The Galaxy Game (7 page)

‘What’s going on here?’ He knew he would get no satisfactory answer, so he proceeded immediately into a lecture on the earliness of the hour, their complete lack of consideration and the punishment for fighting outside of the bounds of the gymnasia. When he closed the door at last, feeling greatly relieved, he almost ran into Abowen. The boy nervously dodged sideways and nearly dropped his bag.

‘Master Silyan! Good morning.’

‘Abowen, you’re up very early on a Friday – and dressed for town, too. What are you planning to do?’

‘It’s the weekend, sir. I’m going to visit my mother?’ He said the last with a curious, questioning emphasis.

‘You’re going to visit your mother in Tlaxce City,’ Silyan stated calmly. ‘Of course. Carry on. You don’t want to miss the train.’

*

Five hours passed before Master Silyan remembered that Rafi had not been wearing his cap. By the following morning he finally recalled that Rafi had been assigned as his Saturday boy. It was Sunday before he acknowledged to himself that something might be wrong. By Monday, it was too late.

Chapter Three

‘We love having you visit, but really, don’t you think this is a little short notice?’

Delarua looked at her nephew for an explanation. She had responded immediately, coming directly from the city to meet him at the outermost commuter station. He had been happy to see her but curiously laconic, and now he only shrugged and stared out of the window.

‘I called as soon as I reached a public comm,’ he said.

‘I don’t mind. It’s just that I need to catch up on some work appointments in the city. You’ll have to spend most of today with your mother and your sister,’ Delarua said.

Rafi was quiet for a moment. ‘Is Gran visiting, too, by any chance?’

Delarua eyed him. The train would reach Tlaxce City Centre shortly, but one of the stops was the Lakeside station, near her mother’s place. ‘No. You want to go see her? I’m not sure that she’s in.’

He shrugged wordlessly, the repeated, meaningless gesture guaranteed to irritate, but she persisted.

‘Tell me now so I can signal the stop,’ she warned him.

‘It’s fine. So it’ll be just us three.’

She examined his expression with genuine anxiety. Never would she forget that she had failed him when he had needed her most. ‘Will that be a problem?’

‘No,’ he replied, then spoiled it with a sigh.

‘Your mother misses you,’ she offered quietly.

He kept silent. The view through the train window flashed green wooded parks and neatly organised suburbia, but over all was the ghost of the boy’s faint reflection, pensive and pondering and sad.

‘Rafi,’ she said. It was a question and a plea. It was a lost call begging for a response.

He leaned against her, too tall now to rest his head on her shoulder, but his cheek settled against her temple. ‘It’s fine.’

*

Whether he was fine or not, she had people to see and work to do. On arrival, she took him straight to her old apartment – now her sister’s – and assessed the meeting of mother and son with a critical eye. Maria hugged him warmly, Rafi relaxed and returned the hug before pulling away, and there was nothing in the timing that could not be put down to the natural inclination of young men to resist being treated like babies. Little Gracie – much bigger now – was a much easier encounter. She screamed happily and ran to her big brother with unreserved glee. He laughed, picked her up and spun her around. Delarua exhaled her worry. They were fine. It really was fine. A few hours would be no problem at all.

By noon she was facing an irate Maria in the living room. Gracie was on the other side of a closed bedroom door (with her ear stuck to the door, if Delarua was any judge), and Rafi was downstairs in the foyer, sitting and nursing a bruised forehead in sullen silence.

‘Maria, stop pacing, stop flinging your hands about and please tell me what happened!’

Maria immediately flung her right hand towards Gracie’s closed bedroom door in a dramatic fashion. ‘He was
tickling
her! Making her laugh!’

Delarua shook her head slowly, dazed at the mundane revelation. ‘What? Oh. You mean . . .’

‘Yes!
He wasn’t using his fingers!
’

Delarua opened her mouth and found herself stuck. She closed her mouth, rubbed her face with both hands, gripped her hair tightly in both fists, then tried again. ‘You know, I’ve seen him do that before. It’s harmless.’ It
was
harmless. It was a simple trick, a little mental brush against the nerve endings under the skin. And yet . . . not really simple, to be honest. Done wrong it felt like the itching of a thousand angry ants, but Rafi clearly had his skill under sufficient control.

Maria pressed her hands to her face in a perfect picture of horror. Tears filled her eyes. ‘Grace, you did not say that. How could you . . . you know everything that’s happened. How can you call any of this
harmless
?’

