* * *
Carlotta left a while later, arranging to meet me at the Jackeral that evening, and I realised that I’d never got round to asking what she’d picked up from the Telemass station that afternoon. I showered, dressed, and decided to visit Matt and Maddie and tell them about Kee’s visit.
I was about to leave the Mantis when the com chimed.
I accepted the call and the screen showed Maddie, grinning out at me. “What a coincidence,” I said. “I was just about to come over.”
“Do that, you old dog, and tell us all about it.”
“What?” I said, all innocent.
She laughed and said over her shoulder to Matt, “He says ‘what?’, as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.”
“Word travels fast,” I laughed.
“Old Ben Henderson and his cronies saw you two leaving the Jackeral hot foot the other night,” she said. “And since then you’ve been inseparable. His crowd don’t miss much.”
“Anyway, I wasn’t coming over to tell you about me and Carlotta, Maddie. Sorry to disappoint you. But I had Kee here this afternoon. She was in a bit of a state.”
She looked alarmed. “Is Hawk okay?”
“He’s fine. Look, I’ll be over to tell you all about it. Get the beer chilled.”
I cut the connection and hurried from the ship.
I made my way around the bay to Matt and Maddie’s dome. The sun was high and hot, and by the time I arrived thirty minutes later I’d worked up a fair thirst.
They were sitting on the verandah overlooking the bay, and waved as I trudged up the sand. I climbed the steps and joined them, and Matt dutifully poured me an ice cold beer.
Maddie said, “You’ll be needing this, David.”
Deadpan, I said, “Yes, it’s a fair walk.”
“I wasn’t referring to the walk,” she said, touching a pair of binoculars on the table before her.
“I don’t believe it!” I appealed to Matt. “Does this woman have no shame? Spying on friends, now?”
Matt shrugged. “I don’t know what to do with her,” he said.
Maddie said, “So... you think this is the real thing, David?”
Before I could reply, Matt said, “We always think it’s the real thing, don’t we?” He stared out to sea. “That’s the beauty and the wonder of it, and sometimes the tragedy.”
Maddie laughed. “Listen to the philosopher!”
Matt hoisted his glass and smiled.
Maddie was still looking at me, eyebrow raised.
I said, “I… it’s early days. Who can tell? But it’s certainly intense.”
She reached out and squeezed my hand. “Good for you, David.”
Matt hoisted his beer. “To the happy couple.”
I took a long drink and licked froth from my upper lip. “About Kee... I don’t know, but it’s eerie...”
“Tell,” Maddie commanded.
I recounted Kee’s visit, her description of the visions. “She said she saw Hawk attacked and stabbed. She said he was in the chamber with me and a tall, dark haired woman when it happened.”
Maddie frowned. “Anyone she knew?”
“That’s just it. As Kee was leaving, Carlotta was paying me a visit – as you well know,” I said. “And Kee’s expression when she saw Carlotta... it was as if she’d seen a ghost.”
Maddie shrugged. “It might not necessarily mean that Carlotta and the woman in Kee’s vision were the same.”
“Well, it might not. But it struck me that Kee thought so. Anyway, she wanted me to come and tell you. We have to keep Hawk from the sacred cavern, at all costs.”
Matt said, “That shouldn’t be too difficult.”
Maddie was watching me. “What do you think about it... the ritual, this vision business?”
I shrugged. “Well, the rationalist in me thinks it’s bunkum. But that tiny part of me, the superstitious heathen in my hind-brain…”
“I know what you mean, David. Look at it from the Ashentay’s point of view. They’re conditioned to believe, and if they have visions which they do believe in strongly enough, then maybe the power of suggestion is so powerful that it might bring about the envisioned events. A kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.”
“That’s about where I stand on it,” I said. “But if Hawk did get stabbed in the sacred cavern...” I shrugged. “If that did happen, then I’d become a convert.”
Maddie said, “Presumably Hawk doesn’t know anything about this?”
“That’s right. Kee asked us not to breathe a word.”
“Poor girl. She must be in a terrible state.”
“Well, she doesn’t believe that what she saw was written in stone,” I said. “Her people believe that the visions don’t necessarily come to pass, that things can be done to circumvent them.” I shrugged. “The sight of Carlotta shook her, though.”
“Spooky.” Maddie shivered. “Another beer?”
We drank as the afternoon progressed, the conversation moving onto other things, and eventually back – perhaps inevitably – to my liaison with Carlotta.
Maddie said, “But you won’t leave us if she decides Magenta is too much of a backwater, will you, David?”
“Lay off!” I protested good-naturedly.
“Why don’t you stay for something to eat?” Matt asked. “We were thinking of having a barbecue. Henderson gave us a flat-head he caught earlier.”
Maddie laughed. “Don’t be so silly, Matt! David has other fish to fry.”
“At the Jackeral,” I said, groaning at her pun and examining my watch, “in under one hour. I’d better be off.”
“Tell us all about it the next time we meet!” Maddie called as I made my way from the verandah.
