53 The Golden Mask ‘We’ve always pretended she doesn’t exist,’ Mirissa said. ‘But now I would like to see her – just once.’ Loren was silent for a while. Then he answered, ‘You know that Captain Bey has never allowed any visitors.’ Of course she knew that; she also understood the reasons why. Although it had aroused some resentment at first, everyone on Thalassa now realized that Magellan’s small crew was far too busy to act as tour guides – or nursemaids – to the unpredictable fifteen per cent who would become nauseated in the ship’s zero-gravity sections. Even President Farradine had been tactfully turned down. ‘I’ve spoken to Moses – and he’s spoken to the captain. It’s all arranged. But it’s to be kept secret until the ship has left.’ Loren stared at her in amazement; then he smiled. Mirissa was always surprising him; that was part of her attraction. And he realized, with a twinge of sadness, that no one on Thalassa had a better right to this privilege; her brother was the only other Lassan to have made the journey. Captain Bey was a fair man, willing to alter the rules when necessary. And once the ship had left, only three days from now, it would not matter. ‘Suppose you’re spacesick?’ ‘I’ve never even been seasick -‘ ‘- that doesn’t prove anything -‘ ‘- and I’ve seen Commander Newton. She’s given me a ninety-five per cent rating. And she suggests the midnight shuttle – there won’t be any villagers around then.’ ‘You’ve thought of everything, haven’t you?’ Loren said in frank admiration. ‘I’ll meet you at Number Two Landing, fifteen minutes before midnight.’ He paused, then added with difficulty, ‘I won’t be coming down again. Please say good-bye to Brant for me.’ That was an ordeal he could not face. Indeed, he had not set foot in the Leonidas residence since Kumar had made his last voyage and Brant had returned to comfort Mirissa. Already, it was almost as if Loren had never entered their lives. And he was inexorably leaving theirs, for now he could look on Mirissa with love but without desire. A deeper emotion – one of the worst pains he had ever known – now filled his mind. He had longed, and hoped, to see his child – but Magellan’s new schedule made that impossible. Though he had heard his son’s heartbeats, mingled with his mother’s, he would never hold him in his arms. The shuttle made its rendezvous on the day side of the planet, so Magellan was still almost a hundred kilometres away when Mirissa first saw it. Even though she knew its real size, it looked like a child’s toy as it glittered in the sunlight. From ten kilometres, it seemed no larger. Her brain and eyes insisted that those dark circles round the centre section were only portholes. Not until the endless, curving hull of the ship loomed up beside them did her mind admit that they were cargo and docking hatches, one of which the ferry was about to enter. Loren looked at Mirissa anxiously as she unbuckled her seatbelt; this was the dangerous moment when, free from restraints for the first time, the overconfident passenger suddenly realized that zero-gravity was not as enjoyable as it looked. But Mirissa seemed completely at ease as she drifted through the airlock, propelled by a few gentle pushes from Loren. ‘Luckily there’s no need to go into the one-gee section, so you’ll avoid the problem of re-adapting twice. You won’t have to worry about gravity again until you’re back on the ground.’ It would have been interesting, Mirissa thought, to have visited the living quarters in the spinning section of the ship – but that would have involved them in endless polite conversations and personal contacts, which were the last things she needed now. She was rather glad that Captain Bey was still down on Thalassa; there was no need even for a courtesy visit of thanks. Once they had left the airlock they found themselves in a tubular corridor that seemed to stretch the whole length of the ship. On one side was a ladder, on the other, two lines of flexible loops, convenient for hands or feet, glided slowly in either direction along parallel slots. ‘This is not a very good place to be when we’re accelerating,’ Loren said. ‘Then it becomes a vertical shaft – two kilometers deep. That’s when you really need the ladder and handholds. Just grab that loop, and let it do all the work.’ They were swept effortlessly along for several hundred metres, then switched to a corridor at right angles to the main one. ‘Let go of the strap,’ Loren said when they had travelled a few dozen metres. ‘I want to show you something.’ Mirissa released her hold, and they drifted to a stop beside a long, narrow window set in the side of the tunnel. She peered through the thick glass into a huge, brightly-lit metal cavern. Though she had quite lost her bearings, she guessed that this great cylindrical chamber must span almost the entire width of the ship – and that central bar must therefore lie along its axis. ‘The quantum drive,’ Loren said proudly. He did not even attempt to name the shrouded metal and crystal shapes, the curiously-formed flying buttresses springing from the walls of the chamber, the pulsing constellations of lights, the sphere of utter blackness that, even though it was completely featureless, somehow seemed to be spinning … But after a while he said: ‘The greatest achievement of human genius – Earth’s last gift to its children. One day it will make us masters of the galaxy.’ There was an arrogance about the words that made Mirissa wince. That was the old Loren speaking again, before he had been mellowed by Thalassa. So be it, she thought; but part of him has been changed forever. ‘Do you suppose,’ she asked gently, ‘that the galaxy will even notice?’ Yet she was impressed, and stared for a long time at the huge and meaningless shapes that had carried Loren to her across the light-years. She did not know whether to bless them for what they had brought her or to curse them for what they would soon take away. Loren led her on through the maze, deeper into Magellan’s heart. Not once did they meet another person; it was a reminder of the ship’s size – and the smallness of its crew. ‘We’re nearly there,’ Loren said in a voice that was now hushed and solemn. ‘And this is the Guardian.’ Taken completely by surprise, Mirissa floated towards the golden face staring at her out of the alcove until she was about to collide with it. She put out her hand, and felt cold metal. So it was real – and not, as she had first imagined, a holodisplay. ‘What – who – is it?’ she whispered. ‘We have many of Earth’s greatest art treasures on board,’ Loren said with sombre pride. ‘This was one of the most famous. He was a king who died very young – when he was still a boy. Loren’s voice faded away as they shared the same thought. Mirissa had to blink away her tears before she could read the inscription below the mask. TUTANKHAMUN 1361-1353 bc (Valley of the Kings, Egypt, ad 1922) Yes, he had been almost exactly the same age as Kumar. The golden face stared out at them across the millennia, and across the light-years – the face of a young god struck down in his prime. There was power and confidence here but not yet the arrogance and cruelty that the lost years would have given. ‘Why here?’ Mirissa said, half guessing the answer. ‘It seemed an appropriate symbol. The Egyptians believed that if they carried out the right ceremonies, the dead would exist again in some kind of afterworld. Pure superstition, of course – yet here we have made it come true.’ But not in the way I would have wished, Mirissa thought sadly. As she stared into the jet-black eyes of the boy king, looking out at her from his mask of incorruptible gold, it was hard to believe that this was only a marvellous work of art and not a living person. She could not tear her eyes away from that calm yet hypnotic gaze across the centuries. Once more she put forth her hand, and stroked a golden cheek. The precious metal suddenly reminded her of a poem she had found in the First Landing Archives, when she set the computer searching the literature of the past for words of solace. Most of the hundreds of lines had been inappropriate, but this one (‘Author unknown – ?1800-2100’) fitted perfectly: They carry back bright to the coiner the mintage of man, The lads that will die in their glory and never be old. Loren waited patiently until Mirissa’s thoughts had run their course. Then he slid a card into an almost invisible slot beside the death-mask, and a circular door opened silently. It was incongruous to find a cloak-room full of heavy furs inside a spaceship, but Mirissa could appreciate the need for them. Already the temperature had fallen many degrees, and she found herself shivering with the unaccustomed cold. Loren helped her into the thermosuit – not without difficulty in zero gravity – and they floated towards a circle of frosted glass set in the far wall of the little chamber. The crystal trapdoor swung towards them like an opening watchglass, and out of its swirled a blast of frigid air such as Mirissa had never imagined far less experienced. Thin wisps of moisture condensed in the freezing air, dancing round her like ghosts. She looked at Loren as if to say, ‘Surely you don’t expect me to go in there!’ He took her arm reassuringly and said, ‘Don’t worry – the suit will protect you, and after a few minutes you won’t notice the cold on your face.’ She found this hard to believe; but he was right. As she followed him through the trapdoor, breathing cautiously at first, she was surprised to find the experience not at all unpleasant. Indeed, it was positively stimulating; for the first time she could understand why people had willingly gone into the polar regions of the Earth. She could easily imagine that she was there herself, for she seemed to be floating in a frigid, snow-white universe. All around her were glittering honeycombs that might have been made of ice, forming thousands of hexagonal cells. It was almost like a smaller version of Magellan’s shield – except that here the units were only about a metre across, and laced together with clusters of pipes and bundles of wiring. So here they were, sleeping all around her – the hundreds of thousands of colonists to whom Earth was still in literal truth, a memory of only yesterday. What were they dreaming, she wondered, less than halfway through their five-hundred-year sleep? Did the brain dream at all in this dim no-man’s-land between life and death? Not according to Loren; but who could be really sure? Mirissa had seen videos of bees scurrying about their mysterious business inside a hive; she felt like a human bee as she followed Loren, hand over hand along the grid-work of rails crisscrossing the face of the great honeycomb. She was now quite at ease in zero gravity and was no longer even aware of the bitter cold. Indeed, she was scarcely aware of her body and sometimes had to persuade herself that this was not all a dream from which she would presently awake. The cells bore no names but were all identified by an alphanumeric code; Loren went unerringly to H-354. At the touch of a button, the hexagonal metal-and-glass container slid outward on telescopic rails to reveal the sleeping woman inside. She was not beautiful – though it was unfair to pass judgement on any woman without the crowning glory of her hair. Her skin was of a colour that Mirissa had never seen and which she knew had become very rare on Earth – a black so deep that it held almost a hint of blue. And it was so flawless that Mirissa could not resist a spasm of envy; into her mind came a fleeting image of intertwined bodies, ebon and ivory – an image which, she knew, would haunt her in the years ahead. She looked again at the face. Even in this centuries-long repose, it showed determination and intelligence. Would we have been friends? Mirissa wondered. I doubt it; we are too much alike. So you are Kitani, and you are carrying Loren’s first child out to the stars. But will she really be the first, since she will be born centuries after mine? First or second, I wish her well … She was still numb, though not only with cold, when the crystal door closed behind them. Loren steered her gently back along the corridor and past the Guardian. Once more her fingers brushed the cheek of the immortal golden boy. For a shocked moment, it felt warm to her touch; then she realized that her body was still adjusting to normal temperature. That would take only minutes; but how long, she wondered, before the ice would melt around her heart?