He’ll never make First Admiral, then?
No, given his heritage it would be politically impossible, but he might manage 7th Fleet commander. He is a highly competent
and popular officer.
Nice to know we’re not totally decadent yet.
She picked Augustine off the oranges, putting him down beside her side plate, then cut a grape open for him. He hummed contentedly
and lifted a segment to his mouth in the dawdling fashion that so bewitched her. As always, her mind wandered to Joshua. He
must be halfway to Lalonde by now.
I have two messages for you.
You’re trying to distract me,
she accused.
Yes. You know I don’t like it when you are upset. It is my failure as well.
No, it isn’t. I’m a big girl now, I knew exactly what I was getting into with Joshua. So what are the messages?
Haile wants to know when you are coming for a swim.
Ione brightened.
Tell her I’ll see her in an hour.
Very well. Secondly, Parker Higgens requests you visit him today, as soon as possible, in fact. He was rather insistent.
Why?
I believe the team analysing Joshua’s Laymil electronics stack have made a breakthrough.
Pernik’s fishing boats were halfway to the horizon by the time Syrinx emerged from the base of the tower on the morning she
was due to visit the whales. The cool dawn sun had coloured the island’s covering of moss a matt black. She breathed in the
salty air, relishing the cleanliness.
I never really thought of our air as anything exceptional,
Mosul said. He was walking beside her, holding a big box full of supplies for the voyage.
It isn’t once the humidity gets up. But don’t forget, over ninety per cent of my life is spent in a perfectly regulated environment.
This is an exhilarating change.
Oh, thank you!
Oenone
said tartly.
Syrinx grinned.
We’re in luck,
Mosul said.
I’ve checked with the dolphins, and the whales are actually closer today. We should be there by late afternoon.
Great.
Mosul led her along the broad avenue down to the rim quays. Water slapped lazily against the polyp. Pernik could have been
a genuine island rooted in the planet’s crust for all the motion it made.
Sometimes a real storm rocks us a degree or so. Ah, right.
Her grin faded.
I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I was leaking so much. It’s very rude of me. Preoccupied, I guess.
No problem. Do you want Ruben to come with us? Perhaps he would make you feel easier.
Syrinx thought of him curled up in the bed where she’d left him half an hour ago. There was no response to her halfhearted
query. He had gone back to sleep.
No. I’m never alone, I have
Oenone
.
She watched a frown form on Mosul’s handsome sea-browned face.
How old is Ruben?
the semi-apologetic thought came.
She told him and had to stifle a laugh as the surprise and faint disapproval spilled out of his mind despite a frantic effort
to cover them up. Gets them every time.
You shouldn’t tease people so,
Oenone
said.
He’s a nice young man, I like him.
You always say that.
I only voice what you feel.
The quay was balanced on big cylindrical flotation drums which rode the swell in long undulations. Thick purple-red tubes
ran along the edge, carrying nutrient fluid out to the boats. Leaky couplings dribbled the dark syrupy fluid into the water.
Syrinx stood to one side as a couple of servitor chimps carrying boxes passed by. They were wildly different from the standard
habitat housechimps, with a scaled reptilian skin a mild blue-green in colour. Their feet were broad, with long webbed toes.
The boat that waited for them was called the
Spiros
, a seventeen-metre sailing craft with a white composite hull. Bitek units were blended into the structure with a skill that
went far beyond mechanical practicality, it was almost artistry. The digestive organs and nutrient-reserve bladders were in
the bilges, supporting the sub-sentient processor array and the mainsail membrane, as well as various ancillary systems. Her
cabin fittings were all wooden, the timber coming from trees grown in the island’s central park. She was used by Mosul’s whole
family for recreation. Which explained why the cabin was in a bit of a mess when they came on board.
Mosul stood in the galley clutching his box of supplies and looking round darkly at the discarded wrappers, unwashed pans,
and crusty stains on the work surface. He muttered under his breath.
My younger cousins had her out a couple of days ago,
he apologized.
Well, don’t be too hard on them, youth is a time to be treasured.
They’re not that young. And it’s not as though they couldn’t have detailed a housechimp to clean up afterwards. No damn thought
for others.
There were more curses when he went forward and found the bunks in the same state.
Syrinx overheard a furious affinity conversation with the juvenile offenders. Smiling to herself she started stowing supplies.
Mosul unplugged the quay’s nutrient-feed veins from their couplings on the
Spiros
’s aft deck, then cast off. Leaning over the taffrail Syrinx watched the five-metre-long silver-grey eel-derived tail wriggling
energetically just below the surface, nudging the boat away from the quay. The tightly whorled sail membrane began to unfurl
from its twenty-metre-high mast. When it was fully open it was a triangle the colour of spring-fresh beech leaves, reinforced
with a rubbery hexagonal web of muscle cells.
It caught the morning breeze, filling out. A small white wake arose, curling around the bow. The tail straightened out, giving
just the occasional tempestuous flick to maintain the course Mosul had loaded into the processor array.
Syrinx made her way forward carefully. The decking was damp below her rubber-soled plimsolls, and they had already picked
up a surprising turn of speed. She leaned contentedly on the rail, letting the wind bathe her face. Mosul came up and put
his arm round her shoulder.
You know, I think I’m finding this ocean more daunting than space,
Syrinx said as Pernik fell astern rapidly.
I know space is infinite, and that doesn’t bother me in the slightest, but Atlantis
looks
infinite. Thousands of kilometres of empty ocean conjures up a more readily accessible concept for the human mind than all
those light-years.
To your mind,
Mosul said.
I was born here, to me it doesn’t seem infinite at all, I could never be lost. But space, that’s something else. In space
you can set out in a straight line and never return. That’s scary.
