Attanasio, AA - Solis

A sheet metal door slides open on a radiant room with the clean redolence of woodwork. Blue straw mats cover the floor, and yellow paper screens, like vertical louvers, section the suite. Between the screens, strips of a kitchen and a sleep cubicle are visible, both with wooden furniture-floral-carved pantry, painted cupboard, swivel stools, a trestle cot, and lacquered side tables.

A blond wood table and fanback chairs in the front room squeeze Mei's heart, and a tear startles down her cheek. She lowers her face to smell the spray of wildflowers in the table's centerpiece, trying to hide her emotion.

Rey Raza places an airy hand on her shoulder. "You're exhausted. I can see the fray light around you."

Shau, surprised, starts to explain, "Rey's from a strong-eye clade. He sees some infra and ultra, bodylights-"

"It's the wood," Mei manages to get out, feels stronger for it, lifts her head

and wipes her eyes. "I haven't been close enough to smell and touch wood since I

left Earth. I didn't know how much I missed it."

Shau puts a fist to his forehead, regretting again the absence of his recorder. He's convinced that these are the moments that will make his clips run. "Rey, rye got to call in."

"Use the cable phone by the cot." Rey points the way, then says with mesmeric softness to Mei, "You must sleep. Tomorrow Grielle comes. She is the woman on the death passage. Like all passagers, she's eager and will want to leave at once. So we will skip the refreshments and let you rest now. You may have the cot, and Shau can sleep in the rover. I have more work to do in the shop and will stay there. Good night."

Before she can demur, he exits through the metal door, and she is left alone

to touch the satiny wood and, for the first time, the palpable distance from her origin. She feels rent from her past, her family, and she rends herself from the table. She doesn't want to think about that now, On Phoboi Twelve, in the black moments when she was actually dead, she learned release. She is appalled that

she will have to learn it again.

In the cubicle she finds the reporter sitting at the edge of the cot, brushing the off-pad on the cable phone. His smile, for all its meekness, is warm. "I'm sorry about the distorts," he says. "Rabana just scolded me for stopping. I should have come straight here and skipped the damn sunset."

Mei's eyes lower to meet his, then swing up, weary and burned by tears. "We're alive. That's enough for me right now." She sits down on the cot and unzips her boots. "Is Softcopy going to take care of you?"

"They're sending me a new link and a recorder mantle." He thumbs the lux pad, and the cubicle lights dim. "I'm going to wait outside for the courier. What I wouldn't give for a whiff right now. Oh, well, I won't see that ring again. Ease, Jumper Nili. Ease and the countenance of dreams."

A slat of dark blue light glows dully from the latrine. She strips off her flightsuit and throws it in the sanitizing hamper. While it's running, she unpeels the nutriment patches from her forearm, all of them spent, and drops them in the disposer. The sonic shower dispels her last resistance to the fatigue she's been feeling since Terra Tharsis. She retrieves her clean flightsuit, zips it on loosely, and collapses onto the cot.

Pulling onto the concrete apron of the tour office lot Buddy kills the electric engine of his black and bulky rental car. He waits under the gaze of the laser cannon until Munk appears with Rey Raza and Shau Bandar. The androne, still holding Charles, introduces Buddy, and the stocky man removes a credit clip from his jacket and passes it to Rey.

"Round trip?" Rey asks, backing toward the garage. "One way," the man with the quiet eyes says.

"A passager?" Rey inquires.

Buddy shakes his head. "No. Just a traveler."

"Not all travelers are admitted to Soils, you know," Rey points out as he takes the credit clip inside to book passage. "A one-way trek both ways is expensive."

"Whatever it costs," Buddy replies.

"Munk called you an old one," the reporter says as they stroll into the garage port. "Are you filed with Softcopy?"

"Yes," Buddy admits and adds with a gentle, mysterious patience, "But I don't want you pulling it up, if you can restrain yourself. I don't want that with me on this trek."

"I don't think I can restrain myself, Buddy," Shau confesses, again wishing he had his mantle, which could access old clips immediately. "I'm a reporter, and what you've just said is far too tempting. Why would an old one go on a

trek-unless it's a death passage?"

"It's not," Buddy answers and looks to the street, where a courier van has pulled up.

"We'll talk," Shau promises and hurries out of the garage. Munk asks Buddy, "What was that about?"

"Most of the old ones have files with the news services." Buddy shrugs. "I'm

no different. But my past is. Where most of the old ones were intent on working with the Maat and building great worlds, I feared the strange new breed and worked mischief against them. It was a short-lived insurrection. But a Maat and some other people died. I was apprehended and reconditioned. Now I feel indifference where before I was hateful."

"The Maat forgave you," Munk says.

"No." Buddy's small smile carries no malice. "They altered my brain." Shau approaches with his arms full of bubble-wrapped packages. "It's all

here," he exults with exaggerated enthusiasm. "I am again the eyes of millions!" Rey returns Buddy's credit clip and helps Shau unpack. The recorder jacket and

mantle are desert-ready, tailored in sturdy canvas, dark brown and sere. The reporter slings it over his shoulders, and a delighted Rey assumes his most ingratiating air for the camera and takes Shau on a tour of the shop.

Munk stands in the port, staring out into the Martian night. Buddy pats him affectionately on the arm, then crawls back into the rental car to sleep. The crystal music of a silicon and chimes from farther down the Avenue of Limits,

too far away to be a threat just now. Nearby, he hears the journalist's recorder whispering to itself. Then it, too, is silent. Soon everyone is asleep, their brains as disengaged from the continuum of actual events as is Charles's in his plasteel sleep.

A jeweldust of stars gleams in galactic vapor trails over the black horizon. There is much for Munk to add to his anthropic model and review, but before he does, he tracks the night sky. In the heavens' swirling turbulence, Earth's silver-blue star stares over them unblinking.

At the first smear of dawn, a skim-flight truck pulls up before Rey Raza's garage and mindless loader handroids begin depositing large high-impact crates. A mocha-skinned woman with long eyes and short black hair braided in tight designs on her pattern-shaved head emerges from the cab. She is dressed in a

slinky green gown of firepoints that fluoresce like auroras as she walks forward under the tracking laser cannon. Standing before Munk, she places her thin fingers on Charles.

"Dear man," she whispers to the archaic brain, "we meet going in opposite directions. By the grace and acts of light, I will get you to Solis, and you will be the last of the first men with whom I speak."

"That is a touching sentiment," Munk states.

The angular woman cocks a fine eyebrow. "What does an androne know of sentiment?"

"Enough to recognize it when I see it. You must be Grielle Aspect."

Her dark, elongated eyes, assess Munk calmly. "I've liked you from the moment you defied the Moot. I believe we will be famous friends."

"How do you know of me and Mr. Charlie?"

"I watch the news clips," she says, turning her chin to her shoulder, revealing a clean, haughty profile as she peers into the garage. "I'm leaving this world, dear androne, not my mind. Knowledge still is power-as it was in Mr. Charlie's time. As it ever will be."