Prayers to Broken Stones (19 page)

“Father? Father, it is getting late.”

I turn to see my son Donel standing behind me. He is wearing the blue and gold robe of the Hegemony Council. His bald scalp is flushed and beaded with sweat. Donel is only 43 but he seems much older to me.

“Please, Father,” he says. I nod and rise, brushing off the grass and dirt. We walk together to the front of the tomb. The crowd has pressed closer now. Gravel crunches under their feet as they shift restlessly. “Shall I enter with you, Father?” Donel asks.

I pause to look at this aging stranger who is my child. There is a little of Siri or me reflected in him. His face is friendly, florid, and tense with the excitement of the day. I can sense in him the open honesty which often takes the place of intelligence in some people. I cannot help but compare this balding puppy of a man to Alón—Alón of the dark curls and silences and sardonic smile. But Alón is 33 years dead, cut down in a stupid battle which had nothing to do with him.

“No,” I say. “I’ll go in by myself. Thank you, Donel.”

He nods and steps back. The pennants snap above the heads of the straining crowd. I turn my attention to the tomb.

The entrance is sealed with a palmlock. I have only to touch it.

During the past few minutes I have developed a fantasy which will save me from both the growing sadness within and the external series of events which I have initiated. Siri is not dead. In the last stages of her illness she had called together the doctors and the few technicians left in the colony and they rebuilt for her one of the ancient hibernation chambers used in their seedship two centuries earlier. Siri is only sleeping. What is more, the year-long sleep has somehow restored her youth. When I wake her she will be the Siri I remember from our early days. We will walk out into the sunlight together and when the farcaster doors open we shall be the first through.

“Father?”

“Yes.” I step forward and set my hand to the door of
the crypt. There is a whisper of electric motors and the white slab of stone slides back. I bow my head and enter Siri’s tomb.

“Damn it, Merin, secure that line before it knocks you overboard. Hurry!” I hurried. The wet rope was hard to coil, harder to tie off. Siri shook her head in disgust and leaned over to tie a bowline knot with one hand.

It was our Fifth Reunion. I had been three months too late for her birthday but more than five thousand other people had made it to the celebration. The President of the All Thing had wished her well in a forty-minute speech. A poet read his most recent verses to the Love Cycle Sonnets. The Hegemony Ambassador had presented her with a scroll and a new ship, a small submersible powered by the first fusion-cells to be allowed on Maui-Covenant.

Siri had eighteen other ships. Twelve belonged to her fleet of swift catamarans that plied their trade between the wandering Archipelago and the Home Islands. Two were beautiful racing yachts that were used only twice a year to win the Founder’s Regatta and the Covenant Criterium. The other four craft were ancient fishing boats, homely and awkward, well-maintained but little more than scows.

Siri had nineteen ships but we were on a fishing boat—the
Ginnie Paul.
For the past eight days we had fished the shelf of the Equatorial Shallows; a crew of two, casting and pulling nets, wading knee-deep through stinking fish and crunching trilobites, wallowing over every wave, casting and pulling nets, keeping watch, and sleeping like exhausted children during our brief rest periods. I was not quite 23. I thought I was used to heavy labor aboard the
L.A.
and it was my custom to put in an hour of exercise in the 1.3-gee pod every second shift, but now my arms and back ached from the strain and my hands were blistered between the callouses. Siri had just turned 70.

“Merin, go forward and reef the foresail. Do the same for the jib and then go below to see to the sandwiches. Plenty of mustard.”

I nodded and went forward. For a day and a half we had been playing hide and seek with a storm; sailing before
it when we could, turning about and accepting its punishment when we had to. At first it had been exciting, a welcome respite from the endless casting and pulling and mending. But after the first few hours the adrenaline rush faded to be replaced by constant nausea, fatigue, and a terrible tiredness. The seas did not relent. The waves grew to six meters and higher. The
Ginnie Paul
wallowed like the broad-beamed matron she was. Everything was wet. My skin was soaked under three layers of rain gear. For Siri it was a long-awaited vacation.

“This is nothing,” she had said during the darkest hour of the night as waves washed over the deck and smashed against the scarred plastic of the cockpit. “You should see it during simoon season.”

