Homecoming

Original draft : 29th March 1998 (6,629 words)
‘This rage of air
To tear me from the sky.
A broken god;
Falling...’
“Re-entry” attributed to T.J. Orman from the collection “Corrupted Koans”, © A. Pale, published Blue Heron Press, Little London, Haven, 2437.
   
Turnaround time at the edge of the Bubble : the Non-aligned freighter ‘Liberal Account’ coasted in space above the ice moon Jingle, the fourth satellite of the planet Pickwick in the Dickens system. Through the steeply angled shield window, Karen Woods looked past the wan reflection of her ghost white face and out onto the bitter snow dusted surface below where their last G-Rider was lifting through the miserly atmosphere.
 
The blank fields of rock and ice acted like a Rorschach test on which she projected an old memory. Alan with Jane on his shoulders crosses under the ridge and then…
 
She turned away furious, swallowing to push her emotions below the stream of consciousness: down to the drowning place where she had kept them suppressed for all these years. Why that sudden uninvited recall? It wasn’t a hard question. She’d had to think of Zephyr again and the past had inevitably taken its chance to break the surface of her mind. It was only the past; the dead past. She ignored it.
 
Gale Jackson sat at a low table, all heavy gravity muscles and engineered tan, dealing cards from a thinderin deck into some obscure game of patience.
 
“We’re wasting our time here,” she said. “We should end the loop at Eyrie. Frontier stations never have anything worth buying, and they never have enough hard currency to make it worth selling to them. We ought to know better, we’ve been here often enough. I vote, from the next trip we let the Republicans do all the supply runs to Jingle. They opened it up and they can bloody well support it.”
 
Ostensibly the first mate was speaking to Karen but her voice was carefully calculated to carry as far as the captain. She seldom missed an opportunity to needle her superior since the humiliation of Tuesday’s Drift.
 
“Shut up Jackson.”
 
Rose Sutherland seemed to speak without rancour, her tone bored and casual, but Karen wasn’t fooled. The older woman was beginning to lose patience.
 
“You know the agreements,” Karen said. “They’d commandeer the ship and have us all for colonists if the Council didn’t execute us first.” She was reluctant to get involved in an argument but even she was growing weary of Gale’s constant bitching.
 
“Yeah, well so much for being Non-aligned!” the first mate grumbled. “How are we supposed to turn a bleedin’ profit?”
 
The arrival of Ben Jordan interrupted the flow of their ill humour. The boy was fiddling with one of the emotion matrix puzzles they’d acquired at the Gesteron Market - ‘No two alike, and a different solution for every mood’, the Viwodian sales thing had said with cheerful metallic humour and Rose had bought half a dozen when she saw how Ben reacted. A little bit like the way we picked him up, Karen thought with a flash of insight. Ben was ten. Orphaned seven standard years ago, he was one of the casualties of a short lived Republican bush war on Tannadice II. The crew of the ‘Liberal Account’ had adopted him and from the captain down, he was regarded as some kind of cross between a son and a lucky mascot. Ben had a form of intermittent autism which resisted neurological analysis. He would phase in and out of social interaction with disconcerting unpredictability but he was remarkably good with technology of all kinds. The pale rose and lime green blobs of light which currently illuminated the crystal lattice in front of him were flickering slowly in response to the subtle pressure of his fingers, the beating of his heart and the chemical messages in his sweat. They pulsed along the solution lines, changing colour all at once to a steady, white, line linked solid which he tossed triumphantly in the air and pocketed; puzzle solved. To Karen, Ben was a puzzle in his own right. As the ship’s medical officer she had spent many hours investigating the state of his mind in an attempt to diagnose and ameliorate his condition, but with no success. That was one failure she’d had to come to terms with. It’s all very well to carry a child round the Bubble, she worried, but he’s growing up. He needs company of his own age and he needs to settle but he’s not going to find it easy. Here though, she had proposed a solution. Rose was in agreement and soon they must raise the issue with Ben.
 
