Starship Winter (David Conway 03)

STARSHIP WINTER

by

Eric Brown

— ONE —

Winters are never harsh, here on Chalcedony.

There are no snowfalls, to which I was accustomed in my native Canada; no rainstorms or biting frosts. After the long, clement autumn, winter is presaged by the nightly passage of migrating swordbills flying south to hotter climes; then comes a long period, lasting some three Terran months, of cooler weather. It is never cold: I’ve never had to wear a coat on my evening outings to the local bar, the Fighting Jackeral, and during the day the sun shines constantly. Winter is the season when the Ring of Tharssos, the halo of fragmented moonlets which encircles the planet, sparkles silver at twilight, and the spindizzy bugs, those scintillating gyroscopic creatures, move from shola trees and fill the air above the coast with their kaleidoscopic light show.

Some tourists come to see the spindizzies, but for the most part the tiny settlement of Magenta Bay is quiet. The holiday villas are shut up for the season; most of the stores along the seafront are boarded up, and perhaps half the residents take the opportunity to move down to the capital city, Mackinley, for the winter, or visit family and friends back on Earth.

I always stay for the winter, enjoying the sense of isolation the season brings, that odd intimation, so common from childhood, of winter being an inimical time when wise people hole up for months and allow nature to take its course – even though, of course, nothing was ever inimical about winter on Chalcedony.

Nothing much happens during winter, but that year was different.

* * *

I met Darius Dortmund, the famous alien-empath, a week after his arrival on Chalcedony.

He was known throughout the Expansion as the man who single-handedly brokered the peace treaty between the colonists of Esperance, Groombridge III, and the native extraterrestrials. I say an “alien-empath”, but of course he was human. He had earned that title because he had the peculiar ability to read the minds – some said the very souls – of alien subjects. Little was known about the man, other than he shunned publicity and was secretive about his ability. No one knew for certain how he had become empathetic, or even if he were actually
telepathic
. Was it true that he had gained his unique powers during an encounter with a vicious Lyran sand-devil? Had he, as some claimed, absorbed the essence of that strange alien being, so that a part of him was in fact alien? Could he actually read
human
minds? Journalists and holo producers around the Expansion had been trying to answer these questions for years.

That morning was much like any other. I rose at seven, showered, and went for a long walk around the bay. I took my time, admiring the views. From the headland opposite my starship, the
Mantis
, I looked back along the scimitar sweep of red sands, backed by the tiny shapes of the beachfront A-frames and more exclusive villas. Inland, beyond Magenta Bay itself, the hills rose to the distant mountains, their purple summits concealed by mist. Even the golden column, the legacy of the Yall, could not be seen; only in winter, and at this hour, was the distinguishing feature of the planet hidden from view.

For some reason, that morning I was thinking back to my doomed love affair with the holo star Carlotta Chakravorti-Luna. It was over two years since her death and the events which surrounded it, and I was feeling melancholy and not a little lonely. The first six months after her passing had been the worst; a time made tolerable only by the constant presence of my friends Matt and Maddie, Hawk and Kee. Only infrequently since then had I been skewered by grief, and time had worked to make each jab of that skewer a little less painful.

Today, as I made my way back through the sliding red sands, I was wondering how my life might have been shaped had Carlotta lived, and we had married and settled down to domesticity aboard the
Mantis
. I suppose I was feeling sorry for myself, regretting the lonely hours between the times I met my friends.

As the sun rose higher, warming me and dispelling the mists, I told myself to snap out of it. I had always despised self-pity in others; there was no way I would allow myself to fall victim to that invidious emotion now.

I was almost back at the
Mantis
when I saw the stranger.

He was standing in the sand before the ship, hands clasped behind his back, staring up at the balcony which fronts the nose cone.

He was tall and thin, characteristics emphasised by his sharp white suit. I put him in his sixties or early seventies, with a thatch of white hair and a peculiar facial pallor which put me in mind of someone recovering from illness.

Seven years ago, after the events which led to our discovery of the true purpose of the golden column, visitors had flocked to Magenta Bay. At times the
Mantis
had been surrounded three-deep by curious onlookers. I had become something of a celebrity, and had sought refuge with my friends. Since then the furore had abated, and only the occasional visitor made the pilgrimage to Magenta Bay to gaze at the first starship to pass through the mysterious portal of the Yall.

I took the stranger to be just another curious tourist.

He turned as I approached, and the first thing I noticed about his face was his piercing ice-blue eyes, in contrast to the deathly white of his flesh. My first impression of his character, gained from something in his lofty regard of me, was that he was arrogant: it was an impression that subsequent experience did nothing to dispel.

“I take it that you’re David Conway?” he said.

“That’s right.”

“And I understand you’re a friend of Matt Sommers, the artist?”

I chastised myself for feeling piqued that the stranger was seeking Matt, rather than myself. Then I felt relief, and curiosity. Something told me that the stranger was an off-worlder – maybe a rich gallery owner or collector?

I held out my hand. “Matt is a friend of mine, yes.”

He gave me a gimlet regard for a fraction of a second, before extending his own hand. His palm was cold.

“Dortmund,” he said. “Darius Dortmund.”

