Starship Fall (2 page)

Only then did I notice the smell; it was the scent of smoke, a certain type of smoke I had never encountered before. It emanated from her flesh, and as I inhaled and wondered who she was and what she was doing here, the woman opened her eyes and stared at me.

Her eyes were mahogany brown, and their light sent the shadows beneath them into stark relief; so that my first impression of her, conscious, was that she was ill.

“Of course, it’s wholly unfair; I was scaling the heights. And then
that
came along, and where was I then? I was good,
great
, but I could never compete with… with
that
.”

It came out in a rush, as if confided to a life-long intimate, and I was open-mouthed and quite at a loss to know what to say.

Then her eyes refocused suddenly, and she snapped, “And who might you be, if I might ask?”

“David,” I stammered. “David Conway...” I gestured back to the
Mantis
. “I live there.”

She sat up, wincing, a graceful hand bracing the small of her exquisite back. “Well, Conway, why don’t you make yourself useful and help me back to my place?”

I stood and reached out, not quite knowing where to touch her, for all the world like some flustered flunky at her beck and call. I grabbed her elbow and eased her upright. Perpendicular now, she stood a good few inches taller than me; her breasts fell a little and filled the material of her dress, and I was made more aware of her curves. (Maddie playfully accused me of sexism when I recounted this, but I set this down as an accurate account of my response to the woman. Recall, I had been alone and celibate for more than five years at the time.)

“Well, don’t just stand there gaping at me, Conway.” She pointed to a large villa a couple of hundred metres away around the curve of the bay. “Help me home, if you would be so kind.”

I slipped my arm around her waist; she leaned into me and I struggled with her through the shifting sands. Ten minutes later – she walked like a zombie on valium – we made it to the verandah of her expensive domicile and I eased her up the steps.

She opened a sliding glass door, shrugged me off and staggered inside. I had a glimpse of a dark lounge hung, I thought, with works of art. At the far end of the room, in the shadows, I made out a beautiful, dark-haired girl, and her similarity to the older woman made me assume it was her daughter.

“You don’t make a habit of sunbathing this early, do you?”

My words halted her progress into the room. She turned, and the look in her eyes could be described as venomous. “Don’t be so bloody ridiculous, Conway.”

I backed off and raised my hands in surrender.

She glared at me, then said, “You don’t have the slightest idea who I am, do you?”

I opened my mouth, doing a fair imitation of a landed jackeral.

Before I could agree that she was indeed correct, she said, “Of course you bloody well don’t!” and pressed a panel on the wall beside the door which swished a pair of curtains across the plate glass. The show was over, folks.

Smiling to myself, and wondering exactly who the hell she might be, I made my way home.

“You mean to tell me, David,” Maddie said, leaning forward incredulously, “that you hadn’t heard
she
had moved to Magenta Bay?”

It was late afternoon, and I’d slipped into the Fighting Jackeral for a beer to find Maddie ensconced in a lounger on the verandah, a fruit juice before her on the table. Matt was beside her, contemplating his ice cold beer as a man might a pot of gold.

Maddie stared at me and said, “No, seriously; I mean, you
hadn’t
heard?”

Matt winked at me and said, “Maddie, the poor man obviously hadn’t. She only moved here a few days ago, after all. Leave him be or tell him, or something.”

I smiled. “Obviously I don’t get out enough. Go on, who is she?”

Maddie sat upright and announced, “Only Carlotta Chakravorti-Luna, is who.”

I blinked. “Sorry, none the wiser. An artist?”

“You are a sad specimen, David Conway,” Maddie said.

Matt came to my defence. “To be honest, David, I only heard of her last week when Maddie said she was moving here.”

Maddie leaned forward. “And you’ve actually met her, David. Lucky you! What was she like?”

“Lucky me? I don’t think so. She was positively… Well, I don’t know how to describe her. Arrogant, dismissive – and probably drunk and drugged, or both.”

“Tell me again exactly what happened?” Maddie asked like a sensation-seeking teenager.

So I recounted the meeting again, this time describing the little I’d seen in the woman’s lounge.

“Apparently she has a holo-deck playing all the time,” Maddie said. “She’s obsessed. The gossip writers say it’s pathological.”

“I don’t understand–” I began.

“Luna is – was – a big holo star on Earth, back at the turn of the century. She’s the daughter of the famous Indian director, Ramesh Chakravorti, and the Italian actress Gina Luna–” Maddie stopped suddenly and stared at someone standing behind me.

I turned.

Carlotta Chakravorti-Luna stood over me, appearing at least seven feet tall from my seated perspective. She looked stunning in a scarlet dress, with midnight hair falling over one eye. She had a hand lodged on one hip and her bearing was imperious.

If she’d heard Maddie, she had the grace not to let on. Instead she nodded to Maddie and Matt, then looked at me. “Conway, I do think I owe you an apology. The way I behaved this morning was
way
beyond decency, and I owe you not only an apology, but an explanation. If you are free some time…?” She let it hang.

I spluttered something like a callow juvenile.

“Come round to the villa one evening, for drinks. Would tomorrow suit? Eight, say?”

And with another nod at Matt and Maddie, Carlotta Chakravorti-Luna swept from the verandah, sashayed through the main bar of the Jackeral and exited at the front.

Maddie was watching me, eyes the size of moons, her jaw halfway to her knees. Matt merely leaned over, jabbed me playfully in the ribs, and winked.