“Open the bay doors, I’m coming in,” the G-Rider pilot said.
 
Fyona Stone’s crisp communication brought a brief economical response from the captain and the first mate tripped the relays to swallow the small craft inside their hull.
 
“What you got?” Gale asked.
 
“Not much. A couple of mail bags for Eyrie; a tonne of refined Chromium; some local jewellery - might have curiosity value I suppose.”
 
Fyona broke off to concentrate on aligning the G-Rider for a few seconds.
 
“Oh and I got a C-Case, I’m afraid.”
 
“Out here?”
 
Gale’s voice managed to convey incredulity and disgust in equal measure.
 
“What the bleedin’ hell was a Charter case doing out here! I thought this was a Republican world! That’s just the luck of this bloody voyage that is. Just the luck!”
 
“I’d better go and check on the storage,” Karen said. She left the bridge, and in five minutes had reached the dark blue gravity reduced zones along the main axis. Oblivious to the stomach lurching weight shift that disconcerted the gravity bound, she bounced back easily through the trampolines and grab bars to aft. A metal stud on her velvet black body suit increased the heating as she reached the dock and holds a few minutes later, and she took a face shield from the wall before entering the IAC51 lock. It was quiet and cold amongst the thick grill plates and ice sheathed pipes; low pressure and minimal heating, but Karen could still feel the deep vibration of the magnetic clamps as they secured the G-Rider. They called it the ‘Deep Freeze’ and this was where they kept any cargo which didn’t require the warmth of life. A C-case certainly fell into that category.
 
Fyona came through the IAC61 lock just as Karen arrived. The pilot was pulling a long thin metallic box behind her - the C-Case. The C stood for Charter but it might as well have stood for coffin because that was exactly what it was. A thin rime coated the sleek black hermetically sealed unit which had once been shipped out in the care of one of the Firstborn. Now matters were reversed and the coffin was looking after him.
 
“He was a miner,” Fyona said. “Came by way of High Tumbler when the Republic opened up Jingle, and he brought his Charter with him.”
 
Before that, of course, he came from Earth but that went without saying. Thermostatic controls would have kept the interior of the box cold even if it hadn’t been in the ‘Deep Freeze’. They weren’t necessary now but Karen checked them over quickly anyway, then helped the pilot stow the thing in an empty storage bay.
 
“It’s a waste of space,” Fyona said with a grimace.
 
“Not as much as the B-Hold,” Karen offered.
 
The other woman just rolled her eyes in agreement. The whole crew thought the same, even though Gale was the only one to show open dissent in front of the captain. Rose Sutherland must have had a rush of blood to the head when she purchased that stock - a job lot of stellar navigation and small propulsion units, designed for use on the automated survey robots which combed the asteroid mining system of Tuesday’s Drift. They were old fashioned, worth less that half what she’d paid for them. They occupied valuable cargo space and nobody else wanted them.
 
“You unloading the rest now?”
 
“Sod it. It can wait until we’re underway. Come on, let’s go to the bridge. I need a drink.”
 
“I think Rose has a mind to include Earth in the next loop,” Karen said as they made their way forward, “so we may be taking our friend all the way home.”
 
“Lucky old him,” Fyona answered sourly, continuing with more vehemence, “He’s choking lucky the Charter still holds at all! Who needs a C-Case?”
 
The Bubble was in ferment but theoretically everyone still adhered to the Revised Charter of 2473. The Revised Charter was pretty thin anyway; a greatly watered down version of the original Emigrant’s Charter which didn’t include the famous Right of Return for the Firstborn. However, and this was where matters got complicated, the Solar Group still granted a scattering of dispensations under the Old Charter. So far nothing had changed that, despite the many aftershocks still passing through the politics of the Bubble since the Republic succeeded from the Solar Group. But for how much longer, Karen wondered?
 
