Valhai (The Ammonite Galaxy) (5 page)

“May the orbits of the heavenly triangle remain stable,” he said.

Cimma looked confused. She hesitated, and then put the knife down to touch Vion’s fingers as protocol required. Grace held her breath. At last she had put the knife down!

“May the flares of Almagest remain quiescent,” Cimma chanted obediently.

Vion dropped his hand, and Cimma turned round immediately to pick up the knife again. Grace was disappointed, but Vion showed no interest in it.

“I have come to give you a medical,” he said, getting some of the usual doctor’s paraphernalia out of his case. “Just the usual things, Cimma. Is that all right?”

Cimma touched her face slowly in an almost robotic movement. “I suppose so,” she said.

“Good. Good.” He was already taking the vital signs. He checked her over quickly and then stood up. “There. Finished.”

Cimma was surprised. “Is that all?”

“Do you want me to look at anything else?” he queried.

“No.”

“Are you sleeping, Cimma?” he asked. Grace’s mother shook her head dumbly. “No? Then I will leave you some pills you can take. They will help you sleep. And a tonic both you and your daughter should take.”

Cimma looked at him warily. He asked no further questions, however, and instead turned back to Grace.

“Perhaps you could show me to the lift, Grace?”

It was when they were walking back on their own that he asked her about the knife. Grace bit her lip.

“Come on Grace, you will have to tell somebody sometime. It might as well be me.”

“She . . . that is . . .” Grace didn’t know where to start. Vion nodded encouragingly, and she felt encouraged to go on, “She heard my father talk to her, after . . . after he died. She says he told her that she must always carry a knife, always be ready to defend the two of us . . . her and me.”

“Does she talk to him all the time?”

“Of course not!” Grace said. “Just that once . . . well, and another couple of times, perhaps. But only a couple.”

“All right, Grace. Calm down. I will just give you a sedative for now that will help her to sleep. But I can see that she isn’t eating, and this knife business will have to stop eventually.” He touched her on the shoulder, sympathetically. “You are getting run down yourself with all this worry. Make sure you take the tonic too.”

Grace nodded.

“And call me if you need me.”

She nodded again.

“I mean it!”

She smiled. It was nice to have someone interested in them. She had been struggling for so long on her own.

“I will,” she told him, as the lift arrived and he stepped through the door as it thinned.

DIVA, WHO WAS usually good at concentrating when Atheron expected it, was finding the current subject very heavy going. The teacher’s voice droned on and on in waves that seemed to wash up so monotonously on the shore in her head that he was sending her to sleep. She tried to keep her eyes open, but the eyelids were so heavy that it was proving a gargantuan task. Vaguely she could hear his voice in the background, receding away from her. Her eyes closed and she gave a sudden start as she felt for a split-second that she might be falling. Her hands clutched at the orthogel chair she was sitting in, and her eyes finally closed.

At that moment she had an oppressive sensation of somebody else being there with her. Her fingers gripped the chair again, only it seemed to her now that she felt some slight pressure back.

Her eyes snapped open, suddenly very much awake. Cautiously she pressed her fingers again into the chair, this time in order. There was a slight pause and then she felt a counterpressure back. But it wasn’t in the same order. It was the same sequence, in reverse!

Somebody using the orthogel to communicate with her. It could only be Six. Hmm! Perhaps that no-name from Kwaide
was
good for something after all! Surreptitiously, she moved her fingers against the chair, this time in a different order. It was immediately repeated to her, an exact copy of her message. She smiled radiantly. Yes!

“I said something which amused you?” Atheron was enquiring.

“Well, I . . .”

“I am glad to see that you appreciate the irony of the chronicles.”

Diva bent her head. “Yes, it is very . . . strange . . . isn’t it?”

“Keep on like this and I’m sure we’ll find ourselves in commontime again.”

He used that carrot every day. “Great,” she said, unconvinced.

“Then you must work harder to achieve it.”

She tried to put on a discouraged expression, but really she was exultant. Who would have thought she would be so anxious to communicate with that irritating boy from Kwaide! She didn’t much care who she talked to any more, as long as it wasn’t Atheron.

