I don’t think so.
Tranquillity doesn’t own any starships,syrinx said.
Have you been there?mosul asked.
Certainly not, it’s a blackhawk base.
Ah.
Serina looked up suddenly, her head swivelling round. At last! I’ve just worked out what’s missing.
What?syrinx asked.
Birds. There are always birds by the shore on normal terracompatible worlds. That’s why it’s so quiet here.
One of the larger cargo spaceplanes chose that moment to lift from its pad. The vertical-lift engines produced a strident metallic whine until it was a hundred metres in the air. It banked to starboard and slid off over the ocean, picking up speed rapidly.
Serina started laughing. Almost quiet!
Be a friend,syrinx said in singular engagement. Vanish!she pulled a wry face, and drained her wineglass. “Refill time. I’ll leave you two alone for a moment.” She sauntered off into the reception room with a suspicious wiggle.
Syrinx grinned. My loyal crew,she told mosul in singular engagement.
Your attractive crew,he replied on the same mode.
I’ll tell her you said that. Once we’re safely outsystem.
He came over and put his arm round her shoulder.
I have a small confession,she said. This isn’t all pleasure.
It looks that way to me.
I want to hire a boat and visit the whales. I’d also need someone who can navigate properly to take me. Is that possible?
Alone on a boat with you? That’s not merely possible, that’s a guaranteed certainty.
Are there any schools near here, or do we have to go from a different island? I’ve only got a week.
There was a school of blues a hundred kilometres south of here a day ago. Hang on, I’ll ask the dolphins if they’re still there.
Dolphins?
Yes. We use dolphins to help with the fishing.
I didn’t know you had servitor dolphins.
We don’t. They’re just plain ordinary dolphins with an affinity gene spliced in.
She followed his mind as he called. The answer was strange, more of a tune than phrases or emotions. A gentle harmony that quietened the soul. Accompanying senses flooded in. She was barrelling through solid greyness, seeing little, receiving sharp outlines of sound. Shapes moved around her like a galaxy of dark stars. She reached the surface and flashed through the ephemeral mirror into the dazzle and the emptiness where she hung with tingling skin stretched taut.
She felt her own body stretch luxuriously in tandem. The affinity link faded away, and she sighed in regret.
Dolphins are fun,
Like voidhawks in water, you mean?
No! Well, yes. A bit.
Happy with being able to tease
Roughly translated from the scherzo, it means the whales are still within range. It’ll take a day’s sailing if we use my boat. Good enough?
Excellent. Can your family spare you?
Yes. This is a slow month coming up. We’ve been working our arses off for the last nine weeks preparing for the Norfolk trade, I’m entitled to a rest.
So you think you’re going to get some rest on that boat, do you?
I sincerely hope not. Although you didn’t strike me as someone who’d do the tourist routine. Not that the whales aren’t worth a look.
Syrinx turned to face the ocean again, squinting at the white cloud stripe where the sky merged with the water. It’s a memory for someone else.“my brother.”
Mosul sensed the pain integral with the thought, and didn’t pry.
Alkad Mzu walked up the stairs from her first-floor apartment in the StPelham starscraper, coming out into the circular foyer with its high, wave-curved ceiling and tall transparent walls looking out across the habitat parkland. A dozen or so other early risers were moving around the foyer, waiting for the lifts in the central pillar, or heading for the broad stairs around the rim which led down to the starscraper’s tube stations. It was an hour after the axial light-tube had brought a timid rosy dawn to Tranquillity’s interior; patches of fine mist were still lurking amid the deeper tracts of undergrowth. The parkland around each of the starscraper foyers was maintained as open meadow dotted with small copses of ornate trees and clumps of flowering bushes. She stepped out through the sliding doors into damp air flush with the perfume of midnight-blooming nicotiana. Colourful birds arrowed through the air, trilling loudly.
She set off down the raked sand path towards a lake two hundred metres away, with only the slightest hint of a limp in her walk. Flamingos were wading through the shallows between the thick clusters of white and blue lilies. Scarlet avian lizards floated among them; the xenoc creatures were smaller than the terrestrial birds, with brilliant turquoise eyes, holding themselves very still before suddenly diving below the glass-smooth surface. Both species began to move towards the shore as she walked past. Alkad reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out some stale biscuits, throwing the crumbs. The birds and lizard-things (she never had bothered to learn their name) gobbled them up hungrily. They were old friends, she had fed them every morning for the last twenty-six years.
Alkad found Tranquillity’s interior tremendously relaxing, its sheer size went a long way to suggesting invulnerability. She wished she could find an apartment which was above the surface. Naked space outside the starscraper apartment window still made her shiver even after all this time. But repeated requests to be re- allocated inside were always politely refused by the habitat personality who said there were none. So she made do with the first-floor apartment which was close to the security of the shell, and spent long hours hiking or horse riding through the parkland during her spare time. Partly for her own frame of mind, and partly because it made life very difficult for the Intelligence agency watchers.
A couple of metres from the path a gardener servitor was ambling round an old tree stump which was now hidden beneath the shaggy coat of a stephanotis creeper. It was a heavily geneered tortoise, with a shell diameter of a metre. As well as enlarging the body, geneticists had added a secondary digestive system that turned dead vegetation into small pellets of nitrogen-rich compost which it excreted. It had also been given a pair of stumpy scaled arms which emerged from holes on either side of its neck, ending in pincerlike claws. As she watched it started to clip off the shrivelled tubular flowers and put them into its mouth.
“Happy eating,” she told it as she walked on.
Her destination was Glover’s, a restaurant right on the edge of the lake. It was built out of bare wood, and the architect had given it a distinct Caribbean ancestry. The roof was a steep thatch, and there was a veranda on stilts actually over the water, wide enough for ten tables. Inside it had the same raw-cut appearance, with thirty tables, and a long counter running along the back where the chefs prepared the food over glowstone grills. During the evening it took three chefs to keep up with the orders; Glover’s was popular with tourists and middle- management corporate executives.
When Alkad Mzu walked in there were ten people sitting eating. The usual breakfast crowd, bachelor types who couldn’t be bothered to cook for themselves. An AV projection pillar stood on the counter between the tea urn
