Starship Winter (David Conway 03) (2 page)

Hawk laughed. “Where else? She’s tending her garden.” Kee kept a small plot of beautiful native plants at Hawk’s shipyard.

“Matt’s down in Mackinley,” Maddie said. “The exhibition’s taking up his every spare minute. But it should be something special.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” I said. I loved Matt’s opening nights, when I could watch my friend relax, after months or years of hard work, and bask in the rewards of creation.

“So…” I said to Hawk. “The trip.”

He said, “Epiphany was… well, magical sounds lame, but it was. It’s a pastoral planet; the aliens there are hunter-gatherers. Rainforests with trees miles high, and flowers the size of sails – the gravity’s much less strong there, you see. And there’s something about the air… as if it’s infused with a drug. Every breath is invigorating.”

I’d seen Matt briefly on his return, and he’d mentioned the Epiphany Stones in passing. It was a project he’d been working on for a year or more, but before the trip he’d kept tight-lipped about it lest the art world got to know and a publicity leak pre-empted the announcement of the exhibition. From Mackinley it was due to go on to Earth, where it was booked to show in Paris, London and Manila.

“Matt said that the stones were magical, too?” I fished.

Hawk smiled. “Matt wouldn’t tell me why exactly they were so special. We were taken by the equivalent of a bullock cart from the spaceport and into the mountains. From there it was a two-day trek through the rainforest to their – the Elan’s – holy city, more of a great, sprawling township, really. I spent the next day wandering around, admiring the views, while Matt was in conference with the Elan’s holy elite.”

“Requesting the stones?” I said.

Hawk nodded. “And he was successful, obviously. With one condition.”

I took a mouthful of beer. “Which was?”

“That the stones be accompanied at all times by a member of the Elan’s holy orders – an Ambassador.”

“So you brought the Ambassador back aboard the ship?”

“He’ll be at the opening night on Thursday.”

Maddie said, “I’m more than curious to see the alien. He’s been holed up with the stones at the exhibition centre all week..” Cut: Won’t leave them for a minute.”

I looked at Hawk. “What do they look like? The aliens, I mean.”

Hawk shrugged his great shoulders. “Small, just over a metre high, very thin and delicate, and furred. It’s the colour of their fur that’s odd, though. They’re turquoise.”

I tried to envisage these creatures. “They sound fascinating. And they’re friendly?”

Hawk nodded. “Extremely so.” He thought about it. “I suppose you’d call the Elan innocent, guileless.” He shrugged. “Matt was over the moon when they agreed to loan him the stones. This is the first time any have been allowed off-planet.”

I looked at Maddie. “What did he do to get them to agree?”

“The Elan were aware of his work,” she said. “Matt had an exhibition of crystals on Epiphany about ten years ago, and the Ambassador attended it. He was bowled over, apparently.”

Hawk said, “Matt visited Epiphany back then and heard about the stones. He became aware of the Elan’s reaction to his exhibition only later, and that’s when the idea formed to use the Epiphany Stones in an artwork.”

“Did you see the stones?”

Hawk nodded. “I was allowed to accompany Matt into the underground chamber where they’re housed.” He shrugged. “They’re nothing special, visually. About this long, by this…” His big hands described the approximate shape of a gold ingot. “And pale blue.”

“Why are they so special?”

Matt had said something about their somehow communicating aspects of Elan history when I saw him the other day, but I think he’d wanted to save the surprise for the opening night.

“Well, Matt was cagey when it came to describing the stones,” Hawk laughed.

“Cagey?” Maddie said. “He wouldn’t even tell me!”

“He did say something about the stones being…” Hawk shrugged. “They were somehow recordings of, or in some way stored, details of Elan ancestors. The Elan don’t have a written history. Apparently it’s all in the stones.”

I considered my encounter with Dortmund earlier. “Do either of you know anything about someone called Dortmund? Darius Dortmund? He seemed very interested in Matt’s exhibition.”

Maddie opened her eyes wide and stared at me. “Dortmund? So he’s been hounding you, too?”

I smiled. “I saw him this morning for the first time. He’s an odd character.”

“Odd?” Hawk exclaimed. “The guy gives me the shivers. He was nosing around the yard a couple of days after I got back, wanting to know all about our trip to Epiphany and the stones.”

