Complete Short Fiction, page 67
“It had to happen some time.”
“Ha.”
“Come on then!” Breyten shouted. “I’ll race you back by way of Leadbutt Col.” He slid perilously down a steep rock face, scattering fragments below him, leaped across a ten-foot fracture, and was off.
“Wait—” Hektor gave it up, slid his behind over a detached boulder, and was after his brother, leaping the dark fractures that filled with the approaching night. He wouldn’t catch Breyten, he knew that. Breyten had always been able to navigate the jagged twists and turns of Noctis Labyrinthus better than anyone, and his utter lack of concern for bodily integrity gave him an advantage. But both of them would recognize pure cowardice if, right now, after flexing his sexual muscles, Hektor claimed to be beyond such childish games.
They returned late, scuttling from the sand crawler into the back entrance of the house like dilatory boys, then up to their separate rooms.
When Hektor finally got to the main social room, there were thirty or forty people there. He saw the formally dressed Breyten standing to one side, isolated in the crowd, a stoneware mug of his favorite fetid hot mineral water already in his hand. Breyten raised his white eyebrows as if wondering where the hell Hektor had been. Hektor scowled, grinned, and dove into the crowd.
Water rights did indeed come up. So did the route of the Eos Chasma magtrack, and industrial tax abatements. Hektor found himself as alert as he had been on the rocks. He was one of the new crop of Legislators, elected to a reserved seat from a district dominated by Passman loyalists. He was desperate to prove his suitability for the post. A few conversations, and he realized he’d just created weeks of work for himself.
“Hektor,” his father’s harsh voice said at his elbow. “Now you’ve finally arrived, I have someone for you to meet.”
Lon Passman was the same height as his sons, but denser, always walking as if deliberately pushing his weight into the floor, a difficult trick in Martian gravity. His hair was thick and white. His sword’s scabbard was ancient and scarred, supposedly dating to the earliest days of Martian settlement.
“All right,” Hektor said, steeling himself for yet another political contact.
“I’m sure you’ve already noticed who’s here,” Lon murmured as they walked. “Have you noticed who isn’t?”
“Governor-Resident DeCoven,” Hektor said promptly. Lon had been friendly with DeCoven’s predecessor, but the new colonial administrator had kept his distance from all Martian political figures.
“He’s busy until the Feast of Gabriel,” Lon said. “Then he makes a personal appearance. Landing Day’s too emotionally fraught for him.”
“You could have had some pigeons for him.” DeCoven’s hobby was pigeon breeding, of all things. His sole contacts with Martians had been limited to people with similar interests. It should have been a charming quirk, but had somehow become an irritation. Politicians had grimly taken up the hobby in the hopes of making personal contact.
“I hate what they do to the furniture.” Lon creased his face in a grin. “You knew DeCoven wasn’t going to be here. Anyone else? A Martian, if you want a clue.”
Even Fatima Weissman was here, a figure prominent in the opposing Chasmic Party and an old Passman family friend. That she was not at the competing Landing Day party at Chasmic Party Chairman Mboya’s house was perhaps a statement of personal loyalty but more likely a way of keeping an eye on Fossic Party doings without being obvious about it . . . got it. Got it, by God. The political world was not confined by the mundane polarities of the Fossic and Chasmic Parties.
“Rudolf Hounslow,” Hektor said, trying not to sound like an eager student waving his hand with the answer. “You invited him, didn’t you?”
“I did.” Lon Passman was sour. “His Olympus Clubs are becoming a real nuisance—blossoming from canyon gangs into what starts to look like a genuine revolutionary organization. People are starting to die. I mean, die for specific reasons, someone else’s reasons—always a warning sign, in the canyons.”
“Did you think you could talk him out of it over a drink?”
“Not at all. A Landing Day party is no place for dramatic confrontations. But I was hoping that you and Breyten could see him, get his measure, make some sort of contact.”
Hektor found his father’s interest in Hounslow’s presence odd, and his belief that Hounslow would actually show up even odder. It was not like Lon Passman to expose himself by having unfulfillable expectations.
“What for?”
