The Galaxy Game (12 page)

‘What is Uncle Dllen—?’

‘Shh. Not the time or the place.’ She looked past him. There was a small balcony at the end of the corridor, scant standing room for a few people beyond a prettily etched glass door. She stood and went to it, slid the door open and looked back at Rafi.

He joined her. The rail of the balcony was sun-warm under his hands but the breeze was cool and so was the view – several metres of green garden between the Consulate and the nearest road and a broad stripe of lake blue at the horizon. There was urban noise, but it was not much louder than the breeze and he did not have to strain to hear his aunt’s voice.

‘Never mind about Dllenahkh,’ she said. ‘Let’s talk about you. You haven’t really told me what you’re doing. You do know your mother hasn’t cooled off yet?’

‘Mmhm . . . yes . . .’ he admitted unwillingly.

‘And I am
not
letting you wander around the City by yourself. You’re not a Tlaxce collegian, not yet.’ She shuddered slightly at
collegian
, as if glimpsing a terrible fate.

‘Um, no—’

‘So what am I to tell the Lyceum when they finally notice you’re missing?’

‘All I need is time. Can’t we dodge them for a few more weeks? Then I’ll have the freedom to go where I want.’

His aunt stared silently at the dual-blue horizon for a long moment before answering. ‘After today I don’t know if I’ll ever see Nasiha again. Freyda wants to go to Punartam no matter what Lanuri says, and though she hasn’t told me, I know she’s been discussing the possibilities with people at Qeturah’s research institute. Tarik’s been talking about going to one of the taSadiri communities of Masuf Lagoon . . . that’s in Vaya where Joral is, near Piedra. I don’t know what to do. Everyone is scattering. Everyone’s trying to find a place where they can do as they want and go as they please. Remember when we said we’d travel the world together?’

He felt helplessly sad after her depressing summary. ‘Whatever I do, wherever I’m going, I’ll write,’ he said weakly.

She eyed him, clearly vexed, but at the situation rather than at him. ‘I’ll hold you to that. I know there’s no good news being spoken in the Consul’s office, so please God may your words be more than an empty promise.’

She exhaled a long breath, straightening her back and relaxing her shoulders as if shrugging off a burden. ‘Very well. Go and become an adult. Make some choices, make some mistakes, but survive as best you can. If you need help and I can’t come to you, I’ll send help.’ She gave him a look of fond pride, but it was quickly taken over by a frown of slow-dawning understanding and concern as he scrubbed his palms dry on his tunic yet again. ‘You’re scared. We all are. I’m sorry.’

He gave a bitter laugh. ‘I want to blame
somebody
, but it’ll never be you.’

The Consul’s door opened, gliding silently on well-lubricated tracks. He saw the motion from the edge of his vision, heard the footfalls on the corridor’s tiled floor and noted how the tension returned to Aunt Grace’s shoulders. She nudged him, urging him back indoors, and slid the balcony door shut behind them.

For a while no one moved or said anything. If Aunt Grace was tense, the three Sadiri standing in the corridor were almost brittle with masked emotion. One touch and Tarik would snap, one word and Nasiha would crumble, and judging by his aunt’s deep and careful breathing, Dllenahkh was on the verge of flying into a fury. When Dllenahkh’s voice broke the silence at last, it was deep and slow, with a vibration that was not the least calming. It frayed the nerve endings like the sizzle of incipient lightning.

‘Let us be on our way. The Consul has very kindly provided a driver to escort Commander Nasiha to the spaceport, and we shall go with her to say our farewells.’

*

The transit to the spaceport was too long for silence and staring at the back of the driver’s head and too short for getting scattered thoughts in a sensible row. Rafi sweated. He sweated and he worried and he tried to catch his aunt’s attention, but she was staring at her feet with wide, glazed eyes. Tarik and Nasiha sat in the very back, hands and heads touching, occasionally whispering to each other in voices that held no trace of tears. How long had they prepared for this day? Was it easier to have warning of one’s leaving, or to go without anticipation or anxiety like the irrevocable shift of sudden death?

