling. He looked from the panorama to Lien, his eyes watering and his lip quivering.
'You… you don't understand,' he managed to get out, with difficulty. His voice caught in his throat, sounding like an injured bullfrog. 'It's not terror that plagues me, but guilt.'
Lien looked at the old man, confused.
'But I assumed that you were still afflicted by the fear that gripped you up on Gold Mountain, all those years ago.'
The old man jerked his head from side to side, as though trying to shake her words from his ears.
'No!' he shouted, flecks of foam spotting the corners of his mouth. 'It wasn't fear, not even then. You don't…'
He left off for a moment, pulling away from Lien and averting his eyes.
Lien reached out and laid a hand on his thin shoulder. She thought of her grandfather, and all that had gone unsaid between them.
'Please,' she said. 'Tell me.'
'No,' he repeated, with less conviction.
'Please,' she urged. 'What do you mean it wasn't fear?'
The old man turned to her, his face a red grimace, his eyes flashing.
'It was envy!' he said. 'It was lust! It was greed! But it was never fear. Anything but fear!'
He rocked back on his heels, eyes on the far ceiling, his body racked with sobs.
'I could have saved Michael,' he went on. 'I only had to reach out my hand. But as he dangled there, I couldn't help thinking that with him gone, Zhu Xan would be mine. I loved her, just as he did, and with my brother dead the way would be clear for me. But…'
He broke off again, sobs interrupting his words. He slid to the floor, on his knees, his hands in his lap.
'But she was already dead,' Lien said.
Mucus ran down his face, and tears streamed across his dry cheeks.
'Yes!' he wailed.
Lien stood, looking down at the frail old man at her feet, rocked by paroxysm of grief and guilt.
'That's why you never went home, isn't it?' she asked, realization dawning. 'Why you never returned to Vinland. You couldn't face your family.'
The old man nodded, and beat his thin fists against the carpeted floor.
'Yes!' he shouted.
Without another word, she knelt down, and wrapped her arms around the old man's slender frame. She drew him tight to her, and McAllister pressed his face into her shoulder, convulsing with sobs.
'Oh, Michael!' the old man said, his voice cracking. 'I'm so, so sorry. It was my job to protect you, and I… Oh, God. Forgive me. Forgive me!'
Lien held him tighter, and stroked the back of his wrinkled skull with her hand.
'I forgive you,' she whispered, tears in her eyes.
They held each other, the old white ghost and the woman from the Northern Capital. Diamond Summit turned, and the curve of Vinland slipped out of view, and the mountains and plains of China swelled to fill the window.
'Now, grandfather,' Lien said, at the edge of hearing. 'Forgive me, too.'
The Fulcrum by GWYNETH JONES
From Gardner Dozois - The Year's Best Science Fiction 23rd Annual Collection (2006)
One of the most acclaimed British writers of her generation, Gwyneth Jones was a cowinner of the James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award for work exploring genre issues in science fiction, with her 1991 novel White Queen, and has also won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, with her novel Bold As Love, as well as receiving two World Fantasy Awards-for her story 'The Grass Princess' and her collection Seven Tales and a Fable. Her other books include the novels North Wind, Flowerdust, Escape Plans, Divine Endurance, Phoenix Cafe, Castles Made of Sand, Stone Free, Midnight Lamp, Kairos, Life, Water in the Air, The Influence of Ironwood, The Exhange, Dear Hill, and The Hidden Ones, as well as more than sixteen Young Adult novels published under the name Ann Halam. Her too-infrequent short fiction has appeared in Interzone, Asimov's Science Fiction, Off Limits, and in other magazines and anthologies, and has been collected in Identifying the Object: A Collection of Short Stories, as well as Seven Tales and a Fable. She is also the author of the critical study Deconstructing the Starships: Science Fiction and Reality. Her stories have appeared in the Fourteenth, Fifteenth, and Sixteenth Annual Collections. She lives in Brighton, England, with her husband, her son, and a Burmese cat.
Archimedes once said, 'Give me the place to stand, and a lever long enough, and I will move the Earth.' In the story that follows, such a lever is provided -and proves to be able to move more worlds than one…
In the constellation of Orion, and illuminated by the brilliant star N380 Orionis, you will find the reflection nebula NGC 1999, and the 'homo sapiens' Bok Globule, famous in astronomical history. This star nursery is the apparent location of the Buonarotti region, to which the 4-space equations give the shape of a notional cross with two-pointed expanding wings, known to Deep Spacers and other romantics as The Fulcrum. To some, this 'X marks the spot' is the forbidden gate to Eldorado; to others, it's the source of our consciousness and an oracle of our future, set like Delphi at the navel of space-time…
The aliens came back to their cabin to find that they'd been turned over again. Last time, they'd lost their drugs. This time it was the bikes. They sat in the wreckage of scattered belongings, letting the spume of violent and futile emotion shed from them, and feeling scared. Losing the fish-oil stash had been serious, but extreme tourists have to accept that they are rich and they will get ripped off. This was different. No one else on the station had any possible use for the exercise bikes. Their fellow prospectors were almost exclusively Deep Space veterans. A few hours a day of simulated mountain racing wouldn't touch their problem with the gravity well.
In the end, the company of their violated possessions got them down, so they decided to go and see Eddie the Supercargo. They knew he wouldn't do anything, but it's always better to report racial harassment. They put their coats on and bounced gently along the drab corridors-two humanoid aliens, about two meters tall, pale skinned and diffident, each with a crest of stiff red hair. Although they were a heterosexual couple, to human eyes they were as identical as identical twins-but unlike human identical twins, they didn't mind being mistaken for each other. They didn't meet anyone. The Kuiper Belt station did not aspire to the parkland illusions or shopping opportunities of near-Earth orbital hotels. Unless they were preparing for transit, most of the prospectors never left their cabins except to visit the saloon.
