What was there, locked in his mind?
Quiet footsteps padded up the stairs, paused at the top, then moved down the hall. Keir peeked around the curtain and saw that it was Chaison Fanning, in his dress uniform, skulking.
Fanning paused at one of the doors, raised his hand, hesitated, then cursed under his breath and knocked. In the pause that followed he put his hands behind his back and leaned back to glance up and down the hallway. Keir ducked back and so did not see who answered the door, but he heard her gasp, and it was Antaea Argyre's voice.
The door thudded softly shut. Keir frowned out the window, but the frown kept twitching into a smile. His feelings hovered between embarrassment and an alien--but very dry--feeling of amusement. He thought about what would happen if Venera Fanning were to come up here now, and found that alien mind intruding again. This time, it clearly held one idea:
This is not a good place to be right now.
At the far end of the hallway, a small set of steps led up to another door; he'd presumed when he saw it earlier that it led to the roof. Keir unwound himself from the window well and moved to it. As quietly as he could, he tried the latch. It opened.
Warm night air coiled around him; to his surprise, as he stepped onto the roof, he found himself among trees and flower beds. Though Slipstream's admiralty wheel was a pretty utilitarian place, the Fannings had managed to find space for a garden between two sloping roofs. Keir was grateful now for the night air and relative silence, and the feel of a warm breeze on his face.
The garden was lit by window and city light--the sky was a glittering tapestry of pinpricks and glowing squares. The air felt wonderful, so like that of a planet ... were it not for the subtle tug in his inner ear that told him he was slowly turning over and over with the whole admiralty wheel. He strolled through the garden, letting his fingers trail through the fronds of living things. He closed his eyes, and flashes of imagery came to him of things he could not remember ever having remembered: plains and forests; sun on his face; and the water of lakes and streams swirling around his ankles, his waist ...
"Stop." He opened his eyes and saw that he'd strayed close to the edge of the roof. City lights and dove-gray scraps of cloud raced by below him.
He turned to find Leal Maspeth looking up at him. She was sitting on a verdigrisy copper box that jutted up out of the carefully tended flowers. She frowned at him. "It looked like you were about to walk off the roof."
"Maybe I was, Ms. Maspeth," he said ruefully. "I don't have a very good sense of where I am--without my dragonflies, you know..."
"Call me Leal."
"Leal ... I was just enjoying the feel of grass."
"Yes, you're from beyond the world," she said. "I guess you wouldn't have touched grass before."
Surprised, he laughed. "Of course we have grass. On planets..." He paused, troubled, then said, "But we make worlds, little ones, you know, and spin them for gravity. Ten kilometers across, a hundred ... lots of room for trees and forests."
She smiled. "Of course."
There was a quiet pause. He looked around for someplace to sit, but Maspeth had the only available perch. Noticing what he was doing, she bumped over a bit and patted the surface next to her. "There's room."
Keir flushed, hoping she couldn't tell in the darkness. Sure he'd hesitated too long, he sat down and found the only way to stay on the box was to be thigh-to-thigh with her. She didn't seem to notice their hips touching, but leaned back, putting her hands behind her. He turned so he could continue to see her, and found her invitingly close.
She'd seemed old when he'd first met her, but maybe what he'd been seeing had been the weight of responsibility burdening her at the time. She was definitely older than he--maybe by ten years--but at dinner he'd caught himself exchanging glances with her that, at times, had the feel of youthful conspiracy to them.
Pinioned by her frank gaze--and acutely feeling the lack of helpful suggestions from his scry--he struggled for something clever to say. Finally he noticed that she was holding a thick, old-fashioned book made of the flat leaves they called "pages." A quill pen jutted out of it. "What's that?" he blurted.
She waggled the heavy volume. "A navigator's log book. I'm writing down my story, at last! I wasn't sure I would ever get to."
She sat up and he took it from her gingerly. The thing was floppier than he'd expected, and he nearly dropped it. The pages were all blank, except for the first few that were covered with fine, looping handwriting in black ink.
Keir had seen such things in sims and other virtual entertainments, but he'd never held an actual book in his hand, nor traced actual handwriting with his fingers. He did so now and found that his touch was reverent. This object had awoken some deep feeling inside him, a surprising respect.
"You learned all you know," he said, "from these."
"Oh, don't put it that way!" She laughed. "I'm already intimidated enough at the thought of writing my own."
He returned it, and smiled at the glittering night. "You must be glad to be back."
"Well." Now she frowned. "I'm not exactly 'back.' This place isn't my home."
"But it's Virga."
"If I threw you to some star across the universe, could you say you felt at home because it wasn't Virga?"
"No, but--" He saw her point, but continued, anyway. "If Artificial Nature was there, it would feel much the same as anywhere else I've lived."
"Why? Is it really all the same everywhere?"
He shrugged. "Seems so ... The admiral wants me to go back. Says I should 'liaise' with the Renaissance when they pick up the rest of your men."
"Oh, that's good. So are you happy to be going home?"
"I told him no." Her eyes widened, but she said nothing. At this moment his lack of scry was a powerful ache, because he really didn't know how much or how little to tell her. "I can't go back," he heard himself say. "Something was happening to me there--something awful ... I, I don't feel right, like this isn't my skin..." He pulled at the flesh of his forearm. "I think I lost my memory, but I seem to think I was once older..."
She looked startled. "Older?" she asked. There was surprise in her voice, but concern as well, and he relaxed a bit. "Was it during what we call the outage?"
"No, we came here after that." He realized he shouldn't have said that, but it was too late.
"That's not very long ago." She leaned back again, her lips pursed and brow furrowed. "You've only spent the last couple of years of your life in Aethyr. Which means you spent most of it somewhere else. Are you telling me you don't remember any of that?"
"N-no ... the memories are there. They're just not in ... what do you call it? Chronological order. They're jumbled up, like those spy's photos Venera threw on the table." And there were far too many of them, too; but he didn't say that.
"Keir--you said you were once older. How old do you think you really are?"
He shook his head.
"You look somewhere between sixteen and nineteen," she said. "When I met you I thought you were younger. You look like you've put on a year or two since then."
"I was getting shorter!" He'd jumped to his feet and started to walk, but there was nowhere to walk to in this tiny garden. He paced to the stairwell, then back to the edge of the roof. "The day I met you, I'd proved it. I was getting shorter." He raised a shaking hand to wipe at his eyes. "What was that? What's going on?"
"Did you tell the admiral about this?"
Her voice was quiet and steady. He turned to find she was still seated, but leaning forward, book on knees, all her attention on him. Keir shook his head.
"Did he insist you should go back?"
"Y-yes. But I can't." He scowled at the pretty night. "I'll run away first."
She stood up. "I'll speak to him. He wants me to go, too--to bring his diplomats to the emissary's people. I told him he didn't need me and that anyway I'd done my part. He insisted until I pointed out that if he lost me, he'd lose his only connection to them." She held up the book and grinned. "I said, better that I stay here and write down everything that happened, so at least there's a record. The emissary's perfectly capable of guiding its people to their home without me. So that's what's happening."