Unnerby stared out at the ocean and the sky above. Sometimes wrong turnings were the best kind. "That's okay. God, what a view." The breaks in the clouds were like deep canyons. The light coming down them flared red and near-red, reflections of sunset. A billion rubies glinted in the water droplets on the foliage around them. He scrambled out the back of the auto, and walked a little way through the sprouts toward the end of the promontory. The forest mat squelched deep and wet beneath his feet. After a moment, Sherkaner followed him.
The breeze coming off the ocean was moist and cool. You didn't have to be the Met Department to know a storm was coming. He looked out over the water. They were standing less than three miles from the breakers, about as close as it was safe to be in this phase of the sun. From here you could see the turbulence and hear the grinding. Three icebergs were stranded, towering, in the surf. But there were hundreds more, stretching off to the horizon. It was the eternal battle, the fire from the New Sun against the ice of the good earth. Neither could finally win. It would be twenty years before the last of the shallows ice had surfaced and melted. By then, the sun would be waning. Even Sherkaner seemed subdued by the scene.
Victory Smith had left the auto, but instead of following them, she walked back, along the south edge of the promontory.The poor General.She can't decide if this trip is business or pleasure. Unnerby was just as happy they wouldn't get down to Lands Command in one whack.
They walked back to Smith. On this side of the promontory, the ground dropped into a little valley. On the high ground beyond there was some kind of building, perhaps a small inn. Smith was standing where the bedrock edge of the drop-off was nicked, and the slope was not deadly steep. Once, the road might have continued down into the little valley and up the other side.
Sherkaner stopped by his wife's side and draped his left arms over her shoulders; after a moment she slipped two of her arms over his, never saying a word. Unnerby walked to the edge and dipped his head over the drop-off. There were traces of road cut, all the way to the bottom. But the storms and floods of the Early Bright had gouged new cliffs. The valley itself was charming, untouched and clean. "Heh, heh. No way we're going to drive down there, ma'am. The road is washed clean away."
Victory Smith was silent for a moment. "Yes. Washed clean. That's for the best... ."
Sherk said, "You know, we could probably walk across, and up the other side." He jabbed a hand at the inn on the hillcrest beyond the valley. "We could see if Lady Encl—"
Victory gave him a sharp, rippling hug. "No. That place couldn't put up more than the three of us, anyway. We'll camp with my security team."
After a moment, Sherk gave a little laugh. "...Fine by me. I'm curious to see a modern motorized bivouac." They followed Smith back to the trail. By the time they reached the vehicles, Sherkaner was in full form, some scheme for lightweight tents that could survive even the storms of the First Bright.
FIFTEEN
Tomas Nau stood at his bedroom window, looking out. In fact, his rooms were fifty meters deep in Diamond One, but the view out his window was from the loftiest spire of Hammerfest. His estate had grown since the Relighting. Cut diamond slabs made adequate walls, and the surviving special craftsmen would spend their lives polishing and faceting, carving friezes as intricate as anything Nau had owned at home.
The grounds around Hammerfest had been planed smooth, tiled with metals from the ore dump on Diamond Two. He tried to keep the rockpile oriented so only Hammerfest's flag spire actually spiked into the sunlight. The last year or so, that caution wasn't really necessary, but staying in the shade meant that water ice could be used for shielding and some gluework. Arachna hung halfway up the sky, a brilliant blue-and-white disk almost half a degree across. Its light was bright and soft across the castle grounds. It was all quite a contrast to the first Msecs here, the hell of the Relight. Nau had worked five years to create the present view, the peace, the beauty.
Five years. And how many years more would they be stuck here? Thirty to forty was the specialists' best estimate; however long it took the Spiders to create an industrial ecology. It was funny how things had worked out. This really was an Exile, though quite unlike what he had planned back on Balacrea. That original mission had been a different kind of calculated risk: a couple of centuries away from the increasingly deadly politics of the home regime, an opportunity to breed his resources away from poachers—and the outside, golden chance that they might learn the secrets of a star-faring nonhuman race. He hadn't counted on the Qeng Ho arriving first.
