Resolution (85 page)

By the time the first witnesses were available for interview, the Atlanta Archipelago, a linked series of morphing artificial islands for rich tourists, had undergone catastrophic failure - terrorists were blamed for the virus - and newsNet journalists were more interested in cataloguing the dead in a high-profile disaster than in an odd, no-longer-newsworthy incident at a Flagstaff mall.

The chief architect of UNSA’s PR campaign was a soft-faced man called Ben Winrod who had learned to lie to his parents at an early age. It was sheer coincidence that he visited the Archipelago two days before its tragic collapse.

One week later, UNSA medics pronounced Kian fit to walk.

No cameras or journalists recorded Kian’s exit from the hospital. Disfigured face half-hidden by a hood, his claw-hand pulled up inside his sleeve, he walked with a limp which would diminish over the years but never disappear.

Only Deirdre was there to see him. She walked beside him, escorting him across the parking lot without touching. Kian stopped at the hire-car’s door, looked up at the sky with an unreadable expression, then hauled himself inside.

‘Take me home please.’ The soft tones were unlike those of the brash young man who had arrived in Arizona twelve weeks before.

Later, some would say it was the voice of a saint.

There was a small memorial service, held in the tiny Church of the Holy Trinity on a Wicklow mountainside, in whose leafy cemetery earlier generations of McNamaras lay buried. One of the attendees was an astrophysicist called Dorothy Verzhinski, who pulled in favours to get a voyage home. She was the one who had dredged through Vachss Station’s scan-logs to find the faint signature of a Zajinet vessel.

It had lain in wait, followed Ro into mu-space ... And no-one had seen Ro since.

‘I’m sorry,’ Dorothy told Kian. ‘So very sorry.’

‘Thank you for coming,’ he said. ‘It’s good that you’re here.’

Later, as Kian stood alone in drizzling rain before his great-grandfather’s worn brown headstone, the infostrand round his wrist beeped. The message was urgent, text-only, from Ilse Schwenger. She had served in the highest echelons of UNSA management, and had helped Ro, years earlier (and Grandmother, before that).

My profound sympathies,
the message read.
UNSA will be holding an official ceremony of remembrance next week, on Wednesday in Saarbrücken Fliegerhorst, at 10:00 local time. I’ll confirm your flight arrangements shortly.

Kian held out his wrist. Silver rain drifted like tears through the holo.

‘Come on.’ It was Deirdre, her face long with sadness. ‘Let’s get you back to the hotel.’

‘All right.’

Kian allowed her to lead him along the wet gravel path, his right arm hooked in her left, the twisted claw-like ruin of his hand visible to anyone who cared to look.

A sputtering log fire filled the hotel’s snug with heat and a smoky tang. Kian and Deirdre sat on opposite sides of the fireplace. Deirdre’s infostrand displayed the official UNSA invitation to next week’s remembrance service.

‘The subliminal message is:
We look after our own.
What they mean is, we look after our own
interests.’
Deirdre rotated the holo so he could read it. ‘See? It’s for Dirk as well, the service. Or that’s what they’re implying.’

‘Dirk’s not dead.’

‘No ...’

‘Who’s the other message from?’

‘What other message?’

‘Deirdre, I can see the icon from here. Is it Paula?’

Deirdre shut down the display.

‘She works for them. For UNSA.’

‘As my mother did. And the father I never knew. And my grandmother.’

‘As you will, Kian?’

‘Yes ... Yes, I think so.’

The fire popped and a small piece of smouldering wood landed on the rug. Deirdre pulled a poker from its stand and shoved the wood onto the tiles. There were iron tongs on the stand also, and she used them to fling the lump back into the grate.

‘I think you should reply to her message, Deirdre.’

‘Even after everything they’ve ... ?’

Kian nodded. ‘Even after everything. You may only get one chance at love.’

‘Ah, Kian.’

Deirdre’s room was at the apex of the old building. The ceiling sloped in from either side, and three-century-old oak beams spanned the gap. A faint draught moaned from a small leaded window.

After a night of fitful sleep, she woke in a blue-grey dawn, padded on bare feet across the cold wooden floor, and peered outside. The Wicklow Mountains were majestic. Down below, on the lawn behind the hotel, a figure was moving.

‘My God.’

It was a dance.

Such grace.

And then again ... there was a warrior’s intent behind the flowing motion.

Deirdre could only watch as Kian moved like a swallow, swooping through graceful movements that were like tai-chi, like aikido, and yet were something new and different. There was a phrase she had always found stupid:
becoming one with nature.
But now ...

Now, for the first time she knew what people meant, and she continued to watch as Kian’s dance brought the dream to life.

Twenty spellbound minutes later Kian finished. He cupped his right hand over his left and bowed. And looked up at Deirdre’s breath-fogged window, his black eyes glittering.

Then he retrieved his walking-stick from the tree it had leaned against, and limped back into the hotel, no longer magical, with his right hand a claw and his face half-covered in glistening scar tissue.

Over the years, Kian would refuse reconstructive surgery until the medics grew tired of offering it. But after seeing that more-than-dance in the dawn, Deirdre could never think of Kian as anything other than a supremely complete being who had already evolved to a level beyond the most daring aspirations of Zen mystics.

Yet he was also simply her friend.

It rained over Saarbrücken, too.

Ranks of young Pilots-to-be, each wearing the new dress uniform of black edged with golden braid, stood on emerald grass in the open-air sports stadium and listened to the eulogies. Older Pilots attended, their metal eye sockets beaded with rain, with sighted helpers to guide them.

The music was solemn. Stravinski’s melodic
Rite of Spring
was the least mournful. Monsignor Edwin Grayling, SJ, stood at the podium and read from Psalms: ‘Though I walk through the valley of death, I will fear no evil…’