“Because he’s going to be the biggest threat to your future here on Mars. He really should have come.” Lon almost whispered the last sentence.
This was odd. “I can’t see him sitting here, chatting, a drink in his hand.”
“Oh, Hounslow’s more sociable than you might think, Hektor. He’s a fanatic, but he’s still a politician.”
“Maybe.” Hektor was dubious.
He spotted Breyten talking animatedly to . . . a woman, he thought. He glimpsed a slender figure, bright hair. A red dress? Or did that belong to someone standing nearby? He didn’t get a chance to check further—his father swept him by before he could see more. But, Breyten, animated? This was much more interesting than the social shortcomings of some two-bit terrorist.
“Nyasa Tso,” his father said suddenly. “My son, Hektor Passman.” And left. Hektor found himself, completely unexpectedly, confronting a tall woman, almost as tall as he was, with brown eyes, which regarded him with cool, almost contemptuous unconcern.
“I, ah, how do you do?” Hektor bowed, happy that there were fixed social requirements that did not demand thought.
“I’m well.” She seemed angry at him, as if he had already offended her. There was a moment of uncomfortable silence.
“Do you climb, there in the Chasma Boreale?” He grabbed the first topic that came to mind.
If she was surprised that he knew where her family was from, she didn’t show it. “Of course. It’s irresistible. Not nice, stable rock like here, though. Last summer I saw an entire cliff shatter without warning.”
He thought of the carbon-dioxide-rotten terraces of millions-of-years-layered dust and water ice that made up the North Polar Cap around Chasma Boreale, and wondered if she was making fun of him. Not an hour before he had been clinging in terror to that nice stable rock of the Labyrinth.
“At least there aren’t plants and wild animals,” he said. “The Council of Nationalities took over the quarters of the Andes Highlands Assembly at Cuzco, Peru this year. The air was good, about like in this room. Most of the Terrans bitched, said it was too thin.”
“Oh, that’s right. You were there helping Councillor Borg try to get Governor-Resident DeCoven recalled.” Her tone was airily contemptuous.
Despite himself, Hektor flushed. “Among other things.”
“She likes to run her sword out of her scabbard so that the Terrans can see its nice shiny Martian blade. A mistake. A Martian mistake. Terrans mislike being threatened by . . . colonists.”
“Easy enough to find fault, afterward.” He realized that he sounded crabby, exactly like someone who had made a big mistake.
She shrugged. “I don’t suppose you had much to say about it, at that.”
Hektor wondered at her dislike of him. He didn’t enjoy being disliked, particularly by women, but he knew it had to happen occasionally. If he acted as decisively as he intended to in his career, there would be many who hated him. But he preferred to know why.
“Well, I did have to do mostly grunt work.” He sighed. “Politics isn’t just riding in triumph through Persepolis, you know. You have to sit in endless ward committee meetings with concerned Persepolitans.”
“But you think that moment of triumph worth it.” She was judicious.
“Victory is a heavy fruit that can only be supported by a strong trunk.”
“There are a million metaphorical answers to that one.”
“There are, there are. It’s my father’s phrase. A Terran aphorism, to boot. Though now I’ve seen fruit trees, and understand it a little better.” He shook his head. “I hope I’m not turning into him so soon.”
“Oh, that wouldn’t be such a bad thing, would it?” Her moment of sympathy seemed to annoy her. She drew herself up. The Tsos were of mixed Chinese-African descent, and her skin was a distinct dark yellow, like clay. “But you have other guests to attend to. Pleased to have met you.”
And so, with a cool handshake, she dismissed him. He walked away from her, wondering. He’d started to enjoy talking to her, but something had stood between them. He’d been away from Mars too long. Maybe Breyten would know something about this woman . . . but Breyten was gone. He never lasted for more than an hour at one of these things.
“Ah, Hektor.” It was Nar Hansen, mayor of Garmashtown, in Ophir Chasma. “You guys don’t seriously intend to grant 65 percent of that new artesian flow to those Hebes buffoons, do you? They just gargle with it and spit it out.”
