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“I don’t believe your luck,” Estella chortled. “I’m going to complain to the tour company. The only thing waiting for me at my landing site was a squirrel, and I’m pretty sure he was gay.”
Justine started buttoning up her cardigan. “Don’t,” she said irritably. “Kazimir was sweet.”
“Yeah: was.”
“You don’t understand.” She pulled up her shorts. “It wasn’t just that. I wanted to teach him a different view of the universe, make him question what he sees.”
“Ah, like: what position is this called? And: I didn’t know you could do it that way around.”
Justine growled at her and went back outside. She ordered the tent to contract, forcing Estella to hurry through the entrance. The crew were backing an empty trailer up to the hyperglider. Broad, knowing smiles were flashed in her direction; several of them winked. Justine had to roll her eyes at that, thinking what it must have looked like to them. A small sheepish smile appeared on her own lips as her sense of humor returned.
“What was he doing here?” Estella asked. “This is nowhere.”
“It’s somewhere now,” Justine replied tartly.
“God, your luck. I’m as jealous as hell. He looked divine.”
Justine pushed her lips together modestly. “He was.”
“Come on, let’s go find a bottle, we should celebrate your grand victory: longest flight and greatest landing. I expect you need to sit down, too, must be difficult trying to walk properly after all that education you gave him.” She glanced pointedly at the tent that had finished contracting. All the empty packets and bottles now lay around it, ejected by the shrinking walls. “Did you even get to see the outside world?”
“There is one?”
Estella giggled wildly, and started to climb up the short ladder to the Telmar’s cabin. “So is it true, does everything really rise higher in low gravity?”
Justine ignored her, sca
“Good-bye, Kazimir,” she whispered.
He would be out there. Watching. Probably feeling a little foolish now. But this was probably the best way. A swift clean break, and a golden memory for both of them. No regrets.
And maybe, just maybe, I taught him something about real life. Maybe he will start to question his idiotic Guardians doctrine.
There was a loud pop of a champagne cork in the cabin. Justine climbed inside and shut the door, enjoying the chill of the air-conditioning as it banished the jungle’s raw heat.
FIVE
From their admittedly elitist point of view, the residents of York5 often claimed that theirs was one of the luckier planets in the Commonwealth’s phase one space. This particular world never experienced pollution or human population pressure, and financial irregularities and corrupt politicians passed it by. A quirk of evolution had produced far fewer than average plant and animal genera. Such conditions made the establishment of no
When CST a
York5 had no real capital city; the largest urban area was a small service town that supported the CST gateway and the airport that sprang up beside it. No factories were ever shipped in, denying it any industrial facilities. Everything a person wanted or needed, from cutlery to paving stones, electronics to clothes, had to be imported. There were no roads or railways providing a civil transport infrastructure, only aircraft owned by the resident families. In all of its two-hundred-forty-year history, the population had never risen above ten million, of which almost three million were staff employed by the families. Instead, it was divided up into vast estates, with each family building mansions and lodges and beach homes as they wanted, where they wanted, and planting whatever kind of surrounding flora took their fancy. Consequently, the continents became magnificent quilts of designer landscapes; it was terraforming on a scale not seen even on Far Away, and all for aesthetics sake.
Captain (retired) Wilson Kime had watched his family estate develop over the last two centuries, returning time and again for vacations and long weekends and a
One day at the height of an exceptional midsummer heat wave, Wilson walked along a long, meandering gravel track on the broad, south-facing slopes a couple of kilometers from the huge mock château that was the family home, inspecting the vines. His only company was two of the senior family’s youngest children, who skipped along with him. Emily, a six-year-old with fawn-colored braids who was his great-great-great-great-granddaughter; and eight-year-old Victor, a quiet inquisitive lad who was a nephew with a co
Every now and then he would stop at the end of another row of the vines, and inspect the clusters of grapes that were just begi
Red-painted viniculture bots, each the size of a motorbike, trundled up and down the rows with their electromuscle arms flashing in and out as they carefully thi
Wilson stopped and picked a couple more grapes. They were immature and sour, but that taste was right for this moment in their development. He spat them out after he’d chewed them thoroughly.