Maddie said, “He called on me yesterday with so many questions…”

I looked at my friends. “Excuse my ignorance, but just who the hell is he? He spun me a line about being some kind of… of facilitator between peoples, societies.”

Maddie smiled. “You haven’t heard of Darius Dortmund, the alien-empath? Where have you been for the past ten years, David?”

“Alien-empath?” I repeated. “He looked human enough to me.”

Maddie laughed. “He is human, though from his manner I do wonder… No, he has some kind of empathetic ability which enables him to read the emotions and feelings of certain people and aliens. He uses this to settle disputes between antagonistic factions around the Expansion.”

I frowned. “And how did he become… empathetic?”

Hawk leaned back in his seat, hands clasped behind his head. “I’ve heard a number of stories. The most prosaic is that he was found to have a mild psionic ability and underwent an enhancement operation, back on Earth.”

Maddie leaned forward. “And the not-so-prosaic story?”

“Well, there’s the frankly daft, media-driven story that he was on Lyra VII, in the desert, and he was savaged by a sand-devil. The story goes that it stopped short of killing him and that when he came round he found himself inhabited by the consciousness of the beast.”

I laughed. “I think I’d go for the enhancement operation,” I said.

“According to some sources I accessed”, Hawk went on, “Dortmund is not only empathetic, but telepathic.”

I shifted uneasily in my seat, recalling the man’s manner this morning, his disinclination to look at me during our conversation – his disinclination, or the fact that he did not need to look at me to discern my reaction to his questions.

I recalled his assessment of me as lonely, and I shivered at the thought of my mind being so open to the stranger.

I said, “What makes you think…?”

Hawk looked at me. “Well, for one thing the way he asked questions but never seemed to follow them up – as if the initial question was merely a prompt to get me thinking about the subject he wanted me to consider, and then he read the rest. The way he rarely looked me in the eye, as if not needing to do so.”

I nodded. “I noticed that, too.”

“And something else,” Hawk went on. “He said something about me and Kee which no one knows about – so it wasn’t as if he could have found out by asking anyone. And the thing was, I’d been thinking about Kee just before he turned up.”

Maddie said, “He asked me questions about Matt, his latest work… but like you said, Hawk, he then dropped it as if he’d found out all he wanted.” She shivered. “I didn’t like the man at all.”

I nodded. “Me neither. And I don’t like the idea that he might be telepathic.”

Maddie said, more to herself, “But I wonder why he wanted to know about Matt and the stones?”

“Well, he’ll be at the opening night of the exhibition,” Hawk said. “I don’t know how he managed to wangle himself an invitation, but we might be able find out more then.”

Hawk then suggested we make a session of it and ordered a round of beers. I sat back and stared out across the bay, considering Darius Dortmund and the imminent exhibition.

— TWO —

Spindizzies are beautiful creatures.

The females of the species leave the shola trees in great swarms at twilight and hover over the bay, their four-part wing systems catching the light of the setting sun as Delta Pavonis dips, swollen and bloody, into the sea. The insects present a beautiful sight then, as a panoply of golden light plays across their flickering wings, but this is merely a prelude to the show that will follow. Minutes later they are joined by a cloud of males. They mate in mid-air, and together they pulse in a polychromatic display like diamonds on fire. Imagine millions of these individual points of strobing, multicoloured light strung out along the coast, and you can understand why visitors flock to watch in silent wonder.

I was sitting at a table on the cantilevered patio at the exhibition centre, looking out over the Mackinley straits. Maddie, Hawk and Kee were with me. I had grabbed a table by the rail in order to have a ringside view when the spindizzies arrived. It’s a sight that I never tire of watching.

“Here come the ladies,” Maddie said, her eyes wide. She looked stunning tonight in a long black dress, her golden ringlets framing her pale, heart-shaped face.

“Look at that!” Hawk laughed. He might have presented the façade of a macho buccaneer, but it couldn’t conceal the romantic streak that ran close to the surface.

We gasped as a mist of scintillating spindizzies swept over the domed roof of the exhibition centre and roiled above the straits. Experts have calculated that over a million female insects swarm in the overture to the show, their shimmering wings refracting the light of the setting sun. Cries of delight rose from the watchers around us.

