Haze and the Hammer of Darkness (52 page)

Martel lets a puzzled expression cross his face, as if he can't understand her hysteria. In fact, he has difficulty, although he can sense the emotional desperation welling from her.

“That's starting right now! And while you're off duty, I'll do my best to see that no one comes close to you, especially no one from any faxcast center. But don't worry. You'll get full credit for this one. Every last credit from that docuslot is yours. Even 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. Program'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 water on which he stands, and from the strike rises blue lightning toward the clouds.

Another golden bolt spears down. Hisses and steams. Haloes the sea-god.

And another.

In return comes a fainter blue upward strike.

The trident whirls, and close upon the whirling rises a waterspout, 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, attacking 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 Martel, a pair of nymphs skates the breaksides of the remaining waves, their laughter chiming like the bells of holidays past.

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 musical 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 evening, 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 Martel 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.

Martel 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 cushions 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 himself.

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 almost 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 softness 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 picnic 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 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 Aurore'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.”

“Marta's blacked me.”

“Oh, that. As long as He hasn't, I wouldn't worry.”

Martel 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 glass.

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.

… not kind to the gods … shows them spoiled … Thor … who am I to say … Martel …

“You're thinking that I was foolish to fax it?”

“Brave. And foolish. That's why I love you. For as long as I can.”

From inside the basket she pulls a small package and thrusts it at him.

“What?”

“Open it. Please.”

He sets his glass on a level spot in the short grass and avoids reading her thoughts so that the gift will be the surprise she intends.

The belt, for that is what it is, uncoils from the wrappings, with the softness and jet-black of natural wehrleather. The buckle is pure silver, a simple triangle, yet hard.

Martel frowns. The buckle alone, with its monalloyed silver, represents an enormous free credit balance. Neither is wehrleather native to Aurore or easy to come by.

He gets up and kneels on both knees to don the belt, looking down at it, admiring the way it feels and fits, and the shine of the buckle, neither muted nor too bright.

“You look so good!”

“Thanks to you.” He grins, looking back down at the belt, then across to her. “Rathe…”

His fingertips brush hers, link, and grasp her hand, draw her across the cloth to him, against him.

Lips linger. A touch of salt, a warmth radiating from lip to cheek to …

Yes … no … not now … later … he liked it.

Martel cradles her face in both hands as he releases her, runs his fingertips down the side of her face.

“You didn't need to.”

“I know, but I wanted to.” Her eyes glisten even in the pervasive indirect light, and that alone tells him that she is pleased.

“I'm hungry,” he announces, not only to change the subject but because the sudden growl of his gut has reminded him that he is.

“Ha! Your stomach spoke first.”

“I admit it. So what else is in the basket?”

“Sea duck and kelip.”

“Then serve, wench.”

“Yes, Masterfaxer. At once, sir.”

Rathe does not notice the dark cloud in the distance, toward the sacred mountain behind Pamyra. Martel sees the cloud, notes it, and concentrates on the sea duck.

“Napkin?”

“At once, sir! Here you go.”

“More Springfire!”

Rathe arcs the bottle across the cloth at him, but he catches it without spilling a drop. Inhales deeply of the aroma, lets it mingle with the scent of Rathe and the pinsting of the sea below.

The days of wine and youth

Are days of love and truth …

Martel listens to the song, to the feelings behind the words, and to the hidden harmony that Rathe does not know she brings to the short song.

“Martel.”

She stares at him.

He starts, realizing his cheeks are wet.

“Must have gotten something in my eyes.”

Martel, crying … see that?

The wonder in her thoughts leeches the emotion cleanly from him.

He picks up the tulip glass from the grass and takes a swig, a long pull to empty it.

The distant cloud is no closer, but darker. Suddenly it disappears, and a chill breeze swirls the picnic cloth and is gone, and with it goes the sense of summer.

“We'd better go.”

Rathe nods.

He folds the cloth while she puts the bottle and glasses away. Only crumbs from the sea duck and kelip remain, left for the shy dories, who will flutter down to feast once the flitter and the man and the woman have left.

 

xx

The myth of the “thousand ships” persists even in nontechnic cultures.… As a practical matter, less than seven hundred possible instances of space colonization fall within the parameters outlined by Corenth.… The implications of a power which could scatter a fleet of one thousand warships of advanced design obviously render the whole question moot and leave unanswered the source of an unverifiable panhumanoid myth.…

—
In Search of the Thousand Ships

Pier V. RonTaur

Alphene, II, 3123
A.A.T.

 

xxi

The white-tipped peak juts through the white carpet of clouds like an imperfect obelisk, evenly lit and evenly shadowed at the same time.

On the empty air, close enough to reach out and touch the impossibly knife-pointed tip of the mountain, sits a man clothed in a pale sunbeam-yellow tunic, leather sandals with the straps circling his crossed and perfect legs and ankles up to his knees, and wearing a crown of light that blurs his features.

Across the peak from him stands a dark and cloudy figure, combining both the blockiness of a Minotaur and the indistinctness of a thunderstorm.

At the third vertex of the imaginary triangle appears another figure, slender, tall, feminine, and ghostly, clad in white with long golden-blond hair flowing down her back.

Martel puts another foot forward, takes another step upward through the cotton clouds, through the indistinctness, knowing the three figures above await him.

Step, step, step.

The fog swirls around him, parts in front of him, closes behind him. But it has no scent, no smell of salt and fish like sea fog, no smell of pine and rock like mountain fog, no sting of ice needles like arctic fog.

His head breaks through, and he steps clear of the fog, standing on nothing at all, to face the trio.

“Slow, Martel,” observes Apollo.

The bull-god says nothing.

The golden goddess turns her head toward Apollo. Martel cannot see her eyes.

“Still … a slow demigod is better than no demigod.”

Martel does nothing. Knows he should do something. Knows he does not know what he should do.