starships decelerated into orbit. Traffic in the other direction was small and open to scrutiny.
The receptionist scanned his ticket in and smiled as her sheet screen scrolled confirmation. 'Do you have any baggage?' she asked.
'Er, one,' Lawrence said. He was so relieved the Prime had guarded him from his father's askpings he made a hash of lifting the case onto her scales. She leaned over and helped him.
'Why are you going?' she asked.
'I, er, my family is sending me to university on Earth,' he stammered.
'Lucky you,' she said brightly. 'You can go through to the lounge now, Mr. Newton. Your flight leaves in forty minutes. If the snowplows can keep the runway clear.'
'Thanks.' His stomach felt curiously light.
Starflight! I'm going to have a starflight. I really am.
And that made up for absolutely everything.
He straightened his back and walked toward the lounge door. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Vinnie Carlton hanging around by the main entrance. Lawrence gave him a surreptitious thumbs-up. Vinnie winked back.
The lounge doors closed behind him. Ahead of him, the picture window gave him a view out over the long arrowhead-shaped spaceplane that was due to take him up to the Eilean. Lawrence hurried forward for a better look.
Vinnie Carlton watched the lounge doors shut He went out to the taxi rank and climbed into the first of the little white bubbles. 'Leith dome,' he told the vehicle's AS.
A thin hail of ice twisted about them on the road. Vinnie settled back in the seat, closed his eyes and concentrated. The flesh on his face rippled; characteristics began to shift, his nose flattening slightly, chin protruding, eyebrows straightening. He opened his eyes, now shaded halfway between gray and green. When he looked in the taxi's mirror to check, Lawrence Newton's young features looked back at him. It had been so many months he barely recognized himself.
Sadly he acknowledged that for all the perfect physical regeneration patternform had given him, he could never project the naivetй that his younger self had always possessed. An inevitable consequence, he thought—not just from the twenty years of experience he owned, but also the result of living beside his earlier self for so long. That proximity had been so much harder than he'd ever imagined. There had been so many times when, as Vinnie, he'd wanted to give that love-stricken, horrifyingly ignorant teenage Lawrence a damn good kicking.
But he hadn't For all those months he'd been a good friend on every level, gritting his teeth as he watched the doomed love affair play out from a vantage point that was far too close. Time and again, when they'd been out in a group, he'd seen the fear hidden in Roselyn's eyes when Lawrence was looking the other way. She must have known he'd find out eventually. Still she carried on, just as besotted and tragic as that desperate teenage boy, clinging to her fragile happiness. He'd lost count of the times he'd almost surrendered to his stormy emotions and whispered to her: 'It'll be all right.' Ultimately, he didn't have that right. For he didn't truly know yet if it would be.
The features on the fresh young face in the taxi's mirror had sunk into a drawn, nervous expression as the weight of twenty years and two broken lives emerged as part of its genuine identity. 'Now you've really come home,' he said to it.
The elevator took an age to get up to the right floor. Lawrence remembered the anxiety he'd felt as he left Amethi for Earth. This was worse. He took the memory chip from his pocket and studied it curiously. The very last episode of Flight: Horizon. And he still hadn't accessed the damn thing. It just wouldn't have been right by himself. He flipped it like a coin and tucked it away again, smiling to himself. The elevator doors opened, and his smile faded.
His legs were very unsteady as he walked down the corridor. He stood outside the apartment door, too scared to move.
I've invaded planets. I've been charged by a herd of macrorexes. I've seen dragons in their natural habitat. I've walked on the planet of the Mordiff. Now knock, you coward.
His fingers rapped lightly on the door.
Roselyn opened it. She'd been crying.
'I'm an idiot,' Lawrence blurted. 'But I had a lot of time to think. A lot of time. And the one thing I want to do more than anything else in the universe is tell you that I love you.'
Several of the children had clasped their hands together as they gazed up at Denise. All of them had fallen silent. They were smiling contentedly.
Denise had about five seconds of peace while the story sank in.
'But what did she say to him?'
'Did they get married?'
'Will they live happily ever after?'
She held up her hands in a plea for quiet 'I don't know exactly what happened next Not there, or on Earth. But I'm sure Lawrence and Roselyn must have spent a long and happy time together. At least...'
'What?' Jones demanded, eyes bugging.
'It's just that Lawrence never wanted to get involved. But simply knowing makes you involved. That's what the dragons taught us: knowledge is the only true immortal. And he knew that in twenty years' time the Clichane was going to arrive back on Earth with patternform and the dragons' memories. The human race would change. So there he was on the planet that was his true home, with the girl he loved. And he had the Fool's Errand with him. He had the knowledge to turn Amethi into a paradise and populate it with angels long before Earth had the ability. Poor, dear old Lawrence. I wonder if he could resist the temptation.'
