Her inquisitive eyes were green, he noticed. “Uh, I was living on Silvergalde. My parents had got lost somewhere down the Silfen paths, so I was helping at the Last Pony. That’s a tavern in Lyddington. Anyway…Ozzie turned up one day—”
She really was an angel. Orion would never have believed he could sit and talk to a girl, and that she’d be interested in what he said; let alone a stunning girl like Jasmine. It wasn’t just her physical beauty that captivated him; she was a lovely person, too. She was eager to hear his story, and asked questions, and was astonished and impressed at the things he’d done and seen, the hardships they’d endured. He began to relax, even though he knew he was babbling on for far too long. But she laughed with him. They shared a sense of humor.
After a couple of hours, Tochee slid out onto the terrace. Jasmine sat bolt upright, her face registering complete delight. “Oh, my goodness,” she said. “You really are telling the truth.”
Orion was slightly stung by the implication, but she looked so thrilled he forgave her instantly.
“Friend Orion,” Tochee said through a slim, top-of-the-line Ipressx array it was holding in its manipulator flesh. “Is this the totally—”
“This is Jasmine,” Orion told his alien friend hurriedly.
“I wish you welcome, Jasmine,” Tochee said. “And hope we will be friends.”
“I’m sure we will be,” she said pertly.
“I will immerse myself in water,” Tochee said. “It will be a relief. I fear I have been no help to my friend Ozzie this morning.”
“I think the Dark Fortress is something he’s got to work out for himself,” Orion said.
Tochee slid over to the stone rail at the edge of the terrace, and rose up to poise the front half of its body on top. The pool was about twenty feet directly below. The locomotion ridges contracted, and it tightened its grip on the array.
“You’re not going to?” Orion asked.
Tochee launched itself off the top terrace, and landed in the pool with an almighty splash.
Jasmine let out a shriek of excitement, and both of them raced over to the railing. Tochee was just surfacing as they peered over the edge. “The water is a perfect temperature,” it called up. Its ridges began to change again, flattening out into long fins. It sped away down the pool, as sleek as any dolphin.
“Superb!” Jasmine said. She cast off her robe and jumped up onto the rail.
Orion stared up at her perfect trim body in an act of near-religious worship. She was wearing a simple white one-piece swimsuit made from shiny fabric. That was when he knew he was in love, and they would get married, and spend every day for eternity in bed doing what he’d watched Andria Elex doing, only better and longer.
“No, wait,” he cried. “It’s too far down.”
Jasmine flashed him a gorgeous, teasing smile. “Last one in’s a wimp,” she shouted, and dived.
Orion’s worry turned to outright astonishment. Jasmine seemed to bend over in midflight so her hands were touching her ankles, then she spun around in a somersault, rotated the other way, spun in reverse, and straightened out to hit the water without a splash.
He gawped in disbelief. She was gliding underwater in a long curve that brought her back to the surface five meters away from where she went in. “Wimp,” she yelled up, laughing. “Wimp, wimp, wimp!”
Snarling, Orion clambered up on top of the rail, and jumped. He was right, it was a long way down. His legs cycled about crazily. At least he remembered to clamp his hand over his nose just before he hit. Unfortunately by then he was tilted over somewhat so he landed on his side. The hard water slapped him fiercely.
He struggled back up to the surface, his whole side numb. At first. The sharp stinging began as he bobbed up. He let out a pained groan.
Jasmine’s laughter cut off, and seconds later she was at his side. “Are you all right?” she asked.
“Sure. Fine. No problem.” His shirt felt as if it was made from metal. He struggled to undo it, then found she was towing him to the steps at the side.
“You silly thing,” she chided. But there was still a huge smile on her face.
Orion had managed to get one arm out of the sleeve. He clung to the steps with the other. “Jasmine?”
“Yes?” She was still smiling at him, her eyes sparkling.
“Have you got a boyfriend?” Where the chutzpah had come from to ask that he didn’t have a clue.
