Eric Brown: Starship Summer

We had finished our meals when Hawk leaned forward, staring along the beach. I saw a small, lone figure striding barefoot through the lapping waves, a blonde woman I judged to be in her thirties.

“Maddie,” Hawk said to me. “I must introduce you.”

He stood and called her name, waving. She looked up, as if from a reverie, then smiled and waved vaguely.

“Won’t you join us?” Hawk called.

She seemed to hesitate, then moved slowly from the sea and trod the sand towards the veranda steps. Over the weeks I came to know Maddie, I recognised this hesitation in her manner as something characteristic—the signifier of her unique condition. At the time I merely thought that she wanted to be left to herself.

She seemed to drift up the steps, smiling from Hawk to myself. She was thin, undernourished, the arrangement of her bones angular. She was attractive in a faded, beach-bum kind of way, the combination of too much sun and salt water. I saw that my estimation of her age had been a little kind: parenthetical wrinkles around her mouth suggested she was in her forties.

“Maddie, this is David Conway, just in from Earth. Conway, Maddie Chamberlain.”

I held out my hand, but Maddie smiled apologetically and whispered, “I don’t shake hands, Mr Conway.”

I smiled uneasily at her touch taboo, and Hawk covered the awkwardness by saying, “Conway’s just bought a ship from me,” and he pointed along the coast to the sleek shape of the starship silhouetted on the headland.

I told her that I preferred it to all the more traditional homes I’d been shown.

“How novel,” Maddie said, smiling with what seemed like genuine enthusiasm. “What a lovely idea.” She spoke with a gentle English accent. “Does it have a name?”

“I haven’t got that far yet.”

She stared at the ship. “Mmm, how about… the Mantis?” she suggested.

I looked along the foreshore at the starship and nodded. Silhouetted against the sky, it did have the aspect of a praying mantis. I nodded. “I like it,” I said. “The Mantis it is.”

From a cheesecloth bag she produced a container fashioned from some kind of local coconut equivalent, and seconds later a waiter appeared with a beer and poured it, without being told, into the container.

She ordered a salad, and ate it with cutlery she took from her bag.

Only then did I notice her clothes. They were evidently home-made, and not very well at that. The seams were uneven, the stitching haphazard.

“Conway’s fled Earth for the quiet life,” Hawk said.

“So you’re not a pilgrim?” Maddie said. It was the question I was asked again and again during my first few weeks in the area.

I smiled and explained that I’d come to Magenta to retire, to relax in the sun; I allowed that I might one day take a look at the Column, but that I was no religious fanatic.

“Do you know something, Mr Conway? I’ve lived on Chalcedony almost ten years now and I’ve never seen the Column at close quarters.” And the sudden smile, on her normally wistful face, made her look years younger.

“Familiarity,” Hawk said, “breeds not contempt but apathy.”

Maddie said, “I understand worshipping a God, but I fail to see why anyone should worship a golden column merely because it’s vast and enigmatic.”

“Perhaps,” I ventured, “that’s exactly why they worship it—in some way it’s a physical representation of the God they can’t see. It’s mysterious, numinous.”

She hesitated, her head on one side, and thought about that. “I wonder why some people need the physical?” she said enigmatically, and then changed the subject. “What did you do on Earth, Mr Conway?”

“I was an engineer. I had my own small business in Vancouver. Orbital elevators, mainly.”

“Was business good?”

I couldn’t help myself. “Up and down,” I said. Maddie laughed; Hawk covered his eyes and shook his head.

Maddie said, pointing to my starship, “Will you repair it? Get it flying again?”

I shook my head. “We think the ship might be alien. I might be an engineer, but I don’t understand the first thing about extraterrestrial mechanics.”

She looked across at Hawk. “You could help him, couldn’t you? Get the thing up and flying again. You could even pilot the ship.”

Hawk looked suddenly uneasy, as if Maddie had touched on a sore point. “Like Conway says,” he said tersely, “it’s alien. They do things differently. We wouldn’t understand the first principles, even.”

Maddie returned to her salad and ate abstractedly. I stretched and said, to fill the sudden silence, “I think I’ll get to like the way of life in Magenta.”

“It’s quiet,” Maddie said, “which is what I like about the place. The outside world hasn’t really reached us yet. The Bay hasn’t been flooded by the crass commercialism of the rest of the Expansion.”

Hawk said, “We know some good people here, don’t we, Maddie? We’ll introduce you, Conway.”

Maddie smiled. “Talking of good people, Hawk, have you seen anything of Matt lately?”

Hawk shook his head. “He’s busy finishing his latest project. He’s racing against time—the private showing is a couple of days away, and he’s still not finished.”

“Matt’s our very own famous artist,” Maddie explained. “Not Matt Sommers, the crystal sculptor?”

Maddie beamed. “The very same. You know his work?”

“My wife ran a gallery in Vancouver. Just reproductions, but I admire his stuff.”

“Is she with you on Chalcedony?” Maddie asked.

I shook my head. “We’re no longer together,” I explained, and left it at that.

Maddie opened her mouth in a silent ‘ah’, and covered her gaffe by rummaging in her home-made bag and producing a card. She pushed it across the table, withdrawing her hand quickly to avoid making contact with me.

“I have a spare ticket for the private viewing on Tuesday. Matt’s a good friend. He won’t mind my inviting you.”

I pocketed the ticket and thanked her. “I’ll look forward to that. You’ll be there, Hawk?”

He smiled. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world—not that I know much about art, but I like watching Maddie going all gooey-eyed when she’s in Matt’s company.” He winked across at Maddie, who gave him the evil eye, and I assumed Hawk had got even by touching her sore point.

“Matt’s a dear,” Maddie said, “but he’s made it perfectly obvious that he feels nothing for me. Not—” she hurried on, “—that I would be in any position to do anything about it even if he did.” And she smiled sweetly at Hawk.

He said, “Matt once told me that he has no place in his life for romance.” He shook his head, as if in wonder. “Which, coming from an artist—someone who should be open to all and every experience—I find baffling.”

Maddie leaned forward and whispered, mock conspiratorially, “Matt has a dark secret in his past. Just like you, Hawk.” And she licked her finger tip and chalked up another hit in the air between them.

At that second, as if to save Hawk, his com rang. He spoke briefly to the caller, cut the connection and said, “That was someone at the yard. A rare customer. I’d better get back before he escapes. I’ll see you both at the viewing, if not before.”

He paid the bill for all of us, despite my protests, and hurried from the veranda.

Maddie sipped her beer and asked, “How long have you known Hawk?”

“I bought the ship from him a couple of days ago. I’ve only met him twice.”

She eyed me over the horizon of her mug. “And what do you think of him?”

I shrugged. “He seems very friendly.”

“It’s strange, but you can know someone for years, and yet not really know them.”