Diamond Mask (Galactic Milieu Trilogy) (29 page)

Their egg descended sedately under control of the farm navigation system. It landed more than a hundred meters away from the five flitters on the opposite side of the pad, not far from a flight of wide, shallow steps that led up to the house on the knoll.

Dee climbed out stiffly with the others. It was cool and very quiet, with a light breeze blowing from the direction of the southern mountains. An unfamiliar, faintly musky scent mingled with the smell of pines and the heated patches of asphalt beneath the egg’s unshielded landing-gear soles.

So this was her Daddy’s farm! From the ground, many of the outbuildings were partially screened by trees and colorful bushes. The rock garden forming the house knoll was planted with what Dee recognized as familiar fall flowers from Earth—purple asters, gold and white and ruby chrysanthemums, dahlias in every hue imaginable.

Suddenly an unobtrusive metal door set into the hillside whisked open. Out stepped a young woman with a hard-favored face and ginger hair cut in a short bob. She wore a blue denim skirt and jacket, a tartan shirt, a beautiful silver necklace studded with turquoises, and cowboy boots. A cream-colored Skye terrier at her side broke into a bouncy run, yapping with shrill ferocity as it charged the visitors. The woman put two fingers to her mouth and emitted a piercing whistle. The long-haired little dog skidded to a halt. “Sit!” the woman commanded. “Stay, you goldarn mutt.”

“Citizen Janet Finlay was originally from Arizona,” Kyle whispered to the children. He sidestepped the growling terrier, hauled off his cap, and flourished it in a sweeping bow. “As radiant and charming as ever, Janet m’annsachd! And how about a big wet smùrach for the auld pòitear?”

The domestic manager strode on past him without a word and
extended her hand to Gran Masha. “How do, Professor MacGregor-Gawrys. I’m Janet Finlay. Welcome to Caledonia and Glen Tuath Farm.” As the two women shook hands, Janet’s narrowing gaze swept over Masha’s fashionable outfit. Her subvocal disapproval was perceptible to both Dee and the professor.

“We’re happy to be here at long last,” Masha said in a neutral tone. “Let me introduce Kenneth and Dorothea.”

Thrawn Janet smiled thinly. “Hi there, Kenny. Hi, Doro.” She gestured to the dog. “That there’s Tucson. He’s got a fancy-schmancy Scotch pedigree name I forgot soon’s I got him. Better not pet him till he gets to know you, less’n you don’t value your fingerbones.”

The children nodded mutely.

“You kids must be tuckered out and starving,” she went on. “There’s a mole-car just inside that door that’ll take us through the burrows to the main house’s elevator. The burrows are what we call the tunnel system we use for transporting supplies and for getting around the farm in really bad weather.” She gave a grim little chuckle. “You’ll find that winter here’s a whole lot tougher than it was back on Earth in dear ole Edin-berg.”

Dee and Ken gave gasps of dismay. With a sweet smile, Gran Masha corrected the manager’s mispronunciation.

“Why, thanks all t’hell, perfessor! I ’preciate that.” Janet was almost gleeful. “It’ll be a real treat having somebody fresh from Scotland clearing up my ethnic boo-boos. They like t’drive ole Ian off his nut. A lot of Callies are like me—enough Scotch genes to qualify for emigration here, but five, six generations removed from life among the bagpipe tootlers. Too bad you’re not staying longer. You could prob’ly teach me a whole lot.”

“I may,” said Gran Masha casually, “stay a bit longer than I had originally intended. Just to make absolutely certain that the environment is congenial to the children.”

“Swell! We’ll find a way to put you to work.” Janet’s daunting gaze flicked to Dee and Ken, who had continued to stare at her in frozen fascination. “And you li’l ankle-biters’ll earn your keep, too, after we fatten you up a tad. Count on it! Now let’s get up to the big house. Ellen and Hugh’ll bring along your bags and traps later.”

Dee said in a small, clear voice, “I’d really rather go meet my Daddy first.”

“He’s busy. He’ll be along when he figgers up the day’s take. You can see him at supper.” Janet turned away abruptly and headed for the door in the hillside. A snap of her fingers brought
Tucson the terrier to heel. Dee heard the manager’s subvocal grumble: Homely as a mud fence and sassy too! That little brat better learn to do what she’s told.

