Kieran showered, shaved, dressed, and downed a snack breakfast from the room’s autochef unit, by which time it was close to eight hours after he had set out his four selected lily buds to thaw. He had spaced three well apart around the room and one in the bathroom, so that when he removed the bins covering them, he was able to get a good indication of how effective each had been in dispersing its scent. Samples 1 and 3, although visually undamaged, hadn’t worked at all; 2 yielded a strong scent, and 4 a distinct but milder one. He chose 2, consulted his notes for the procedure that he had followed in treating it, and was able to practice more with several fresh samples from the refrigerator before Solomon Leppo arrived. Leppo stood looking around in bemusement at the room’s collection of medical gadgets, mutilated flowers, and trash bins. “This isn’t from some kind of party you had last night,” he decided.
“Don’t worry,” Kieran told him cheerfully. “We’re not getting ready for a funeral. I’m going to give you a crash course on the new science of botanical surgery.”
“Surgery? On plants? That’s a new one.”
“I’ve just invented it. Then, when you’ve graduated—which had better be in under an hour, since I’ve got a lot to do—you’ll be performing your new art live this afternoon. Now this is what we’re doing. In a room at the back downstairs, they’ll be packing delayed-opening flowers that are being sent up to Asgard for the wedding.” Kieran picked up one of the sprays that he had saved. “The flowers will include bundles of lilies like these. Follow hard and concentrate on what I’m about to show you, Solomon, my good friend, because there won’t be any second chance. . . .”
Kieran demonstrated the technique that he had settled on, describing its purpose, repeating it with several of the lily buds and breaking them open to show Leppo the results. He then had Leppo try his hand, doing it over until he seemed to have the hang of it. Kieran then gave him the syringe, the remaining test liquid, and the rest of the buds. “Take these away and practice until you can get it right every time,” he said. “I’ll meet you down in the lobby at two o’clock this afternoon. Make sure you’ve got the syringe with you. We’ll take it from there.”
“Does anything ever run sane and normal around you for long?” Leppo asked, shaking his head.
“I’ve let it sometimes, just out of curiosity, but it tends to get boring,” Kieran replied. “Piece of philosophy: if any two days of your life are the same, one of them was unnecessary.”
The packages from June had all arrived by this time. Kieran spent the next hour using the makeup kit and wardrobe to transform his appearance. When he was satisfied with the graying, brown-eyed, swarthy-skinned patriarch of indeterminate central Asian origins staring back at him from the mirror, he turned his attention to the gift item that she had picked.
It was a carved Martian Cross, cut and polished from a gray-green native rock that Kieran recognized as an igneous type similar to dolomite, found below the red layer—which was essentially a surface feature now generally accepted as having blanketed Mars from an external source some time in the not-so-distant past. The design borrowed elements from the Maltese and Celtic crosses, combining them in a distinctive angular style in some ways suggestive of Navajo sand-pictures. It had originated with one of the religious sects that had come to Mars in the early settlement days, and had since been adopted as a generic symbol of the culture, like the Japanese sun or the Irish shamrock. It was ideal—just what he wanted. The box with it was of a silver alloy inlaid with patterns built from polished grains of variously colored local stones and minerals, some of them quite rare and pricey. Inside, it was padded and lined with a satiny maroon material.
Again more than satisfied, Kieran called Walter Trevany for an update on intercepts from Asgard via Troy. The most interesting snippet was an exchange between Velte and Banks, in which Velte confided that while talking to Marissa down on Mars within the last hour, Hamilton Gilder had told her about the affliction that had broken out among the survey group at Tharsis and their military support unit, and the rumor that it was somehow connected with the ancient builders whose works were being violated.