I said nothing.
'My father died and I wanted something, and you told me that it wasn't revenge. And you were right. Revenge is trash. Worthless. But why? What was it I needed instead?'
I shook my head. 'I was only trying to spare you the effort. Revenge is a waste of time and-'
'No/ she said, looking at me directly. 'It's a displacement activity. It's something you can lock on to and do because you can't do the thing you really want to do/
I had grown impatient. 'And what might that be, Medea? Do you know?' I asked.
'I do now/ she said. Thuring killed my father. I needed something, and it wasn't payback. It was what he took from me. I needed to know my father. If I'd ever had that, then I'd never have given Thuring another thought/
She was right. It was so obvious, it chilled me. I wondered how many other, similar, obvious mistakes I had made in my life with my head so full of certain knowledge and my heart so numb.
I looked back at the pugnaseum, and saw Midas's cerise jacket handing where she had left it, draped against the inside of one of the windows like a trapped butterfly.
'I can give you what you want/1 said, 'in part, at least. If you really want it/
I summoned my astropath, Vance, and requested that he made the preparations. He suggested that evening might be a good time, when things were quieter, and so I asked Jarat to serve a light dinner early to leave the evening clear, and to leave out a cold supper in case we were hungry once we were done.
At seven, Medea and I went to the reading room above the house's main library. I gave Kircher specific instructions that we were not to be disturbed. Most of the household had retired early to private study or relaxation in any case.
Psullus, the rabricator, was in the library, repairing some bindings that were fraying at the spines.
'Give us a while/1 said to him.
He looked unnerved. Infirm with a progressive wasting disease, he virtually lived in the library. It was his private world and I felt cruel ousting him from it.
'What should I do?' he asked cautiously.
'Go sit in the study, watch the stars come out. Take a good book.'
He looked around and sniggered.
My library was at the heart of Spaeton House, and occupied two floors. The lower level was divided by alcoves of shelves and the upper gallery was supported by those alcoves, giving access to further shelving stacks lining the gallery walls. Soft glow-lamps hung from slender ceiling chains and cast a warm, golden light all around, and the panelled reading lecterns along the centre of the ground floor were fitted with individual reading lamps that generated little pockets of brighter blue luminescence.
The place was comfortably warm, its atmosphere carefully controlled to guard against any excess humidity that might damage the stored books. There was a smell of wood polish, chemical preservatives, and the ozone whiff of the stasis fields that protected the oldest and most fragile specimens.
Once Psullus had gone, taking with him a copy of Boydenstyre's
At the door, Medea paused and took a Glavian needle pistol from her pocket.
'I brought this/ she said. 'It was also my father's, one of the pair made for him.'
I knew that well enough. Medea still carried the matched pistols in combat.
'Leave it outside/ I told her. 'It's never a good idea to attempt connection through weapons. Even friendly heirlooms like that. The sting of death attaches itself to them and you'd find that unpleasant. The jacket will be fine.'
She nodded and left the gun on a bookshelf near the reading room door. We went inside and found Vance waiting for us. The small chamber was candle lit, with three chairs arranged around a cloth-covered table. The last rays of sunset were glimmering in through the stained glass skylight.
We took our seats. Vance, a tall, stooping man with kindly, tired eyes, spread Midas's cerise jacket on the tablecloth. He had already been meditating enough to put him near to the trance state, and I gently guided Medea to a receptive calmness.
The auto-seance began. It is a simple enough psychic procedure, and one which I have used many times for investigation and research. Vance was the conduit, channelling the power of the warp. I focused my own mind-strength to keep us centred. From the point of transition, the room took on a cold, frosty light. Solids became transluscent and fizzy. The dimensions of the little reading room stretched and shifted impatiently.
Midas's jacket, now a wisp of turquoise smoke, was swathed in the aura it had accumulated over time, the echoes of its contact with human hands, human minds.
Take it/1 said. Touch it/
Medea reached out her hand warily and brushed her fingers against the edge of the aura, which bloomed and fluffed up at her touch.
'Oh/ she said.
We teased apart the psychic memories clinging to that garment until we found her father. Midas Betancore, pilot, warrior, my friend. We coaxed his phantom out of hiding.
It was no ghost, just the after-image he had left behind. An impression of him, his looks, his voice, his emotions. A distant hint of his rich chuckle. The faint odour of the lho-sticks he liked to smoke and the cologne he chose to wear. We saw him young, little more than a boy. We saw him in virile middle age, just a few years from his untimely death. There, at the helm of the gun-cutter, itself now just a ghost too, the Glavian circuitry inlaid into his hands marrying him profoundly to the craft's controls. There, steering a long-prow. There, watching the suns rise over the Stilt Hills of Glavia.
We tasted his grief at the death of Lores Vibben, but I had Vance pass along quickly to spare us the empathic pain. We clung to him through several exhilarating dogfights, sharing the joy of virtuoso manoeuvres and expert kills. We watched as he saved my life, or the lives of my companions, over and again.
We listened at a dinner table while he made the company roar and clap with an outrageous tale well told. It made all three of us laugh out loud. We saw him, in silence, studying a regicide board and trying to fathom out how Bequin had managed to beat him again. We watched him, through a blizzard of coloured streamers, take his bride to the altar of the High Church at Glavia Glavis. I glimpsed myself, alongside Fischig, Alizebeth and Aemos, in the front pew, cheering and ringing our ceremonial bells with the rest of the congregation.
That's my mother!' Medea whispered. The veiled woman on Midas's arm was stunning, exquisite. Jarana Shayna Betancore. Midas always did have such good taste. Jarana lived still, far away on Glavia, a distinguished widow and director of a shipwrighting firm. 'She looks so young/ Medea added. There was a note of sadness in her voice. She hadn't been back to Glavia to visit her mother for many years.
Then, almost as if we were intruding, we saw Midas and Jarana embracing on the shores of Taywhie Lake. Midas was beside himself with happiness and excitement.
'Really? Really?' he kept asking.
'Yes, Midas. Really. I'm really pregnant/
I looked at Medea, saw the tears in her eyes.
'We should stop now, I think/1 said.
'No, I want to see more/ she said.