“Come on now, Nar.” Hektor said, as cheerily as if the discussion hadn’t already taken up most of the past week. “Animal protein production is scarcely gargling.”
“You’re choking us! We’re barely above five hundred days’ reserves as it is. . . .”
Pleasing Hansen and his interests in Ophir were key to the next water distribution agreement. But Hektor didn’t want to discuss it now. His eyelids felt heavy, and it was still early. He peered over Hansen’s shoulder, hoping for release. Hansen was too intent on his arguments to notice.
When he saw her, she seemed like the only other living person in the room. Features glimpsed past backs and gesturing arms—a longfingered, lacquer-nailed hand with a drink in it, a bare shoulder, red-gold hair, a red dress clinging to a hip—coalesced into a whole, a woman, who stood, isolated from the rest of the party by a now-empty food table. She seemed exasperated by something, abandoned.
“Next week then,” Hektor said, agreeing to something just to get away from Hansen. “You can show me the desperate wasteland Ophir has become.” Another day given away. A Legislator’s time was as cheap as party favors. He walked toward her.
“It’s amazing,” Hektor said, as if picking up the thread of an interrupted conversation, “how much harder we work at enjoying ourselves than at any real job.”
The woman looked at him. Her eyes were dark blue. “Are you enjoying yourself?”
“I wasn’t.” He gestured at a chair. “My name is Hektor.”
That seemed to amuse her. “I know.” She sat down. “Mine is Laia Korvengeld.” She held up a warning hand. “But I feel I should warn you: I don’t know anything about water rights, regolith ice mining, air pumping, those things.”
“That’s the best news I’ve had all night,” he said fervently.
She smiled. “Good. Then maybe we can be friends.” She poured him a glass of wine. “You know, I’ve never been to a party like this. You all work so hard. All night,” she sloshed her wine glass, spilling some, “it’s been like watching yeast bounce around turning sugar into votes.”
She had fine wrists, and impossibly long fingers. He watched them in fascination. “That’s truer than you think,” he said. “Like this wine. North Slope, Gangis Chasma. Popular tourist item. Any idea how many tax deals had to be made to have it economic to grow gene-modified vines on Martian rock? The grapes look like little air tanks. You have to crack them to get the juice out.”
“So it’s true! You never stop. Breyten was right.”
Hektor examined her with dismay. The red dress, the blond hair . . . she was the woman he’d seen Breyten talking to earlier. His date, then. And here Hektor had already started to get attracted to her.
“You’re here with Breyten, then?”
She laughed. “Not at all. I just know him. I’m here . . . well, on my own.”
He took a relieved breath. “Let’s get out of here, before someone else finds me. I’ll show you the house, if you like.”
“Sure.” She stood and took his arm. “I’d like that.”
Hektor was adept at giving house tours, having been trained to it from childhood. It was full of Martian history. Emblems of famous duels hung on the walls. An early exploration vehicle with wide spring tires stood in the garage.
“What a weight of time,” Laia said wonderingly.
“It’s not full of millennia of history, like some Terran Houses I’ve seen.”
“Oh, they can keep their old junk, and spend their time dusting it. Maybe it’ll keep them from bothering us.”
So she did have her political positions, after all. “Most Terran Households are no older than this one, of course. They just pretend they’re older, hauling in old foundations and playing like they’ve been there for centuries. But we really do have an old foundation. This way.”
Down in the sub-basement, where the house dug its fingers into the rock, was the Passman family’s proudest possession: a circle of rock fused into glass, about three meters across. A few amorphous lumps of carbon composite stuck out of it. Laia Korvengeld stared at it, not recognizing what it was.
“We don’t really have documentary authentication for it,” Hektor said. “But we’re sure it’s the site of an extremely early pressure dome. One of the ones from the First Settlement.”
She knelt and put her long-fingered hand on the fused glass. “It was so hard. So hard. No Landing Day parties for them.”
“No. They’d only just landed themselves.”
“Think of how often they must have lost their air,” Laia said. “Choking on their own carbon dioxide. Suffocation connects us. They died just the same way. The oldest ones, the first ones.”
