Guthrie House seemed older than its centuries, the stone of it almost as if shaped by wind and rain and frost rather than human hands. That mass belonged here, among the firs to right and left and behind, the sweep of lawn and flowerbeds down to the water. Dock, boat, outbuildings fitted as well into the island. Even the spaceship and its shelter were right for this ground.
But that was all within him, Kenmuir thought. It was because of tradition, sanctity, about which nature knew nothing. And nature itself, the sense of coming home to a living ancientness, was an illusion. Clouds lifted like snowbanks into radiant blue; a breeze blew cool, with savors of woods and salt, above summer-warm soil; waves gleamed and murmured, forest soughed; a few gulls went soaring aloft—in a carefully tended and restricted enclave. It was happenstance that he saw no aircraft pass overhead. When the declining sun had gone behind the ocean, he would spy satellites on their ways across what stars the sky-glow let him see.
Maybe that was why the spaceship stood not as an intruder. Instead, a guardian of this peace? A totem, a rallying point, at least. She wasn’t obtrusive to sight anyway. Occupying a clearing several hundred meters inland, she and her transparent cover would not have shown if the terrain had not risen. As it was, only her bow appeared, a spearhead above treetops and roof.
Leaving his hired volant on the airstrip and walking toward the house—gravel scrunched beneath his feet —Kenmuir found his gaze and mind dwelling on her. Kestrel, the little Falcon-class that Kyra Dayis piloted, she who long and long ago rescued Guthrie from the Avantists and did battle with his doubleganger. Kenmuir himself had once partaken in the annual rite of inspection, cleaning, recharging accumulators, the benediction that ended, “Be always ready to fly.” Beneath the solemnity, a chill had coursed through him and the hair stood up over his whole body. He was very young then … But something of the same stirred anew today. His race did live and die by symbols. And the Lunarians by theirs—But what of the sophotects?It occurred to him that he had never looked up the history of this relic. What struggles and chicanery had it taken, not to obtain her, but to win leave to keep her in alert condition? Oh, she was totally obsolete now, but she had not been then; and to this day, license for storing any amount of antimatter on Earth was not otherwise given unless the machines were fully in charge of it and its containment.
Well, Fireball Enterprises, which had dominated the Solar System, did not dissolve quickly or without many concessions granted its folk. Let them have their memorial. Already in their lifetimes, they were becoming no more than a harmless sodality. After a generation or two, hardly anyone else remembered that Kestrel existed. To the cybercosm, she was an entry in the database.
Nevertheless, she was. And—Fireball, harmless? That remained to be seen. Kenmuir’s pulse and footsteps speeded up.
A guard waited on the verandah. She was unarmed, ceremonial, a girl serving her apprenticeship before initiation into full consorte status. Matthias liked to have visitors greeted in style. She saw the Fireball uniform he had donned, the same gray as hers, and snapped him a salute, which he returned. (Meanwhile he reflected that in the days of the company there had been no formalities. Such things accreted, like coral crowing on a sunken hull.) “Captain lan Kenmuir,” he identified himself unnecessarily, except for her sake, “with an appointment to meet the Rydberg in private.”
“Aye, senor,” she responded. “For favor, follow me.”
He had not been here in years, but as he entered the vestibule, memory billowed over him. The oak panels, the glass window where Daedalus and Icarus spread their wings—and down a hall, the great dark room with its antique furniture, carpeting and hangings, candelabra and crystal, pictures, books, traditions. In an armchair at the stone fireplace sat Matthias. Kenmuir drew to attention before him. “Hola, senor,” he greeted as was customary here.
The old man nodded. “Bienvenido,” he said. His voice was a bass rumble. Nor had much else changed since Kenmuir last encountered him. The frame was still massive, paunchy but not withered in the limbs or in the heavy, hook-nosed features; hair was a white cockatoo crest, eyes deep-set and unwavering. A Fireball emblem on the left breast made his plain blue robe uniform enough for him.