Event Horizon (Hellgate) (133 page)

“I’ve been wondering,” Vaurien admitted with all due caution. “We’ve been hearing
commentary
from the ancestrals. Once or twice
Mad’ue
shushed them; I don’t speak the language, but I’d be prepared to swear he was telling them to mind their manners. Midani’s so close to steaming mad, he didn’t eat, though the food looked superb, from the Resalq perspective. So, Neil?”

“So … you ever hear the name of Tigh Stromberg?” Travers wondered.

“Won the Arago challenge,” Vaurien remembered. “A couple of times. Got engaged to a Sark socialite, just before we left.”

“Riga socialite,” Marin corrected. “Winona Breck … except she’s not a girl. They’re both
very
young Resalq. And they want out of Carahne.”

“Maybe forty paying passengers, Carahne to Saraine, if you’re interested.” Travers slid hands into pockets, and with a frown studied the ancestrals around the dining table. “This isn’t a good place for Resalq of Stromberg’s generation, any more than Earth and Mars would be the place for Barb or Jo, or even Mick. They’re too different.”

“They’re what the Deep Sky made of them,” Vaurien said thoughtfully, “and they’ve a right to be what they are.” He was looking at Jazinsky even then. “Forty passengers?”

“As far as Saraine,” Marin affirmed. “They can charter themselves a ride from Velcastra, be home in a couple of weeks. Riga,” he added, “might just come right back to life. These kids are in a jam, and they just want to go home. The family estates in Riga are waiting for them.”

“Commercial passengers,” Travers added.

Richard gave him an amused look. “You’re wheedling?”

“Negotiating,” Travers said expansively. “It’s got to be easier money than pulling a freighter off the accretion disk of Naiobe!”

“Ouch.” Vaurien winced visibly. “Where are these kids?”

“There’s a delegation – on the Capricorn,” Marin told him. “Stromberg, Breck, a few of their friends. They’re calling the rest of the group. Give them a nod, and Gill Perlman can fly a couple of shuttle flights.”

“All right, let’s hammer out some details,” Vaurien agreed.

He would want ID, Travers knew. No one underage would ride out with the
Wastrel
, but since anyone stranded here would have contacts on Borushek, these unlikely Diaspora should make their own way adeptly. Travers and Marin sat on the stone bench in the garden, where the air was heavy with the scent of the night blooming plants and the brilliant moonlight cast double shadows across an ornamental sundial. Vaurien went on into the Capricorn, and the aroma of coffee wafted down the ramp along with the strains of a Borushek girl band called
Roripoppu
.

Footsteps from the house announced Mark. He was cradling a last glass of wine as he joined them, and Marin set Vaurien’s business into a few choice phrases. Mark seemed far from surprised. “I can’t really blame the ancestrals, but … it’s an overreaction. One can only hope it’ll erode away as time and safety, sheer complacency, overtake them. Resalq culture
can
be reborn here in a much purer form than anything that’s been known in centuries. Is it a bad thing?”

“No,” Marin allowed. “Not unless it starts to create a caste system, with the ancestrals on top, people like you in the middle, tolerated, people like Tigh and Winona on the bottom, scorned and ostracized.” He paused reflectively. “You remember how we speculated about a caste system among the Zunshu? We were pretty scathing of it.”

“And it wouldn’t be any more attractive if it were to happen here,” Mark said wryly. “Oh, I hear you, Curtis. And I’m sure people like
Mad’ue
hear you too. Midani Kulich is breathing smoke! He won’t be staying. Him and Emil, in the same small town? There’d be blood before the day was out. Emil can’t forgive him for being the one who flew Zunshu space – wrote himself into Resalq history, I suppose. But there’s more than that between them, as you know. They’ll never agree about this burning desire Emil
harbors
to see the pure Resalq bloodline return at the cost of the rest of us. Alas, I’m, afraid Emil is far from alone.

“There’s more than enough who think like him for
Carahne
to suffer birth pangs.” He sipped a little wine, swirled the deep red liquid in the glass. “Your own ancestors used to say that time cures all, and they were right. A hundred years, five hundred, all this will be forgotten.
Carahne
will be a world to be reckoned with, and when those days come, if Tigh Stromberg and Winona Breck wanted to be here, they’d be as welcome as they’re
not
right now.”

“Resalq are coming in from as far away as Louverne,” Marin mused. “There’s a halfway decent population here already – if you’re thinking of the gene pool. Emil certainly is.”

“The population is a little over a thousand,” Mark told him “Fifteen have been born here in the last six months. I
can
understand how Emil Kulich feels. He’s still young, and by the time he’s as old as I am now, the Resalq will be back. The … ‘real’ Resalq,” he added quietly. “And as soon as their numbers are great enough for them to feel utterly complacent of their place in the universe, I believe people like us – the
hybrids
, if you don’t mind the word; and it’s accurate enough! – will be welcome.”

“You’re already welcome,” Travers said pointedly, “anywhere in the Deep Sky. You want irony? You’re highly respected anywhere but here.”

“Perhaps.” Mark finished the wine in one swallow. “Time will tell. And if there’s anything we Resalq have plenty of, it’s time!” He gestured back toward the house, the dinner table. “
Mad’ue
has accepted the stasis chamber project, of course. How could he turn it down? We had an update from Engineer Ingersol sometime during the second course – the installation is complete, they’re setting down the chambers even now. I’ve warned
Mad’ue
not to tamper with ancient, malfunctioning hardware till he’s run every scan, every permutation of every experiment – and even then, to evacuate the facility, do the work on remote! The lessons of El Khouri were learned the hard way.”