When traders talked about a C-Case they were always thinking of the Old Charter. The Right of Return referred only to the Firstborn - individuals born and raised on Earth and living and working elsewhere in the Bubble. They were gifted their own coffin on emigration, and promised that after death they would be returned to Earth.
 
The gentlest push of the rocket engines cut them free from gravity’s light embrace, the next step in the cosmic waltz - Liberal Account round Jingle, Jingle round Pickwick, Pickwick round Dickens. The ship was bowing out now to join another dance around another sun, and as Karen and Fyona entered the bridge they were granted a magnificent view. At first Karen only noticed that Ben was staring straight out of the shield window with his eyes wide open and his mouth gaping. He’d gone into fugue, stunned by the sight. Then she too looked out.
 
The scene was lit by the orange energies of Dickens, the K2 star sprouting tangled flares like a beard on its spotted face. Jingle was a tiny pearl in that immense light - fragile and beautiful. Its shadow cut a perfect hole in the cherry pink and lemon yellow cloud tops of the gas giant below. Pickwick brooded on the slow neurotic energies of a hundred lightning storms under red and brown skies, a plump body squashed by its own rapid rotation. Circling serenely above were his rings - more spectacular than those of Saturn himself, they shone with the gorgeous complexity of a thousand divisions and subdivisions, sculpted by a score of tiny moons.
 
“It’s just dust,” Gale said at last. “Just ice and dust.”
 
She poked Ben irritably but of course he didn’t respond. He’d come round when he was ready.
 
Just ice and dust, Karen thought. So are we all, but what a wonder ice and dust can be!
 
“Stop gawping,” the captain complained. “Are we going fire the strip engine or are we going to sit under this gravity forever?”
 
The captain’s office was recessed into Bulkhead One and looked out over the bridge from a commanding height of ten metres. It could be reached by a shining chrome stairway of impressive dimensions, or a backdoor ladder through the IAC11 lock which descended into her private quarters. Rose Sutherland had a pretty relaxed style of leadership and she only used the office on significant occasions so Ben looked nervous as he took a seat in front of the heavy oak table. Karen squeezed his hand in reassurance as she sat next to him.
 
They were three days out of Eyrie on course for Carillon IV; the strip engine bouncing them in and out of reality on real and imaginary instants of time just long enough to collapse the reflected wave function. From Carillon IV they would travel to the important double world system of Mainstream and Greenlush, then on to Olympus before crossing the borders of the Republic to the independent world of Zephyr. Zephyr had once struggled for freedom from the Solar Group and vigorously resisted incorporation into the Republic. After that the route was undecided and depended on trade, but the captain would probably elect to continue inwards to the Solar Group.
 
In the Steeple Hills of Zephyr, the Non-aligned Ishiguro Clan (to which the Liberal Account was affiliated) maintained a Planet School called Highwitch.
 
“Do you remember Zephyr?” Rose began. “Fyona and I took you to visit the Ishiguro Community. We saw the Prism and we rode a balloon boat down the Whitefire Rapids. You went on a hike with Juan and Naomi into the Mist Forests. They showed you the layer of the chatter kings and you climbed the trees where the fur birds roost. You liked it.”
 
Ben nodded warily, wondering where this was leading. Rose took a deep breath and leant forward with her arms flat on the table.
 
“It’s time for you to leave the Liberal Account,” she said. “We’ve taught you all we can. When we reach Zephyr you’ll be enrolled in the Planet School.”
 
There. It was said.
 
“But this is my home!” Ben wailed. “I don’t want to go to some world where they don’t know the first thing about Trading.”
 
He laced the word ‘world’ with all the contempt of a life time Trader like Gale Jackson. But he’d never lived on one, unless you counted the few years on Tannadice II, which he could hardly remember now (or perhaps he could and the memory of that trauma wasn’t helping).
 
Karen sighed. She knew this was going to be difficult.
 
