Forge of Heaven

“Yes, sir,” Procyon said.

“Drusus and Auguste have gone back to work. They’re still limiting their activities. The doctors don’t want them on longer than an hour on, an hour off. We’re monitoring via Hati’s taps. How do you feel?”

“No effects, sir.” A spark of fervent interest. But then a little hesitation. And, worriedly: “I won’t contact Marak if I think in any way I’m a conduit for Kekellen.”

“I think we can work that out. You’ll help us. Marak will. He understands your situation.”

“He does, sir?”

“He’s not entirely pleased about what happened to you. But he’s happier now that you’re on your feet. Are you fit to go on duty?”

“I’m fine, sir.”

“An hour on, an hour off, until you hear otherwise.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Dismissed, then. Go to it. It’s your shift.”

“Thank you, sir.” Procyon started to leave. Then stopped. “Where do I go, sir?”

“Home,” Brazis said. “Home to your apartment, I suppose. Where your office is.”

“I’m known on the street, sir.”

“I’d say you are. You’ll have to manage that notoriety. I leave that to your ingenuity.” A deliberate frown. “And wear a coat in the office.”

“Yes, sir.” Enthusiasm. Boundless enthusiasm. As if he wasn’t a walking communications device for Concord’s most dangerous resident. “Thank you, sir. Thank you.”

“Out,” Brazis said. Gratitude embarrassed him, when simple necessity had dictated the young man’s return to work. Keep Marak happy, repair the breach downworld. Keep Kekellen happy—maybe let the old sod ask a few direct questions of Marak, if Marak would deign to answer them.

The one honest man on earth. And Kekellen had found honesty in the heavens, it seemed.

Honesty didn’t figure in his own duty. He just did it as he saw it.

DINNER AT THE PLANE,not the place Procyon would have chosen, but Ardath had her standards and her obligations. Procyon wore his best, quiet, against Ardath’s blue and gold. The maître d’ whisked him to a conspicuous table, saw him seated, and the wine steward was quick to put in an appearance, suggesting his own mid-pricey celebration favorite. Ardath had arranged that, and he didn’t fight it. He sat pretending he didn’t know the whole room was watching and waiting. He hoped it might be a one-drink wait if he was lucky.

And Ardath swept in early, with Isis and Spider, with little Mignette in close, worshipful attendance. Isis, Spider, and Mignette weren’t sharing the table. They had another. But they were always nearby, Ardath’s bodyguards, if the need for defense ever presented itself, social or otherwise.

He got up, returned his sister’s warm handclasp, sat down again with the whole world watching.

“You’re looking good,” his sister said. A thousand hopefuls would die for that judgment. He only resisted the temptation to touch the brand he wore forever, in front of all these people.

“You’re always good,” he shot back, and made her laugh.

They dealt with the wine steward, and with the waiter, and with the owner, who would have fired either the steward or the waiter if they had either one so much as frowned.

It was too much steady smiling. They heaved a simultaneous sigh as they finally found something like a moment of privacy, the two of them alone.

“How areyou?” Ardath asked him, meaning a world of things, and he gave a little shrug.

“Well, I’m supposed to visit the parentals on the 12th.”

“Poor brother!”

“Oh, I’ll be completely respectable. Except this.” A little shift of the eyes upward. “Except they know, now. The street knows. And they do. It’s going to be interesting.”

“I can’t go.” It was an earnest, worried excuse. Halfway an offer to have gone in his place—if she could.

“Sis. You’re sweet. But I’ll survive. More to the point, I won’t scandalize them if I stay in bright light, and I’ll play games with the junior cousins. I’ll be just cousin Jerry.”

“Horrid. You aren’t. Everybody knows you’re not.”

“I am. More than you’d guess. I just live my little life and buy my own groceries. It’s my private fantasy.”

Ardath set her chin. “The fools on this station can’t touch you. Nobodydares touch you.”

“Security doubts they would, at least.” Salads showed up, deftly, quietly. “And you? How are you getting along?”

“Oh, fine,” Ardath said. “Really, very.”

“That’s good.”

“Procyon, do you haveto live at that stodgy nook address?”

“It’s comfortable.”

“Well, you lend it cachet. No question. They couldforgo the rent. You should speak to the management.”

“I’m kept by the government, but don’t spread that around.”

A laugh. “I always knew you’d do something sensible.”

Kekellen listened from time to time, but said very little. Unlike Marak, Kekellen observed no schedule, interrupting his sleep now and again, but mostly keeping his robots away and his relays quiet while he was working or in public, and he was glad of that.

Drusus was on duty at the moment. They were back in the usual rotation. So he had a private life, such as it could be, with such ties as he had. He actually enjoyed the supper, feeling safe, in a way he hadn’t expected. There were two kinds of security, one he’d kept by being nobody and quiet, and what he had now, a notoriety that made people shy of talking to him, let alone bothering him.

That meant he could do what he’d never done, and go where he’d never go, and he didn’t have any question he’d stay employed—not these days.

He’d begun to settle in, was what. He’d found a means of living the life he liked.

That wasn’t at all bad.

THE AIR HAD a different smell, now, wet sand, wet rock, salt water; and the evenings had gotten much colder.

Change, change, and change in the rules of the world. Marak took a steaming cup of tea, and Hati took one, and they listened to young Farai, who thought he’d seen a fish swimming at the surface of their new sea, and was excited.

Marak himself doubted any fish could survive the plunge the watchers in the heavens described at the gates of the Wall. But who knew? He listened politely, and drank his tea.

The long spine of the Needle Gorge was indeed likely to fail, so Ian said, and soon, taking their relay with it. Well that they were up on solid ground. And they might almost see it from here.

Luz was back with Ian. The Ila had taken to her quarters, with the doors shut. They might stay shut for a while.

Ian’s latest rocket was a success. Ian was getting spectacular images from the Wall, which now stood as an island, and they got others, from the edge of the plateau. They sent them to the Refuge, but the Ila refused to come out of her chambers and look.

Ian had tried to entice him to come back, meanwhile, but he was uncertain. Out here, he had no need of Ian’s cameras. To see all the history of the waterfall in its glory, it seemed they had a choice, to go back to the Refuge, or at least trek as far as the waystation at Edina, to see Ian’s images on a much larger screen.

Meanwhile the shallow rim of their new sea steamed with fog, while the heart of it deepened. The waterfall at the Wall had diminished, the seas equalizing.

As for Farai’s precious fish, first would come the chemical adjustment of the water, the algaes, and the weed would take hold, and the one-celled creatures, and the floaters and the burrowers.

Once the food chain established itself, then the fishes might come, long and sinuous, making their living on lesser creatures.

Already the weather reports spoke of torrential rains in the highlands, water which would cut the gorge faster and faster toward the new sea, until it vanished altogether into a chain of islands. When the Needle did merge with the sea, it would sweep down its own different chemistry to a new estuary.