They spent the morning talking, exchanging the memories of particularly intense or moving or treasured incidents from their
respective lives. Syrinx found herself feeling slightly envious of his simplistic life of fishing and sailing, realizing that
was the instinctive attraction she had felt at their first meeting. Mosul was so wonderfully uncomplicated. In turn he was
almost in awe of her sophistication, the worlds she’d seen, people she’d met, the arduous naval duty.
Once the sun had risen high enough to be felt on her skin, Syrinx stripped off and rubbed on a healthy dose of screening cream.
That’s another difference,
she said as Mosul ran his hands over her back, between her shoulder blades where she couldn’t reach.
Look at the contrast, I’m like an albino compared to you.
I like it
, he told her.
All the girls here are coffee coloured or darker, how are we supposed to tell if we’re African-ethnic or not?
She sighed and stretched out on a towel on the cabin’s roof, forward of the sail membrane.
It doesn’t matter. All our ethnic ancestors disowned us long ago.
There’s a lot of resentment in that thought. I don’t know why. The Adamists we get here are pleasant enough.
Of course they are, they want your foodstuffs.
And we want their money.
The sail creaked and fluttered gently as the day wore on. Syrinx found the rhythm of the boat lulling her, and coupled with
the warmth of the sun she almost went to sleep.
I can see you,
Oenone
whispered on that unique section of affinity which was theirs alone.
Without conscious thought she knew its orbit was taking it over the
Spiros
. She opened her eyes and looked into boundless azure sky.
My eyes aren’t as good as your sensor blisters. Sorry.
I like seeing you. It doesn’t happen often.
She waved inanely. And behind the velvet blueness she saw herself prone on the little ship, waving. The boat dropped away,
becoming a speck, then vanishing. Both universes were solid blue.
Hurry back,
Oenone
said.
I’m crippled this close to a planet.
I will. Soon, I promise.
They sighted the whales that afternoon.
Black mountains were leaping out of the water. Syrinx saw them in the distance. Huge curved bodies sliding out of the waves
in defiance of gravity, crashing down amid breakers of boiling surf. Fountain plumes of vapour rocketing into the sky from
their blow-holes.
Syrinx couldn’t help it, she jumped up and down on the deck, pointing. “Look, look!”
I see them,
Mosul said, amusement and a strange pride mingling in his thoughts.
They are blue whales, a big school, I reckon there’s about a hundred or more.
Can you see?
Syrinx demanded.
I can see,
Oenone
reassured her.
I can feel too. You are happy. I am happy. The whales look happy too, they are smiling.
Yes!
Syrinx laughed. Their mouths were upturned, smiling. A perpetual smile. And why not? Such creatures’ existing was cause to
smile.
Mosul angled
Spiros
in closer, ordering the edges of the sail to furl. The noise of the school rolled over the boat. The smack of those huge
bodies as they jumped and splashed, a deep gullet-shaking whistle from the blow-holes. She tried to work out how big they
were as the
Spiros
approached the school’s fringes. Some, the big adult bulls, must have been thirty metres long.
A calf came swimming over to the
Spiros
; over ten metres long, spurting from his blow-hole. His mother followed him closely, the two of them bumping together and
sliding against each other. Huge forked tails churned up and down, flukes slapping the water, while flippers beat like shrunken
wings. Syrinx watched in utter fascination as the two passed within fifty metres of the boat, rocking it alarmingly in their
pounding wake. But she hardly noticed the pitching, the calf was feeding, suckling from its mother as she rolled onto her
side.
“That is the most stupendous, miraculous sight,” she said, spellbound. Her hands were gripping the rail, knuckles whitening.
“And they’re not even xenocs. They’re ours. Earth’s.”
“Not any more.” Mosul was at her side, as mesmerized as she.
Thank Providence we had the sense to preserve the genes. Although I’m still staggered the Confederation Assembly allowed you
to bring them here.
The whales don’t interfere with the food chain, they stand outside it. This ocean can easily spare a million tonnes of krill
a day. And nothing analogous could ever possibly evolve on Atlantis, so they’re not competing with anything. The whales are
mammals, after all, they need land for part of their development. No, the largest thing Atlantis has produced is the redshark,
and that’s only six metres long.
Syrinx curled her arm round his, and pressed against him.
I meant, it’s pretty staggering for the Assembly to show this much common sense. It would have been a monumental crime to
allow these creatures to die out.
What a cynical old soul you are.
She kissed him lightly.
A foretaste of what’s to come.
Then rested her head against him, and returned her entire attention to the whales, gathering up every nuance and committing
it lovingly to memory.
They followed the school for the rest of the afternoon as the giant animals played and wallowed in the ocean. Then when dusk
fell, Mosul turned the
Spiros
’s bow away. The last she saw of the school was their massive dark bodies arching gracefully against the golden red skyline,
whilst the roar of the blow-holes faded away into the ocean’s swell.
That night twisters of phosphenic radiance wriggled through the water around the hull, casting a wan diamond-blue light over
the half-reefed sail membrane. Syrinx and Mosul brought cushions out onto the deck, and made love under the stars. Several
times
Oenone
gazed down on their entwined bodies, its presence contributing to the wondrous sense of fulfilment in Syrinx’s mind. She
didn’t tell Mosul. The Laymil project’s Electronics Division was housed in a three-storey octagonal building near the middle
of the campus. The walls were a soft white polyp with large oval windows, and climbing hydrangeas had reached the bottom of
the second-storey windows. Chuantawa trees from Raouil were planted around the outside, forty-metre-high specimens, their
rubbery bark and long tongue-shaped leaves a bright purple, clusters of bronze berries dangling from every branch.