Engineman - Eric Brown [48]
The two Disciples waved across at Ella and Max, then set off along the path that wound down the hillside through the jungle. Conchita picked up her daughter and walked to the top of the track, stood and watched them go.
Ella threw down the rag and joined them.
The woman smiled shyly. "It is more difficult for those who stay behind. The constant worry..."
"Have faith," Ella said. She glanced at the woman's arm, expecting to see an infinity symbol tattoo.
Conchita said, "No, I'm not a Disciple." She looked from Ella's tattoo to her shoulders. "You were never an Enginewoman, and yet you believe?
Ella shrugged. "I have faith," she began, but left it at that. She looked up at Conchita and said, "You must have some belief? Are you Catholic?"
Conchita laughed. "I have no belief - or rather I believe in my husband, in my daughter." She bounced Maria on her hip and kissed the little girl. "The love I have for Emilio and Maria is enough. And you? Besides your faith, do you have special people?"
Ella smiled. "I had. Eddie was an Engineman. He gave himself to the interface. And my father... I haven't seen him for ten years." She shrugged. "We didn't get on..."
To her surprise, Conchita hugged her with her free arm. "You seem so lost, Ella. I hope you find your way."
She smiled at Ella and then carried her daughter into the house.
Ella returned to her room, to change from her silversuit into jeans, a t-shirt and the jacket the courier had given her. She stepped outside, sat in an old armchair on the porch and stared down the hillside towards the coast.
One of the factors that had made Ella decide to leave her father when she was fifteen - indeed, the main factor - was the simple fact of his lack of affection. There were many other reasons, a catalogue of specific incidents, acts of thoughtlessness or deliberate instances of cruelty - one in particular involving L'Endo which she could not bring herself to dwell on - but she understood that these acts of unkindness were merely the result of her father being unable to feel towards her the simple love and affection that should unite father and daughter. For instance, Ella could not once recall her father picking her up and hugging her when she was a child. Her upbringing had been left to the care of a series of nannies and minders. Her father had been a stern, saturnine figure who lived a separate life in his own suite of rooms during her early years. From the age of five until twelve, she'd attended a boarding school on the Rim world of Jet, and in that time her father had turned up just twice to take her on holiday, and on each occasion she had spent most of the vacation with her minder. At twelve, on her father's posting to the Reach, he had installed her in a day school in Zambique, within commuting distance of their villa in the Falls. Her father stayed at the villa perhaps one week in six, but by that time years of separation had taken their toll, and they had acted towards each other as strangers.
Ella drew her legs to her chest and hugged her shins. The damned thing was, she could almost bring herself to understand why her father had felt towards her as he had. Her mother had died when Ella was young, leaving him with a child as a reminder of his loss - a child that he had never wanted. His work for the Organisation around the Rim had taken him away from home when she was young, and later in her teens his absence made any rapprochement impossible. She could almost understand her father's disaffection, but she could not bring herself to forgive him.
And then this bolt from the blue. "I have seen the light, Ella.