The Galaxy Game (3 page)

‘A seven-year posting is not for ever, Grace,’ Nasiha chided absently.

‘They will make it for ever. You know that,’ Grace muttered. ‘And you . . . you’re keeping secrets from me.’

Unexpectedly, Nasiha laughed. There was so much fondness and joy in her laughter that Grace responded with a huge grin, immediately disarmed. ‘Of course I am keeping secrets from you,’ she said, ‘but I thought you knew why.’

Grace shrugged. ‘I know you love me, but I also know you don’t take me seriously where some matters are concerned.’

Nasiha dipped her head and gave Grace a stern and censuring look from under frowning brows. ‘Nonsense. I am doing you a favour. I do not think that you would not keep my secrets, but it may be that you
could
not. And I do not wish to put your husband in an awkward position. He must maintain a good relationship with New Sadira in general and the Consul in particular. If I must plot disobedience, I will not involve you two.’

‘You should give us the choice,’ Grace grumbled.

‘We are all of us caught between duty and choice. They tell me that my children are the future of my people and I have a duty. But how can I ransom the freedoms of the unborn to an unknowable future?’

‘You say that now because of Cygnian influence. When you first arrived, all of you, your sole duty was to the survival of Sadira. Now you allow Terran and Ntshune riff-raff like me into your community and you don’t even flinch at the prospect of a diluted bloodline. That’s quite a change.’

‘New Sadira has changed, too, but in the opposite direction. There lies my dilemma.’

‘I wish you would let us do more.’

‘I
do
want you to do more. Would you save only me when so many others are in danger? Do your research, collaborate with the Academes, and as for your husband . . .’ Nasiha looked down, drew a breath and exhaled. ‘I know that Dllenahkh will strive to keep the name of Sadira from dishonour. I believe he has some challenges ahead of him. You must keep him stable and save him from despair.’

‘These sound like goodbyes,’ Grace said, her voice wavering.

Nasiha nodded. ‘One way or another, I will be leaving Cygnus Beta, and I believe it will be soon. I hope it will be in a way that I choose.’

She looked pensively at the window view as Grace quickly wiped her eyes and cleared her throat.

‘I’ve got some reports to finish. Call me if you need anything, and . . . finish recording that message, okay?’

Nasiha nodded as Grace stretched up to the recorder on the shelf, her hand filling the view as she reached towards it . . . then darkness and silence indicated that the glimpse into the past was at an end.

The Patron cleared his throat in a little staccato rhythm that made him sound far too much like his aunt. ‘That’s it. I take it you have the datacharm Commander Nasiha recorded for you?’

‘Yes,’ Narua said, or tried to say, but his voice was below a whisper, dry and tearless. He tried again with more force and spit. ‘Yes.’

‘What did she put on it?’

‘An old Sadiri lullaby. The melody is very pretty but the lyrics are a bit grim. Something about how getting married and having a hundred descendants is preferable to dying alone and forgotten and useless.’

‘Ah. I suppose things haven’t really changed that much in the Sadiri mindset.’

‘But she said . . . she said family can be a matter of choice, not birth.’

‘That’s a very Ntshune sentiment.’ The Patron sounded pleased.

‘And if your family is as large as a dynasty, your priorities change,’ Narua acknowledged.

The Patron shook his head and stared earnestly at the young Sadiri. ‘They don’t change, Narua. They deepen, they expand, but they don’t change as much as you think.’

He stood up briskly, bent and picked the charm out of the holo pit. ‘Keep looking for her. I will give you what help I can when I can. I only ask that you answer my call if I need you. Now, if you will, I have appointments elsewhere. Feel free to use my workroom and quarters while you go through the rest of the charms. All the tech is secure and surveillance-free.’

‘Thank you, Patron,’ Narua said, his voice almost breaking with surprise and emotion at the unexpected generosity.

He waited for the Patron to exit before tossing the bracelet of charms into the pit before him. Then he stretched out on the cushions and began to listen and watch.