She was more mysterious than she had seemed upstairs. Laia was finer-limbed than a First Settler would have been, but Hektor could still imagine her in an early skintite, setting up an enclosed hydroponic garden or skimming across the red-sand surface in a vapor-puffing jumper. If he tried to kiss her, what would she say? She wouldn’t allow it, of course, but it still might be interesting to—
She stood and brushed off her knees. “Time for me to go,” she said briskly. “My company will be leaving.”
Hektor escorted her to the front hall. That was as much as he would get done tonight.
She slapped his chest with her hand. “Enough. Thank you. For showing me a little of how things work.”
He bowed. “I will call you.”
“Sure.” Her attention was already on something in the departing crowd. He watched her walk away from him. That clinging red dress really did suit her figure.
Something distracted him and he let his eyes wander away from her, up the lines of the vault above. Windows and balconies from the upper floors hung overhead. Breyten stood in the uppermost balcony, looking down. From there, the figures on the floor were just foreshortened dots, easy targets. As children, he and Breyten had hidden up there and dropped water balloons on unsuspecting guests. They would drift down slowly, slowly, but no one ever looked up to see the approaching doom.
What was Breyten looking at? Hektor gazed across the thinning crowd and caught just a glimpse of the person Laia had been hurrying to meet. It was Nyasa Tso, who was gathering a thick, regal stole across her shoulders. Then they were gone. And, high above, so was Breyten.
The Feast of Gabriel was as loud as ever, but Hektor, as he shouldered his way through the crowd, thought he sensed something different in the noise. The shading of mood had changed subtly during his two years on Earth, become darker and more refractory. He’d seen it in his work for the Legislature, in the unexpected resistances and angers he had encountered where all should have been simple political accommodation, but somehow it was all clearer here in the street, even though it was concealed beneath the macabre costumes and behaviors of the Feast of Gabriel.
The snaking tunnel passed through a gate and opened out into a glass-topped canyon. Once a channel on the floor of Tithonium Chasma, it had been tented over during the early days of settlement. The great northern cliff of Tithonium was just visible above, cutting a scalloped line against the darkening sky.
Laia was out here somewhere, in the northern passages leading toward Rahab Square. She’d refused to arrange a specific meeting place, but had just said “Find me. I won’t hide.”
Giant mythic figures were carried on the backs of willing acolytes. One of them, arms outspread, head thrown back in ecstasy, Hektor recognized as the Terran saint, Aya Ngomo. A blue-green glow came from her forehead, the color of the ngomite she had discovered.
Laia wasn’t under there. “I’ll be Amine,” she’d said. “Watch for me.”
He’d been looking for some image of Amme herself, but there, sweeping along behind Aya Ngomo, crouched protectively, was the tragic hero Brakner, Amme’s lover. A poet had once said that he was every young girl’s first love. Amme and Brakner was an old and romantic story, and even somewhat true.
Hektor paused and watched the heavily muscled figure lumber by him. He quickly examined the people beneath the bulging calves to see if he could see Laia. He caught a glimpse of a few floating strands of blond hair, nothing more. Brakner swept around a curve and Hektor followed. They were moving quickly, and he pushed himself into a lope.
Gowned students ran past with unsheathed swords gleaming in the insanely bright overhead lights. The Feast of Gabriel was a security nightmare, as all of Oswald DeCoven’s Martian associates had pointed out. Still, the Governor-Resident had insisted on his public appearance, despite growing hostility to his presence. Of course, Hektor reflected, Martians would never have consented to be governed by someone who was afraid to appear in public.
The canyon widened out and disappeared, and Hektor found himself in a vast rotunda. The crystal dome overhead was so high it disappeared. It leaped from bastions of native rock and hung suspended by the higher air pressure inside. The sky was now black, hung with stars, though a light show played on the great northern wall of Tithonium, flaring it with imaginary daylight.
Specks flickered somewhere up in Rahab Square’s vaulted expanse. Hektor squinted, trying to make them out. It took him a few moments to recognize flocks of fancy pigeons with multicolored feathers. DeCoven was somewhere around with his fellow bird fanciers.
