Read Online Flight of the Vajra by Serdar Yegulalp - Free Book Online
Authors: Serdar Yegulalp
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check instead. Even
when “off” the CL still responded to near-field requests from those with authority,
and in most jurisdictions it was mandatory for a CL to generate a reply to Who are you?
Angharad’s room had one wall open to face one of
the inner gardens, where a three-level fountain burbled and attracted the
occasional bird. The room itself was minimal—matted floors, small round
cushions for guests, and a large square one (more like a platform) on which Her
Grace herself sat at the far end of the room.
Millennia of civilization have not managed to make
it any less startling to see someone in person for the first time after you’ve
spent half a lifetime only looking at pictures or replaying CL dumps. She had
more than a few biological years on me, and true to her Old Way heritage she
wore with pride the slight lines in her face and the tinges of gray in her
hair. She wore the same midnight blue wimple and robes she’d been clad in on
the posters, with what I knew to be waist-length black hair wound tight in a
multi-coiled coiffure. Two ropes of that coiffure peeked out from either side
of the wimple, framing her face all the more closely, accentuating her
purple-grey eyes and her smile—which in every picture I’d seen always looked
like she was welcoming a friend.
“Mister Sim!” (And seeing her is nothing compared
to the jolt you get when you hear her actually saying your name. ) “Please,
sit. If there is anything you would like, the Lodge offers a full range of
refreshments.”
“I’m fine, thank you.” I sounded a lot creakier
and less confident than I thought I would. She sounded like just saying hello
to someone in that contralto of hers was more fun than anything else you could
ask her to do. For some reason it was hard for me to get into a proper
crosslegged seating position in front of her, and I felt doubly weird towering
over her even when sitting down. She was barely taller than Enid herself, maybe
a hundred sixty centimeters to my full two meters and change.
“I, uh . . . ” (Cosm take it all, what do you say to the living avatar of the belief system you were reared in and then
left behind? “Heard you missed me”?) “This was all kind of out of the
blue, you know, so I’m a little . . . Look, how did you find me?”
“This isn’t a very large town. One of my personal
assistants overheard your name being mentioned in what appeared to be an
argument in the open-air section of a hotel’s restaurant. She identified you
and came to me.”
The woman in the blue robes. Well, serves
me right for staring back, I guess. And it wasn’t as if someone looking for me
under my real name wouldn’t eventually find me. I had never bothered to hide:
anyone who came looking for me usually came away massively disappointed anyway.
“I had been meaning to speak with you after the
incident with your family,” she went on, tamping down the buoyancy in her voice
a bit. “Unfortunately, I was unable to make contact with you, and then you
withdrew from public life for quite some time.”
People tend to do things like that after their
family and best friend die, I thought. Along with tons of other folks whose big
mistake that day was simply being together in the same ship.
“Wait, you were looking for me back then, too?” I
said.
“I was, but I did a very poor job of it.” She
sounded even more reserved now, eyes down a little further. “At the time, I
paid, I admit, little attention to such things as starship disasters. But when
word reached me about the restitution campaign you attempted, I attempted to
contact you. By then, however, you had removed yourself from the public eye.
So, again, I apologize.”
“Well—” I don’t remember what I originally had in
mind to say after that, because the laugh that came out of me instead swept it
clean away. “From the sound of it, if anyone should apologize, it’s me .
I’m the one that squirreled himself away for so long.” I
when “off” the CL still responded to near-field requests from those with authority,
and in most jurisdictions it was mandatory for a CL to generate a reply to Who are you?
Angharad’s room had one wall open to face one of
the inner gardens, where a three-level fountain burbled and attracted the
occasional bird. The room itself was minimal—matted floors, small round
cushions for guests, and a large square one (more like a platform) on which Her
Grace herself sat at the far end of the room.
Millennia of civilization have not managed to make
it any less startling to see someone in person for the first time after you’ve
spent half a lifetime only looking at pictures or replaying CL dumps. She had
more than a few biological years on me, and true to her Old Way heritage she
wore with pride the slight lines in her face and the tinges of gray in her
hair. She wore the same midnight blue wimple and robes she’d been clad in on
the posters, with what I knew to be waist-length black hair wound tight in a
multi-coiled coiffure. Two ropes of that coiffure peeked out from either side
of the wimple, framing her face all the more closely, accentuating her
purple-grey eyes and her smile—which in every picture I’d seen always looked
like she was welcoming a friend.
“Mister Sim!” (And seeing her is nothing compared
to the jolt you get when you hear her actually saying your name. ) “Please,
sit. If there is anything you would like, the Lodge offers a full range of
refreshments.”
“I’m fine, thank you.” I sounded a lot creakier
and less confident than I thought I would. She sounded like just saying hello
to someone in that contralto of hers was more fun than anything else you could
ask her to do. For some reason it was hard for me to get into a proper
crosslegged seating position in front of her, and I felt doubly weird towering
over her even when sitting down. She was barely taller than Enid herself, maybe
a hundred sixty centimeters to my full two meters and change.
“I, uh . . . ” (Cosm take it all, what do you say to the living avatar of the belief system you were reared in and then
left behind? “Heard you missed me”?) “This was all kind of out of the
blue, you know, so I’m a little . . . Look, how did you find me?”
“This isn’t a very large town. One of my personal
assistants overheard your name being mentioned in what appeared to be an
argument in the open-air section of a hotel’s restaurant. She identified you
and came to me.”
The woman in the blue robes. Well, serves
me right for staring back, I guess. And it wasn’t as if someone looking for me
under my real name wouldn’t eventually find me. I had never bothered to hide:
anyone who came looking for me usually came away massively disappointed anyway.
“I had been meaning to speak with you after the
incident with your family,” she went on, tamping down the buoyancy in her voice
a bit. “Unfortunately, I was unable to make contact with you, and then you
withdrew from public life for quite some time.”
People tend to do things like that after their
family and best friend die, I thought. Along with tons of other folks whose big
mistake that day was simply being together in the same ship.
“Wait, you were looking for me back then, too?” I
said.
“I was, but I did a very poor job of it.” She
sounded even more reserved now, eyes down a little further. “At the time, I
paid, I admit, little attention to such things as starship disasters. But when
word reached me about the restitution campaign you attempted, I attempted to
contact you. By then, however, you had removed yourself from the public eye.
So, again, I apologize.”
“Well—” I don’t remember what I originally had in
mind to say after that, because the laugh that came out of me instead swept it
clean away. “From the sound of it, if anyone should apologize, it’s me .
I’m the one that squirreled himself away for so long.” I
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