“The custodians are very kind,” she said. “We all have to spend time on Planet. That’s part of the Trader Way. I lived in Highwitch once.”
 
Rose glanced at her oddly and she felt another small aftershock of memory. Why did I say that, she thought? Then again, why not? It was a long time ago and this was my idea. The calamity on Zephyr was an old wound but it had never healed. All the crew knew about it, of course, but no one had spoken of it for a decade now. That, too, was the Trader Way. “The past is as quick as light,” they joked in one of their proverbs, “but it can’t catch a strip engine!”
 
Ben frowned. He was sulking and he looked like he might be about to cry.
 
“Juan and Naomi like you,” Rose said. “They’ll look after you. I don’t want to hear any more dissent.”
 
There was a momentary impasse and a cobalt blue light suddenly flooded them from the bridge.
 
“Bloody hell!”
 
Gale Jackson’s voice was unpleasantly clear over the intercom. “We got a problem captain…”
 
 
On the windy green plains of Carillon IV the New Primitives rode wild Arabian horses and herded boola beasts between the silver towers of long abandoned Asamack citadels. They shared the world with half a dozen Pasteracht communities who had their main temple at the lakeside city of Eastur. The Pasteracht were cultural refugees from all the continents of Earth and they were signatories to the Old Charter with the rights of the Firstborn.
 
Another sunrise, another day. Edgar White let his waking mind gather itself together as he watched slow shadows retreat behind the blank purity of the cubic houses of Eastur.
 
“There’s a ship in dock,” his wife said, returning from the night shift. She looked tired. “On its way Inwards but it hit trouble with the Flicker Drive. The Orbiters think it will take ten days to retune the strip engine.”
 
“Solar Group?” he asked hopefully.
 
“Nah. Just one of the Non-aligned. Some tub called the ‘Liberal Account’”
 
A Solar Group ship would bring his replacement and only then could the doctor and his wife return to Earth. In the mean time, Hypocratic Society rules bound them here. Edgar tried not to let his disappointment show as Anna came over and kissed him on the forehead.
 
“Never mind love,” she said. “It won’t be long now.”
 
He rose and dressed in the simple white toga that was his every day uniform, leaving his wife to crawl into the warm nest of their bed.
 
Pale grey and blue waterfall trees flung low branches foamed with tiny white flowers over the sun washed sandstone streets of Eastur. The strong yellow light was tempered by a soft wind from the lake but it was going to be another hot day. Little turquoise skitter lizards were coming out to warm themselves on the tree trunks and stone walls, and Frank Priest’s old dog Savage had already colonised the shade beneath the fountain in the main square.
 
“Morning doctor”
 
Callisto Brooks curtsied deferentially, blocking his path, nervous but insistent. The Pasteracht were always nervous. It was an indelible consequence of their long tradition of persecution as the formal prey of the Zed Men; one of the nastiest aberrations of the fourth dynastic house of the Resource Management government on Earth. That was over now. Even the short lived fifth dynasty of the pilgrim council was over. It was the sixth dynasty which led the Solar Group but the Pasteracht remained in political exile, cast out of Earth as an embarrassment to the new orders.
 
“Charlie’s still coughing,” she said anxiously. “He’s not getting any better. Will you see him again? I can bring him round in the afternoon.”
 
“Of course,” he said, trying to soothe her. “I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about but I’ll have another look at him. He’ll soon be out and about again.”
 
But privately he was worried and he kept his head down as he crossed the Temple river at the wide Three Arch bridge. Young Charlie Brooks was only the most recent case but there were half a dozen others on his books and he had no idea what was causing the epidemic. It was serious too. Of that, he had no doubt. None of his patients were responding to conventional antibiotics.
 
