Выбрать главу

A ramp extended and touched the wall at their feet.

Dolmaero embraced Ruiz awkwardly. “Well,” he said in a muffled voice, patting Ruiz’s back, “I will wish you the finest luck. You did your best for me.”

He turned to Nisa, bowed his tattooed head. “And the finest luck to you, Noble Lady. Though I wish you were not so devoted to Ruiz Aw. A princess returned from the dead… what a wonderful miracle that would make, to rally a world.”

“Thank you,” she said, and kissed his cheek. “My ambitions have become a great deal more modest — or ambitious, I’m not sure which.”

“I do not blame you,” he said.

When they lifted away, Dolmaero stood waving from the top of the Worldwall. His sturdy figure too quickly grew small and disappeared.

The Worldwall became a snake crawling along the edge of Pharaoh, and then Ruiz couldn’t look any longer.

He turned to Nisa. She watched her native world diminish, a look of tender ambiguity lighting her lovely face. “Good-bye,” she said finally, and shut off the screen.

She took a deep breath. “So,” she said, “what now?”

“We’ll live. We’ll dream. We’ll have flowers. Slow days and long nights,” he said, and covered her hand with his. “Flowers and time.”

Biographical Notes

Ray Aldridge was born in 1948. He has published a three-volume series, The Emancipator, featuring ex-slave investigator Ruiz Aw. The volume titles are The Pharaoh Contract, The Emperor of Everything and The Orpheus Machine. Short stories by Aldridge appeared in Full Spectrum 4 (1993) and The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction: A 40th Anniversary Anthology. Among his shorter works are Steel Dogs (1989), Gate of Faces (1991), a Nebula Best Novelette nominee (1992) and The Beauty Addict (1993), a Nebula Best Novella nominee (1994).