I sat back, wondering how I felt about the summons to the villa of a once famous but still ravishing holo star.

“So… tell me more about Carla Chakrawhatever-Lunacy,” I said.

The next day, I strolled around the bay to Matt and Maddie’s place. They lived on the southern headland opposite mine, in a two-storey beachfront dome backed by pines. Last night, before last orders, Matt had invited me over to take a look at what he was working on. It was mid-afternoon and hot when I arrived. Maddie was sitting on the verandah overlooking the bay, reading a novel I had loaned her.

She looked up and shaded her eyes when I climbed the steps. “And might the footsore traveller be in need of a beer, by any chance?”

“You’re a mind-reader, Maddie.”

She fetched me an ice cold bottle from the cooler and escorted me through the dome to Matt’s studio.

“Isn’t it tonight you have the assignation with Magenta’s biggest celebrity?” Maddie asked with a sly smile.

“Hardly an assignation, Maddie.”

“I’m not so sure. If you want my opinion, I think she has the hots for you.”

I laughed. “Come on! Is that likely?” I think I coloured as she grinned at me.

“I don’t know. You’re quite a catch, David. Lean, fit, personable. And famous, in your own right.”

I snorted. “And you know what I think about fame,” I said.

We came to the studio, a light-filled space on the dome’s ground-floor. Matt was wearing only a pair of baggy shorts, his preferred attire when working. He stood over a computer keypad and played it like a musician.

He looked up when we entered and nodded at my beer. “Good idea, sir.” He moved to a cooler in the corner of the room. “Maddie?”

“I don’t want to feel left out,” she said. “How’s it coming on?”

Matt passed her a beer and we sat on folding chairs in the middle of the studio. I looked around. Other than stacked crystal boards, old canvases and the odd unfinished sculpture, there was nothing on show to indicate his latest project.

“Almost finished, and I think it’s okay. Should be ready in a few days.” He looked at me. “I’m having a private viewing here in a couple of weeks, if you’d like to come along.”

“Try keeping me away,” I said. “What are you working on?” He was notoriously reticent about work-in-progress, as if to talk about his work might dissipate the creative impetus.

“Seeing as how it’s almost done...” He leaned over and tapped a few keys on the com-pad. “I wanted to get away from what I’ve doing lately – the emotion crystals. I felt I’d done enough in that medium for the time being. I was getting stale–”

“That’s not what that New York critic said about your last exhibition,” Maddie put in.

Matt snorted. “What do critics know? Anyway, I thought I’d try something completely different.”

In the air at the far end of the dome, I saw two figures materialise. They were naked, though abstract; that is, it was impossible to identify the man and woman: they stood as representative, perhaps, of the human race.

“We live in a cynical age, David. Perhaps we always have. In the past, my art has been an attempt to counter that cynicism. After all, nihilism’s an easy get out – it’s far harder to be constructively positive about the human condition, but I try.”

As I watched, the figures reached out towards each other, came together and merged; they became one, and then something odd happened. They seemed to explode into a million shards of light, which hung in a nimbus and slowly expanded to fill the far end of the dome in a scintillating sphere.

“I wanted to say something about what I have with Maddie,” Matt explained. “I wanted somehow to capture and encapsulate the feeling we call love.”

“It’s... beautiful,” I said.

“It’s not just visual.” Matt smiled and gestured. “Go ahead, walk into it.”

I looked at him questioningly, but he just urged me on. Beside him, Maddie nursed her beer and smiled.

I did as instructed, left my seat and strode towards the radiant globe. I paused before it, wondering what species of art this might be, and what I might experience when I stepped into the light.

I took a breath and advanced.

How to describe the sensations that overtook me then? I was bombarded with emotions – the experience was akin to Matt’s crystals, though much more powerful. It was as if I had taken a drug which allowed me to access all the euphoria, all the love, I had ever felt for everyone throughout my life. I moved around in the light like a sleepwalker, my head filled with the joyous wonder of life and love...

Then I passed through the other side of the globe, and instead of coming crashing back down to mundane reality, the upbeat feelings of unity and positivism remained with me.

I walked around the sphere, marvelling, and returned to where Matt and Maddie were sitting, watching me closely.

“Well?” Matt said.

I shook my head, still in a daze. “How the hell did you do it, Matt?”

He smiled. “Trade secret, David. It’s not too different in principle to my crystals, though I employ nano-tech instead of alien stones.”

“It’s remarkable. It’ll be a hit.” I smiled at my friends, as they sat side by side and held hands, and I think a part of me envied them the love that had gone into Matt’s creating this, his latest masterpiece.

“There’ll be about a dozen spheres when I’ve finished,” he went on, “all representative of different kinds of love. I’m still tweaking two or three of them.”

“I can’t wait for the private viewing,” I said.

Maddie’s com bleeped, and she stood and moved away to answer the call.

“Well,” Matt said, “I’m delighted you liked it.”

“Liked?” I said. “I loved it!”

Matt laughed, and looked across at Maddie. He frowned. Maddie was speaking hurriedly into her com, looking worried.

She cut the connection and hurried over to us. She looked from Matt to me, her face white.

“That was Hawk,” she said.

My heart jumped. “What?” I said.

“He asked if we could come over. It’s Kee. He said she’s disappeared, and he fears for her safety.”

* * *

We climbed aboard Matt’s ground-effect vehicle and tore off down the coast to Hawk’s starship junkyard three kays out of Magenta.