Spear of Light (28 page)

The rainstorm didn't materialize by morning. Charlie took Cricket with him, and they flew over the Resort Mountains with the sun blazing bright swaths of morning color through holes in barely pregnant clouds.

He couldn't go into Manna Springs, but he could hold his own on the small farms. He was born there, grew up managing tillingbots and harvesting by hand. Besides, maybe time had driven people off of the ragged edge of anger and they would welcome him.

He'd see.

First, though, he owed Amfi a visit. She'd stayed out of Ice Fall Valley for a few weeks after he told her to, but then she'd gone back and told him it was fine. Stubborn gleaner. Still, it made him smile to imagine her back home.

He wanted to learn what Yi and company were up to. Their trip into the cave did look very, very deliberate. He trusted Yi. He'd never been able to read Jason that well, and he'd never even met this Chrystal.

Would she be very different from the first one?

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

NONA

A few clouds scudded by over the roofs of Manna Springs, promising eventual rain. Nona decided the light coat she'd chosen was enough, worn over tight trousers that tucked easily into the comfortable walking boots she'd had made before she came. Jean Paul had brought them to her a few days ago, when the Port sent him on an errand in town. Shoes from home felt good on her feet.

She stopped by the flower store and chatted with the young man who ran it, selecting a bouquet of purple and yellow ring flowers for her office. At the Spacer's Rest hotel where she'd stayed on her first visit to Lym, she leaned across the wooden concierge's desk and asked the owner about business. They spent a few minutes commiserating about how all of the tourist traffic went to Hope now, and how the twins' tight security made it hard for visitors to stay in town.

Three streets over, she stopped in at the school and dropped off two bags of art supplies she'd ordered from the Deep after she'd heard the school was running short. She bent into a surprise cold wind, shivering and keeping her head down.

The Springs Cafe felt as warm as it smelled when she ducked in the door. A wall-length counter offered the most varieties of stims, teas, and sweets in town. Between the counter and the door, a patchwork of a dozen or so handmade tables brightened the room. The proprietor, Penny, had painted them herself in a myriad of colors and styles. Amanda Night looked up as Nona walked in and waved her over to a table in the far back.

In spite of the fact that it probably fooled no one, they always played their meetings as casual surprise encounters. It had been a surprise the first time they shared tea, at least as far as Nona knew. The second and third meetings had been awkward, but Nona had stayed away from diplomatic topics and let the relationship build slowly.

This was their fifth meeting. Amanda looked more upset than Nona had ever seen her. Her eyes were puffy and her cheeks red from tears.

They weren't close enough for Nona feel comfortable giving Amanda the big hug she clearly needed, but Nona offered a sympathetic smile as she put her things down and went to the counter to order.

Five minutes later, she curled her hands around a warm cup of stim flavored with thick, red berries from the high mountains of Goland. She sat down quietly and watched Amanda, hoping she'd offer to share her pain. Nona lifted her cup and sipped. The stim tasted too sweet, but good enough that she'd get through it. Maybe it would grow on her.

Amanda fiddled with her own half-empty cup for a good five minutes before she looked up and blurted out, “Do you have children?”

What a surprising question. “No.” It took a moment for Nona to respond with the obvious. “Do you?”

“Yes. One. A girl. She's with my husband, Ted.”

So many things she hadn't known: a marriage, a child. Amanda and her brother Jules had come in from a farm to rule Manna Springs after the uprising, and Nona had just assumed they were single. “Is she okay? Did something happen?”

“Ted called last night.” She hesitated, wrung her hands, set the cup down. She lowered her voice. “He said she's run off with the Shining Revolution.”

Nona leaned in and whispered back. “I thought they were wiped out after the attack?”

“More are landing.”

“I'm so sorry!” Possible implications spun through Nona's head.

“Amy's not the only one who's gone off to join them. Ted told me there are more.”

“Where are they?”

“Where did Amy go? Or where are they landing their ships?”

Either answer interested Nona. She sipped at her stim. “Surely there are satellites to track them with.”

“Of course there are.” She held up her slate. “I've been searching. We'll find them. But we haven't yet. Maybe they're camouflaged somehow, or our systems are compromised.”

Nona leaned toward her. “Has that happened before?”

“I think so. We're farmers, not rangers. They'd know. We've heard rumors that the revolution is collecting on Entare.”

“So far? Isn't Entare a continent? Like Goland but a long ways away?” Charlie and Jean Paul lived on Wilding Station on Goland. She'd been there, seen the ruined city of Neville. Ice Fall Valley was on Goland. “I studied a map on my way down. Isn't Entare a big place?”

“It is. It takes half a day to get there, even in our faster skimmers. It's the third place the Next are building a city.”

“Maybe that's why I remember the name. Do you think the Revolution is going there to attack the new city?”

Amanda's voice shook slightly, like she barely had control. “How do I know? All Ted told me was that she'd gone, that she left a note. He found it just this morning, so she can't have gotten far yet. But it's not a good time for me to leave. I mean, I can't, not immediately. But I need to. Damn it. Damn Ted for not keeping her safe, and me for coming here.”

“Why can't you go?” Nona asked as gently as she could.

