The Galaxy Game (37 page)

Kirat began to fuss slightly, bored at all the talk. Tarik raised a hand and the two young novices took the children out of the room. Silyan brought his hands to his face and dragged them slowly over his eyes. ‘This is . . . ambitious.’

‘But it could save both their lives,’ Tarik replied quietly. ‘Once we hoped it would be enough to keep our family together.’

Silyan knew what was coming. He had sensed it even from those early days of polite greetings and casual conversation. He knew that Tarik wanted something from him.

‘Can you teach Kirat and Siha to have what you have with Galia?’

‘I don’t know!’ he cried out. Why did people ask him such things, as if it had not been enough to produce that one miracle of transit? ‘Can such things be taught? We were abandoned, untutored, unsocialised. No one taught us how to
be
.’

‘Can you try? You and Galia may be the first, but you must not be the last. I am asking you and Galia to raise Kiratsiha as best you can. Another experiment, another necessity.’ His expression became suddenly, tragically agonised. ‘My wife is still missing. I have searched this entire planet for her, and now I must search elsewhere. I have heard of a mindship whose pilot was so badly injured that it was forced to absorb the physical body to keep the human consciousness alive and intact. If that rumour is true, it means there remains one pilot from Cygnus Beta whom I have not yet asked about my wife.’

‘Where is this mindship now?’ Silyan asked.

Tarik exhaled slowly. ‘I have been told to try the old Sadiri monasteries and retreat colonies,’ he mumbled. ‘That will be my first step.’

Silyan tried to warn Tarik about the utter lunacy of seeking a single human in the vastness of the inhabited galaxy, but he could not find the words and he could not keep the pity from his eyes.

Rather than be offended by that pity, Tarik chose to use it. ‘If Kiratsiha stays with me, New Sadira may discover his secret and Siha will be taken away from us. Siha and Kirat can live with you as orphans from the Lyceum or acolytes from Tirtha. Whatever tale you care to tell, it will be accepted.’

Silyan’s secret guilt pricked him and he hesitated, suspended between the cruelty of no and the folly of yes. At last he spoke, faltering but honest. ‘I think I will say yes – I know I will. Perhaps I owe this to the universe for all my sins and all my gifts, but . . . when I say yes, I fear your children may never see you again.’

Tears filled Tarik’s eyes, but he stayed resolutely focused on Silyan. ‘That may be the case. I would rather them safe and distant than close and in peril.’

Silyan bowed his head in respect for Tarik’s hard choice. ‘I need a moment alone.’

Tarik got up and opened a small door at the side of the room. ‘These steps lead to the top of the tower. No one will disturb you there.’

The curving staircase went up and up and ended at another small door secured with a crude bolt on the inside. Silyan unfastened it, took a few more steps up and found himself space and solitude in the form of a circle bordered with low battlements, low enough for him to see the distant lights of Piedra and Masuf glimmering in the twilight. That same twilight greyed the surrounding semi-desert to emptiness, a void in which the twin cities floated with the watchtower as midpoint, fulcrum, nexus and anchor. What did Galia think of all this, of bringing two strangers into their self-contained circle? He questioned her mind within his and felt her unique response: she was intrigued; she wondered about the balance; she would try the experiment for the sake of the possible findings. Silyan laughed to himself. She would leave the guilt and the pity for Tarik to him; her mind was and always had been on another plane. There was no one like her, and he doubted either part of Kiratsiha could compare, but he did miss his students a little and here were two for the asking.

And yet Tarik’s pain spoke to him – the pain of losing his wife, giving up his children and leaving his community. He had been part of that kind of pain through his work with the Lyceum. Something was owed.

The battlements were ancient and crumbling, with decaying mortar and weathered rubble. He took time to gather a talisman for a promise. Descending to the living room, he gave Tarik three stones and said, ‘You will lend us your children for a while and we will do our best. But the stones of this watchtower will draw you to return. Say it.’

Tarik’s eyes were still wet but his face was peaceful and his voice was steady as he held the dusty stones in his hand and promised, ‘By the stones of the watchtower, I will return.’

Acknowledgements

Continued thanks and appreciation go to my father and my sister; to Robert Edison Sandiford, Esther Phillips and so many others in the Barbadian literary community who inspire me to improve and persevere; to the staff of the Cooke Agency, especially Sally Harding and Ron Eckel, for outstanding professional support; to Betsy Mitchell, Dvorah Simon, Karen Burnham and Cheryl Morgan for help both great and small on the first draft; to the editors and publicists at Del Rey and Jo Fletcher Books, especially Tricia Narwani, Greg Kubie, Alexandra Coumbis, Jo Fletcher and Nicola Budd; and to the readers . . . because as much as I enjoy writing these stories for myself, I get even more pleasure from the knowledge that someone else is enjoying them too.