She leaned forward and kissed him. It seemed to go on for a long time. Orion wasn’t really sure. Her tongue was inside his mouth, setting off loud fireworks in pleasure centers he didn’t even know existed before.
When she pulled back, he blinked uncertainly to see her grinning wickedly. “That was a no,” Jasmine told him impishly. She pushed off from the steps, floating on her back, still grinning at him. “Just in case you didn’t realize.”
“I did,” he whispered helplessly.
Her arm moved fast, and splashed a whole load of water over him. He splashed back. She giggled, and started kicking up a spume. Orion tugged his shirt off completely, and set off in hot pursuit.
They messed around in the pool for nearly an hour before Jasmine said she was going back up to her room to dry off for lunch. “I’ll be back in a moment,” she promised as she pulled her robe on again. “Get the cook to make me a burger, with Italian fries, you know, the herb ones. And a side salad.”
“I’ll do it,” he promised loyally.
He clambered out of the pool and found a towel in the locker by the showers.
“Your association seemed to be developing well, friend Orion,” Tochee said. It was sunning itself on the lower terrace beside the pool. Nearly all of its colored fronds were dry again, ruffling in the warm breeze.
“Do you think so?” Orion asked as he watched Jasmine walk up the stairs to the upper terrace. She waved happily when she was at the top, then hurried off into the mansion.
“I am not an expert judge of your species, friend Orion, but you were behaving most harmoniously together. It is my belief she enjoyed your company. If she did not, she would not have remained with you; she was under no obligation.”
“Hey, that’s right!” He picked up his sodden orange shirt. “I’m going to find the cook and then get a clean shirt. Do you want anything?”
“I believe I would like to try more of the cold vegetable lasagne, with cabbage, please.”
Ozzie had started the morning full of determination. Anger-driven determination, as he would be the first to admit. It would have been sweet to show that pompous dick Nigel how to fix the Dyson Alpha barrier generator. He set to it with an open mind and a burst of enthusiasm. Unfortunately, he soon found out that having Tochee with him wasn’t such a good idea. He became a little tetchy with the alien’s constant questions and apologetic answers to his own inquiries. It soon became very plain that Tochee had only a very limited knowledge of physics. Whether that extended to its entire species, Ozzie promptly stopped caring. All he’d hoped for was a little insight, that Tochee might come at the problem from a different angle. Not a chance.
By the time Tochee left to “take a break,” Ozzie could have cheered. It had also become depressingly obvious that there had been a significant amount of excellent work done on analyzing the data that the Second Chance had brought back. An alarming quantity of which he was struggling to understand. If he’d been wetwired with maximum interface, and had full access to both his secure store and his asteroid’s RI, he might have managed conversance with the plethora of theories that physicists had put together. Even then, they were only theories.
But this life around, his wetwiring was limited to the biochip inserts he’d received in preparation for walking the Silfen paths. And although the mansion’s security staff were undyingly courteous, he wasn’t allowed access to the unisphere.
An age later, he stood inside the big projection of grandiose lattice shells wrapped around their peculiar rings, and gave it a hearty curse. The green clouds of equations that summarized humanity’s finest thoughts on the problem retreated, taking their luminescence to the corners of the study. He almost shut down the projection. Now he’d actually seen the Dark Fortress his earlier notions about it were fast becoming a fantasy inspired by petulance. His virtual hands patted down several columns of icons as if they were annoying insects, and the projection swung around him, running through a complete cycle. It still didn’t make any sense, so he resurrected the second image, a simulation of the shells after the barrier had failed. The extraneous quantum signature was as plain as possible, but without a more accurate image it was impossible to see what it was actually doing, which section of the generator it was disrupting. And the Second Chance had never returned for a close look. The starship had maintained a watch during its visit to the Watchtower, but the data it received from such a distance was constant. Nothing had changed. Ozzie returned the image to a real-time playback. This recording was nothing more than a smudge of data against a backdrop of alien stars. That didn’t help him much either. Then he gave it a surprised glance; it still hadn’t changed. He told his e-butler to run to the end of the recording, and highlight any detected variations. An intriguing notion was forming at the back of his mind.