She frowned for a second. But how could they understand each other? And then her brow cleared. Of course. Next time they met they could work out some sort of a code, though it would have to be without being watched or heard by Atheron. She couldn’t even imagine what the punishment would be for secretly talking to another apprentice.

Diva raised her head to the interscreen, and found it all of a sudden much easier to pay due attention to her lessons. It was only a remote type of personal contact, but it would be so very, very much better than nothing at all.

Six was in the middle of a problem when he felt the sides of the chair press against his fingers. He thought straightaway of the girl from Coriolis. He had only seen her twice since they arrived, and the last time had been months ago. It seemed they were both very bad students, undeserving of commontime. It had to be her. Nobody else would be trying to contact him. So she had finally decided that he was better than nothing! How the mighty were fallen! Six returned the pressure, finding no difficulty in multi-tasking and managing at the same time to listen with an attentive expression to his teacher. Over the last months his mind had sharpened, and he no longer found such long periods of concentration difficult. He was quicker to learn. He raised an eyebrow as he was forced to admit it. He was sharper mentally and physically. Amazing what being shut up in a bubble or two could do for you! But to be able to talk to somebody all the time . . . now that
would
make a difference! Even if it was Diva, who was living under the incomprehensible illusion that she was better than him!

Renewed, his fingers drummed out a staccato music on the chair, and then danced up and down happily as it was returned to him. They would have to work out a code, he thought. He would make a special effort in the next few days and with luck Atheron would give them some commontime. He thanked Cian that she had found out how to do this. He was sure he would have turned into some type of zombie without any fellow Sacran contact. If you could call Diva Sacran, that was. He was inclined to think she belonged to a different system altogether.

It was another three days until they managed to get their half an hour together, and by then Six had had time to think out a code. He realized that if Atheron became aware of what they were doing he would undoubtedly find a way to put a stop to it. So when Diva came through her curvilinear bubble door into the commontime chamber he was ready. Nothing could be said openly about it.

“Diva,” he touched his fingers to hers, in the Almagest way of greeting that had long ago been adopted on the Sacras planets, too. But instead of merely touching the fingers, he exerted a pressure as he slowly said her name. The third finger of the left hand, once. The second finger of the left hand, three times. The second finger of the right hand, once. The little finger of the left hand, once. And the little finger of the right hand pressed hers, once, to signify the end of the word. “Diva,” he repeated slowly, following the same sequence again.

“Six,” she said then, and Six pressed the first finger of the right hand, four times. And the little finger of the right hand once, for the end of the word. She repeated his name, and he repeated the pressure. It was a simple code. He was sure she would have picked it up.

They withdrew their fingers. Any longer would have seemed suspicious if Atheron was watching them.

“So, Kwaidian, made friends with Atheron yet?”

“He reminds me of an Elder I know, back on Kwaide. He has exactly the same effect on me.”

“I’m sure Atheron would be flattered!”

“Yes.” Six appeared to be dwelling on some sort of mental vision which pleased him. “I hope one day I will be able to pay him back suitably.”

“I am sure some time in the future you will be able to show exactly how much you appreciate him.”

A slow smile lit up Six’s face. “I hope to, one day,” he said, making it sound like a promise. There was a moment’s silence, and then he asked Diva, “And you? Missing all that Mesteta wine?”

Diva looked sideways at him. “I didn’t drink Mesteta wine, boy!”

“I’d have thought they’d have added it to their babies’ bottles!”

“Only the lower classes and foreigners drink it, ignoramus!”

“Excuse me, your huffiness, so what do the upper classes do with it?”

She glared at him. “We bathe in it.”

Six began to laugh. “You bathe in it?” He was incredulous. “You pour good wine into your bath water? What a waste of alcohol! You wouldn’t catch a Kwaidian doing something as dumb as that.”

“Do you even know what baths are on Kwaide?” she asked sweetly.

“We are not primitives, you know.”

“No, your manners are exquisite, aren’t they? Oh sorry, that’s right: you don’t have any manners.”

“If I didn’t have any manners you wouldn’t still be standing up,” Six said mildly.

“Like you could take me on, Kwaidian! I am trained in full body attack!”

“And?”

“And you are an untrained untouchable! It would be no contest whatsoever.”

“I know,” Six gave the same slow smile he had before, “but I would be lenient on you.”

