Under a winged buttress, he paused to admire his second favorite sculpture, this one done in light, in three dimensions, by the famous artist Surya Neve Lao. It depicted the Meroite queen, the Candace Amanirenas, as she directed a dawn attack on the Roman garrison at Syene together with her son, Prince Akinidad. Silhouetted against the flames rising within the garrison walls, David recognized a woman as she tipped back her head and stared up at the sculpture curling back along the concourse wall.
"Diana!" he cried.
She turned and blinked at him for a moment. Behind her, the battle raged endlessly on, never to be lost, never to be won.
"David!" She smiled suddenly and it seemed that the whole concourse was brightened by her. She hurried over to him, and they embraced.
"Where are you off to?" he asked. "When I left Rajiv, he said the Repertory Company was in Bangkok. You haven't left them, have you?"
"No, I-" She hesitated and glanced behind at the sculpture, then back at him. To his surprise, she still wore the scar of marriage on her face. Right now, she looked nervous, and even a little embarrassed. "I'm meeting someone. At Scarab Gate."
"Oh, I'll walk you. I'm leaving through Antelope Gate, and it's right next door. Anyway, my favorite sculpture is at Scarab Gate."
"Your favorite sculpture? Do you go through Meroe often? You must be quite the traveler."
David grinned. Oh, well. He was proud of his work, and it was worth being proud of. "I designed it."
"This station!"
One of the things David loved about Diana was that her emotions were so wonderfully distinct. He laughed.
"But it's wonderful! Why did you make the buttresses like that, like they're wings?"
"Because they are wings. They're the wings of the Goddess." So they walked to Scarab Gate and he told her about the design and the arguments and compromises and the choices that had gone into building Meroe Transfer Station.
A beautiful bronzed arch made of huge linked scarabs bridged the concourse wall that led into the steep, four-walled chamber that was Scarab Gate and a lounge for departing and arriving passengers. A second scarab arch, smaller and less ornate, sealed off the port tube that led to the pier and the locks.
"Where are you going?" Diana asked finally.
"I'm going to Odys. Business for Charles."
Diana smiled. "His Nibs. That's what Maggie O'Neill always.called him. Where is she?"
"There. On Odys."
"Ah," said Diana, and that was another thing David liked about her. She knew when he had said as much as he could say.
"Here it is. My favorite sculpture."
She stopped. "It's very simple."
It was simple, a simple gray sandstone statue of a young Candace, a queen, a resolute soldier bearing a sword and wearing a crown. To David, that statue was Nadine; not that it looked anything like her, but that it captured her spirit.
"I like the way the sculptor has suggested hair just by using hatching," said Diana.
"Are you coming to meet family?" David asked.
Her mouth tightened. She held in some overwhelming emotion. "Tess Soerensen told me once that it's easy to act on impulse and much harder to think about what the consequences might be. But the consequences will show up sooner or later, and then you must prepare yourself to deal with them." She looked up at him. A man could drown in the blue of her eyes. Despite himself, he found his gaze darting down to the scar. It looked oddly fresh.
"It's what we've done to Rhui, isn't it?" she asked bitterly. "We walked blithely in and watched how it changed us, but we never thought about how it might change them. They're the ones who will suffer the most."
He had thought the same thing many times. "Who are you meeting?" he asked, but by the expression on her face, he could guess who it was. So this was her guilt talking, that she had wanted Anatoly and had somehow managed to persuade Charles or Tess to let him come to her, and only now did she realize how hard the transition would be for her husband.
The boards lit. The familiar monotone announcement began, detailing the arriving ship and its coordinates. Diana's hands flew to her cheeks. She had gone suddenly pale.
"It was so good to see you, David," she said, lowering her hands with conscious embarrassment. "But I have to go. Please. Please, come and visit me when you come back, or if you see us, if we tour, come and see me backstage."
"I will. I wish you the best of luck, Diana."
She kissed him on each cheek, in the formal jaran style, and smiled, and left him.
Thus dismissed, he had no choice but to simply stand there and watch as she ran over toward the small gate and then jerked to a halt at the waist-high wicker fence that blocked off the egress. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, too nervous to stand still.
Passengers streamed out. Diana waited. David watched.
The floor was sloped so that he could see farther into the port tube than Diana could, so he saw the uniformed attendant first, and her companion, a shell-shocked looking young man. Next to the attendant's dark uniform and olive skin and robust build, the young man looked almost fragile, he was so fair and so slight. But he was here.
David felt sick with envy.
It was a little scene, complete in itself. Diana wiped a tear from her face, and then she saw him. The attendant jostled his arm-what need had she to know Diana? It was apparent who was waiting for the young man-and Anatoly looked up and saw Diana.
David turned away. He could not bear to watch any more. It was too painful.
He skirted the sandstone statue and trudged back through Scarab Gate and on down the concourse to the gentler lines of Antelope Gate. Thank the Goddess, there was no delay for his flight. He boarded, found his cabin, locked the door, stowed the precious tube between his leg and the bunk wall, and plugged straight into hibersleep for the voyage.
He had no dreams.
But he did wake up with the usual horrible nausea and vertigo. Maggie was sitting on the pull-down chair, squeezed into the tiny cabin, regarding him with a frown on her face. Her freckles were prominent today for some reason, making her red hair seem all the more red. Or maybe it was just his eyes adjusting to the lights.
"You don't usually do hibersleep, do you, David? I thought it made you sick as a-Aha!" She jerked the siphon out. of the wall and caught most of the phlegm that was all he had to throw up, and then wiped his face with a cool towel.
"You're a peach, Mags," he said. His mouth felt like it had a thousand-year-old growth of fungus in it. "I don't dare sit up."
"No sympathy from me," she retorted. "I hate the fumes of that stuff. Here." She bent over and extracted the tube of maps. "Do you want me to wait for you to recover, or just take this downside?"
"Maggie!"
"Oh, David." She sat down beside him and smoothed his hair with a hand. "You look rotten. Why did you do it?"
"I didn't want to think for that long, cooped up on a ship."
She regarded him thoughtfully. "Oh," she said at last. "I don't suppose you crossed paths with Diana Brooke-Holt, did you?" He didn't need to reply. Maggie knew him well enough to read his face.
"Poor Diana," she said.
"Poor Diana!"
"No, you're right. Poor Anatoly's more like it. You know she sent him back a message saying he should stay on Rhui, didn't you?"