“Marc told you?”
“I said you were in love, Marc guessed who with,” Tatia said. “And it made sense. In a weird sort of way. But I wasn’t sure, until now.” And smiled a gotcha smile of curiosity and hurt.
“Pretty good,” Kara said, “from someone who stole my beloved.”
Tatia managed to stifle a laugh. “I mean, I could be deeply traumatised.”
“Sobbing in your cabin... look, I don’t know. Mainly because I don’t know about Anson and me. It only happened the day before we left. I’ve no idea how...”
Tatia shook her head. “You do know how you feel. And suspect how he does. Because he said something and, ruthless bastard as he is, wouldn’t unless he meant it. So why not tell me? Because we once fucked?”
“Mind your tongue,” Kara said severely. “You might end up my daughter.”
And after they’d both managed to stop laughing – part release from the past weeks of tension, so peaking hysterical, it was either that or the mother of all screaming rows, things said that can never be taken back – they went to make tea.
“Seriously?” Tatia asked, doing her thing of strong tea tamed by hot water because of no fresh milk and there were times when a slice of lemon was so wrong.
“Because I’m terrified there won’t be an us with Anson,” Kara heard herself say, and felt tears gathering, which was so out of character as to alarm both of them.
“You want to tell me?” Tatia asked. “But blow by blow, whatever...”
So Kara did, the story sounding unreal to her own ears as she spoke.
But not unreal to Tatia. “Makes sense,” she said thoughtfully. “You’re both soldiers. So you understand each other. He’s a good-looking guy. And you, well...”
“Would it worry you?”
Tatia smiled. “That my one-time...”
“... short-time,” Kara shot.
“... girlfriend is involved with the father I hadn’t seen in thirty years?” She fetched a bottle of dark rum, added a slurp to two cups of lukewarm black tea. “Okay, it isn’t any weirder than wiping out an entire alien race. If there was a real daddy–daughter vibe, maybe I’d be confused. But there isn’t, and however Anson and I learn to relate, it’ll never be cosy domestic. So, here’s my best friend and sometime – okay, one night stand – lover in love with my so long absent father who I don’t know... who’s ruthless as fuck... but hey, is all the family I got. So you go for it, girl. Which you will anyway. I’m okay.” She paused, then, “He know about us?”
Kara shrugged. “Possibly. Anson seems to know most of what happened on that SUT. Thing is, no serious relationship since your mother died.”
“Was murdered,” Tatia said quietly. “Have you ever had a serious one?”
Kara didn’t need to think twice. “Nothing that lasted.”
“So you were sort of hoping a man would teach you how?”
She thought of Bel Drago. “Not necessarily a man...”
“Oh, come on! That little-me girlie role is only a pose.”
“I don’t even know if he’s still alive!”
“The Wild said he’d gone underground...”
“Because there’s a fucking contract on him!”
“He’ll survive, love. It’s in the genes.”
And that was it. No point in talking about Marc because, as Tatia said, every guy who goes exploring in different dimensions promises to come home. So Tatia would work on the assumption that he might because he promised and took the lock of her hair. But she wouldn’t wait forever.
“So you love him,” Kara said.
“He saved my life. Seems only fair.”
Kara looked at Tatia for a long few seconds. “You and Marc are the closest friends I ever had. I don’t want to lose that. I don’t want to lose you.”
“You won’t,” Tatia said simply. “Whatever happens.” And then, because it had been worrying her, “why did they come and look at us? The Originators, I mean.”
Kara thought back to the strangeness of the Originator spaceships passing the Thrown like an ancient sailing fleet paying tribute to their monarch.
“Curiosity?” Kara tried.
“They’re governed by whatever pre-cog plan they have, what they see,” Tatia said. “They don’t do curiosity.”
“What do you think?”
“That maybe it’s not over? That procession was the start of something else?”
“Pretty soon humans will take over what’s left of that precog empire,” Kara said. “Too good a business opportunity. Whatever those Originators are – and original thought doesn’t figure highly with them, you said – masters of the universe they’re not. Forget them, Tatia. They’re done.”
< You’re sure?
> Shut up. She needs the reassurance. So do I.
Not least because she’d come to suspect that Tatia had been bred for her role. It wasn’t mere chance. Just as Kara had been bred for hers and probably Marc for his. Greenaway too, maybe Cleo and the Exchange.
* * *
They landed at Marc’s house on the Severn at 1100 hours on a sunshiny day, three weeks and four days since Kara had left from Scotland. A day when anything good can happen, when the grey maybe or watery if only are hidden by let’s do it or simply this is just so nice.
Judging by intercepted radio and TV news, things were quietening down. San Diego and Houston had declared peace. The proposed memorial to the Houston Posse, still lost in the Mojave Desert, was changed to one commemorating Houston’s twinning with San D. There were already eighteen similar memorials, plus one to an area of the Scottish Wild – a long-abandoned golf course – left over from pre-alien days. Houston does like to twin, not always too fussy who with.
Artificial intelligences throughout Earth and Earth-colonised space were sheepishly announcing it had been the AI equivalent of something they’d eaten... or sending happy e-postcards from throughout the Galaxy to say they’d be home soon.
The famous 7 building in Berlin reassembled itself, this time using no extra material. Berliners stood and cheered.
Not covered by the newscasts but equally significant:
Andrea Mastover changed her mind and left the New Dawn euthanasia clinic to return home, divorce her husband
