No, I mean the personality is different, altered. There is no joy in its thoughts.
Syrinx opened her eyes and stared round the contoured walls of her cabin. Familiar trinkets she had picked up on her voyages were lined up in glass-fronted alcoves. Her eyes found the fifteen-centimetre chunk of whalebone carved into a squatting Eskimo which Mosul had given her. But Oenone ’s unease was too unsettling for the crude statue to register the way it usually did, bringing forth a warm recollection intrinsic to both of them.
Perhaps there has been an accident on one of the fishing boats,she suggested.
Then the grief should be shared, as is proper.
Yes.
Pernik hides behind a facade of correctness.
Is Eysk available?
One moment.
Syrinx felt the voidhawk’s mind reach out, then Eysk was merging his thoughts with her. Still the same old kindhearted family elder, with that deeper layer of toughness that made him such a shrewd businessman.
Syrinx,he exclaimed happily, we were wondering where you had got to.
Did you think I’d skipped out on you?
Me?he projected mock horror. Not at all. The arrest warrant we had drawn up was a mere precaution.
She laughed. I’ve brought your cases of Norfolk Tears.
How many?
Sixty.
Ah well, my family will be through that lot before the week’s out. Are you coming down tonight?
Yes, if it’s not too late.
Not at all. I’ll have some servitors lined up to unload your flyer by the time you get down.
Fine. Is everything all right on the island?
There was a moment’s hesitation, a thought-flash of bemused incomprehension. Yes. Thank you for asking.
Is Mosul there?
Sex, that’s all you young people think of.
We learn by example. Is he there?
Yes. But I don’t think Clio will welcome an interruption right now.
Is she very pretty?
Yes.he generated an image of a girl’s grinning face, half hidden by long dark hair. She’s bright, too. They are on the point of formalizing the arrangement.
I’m happy for him, for both of them.
Thank you. Don’t tell Mosul I said so, but she’ll make a splendid addition to the family.
That’s nice. I’ll see you in a couple of hours.
I’ll look forward to it. Just remember, Mosul learnt everything he knows from me.
As if I could forget.she broke the contact.
Well?Oenone asked.
I don’t know. Nothing I could put my finger on, but he was definitely stilted.
Shall I ask the other islands?
Goodness, no. I’ll find out what’s troubling them once I’m down. Mosul will tell me, he owes me that much.
Hooked into the flyer’s sensors, Syrinx couldn’t be sure, but Pernik appeared aged somehow. Admittedly it was darkest night, but the towers had a shabby look, almost mouldered. They put her in mind of Earth’s Empire State Building, now carefully preserved in its own dome at the centre of the New York arcology. Structurally sound, but unable to throw off the greying weight of centuries.
Thirty-two years old, and you see everything in such jaded terms, she told herself wearily. Pity that Mosul had formed a permanent attachment, though. He would have made a good father.
She clucked her tongue in self-admonition. But then her mother had conceived two children by the time she was thirty.
There’s always Ruben,Oenone suggested.
It wouldn’t be fair to him, not even to ask. He’d feel obligated to say yes.
I would like you to have a child. You are feeling incomplete. It upsets you. I don’t like that.
I am not feeling incomplete!
You haven’t even prepared any zygotes for my children yet. You should think about these things.
Oh goodness. You’re starting to sound like Mother.
I don’t know how to lie.
Rubbish!
Not to you. And it was you who was thinking of Mosul in that light.
Yes.syrinx stopped trying to argue, it was stupidly blinkered. What would I do without you?
Oenone wrapped her thoughts with a loving embrace, and for a moment Syrinx imagined the flyer’s ion field had leaked inside the cabin, filling it with golden haze.