I smiled and waved and, as I wandered back through the scented pines, I thought how lucky I was to have such great friends… and now Carlotta.
I arrived back at the Mantis, dressed for dinner, and arrived at the Jackeral with ten minutes to spare.
* * *
Carlotta breezed in on the stroke of seven. Heads turned as she made her way to the bar, stunning in a yellow, off-the-shoulder dress with a flower of the same colour pinned in her hair. The dress complemented her mocha skin, and as if to emphasise the Indian in her she wore a crimson tikka-spot on her forehead.
She pecked my cheek in greeting and whispered, “Great to see you, David,” and I thought I was going to have a heart attack.
“Shall we have a drink at the bar, and then dine?” she said, sliding onto the bar-stool beside mine. “I’ll have the usual.”
I ordered another beer and a vodka and sava for Carlotta, and I asked her how her day in MacIntyre had gone.
“It was a success. I collected what I went for and miraculously it had survived the Telemass journey intact.”
“What was it?”
“It’s a secret, David. But I’ll show you later tonight, hm? That is, if you want to come back to my place?”
I smiled. “Try keeping me away,” I said, my curiosity piqued.
We drank and chatted and I felt totally relaxed in her company. The David Conway of just one week ago, had he been able to look ahead and see himself in the presence of this beautiful woman, would have been amazed; looking back, I had assumed I was happy then, but what I felt now was close to euphoria.
We had another drink and then moved to the dining area; I had grilled jackeral and Carlotta a local salad, and as we ate she regaled me with hilarious stories of the great and the good – and the not so great and good – she had met during her time as a world-famous holo star.
She laughed a lot, and touched me, and I compared her present mood to how unhappy she had been just days ago, and I marvelled that I had made such a difference.
I told her about my life in British Columbia, and she asked about my wife. I told her that the marriage had been happy, but that it had no way of surviving the death of my daughter.
She quickly touched my hand. “Don’t, David. I can see it still hurts. Tell me about the Mantis instead. I’ve seen the film, but I want the truth.”
So I told her how I’d bought the Mantis from Hawk’s junkyard, and how just days later I’d seen the first alien ghost aboard it… and how, a while later, the ghost of the Yall had led us to the miracle of the golden column.
“And to think,” Carlotta declared, at her most thespian, “I am intimate with the Opener of the Way!”
We laughed and drank and, come midnight, we were happily sozzled.
“And now,” she said, standing and swaying and pulling me up from the table. “Now I want to show you something. Back to
my place, my man.”
I allowed myself to be taken, and we slogged through the magenta sands which scintillated in the Ringlight, almost falling once or twice and laughing at our clumsiness.
At last we made it to her villa.
“Sit right there,” she said, pushing me into the sofa and swaying over me. “Don’t move, and I’ll show you... I’ll show you an invaluable work of art.”
I opened my mouth to ask what it was, but she shushed me with a long finger pressed to the crimson slash of her mouth, and tottered into the next room.
She returned a minute later carrying a box perhaps half a metre square. She placed it with exaggerated care on a small coffee table, then knelt on the carpet, reached out and touched something on the side of the box.
The sides unfolded as if by magic, revealing a small carved figure standing on a plinth.
I gasped. It was the religious relic which, in the film Starship Fall, Ed Grainger had taken from the sacred cavern.
“So that part of the film was true to life?” I began
She blinked at me. “You’ve seen it all the way through?”
I told her about the download. “But in the film,” I said, “Grainger returned here with it...” I shook my head. “But obviously not in reality.”
Carlotta stared at the carving, her eyes massive. She said, “What really happened, David, is that Ed sold the relic to finance his explorations. It went into the xenological museum in Paris. He tried to get it back when he decided to return here, but they weren’t giving it up that easily – and he didn’t have the cash they were asking for it.”
“So how come...” I said, gesturing at the statue.
“I made them an offer they couldn’t refuse, and for the past few weeks I’ve been waiting for the relevant authorities in Europe to sanction its release.”
“And now,” I said, “you can return it to the Ashentay as Ed would have wished?”
She smiled. “Closure, David...” She paused, then went on, “But I also want something from them, you see. It came to me that if I returned the relic, then they might help me locate where Ed’s ship landed, or crash-landed.”
I nodded, feeling adolescent jealousy despite myself.
Then I said, before I knew I was saying it, “I could help you, Carlotta. I mean, I know the way to Dar, the Ashentay village not far from the sacred cavern. I even know someone who could guide us the rest of the way.”
Her face illuminated. “David, you don’t know how much... Come here.” She reached out and took me in a passionate embrace, and seconds later she was sobbing against my shoulder.
“It’s been so long, David. So long, and I finally want an end to the... the grief. I want closure.”
“And then?” I asked.
She answered me, between kisses. “And.” Kiss. “Then.” Kiss. “Who knows what the future.” Kiss. “Holds?”
She dragged me to the bedroom, and all I could concentrate on was the glorious present.