“Ha.”
“Come on then!” Breyten shouted. “I’ll race you back by way of Leadbutt Col.” He slid perilously down a steep rock face, scattering fragments below him, leaped across a ten-foot fracture, and was off.
“Wait—” Hektor gave it up, slid his behind over a detached boulder, and was after his brother, leaping the dark fractures that filled with the approaching night. He wouldn’t catch Breyten, he knew that. Breyten had always been able to navigate the jagged twists and turns of Noctis Labyrinthus better than anyone, and his utter lack of concern for bodily integrity gave him an advantage. But both of them would recognize pure cowardice if, right now, after flexing his sexual muscles, Hektor claimed to be beyond such childish games.
They returned late, scuttling from the sand crawler into the back entrance of the house like dilatory boys, then up to their separate rooms.
When Hektor finally got to the main social room, there were thirty or forty people there. He saw the formally dressed Breyten standing to one side, isolated in the crowd, a stoneware mug of his favorite fetid hot mineral water already in his hand. Breyten raised his white eyebrows as if wondering where the hell Hektor had been. Hektor scowled, grinned, and dove into the crowd.
Water rights did indeed come up. So did the route of the Eos Chasma magtrack, and industrial tax abatements. Hektor found himself as alert as he had been on the rocks. He was one of the new crop of Legislators, elected to a reserved seat from a district dominated by Passman loyalists. He was desperate to prove his suitability for the post. A few conversations, and he realized he’d just created weeks of work for himself.
“Hektor,” his father’s harsh voice said at his elbow. “Now you’ve finally arrived, I have someone for you to meet.”
Lon Passman was the same height as his sons, but denser, always walking as if deliberately pushing his weight into the floor, a difficult trick in Martian gravity. His hair was thick and white. His sword’s scabbard was ancient and scarred, supposedly dating to the earliest days of Martian settlement.
“All right,” Hektor said, steeling himself for yet another political contact.
“I’m sure you’ve already noticed who’s here,” Lon murmured as they walked. “Have you noticed who isn’t?”
“Governor-Resident DeCoven,” Hektor said promptly. Lon had been friendly with DeCoven’s predecessor, but the new colonial administrator had kept his distance from all Martian political figures.
“He’s busy until the Feast of Gabriel,” Lon said. “Then he makes a personal appearance. Landing Day’s too emotionally fraught for him.”
“You could have had some pigeons for him.” DeCoven’s hobby was pigeon breeding, of all things. His sole contacts with Martians had been limited to people with similar interests. It should have been a charming quirk, but had somehow become an irritation. Politicians had grimly taken up the hobby in the hopes of making personal contact.
“I hate what they do to the furniture.” Lon creased his face in a grin. “You knew DeCoven wasn’t going to be here. Anyone else? A Martian, if you want a clue.”
Even Fatima Weissman was here, a figure prominent in the opposing Chasmic Party and an old Passman family friend. That she was not at the competing Landing Day party at Chasmic Party Chairman Mboya’s house was perhaps a statement of personal loyalty but more likely a way of keeping an eye on Fossic Party doings without being obvious about it . . . got it. Got it, by God. The political world was not confined by the mundane polarities of the Fossic and Chasmic Parties.
“Rudolf Hounslow,” Hektor said, trying not to sound like an eager student waving his hand with the answer. “You invited him, didn’t you?”
“I did.” Lon Passman was sour. “His Olympus Clubs are becoming a real nuisance—blossoming from canyon gangs into what starts to look like a genuine revolutionary organization. People are starting to die. I mean, die for specific reasons, someone else’s reasons—always a warning sign, in the canyons.”
“Did you think you could talk him out of it over a drink?”
“Not at all. A Landing Day party is no place for dramatic confrontations. But I was hoping that you and Breyten could see him, get his measure, make some sort of contact.”
Hektor found his father’s interest in Hounslow’s presence odd, and his belief that Hounslow would actually show up even odder. It was not like Lon Passman to expose himself by having unfulfillable expectations.
“What for?”
