“Thanks,” I said to her. “But I prefer to be alone.”
“Well,” she said with a trace of disgust, “it’s my duty to let you know.”
The car dropped me off at the house, a squat blue bungalow near the beach set among wind-whipped fields of sugarcane and towering coconut palms. Forty minutes later I was splayed on the empty beach while Ardabaab’s red-dwarf sun—rock-candy pink at this late hour—dipped low over the turquoise sea, the most tranquil I had ever seen. For a station-born like me, it was utterly glorious.
The wind blew and distant lights twinkled over the waters. I smiled. I had arrived. With pen and paper in hand, I furiously scribbled:
Chapter 23. Arrival.
When Yvalu stepped off the thoughtliner, she bent down and kissed the ground. Her hands came up with a scoop of Muandiva’s fertile soil, which she immediately swallowed, a pinch of this moment’s joy that she would carry in her body forever. Thank Shaddai. She was here.
A lizard skirted by. Strange people smiled and winked at her. She beamed and jumped and laughed. Ubalo had walked this world, perhaps had even stepped on the same dark earth still sweet on her tongue. Ubalo, who had brought her to Silversun, where they had watched the triple stars, each of a different shade, rise above the staggered mesas of Jacob’s Ladder and cast blossoming colorscapes of ever-shifting rainbows across the desert. Ubalo, who had traveled to the other side of the galaxy to seek a rare mineral Yvalu had once offhandedly remarked she liked during an otherwise forgettable afternoon. Ubalo, whose eyes shone like Sol and whose smile beamed like Sirius. For him she would have suffered a trillion mental hells if only to hold his hand one more time.
I wrote, and wrote more, until I ran out of pad. And when I looked up, the sun had set, and new constellations winked distant colors at me. Ardabaab has no moon. I had been writing by their feeble light for hours.
Early the next morning, after I bury the lizard, I head for Halcyon’s beachside cafe with a thermos of keemun tea and four extra writing pads tucked deep into my bag. While hovering waiterplates use my thermos to refill cup after cup, I churn out twenty more pages. But when a group of exuberant tourists from Sayj sit nearby, growing rowdy as they get intox, I slip down to the beach.
I return to last night’s spot, a private cove secluded from all but the sea, and here I work under the baking sun as locals, identified by their polydactyl hands and violet eyes, offer me braino and neur-grafts and celebrilives, each on varying spectra of legality.
“I got Buddhalight,” a passerby says, interrupting my stream. “Back from zer early days, before ze ran out of exchange.”
I grit my teeth in frustration. I was really flowing. “Thanks, but I prefer my own thoughts.”
“Alle-roit,” she says, swishing off. “You kayn know ’less you ask.”
I turn back to my pad and write:
But no matter who Yvalu asked, none had heard of a mentsh named Ubalo. And when she shared his message with the local We, the mind told her, somewhat coldly, “This transmission almost certainly came from Muandiva. But I have not encountered any of his likeness among my four trillion nodes. It’s plain, Yvalu, that the one who you seek is simply not here. ”
“Then where is he?”she said, verging on tears. “Where is he?”
And the local We responded with words she had never heard one speak before: “I am sorry, Yvalu, but I have no idea.”
I finish a chapter, and a second, and before I begin a third, a shadow falls across my pad and a sharp voice interrupts me. “What you doing?”
“Not interested,” I say.
“Not selling.”
I look up. A child stands before me, eclipsing the sun. Small in stature, her silhouette makes her seem planetary. She has short-cut dark hair and six elongated fingers. And though the sun blinds, the violet glare of her eyes catches me off guard and I gasp. I raise a hand to shade my face, and sans glare, her eyes shine with the penetrating violet of a rainbow just before it fades into sky. I’m so taken by them I’ve forgotten what she’s asked. “Sorry?”
“What you drawing?”
“This isn’t drawing.”
“Then what is it?”
“This?” It takes me a second. “I’m writing.”
“Writing.” She chews on the word and steps closer. “That’s a pen,” she says, “and that’s paper. And you’re using cursive. Freylik!” She laughs.
It’s obvious she’s just wikied these words, but her delight is contagious, and I smile with her. It’s been a long time since I’ve met someone who didn’t know what pen and paper were. Plus there’s something in her voice, her cascade of laughs, that reminds me of my long-dead daughter.
“What you writing?” she says.
“A novel.”
“A novel.” A wiki-length pause. Another smile. “Prektik! But …” Her nostrils flare. “Why don’t you project into your neural?”
“Because my neural’s off.”
“Off?” The notion seems repulsive to her.
“I prefer the quiet,” I say.
“SO DO I!” she shouts as she plops down beside me, stirring up sand. “Name,” she says, “Reuth Bryan Diaso, citizen of Ganesha City, Mars. Born on Google Base Natarajan, Earth orbit, one gravity Earth-natural. Age: ninety-one by Sol, two hundred ninety-three by Shoen. Hi!”
For a moment I pretend this girl from Ardabaab has heard of me, Reuth Bryan Diaso, author of fourteen novels and eighty-seven short stories. But it’s obvious she’s gleaned all this from public record. I imagine wistfully what it must have been like in the ancient days, when authors were renowned across the Solar System, welcomed as if we were dignitaries from alien worlds. Now mentshen revere only the grafters and sense-folk for