Wordlessly, Dee lifted her eyes in appeal to her grandfather, who had been standing with his hands thrust into his pockets, glowering. The writer perked up. There was a sly grin on his face as he seized both children by the hand.

“Còir càir e!” he said. “To think Ian would be too busy to see his own bairns! Havers! It’ll be a grand surprise.” Leaving Janet and Gran Masha standing there, he hauled Dee and Ken off across the tarmac at a brisk canter. But after they had gone only a few dozen meters, Kyle pulled up, winded. “Don’t wait for me!” he wheezed. “Run on ahead!”

Dee shrieked with delight and went dashing away, outdistancing her less sturdy brother easily. Ken soon gave up the race and dropped back to join his grandfather, but Dee rushed on, heading straight for the five parked aerostats. They were much bigger than they had seemed from the far side of the landing field. Even the small ones were more than twice the height of an egg, and in the gathering dusk they looked more like otherworldly animals come to their night roost than flying machines.

The two coveralled ground crewmen were talking to four other people who wore half-unzipped flight suits and carried bulky helmets under their arms. They all grinned when little Dee came running up. Suddenly seized by shyness, the girl found herself unable to speak. But the workers knew who she was, all right.

A woman pilot pointed to the silver aircraft. “Your Dad’s still inside his flitter, sweetheart. Just go knock on his boarding ladder and he’ll come down in a jif.”

“Zonked out after a killer day,” another pilot said, laughing. “Or maybe he’s just floating on cloud nine because he finally figured out how rich he’s gonna be when we get this humongous crop of screw-weed tallied and shipped.”

Dee managed to thank them and scurried away. The aircraft were still tethered to the exsufflation hoses that gently sucked out their fragile cargo. A soft humming sound came from invisible machinery and the musky odor was stronger. The silver flitter was the last in line. A dim greenish radiance illuminated its cockpit, which was still covered by a transparent canopy. Like the others, her father’s aerostat rested on retractable jointed legs similar to those of an egg. A plass ladder had been extended down to the tarmac from the left side of the fuselage.

Dee could see a figure sitting inside, but it looked scarcely human, for its face was hidden behind a shiny lowered helmet visor and a strange mask. Was it really Daddy? Carefully, she reached out to touch the pilot’s mind.

Tired … tired enough to die.

For the briefest instant she perceived his outermost layers of thought—the harvest of airplants; a vast burden of physical exhaustion shot through with flashes of pain like a dark cloud stabbed by lightning; and below that the hint of an enormous, all-consuming sorrow that she could not understand and flinched away from examining any closer.

Poor Daddy! He had been working so very hard, thinking of nothing but gathering up the precious, unexpected masses of plants, working night and day almost without a break. His subliminal thoughts revealed to Dee that the arduous job was finally done. Harvest season was over, and tonight shifting winds would scatter the airborne treasure; but Glen Tuath Farm, after tottering for years on the brink of ruin, had been saved. As for Ian Macdonald, he was home with his crew and he could shed his responsibilities at last. What he wanted most of all was to go to sleep.

Escaping it all—including the greater pain that had nothing to do with his weary body.

Dee felt a pulse of dread lance through her. If the farm had been saved, then why was Daddy still so unhappy? Was it because she had come? She knew that her father’s deeper, secret thoughts probably held the answer, but she shrank from looking any further into his mind. She could not bear to learn the truth about his feelings for her before even seeing his face.

Hesitantly, she rapped on the plass ladder. The masked figure did not move.

“Daddy?” she called. “It’s me. Dorothea.”

For a little while nothing happened. Then, just as she lifted her hand to knock again, the cockpit canopy slid back. The green light inside was extinguished and the masked man climbed out very slowly and began to descend.

She backed away apprehensively as he reached the ground and turned to look at her there in the twilight, slowly removing his gloves.

“Daddy?” she whispered.

His flight suit was silvery like the ship, fitting his body tightly, having elaborate ridged and corded patterns like an insect’s armor. He had lifted the reflective visor of his complicated
helmet, but the lower part of his face remained concealed behind a silver oxygen mask. His eyes were hazel like Dee’s own, bleared by fatigue and deeply creased at the corners. When his hands were finally free of the gloves he clipped them to his belt, then unfastened one side of the mask and slipped off the helmet and its self-contained breathing apparatus, setting it on one of the ladder steps. His hair was damp and plastered to his head. A thin bruise ran across his upper cheeks and nose where the mask had pressed into his flesh during long hours working high in the air. He had a dark stubble of beard and dry, cracked lips.