Kee, a tiny blonde Ashentay, gripped Hawk’s arm like a child and stared open-mouthed. She might have looked human to the uninitiated eye – though human in miniature, with bird-like bones, a thin face and unnaturally large eyes – but Kee was as alien as the spindizzies, and the insects held a sacred place in the mythology of her people.

“And here come the males of the species,” Hawk said.

A dark cloud, thick as ink, rolled over the exhibition centre and headed straight for the vast, reflective mass of their prospective mates.

Kee raised a hand to her forehead in a quick, reverential gesture, murmuring something in the language of her people. Gazing at the spindizzies, Hawk murmured a translation, “Summer and Winter, the year turns, the kalay – the spindizzies – conjoin in wondrous harmony. We are blessed.”

Over the straits, the male and female spindizzies met, swirled, and seconds later it happened.

The spindizzies mated, and the bodies of the females lit up suddenly like tiny, coloured neon tubes. Multiplied a million-fold, the spectacle was staggering. No human firework display could match the vibrancy or the extent of the pulsing, shifting play of colour as the insects swarmed and surged in paroxysms of coital joy.

I found myself laughing in pure delight. Around me, others were crying at the sight.

The display lasted perhaps ten minutes, followed by the aftermath, which I always found subtly moving and melancholy. The airborne glow died as suddenly as it had begun, to be replaced by the last glitter of sunlight through the females’ wings. The males, dark shapes like massed iron filings, then fell away, spent and dead, and floated down to the surface of the sea. For the next few weeks their husky carcasses would be washed up on the beaches along the length of the coast.

The females, for their part, returned fertilised to their lairs in the shola tress, where they would lay their eggs and hibernate for the winter. In spring their young would be born and take wing in another, though lesser, display of alien biological wonder.

We drank our beers and watched the female spindizzies pass overhead in small groups.

There was a murmur of comment in the crowd behind us, and we turned to see Matt moving through the parting press towards us. He was accompanied by Chandranath, the director of the exhibition centre, and – I was surprised to see – none other than Darius Dortmund.

The off-worlder wore the same white suit as the other day, and in the fading twilight he seemed even paler than the first time we met.

Dortmund bent towards Matt to say something as they approached, and Matt was scowling at the off-worlder’s remarks.

I did not notice the fourth member of their group until they were almost upon us. She was walking in their wake, a slim blonde woman I judged to be in her late thirties, elfin and smiling. I thought at first that she was a native Ashentay, and that she was partnering Dortmund, an idea I found disconcerting.

They joined us and a waiter dispensed drinks. Chandranath introduced Dortmund, redundantly, as we’d all made his acquaintance, and then the woman, who I now saw was not alien.

“Lieutenant van Harben of the Mackinley Police Department,” Chandranath said.

We exchanged handshakes and small talk, and I found myself standing next to van Harben at the rail while the others discussed art-related topics amongst themselves.

She smiled up at me, playing with the stem of her wine glass. Her eyes were startlingly green. “I read about you and your friends before I came to Chalcedony,” she said. Her voice was soft, tinged with an accent I judged to be Northern European.

I smiled. “Don’t believe everything you read,” I quipped. A lot had been reported about how Matt, Maddie, Hawk and I had stumbled on the secret of the Yall, not a quarter of it accurate.

“I didn’t,” she said. “Anyway, it’s nice to meet you in the flesh.”

I gestured towards Dortmund, who was pontificating on some subject in his characteristic manner: that is, speaking but not visually addressing his audience. He was gazing out to sea at the female spindizzies drifting inland.

“Did you come to Chalcedony with Dortmund?” I asked. It was the most diplomatic way I could think of ascertaining whether or not they were together.

She stabbed a glance at the off-worlder, saying, “
That
… man? No. No, of course not. I came here six months ago to take up the post of Lieutenant with the Mackinley Police Department.”

I nodded, sipping my drink to hide my reaction: I had that involuntary, sexist male response of surprise when I encountered a woman in an unexpected role. Call me ignorant, but my image of Detective Inspectors was of burly, middle-aged, cynical men with alcohol dependencies.