As usual, they found whole Universes of provocative topics to chatter about while they toasted and dined in one of the Rocotzio Section's elegant little bistros. Then-a little tipsily-they retired to her hearth and couch to celebrate those deliciously carnal elements that perfected their relationship.
Early in the Dawn watch-long before Hador had begun to lighten the horizon-Brim found himself once again relaxed at the end of the couch, contemplating her radiance by the glow of embers in the fireplace. No royalty here: this was a beautiful, intelligent-fascinating-woman who made her honest way in the Universe by being excellent.
Her long hair had become a tangled brown halo around the soft features of her face. She was partially covered by a light quilt, but her shoulders were bare and one exquisitely dark nipple peeked out from beneath the coverlet.
An ember snapped in the fireplace, and her eyes opened. She smiled sleepily at him for a long time in the stillness of the dimly lit room; then she frowned. "Wilf Brim," she said softly,
"we aren't going about this very well, are we?"
"What do you mean?" Brim asked, raising an eyebrow.
She sighed. "What I mean is that I could think of very little else during the conference except tonight-and you. I'm afraid I could become very attached to you."
Brim rubbed her foot. "I think I'm already that way about you."
She shut her eyes for a moment. "Wilf," she said seriously, "come to your senses. I know that you are on the rebound. And frankly, if you care for this 'distant' lover of yours as much as I think you do, then it's my bet that she must once have loved you an awful lot in return-probably, she still does."
"It's all over between us," Brim said unemotionally.
She looked him in the eye. "I've been in love once or twice myself," she said with a wry smile, "and I know the truth about that. It takes a long time for love to really stop. Down deep, Wilf, I think you know it, too." Pushing aside the comforter, she sat up on the couch and crossed her legs on the cushions. "Let's suppose I did let myself go all the way in love with you," she said, "it would be very easy for me to do that right now-and then that distant lover of yours suddenly decided to leave her husband and return to your arms." She took both his hands and stared into his eyes. "You'd either leave me right then or-worse-you'd stick it out and learn to hate me." She raised an eyebrow. "Either way, I'd lose, right?"
Brim could only shrug. For all he knew, she might be correct.
"On the other hand," she continued, "what if-right out of the blue- I met somebody who simply swept me off my feet? And this great, bulking stud had the same feelings about me?"
She chuckled and shook her bead. "Wilf, dearest lover-let's the two of us enjoy what we have right now: great sex and a wonderful, wonderful friendship. It's more than most people get from the best marriages. And-what the hell-maybe someday we will get together. But for now..."
Brim smiled with relief. "For now?" he asked.
Claudia settled back against the pillows. "We've got a whole box of tissues we haven't used yet, Wilf Brim," she said, wiggling her bottom. "Let's get busy...."
Three mornings later, Brim stood on Defiant's sunlit bridge checking a number of retrofits that had been made to his Helmsman's console when Wellington came bustling up with Ursis in tow. "Wilf," she said, a great smile on her face, "that pretty friend of yours, Claudia Valemont, actually arranged a tour of the Gradygroat orbital forts! I got an invitation from Abbot Piety at the monastery just a metacycle ago. Regula Collingswood was with me when the messenger arrived-and said I should take Nik and you with me. Isn't that wonderful?"
Behind her, Ursis raised his eyes to the heavens and nodded his head in resignation.
'"All snow melts when needed,'" he quoted stoically.
"Indeed," Brim said, looking at both with a grin. "Did the Captain indicate how we are supposed to get there?" he asked.
"Of course," Wellington said. "We're to take launch number four-the little one. She says that way she'll be sure we're back quickly if we're needed."
Brim nodded. "She's certainly thought of everything," he said.
"You bet!" Wellington gushed. "Come on, Wilf," she urged, "let's get going before somebody starts a major war around here and interferes with the really important work."
Brim met Ursis's laughing eyes. "I'll need about fifteen cycles to get ready," he said, grinning now in spite of himself. "Let me throw a clean battle suit in my softpack and... ah...
call off a couple of engagements. I'll meet you on the boat deck. All right?"
"Fifteen cycles," Wellington said excitedly. "We'll be waiting, won't we, Nikolas?"
"Indeed," Ursis said impassively. "We shall definitely be waiting...."
By the following morning, they had inspected eight of the thirteen orbital forts: enormous, massively armored contraptions-perhaps three or four times the size of a battleship-that looked like an egg embedded at the large end in a thick, disk-shaped structure perhaps half again its diameter. Four angular turrets were mounted equidistantly around the disk's rim, each equipped with a pair of colossal disruptors: striated and finned monsters nearly six hundred irals long that were more man twice Defiant's entire length.
Inside the egg-shaped portion of each fort they discovered a scale model of the monastery atop City Mount Hill in Atalanta, each complete with a Power window at the apex of the ceiling and a floor with concentric Destruction and Resurrection rings surrounding a central cone of Truth. The only difference that Brim could see was that Hador itself provided the illuminating beam through the Power windows instead of the monastery's G-seed. He shook his head. The outrageous Gradygroats had even gone to all the trouble of building in automatic attitude controls so that the big forts were always aligned to that light. There had to be something in their teachings that was worth going to all that engineering. Smiling, he promised himself that if he could ever find the time, he would go back to the monastery library for serious study.
The disk structures-with their four great turrets and prodigious disruptors-were clearly the most fascinating elements to both Ursis and Wellington. After minute inspections of the firing rooms and the disruptors themselves, both had become convinced that the tremendous mechanisms were simple enough to be quite workable, and-insane as it seemed-perfectly maintained, at least according to the metal pages of huge maintenance compendiums the priests gave them to read.
The only factor that didn't make sense at all was the age-old issue of supplying adequate energy to fire such phenomenal artifacts. Toward the middle of their visit to the seventh fort, Ursis had used The Manuals to trace energy channels within one of the disruptors back from its discharge tube. Inexplicably, it seemed to end in a singularly angled breech fitting-perhaps six irals wide-that faced a darkened crystal window of the same size and angle in the floor of the turret. Both Wellington and Ursis immediately agreed that this must constitute the power input. But what kind of energy came through that window-and from what?
Unfortunately, beneath the turrets, the colossal disk structures were hollow for the most part-and virtually empty.
The vast expanse of wall directly beneath the chapel floor was nearly featureless, except where it was pierced by a large crystal lens. Whatever function the lens had once served was now apparently gone. It was covered on the chapel side by the Truth cone and, clearly, retained only a vestigial existence-like a similar device mounted at the center of the opposite wall. Aside from these artifacts, and the eight crystal windows opening into the rim turrets, there was little to see. As Brim tucked himself into the simple bunk provided by the Friars-a far cry from Claudia's couch!-he grinned. So far, the trip had been utterly fascinating-and utterly useless.