“Because he’s going to be the biggest threat to your future here on Mars. He really should have come.” Lon almost whispered the last sentence.
This was odd. “I can’t see him sitting here, chatting, a drink in his hand.”
“Oh, Hounslow’s more sociable than you might think, Hektor. He’s a fanatic, but he’s still a politician.”
“Maybe.” Hektor was dubious.
He spotted Breyten talking animatedly to . . . a woman, he thought. He glimpsed a slender figure, bright hair. A red dress? Or did that belong to someone standing nearby? He didn’t get a chance to check further—his father swept him by before he could see more. But, Breyten, animated? This was much more interesting than the social shortcomings of some two-bit terrorist.
“Nyasa Tso,” his father said suddenly. “My son, Hektor Passman.” And left. Hektor found himself, completely unexpectedly, confronting a tall woman, almost as tall as he was, with brown eyes, which regarded him with cool, almost contemptuous unconcern.
“I, ah, how do you do?” Hektor bowed, happy that there were fixed social requirements that did not demand thought.
“I’m well.” She seemed angry at him, as if he had already offended her. There was a moment of uncomfortable silence.
“Do you climb, there in the Chasma Boreale?” He grabbed the first topic that came to mind.
If she was surprised that he knew where her family was from, she didn’t show it. “Of course. It’s irresistible. Not nice, stable rock like here, though. Last summer I saw an entire cliff shatter without warning.”
He thought of the carbon-dioxide-rotten terraces of millions-of-years-layered dust and water ice that made up the North Polar Cap around Chasma Boreale, and wondered if she was making fun of him. Not an hour before he had been clinging in terror to that nice stable rock of the Labyrinth.
“At least there aren’t plants and wild animals,” he said. “The Council of Nationalities took over the quarters of the Andes Highlands Assembly at Cuzco, Peru this year. The air was good, about like in this room. Most of the Terrans bitched, said it was too thin.”
“Oh, that’s right. You were there helping Councillor Borg try to get Governor-Resident DeCoven recalled.” Her tone was airily contemptuous.
Despite himself, Hektor flushed. “Among other things.”
“She likes to run her sword out of her scabbard so that the Terrans can see its nice shiny Martian blade. A mistake. A Martian mistake. Terrans mislike being threatened by . . . colonists.”
“Easy enough to find fault, afterward.” He realized that he sounded crabby, exactly like someone who had made a big mistake.
She shrugged. “I don’t suppose you had much to say about it, at that.”
Hektor wondered at her dislike of him. He didn’t enjoy being disliked, particularly by women, but he knew it had to happen occasionally. If he acted as decisively as he intended to in his career, there would be many who hated him. But he preferred to know why.
“Well, I did have to do mostly grunt work.” He sighed. “Politics isn’t just riding in triumph through Persepolis, you know. You have to sit in endless ward committee meetings with concerned Persepolitans.”
“But you think that moment of triumph worth it.” She was judicious.
“Victory is a heavy fruit that can only be supported by a strong trunk.”
“There are a million metaphorical answers to that one.”
“There are, there are. It’s my father’s phrase. A Terran aphorism, to boot. Though now I’ve seen fruit trees, and understand it a little better.” He shook his head. “I hope I’m not turning into him so soon.”
“Oh, that wouldn’t be such a bad thing, would it?” Her moment of sympathy seemed to annoy her. She drew herself up. The Tsos were of mixed Chinese-African descent, and her skin was a distinct dark yellow, like clay. “But you have other guests to attend to. Pleased to have met you.”
And so, with a cool handshake, she dismissed him. He walked away from her, wondering. He’d started to enjoy talking to her, but something had stood between them. He’d been away from Mars too long. Maybe Breyten would know something about this woman . . . but Breyten was gone. He never lasted for more than an hour at one of these things.
“Ah, Hektor.” It was Nar Hansen, mayor of Garmashtown, in Ophir Chasma. “You guys don’t seriously intend to grant 65 percent of that new artesian flow to those Hebes buffoons, do you? They just gargle with it and spit it out.”
