Most of Vancouver Island was park. You had to wait your turn for camping, but day trips were unrestricted and Victoria offered visitors an abundance of services. The smaller businesses among these were accustomed to cash payments. In the morning Kenmuir and Aleka would get a private, manned cab to Sprucetop Lodge in the mountains. From there it was a stiff day’s hike down to the Fireball property, where the gate should recognize him and let them in.
First they would take a night’s rest here. The risk seemed less than the need.
As they left the café Where they had had dinner, light blazed off windows in the Parliament buildings. It was as if those stately museum pieces momentarily remembered how life once busied itself within them. The light streamed from a sun golden-hazed on the horizon, threw a glade across the bay, drenched lawns and flowerbeds, gilded the wings of two belated gulls asoar in silver-blue. A group of young people stood gathered on a dock. Song lifted, a guitar toned, otherwise the evening lay quiet and few folk moved along the streets.
“Beautiful,” Aleka murmured.
“Yes.” Kenmuir barred himself from calling it somehow sad. Was that only his mood?
“Like home,” she said.
He arched his brows. “Really?”
“Oh, the country, the air, everything’s different. What a wonderfully various planet this is, no? But the peace and happiness, they’re the same.”
Which she hoped to preserve on Nauru. Could she? Even if this crazy gamble of theirs, incredibly, paid off, could she?
They started toward the house where they had engaged bed and breakfast. Perhaps that caused her to fall silent. They had agreed on the tubeway that it would be safest, minimally noticeable, to stay as companions. “I can mind my manners,” he promised, feeling a flush in his cheeks. She nodded, smiled, and relieved him by saying no more.
Instead they had mostly talked of what was past and what might come to be. Bit by bit, shyly at first, later more freely, they grew well acquainted, and liked what they found.
They were walking along a tree-shaded boulevard, already in twilight, before she spoke further. “I want to show you my home.”
“I’d love to see it,” he answered. See it, and know it for doomed.
“This place reminds me so much,” she repeated herself. “Not that I haven’t been in others like it, in their particular ways. We do live in a golden age, almost.”
Though he didn’t want to argue, he was unable to let a misstatement go by. “May I point out that gold is solid and inert?”
She frowned. “You needn’t. I’ve heard enough about how nothing ever really changes any more, how we’re at the end of science and art and adventure.”
“Aren’t we?”
“Look around you.” She stopped, which made him jerk to a halt, turned, and gestured back toward the water. How supple every movement was, he thought. “Those youngsters there, or those we saw leaving Winnipeg, or nearly any kids anywhere. To them, the world is new. Love and sport and Earth and Moon, all the great works, all the story of our race, it’s theirs.”
“True,” he must concede. “I’ll never use up the facts in the databases. Or Shakespeare or Beethoven, I’ll never discover everything that’s in them. A lifetime’s too short for it.”
“Exactly.”
“Nonetheless you’re at odds with the system.”
She stamped her foot. “How often will we go over this ground? Haven’t we trampled it flat by now?” She resumed walking, long strides. “I didn’t claim things are perfect, or ever will be. We’ll always have to fight off entropy.”
He’d clumsied again. Rather than apologize, which she’d told him he did too readily, he attempted a chuckle. “I didn’t expect such a trope from you.” She glanced at him. Her eyes lighted the dusk. “Oh, you know your physics, but I think of you more in terms of sea and wind and—Yes, the universe does still hold plenty of surprises.”
She dropped whatever annoyance she had felt. Earnestness remained. “And we won’t go static, either. Like my Lahui, why, they’ve got all sorts of evolving to do yet. I bet they’ll become something nobody foresaw.”
He knew he should mumble agreement and proceed to inconsequential. He couldn’t. Was that stubbornness, or was it respect for her intelligence? “Will it matter, though?”
“What do you mean?”
“The cybercosm tolerates us—”
“It helps us!” she exclaimed. “Without it, Earth would be … a poisoned desert … and savages fighting for scraps.”
“Maybe. Or maybe we would have solved our problems by ourselves.” He raised a hand. “In any case, the situation is what it is. Very well, I grant you, the cybercosm is not unkindly. It serves us, you might even say it indulges us. The monsters, the genocide artists of history, those were human.”
“And we’re freed of their kind.”
“To what end? To keep us contented, out from underfoot, while the cybercosm goes on to its destiny?”
“Which is?” she demanded.
“You’ve heard. It’s been prophesied for centuries, since before artificial intelligence existed. Mind, pure mind, taking over the universe.”
“Do you mind?” Her laugh went sweet through the quietness. “Me, I’m not jealous. I just want my people to make their own future.”
“But in that, aren’t they constrained, guided, shaped to fit into limits set for them?”
She tossed her head. “I haven’t noticed much constraint or guidance on me lately.”
No, he thought. She was with him on a mission they did not understand. Lilisaire’s cause, devious and dubious. Irony: It would deny a home in space to humans who shared his longings; it would confront and in some dark way endanger the order of things that nurtured Aleka; yet still they waged their forlorn campaign.
Together.
The words flew out as if of themselves. “I don’t believe anything short of reconditioning could compel you. I’ve never known anyone more independent.”
She caught his hand. The clasp glowed. “Gracias. You’re no auhaukapu either.”
They stopped once more and faced one another. Briefly, marvelingly, he wondered how that had happened. It was at a deserted intersection. The sky had turned violet and the Moon, waxing toward the half, seemed brightened thereby. They did not let go their hold.
“How I want you to meet the Lahui,” she said low. “I can imagine you joining us. We could use your skills and, and you.”
He shook his bewildered head. “No, I’m too old, too alloyed with my habits.”
Her teeth gleamed. “Nonsense! You outperform every young buck I can name. That time in Overburg—”
“The fight? That was nothing.” He forced honesty: “And, in a way, I brought it on.”
“How?”
“Oh, I—I’d accepted Bruno’s … hospitality, and he naturally expected—” Kenmuir choked.
“Maopopo ia’u.” He heard the scorn. “I know. He figured me for property, like his women.”
Trapped, he floundered about. “I, I didn’t like it—didn’t see how to say no, when he got insistent—”
“Why should I blame you?” she asked soothingly.
“But I think you should know—I’d like you to know—” He struggled. “When I was alone with her, I couldn’t.”
“Oh, Kenmuir.”
“The situation, and, and clearly she didn’t care—I said I was very tired, and she yawned, and … we both went to sleep.”
Aleka threw back her head. Her laughter rang.
In Kenmuir, chagrin faded to ruefulness. His heart thuttered less loudly. After all, how important was this? Lilisaire. Meanwhile, he had—reassured?—his friend.
Aleka sobered. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“Don’t be.” He managed a smile. “It is rather funny.”
She took his other hand as well and looked directly up at him. “You’re a lovely man, you are. And we have no idea where we’re bound. Most likely to failure. Maybe we’ll go free, maybe not. But Pele grins.”
He waited.
“We’ve got tonight,” she said.
He woke once. An old-style window, open to cool air and a breeze that lulled in leaves, faced west. The Moon shone through. It barely brought from shadow the curves along shoulder and arm and cheek where she lay breathing close against his side. Happiness welled quietly up in him. For this short spell, the Moon was the home of peace.