He had never been inside the spaceport before. He wished for a wrist comm that could be compass and map in the bewildering twist and sprawl of buildings, channels and walkways that coiled around the sky-stabbing spire, a spire so tall it dominated both the Tlaxce skyline and the littoral so that whether you looked at it from amid buildings or over water, it similarly met the viewer’s scrutiny with an immediate sense of falling and fear. It did provide a kind of falling, falling
upwards
, past cloud and hazy sunshine to the invisible presence of the orbital quarantine station, casually known as Stage One.

They disembarked from the car at a terminal entrance from which no pedestrian egress would be allowed and watched as the Consulate driver departed. Then, with one obligatory neck-craning glance at the terminal’s tip, they went into a high-ceilinged hall.

To Rafi’s homesteader eyes, all was confusion. There was a wealth and variety of technology he had never used nor even seen used, and people walking with busy purpose from one place to another. As he stared, he felt a hand settle on his shoulder. When he looked up, half-expecting it to be Aunt Grace, it was Commander Nasiha. She gave him one questioning look; he replied with a slow, hesitant nod. He felt his heartbeat pounding in his throat.

She bent to his ear. ‘Stay close by me,’ was all she said, but it calmed the painful beat from a gallop to a canter. Resolve strengthened, he nodded again and followed in silence.

The crowd grew more densely packed farther into the hall. Small groups in the throes of goodbye stood at the margins while the larger mass ambled patiently in line along a broad causeway running under an arch. The raised floor flashed with coloured lights; travellers checked their wrist comms to find a match and dutifully selected their allotted route out of several that branched off into the passenger hall beyond the grand arch. Many were destined for the other side of Cygnus Beta on sub-orbital flights, some for a period of work or recreation on an orbital installation, and the remainder for Stage One, gateway to Punartam, the nearest galactic travel hub.

‘Aunt Grace,’ he said. ‘I’m going to leave now with the Commander. I’m going to another province. Maybe Vaya, since Joral’s there.’

She breathed in, sudden and sharp, and gave him a look of pain and shock. Of course – after bracing herself for her friend’s departure she had no reserves for this fresh bond-breaking, a possibility discussed barely an hour before. ‘Now?’ she whispered, the word faltering under the weight of emotion.

He nodded, unable to trust his own voice.

Dllenahkh drew closer to his wife and placed a comforting hand on her back. ‘You have credit?’ he asked his nephew.

Rafi nodded again. ‘A little . . . my student allowance.’

‘Don’t use it. That can be easily traced,’ he explained. ‘We can pay your fare out of the homestead’s Cygnian credit account. We always have people travelling in and out; they deposit galactic credit into our account and we make purchases on their behalf with the equivalent credit in Cygnian. It will not be noticed.’

Rafi nodded for the third time, using it as an excuse to dip his head lower and lower in the hope that his wet eyes would not be noticed. He took the small credit chip Dllenahkh extended to him and folded it safely in his fist. He endured his aunt’s quick, fierce hug without breaking down.

‘I’ll write,’ he promised, and turned away slightly to blink the salt water out of his vision.

The Commander, who had far better control of herself, embraced her husband and spoke a few quiet words to her friends. When Rafi could look directly at them once more, he saw a row of faces as calm as masks – but Dllenahkh’s eyes were worried, Tarik’s anguished and Grace (the hardest to bear), her eyes kept that hurt bewilderment caused by his impulsive words.

‘Time to go,’ said the Commander, again with the gentle touch to his shoulder, steering and strengthening him.

Rafi gave one final nod in a weak attempt to reassure, then turned and walked away with the Commander, feeling mildly annoyed by the inadequate moment of farewell. He knew it was a turning point in his life – why did it feel so flat and mundane? His emotions were confused, but somehow dampened rather than heightened, as if he was afraid to feel. He wondered if he would revisit the memory in later years and find it more moving – weighty with significance and poignant with nostalgia.

In later years, Rafi remembered the embarrassing moisture on his newly purchased travel token when Commander Nasiha took it from his sweating hand. He recalled that his nerves were so shot she had to fasten her comm to his wrist herself when his shaking fingers took too long. He tried hardest to remember her words. ‘I am going with the pilots. I will send word when I can. May your aunt forgive me.’

He did not remember having the slightest inkling that he would be the last of the Dllenahkh homestead to see Commander Nasiha alive.

