I looked at Hawk to see how he’d take this. He laughed. “Kee is an adult, Maddie. You know that. And anyway, we don’t have sex.”
Maddie stared at him. “You don’t? You never told me that.”
“I don’t tell you everything I don’t do, Maddie.” He shrugged. “Our relationship is platonic. It’s more like… I suppose like having a daughter.”
“But you told me you loved her?” Maddie said.
Hawk said, “So? You can love someone like a daughter, even if she isn’t technically your daughter.”
I looked at Maddie, wondering if her condition, her physical isolation, had over the years worked to deaden her empathy.
She said to me, “Do you understand that, David?”
I looked past her, to the holocube of the laughing blonde girl. I was overcome, suddenly, by the recollection of the love I had felt for my daughter. I nodded. “Of course. We can love anyone. If we can love someone, without physical intimacy, then isn’t that something to be cherished?”
In the quick ensuing silence I caught the bitter look on Maddie’s face as she stared across at Hawk, who was self-consciously gazing through the viewscreen at the Ring.
Matt broke the uneasy silence. “David, you said you were looking for work. What were you thinking of?”
I shrugged. “Something that’d keep me active for a couple of days a week. Nothing too stressful.”
“How about some courier work? The company I used went bust recently—they delivered my work materials once a week from MacIntyre and took my completed work back to the Telemass Station.”
So it’d be two days a week, a couple of trips down the coast to the capital. They charged me a couple of hundred a week. I’ll match that, if you’re interested.”
“That sounds perfect,” I said. The thought of getting down to the capital twice a week, and getting paid for the effort, appealed to me.
Hawk and Maddie were on speaking terms again. “Have you seen these apparitions?” Maddie was asking him.
Hawk shook his head. “Only David has.”
“What were they like?”
I told her. “Pretty archetypal aliens—before we met the Qlax and the Zexu, that is. Green, slim, amphibian-looking.”
“When did they appear?”
“I’m not sure. I’d been asleep a while. One, two-ish, maybe.”
She looked around the group. “It’s midnight now,” she said. “How about we dim the lights, keep quiet and wait for the alien spooks to show themselves?”
Matt laughed. “I feel twelve years old again, spending the night in the old Hooper place on the hill…”
“Why not?” Hawk shrugged. “It might help us work out where the projections come from.”
Maddie said to me, “You weren’t wanting to get rid of us and have an early night, David?”
“You kidding? And miss a ghost hunt with friends? I’ll get another bottle.”
I slipped into the galley, fumbled a bottle of wine from the rack—almost dropping it in the process—and staggered back to the lounge. Until I’d stood up, I didn’t know how drunk I was.
I opened the bottle and refilled glasses. I raised mine, “To the good ship Mantis and all who haunt her!”
We toasted the ship and I dimmed the lights. The only illumination in the lounge now was the light of the Ring that slanted in through the viewscreen, gilding everything silver.
We talked in whispers. Hawk said, “I wonder if there’s anywhere else on Chalcedony that’s haunted?” His voice was slurred.
Maddie murmured, “The Sanatorium.” In an aside to me, she explained, “That’s where I lived when I first came to Chalcedony. The day-room there is visited by the shade of an old resident.”
Matt laughed. “And I thought we were living in a rational age!”
An hour passed. We finished the bottle and I fetched another, moving very carefully this time as my body seemed in the grip of a mischievous agent which was trying to make me lie down. I made it to the galley, located the wine rack after a survey which seemed to last five minutes, and extracted a bottle. Holding it like a tolling bell, I reeled back towards the lounge, barging from wall to wall of the corridor and giving thanks that it was so narrow.
I heard a gasp from the lounge, and what I saw when I came to the entrance had the effect of sobering me.
I leaned against the frame and stared.
The green figure, as diaphanous as before, was standing beside the control pedestal, its fingers moving rapidly through the air.
Beyond, in the silver light, I made out the startled faces of my friends, transfixed. I returned my attention to the alien figure, attempting this time to see if it was indeed being projected, and if so from where.
But I saw no signs of beamed light from the walls of the lounge. I tried to work out how it might have appeared—other than by some occult agency—but my mind was too fuddled.
Then there was sudden movement from beyond the standing figure, and Hawk called out, “Maddie!”
I peered into the gloom. Maddie had stood, unsteadily, like me the worse for wine. She hesitated, staring at the alien apparition for a second. Then, quite deliberately, she pulled the silk glove from her right hand and stepped towards the alien.
I saw her face in the silver light. I saw her expression of mingled determination and fear as she approached the alien and reached out.
“No!” Hawk called, leaping to his feet.
Maddie’s hand entered the ghost, and instantly she gasped and collapsed. Hawk caught her before she hit the deck.
Then the green figure vanished, as if it had never been there, and I lurched towards the controls and upped the lighting.
Hawk was carrying Maddie back to the couch, ensuring that his flesh didn’t make contact with hers.
Matt and I were beside them, staring down at Maddie. She was coming to, staring up at us, eyes blinking quickly in the aftermath of the encounter.
I found her mug, wrapped it in a cloth to ensure that I didn’t touch it with my skin, and filled it with water.
Hawk held it to her lips and she drank.
A minute later she was sitting up. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I was foolish. I shouldn’t have… I’m okay. I’m fine now.”
I could see that Hawk wanted to touch her. His hand hovered close to her head, as if needing to stroke her blonde curls. “Maddie…” He hesitated, looking at me.
When he said, “Maddie, what did you sense?” I told myself that his curiosity was excusable, and in no way mitigated his concern for her.
She blinked, far away, then managed, “I felt… I felt the being, Hawk! I actually felt the alien!” Her eyes clouded. “Or I sensed its essence…” She was weeping now. “I don’t know. Felt or sensed? Anyway, I know…”
My heart, I realised then, was thumping wildly. Matt leaned forward, “Know what, Maddie?” he asked.
Her eyes flicked towards him, staring. “I know the aliens called themselves the Yall,” she said. “And I know they constructed the Golden Column.”