Metal Swarm - Kevin J. Anderson [22]
Eleven
Sullivan Gold
In his quarters halfway up a crystalline tower, Sullivan looked at reflections of Mijistra's skyline and pondered what to write. The grey-haired cloud-harvester manager held a stylus in his hand, tapping the tip against a diamondfilm sheet. He had gone through seven drafts of this letter to his wife. No words seemed sufficient to explain everything that had happened.
'Dear Lydia, Guess what? I'm not dead after all!' His lips quirked in a smile. He could just imagine her expression when she read that.
Instead, he started again and wrote a long rambling letter, telling Lydia how often he had thought about her and what dangerous situations he had survived. 'My cloud harvester was destroyed by hydrogues. I rescued an Ildiran crew and then was held prisoner in Mijistra.' He reassured Lydia that he was healthy, treated well, and bore no particular ill-will toward the Ildirans.
As he continued writing, he worried about what had happened to his family. Had any of them been hurt during the hydrogue battle around Earth? Were Lydia, their children, and their grandchildren even still alive? Sullivan had no idea what was going on. 'Now the Mage-Imperator has decided to let me come back home again, if you'll have me.'
After writing two more drafts of the letter, he decided it was as good as he could make it. He reminded himself it was a message home, not a literary masterpiece (though Lydia would certainly correct his grammar). 'Hope to see you soon. Love, Sullivan.'
He gathered up the sheets and went in search of Kolker, wanting to find the lonely green priest before all the other Hansa engineers scribbled their own letters home. Kolker would dictate the words into the treeling like a telegraph operator sending a message. Some other green priest would receive the letter and find someone to deliver it to Lydia. How he wished he could be there to see her reaction! (Then again, if he could be there, the message itself would be superfluous.)
In one of the Prism Palace's courtyard gardens Kolker sat cross-legged and alone on a polished stone slab under the intense light from multiple suns. Even with one of Ildira's seven stars snuffed out, the day was too bright for Sullivan, though he had gotten used to squinting. In his open palms Kolker held a mirrorlike prismatic medallion, a circle with patterns etched on its angled faces, so that when the sunlight struck it, rainbows splashed off in coloured streams.
The green priest seemed preoccupied when Sullivan greeted him and asked him to send the letter to Lydia on Earth. 'I'll try, of course, but I don't know if it'll do much good. The only green priest on Earth is rarely allowed to use his treeling. He's under house arrest in the Whisper Palace.'
'Why would the Chairman want to isolate his green priest?'
'Because of the government breakdown.'
Sullivan sat beside Kolker on the stone slab, trying to get comfortable. 'What government breakdown? Sounds like you have some news you haven't shared.'
Not reluctantly, but without any obvious interest in the matter, Kolker explained what had happened with King Peter and the new Confederation, and that all green priests had denied their communication services to the Hansa.
'What a mess! As if the drogues weren't bad enough. Why didn't you tell me?'
'It didn't seem important right now.'
Sullivan could tell that the green priest was troubled, changed somehow. Once, he'd been extremely talkative, spending much of his time connected through the worldforest network. 'I'm surprised you haven't been up in the rooftop gardens all day long, using the treeling to chat with your green priest friends.'
Kolker shrugged. 'What used to give me so much joy isn't enough anymore. It's as if blinders have been removed from my eyes. Where once I saw only a small meal, now I can envision an entire banquet, yet I'm not allowed to taste anything other than