“At least they were learned,” Marin said aridly. “So you’re done with business here?”

“Short of taking aboard a number of passengers for Saraine!” Mark indulged himself in a chuckle. “Saraine hasn’t known the presence of so many Resalq in almost a century! We’ll have to prefabricate accommodations for them, until their charter can come over from Velcastra. Forty of them, you said?”

Travers stood as Vaurien appeared on the ramp under the Capricorn. “That was
Tigh’s
guesstimate … so, Richard?”

“Give Gill Perlman a call,” Vaurien said without preamble. “She and Fargo are flying shuttle duty – two flights should do it.” He strode out to the sundial, inhaled the heady aroma of roses and gardenia and studied the new stars with a speculative expression. “There’s got to be a jewel like this out there, waiting for us.”

“And,” Travers said pointedly as he watched the young Resalq troop out of the Capricorn and vanish swiftly into the moon shadows, “it’ll be a lot of fun finding it.” He slid his left arm around Marin’s waist and drew him close. “We’re leaving, Richard?”

“We’re always leaving.” Vaurien’s eyes dropped back from the stars. “That’s the problem. We shove off in six hours, give or take. Saraine in nine days; then Alshie’nya … the
Esprit
should have her new engines by the time we arrive; the
Harlequin
should be done laying comm drones around Hellgate. If Lai’a comes back online, it can lay drones across twenty Freespace worlds while the Resalq put a team together, to study the Zunshu gas giant.” He nodded toward the house. “They’ll be thrashing it out right now. Their eyes are dancing with glee.”

“And us?” Marin wondered.

Vaurien looked down at him with a familiar lopsided smile. “Depends where you want to be. You’ve got a while left, before we’re at liberty to ship out of Hellgate and … vanish.” The smile broadened as he gave Travers a wink. “We won’t leave without you.”

He headed back into the house with that and Mark followed, leaving Travers with the freedom to take Marin in an embrace between roses and oleanders, eat him with kisses in the light of
Carahne’s
two moons. His hands delved into Marin’s shirt, molded about his chest, and with a soft curse as his wayward body began to respond, Curtis steered him to the Capricorn and locked the hatch.

Eternal City, Saraine

The AI chassis stood three meters tall and almost two thick, a kevlex-titanium armor cocoon around a thirty-kilo holographic crystal grown in a lab on the
Carellan Djerun
. Such crystals grew for up to a year, and for every one certified perfect, nine were rejected for microscopic flaws. Lai’a lived in a crystal matrix of such perfection, Mark swore he had never seen its equal. The crystal alone was worth its weight in
gelemeralds
; the AI mind which had been born inside it was beyond value. The kevlex-titanium wore a dull, green-gray sheen in the lab lights. The chassis was suspended in an Arago cradle in the middle of the biggest lab under the house, in the stream of cool air whispering from the vents.

Bevan Daku lilted from the living room, above, where Vidal had sprawled on the couch an hour before with a handy and a veeree visor, trying the cracks for
Abelard and
Zenobia
4.2
. Reuben Kravitz swore by these keys to a game for which Vidal could not seem to think sneakily enough, but the last Marin saw of Mick, he had gone to sleep with the game looping endlessly, waiting for some coherent input.

Sitting on the stairs outside the lab’s open door, Travers was talking to Fargo and Perlman. They were back on the
Wastrel
, loading up with an eclectic assortment of goods from Supply – enough to keep forty transit passengers entertained and comfortable for the week before a charter vessel arrived from Velcastra.

Saraine was murmuring quietly with comm traffic again. Joss had come online at a signal from the
Wastrel
and the house was warm and bright when the Capricorn touched down in the rear courtyard. The human archaeologists welcomed Mark back – the wealthy eccentric, so obsessed with all things Resalq, he lived here in a mansion designed after the ‘dead’ civilization. They sent greetings and an invitation to come down to the camp for champagne and oysters in the evening. Those scientists were due, Marin thought ruefully, for a rude epiphany on the day when the Resalq came out to the Deep Sky.

A new dormer building stood on the long slope below Mark’s house, with a view of the ruins and, beyond, the hills. Drones constructed it in two hours, while the Capricorn shuttled Stromberg’s party down; they would take it to pieces, put it in storage, when the young Resalq had gone. Marin had expected furore in Raishenne when the unwelcome generation left, but few older Resalq were surprised.
Equeros
were emotional; some were angry, but the anger was directed at Emil Kulich and the group at the heart of Raishenne, since the
equeros
themselves were of a generation little older than Dario and Tor, and displayed very human characteristics.

Not all Resalq were what Midani called ‘nasty
bastardish
minding.’ Marin suspected that Emil’s group might be a minority, but they were an influential minority composed of scientists, politicians, and a few who had played key roles during the
Car’am
anha
. ‘Time,’ Mark had said, ‘will cure all.’ Marin hoped so, but Tigh Stromberg, Winona Breck and their companions were furious enough to leave and not look back.

Midani was the first one back on the Capricorn, and refused to even call Emil before the
Wastrel
shipped out. Mark conferenced at length with
Mad’ue
and the team who would be working with the stasis chambers, but Midani marched aft to the hangar where Tor and Dario were playing folgen with Rabelais, Queneau and Vidal, and dealt himself in, even though he had little idea of how to play. ‘
Yous
being teaching,’ he growled, and slapped down a wad of colonial dollars, as if in that moment he relished anything
not
purely Resalq.

The lab was quiet, cool. Wrist-thick hanks of cable bled from the AI chassis to a control processor. Dario and Tor had checked every connection three times that Marin knew of, and Mark was only delaying out of some anxious desire to anticipate the unpredictable.