The clouds still hung low and blended into gray waves in the distance but the sea was down to a gentle five-foot chop. I spread mustard across the roast beef sandwiches and poured steaming coffee into thick, white mugs. It would have been easier to transport the coffee in zero-gee without spilling it than to get it up the pitching shaft of the companionway. Siri accepted her depleted cup without commenting. We sat in silence for a bit, appreciating the food and the tongue-scalding warmth of the coffee. I took the wheel when Siri went below to refill our mugs. The gray day was dimming almost imperceptibly into night.

“Merin,” she said after handing me my mug and taking a seat on the long, cushioned bench which encircled the cockpit, “what will happen after they open the farcaster?”

I was surprised by the question. We rarely talked about the time when Maui-Covenant would join the Hegemony. I glanced over at Siri and was shocked by the countenance revealed by the harsh, upward glare of the instrument lights. Siri’s face showed a hidden mosaic of seams and shadows which would soon replace the pale, translucent complexion of the woman I had known. Her beautiful, green eyes were hidden in wells of darkness and the cruel light turned her cheekbones into knife-edges against brittle parchment. Siri’s gray hair was cut short and now it stuck out in damp spikes. I could see the tendoned cords under the loose skin of her neck and wrists. Age was laying claim to Siri.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“What will happen after they open the farcaster?”

“You know what the Council says.” I spoke loudly, as if she were hard of hearing. “It will open a new era of trade and technology for Maui-Covenant. You won’t be restricted to one little world any longer. When you become citizens, everyone will be entitled to use the farcaster doors.”

“Yes,” said Siri. Her voice was weary. “I have heard all of that, Merin. But what will
happen?
Who will be the first through to us?”

I shrugged. “More diplomats, I suppose. Cultural contact specialists. Anthropologists. Ethnologists. Marine biologists.”

“And then?”

I paused. It was dark out. The sea was almost gentle. Our running lights glowed red and green against the night. I felt the same anxiety I had known two days earlier when the wall of storm appeared on the horizon. I said, “And then will come the missionaries. The petroleum geologists. The sea farmers. The developers.”

Siri sipped at her coffee. “I would have thought your Hegemony was far beyond a petroleum economy.”

I laughed and locked the wheel in. “Nobody gets beyond a petroleum economy. Not while the petroleum’s there. We don’t burn it, if that’s what you mean. But it’s still essential for the production of plastics, synthetics, food base, and keroids. Two hundred billion people use a lot of plastic.”

“And Maui-Covenant has oil?”

“Oh, yes,” I said. There was no more laughter in me. “There are billions of barrels reservoired under the Equatorial Shallows alone.”

“How will they get it, Merin? Platforms?”

“Yeah. Platforms. Submersibles. Sub-sea colonies with tailored workers brought in from Ouster or the Tau Ceti Cities.”

“And the motile isles?” asked Siri. “They must return each year to the shallows to feed on the bluekelp there and to reproduce. What will become of the isles?”

I shrugged again. I had drunk too much coffee and it left a bitter taste in my mouth. “I don’t know,” I said.
“They haven’t told the crew much. But back on our first trip out, Mike heard that they planned to develop as many of the isles as they can, so some will be protected.”

“Developed?” Siri’s voice showed surprise for the first time. “How can they develop the isles? Even the Founder’s Families must ask permission of the Sea Folk to build our treehouse retreats there.”

I smiled at Siri’s use of the local term for the dolphins. The Maui-Covenant colonists were such children when it came to their damned dolphins. “The plans are all set,” I said. “There are 128,573 motile isles big enough to build a dwelling on. Leases to those have long since been sold. The smaller isles will be broken up, I suppose. The Home Islands will be developed for recreation purposes.”

“Recreation purposes,” echoed Siri. “How many people from the Hegemony will use the farcaster to come here … for recreation purposes?”

“At first, you mean?” I asked. “Just a few thousand the first year. As long as the only door is on Island 241 … the Trade Center … it will be limited. Perhaps 50,000 the second year when Firstsite gets its door. It’ll be quite the luxury tour. Always is after a seed colony is first opened to the web.”

