Dark Ararat

“There shouldbe more people here,” Ly

“I’ve only heard rumors,” Matthew said, putting a hand on the wall beside the path to balance himself more securely. “No one was delegated to brief us on that sort of stuff, even though Milyukov seems to think that Bernal might have been murdered to deny him a voice in the big debate. Was he even pla

“I doubt it. The only plan he seemed to be interested in during the days leading up to his death was the river journey. The engraved wall’s just over there.”

Matthew picked out the relevant patch of wall easily enough. He’d been hoping that the photograph he’d looked at on Hopehadn’t done it justice, but the original was no clearer. The reality seemed, in a way, even more primitive than the image—but someone had obviously gone to considerable trouble to carve out the line drawing, given that any chisels they had available must have had brittle blades.

“Where’s the pyramid?” Matthew asked, suddenly.

“Good question,” Ly

“Maybe,” said Matthew, grudgingly. “It’s a pity Bernal didn’t get his cameras. If he’d been able to take them downriver with him, he’d have been able to put his two cents’ worth into the debate at Base One from a unique platform. Unless, of course, Milyukov decided to do likewise, in which case there’d have been a big on-screen argument. Bernal always loved a big showdown.”

“It’s not just some cheap TV event, Matthew,” she told him, with a measure of asperity, as she led him away from the mural, this time heading back the way they had come. “It’s real, and it might determine the fate of the colony.”

“Not unless it’s properly stage-managed, it won’t,” Matthew said. “There’ll be a lot of nonsense talked, and maybe a show of hands, and it will accomplish exactly nothing. The fact that there’s a power struggle going on aboard Hopemight have convinced too many of us that there’s more than one possible outcome to this sorry mess, but there isn’t. Whatever happens up there, those of us who are down here are stuck here for the foreseeable future, and probably forever. If this is a death trap, we’ll die in it.”

“Try telling that to Tang. On second thought, don’t. You’ll stand a better chance of getting that berth if you don’t upset him. Ike and I want you to have it, but that might not be enough.”

“So I’d gathered,” Matthew said. “Ly

“As I told your friend Solari, I don’t know. If he thinks it was me, he’s barking up the wrong tree.”

“Why should he think it was you?”

“Because I’m the nearest thing to a scorned woman he can find. Cherchez la femme—isn’t that the detective’s motto?”

“Oh,” Matthew said, momentarily unable to think of anything else to say. It wasn’t a line of argument he wanted to pursue. He thought about Tang Dinh Quan instead, and the two daughters Tang had in SusAn. For Tang, he knew, any argument about the future of the colony had to cut further and deeper than “We’re stuck with it for the foreseeable future, so we might as well get on with it.” When the time came for him to talk to Tang he had to have something better than that to say to him. Tang’s daughters, like Alice and Michelle Fleury, still had all their options open.

The worst scenario that Matthew could readily imagine was that Alice and Michelle might be whisked away in the tender care of Konstantin Milyukov’s Revolutionary Tribunal while their father was marooned, whether the world on which he was marooned was capable of sustaining human life in the longer term or not—but how could that possibly happen, he asked himself, given Rand Blackstone’s calculations?

Matthew had relaxed considerably now that they were retracing their steps, but that was a mistake. He was still tired, and he had grown used to putting his hand out sideways to rebalance himself and provide a little extra support. While descending from the mound he had been placing it on bare stone, but now they were walking along a narrow path the walls to either side were covered in vegetation. Because he found the feel of the alien “stems” and “leaves” slightly disconcerting, he had developed a subliminal preference for reaching throughthe purple curtain to touch the stone behind it—but it was an unwariness that he quickly came to regret.

It was only out of the corner of his eye that he saw the flicker of movement as a clutch of tentacles began writhing like Medusa’s hair, but the glimpse was enough to flood him with terror.

He snatched his hand away with the utmost urgency—and immediately understood how minutely his autonomic nervous system had been tuned to Earthly conditions. It felt as if his arm had been seized by some alien power and thrown aside. There was no real reason for him to stumble, but the sense of dislocation that suddenly swept over him made it all-but-impossible for him to maintain his stance. He lurched to one side, crashing into the wall opposite the one from which he had removed his hand. He had tripped over his own foot.

While he was cursing volubly Ly

Although he was still fighting for balance, Matthew immediately realized how small the monster was by comparison with the one that Rand Blackstone had brought back to the bubble after Marya

“It’s okay,” Ly

“What’s the bloody thing doing lurking in there?” Matthew growled, to cover his embarrassment. “What’s the point of having photosynthetic pigments in your skin if you’re going to skulk in the shadows while the sun’s at zenith?”

“Another good question,” Ly