I could sense her eyes taking me in for the first time, but I continued to observe Morgan.
“I’ll leave you as Lieutenant Chang’s responsibility then.” The commander inclined his head to Jiendra. “If you would act as the professor’s escort, Lieutenant, as necessary. You do need a check at sick bay. All of you.”
“I can manage that, Commander.” Jiendra smiled politely. “I think he has more than proven his loyalty and trustworthiness.”
“After sick bay,” Morgan continued, pointedly ignoring me, “you’re relieved of all duties until morning quarters tomorrow.”
Jiendra eased up to me, and smiled. “Will you escort me?”
“That might be in the optimal interest of all.” I did not bother to mask my relief and elation.
“… most polite she’s been to anyone…” came a murmur. I thought it might have been from Lindskold.
I offered my arm to Jiendra, and she accepted it.
76
Barna
In between the General Quarters and the escape and fight with the Covenanter ships, and afterward, I kept working on the differing paintings of the artifact. From each angle, each image, it conveyed a different sense of what it was. I didn’t even try light matrices. Those didn’t seem right. While I thought I managed, especially in one of the larger oils, to combine several of those different “identities” into one painting, even that work didn’t catch everything.
I also spent some time on the study of the professor and the pilot, and that kept me fresh for the work on the renderings of the artifact.
I also worried about Elysen. I’d stopped by her work space often, but she wasn’t there. I’d even slipped down to sick bay, but the medtech on duty there insisted she wasn’t there, and promised to let Major DeLisle know I’d inquired.
I hesitated to try to find her stateroom, or to go there, but the comm gave me the same response every time, and she hadn’t returned any of my messages.
For perhaps the eighth time in less than half a stan, I stood back from the canvas and studied the work. I had the silvered blue of the hall in which I’d found it correct, and I was happy with the crystal flaring sections, but the silver-grayish bases didn’t convey what I wanted.
“Ser Barna?”
I turned from the easel. A major stood in my work space/studio doorway. He looked familiar.
“I’m Doctor DeLisle.”
“Yes?” Was it about Elysen? “Is it about Dr. Taube? What can you tell me?”
“She asked to see you, and, well, it’s not something I wanted to handle over the comm.”
“Is she… she said there was nothing anyone could do.” I didn’t know what else to say.
“I’m afraid there isn’t.” The doctor smiled, sadly. “Not that I can do. Not that anyone could have done anywhere. Remedial actuation of telomerase only works for so long, even under the best of conditions. She was fortunate that she’s one of those for whom it works at all. It doesn’t for most people.”
Fortunate? I wondered. Watching your children and grandchildren die before you? Even partial immortality—or extreme old age, active or not—had a price. My eyes strayed back to the canvas. Had that been a problem for the Danannians? Would we ever know?
“Where is she?”
“I’ll take you.”
“Just a moment. I want to bring something.”
DeLisle waited while I gathered up the best of the portraits of her. Then we took the lift down to the quarters deck.
On the lift, a solid-faced lieutenant I didn’t know looked at DeLisle, me, the portrait, and back at me. He almost shook his head. I could tell.
“She’s dying.” I wanted to shake him.
He started to retort something, then caught himself. “Your friend?”
“In a grandmotherly way. She’s an astronomer.”
We got off, leaving the lieutenant. He had other things to worry about, I surmised.
“He doesn’t understand,” DeLisle said quietly. “He’s young, and if he survives combat, he still believes he’ll live forever and never grow old.”
Did I feel that way? Or somewhere in between—not young, but ageless? Didn’t we all?
DeLisle stopped at a doorway. “I can’t stay. There’s a monitor, and if there’s any problem… when…”
“Can you do anything?”
“No. Nothing more than relieve the pain and discomfort. We’ve done that.”
“Do what you need to. I’ll stay with her.”
“I can send a tech if you have to leave.”
“I’ll stay with her.”
DeLisle eased the door open and motioned for me to enter.
Elysen lay stretched on the gray plastrene bunk in her quarters, plain white sheets tucked neatly across her chest, white counterpane folded across a gray D.S.S.-issue blanket, her upper torso and head propped up with two white pillows. Somehow, she should have been in a solid wood bed with fine linens, and an antique china tea set beside her. Then, perhaps not. She had wanted to keep working. The only sign of any medical equipment was a wide wristband, with a narrow strip that led to a miniature console on the low table beside the bunk.
Her head turned. “Chendor?” Her eyes went beyond me. “I told you not to tell anyone.”
“Medical discretion, Dr. Taube.” DeLisle smiled, almost boyishly.
“If you were not a D.S.S, doctor, I’d report you.” Her voice was thin, wheezy, and slightly rasping.
“But I am.” He inclined his head. “I’ll be back later.” The door closed behind him.
Elysen snorted, but the sound was a soft wheeze.
“I thought you might like to see the final version.” I stepped forward and turned the canvas so that the light fell on it.
“You… do have a great gift, Chendor… shouldn’t have wasted it on me.”
“It wasn’t wasted. You made a great discovery, and there ought to be a real portrait of you.”
“Looking too old to have done anything.”
I wasn’t about to get into that. “You’re not in pain?”
“No. There’s no pain, except feeling the universe close in around me. It’s hard to think for long at a time, and soon, I won’t be able to at all.”
“You’ll be fine,” I lied. “You’re just tired.”
“I’m more… than tired… but there’s nothing to be done.”
I propped the portrait against the bulkhead where she could see it, then settled onto the stool beside the bunk.
Her eyes closed, and I just sat there for a time.
She coughed and opened her eyes. “You asked what we had discovered, Chendor. It’s very simple. The Danannian aliens used their technology to move their entire galaxy—a small one, as galaxies go—into a new universe that they created.”
Was Elysen getting delusional? She’d already told me that.
“I am not losing it.” Her voice became gently acerbic. “I am not imagining things. That was what your device or model was all about. It was a representation of what they did… or, at the time it was made, a representation of what they were trying… Cleon doesn’t think that part of their science will work now… don’t understand the physics… something about the understructure of the universe… when dark energy and matter… atrousans and gravitons… once the density of the universe drops below a certain value… there’s an attenuation effect…” Her voice dropped off.
“You told me some of that. You and Cleon made it very clear. Just rest.”
“I suppose… I did. It’s hard to remember… I can recall when everything was so clear…”
I reached out and patted her shoulder. “We all have times like that.”
“Don’t humor me, Chendor.”