“Space save me!” he exclaimed, suddenly sober. “What am I doing up here in a tree?”
“You’re a new man. Murek is gone; I erased him down to the last bit.”
He let her hug him. He had never felt happier with anyone in his life. “I love you.” Freedom was exalting. “I’m
taking you with me. Why didn’t I think of that before? I’ve just decided that I’m willing to defy your parents. I’ll never let you go.”
“That’s just what I’ve been planning all along,” she cooed.
“I’m awed by my stupidity. Where will we hide!”
“I have another secret I shouldn’t have kept from you. I’ve located a honeymoon retreat that’s not on our family charts.”
19
MOTHER AND DAUGHTER AND A WALL WITH EARS, 14,791 GE
This is the excellent foppery of the world: that when we are sick in fortune—often the surfeit of our own behavior—we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars, as if we were villains on necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance, drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence...An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition on the charge of a star!
—The SpearShaker of Old Rith
The mysterious owner of the Coron’s Egg, wherever in the Galaxy he resided, was obviously not a collector. From her coded correspondence with him, Nemia of P Amontag was convinced he did not know that he possessed a first edition or even that there had been many editions of what he called his “galactarium.” He valued it for some obscure reason; he was neither willing to sell it nor willing to reveal his identity, though he did seem ready to offer information contained within—for a price. She, however, had no intention of asking for the coordinates she desired—the location of the planet Zural II, which Grandfa was certain it held. Such a misstep could attract far too much attention. She needed help.
By night Nemia sneaked out by air to visit her mother, meticulously making sure that she had a backup story and that Hiranimus would not be able to trace her. The P Amontag estate and factory were built into the side of a cliff with an awesome view of the local badlands. That was why she was still good at rock climbing. The pitons she had zapped into the rock as a child were probably still there. Nemia was the family hiker and adventuress—she took after Grandfa. Her mother didn’t like to leave mansion or factory except for long trips and the occasional stellar adventure. Father was away, as usual, that extraordinary mathist and plotter always with his hand in dubious affairs, Grandfa’s son. She would have to deal with her mother. She would rather have dealt with her father.
The mansion’s disembodied robopresence greeted her warmly by sliding open the door before she could sneak up on it, a mutual game they had played since she was a child. She had never won. “Ah, so you’re back!” The robopresence had a cluttered archivist’s memory. “Ran away without even saying good-bye to me! Was that nice!”
“Grandfa kidnapped me,” she explained contritely.
“You’ve grown so! Of course, as usual with l’Amontag children, you’ve forgotten to comb your hair. Mama will be certain to remind you. I can have a brush ready for you in the refresher.”
Nemia sighed. There was no way to face down her old faceless friend. “Mama is waiting.”
“No she isn’t; she has your message that you’re coming but I haven’t yet told her that you’re here. You have time, little one. Now hurry with that hair fix-up before she gets impatient!”
Nemia gave up with a smile. In the refreshing room she put down her traveling case and decided on more than a hair fluffing; she stripped and took a mist shower, brushed her teeth, scrubbed her tongue, and spent all the strokes on her hair that the watchful robopresence expected. A silken robe embroidered with the cavorting figures of gengineered beasts was waiting for her when she was ready.
“Where is Mama?”
“Her boudoir. I will now announce your arrival.”
“No. I want to surprise her.”
“That wouldn’t be the proper protocol,” replied the stem voice.
“When I was a baby, you let me sneak up on her!” she pleaded. “Please?”
“She’ll disconnect me!”
“Ha! She’d forget her own name without you. Keep quiet and I’ll tell you a story tonight. Is it a bargain?”
“You’ll tell me a story? you little conniving rascal! I’m the storyteller around here!”
“I’m grown up now. I tell the stories!”
The robopresence sighed in capitulation. “Such respect I get for spoiling you!”
At her mother’s door Nemia set down her traveling case noiselessly and watched familiar matronly fingers engrossed in intricate embroidery. It was the same comfortable room, the same flickering fire. Mama never changed her furniture, or her ways, addicting herself to the special things which passed her demanding judgment. The huge screen upon which she wove her patterns hadn’t been upgraded in Ne-mia’s memory. The bed under which Nemia had played “cave” since she was two was still there; none of the tables and chairs and cushions—once metamorphosed into castles and ships and control rooms and dungeons—were missing, but now seemed to be arranged in their proper places. The rug was new, its baroque themes almost sacrilegious to Nemia, who had grown used to her mother’s timeless constants. The old rug had carried simple beige designs.
Nemia hesitated to interrupt the delicate weaving of quantronic magic, but she knew from long experience that this was merely the way her mother passed her quiet time, that she liked to be interrupted. “Mama.”
The Duchess of l’Amontag took only a moments’ hand gesture to dismiss her creation and turn to her daughter. “Ah, my runaway child.” The pleasantries thus aside, she moved on to business immediately. “Have you snared him yet?” “Yes, Mama.” She curtsied.
“Hmmm. I thought you’d rebel. You haven’t been the easiest child in the world to raise properly. Rebellion would have been the easy way out.”
“I wanted to.” Nemia smiled. “I would have—but I like him”
“His family entirely approves of you.”
“So does he!” Nemia answered hotly.
“He does, does he? He’s not altogether the best choice for you. But knowing you, I had to make compromises.”
“I thought Grandfa chose him?”
“Well, now!” said the Duchess indignantly. “That man certainly did his share of meddling! Your father’s side of the family is incorrigible! I had Hiranimus Scogil on my list before your grandfather even knew he existed. At the bottom of my list.”
‘That puts him up a notch on my list!” retorted Nemia. “Children,” came a placating disembodied voice, “no quarreling in my house!”
“Quiet! Or I’ll disconnect you.”
“Mama, treat her well! She’s an old friend!”
“Have you ever seen me beat her? She does need a brain transplant.”
“Mama, you wouldn’t know how to run the house without her!”
“There’s that,” conceded Nemia’s mother.
“Nemia, she’s right.” The voice sniffled. “After all,” it went on righteously, “servants are to be seen and not heard!” “May we be alone?” the mother demanded imperiously, and after a long enough silence she returned to her daughter. “So That meant back to business. “I presume you are here for a handout?”
“Mama! You arranged the wedding! Since we have to elope in the middle of the night, the least you can do is give us a glorious honeymoon.”