Dudley stepped out onto the platform, and immediately reached for his sunglasses. The settlement was somewhere in the tropics, with a clammy humidity to go with the burning blue-tinged sunlight. To the west, he could just see the ocean past a series of gentle hills. He pulled his jacket off and fanned himself. His skin was already sweating.
Someone at the other end of the platform called out Dudley’s name and waved. Dudley hesitated in the act of raising his own hand. The man was just over six feet tall with the kind of slim frame that marathon runners cherished. Physical age was difficult to place, his skin was heavily OCtattooed; patterns and pictures glowed with hazy color on every limb. Gold spiral galaxies formed a slow-moving constellation across his bald head. A perfectly clipped, graying goatee beard was the only real clue to late middle age. He grinned and started to walk down the length of the platform; his kilt flapping around his knees. The tartan was a bold pattern in amethyst and black.
“Professor Bose, I presume?”
Dudley managed not to stroke his own OCtattoo. “Uh, yes.” He put his hand out. “Er, LionWalker Eyre?” Even the way he pronounced it was wrong, like some kind of disapproving bachelor uncle. He hoped the heat was covering any blush to his cheeks.
“That’ll be me. Most people just call me Walker.”
“Er. Great. Okay. Walker, then.”
“Pleased to meet you, Professor.”
“Dudley.”
“My man.” LionWalker gave Dudley a hearty slap on his back.
Dudley started to worry. He hadn’t given any thought to the astronomer’s name when the datasearch produced it. But then, anyone who had enough money to buy a four foot reflecting telescope, then ship it out to a frontier world and live there with it, had to be somewhat eccentric.
“It’s very kind of you to allow me a night’s observation,” Dudley said.
LionWalker smiled briefly as they headed back down the platform. “Well now, it was very unusual to be asked such a thing. Got to be important to you, then, this one night?”
“It could be, yes. I hope so.”
“I asked myself: why one night? What can you possibly see that only takes up such a short time? And a specific night as well.”
“And?”
“Aye, well that’s it, isn’t it? I could not come up with a single thing; not in terms of stellar events. And I know there are no comets due, either, at least none I’ve seen, and I’m the only one watching these skies. Are you going to tell me?”
“My department has an ongoing observation of the Dyson Pair; some of our benefactors were interested in them. I just want to confirm something, that’s all.”
“Ah.” LionWalker’s smile grew wise. “I see. Unnatural events it is, then.”
Dudley began to relax slightly. Eccentric he might be, but LionWalker was also pretty shrewd.
They reached the end of the platform and the tall man suddenly twisted his wrist and pointed a finger, then slowly drew a semicircle in the air. The OCtattoos on his forearm and wrist flared in a complicated swirl of color. A Toyota pickup truck pulled up sharply in front of them.
“That’s an interesting control system,” Dudley commented.
“Aye, well, it’s the one I favor. Sling your bags in the back, will you?”
They drove off along one of the newly extruded concrete roads, heading out of the busy settlement. LionWalker twitched his fingers every few seconds, inducing another ripple of color in his OCtattoos, and the pickup’s steering would respond fluidly.
“Couldn’t you just give the drive array some verbal instructions?” Dudley asked.
“Now what would be the point in that? My way I have control over technology. Machinery does as I command. That’s how it should be. Anything else is mechanthropomorphism. You don’t treat a lump of moving metal as an equal and ask it pretty please to do what you’d like. Who’s in charge here, us or them?”
“I see.” Dudley smiled, actually warming to the man. “Is mechanthropomorphism a real word?”
LionWalker shrugged. “It ought to be, the whole bloody Commonwealth practices it like some kind of religion.”
They quickly left the settlement behind, driving steadily along the road that ran parallel to the coast, just a couple of kilometers inland. Dudley kept catching glimpses of the beautifully clear ocean beyond the small sandy hillocks standing guard behind the shore. Farther inland the ground rose to a range of distant hills. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, nor any breeze. The intense light gave the tufty grass and coastal reeds a dark hue, turning the leaves almost jade. Small scrub trees grew along the side of the road; at first glance similar to terrestrial palms, except their leaves were more like cacti branches, complete with monstrous red thorns.
Fifty kilometers clear of the settlement the road curved inland. LionWalker gave an elaborate wave with his hand, and the pickup obligingly turned off, heading down a narrow sand track. Dudley wound the window down, smelling the fresh sea air. It wasn’t nearly as salty as most H-congruous worlds.
“See the way they laid the road well inland?” LionWalker called over the wind. “Plenty of prime real estate between it and the coast. Thirty years’ time, when the city’s grown up, that’ll sell for ten thousand dollars an acre. This whole area will be covered in rich men’s beach houses.”
“Is that bad?”
“Not for me,” LionWalker said with a laugh. “I won’t be here.”
It was another fifteen kilometers to LionWalker’s house. He’d taken over a curving bay that was sheltered by dunes that extended for several kilometers inland. His house was a low bungalow of pearl-white drycoral perched on top of a large dune only a hundred meters from the shore, with a wide veranda of decking facing the ocean. The big dome of the observatory was a little farther back from the water, a standard concrete and metal design.
A golden Labrador ran out to greet them, tail wagging happily. LionWalker fussed with it as they walked to the house. Dudley could hear the sounds of a furious argument while they were still twenty meters away.
“Oh, Lord, they’re still at it,” LionWalker muttered.
The thin wooden shutter door slammed open and a young woman stormed out. She was startlingly beautiful, even to Dudley, who was used to a campus full of fresh-faced girls.
“He’s a pig,” she spat at LionWalker as she hurried past.
“Aye, I’m sure,” LionWalker said meekly.
The woman probably didn’t hear, she was already walking toward the dunes, face set with a determination that made it clear she wasn’t going to stop until she reached the end of the world. The Labrador gave her a longing look before turning back to LionWalker.
“There, there.” He patted the dog’s head. “She’ll be back to give you your supper.”
They’d almost reached the door when it opened again. This time it was a young man who came out. With his androgynous features, he was almost as beautiful as the girl. If it hadn’t been for the fact he was shirtless, Dudley might even have questioned his gender.
“Just where does she think she’s going?” he whined.
“I don’t know,” LionWalker said in a resigned tone. “She didn’t tell me.”
“Well, I’m not going after her.” The youth set off for the beach, slouching his shoulders and kicking at the sand with his bare feet as he went.
LionWalker opened the door and gestured Dudley inside. “Sorry about that.”