“Come on now, Nar.” Hektor said, as cheerily as if the discussion hadn’t already taken up most of the past week. “Animal protein production is scarcely gargling.”
“You’re choking us! We’re barely above five hundred days’ reserves as it is. . . .”
Pleasing Hansen and his interests in Ophir were key to the next water distribution agreement. But Hektor didn’t want to discuss it now. His eyelids felt heavy, and it was still early. He peered over Hansen’s shoulder, hoping for release. Hansen was too intent on his arguments to notice.
When he saw her, she seemed like the only other living person in the room. Features glimpsed past backs and gesturing arms—a longfingered, lacquer-nailed hand with a drink in it, a bare shoulder, red-gold hair, a red dress clinging to a hip—coalesced into a whole, a woman, who stood, isolated from the rest of the party by a now-empty food table. She seemed exasperated by something, abandoned.
“Next week then,” Hektor said, agreeing to something just to get away from Hansen. “You can show me the desperate wasteland Ophir has become.” Another day given away. A Legislator’s time was as cheap as party favors. He walked toward her.
“It’s amazing,” Hektor said, as if picking up the thread of an interrupted conversation, “how much harder we work at enjoying ourselves than at any real job.”
The woman looked at him. Her eyes were dark blue. “Are you enjoying yourself?”
“I wasn’t.” He gestured at a chair. “My name is Hektor.”
That seemed to amuse her. “I know.” She sat down. “Mine is Laia Korvengeld.” She held up a warning hand. “But I feel I should warn you: I don’t know anything about water rights, regolith ice mining, air pumping, those things.”
“That’s the best news I’ve had all night,” he said fervently.
She smiled. “Good. Then maybe we can be friends.” She poured him a glass of wine. “You know, I’ve never been to a party like this. You all work so hard. All night,” she sloshed her wine glass, spilling some, “it’s been like watching yeast bounce around turning sugar into votes.”
She had fine wrists, and impossibly long fingers. He watched them in fascination. “That’s truer than you think,” he said. “Like this wine. North Slope, Gangis Chasma. Popular tourist item. Any idea how many tax deals had to be made to have it economic to grow gene-modified vines on Martian rock? The grapes look like little air tanks. You have to crack them to get the juice out.”
“So it’s true! You never stop. Breyten was right.”
Hektor examined her with dismay. The red dress, the blond hair . . . she was the woman he’d seen Breyten talking to earlier. His date, then. And here Hektor had already started to get attracted to her.
“You’re here with Breyten, then?”
She laughed. “Not at all. I just know him. I’m here . . . well, on my own.”
He took a relieved breath. “Let’s get out of here, before someone else finds me. I’ll show you the house, if you like.”
“Sure.” She stood and took his arm. “I’d like that.”
Hektor was adept at giving house tours, having been trained to it from childhood. It was full of Martian history. Emblems of famous duels hung on the walls. An early exploration vehicle with wide spring tires stood in the garage.
“What a weight of time,” Laia said wonderingly.
“It’s not full of millennia of history, like some Terran Houses I’ve seen.”
“Oh, they can keep their old junk, and spend their time dusting it. Maybe it’ll keep them from bothering us.”
So she did have her political positions, after all. “Most Terran Households are no older than this one, of course. They just pretend they’re older, hauling in old foundations and playing like they’ve been there for centuries. But we really do have an old foundation. This way.”
Down in the sub-basement, where the house dug its fingers into the rock, was the Passman family’s proudest possession: a circle of rock fused into glass, about three meters across. A few amorphous lumps of carbon composite stuck out of it. Laia Korvengeld stared at it, not recognizing what it was.
“We don’t really have documentary authentication for it,” Hektor said. “But we’re sure it’s the site of an extremely early pressure dome. One of the ones from the First Settlement.”
She knelt and put her long-fingered hand on the fused glass. “It was so hard. So hard. No Landing Day parties for them.”
“No. They’d only just landed themselves.”
“Think of how often they must have lost their air,” Laia said. “Choking on their own carbon dioxide. Suffocation connects us. They died just the same way. The oldest ones, the first ones.”