When Edgar looked up again he had all but bumped into two new figures. The first was a child, gangly and awkward with bright red hair and a sharp little chin. The second was a serious looking brunette in her early forties, slightly plump with a pale, introspective kind of hardened beauty. For a moment there was no recognition .He was conscious only that the pair were strangers to Eastur and that he so rarely saw strangers. Then he identified their Trader robes, remembered the ship and remembered the woman’s face. A different world and a different time.
 
“Karen Woods!” he said. “Good to see you!”
 
“Doctor White. This is Ben. Can we talk to you?”
 
A drift of Rock Irises cloaked the shallow hillside beneath the surgery window, their stiff rosettes of spear shaped leaves standing like rigid grey green guards in the gentle breeze which fluttered the purple heads of their flowers. They were very beautiful and they reminded Edgar just a little of the first crocuses of spring. So what was wrong with them? What’s wrong with them, Edgar reflected wryly is that they aren’t crocuses. It was something for which the native plants could hardly be blamed.
 
“So I’m due to retire,” he said to Karen. “Then we’re back to Earth. That’s all I want now : all Ann wants as well. That’s what comes of being one of the Firstborn I suppose. This sun just isn’t right. The New Primitives think it’s funny when they aren’t contemptuous and they’re probably right but I don’t care. I’ve earned the right to opt out of it.”
 
He turned to Ben. “And you’re going to Zephyr, are you?”
 
Karen had explained a little of Ben’s history and told the doctor about his medical condition.
 
“Not if I can help it,” the boy grumbled. “I’m a Trader.”
 
“He doesn’t think much of planets,” Karen said wryly.
 
“Ah, well since you’ve made an unexpected stop over we’ll have to see if we can convince you. There’s so much that a world can offer which you’ll never know in a metal box in space. You have to feel it to appreciate it. I can’t explain it any better. You just can’t live on a star ship forever.”
 
“I don’t see why not! You don’t like this place,” Ben accused. “You’ve just said so!”
 
“Hmm.. No, you’re right I don’t,” the doctor admitted thoughtfully. The boy wasn’t stupid and Edgar realised that, whatever his intermittent mental problems, outside the fugue state his ability to reason and to perceive the emotions of others was perfectly adequate. In fact, when Ben was aware he seemed that much more strongly aware. So, I’d better try harder to explain, Edgar thought.
 
“Think of it this way,” he said. “There’s a time when you’ve got to explore - to break away and see new things. For you that time is now. You have to seize the chance. Unless you go out and look, how are you going to know what you’re missing? Now for me - I’ve done that. I’ve been to Haven and Om. I’ve lived on Zephyr and now Carillon IV. And I’ve met some wonderful people and done some wonderful things. So if I want to go back to Earth now, then that too is an adventure; an adventure of return. Do you understand?”
 
Ben just looked stubborn.
 
“Come on, I’m not seeing any patents this morning. The administration will keep. Let’s go and look at the Temple!”
 
There was little to do on the ship, whilst the engineers adjusted the extremal singularity at the heart of the strip engine. Karen and Ben had plenty of time to explore Eastur and the surrounding countryside. The saw a lot of the doctor and he introduced them to several of the Pasteracht. Karen was struck by how hospitable they were. Everyone seemed to be going out of their way to be friendly to Ben and his mood began to lighten.
 
On an afternoon when a warm wind raised white waves over the lake and brushed fan tail clouds back from the agonies of space, Karen and Edgar watched Ben splashing at the shore line.
 
“Enjoying the Trader life?” Edgar enquired mildly. She hesitated a little too long and he guessed. “Planets eh? You can’t live with ‘em and you can’t live without ‘em.” He quoted the hoary old Trader motto corrupted from some lost antecedent.
 
“I’m tired of chasing round the Bubble,” she admitted. “The ‘Liberal Account’… well it’s a bit limiting. They’ve all got their agendas but I’m not sure what mine is.”
 
“You know what I think?” he said.
 
Now it was his turn to hesitate, but Karen let her silence make him speak. “I think you should go back to Zephyr. You’re not a Trader at heart. You belong with the Ishiguro. No one wanted you to leave.”
 