I didn’t know as much then about the man, or his reputation, as I was to learn over the next week, but the name was familiar. Wasn’t he some kind of expert on alien affairs who used his empathy with the
other
to settle interspecies disputes?

I wondered at his interest in Matt.

Dortmund indicated the Fighting Jackeral, a couple of hundred metres along the beach. “I know it’s early, but would you care for a drink?”

I said, “I haven’t had breakfast yet. The Jackeral does great coffee and croissants.”

* * *

We sat on the verandah, looking out over the bay. Dortmund ordered a double whisky on the rocks – at eight in the morning – and I a coffee with croissants and marmalade.

His first words, as he settled down with his drink and gazed out across the bay, were, “I can see that you have no idea who I am?”

I smiled to myself. I was glad that he was not looking at me; he was concentrating his regard on the sparkling Ring of Tharssos above the headlands. I noticed, then and in our subsequent meetings, that he only looked sparingly at the people in his presence. At first I assumed this was a characteristic of his natural arrogance; later I was to learn otherwise.

I took a sip of coffee. “The name is… familiar,” I said. I played dumb. “A fellow artist, a patron?” I suggested.

His expression remained neutral. The skin of his face, I noticed, was not only pale but seemed deficient of pigment, like a fresh canvas. His eyes narrowed as he stared at the arc of the Ring.

“I have been called an artist, Conway, but not an artist in any accepted sense. That is, not someone who creates works which represents their thoughts and feelings on the world around them. If I am an artist at all, then it is in the far more important sphere of facilitating the ability of individuals and societies to apprehend the subjective truths of their respective situations.”

It was a grand claim, and he sat in silence as I worked it out. At last I nodded. “I see…” I said. “And just how do you go about… facilitating this?”

He raised his glass to his lips with thin fingers and took a tight sip of whisky. “I apprehend the truth of a situation, of an individual or group, and dispense what I judge to be the appropriate recommendations. I am invariably right,” he finished.

I bit into a croissant, at a loss to know how to respond. After a growing silence, I said, “So… you mentioned Matt Sommers?”

He turned his head and looked at me. The effect of his piercing regard, coming as it did for the first time since we sat down, was disconcerting.

He said, “You are lonely, Conway.”

I stared at him, aware of holding a corner of croissant ludicrously before my open lips. “I don’t see what…” I began.

He raised a hand, as if to stall my objections, and turned his gaze out to sea. “I sense that you suffered loss recently, and use as a crutch the enduring friendship of those around you.”

“I wouldn’t call my friendship a crutch,” I said. I wondered whom he’d been talking to, to know so much about me.

“I sense”, he said again, with an air of pronouncement, “that your years on Chalcedony, after fleeing Earth, have been a period of withdrawal, almost of complacency. I would recommend a widening of your horizons, both geographically and personally – that is, you are a man in search of, in need of, love.”

I felt a curious ambivalence of emotions, then: first of all anger at the arrogant assumptions of this superior stranger, and then a gnawing apprehension that what he had said might contain a grain of truth.

Not that I would admit as much. “After what I went through on Earth”, I began, “I needed to get away. Matt and Maddie, Hawk and Kee… they’ve become my family.” As soon as I said this, I hated myself for feeling I had to justify my situation.

I said, “Anyway… I presume you didn’t come here to talk about me. You mentioned Matt?”

I was relieved when he nodded and said, “I take it he has returned to Chalcedony?”

“He came back last week.” He’d been away a month – on Epiphany, Acrab IV – a month away from Maddie, which he’d said was torture. He’d brought back a collection of what he called Epiphany Stones, which would be the centrepiece of his next work of art, due to be shown down at Mackinley in a few days.

Dortmund nodded. “Has Sommers told you anything about why he was on Epiphany, Conway?”

I decided to play my cards close to my chest. Matt had said something about the Stones he’d brought back, but I had no intention of telling Dortmund this.

“No. It’s all a bit hush-hush.” I hesitated, then said, “I’m eager to see the exhibition on Thursday.”

He inclined his head. “As am I, Conway. As am I.”

He finished his drink, rose to his considerable height, and inclined his head at me. Again his regard made me uneasy: I gained from the cold look in his eyes the idea that he was merely gazing upon me to confirm the negative impression he had already formed.

“I will see you at the exhibition,” he said, and stepped from the verandah.

I watched him walk across the sands, around the Fighting Jackeral, and disappear from sight.

* * *

I was about to order another coffee when a heavy hand fell on my shoulder. I looked up. “Hawk!”

I stood and embraced him, feeling the occipital console that spanned his shoulders like a yoke, and the spinal jacks which he used to interface with his starship.

He was wearing his faded black leather jacket and his piratical face was unshaven. All he needed to complete the image was an eye-patch – and perhaps a voluble parrot on his shoulder.

“How was the trip?” I asked. He’d taken Matt to Epiphany, via the golden column, and I hadn’t seen him since his return.

Maddie was behind him. “They had a great time,” she said. “I wish I’d gone with them.”

After the frosty presence of Darius Dortmund, it was nice to be in the company of friends. We ordered coffee. “No Matt? And where’s Kee?” I asked.