She was more mysterious than she had seemed upstairs. Laia was finer-limbed than a First Settler would have been, but Hektor could still imagine her in an early skintite, setting up an enclosed hydroponic garden or skimming across the red-sand surface in a vapor-puffing jumper. If he tried to kiss her, what would she say? She wouldn’t allow it, of course, but it still might be interesting to—
She stood and brushed off her knees. “Time for me to go,” she said briskly. “My company will be leaving.”
Hektor escorted her to the front hall. That was as much as he would get done tonight.
She slapped his chest with her hand. “Enough. Thank you. For showing me a little of how things work.”
He bowed. “I will call you.”
“Sure.” Her attention was already on something in the departing crowd. He watched her walk away from him. That clinging red dress really did suit her figure.
Something distracted him and he let his eyes wander away from her, up the lines of the vault above. Windows and balconies from the upper floors hung overhead. Breyten stood in the uppermost balcony, looking down. From there, the figures on the floor were just foreshortened dots, easy targets. As children, he and Breyten had hidden up there and dropped water balloons on unsuspecting guests. They would drift down slowly, slowly, but no one ever looked up to see the approaching doom.
What was Breyten looking at? Hektor gazed across the thinning crowd and caught just a glimpse of the person Laia had been hurrying to meet. It was Nyasa Tso, who was gathering a thick, regal stole across her shoulders. Then they were gone. And, high above, so was Breyten.
The Feast of Gabriel was as loud as ever, but Hektor, as he shouldered his way through the crowd, thought he sensed something different in the noise. The shading of mood had changed subtly during his two years on Earth, become darker and more refractory. He’d seen it in his work for the Legislature, in the unexpected resistances and angers he had encountered where all should have been simple political accommodation, but somehow it was all clearer here in the street, even though it was concealed beneath the macabre costumes and behaviors of the Feast of Gabriel.
The snaking tunnel passed through a gate and opened out into a glass-topped canyon. Once a channel on the floor of Tithonium Chasma, it had been tented over during the early days of settlement. The great northern cliff of Tithonium was just visible above, cutting a scalloped line against the darkening sky.
Laia was out here somewhere, in the northern passages leading toward Rahab Square. She’d refused to arrange a specific meeting place, but had just said “Find me. I won’t hide.”
Giant mythic figures were carried on the backs of willing acolytes. One of them, arms outspread, head thrown back in ecstasy, Hektor recognized as the Terran saint, Aya Ngomo. A blue-green glow came from her forehead, the color of the ngomite she had discovered.
Laia wasn’t under there. “I’ll be Amine,” she’d said. “Watch for me.”
He’d been looking for some image of Amme herself, but there, sweeping along behind Aya Ngomo, crouched protectively, was the tragic hero Brakner, Amme’s lover. A poet had once said that he was every young girl’s first love. Amme and Brakner was an old and romantic story, and even somewhat true.
Hektor paused and watched the heavily muscled figure lumber by him. He quickly examined the people beneath the bulging calves to see if he could see Laia. He caught a glimpse of a few floating strands of blond hair, nothing more. Brakner swept around a curve and Hektor followed. They were moving quickly, and he pushed himself into a lope.
Gowned students ran past with unsheathed swords gleaming in the insanely bright overhead lights. The Feast of Gabriel was a security nightmare, as all of Oswald DeCoven’s Martian associates had pointed out. Still, the Governor-Resident had insisted on his public appearance, despite growing hostility to his presence. Of course, Hektor reflected, Martians would never have consented to be governed by someone who was afraid to appear in public.
The canyon widened out and disappeared, and Hektor found himself in a vast rotunda. The crystal dome overhead was so high it disappeared. It leaped from bastions of native rock and hung suspended by the higher air pressure inside. The sky was now black, hung with stars, though a light show played on the great northern wall of Tithonium, flaring it with imaginary daylight.
Specks flickered somewhere up in Rahab Square’s vaulted expanse. Hektor squinted, trying to make them out. It took him a few moments to recognize flocks of fancy pigeons with multicolored feathers. DeCoven was somewhere around with his fellow bird fanciers.