“I had to,“ she said in anguish. “I had to!”
 
He was silent again for a moment. A school of seraphim broke the water and they watched the silvery little bodies skip over the shining water. “Maybe,” he said at last. “But I think it’s time for you to go home now.”
 
 
When the plague came, it came suddenly. Edgar recognised the cause only a little time before he succumbed.
 
“There’s a local bacterium that forms part of the intestinal flora of everyone who lives here during the spring. It can subvert the immune system and subsists in a second form beneath the epidermis, but it’s harmless in itself. We’ve known about it for years and its never been a problem. Well it seems like it has a symbiotic relationship with one of the lake algae. It’s a Trojan horse for a more serious infection. There’s something different in the condition of the lake this season. That’s what’s triggered it.”
 
One by one, nearly the whole of Eastur came down with a green bloom beneath the skin. There was no cure and within a week they were all dead : One thousand and sixty eight C-Cases. The ‘Liberal Account’ had to take them all.
 
The A-Hold was a melancholy sight when they left for Greenlush and the captain was not best pleased. Karen noticed that she’d picked up Gale’s style of swearing.
 
“What do they think this ship is, a bloody mortuary,” Rose said as if the Pasteracht had deliberately died to annoy her. The social temperature on the ‘Liberal Account’ felt about the same as the ‘Deep Freeze’.
 
“If you can’t transport the full quota, I’ll have to keep the contract,” the Stump Boss said, cleaning his elaborately manicured purple fingernails with practised nonchalance. “Assuming my colleagues haven’t found prior hold space.”
 
He was an agent for the A’spojeena, one of the Galian Trading Gangs operating out of Greenlush. His shocking white hair had been dyed violet and was tied back with a simple black ribbon. His ebony skin shone with unacknowledged sweat and his unfocused gaze wandered into the fertile colours of planet light.
 
Rose Sutherland gave him a lopsided grin and tried to appear unconcerned but she wanted the deal badly and he knew it. They were playing ‘The Sport’ now. A game of business, money and probability. The Stump Boss took the ceramic contract chip between thumb and forefinger and turned it over.
 
“It’s such an easy job,” he said with a deceptive answering smile. “Take the pressed petals from Olympus and deliver them to Panaquon. It’s the standard terms of course but I think you’d make it.”
 
It was a tricky trading decision.. If only they had cargo for Olympus it would be easy. Or if they didn’t have full holds.
 
The Stump Boss was just a representative and he wasn’t authorised to give the ‘Liberal Account’ any guarantees. There would be other agents for the A’spojeena on other routes and every one would offer an initialised contract. Only the first ship to reach Olympus could gain the business. The other ceramic chips would never be confirmed and their holders would have to make do with whatever casual trade the system offered. In the case of Olympus that would be precious little. Olympus was a backwater and this crop, an unusual bonus. It was just luck that the ‘Liberal Account’ was going there already, because of their planned stop over on Zephyr. The more usual trade route from Greenlush and Mainstream went via Blue Cola.
 
The captain wasn’t about to admit that she expected the ‘Liberal Account’ to call at Olympus in any case.
 
“Give me the contract,” she said. “We’ll take the quota.”
 
An hour later she was explaining it to the others.
 
“It’s a lucrative shipping contract and we don’t have to take any of the risks. We’re not buying the petals, just transporting them for a flat fee. A large flat fee. And from the time stamp on the contract I think we’re nearly certain to get the business.”
 
“Only one problem captain,” Gale Jackson said. “The C-Cases. Had you forgotten them? We’ve got all holds full, what with them and the rubbish from Tuesday’s Drift.”
 
“I’ve told the agent we’ll relay them on Olympus. They can be put into storage and a transfer of responsibility effected.”
 
“Wonderful!” Gale snorted. “The Council are really quick with that kind of thing aren’t they?” She was laying the sarcasm on thick.
 