“And later?”

“After the five-year probation? There will be thousands of doors, of course. I would imagine that there will be twenty or thirty million new residents coming through during the first year of full citizenship.”

“Twenty or thirty million,” said Siri. The light from the compass stand illuminated her lined face from below. There was still a beauty there. But there was no anger or shock. I had expected both.

“But you’ll be citizens then yourself,” I said. “Free to step anywhere in the worldweb. There will be sixteen new worlds to choose from. Probably more by then.”

“Yes,” said Siri and set aside her empty mug. A fine rain streaked the glass around us. The crude radar screen set in its hand-carved frame showed the seas empty, the storm past. “Is it true, Merin, that people in the Hegemony have their homes on a dozen worlds? One house, I mean, with windows facing out on a dozen skies?”

“Sure,” I said. “But not many people. Only the rich can afford multi-world residences like that.”

Siri smiled and set her hand on my knee. The back of her hand was mottled and blue-veined. “But you are very rich, are you not, Shipman?”

I looked away. “Not yet I’m not.”

“Ah, but soon, Merin, soon. How long for you, my love? Less than two weeks here and then the voyage back to your Hegemony. Five months more of your time to bring the last components back, a few weeks to finish, and then you step home a rich man.
Step
two hundred empty light years home. What a strange thought … but where was I? That is how long? Less than a standard year.”

“Ten months,” I said. “Three hundred and six standard days. Three hundred fourteen of yours. Nine hundred eighteen shifts.”

“And then your exile will be over.”

“Yes.”

“And you will be twenty-four years old and very rich.”

“Yes.”

“I’m tired, Merin. I want to sleep now.”

We programmed the tiller, set the collision alarm, and went below. The wind had risen some and the old vessel wallowed from wavecrest to trough with every swell. We undressed in the dim light of the swinging lamp. I was first in the bunk and under the covers. It was the first time Siri and I had shared a sleep period. Remembering our last Reunion and her shyness at the villa, I expected her to douse the light. Instead she stood a minute, nude in the chill air, thin arms calmly at her sides.

Time had claimed Siri but had not ravaged her. Gravity had done its inevitable work on her breasts and buttocks and she was much thinner. I stared at the gaunt outlines of ribs and breastbone and remembered the sixteen-year-old girl with baby fat and skin like warm velvet. In the cold light of the swinging lamp I stared at Siri’s sagging flesh and remembered moonlight on budding breasts. Yet somehow, strangely, inexplicably, it was the
same
Siri who stood before me now.

“Move over, Merin.” She slipped into the bunk beside me. The sheets were cool against our skin, the rough blanket
welcome. I turned off the light. The little ship swayed to the regular rhythm of the sea’s breathing. I could hear the sympathetic creak of masts and rigging. In the morning we would be casting and pulling and mending but now there was time to sleep. I began to doze to the sound of waves against wood.

“Merin?”

“Yes?”

“What would happen if the Separatists attacked the Hegemony tourists or the new residents?”

“I thought the Separatists had all been carted off to the isles.”

“They have been. But what if they resisted?”

“The Hegemony would send in troops who could kick the shit out of the Separatists.”

“What if the farcaster itself were attacked … destroyed before it was operational?”

“Impossible.”

“Yes, I know, but what if it were?”

“Then the
Los Angeles
would return nine months later with Hegemony troops who would proceed to kick the shit out of the Separatists … and anyone else on Maui-Covenant who got in their way.”

“Nine months shiptime,” said Siri. “Eleven years of our time.”

“But inevitable either way,” I said. “Let’s talk about something else.”

“All right,” said Siri but we did not speak. I listened to the creak and sigh of the ship. Siri had nestled in the hollow of my arm. Her head was on my shoulder and her breathing was so deep and regular that I thought her to be asleep. I was almost asleep myself when her warm hand slid up my leg and lightly cupped me. I startled even as I began to stir and stiffen. Siri whispered an answer to my unasked question. “No, Merin, one is never really too old. At least not too old to want the warmth and closeness. You decide, my love. I will be content either way.”

I decided. Towards the dawn we slept.