CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

 

 

HERE’S A MAN who enjoys playing god too much.

Moonlight and the perfume of jasmine—the garden inside the Madrugal Tier gave off the illusion of a courtyard. Saurebaras watched Madrugal rearrange the Archer’s Ring in a sand garden the length and breadth of Polyteknical’s driveway. She doubted if he or the late Ignazia had been religious, or even remotely spiritual, but she could not deny the serene order he brought to his creation, a spiral of fine black sand bordered by white pebbles. A polished boulder was half buried in the centre of the spiral. This represented Gachala, and the moss covering the rock approximated the sun’s hue, depending on Cabuchon’s atmospheric conditions.

Spreading out from the boulder and placed at regular intervals were the other settlements and bodies in orbit. A rough crescent-shaped block of sandstone was Tahel, but did no justice to the streamlined parabola visible on a clear night. On the neighbouring spiral arm lay four rhodochrosite spheres arranged in a square: Synarc, a Tagmat military complex of interlinked bases.

In an inspired improvisation, Madrugal had used quartz pellets for the Demarcation, ever-shifting in its distribution according to the defence of the Archer’s Ring.

She stumbled across a violet sphere of amethyst under a bougainvillea bush.

“You’ve found the Archives!”

A servitor rolled towards the bush, extracted the sphere and restored it to its rightful place. Purple to represent knowledge, and there was plenty of that in the Archives, a repository housed in a hollowed-out moon.

“Could you entertain a personal request?”

“It depends.”

“I’m expecting visitors tomorrow night. You’d do me an honour if you danced for them.”

“That was my previous life, which ended yesterday.”

“But that was only yesterday.”

“Yesterday’s gone, along with everything else,” insisted Saurebaras.

Madrugal scratched his chin thoughtfully. “By next week it’ll indeed become your previous life. Indulge me—in Ignazia’s memory and for old times’ sake?”

“You invite the wrath of the Aronts by letting me stay here.”

Madrugal laughed. “Let’s pray they’re that stupid to break the accord. My Sarisses haven’t seen action for a while. Here comes one now for a little demonstration.”

The Sarisse guard wore moss-green armour trimmed with black.

“Slice the armour,” Madrugal told Saurebaras.

She opened a concealed pocket in her skirt and took out her caltrop, and swiped at the guard’s chest. Slivers of armour fell away, but the armour was already healing itself.

“This looks like skin.” Saurebaras examined the slivers on her caltrop. They fell to the grass like shaved mica.

“Skin is the first armour we wear.” Madrugal beamed as he dismissed the guard.

“You’ll tell that to your investors?”

“From the outset. The wearer suffers minimal damage when the fibres slough off. Physical force is neutralised or dissipated. Plus, there’s almost instantaneous regeneration provided at least eighty percent of the armour is still intact.” He coughed. “So, may I repeat my request? Please dance for my guests tomorrow night?”

Refreshed by the calm surroundings, Saurebaras agreed. The Madrugal Tier seemed to have shed its claustrophobic feel since Ignazia had died, and she didn’t want to think about next week or month.

He left her in the garden under a trellis decorated with bamboo and leaping carp motifs. The subtle scent of syringa hanging in the night air was undercut by dessert cubes opening in the warm air, with twig-thin carrots called hairpins piled up in a dish next to the cubes. Saurebaras had never liked the sweet fermented paste mashed out of high yield corn.

She retired to the guest room, the embroidered curtains now faded. A miniature Gachalan disk rested on the family altar. The red femtopaper cutouts reconfigured themselves into phoenixes, dancing around longevity peaches and dragons clutching fiery pearls.