Remembering Siri

'Then why this… crypt?' I watch what I say. Donel is sensitive.

He mops his brow again and glances toward the door. We are shielded from the view of the crowd but we are far behind schedule. Already the other members of the Council have had to hurry down the hill to join the other dignitaries on the bandstand. My slow grief this day has been worse than bad timing it has turned into bad theater.

'Mother left instructions. They were carried out.' He touches a panel on the inner wall and it slides up to reveal a small niche containing a metal box. My name is on it.

'What is that?'

Donel shakes his head. 'Personal items Mother left for you. Only Magritte knew the details and she died last winter without telling anyone.'

'All right,' I say. 'Thank you. I'll be out in a moment.'

Donel glances at his chronometer. 'The ceremony begins in eight minutes. They will activate the farcaster in twenty minutes.'

'I know,' I say. I do know. Part of me knows precisely how much time is left. 'I'll be out in a moment.'

Donel hesitates and then departs. I close the door behind him with a touch of my palm. The metal box is surprisingly heavy. I set it on the stone floor and crouch beside it. A smaller palmlock gives me access. The lid clicks open and I peer into the container.

'Well, I'll be damned,' I say softly. I do not know what I expected artifacts perhaps, nostalgic mementos of our hundred and three days together perhaps a pressed flower from some forgotten offering or the frenchhorn conch we dove for off Fevarone. But there are no mementos not as such.

The box holds a small Steiner-Ginn handlaser, one of the most powerful projection weapons ever made. The accumulator is attached by a powerlead to a small fusion-cell that Siri must have cannibalized from her new submersible. Also attached to the fusion-cell is an ancient comlog, an antique with a solid state interior and a liquid crystal diskey. The charge indicator glows green.

There are two other objects in the box. One is the translator medallion we had used so long ago. The final object makes me smile ruefully.

'Why you little bitch,' I say softly. I know now where Siri had been when I awoke alone that first time in the hills above Firstsite. I shake my head and smile again. 'You dear, conniving, little bitch.' There, rolled carefully, powerleads correctly attached, lies the hawking mat which Mike Osho had purchased for thirty marks in Carvnal Market.

I leave the hawking mat there, disconnect the comlog, and lift it out. The device is ancient, possibly dating back to pre-Hegira times. I can imagine it being handed down in Siri's family from the seedship generation. I sit cross-legged on the cold stone and thumb the diskey. The light in the crypt fades and suddenly Siri is there before me.

They did not throw me off the ship when Mike died. They could have but they did not. They did not leave me to the mercy of provincial justice on Maui-Covenant. They could have but they chose not to. For two days I was held in Security and questioned, once by Shipmaster Singh himself. Then they let me return to duty. For the four months of the long leap back I tortured myself with the memory of Mike's murder. I knew that in my clumsy way I had helped to murder him. I put in my shifts, dreamed my sweaty nightmares, and wondered if they would dismiss me when we reached the web. They could have told me but they chose not to.

They did not dismiss me. I was to have my normal leave in the web but could take no off-Ship R-and-R while in the Maui-Covenant system. In addition, there was a written reprimand and temporary reduction in rank. That was what Mike's life had been worth a reprimand and reduction in rank.

I took my three-week leave with the rest of the crew but unlike the others I did not plan to return. I farcast to Esperance and made the classic Shipman's mistake of trying to visit family. Two days in the crowded residential hive was enough and I stepped to Lusus and took my pleasure in three days of whoring on the Rue des Chats. When my mood turned darker I 'cast to Ouster and lost most of my ready marks betting on the bloody Shrike fights there.

Finally I found myself farcasting to Homesystem Station and taking the two-day pilgrim shuttle down to Hellas Basin. I had never been to Homesystem or Mars before and I never plan to return, but the ten days I spent there, alone and wandering the dusty, haunted corridors of the Monastery, served to send me back to the Ship. Back to Siri.

Occasionally I would leave the red-stoned maze of the megalith and, clad only in skinsuit and mask, stand on one of the uncounted thousands of stone balconies and stare skyward at the pale gray star which had once been Old Earth. Sometimes then I thought of the brave and stupid idealists heading out into the great dark in their slow and leaking ships, carrying embryos and ideologies with equal faith and care. But most times I did not try to think. Most times I simply stood in the purple night and let Siri come to me. There in the Master's Rock, where perfect satori had eluded so many much more worthy pilgrims, I achieved it through the memory of a not-quite sixteen-year-old womanchild's body lying next to mine while moonlight spilled from a Thomas Hawk's wings.

When the Los Angeles spun back up to a quantum state, I went with her. Four months later I was content to pull my shift with the construction crew, plug into my usual stims, and sleep my R- and-R away. Then Singh came to me. 'You're going down,' he said. I did not understand. 'In the past eleven years the groundlings have turned your screw-up with Osho into a goddamned legend,' said Singh. 'There's an entire cultural mythos built around your little roll in the hay with that colonial girl.'

'What are you talking about?' I asked. I was irritated and frightened. 'Are you throwing me off the Ship?'

Singh grunted and brushed idly at his right eyebrow. The gold bracelet on his wrist caught the light. 'Did you know that your groundside girlfriend was a member of their original Shipmaster's family?' he asked. 'Sort of the local equivalent of royalty.'

'Siri?' I said stupidly.

'She told the story of your… what shall we call it… your love affair to everyone she could. Poems have been written about it. There was a play performed every year on one of those floating islands of theirs. Evidently there's an entire cult that's sprung up. You seem to be at the center of a romantic legend that's caught the imagination of most of the yokels on the planet.'

'Are you throwing me off the Ship?'

'Don't be stupid, Aspic,' growled Singh. 'You'll spend your three weeks of leave groundside. The Hegemony needs this planet. The Ambassador says that we need the cooperation of the groundlings until the farcaster's operational and we get some occupation troops through. If this half-assed, star-crossed-lovers myth can smooth things for us during the next few trips, fine. The experts say you'll do the Hegemony more good down there than up here. We'll see.'

'Siri?' I said again.

'Get your gear,' ordered Singh. 'You're going down.'

The world was waiting. Crowds were cheering. Siri was waving. We left the harbor in a yellow catamaran and sailed south-southeast, bound for the Archipelago and her family isle.

'Hello, Merin.' Siri floats in the darkness of her tomb. The holo is not perfect; a haziness mars the edges. But it is Siri Siri as I last saw her, gray hair shorn rather than cut, head high, face sharpened with shadows. 'Hello, Merin my love.'

'Hello, Siri,' I say. The tomb door is closed.

'I am sorry I cannot share our Sixth Reunion, Merin. I looked forward to it.' Siri pauses and looks down at her hands. The image flickers slightly as dust motes float through her form. 'I had carefully planned what to say here,' she goes on. 'How to say it. Arguments to be pled. Instructions to be given. But I know now how useless that would have been. Either I have said it already and you have heard or there is nothing left to say and silence would best suit the moment.'

Siri's voice had grown even more beautiful with age. There is a fullness and calmness there which can come only from knowing pain. Siri moves her hands and they disappear beyond the border of the projection. 'Merin my love, how strange our days apart and together have been. How beautifully absurd the myth that bound