‘But Maria, was it really so bad that you had to hit him? With a spatula?’

Maria let the tears spill then, and Delarua felt guilty for two fleeting seconds before her following words erased all sympathy. ‘You’re as bad as he is, married to that . . . to . . .’

‘If you
want
to say “alien”,’ Delarua said wearily, ‘go ahead. Even though he’s been here for nearly four years now.’

‘You let him into your mind! How do I even know I’m talking to my sister?’

‘Pause. Stop. Halt. You did not just accuse my husband of bodysnatching me.’

She shook her head vigorously. ‘I can’t deal with this. If you can, you take him. I don’t need this in my life. We don’t need this.’

‘Maria, ease off the drama. Please. Rafi and I are going to have a nice little break for a week or two and then we’ll come back and see how you and Gracie are doing.’

Delarua collected Rafi’s belongings without further excitement and went down to the foyer. It hurt to meet her nephew’s eyes and see the betrayal and self-loathing there, but meet them she did. She unashamedly poured warmth and light towards him until he managed a tiny smile and stood up.

‘Home?’ he queried. The word was heartbreaking.

‘Home,’ she replied, ‘but I have one more appointment this afternoon at the Sadiri Consulate. I hope you can stay out of trouble until then. Do you want to stay in the city until I’m ready, or should I pack you into a car pre-programmed for Sadira-on-Cygnus?’

He shrugged again, but this time it was less obnoxious. ‘I can wait and travel with you. I promise I’ll be good. I have some research to do.’

She laughed at him. ‘Research, young man? Impressive! I’ll set up a libraries and museums list for your comm.’

‘And ministries,’ he said quickly. ‘Big project,’ he added in reply to her look of curiosity.

‘Fine, ministries, too. In fact, let me put you in touch with Gilda, my old workmate. She’s expert at city tours.’

His expression turned apprehensive. ‘Is that the woman Gran told me to stay away from?’

Delarua chuckled. Gilda
could
be a bit much. ‘I’ll tell her to keep it child-friendly.’

They took an autocab towards the bureaucratic quarter and parted ways at the main entrance of the tower that housed the Sadiri Consulate. Delarua started up the steps briskly, paused and looked over her shoulder, watching as Rafi chose a pedestrian path with only a touch of the homesteader’s hesitation in the city. He carried his weekend pack over his shoulder like a new, raw collegian and glanced often at his comm, but there was something to his posture and stride, an air of purposefulness that made it unlikely anyone would take advantage of him. He was distant from her now – her own fault – and she was worried about him. Nevertheless, there were other distractions that would not wait for a convenient time. She faced the doors of the Consulate once more, drew together what courage she could manage and went in.

It was no longer a friendly place. Naraldi was no longer the Consul, and the Government of New Sadira had sent a replacement who was, to put it mildly,
tolerated
. He had been obvious in his dislike of the creeping Cygnianisation of his staff, and brusque in his dealings with the settlement’s Councillors and was thoroughly hated by all female Sadiri for his inappropriate attentions. However, he was efficient, dedicated and the sole link with New Sadira. Tolerance was the only option. She tried to remember that when she entered his office and faced the man seated behind the desk.

‘Grace Delarua?’

When he greeted her, his nod not quite dismissive though never respectful, she was reminded that tolerance worked both ways.

‘Consul Vranhil,’ she replied, offering an empty answer to his useless question.

‘You are not the person I was expecting.’

‘I know. Those whom you were expecting believed it appropriate to send me to convey their apologies.’ She had honed her diplomacy dancing in the half-shadows of Dllenahkh’s mind, a quintessentially Sadiri mind if ever there was one.

‘I can accept the apology for the denied request – I understand that Dllenahkh has many demands on his time – but an order disobeyed? That requires more than mere apology. Where is Commander Nasiha?’

Delarua bowed her head for a moment. In that moment, Consul Vranhil affected to remember his manners and gestured to a chair. She sat, took a second moment and spoke. ‘My colleague has a number of demands on her time as well. Surely you have received her formal request for deferral of posting?’

Vranhil shifted, frowned and spoke with a harsher tone. ‘That is indeed the correct procedure, but I question whether it is appropriate given the lengthy duration of communications between Cygnus Beta and New Sadira.’

Delarua decided to be reckless. She leaned forward. ‘We will be guided by you, Consul. Commander Nasiha only wishes to do her duty to her people and to the next generation of her people.’ There. Nasiha had to have some status as the mother of a pure-blooded Sadiri child. What could the Consul say to that?

