Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

Mars squirted away.
    Mela was watching him. ’Are you OK?’
    Symat felt a pang of regret. But he had made his choice, and now
he had to follow it through. ’I’m fine. What about you?’
    ’I don’t matter.’
    ’Yes, you do.’
    ’I’m all right.’
    He tried to focus on the journey. Mars was gone, and the sun’s
huge hull was receding. ’We’re going away from the sun. Where to?
Saturn?’ His knowledge of Sol system’s geography was vague, but he
knew Saturn was a giant world out in the dark, far out beyond the
orbit of Mars.
    ’Not as far as that. Not at first.’ Her small face was creased
with concentration. It was as if she was listening to a faint voice
only she could hear.
    ’So where? Jupiter?’
    ’No. Jupiter’s on the far side of the sun right now.’
    Symat was faintly disappointed. He’d have liked to see the black
hole remnant and its shattered moons. ’Then what? An asteroid? There
is a belt of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter.’
    ’There was. But the belt was mined out long ago. And then when the
sun started heating up many of the remaining icy bodies were
destroyed. Sol system was a lot more interesting, once.’ She sounded
wistful.
    ’So where are we going?’
    She smiled. ’You’ll see.’
    He studied her, curious. ’What’s it like?’
    ’What?’
    ’When you get stuff downloaded into your head.’
    She frowned, trying to find words. ’It’s as if I lost my memory,
then recovered it.’
    ’It doesn’t sound very comfortable. Not if it feels like you’re
sick.’
    She sighed. ’It’s not comfortable. And I don’t have any control
over it. The stuff just pours into my head when it’s needed - when
you need it. Sometimes even when I’m asleep, it comes.’
    ’I didn’t know your kind slept,’ he said. She looked hurt, and he
added hastily, ’Sorry. And I’m sorry you’re having to put up with
this, for my sake.’
    ’It’s not your fault. And anyhow if I hadn’t been around when the
Conclave decided it needed to speak to you, if they’d picked some
other Virtual, I’d never have got to see all this.’ She waved a hand
at the utter darkness beyond the enclosing walls of the flitter, and
they both burst out laughing.
    Symat clapped his hands to opaque the hull, and suddenly the
flitter felt like a cosy room. ’So shall we play a game?’
    Mela smiled. ’OK.’
    No longer children but not yet adults, the two of them ran and
laughed through the confines of the tiny ship, as it sailed on into
the mined-out emptiness of Sol system.
     
    After a day of silent transit, their destination came swimming out
of the dark.
    It was just a lump of ice at first glance, maybe a couple of
hundred kilometres across. Tinted an odd red-purple colour, it was
only vaguely spherical. It was impossible to tell if the scars on its
surface were natural or man-made, for the ice had obviously been
heavily melted, and the ridges and crater walls were softened and
slumped. But this island of ice was occupied. Symat saw lights,
defiant green and white, gleaming in crater shadows.
    And as the flitter skimmed low a spindly tower, kilometres tall,
loomed above the crumpled horizon. It was absurdly out of proportion
on this little world. When he looked carefully Symat saw a ghostly
purple bloom at the top of the tower: rocket exhaust.
    Even given the tower, this worldlet was hardly spectacular. But he
had to admit he was impressed when Mela finally told him the name of
this place. It was Port Sol.
    ’That’s impossible,’ Symat said immediately. ’Port Sol is a Kuiper
object.’ An ice moon, one of a vast flock drifting far beyond the
orbit of the farthest planets. ’We’re inside the orbit of Saturn.
What’s it doing here?’
    A Virtual popped into existence in the middle of the cabin. ’I
think I can answer that.’ It was a man, perhaps as old as Symat’s
father, though it was hard to tell physical ages. But unlike Hektor
he was short, squat, his limbs short and his belly large.
    Symat resented this sudden intrusion. He snapped, ’Who are
you?’
    ’Actually I don’t have a name. You can call me by my role, which
is the Curator.’ Despite his persistent grin he looked like a
curator. He was bald, and he wore an antique-looking robe, black,
sweeping to the floor, its breast adorned with a green tetrahedral
sigil.
    Mela asked, ’Curator of what?’
    ’Why, of Port Sol, of course. One of mankind’s most precious
bastions - and still a working place today.’
    Symat