Part One

Cygnus Beta

Chapter One

It was that hour of the game when sweat and blood began to rub together, skin sliding on skin, smudging the marks of allegiance and territory and leaving only the grav-band colours to identify the two teams. The audience was global and the cacophony shocking. Every drop and pull and sink was cursed and celebrated. A mosaic composed of myriad images of frenzied supporters enveloped the Wall in a hemisphere of seething colour. Players would occasionally look outwards into that mad, tilted sky and add their voices in shouts of triumph or fury, but for the most part they saved their breath for speed.

Adrenalin spiked high in players and spectators alike, pushed by the high risk and higher stakes. This was the best part. It was ruined by unfriendly white light flooding the room and washing out the rich, broad holo projection of seventeen carefully coordinated school slates. Cries of dismay rose up and as quickly died down again at the sight of the schoolmaster standing in the doorway with a tired expression on his face.

‘Boys, you are loud. Go to sleep. You will find out the score in the morning. Caps on, Riley, Kim and Dee. Caps straight, Pareti and Sajanettan. Put away those slates. Let all be in proper order before I leave this place. You – Abowen, Abyowan, however your name’s pronounced – aren’t you the new Saturday boy?’

The master’s voice was a marvel. It started at a resentful mutter, swelled to stern command and concluded with a sharp, querying snarl directed a student who was standing casually at the edge of the room. The boy looked as if he had been hoping – no – expecting to be overlooked. The sudden question startled him badly.

‘Yes, but . . . it’s Friday.’ Now he looked bewildered.

‘Not any more – it’s midnight. You know who I am, don’t you? My sister teaches you Telecoms and Transfers.’

‘Of course I know,’ the boy replied, oddly offended. ‘I’m not that new.’

The master’s expression turned suspiciously mild. ‘Barely a year, big school, high staff turnover with some teachers you know of but never see face to face – it wouldn’t be surprising if you didn’t know the connection. My office, east wing, nine tomorrow morning.’

The room had settled down. Leaving the Saturday boy to worry whether the appointment was for work or punishment, the master scanned the dormitory and, finding it relatively neat and its denizens subdued, gave a brief, approving nod.

‘Lights out,’ he said, closed the door and set off without a backward look. The slow fade would give them all plenty of time to get into bed.

He jogged down the corridor with as much haste and dignity as could be managed on too many sedentary years and a creaky ankle. ‘Loud,’ he grumbled to himself. ‘Pestilential interference is the problem. A seventeen-slate array! Selfish, unthinking poppets!’

The lift tower at the corner of east and south was illuminated solely by the starlight from its long, narrow windows, but he stepped onto the lift pad with the sixth sense of familiarity and gave it a solid stamp. It carried him up to the second level as he muttered, this time with a touch of admiration, ‘Enterprising little
moujins
. Galia will be proud.’

Their lodgings were at the opposite end of the wing from his office. He had insisted. Life was too complicated without maintaining a few artificial boundaries. Galia did not have an office; she did not need one. She stayed in their small set of rooms, keeping mainly to the large study.
He
called it a study. Most visitors simply called it . . . strange. The walls were full of fixed shelves, the upper air dangled leashes from a couple of floating shelves, and nothing touched the wooden floor but Galia’s own feet and her old-fashioned walking stick. She stood leaning on it, considering a slate propped on a shelf opposite her. It was silently broadcasting a small flat-view of that same match he had shut down in the north wing first-level-boys’ dormitory.

‘In, Silyan,’ she told him as he hesitated in the doorway. The brief exchange said everything about which sibling was elder and dominant.

The floor of the study had a pleasing give, a slight bounce. He enjoyed it. It was how his feet knew he was home. Galia turned away from the slate and the movement of her considerable mass sent a familiar pulse through the floor: the sharp vibration of walking stick and the low-amplitude surge of the shifting from left foot to right.

‘Image improved. Well done. How many?’

‘Seventeen.’

She acknowledged the feat with a nod and a minor show of her dimples. ‘Sometimes they pay attention.’

