Keylinn noted that, from his wording, he no longer quite identified with Outsiders. She wondered how long he’d been on board.
A third security officer joined the pair who were forcing the boys up the ramp of the return ship. Her eyes went involuntarily toward the spectacle, then snapped back to the interviewer.
“Yes, sir,” she said.
“Oh, and what’s your name?” he asked, pen poised. “Gray,” she said, aware out of the comer of her eye of the struggle that was presently taking place on the ramp. She smiled politely up at the interviewer. “Keylinn Gray.”
Chapter 6
“A check of the Cities calendar will show that it was an ordinary Saturday: shiftwork, early dismissals for Sunday worship, a rather tedious meeting of the Diamond council. And yet, looking back, March 30, 545, was a day of reverberations for the Redemptionist historian. Two women came to the Diamond: Iolanthe Pelagia of Opal, and Keylinn Gray. ”
GABRIEL, his private books
Partial text of a letter from Keylinn O’Malley Murtagh to Sean Reagan Murtagh, written in Graykey Old Tongue:
To Sean Reagan Murtagh
Cold Hill Farm
c/o Graykey Academy
PRIVATE
My dear, my darling Sean,
I’ve been aboard the City of Diamond for a day and a half now, and I’m still reeling from culture shock. Fortunately I don’t think anybody’s noticed. My contract has passed from Elizabeth Vesant to a personage who shall remain nameless, but whom I can sum up to you by telling you he’s a born gathrid. I narrowly missed being taken several sector-gates away, my boy, so don’t tell me life out in the wide universe is dull compared to home!
I slept in an assigned cell on the Transport deck, and next morning (this morning, that is) found a free pass to the City proper left by my patron. There were some funny looks from the guards on duty—apparently Outsider techs are generally restricted to the deck where they work—but I had no intention of staying confined if I could help if.
Sean, it’s amazing here. I had no idea that an engineered environment could be so gaudy, so flamboyant with life. Coming off the Kestrel, it was like stepping from a desert waste into a teeming jungle. Mercati Boulevard, the “main street,” cuts through a dozen levels, disappearing abruptly at locks along the way and then reappearing at the next higher. I was going to compare it to a sunken river, but it’s more like something out of the theater. Colors, noise, songs … the shadows of wind-chased, illusory clouds constantly pass over the storefronts, and the roof overhead pulses with Earth-sky blue. You’re caught half in pure nature, half in technodrumbeat, and I think it comes out in the footsteps of the pedestrians—all on their way to someplace fast. I was crossing a walkway, heard somebody yell, “Ware below, sweetheart!”—at least, I think that’s what he said under the accent—and just missed being splat by a sack of garbage, ready for the noon maintenance teams. This is nothing like a station as you or I have heard of it. The first few months I spent on Baret Station with Vesant, I started to go green-crazy, aching for leaf smell and dirt smell, longing for trees. (There should be a name for that in Old Tongue, Sean, “the longing for trees.” Let me think about it.) Any road, it wears off eventually, but I’d touch down on Baret One for a week and it’d be back again, virulent as ever. Baret One’s only half terraformed, but it’s enough to raise the genie from your cells, believe me. I can live in space, Sean, but I was designed for planet-side.
Gray walls and cafeterias, that’s Baret Station. Not here, my boy, not here: Variable lights, banners, plants, parks, neighborhoods, dialects, and bars, bars, bars. All with people arguing inside. Do they argue ball-playing, Sean, do they argue love? Do they argue status, insult, hierarchy? They argue the most obscure points of theology that ever danced on the head of a pin. I counted the number of times I heard the word “heresy” spoken inside the Green Lion Tavern. Thirty-six. I suppose a Graykey shouldn’t complain, since nowhere outside of home have I heard the fine points of contract duty debated as we do in our off hours, but still I do complain.
The truth is, I complain because they don’t allow unescorted women into the better taverns in this city. Oh, don’t look disapproving, love, I wasn’t going to knock off a half-dozen pints; I just wanted to feel comfortable for a while, and I thought a tavern would be the place to do it. On sparkling water, Sean, I know very well that I’m on duty.
But I get ahead of my story. My first morning, I made my way up Mercati Boulevard to what they call here the admin levels, where the government offices are. Theoretically, they tell me, I could keep cutting through the levels along the Boulevard until I reached court, assuming they let me through the last few series of locks (improbable). The first neighborhood I scouted, where the garbage just missed me, was loud and cheerful sounding enough. I passed two full-color posters of the lad who they tell me runs this place, along with announcements of his wedding. No pictures of the bride, though.
I looked. Anyway, I considered, purely as an academic assignment, how I would go about killing the fellow, and decided in the end that the main problem would be not the task itself but getting to Transport afterward.
I passed a few public recyclers, always a sign of civilization (the loud noise they make here, for all the world like a hawk-and-spit sound, made me jump the first time I heard it), and found myself peering at the notices pasted to the outside. Just call me “Nosy” Murtagh. I wrote one bunch down for you:
REWARD!!!!
FIVE
