The Great Wheel (50 page)

“Does it have a name?”

She chuckled. “Several.”

He turned slowly to look at her. He saw her smiling, outlined against the stars.

“Will you stay for a while, John? Will you come over there with me?”

“I can’t just go across, though, can I?”

“It’s only a couple of days here in Median for quarantine, and then a few more to let your recombinants subside. And these gloves—” She drew a slow, bright curve. “I hate them. These rules. But it’s the price you pay. There’s always a price, isn’t there?”

“Then it’s really true, that on the satellites it doesn’t matter?”

“It’s what I told you, John. It’s a controlled environment. The dangers aren’t the ones you get down there…unless someone carries them up. Recombinants are hardly needed, and it doesn’t matter what color your eyes are. In fact, there are quite a lot of my people up here. There”—a smile—“you see! I still think of them as my people. But I’m glad we’re here. All of us. It’s the best chance we have. I remember when we ran out in the streets under those skies, and the witchwomen, the star-maps, the moonstones…” She blinked. Her eyes were shining. “One day, this’ll be about more than just tending the climate, John. One day, we’ll…” Laurie shook her head, gazing out at the turning wheel of the great station. “I wish I could show you.”

“I really can’t go over there, Laurie. I have to return to Rome. I have an appointment with the bishop tomorrow, and the last reentry’s—when?” He looked at his watch. When he touched it with his fingers, it told him that he had less than an hour.

“Okay,” she said. “It’s not as though we’re…”

“No.”

“…never going to see each other again. I mean, I just wanted to settle, John. To get used to being
here.
You do understand that?”

“It was what I needed too.”

“But if you really are…if you’re going back on the reentry. I need to go back myself. It’s where I live, and I have a shift tonight.”

“What you do, does it have anything to do with structural communication?”

“Structural what?”

“It was just a thought.”

Laurie floated in the starry darkness, her shining hands outstretched. He took them and felt the warmth of her flesh through the thin gloves.

He said, “I’ll stay here alone for a while.”

“You brought Hal’s remains with you, didn’t you?”

He nodded.

“Maybe we could…” She let go of him as she pondered something, then shook her head and waved a hand. The motion made her begin to drift away, and at their backs the space station she called home rolled on and on over Earth’s darkside. “Over there, it makes you dizzy at first, although they’ve never quite worked out why. Something called the Coriolis force.”

He said, “
Gunafana,
Laurie,” as she drifted, before she could pull herself back to him.

He saw her grin.

“You just said good evening,” she said. “Even here, John, it isn’t evening.”

“Goodbye, then.”

Her face flashed out of the moon’s light. She became a thinning silhouette as she waved to him from the tunnel leading from the dome, then there was nothing at all.

He looked out into space, where time poured from the darkness and where, so close, the endless lights of the space station turned. She’d be there again soon, tumbling over and over in that great wheel where all hands were joined. Or that, anyway, was how he’d like to leave it. That was what he’d like to think.

He looked at the Earth’s gleaming darkside curve. Even with all the wonders of up here, down there was still more wonderful, and vast. He gazed at his planet for a timeless moment, feeling the glint of stars and satellites all around him, breathing Laurie’s scent as it faded in the silent air, knowing that he was truly here, and watching as the hidden but rising sun broke a silver crescent on the gleaming rim of the River Ocean. Just as the sun began to throw filaments of light into his eyes, he saw something else flash below in the near-darkness, a silver capsule breaking the surface of the atmosphere like an arrow, a pointing finger, a line of fire where all elements were joined. Blue and black and white. It was the last of Hal. A shooting star.

Father John turned away and floated back towards the lighted tunnel.

Ian R. MacLeod is the acclaimed writer of challenging and innovative speculative and fantastic fiction. His most recent novel,
Wake Up and Dream
, won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History, while his previous works have won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and the World Fantasy Award, and have been translated into many languages. His short story, “Snodgrass,” was developed for television in the United Kingdom as part of the Sky Arts series
Playhouse Presents
. MacLeod grew up in the West Midlands region of England, studied law, and spent time working and dreaming in the civil service before moving on to teaching and house-husbandry. He lives with his wife in the riverside town of Bewdley.

Gillian Bowskill

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1997 by Ian R. MacLeod

Cover design by Michel Vrana

978-1-4804-2370-1

This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media

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