‘Lieutenant Tarik, is he well?’

Delarua resisted the urge to bite her tongue and smiled instead. ‘Busy. As you know, he is, like his wife, one of the foremost in research on Cygnian communities of taSadiri. As a result, he is much sought after as an intercultural liaison.’

‘So are you, Ms Delarua,’ said the Consul.

Delarua acknowledged the compliment with a nod and hid her suspicion at the flattery.

‘Perhaps you can manage with Lieutenant Tarik as your main partner in the consultancy and allow Commander Nasiha to return to New Sadira as ordered.’

‘Allow?’ Delarua said softly, nonplussed.

Consul Vranhil clasped his hands together, set his elbows on the desk and became stern. ‘You have shown me a very impressive blend of Ntshune and Sadiri diplomacy and speech, but the situation remains the same. New Sadira is awaiting the arrival of Commander Nasiha. Further delay will lead to unpleasant consequences beyond my control. Arrangements have been made for the Commander’s passage to New Sadira via Punartam. Please make it clear to her that acceptance is the most appropriate action.’

‘Passage . . . for the Commander only? Not for her son, nor her husband?’ Delarua had to ask. Every negotiation had its fallback position, and she knew that if Nasiha had to leave, she would not want to go alone.

‘New Sadira has a surplus of males, Ms Delarua. It would be foolish to waste resources bringing in more.’ Consul Vranhil met her eyes with a fleeting expression of mild shame, but then he quickly straightened and briskly spoke. ‘I have other matters to attend to today and I must not fall behind on my schedule. Farewell, Ms Delarua.’

She said her goodbyes in one last show of near-Sadiri diplomacy, maintaining as much poise and calm as possible. Then, as soon as the doors of the Consulate had closed behind her, she kicked the wall and silently cursed the men of New Sadiri and their
inappropriate
desire for every single pureblooded Sadiri female left in the galaxy.

*

A certain amount of quiet conversation took place during the latter part of the journey to the homestead. Worrying over the stalemate with the Consul preoccupied Delarua for a while, but Rafi’s casual stoicism gradually reminded her that here was a problem she had a better chance of solving. There had been a time when silence or humour was the easier option, but Delarua had learned to be brave since then.

‘She
does
love you. But . . . but . . . she’s stopped trusting her feelings. That’s going to take some time to come back. You understand what I’m telling you. If you don’t keep at it, if you back off because she makes it too difficult, she’ll convince herself that you never cared about her or Gracie.’

Rafi said nothing, and Delarua waited anxiously, biting back the urge to overtalk the issue.

‘You make it sound like so much hard work,’ he said at last.

‘I’m sorry, Rafi, but the truth is you’re much stronger than she is right now, and you have to be the mature one. I’ll try my best from my side, but all I’m asking of you is that you don’t give up on your mother.’

‘You’re more my mother—’

‘Stop that. That’s not a compliment, not now. Promise me, Rafi.’

He sighed, but promised. ‘I will not give up on my mother and my sister.’

Delarua smiled at last. ‘Thank you.’

*

After a late arrival and an even later dinner, Rafi felt himself relaxing immediately. There was a comfortableness about the main house of the homestead. The design was somewhere between communal and individual, and the result was kind to guests. Open rooms enclosed a small indoor garden in a configuration that was familiar in several Terran cultures: herbs, flowering shrubs and a small tree exuding a subtle, calming perfume. Stairs at the far end of the garden led up to the roof; broad, glassless windows throughout let in the starlight and the night breezes but kept out the insects and other, larger night prowlers. There were no closed doors within, no blind corners and no questionable shadows to make a stranger feel lost or uneasy.

Most of the familiar faces were present in the dining room. Nasiha had quickly finished her meal and excused herself to return to Tarik, who was in their rooms watching over their sleeping child. While he enjoyed the last of his dessert, Freyda told him that Lanuri was at a committee meeting for the development of Grand Bay and Joral was working at the Sadiri Sub-Consulate for the heritage communities of Vaya Province. The Sadiri settlement was another world with a buzz and activity that made the Lyceum feel artificial and trivial. Rafi especially admired Dllenahkh, his aunt’s husband and a former Councillor, who appeared to have an informal advisory role in everything from the new strain of sweetgrass in the greenhouses to the social fabric of the settlement itself.