“The Port Authority is coming in this afternoon to brief us about the ships that keep showing up in our space. There isn't room for them at all, no place they can dock. Space is filling up around us.”

“I know.” Nona's own ship, the
Star Ghost
, had a berth in one of the orbiting stations, and she'd been offered more for the berth than the ship itself was worth. More than once. But this wasn't the place to talk about politics or the spaceport. “How old is Amy?”

“Twenty. Just a month ago.”

Young. Nona remembered the tone in the Jhailing's voice when it spoke of having no mercy if and when the Next were attacked. “I'm sorry. I'm sure it's scary. Do you have a picture of her?”

Amanda turned her slate around. A bright young girl with Amanda's dark blue eyes and hair that she'd clearly dyed a bright pink stared out of the screen. She looked defiant and pissed off, a bit like any teen. “That's from last year. Now she's cut her hair short and dyes it black, and she's lost thirty pounds, so she looks like a stick. But you'd recognize her from this. She still looks like me.” Amanda looked away, blinking back tears.

Nona reached out a put her hand on Amanda's. She'd never touched her except for formal handshakes and she half expected the woman to pull away.

Amanda didn't. At least not before she squeezed Nona's hand in thanks. She said, “Jules says we have to stay here and do our jobs. But he doesn't really understand. He can't. He hasn't had any kids.”

“Do you need his permission to leave?”

Amanda sniffed and blew her nose, but smiled, if only for a second. “Someone needs to find her.” She got up and used a faucet at the end of the bar to refill her cup with hot water. When she sat back down, she asked, “Do you have any better surveillance equipment than we do? The Port controls all of our good stuff, and I can't ask them.”

If only she did. “All I have is my embassy and my shipments. I can ask the Deep for something, but it would take time.”

“No,” Amanda said. “I suppose you shouldn't.”

Nona choked down the last of her stim. “I was hoping to go on a tour of some of the rest of the planet. I could visit some of the farms, ask around, see if I can learn anything. I was planning to ask you officially soon.”

Amanda fiddled. “You're not allowed on Entare. Not unescorted.”

“What about just the closest farms? A woman from Earl's invited me once. I could just say I was taking up the invitation.”

“I'll talk to Jules. Don't report this, okay?”

“Nothing that happens in a stim house is official business,” Nona said. “I promise.”

A few hours later, Nona sat alone at her big embassy desk, staring at catalogs and thinking about what to order. She needed small things that people here would appreciate, like the art supplies for the school. Anything big would be rejected as coming with strings, but so far most people in the community had been grateful for small kindnesses, like a pouch of chocolate to shave into stim or nice lotions that couldn't be—or weren't—made on Lym. Manna Springs was more self-sufficient than most small stations. But they had always traded for the small brilliances of life, and the current disruption of regular traffic in favor of hopeful would-be Next and Next ships had stopped the usual tourist and academic trips.

She looked up at a tentative knock on the door. Amanda stepped in, shutting the door behind her. “I can go with you. I'll be your escort. That way I'll be working, and Jules is okay with that. Not just to Earl's. On a grand tour.”

Nona was willing to bet Jules was more than okay with that. He could make all of the decisions for a while. Too bad he wasn't better at it. “That's great,” she told Amanda. “Should we leave tonight?”

Amanda gave a quick shake of her head. “I wish. I still have to meet the Port, and there are things I couldn't move for tomorrow.” She hesitated a moment, looking uncertain. “Is that all right with you? We'll take something that can get to Entare. I can't go straight there, but we'll have enough flight power to make it.”

Too bad they couldn't leave earlier. “So, dawn of the day after tomorrow?”

“Yes. I'll be here then.” Amanda held her hand out.

Nona took it. “I'm looking forward to it. I hope we find Amy.”

“Me, too.” She shook Nona's hand and left, the whole exchange taking no more than a minute or two. Still, there had been a brief flash of genuine gratitude in Amanda's eyes right before she left.

Nona went back to her slate to find a fresh message.

She had to read it three times before she felt certain she understood it. And then she sat and stared at it for a long time, deep sadness sticking her to her chair.

Dr. Neil Nevening, the Historian of the Diamond Deep, had resigned his post. He was already on his way to Lym, where he planned to request to become one of the Next. He would arrive in three days.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

YI

Yi jogged through what they had started calling the cave of machines. He started just outside of the gleaner's quarters and paid careful attention to each step on the wide, slick pathway. It must be meant to take the ships out of the cave. He expected to eventually find some kind of train or dolly or tug, but so far it had eluded them.

The dry air smelled of oils and electricity and of scrubbers. It resembled the air on a space ship. He found it amazing that it didn't simply smell of age and broken things, and even more amazing that most systems they knew how to access seemed fine. Of course, not everything they had found worked. Some screens and information systems and lights were dark and dead. All around him, he felt the presence of technology that he didn't know how to access.

Each alcove had yellowish lighting, although only a little over half of the lights worked and he had to tune his vision to see in the dark and then the light and back again. The first ships were about twice the size of the skimmer they'd flown partway here in, so just right to use on a planet. They didn't look like either the Next skimmers or the bulkier human versions. These were hard of line, small, and dark.