“In the mean time we have to pay to keep a bunch of stiffs. Then we have to pay to get someone else to move ‘em. That’s an excellent deal!”
 
“I said, I told the agent we’d relay them on Olympus,” the captain said slowly. “Did you hear me say we were going to relay them? We’ll have empty holds when we reach Olympus. We find somewhere nice and quiet and we open them to space. Just an unfortunate accident in sealing the hatches - a bit of unexpected acceleration and no one will be any the wiser. I take it there are no objections?”
 
There was a stunned silence.
 
It’s finally come to this, Karen thought. I knew business was bad but this is real desperation stuff.
 
“You don’t expect anyone will believe that, do you?” Fyona said. “Carillon IV is going to make news. You’re talking about breaking the Charter, big time. There’s gonna be some heavy questions.”
 
“Then we’d better make sure we have a straight story. I wouldn’t worry though. No one can prove anything. You think the way the Bubble is at the moment anyone’s even goin’ to try? I don’t.”
 
Rose was actually enjoying their discomfort. For once, even Gale had nothing to say. It was the showdown that her persistent goading had provoked. There was nothing she could say.
 
“We need the capital,” Rose insisted. “Make yer minds up. Where’s your loyalty. With the living or the dead?”

Ben had a place of his own where the angular steel girders of the high mass loading cradles broke the sleek lines of the starship like the wings of an ugly duckling. There was a controlled corridor of mirrored tin and electrostatics leading back to the holds. Karen found him inside an embedded observation cell, carpeted with a hardy grey matting of dim foss and painted Sjanamak pink. He was fiddling with one of the useless propulsion units from the B-Hold.
 
“How did you get that?”
 
“I know the codes for the Deep Freeze,” he said with a touch of defiance. “Why shouldn’t I?”
 
“Because you’re not supposed to touch the cargo. The captain doesn’t like it if any of us touch the cargo.”
 
“Why should I care?” he said. “None of you want me anyway. You’re putting me off at Zephyr and she’s emptying the holds before we get to Olympus, so what’s it matter?”
 
He had a point. Karen tried not to feel guilty. She was here to attempt a reconciliation.
 
“What are you doing anyway?”
 
He showed her the propulsion unit and the astrogation systems, demonstrating how the kit could align itself with respect to an internal star map.
 
“It’s surprising how efficient it is,” he said. “It can’t pack much reaction mass but it can run the orientation systems on a minuscule power bleed and it’s smart enough to switch off all the active instrumentation between navigational polling points. It’s only meant to be used within one stellar system but the designers put absolute co-ordinates into the thing and it derives the local star patterns. I suppose that was to allow it to be used all over the Bubble.”
 
He changed the subject suddenly.
 
“I wish I wasn’t going to Zephyr on my own. It wouldn’t be so bad if I knew someone.”
 
Poor kid, she thought. The plague at Eastur had hit him hard. It had affected her badly as well. It wasn’t exactly the sort of thing to fill anyone with confidence in the future. Responsibility. This is the responsible thing to do, she told herself. I don’t want to go back. I really don’t want to go.
 
“I’m coming with you,” she said. “I’m going to Highwitch.”
 
All of a sudden Ben looked a lot happier. He hugged her. I still don’t want to go, she thought, but the sharp edge of the emotion was blunted by compassion. Perhaps it won’t be so bad.
 
Two days later, they held a funeral service. Karen knew that it was as much to assuage the captain’s guilty conscience as for any other reason. One thousand and sixty nine coffins went spinning into the void.
 
When the strip engine had blinked them on their way, something moved. A tiny flare broke the darkness of the dead space. Then one thousand and sixty nine navigation systems came to life...
 
“I didn’t tell you to clear the B-Hold as well,” the captain shouted when she realised it was empty. “We could have got some capital for that equipment, even if we’d sold it at a loss.”
 