“Tsk!”

“Oh tskk, tskk!” he hissed back, circling around the Coriolan girl with his hands outspread. “Ooh! You terrify me!”

She put her nose up. “You’re lucky I don’t feel like fighting now,” she said with a sniff.

“Why not,” he taunted. “Time for your Mesteta bath, is it? Time to give your cutis a thrill?”

“You are a very silly boy!” Her eyes glittered.

He shook his head. “At least I know better than to sit in perfectly good wine.”

“No doubt you would get intoxicated with it, like all the lower classes do!”

“Chance would be a fine thing!” he agreed. “Thank Sacras I wasn’t born into the upper classes.” He shook his head in disgust. “What a waste! It’s enough to put a man off his food. I don’t know how you stand it!”

“And what sort of alcoholic drinks do you have on Kwaide?” she asked.

“We drink water,” he said flatly.

“Only water? Don’t you have anything else to drink? Only water from the tap?”

He shook his head again, “Only the biggest cities have tap water. We drink out of streams and rivers.”

“What! No coffee or hot chocolate, or anything?”

“Just water.”

She shuddered. “Eugh! what a life! No wonder you are always in a bad mood, nomus. That must make even the food and drink here taste good in comparison?”

He stiffened. “We have the best fruit in Sacras,” he told her. “Just because it isn’t like Coriolis doesn’t mean it’s bad. It’s beautiful in the uninhabitable zone. Icy and misty and wild, with winds so cold that they can kill a grown man.” His gaze was far-away.

She gave a brief shiver. “Not my cup of tea, I’m afraid. Anyway, you can’t live off fruit and nothing else.”

He hesitated. “We sometimes ate meat.”

“Yuck!” She put one of her fingers to her mouth and made gagging sounds. “How could you! On Coriolis we haven’t eaten meat for centuries!”

“Well bully for good old Coriolis,” snapped Six. “I’m glad you spent your time sitting around sipping hot chocolate. We couldn’t, so what?”

“Sorry. It’s just that . . .
wow
. . . meat! That is so gross!”

“It wasn’t very often. No need to make such a big thing over it.” He gave a sigh. “Tell me, been eaten by your bed yet?”

“Every day I seem to sink deeper, but it hasn’t quite gobbled me up yet, no. You?”

“I put one hand against one of the walls the other day and started to fall through it. Atheron came to life and caught me up to my elbow in wall. He wasn’t best pleased.”

“I bet! He can be horribly sarcastic when he wants, can’t he?” she said. “And always so condescending!”

Six gave a rueful nod. “Reminds me of the matron at the birth shelter. Except he smiles, if you can call it a smile, something she was not renowned for exactly.”

“Was it very bad, being a no-name?”

He looked at her steadily. There was no way this pampered girl could even begin to imagine what his life had been like.

“Perhaps it suited me,” he said lightly. “I don’t think I would have been much of a success as an Elder’s daughter on Coriolis.”

“I had a perfect life!”

“Look what it turned you into!”

“Of all the cheek . . . she began, but luckily at that moment the doors to their respective bubbles thinned, so they decided to acknowledge a draw, and said goodbye by touching their eight fingers together again respectfully, leaving the thumbs back. Diva pressed the first finger of her right hand against his finger, four times. He knew that she had picked up the code.

“See you next commontime Diva. Be good!”

“I’m never anything else, Kwaidian. You’re the one who might find it difficult!”

“You have no idea,” he admitted.

They each made their way back into their bubble with little heart for more classes. Still, any kind of communication would be an improvement on their day to day lives as prisoners.

Atheron finished his report quickly. Both of the apprentices seemed to be settling down satisfactorily into the program. Efficiency had improved, especially in the case of the boy, Point five six. He had at first been uncooperative and unwilling. It now seemed, however, that his progress was firmly within the proposed parameters, and he was certainly capable of attaining impressive academic achievements. The conversation which had just been monitored seemed to confirm the preliminary findings. Both candidates had adapted and were now on their way to becoming acquiescent participants who would prove uncontroversial students, although the girl was rather slower than the others academically.

Atheron forwarded the report to Xenon with a flick of his hand and turned his attention back to the master screen.