“Maybe”, Hannah said, “despite his protestations he secretly admires the exhibition?”
Matt frowned. “I don’t know about that. He always was an odd character.”
I looked at him. “Always? This isn’t the first time you’ve met?”
Maddie flapped a hand, as if to say, Don’t get him started on that subject!
Matt sighed. “For my sins, I knew Darius Dortmund on Earth forty years ago. We were both students at Bonn Academy of Art.”
“He was an artist?” I said.
“Well, he thought he was. He had a certain… raw talent, let’s say.”
Hannah sipped her drink and asked, “What was he like, back then?”
Matt shrugged. “Similar in character: intolerant, prickly, a loner who thought everyone else lacked not only talent but intelligence. I’ll give him this◦– he always was intellectually gifted. He saw to the heart of everything; his conversation could be brilliant. But he lacked… let’s just say that he lacked… heart, for want of a better word. Spirit. Humanity.” Matt laughed. “He was a pessimist, when pessimism wasn’t the fashion. Space was opening up; new worlds, new races, new philosophies were being discovered◦– but Dortmund claimed that there was nothing new under the sun and that the truth, in every field, could be found in materialist reductionism.”
Hannah frowned, “But how does that tie in with his obsessive sampling of the Epiphany Stones?” She shrugged. “I don’t know, but he looked like a man in search of something.”
Matt gestured with his beer bottle. “I can’t answer that, Hannah. Maybe he’s changed, left his nihilistic materialism behind… but somehow I think not.”
Hawk asked the question on the tip of my tongue. “So what happened to him? I mean, there he was in Bonn, the death of the party, and then he becomes famous years later as… what did the media call him? An alien-empath? How did that happen?”
Matt laughed. “He dropped out of the Academy before the final year, and to be honest everyone was glad to see the back of him. Over the years since, I kept hearing about him◦– though never in art circles; he never made it as an artist. About five years after I left Bonn, I heard from a fellow student that he was working for the European government, troubleshooting on colony worlds where there were problems. Not long after that a friend said they’d bumped into him at the Paris Telemass station, just back from Meridian◦– but Dortmund was too wrapped up in himself to acknowledge the guy.”
Kee said, “But he wasn’t empathic then?”
“Not to my knowledge. I’ve heard he became augmented about ten years ago.”
“And how did that happen?” I said. “If reports in the media are to be believed—”
Matt held up a hand. “They’re not. He wasn’t bitten by a Lyran sand-devil, nor absorbed into the consciousness of some telepathic beast somewhere, then spat out. And he wasn’t taken over by an alien…”
“So what did happen?” Hannah wanted to know.
“He worked for Berlin as a troubleshooter. When the neuroscience of empathy came in, he was one of the first lined up for the cut. Some say he became even more nihilistic following the operation. Think about it◦– would you like to be privy to the workings of the human mind, and do it for a living? If you read the wrong sort of person again and again, the criminal, the insane, it’d be enough to turn anyone into a sociopath.”
“So he’s actually telepathic?” I asked.
Matt wobbled his beer bottle. “I’ve heard he’s what’s called an enhanced empath◦– he can read emotions, surface-level thoughts, stray mental emanations, but nothing deep or comprehensive.” He shrugged. “But that’s only what I’ve heard. Who knows?”
I said, “From the way he acts, he gives the impression of being a mind-reader…” I thought about his assessment of me the other day as lonely.
“That might just be acute intuition based on his empathy,” Maddie said,
Hawk grunted a laugh. “I don’t like the idea of the bastard reading my thoughts, I must admit.”
Matt said, “Around eight years ago the news broke that he’d brokered a peace deal between the colonists of Esperance and the hostile aliens there. I must admit that all the media adulation stuck in my craw. Call me shallow, if you like.”
“That’s a human reaction,” I said. “You don’t know how I felt when my ex-wife made a million from some art deal shortly before I moved here.” I laughed at the thought.
“What do you think he’s doing here, Matt?” Hawk said. “Has he come just to view the latest work of an old acquaintance?”
Matt shook his head, his brow buckled in thought. “I don’t know. I haven’t asked him, directly.”
Maddie clapped her hands and passed around the menus. “Enough of Dortmund!” she demanded. “Let’s think about our stomachs instead.”
Hannah ordered a local fish with braised Chalcedony salad, and I went for a winter bouillabaisse. Thirty minutes later we were eating in silence. I glanced at Hannah, to see if she was enjoying her meal. Her eyes grew huge above a forkful of vegetables; she had a magical way of communicating her delight without using words.
“What do you think?”
“Mmm!” She mopped a spill of oil from her chin, laughing at her clumsiness. “Wonderful! It’s great, David.” She reached out and squeezed my fingers. “Thanks so much for inviting me.”
I grinned adolescently. “My pleasure.”
We were settling back, replete yet contemplating dessert, when Matt’s com chimed. He excused himself and took the call, standing by the balcony rail and staring out across the waters of the bay.
He stiffened, his brow furrowing. I heard a fraught, “What? What the hell…”
He moved away from the rail, more to work off frustration by striding back and forth, I guessed, than from the desire not to be overheard. A hurried conversation ensued. Mild-mannered so much of the time, he seemed animated and angered now.
Maddie was watching, her expression concerned.
A minute later Matt returned to the table. “I’m sorry. You’ll have to excuse me. There’s been some trouble down at the exhibition—”
Maddie stood and touched his arm. “Trouble?”
Matt shrugged. “Something about the power supply to the stones◦– at least, I hope it’s that. I’d better get down there and sort it out.”
“I’ll come with you,” Maddie said.
Matt kissed her forehead. “Thanks, but there’s nothing you can do. Stay here and enjoy yourself. I’ll be back in an hour or so, okay?”
She consented, but with obvious displeasure. As Matt hurried from the patio and made for his hover-car in the lot, we debated ordering desserts. In the end only Kee went for something sweet; the rest of us opted for beer.
I smiled at Hannah. I wondered if she detected my sadness. I often have this feeling when good friends are called away from the group, or cannot make it to a gathering: a kind of minor-key melancholy at their absence. I suppose it was because for too many years I had not enjoyed the amity of such a close-knit group of friends.
Conversation turned to other things. Kee asked Hannah how she was liking life on Chalcedony. She said she loved the slow pace of life, and how friendly people here were…
I was the first to notice the arrival of the long white limousine. It was a hired vehicle◦– a chauffeur with a peaked cap was at the wheel◦– and two figures sat in the back seat. The limousine pulled off the coast road and glided to a halt beside the Jackeral, perhaps fifty metres away.
“Hello,” I said. “I think we have company.”
As I spoke, a small, blue-furred figure opened the vehicle’s rear door. The Elan’s feet didn’t touch the ground as he turned on his seat, and he had to jump the last few inches to the tarmac.