2312

“Slow movement of the Seventh,” he said, “if you don’t mind.” And he was off into another tune from their time under Mercury, one she had always enjoyed riffing on, it had so many possibilities. Sometimes they had gone on with it for hours, for half a day or more. Stately, solemn, elegiac; something like Wahram himself, pacing through the days. On the march. Someone you could rely on.

“Maybe,” she repeated. “It may be.”

They fell into the song as of old, as when they were in the crucible and everything depended on how they went forward. As now, even now, just floating in space waiting for rescue, having faith it would come.

Faith justified; for Pauline said, “Ship approaching.”

One white dot among the rest bloomed, and in a matter of seconds became another little space yacht, a hopper hovering there before them like a dream, bizarre and magical.

“Oh good,” Swan said.

Now they too were Peters. She had to remember that. They were only continuing by way of a rescue. As they puffed over to the little ship, Swan tried to fix what this had felt like-the floating, Andromeda, Wahram’s gaze, their duet. It could have been their last hours. She thought of Alex again. Our stories go on a while, some genes and words persist; then we go away. It was a hard thing to remember. And as the lock door closed and they were back inside, she once again forgot it.

KIRAN ON ICE

I t was while Kiran was still being stared at by the eyes in the box that it occurred to him that he should not be seeing something like this, and one quick glance at the tall security guard made it clear that this thought had also occurred to the guard. As the guard started relocking the box Kiran considered what this meant, and before the guard had finished tapping the keypad Kiran was off and dashing back the way they had come. He turned into the first street available and sprinted hard to the next intersection and turned again, with a single glance back; the guard was not yet in view. Off he went at a slightly slower pace, thinking about his options. The train that ran between Vinmara and Cleopatra would certainly be watched, and there was only the one.

Much of the population of the town was still out celebrating the uneclipse and the end of the rain. And he knew where the gate was relative to his current position. He cut right yet again and so toward it. The streets of the seashell town were almost empty. Ahead the gate; none of his new work unit was visible, nor any security guards aside from the ordinary gatekeepers. He gave his original ID card to one of these as he came to the gate lock door, then went in the lock and checked to make sure his suit was secure.

Out onto the snowy hillsides of Venus. People were trooping back down from the hilltop overlooking the bay, and he looked away as he passed them and headed around to the west of town. When he had gotten past the edge of town he slipped over the hill and out of view of Vinmara, then took a broad wash south, toward the distant ocean.

They were still covering the frozen CO 2 down there, so he hoped he could catch a ride from one of the super-zambonis or foamed rock applicators. He wanted to get to Colette, but feared that the whole transportation system would be alerted to look for him. Now it was really hitting home what it meant to be a double agent or a mole or whatever it was he had turned into; it meant neither side would care about you, or care to defend you if problems arose. On the other hand, if he could get to Shukra, he had information Shukra had asked him to obtain. So getting to Colette was the obvious thing to try.

Vinmara was located just south of Onatah Corona. Onatah was the Iroquois corn goddess, his faceplate map told him; no doubt a much friendlier goddess than Lakshmi, who after all was Kali’s boss. Everything Kiran had heard about Lakshmi made him pretty sure that he might not survive her displeasure. At the thought he yelped and took the translation spectacles she had given him from his suit’s chest pocket. Reluctantly, with a final kiss in thanks for all they had done to improve his love life, he tossed them away. Really a shame he had not thought to do so back in the city, but there was no way he was going to return there now.

Since he had been able to see the big rock foamers on the skyline from Vinmara, he had assumed that they could not be too far away. Now, as he walked over the crunchy and sometimes slippery snow downhill toward the dry ice sea, he realized that the new town’s hillside perch might give it a view much farther away than he had reckoned. In fact it could be many kilometers.

This thought was beginning to oppress him when he came over a small ridge in the ice and saw a super-zamboni, not immediately near but just a couple of kilometers away, and lumbering along slowly in the usual manner. He broke into a trot and tried to pace himself for the run there. It was moving crossways to his approach, so he was going to be all right; no need to kill himself.