She tapped her cane. Two other slates switched on from their stations on the walls, there was a momentary blur and the full holo coalesced in the centre of the room, almost filling it to the ceiling. Her brother’s eyes went wide from the sheer impact of the holo’s size and fine-grained detail. He silently watched both the game and Galia’s concentration. He would have been making notes, looking up strategies, anything to keep a proper sense of what was going on rather than superficially enjoying the speed and skill of the players, but she was far above him and only her mouth moved as she whispered numbers and formulae to herself.

A sadness as sudden and deep as a Punartam double-sunset fell over his spirit. ‘Are you so sure? Are they so sure?’

Galia was untouched by any doubt. ‘What else is there to do?’

They balanced each other, moments bound by a shared pivot point – blood, ability and a common prison. The more information they received, the more certain she became; the greater the potential for success, the more his terror grew that they would fail. Hope for a distant dream was sweeter, gentler and easier to bear than hope on the blade-edge of freedom or utter disaster. At different times they kept each other from despair. She looked at him with a small smile that teased him for his cold feet and sparked enough of the old sibling rivalry to fire up his courage again.

‘I have not moved or fought,’ she said, ‘but standing still is not surrender. Look at the players. It’s about timing. It is always about timing. You must move when the circumstances are right or you will fall. Look at the strategists. They stand still and hold the reins. Sometimes we are players and sometimes we are strategists.’

Silyan looked. Anyone could understand the game with a glance. Players ran and climbed and slid from the base of the Wall to the top. They obstructed their opponents and carried their mates. They moved together as closely as possible; a scattered team lost weight and leverage in more ways than one. They tried to tilt the Wall in their favour, making it easy for even the weakest to reach the goal. That was the game at first glance and many supporters needed no more to enjoy their wins and mourn their losses. For those who knew, there was more, much more. For example, how a certain concentration and configuration of players could tilt the Wall against the other team, or how the sudden shifts of gravity might cause not merely a fall but even, in the case of a slow or unskilled player, a dangerous shear that could rip limb from body. Most of all, the true aficionados knew that the key to the game was in the hands of the strategists, a pair of players who never ran or climbed but stood before the Wall, working at low-slanted grids on easels and orchestrating the moves of their team with pre-programmed manoeuvres coordinated through the push and pull of grav-bands on their wrists. One commentator described it as holding the reins for an entire derby of horses while trying to keep them from trampling each other, running off the track or colliding with the rails.

Silyan had never ridden a horse, but he had kept order in a dormitory of fifty boys of varying parapsychological and physical abilities. The reins were long enough and strong enough that he could, as Galia said, stand still and manipulate them with knowledge and timing alone.

There was hazard, too. A player on the Wall might run the risk of shear or a tumble to the base with no hope of medical assistance until the traditional whistle for game-over, but a strategist captain and his deputy were the only ones who faced consequences after the final whistle, consequences that could be as trivial as a brief loss of credit or as permanent as dismissal and dishonour.

Silyan and Galia had no credit to lose, and dismissal, whether under cloud or glory, would have been a gift. So they stayed, he anxious, she calm, both awaiting a shift of forces that could tilt the Wall in their favour.

*

In the end, he was the one who almost forgot the morning appointment with the Saturday boy. It had been a late night, watching and pondering the game, and he had not slept well, watching and pondering his dreams. It was fifteen minutes before nine when he came to his office, not for the appointment but to reread some recent articles from Punartam. He was not fully the schoolmaster, still rumpled and too-comfortable in an old tunic and a frayed but warm mantle to shield him from the chill of the building’s thick, ancient stone. The knock on the door startled him upright from his recliner, disorientating him from a reality of formats and formulae until he remembered who and where he was and shouted permission for the boy to enter.

The door opened.

‘Master,’ the boy greeted him. There was deference in the lowered head, but his eyes were cautious and his jaw tense as if, though no longer a novice, he still did not know what to expect.

‘Sit.’ He made the command friendly but his eyes kept a close watch on the boy as he sat on a chair beside a table with breakable things like confiscated games, old-model slates and half-full pesto jars, and in the middle of it all an intricate game strategy board wedged between two slates and a stack of old books.

‘Rafi Abowen Delarua. You’ve spent a full year at the Lyceum now. How are you faring?’