Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

ill-informed
ears, might even be religious in character. If so, of course, it was
perilous to the greater efficiency of the Third Expansion. An
important issue, then. But not very interesting.
    Surreptitiously, as they talked, he studied Teel.
    He supposed he had expected some battle-scarred veteran of raids
on Xeelee emplacements. But this Navy officer was young, surely about
the same age as he was himself, at twenty years. Her face was long,
the nose narrow and well-carved, her nostrils flaring slightly; her
mouth was relaxed but full. Her skin was unblemished - though it was
pale, almost bloodless; he reminded himself that of all the countless
worlds now inhabited by mankind, on only a handful could a human walk
in the open air without a skinsuit. But that paleness gave her skin a
translucent quality. But it was not Teel’s features that drew him -
she was scarcely conventionally beautiful - but something more
subtle, a quality of stillness about her that seemed to pull him
towards her like a gravitational field. She was solid, he thought, as
if she was the only real person in this place of buzzing bureaucrats.
Even before she spoke to him, he knew that Teel was like no one he
had ever met before.
    ’Novice.’ The Commissary’s gaze neatly skewered Luca.
    To his mortification, Luca felt his face flush like a child’s in a
new cadre. Captain Teel was looking a little past him,
expressionless. ’I’m sorry,’ he said.
    Dolo brushed that aside. ’Tell me what you are thinking. The
surface of your mind.’
    Luca looked at Teel. ’That, with respect, the Captain is
young.’
    Dolo nodded, his voice forensic. ’How could one so young -
actually younger than you, Novice - have achieved so much?’
    Luca said, ’ >A brief life burns brightly.< ’
    Teel’s lips parted, and Luca thought she sighed. The ancient
slogan hung in the air, trite and embarrassing.
    Dolo’s smile was cruel. ’I have come to a decision. I will visit
the site of this Doctrinal infringement. And you, Novice, will come
with me.’
    ’Commissary - you want me to go to the Core?’ It was all but
unheard of for a novice to travel so far.
    ’I have no doubt it will help you fulfil your fitful promise,
Luca. Make the arrangements.’
    Suddenly he was dismissed. Luca stood, bowed to the Commissary and
Captain, and turned to leave.
    Emotions swirled in Luca: embarrassment, surprise, fear - and a
strange, unexpected grain of hope. Of course this was all just some
game to the Commissary; Dolo had spotted Luca’s reaction to Teel and
had impulsively decided to toy with him. Dolo was hugely arrogant.
You could hardly expect to become one of the most powerful members of
a bureaucracy that ruled the disc of a Galaxy without learning a
little arrogance along the way. But for Luca it was a good
opportunity, perhaps an invaluable building block for his future
career.
    And none of that mattered, he knew in his heart, for whatever the
wider context Luca was now going to be in the company of this
intriguing young Navy officer for weeks, even months to come, and who
could say where that would lead?
    At the door he glanced back. Teel and Dolo continued to talk of
this uninteresting Doctrinal problem at the Galaxy’s Core; still she
didn’t look at him.
     
    They were to climb to orbit in a small flitter, and there join the
Navy yacht that had brought Teel to Earth.
    Luca had only been off Earth a couple of times during his general
education, and then on mere hops out of the atmosphere. As the
flitter lifted off the ground its hull was made transparent, so that
it was as if the three of them were rising inside a drifting bubble.
As the land fell away Luca tried to ignore the hot blood that
prickled at his neck, and the deeply embarrassingly primeval
clenching of his sphincter.
    He tried to draw strength from Teel’s stillness. Her eyes were
blue, Luca noticed now. He hadn’t been able to make that out before,
in the shifting light of the Library.
    As they rose the Conurbation was revealed. It was a glistening
sprawl of bubble-dwellings blown from the bedrock. The landscape
beyond was flat, a plain of glistening silver-grey devoid of hills,
and there were no rivers, only the rectilinear gashes of canals. The
only living things to be seen, aside from humans, were birds. It was
like this over much of the planet. The alien Qax had begun the
transformation of the land during their Occupation of Earth, their
starbreaker beams and nanoreplicators turning