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the station's cut. It should make you wealthy. If you live to enjoy it."
Martel stands there.
Marta marches toward the portal, then half turns.
"You've got about a quarter-stan before we go local. Pro-
gram's on the up sheet. If I ever talk to you again, other than by fax, and
that's only when necessary, count yourself flamed lucky."
Marta is gone. From the lack of mental echoes, he can tell the entire
CastCenter is deserted.
"Some reaction ..." he mutters.
He had expected concern, but not the violent paranoia they'd all displayed.
He shrugs, heals the cut inside his mouth, and heads for the on-line control
center.
He leaves his mental shields up. If half of what Marta has screamed is
correct, he will need them.
XIX
Dull rumbles echo, bounce, skip like flat stones over the leaden surface.
Green-golden water heaves itself at the rocky fingertip of land that seems to
dive into the waves.
The wind whips spray around the man standing atop the one boulder, black, that
protrudes from the flat and bare rock.
The atmosphere itself shrouds the dark clouds, sulfurs the honesty of rain
with the false promise of the sunlight that never has been.
Raindrops shatter as they strike the sea, fragment on crystal rocks, dissolve
into the flanking beaches, nourish the high grasses on top of the cliffs
above.
The difference in the fate of each raindrop is not in the rain.
Martel watches the sea, looks out across the surf that breaks below his feet
and foams around his boulder perch.
A golden streak of lightning flashes, flares, flashes down at an unbroken wave
climbing above its sisters.
Steam hisses, the sound audible to Martel though the crest is fully three
kilos out.
Standing on the wave, appearing from nowhere, is a figure dripping cobalt
water, despite the greenness of the water above which he towers, bearing a
trident. He strikes the wa-
ter on which he stands, and from the strike rises blue light-
ning toward the clouds.
Another golden bolt spears down. Hisses and steams. Ha-
loes the sea-god.
And another.
In return comes a fainter blue upward strike.
The trident whirls, and close upon the whirling rises a wa-
terspout, not black-green, but brilliant blue, that hurls itself toward the
low-hanging clouds.
The clouds lift. The waterspout follows, howling.
Another golden bolt strikes downward, then a shower, at-
tacking the tower of water like the arrows of a besieging army.
The tower quivers, wavers, and tilts. Drops in an instant waterfall into the
sea.
Within moments, the tattered fragments of the clouds are gone, and the waves
subside, the air fresh with the memory of rain.
In the distance, beyond the vision of most but clear to Mar-
tel, a pair of nymphs skates the breaksides of the remaining waves, their
laughter chiming like the bells of holidays past.
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The empty quarter, the empty half, the empty outside of a full beaker ... why
are these the things he looks for?
Really, it is a most unusual occurrence when analyzed a storm to set the
scene, followed by a short battle between
Apollo the sun-god and the sea-god, completed with a musi-
cal finale of two nymphs with laughter. Now, hasn't that been your typical
evening on your everyday deserted beach?
Oh, yes, and add to the foregoing that evening isn't eve-
ning, but everlasting day, and that most beaches away from
Sybernal, Pamyra, and Alesia are usually deserted, O expert on beaches.
All quite understandable, since Sybernal had twenty kilos of perfect beach,
and Pamyra another ten. The normal tourist is rich and sedentary or poor and
transportationless.
The twinge in his left leg reminds Mattel that he has lost track of time.
Again.
The wetness of the quick rain has begun to fade with the return of full
daylight, and the scent of spring fades into the perpetual golden haze that
lies across the sky.
The regular beat of waves against the stone point resumes.
Mattel frowns, concentrates, and a short cloak of darkness flows from his
shoulders. With quick steps he crosses the flat green-gray stone, his feet
leaving no trace on the damp rock.
From the back of the small peninsula rises a cliff, the gray rock cleft in the
middle. The cleft is filled with broken stone.
Each boulder is roughly as wide as the armspan of an average man. None is
smaller than a small table, and no sand cush-
ions the space between the rectangular blocks. The sides of the cleft are
smooth, and the gray-striped stone is scarred with black lines.
Martel jumps from the top of the bottommost stone to the next one, zigzagging
his way up the jumble toward the grassy plateau.
By the time he reaches the short golden grass, the flitter he senses in the
distance, coming south from Sybernal, should arrive. Piloted by Rathe Firien.
Martel drops his shadow cloak even before his first step out onto the grass.
Black enough for Rathe as he stands.
Black trousers, tunic, belt, and boots.
The old words rise into his thoughts and to his lips.
"Tell .me now, if you can, What is human, what is man ..."
He shakes his head, half aware that Rathe sees the gesture as she brings the
flitter down, knowing also that she will not misinterpret, that she
understands how he argues with him-
self.
Crooked in her left arm as she swings from the flitter is a wicker basket, the
kind made by the Apollonite postulants for the tourist trade, and which would
be called old-fashioned al-
most anywhere else in the Empire of Man.
"Flitter?" he asks, still in full stride toward her.
"Clinic's. Slow time now, and it has been for weeks.
Maybe the Fuardian-Halston thing. Who knows?"
Rathe's red-silk hair is longer these days, covers her ears.
With the length has come a slight wave, and a certain soft-
ness to her features.
She sets the basket on the grass. From the top she brings forth a thin cloth,
which she shakes out and spreads on the ground. The basket then goes in the
middle.
Rathe seats herself cross-legged and motions.
"I know you're restless, but since I've brought you the pic-
nic dinner I don't deserve, at least sit down and enjoy it with me."
"You don't deserve?" He sits down, not cross-legged but half lying on his left
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side. He props his head with his left hand and looks across the top of the
basket at her freckled face.
"To have dinner with one of Aurora's top faxcasters? Of course I don't
deserve. And if all the rich norm ladies knew where you hid when you're not at
the CastCenter, I'd never see you."
"Malta's blacked me,"
"Oh, that. As long as He hasn't, I wouldn't worry."
Mattel caught the anxiety beneath the bantering tone, the darkness behind the
forced smile.
"You caught the special on the postulants?"
"No. But everyone's talking about it. Talking about how none of the other
faxers are supposed to talk to you. I don't think it set well. Father H'Lerry
is supposed to speak on it next service."
Rathe pursed her lips, returned her attention to the basket, from which she
pulled a bottle of Springfire and two tulip glasses.
"I hope he's generous," Martel answers, forcing a chuckle that sounds hollow
even to himself. He extends his arm for a glass. "Farell said it was on my
head. Marta Farell, my dear supervisor." How literally had Farell meant it? He
blocks the thought automatically.
Rathe licks her lips, twice catches her lower lip with her upper teeth,
worries it, stares down at her half-filled tulip
Martel takes a small sip of the Springfire and waits.
Rathe stares at the picnic basket.
"You're worried."
She nods, without looking up.
He can read exactly what she is thinking. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]