Was he really the father she could not remember, the handsome young man in the old photo, the furious, heroic protector whom she had seen so briefly on the subspace communicator in the Islay police station back on Earth?

He stared at her, unsmiling. As the silence lengthened between them Dee’s throat tightened. She tried to speak again but apprehension had rendered her mute. Sudden tears transformed the motionless tall figure to a dim blur.

Daddy? Are you—

Oh, no! She must never use farspeech, just as she must not try to read his private thoughts! She must be careful to give no hint of what she was, must try to be the kind of daughter he would find lovable—a child who was quiet, useful, obedient, and uncomplaining. She blinked away the tears and tried to smile, seeing his careworn face clearly again in the dusk.

He was hurting so much inside. Poor Daddy.

The urge to share her healing redaction with him, to really know him, suddenly became irresistible to Dee. She had to find out whether this man could love her, no matter what price she paid.

Instinctively continuing to shield herself, she looked directly into her father’s eyes, into the deepest wellsprings of his emotions, hoping she would be able to understand what she found.

Oh, yes. There it was.

A knot of misery greater than his physical suffering, greater than any of his persistent anxieties about the farm. The root of the pain was twofold: part of it was despair over twice-lost Mummie, the rest an even greater and older grief for himself, the one latent child among three operants, rejected both by his mother and by the woman he had loved most. The capacity for happiness still resided within Ian Macdonald, but it was horribly damaged, almost buried beneath a black mountain of loss, rejection,
and heartache. How could he possibly be expected to free himself from its burden and embrace a plain-looking little girl?

Poor Daddy. It wasn’t his fault that he couldn’t love. Dee was very sorry that he had been so badly hurt. There had to be some way she could help—

She possessed more than one kind of redactive power. The personal healing force was operant, but the external redaction that could affect other minds and bodies still lay imprisoned within its imaginary box. A very large box. The surging huge crimson thing inside could change others and it was also capable of changing her in some unknown, fearsome fashion if she released it and put it to use.

Ian Macdonald continued to stare at her blankly. Did he even realize who she was?

Daddy, I’m Dorothea. Your daughter. Please feel better!

She opened the new box. The angel appeared immediately, showing her in a split second what she must do.

As the invisible crimson flood surged out and engulfed him, Ian Macdonald gave a sharp gasp. For a moment his silvery figure went rigid. Then his shoulders slumped and he swayed, taking hold of the aerostat’s boarding ladder to steady himself. The spasm passed and he uttered a profound sigh and wiped his forehead with the back of one hand. He looked down at the little girl in puzzled surprise.

When she was sure that her redaction had done its work, Dee withdrew it and hid once again behind her blue mental armor, lowering her head and squeezing her eyes shut so Daddy would not see the triumph shining there. She had done it! He was not completely healed, but she had helped him.

The new mindpower was out of its box and she would never get it back in again. It was one more thing she would have to hide from Gran Masha’s prying. But Daddy no longer hurt so badly. She was certain that he would never know she had touched him with her red comfort. And he would never hear if she bespoke him now:

It’s all right if you can’t love me, Daddy. I understand. But may I stay here with you anyway?

Hands beneath her thin little arms.

Powerful hands lifting her high, high.

Holding her against a broad, hard chest and shoulder that were not cold and metallic at all but warm. Sounds of hoarse breathing, slight leathery creaks from the environmental suit, smell of plass, smell of grownup sweat, a whiff of the exotic
musky odor that she had decided must belong to the mysterious airplants.

A hand pulled back the hood of her anorak and moved slowly over her hair. She was afraid to open her eyes, afraid even to breathe.

Rough lips brushed her forehead.

She opened her eyes and saw him, battered and grubby and human inside his awesome garb. His silver arms tightened about her and she clung to him fiercely, not making a sound even though tears were once again streaming down her cheeks.

Somewhere far away she heard the voices of Ken and Grandad calling. The floodlights on the factory building flicked on and the noise from the pumps suddenly stopped.