*

The drive to the Dllenahkh homestead was long enough for Ntenman to learn that Cousin Ivali of Tirtha, now Goodwife Ivaliheni of Sadira-on-Cygnus, was far more handy with a draughtcar than he was and much more cheerful and relaxed than Serendipity. The drive from the front gate to the main complex of the homestead was long enough to discover that she was as baffled by the situation as Ntenman and Serendipity put together.

The residents of the Dllenahkh homestead gave them a courteous welcome, but some very important people were missing, leaving proxies and relatives in their place. A man exercising in a field with a small group of young men introduced himself as Dllenahkh’s associate coach at the training hall, now seeing to the students in his elder’s absence. A woman walking slowly along the main entry road with a toddler proved to be a hired childminder, a new but temporary addition to the homestead, there only for the purpose of caring for the offspring of Lieutenant Tarik and Commander Nasiha.

‘I’ve never seen it like this,’ Ivaliheni said quietly to her cousin. ‘It’s half-dead here, and no one is giving us answers.’

It was true. Both sides were cautious with each other, neither telling the full tale of events on either side. At last, after participating in the somewhat bonding experience of unlinking Ntenman’s aerolight from the draughtcar and squeezing it into a half-cleared artisans’ workshop, the associate coach finally revealed to them where Dllenahkh and Grace Delarua could be found.

He did not mention Rafi’s name at all, but then again, neither did Ntenman and Serendipity.

Ivaliheni drove them to nearby Newbridge, the de facto political capital of Sadira-on-Cygnus and the location of the Council Hall, the Garden of Memory and buildings that housed various Civil Service ministries and affiliated organisations.

When they passed the Council Hall, Ntenman yelped out a garbled, ‘
Stop!
’ There was Grace Delarua, sitting on a bench outside the big double doors of the Hall, looking across the road at the small trees in the Garden of Memory with an expression that said everything and nothing and none of it good.

Ivaliheni veered onto the verge with an expert and stylish side-swerve. She looked at Serendipity.
I want to know what’s happening
, she told her in a firm, swift and silent mind-to-mind connection.

I’ll try, I will
, Serendipity replied in like manner. Then she continued aloud, ‘Thanks for the ride. I’ll call you later.’

Delarua’s attention had been caught by the sudden divert-and-stop of the heavy vehicle on the road, so she was already staring when Ntenman and Serendipity got out of the draughtcar and crossed the road. As they approached she continued to stare, fascinated and bemused, trying to place them. They were dressed in civilian clothing, not student uniform, but the faces were familiar. The boy . . . yes, she was sure she had seen the boy at the Lyceum. Tinman, Rafi called him. The girl . . . she was a lot less sure about the girl. Not the Lyceum, but somewhere . . .

She came to a conclusion and reacted accordingly. ‘You’re late,’ she said in a dry, flat tone, skipping all pleasantry and greeting. ‘He’s gone.’

Serendipity gasped. ‘Gone?’ she said in a voice so tragic that Delarua wondered if she thought Rafi was dead.

Delarua pointed her chin to the sky with an abrupt, truculent jerk of her head. ‘He’s in the orbital quarantine station.’

‘Ho. Ha.’ Ntenman exhaled, kept exhaling and dropped down beside her on the bench, his eyes wide with shock. ‘Wha?’

She gave the young man a look that was almost sympathetic. ‘You’re taking it well.’

Ntenman was too stunned to notice whether or not that was meant for sarcasm. ‘You let him go to—’

Before he could get any more words out, she flung up her hands to her head and let go a wail of frustration and fury. ‘Let? I did not
let
him!’

They blinked at her in utter helplessness while she struggled and seethed with emotion. Ntenman eventually reached out a hand to pat her shoulder in an attempt at calming. Serendipity stood with her hand to her mouth, frozen and speechless with dismay. Her poise had evaporated, blown away, a thin wisp taken by the wind.

‘The trouble with folk like us,’ said Grace Delarua, speaking slowly, deliberately and with desperate control, ‘is that we think we communicate so well when we aren’t communicating at all. And now here I am talking to relative strangers about matters that may not concern them. Why are you here? Why didn’t you stop Rafi from leaving the Lyceum in the first place?’

Ntenman flapped and fizzled, both indignant and off guard.

Serendipity saved the moment. ‘We didn’t know,’ she protested.

Delarua’s eyes narrowed. ‘Wait. I know you. You’re an Uplander from the monastery. That girl. Sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.’