“We didn’t open the bleedin’ B-Hold,” Gale protested.
 
Ben restrained a smile. He would leave the Traders with his head held high. He winked at Karen and she suddenly guessed what had happened. Suppressing a smile of her own she turned away. Two days to Olympus and another four to Zephyr. At that moment it seemed like a very good idea to be leaving the ‘Liberal Account’.

“Did you make the right decision?” Eldred asked. The old councillor put his hands on the wooden railing and breathed deeply. The lightening sky was vast and empty as it waited for an imminent fiery dawn. From the upper balcony of the Ravine Dormitory, Karen looked across a narrow iron bridge to the long shoulder of rock where the Prism stood. She didn’t answer immediately.
 
Ben was leading a group of younger children, scrambling over the smooth glass boulders at the base. There were three Artists supervising today’s additions to the continually evolving structure at the spiritual heart of Highwitch. The Artists carried bowls of molten resin and sacks of shocked crystal pearls from the thermal vents in the higher reaches of the Steeple Hills. Their white robes reminded her a little of the Pasteracht. Ben was enjoying himself enormously, calling to another work gang above, as they secured little lenses to the top of the left wing.
 
It had been hard coming back to Highwitch: hard to face the slope of broken stone where her husband and daughter were buried. But the roar of the killing landslide had faded into the greenery that now covered their graves and somehow, when she saw it again, the reality had less power than the memory and she could confront it with resolution. And, too, it was good to see Juan and Naomi again and to realise how much she’d missed her old friends. Their relationship would never be quite the same but it wasn’t something she should run from.
 
Ben would be much happier at the Planet School. Already she knew that it had been right to bring him here. Perhaps his autism would never be cured but it seemed to be ameliorated by his contact with the other children. And for herself? For herself, it was time to face the future and reclaim her home.
 
The fierce white sun of Zephyr erupted over the line of the Steeple Hills. Its light hit the Prism and stained Highwitch with a hundred dappled colours. Eldred had waited patiently for her answer.
 
“I think so,” she said.
 
 
Karen and Ben were a distant ‘pulse in the eternal mind’ when the brief light of a meteorite made an end to a journey they had once shared, long ago.
 
The miner from Jingle was the first to be cremated by re-entry, but there would be others. The ‘broken gods’ would have their discourse with the air. After all these millennia they had drifted apart, disturbed by the subtlest of gravitational effects and the smallest of inconsistencies in their robot drives, but Ben had done a good job and the mechanics produced a miracle. In their own way and in their own time, every coffin would complete the voyage.
 
Mother Earth waited for them. Their origins were forgotten, lost to the memory of history. The Bubble had burst long ages ago and the Contemporary races vanished to their manifold destinies. But what’s a hundred million years to suns and planets? Time to take a deep breath : to contemplate the abundant fusion of hydrogen and the lengthy cooling of molten cores. Time for Mother Earth to rearrange her continents like a dowager shifting her skirts. Time to clear up and start again.
 
Now, as the Inheritors busied themselves in their own complex chronicles they seldom remembered that they were only the Second born; that Mother Earth had sent forth her First born ages before.
 
She was still the same in all her essentials; in all the things her children loved, the second as much as the first - blue and green, wet and warm, arid and fertile, frozen, tropical and temperate; a paradise in space.
 
Across the long, lonely gaps between the stars; across the mind empty, nothingness; across the hard vacuum that lies unwashed by stellar winds, where only remote galactic energies cast their intermittent glimmers; across the hollow clockless multi-million years, they flew with the patience of Newton. Not for them, the instant gratification of the flicker drive. They travelled the slow and sure way - the way of all brute matter; ice and dust.
 
And perhaps, after all, there would be a brief time for this final kiss. Across all the dark light years, the children of Earth were coming home.
  29/03/98 - DMFW


Cover image: Zephyr : The Prism at Highwitch by DMFW with Vue

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