Ring Around the Sky - Allyn Gibson [9]
But what dominated the view from the balcony was not Prelv.
From east to west a thin line, shining bright in the sunlight, cut across the sky. Gomez looked up. Her gaze caught the Ring in the southeast, and she followed it upward through the blue sky and the wafting clouds. Here and there she saw thin, bright lines intersecting the Ring—the elevators—and she followed one or two down to the horizon or until the clouds obscured them. She continued westward along the Ring, and to the southwest, not far below the Ring’s maximum elevation in the sky and one of the elevator junctions, the Ring’s reflected splendor was broken. She hadn’t known the position of the destroyed segment of the Ring, but the thought that the first minister of the planet could come on his balcony and see it every day saddened her deeply, and she turned from the sky and looked to Grevesh who, as she had been, was looking up into Kharzh’ulla’s morning sky.
Grevesh turned to her and smiled. “An impressive sight, is it not, Commander?”
Gomez nodded. “Yes, First Minister, it is.”
He moved his chair to her side, and he took her right hand in his hands. “The Ring matters to my people. It stands as a symbol of everything that we are.” He looked up into her eyes. “Please, we need your help, your expertise.” Grevesh then looked past her to Eevraith and nodded in his direction. “When he was but a student at the university, my minister of transportation wrote the definitive work on the Ring, how to build it and how to work it, but repairing it is a different and difficult problem.”
Gomez turned and looked at Tev. He wore a neutral expression on his face, and she thought his eyes especially sad and pained. She gave him a reassuring nod, turned back to Grevesh, and said, “We’ll do what we can, First Minister.”
“I knew you would.”
Eevraith seated himself on a nearby couch on the balcony, and he gestured at the couch opposite. “Please, Commander, be seated,” he said.
As Gomez moved to sit, Grevesh asked, “Who would this be? We haven’t been introduced, Eevraith.” He stared directly at Tev, whether out of shock or confusion Gomez could not decide.
“First Minister,” began Eevraith, “this is no one—”
“Nonsense,” said Grevesh just as Gomez was about to object to Eevraith’s assertion that Tev was “no one.”
Tev stepped forward quickly, knelt at the arm of Grevesh’s chair, took Grevesh’s right hand in his, and touched them to his forehead. “It has been far too long, sir,” he said as he stood. “You were a friend of my father’s. I am Mor glasch Tev, second officer of the U.S.S. da Vinci. I knew your granddaughter, Biyert, quite well, and my family and hers spent summers together at your vacation home.”
“Tev,” whispered Grevesh, recognition dawning on his face. “Your father—”
Tev nodded. “When you were the chancellor of the Kharzh’ullan University, my father was the chair of the political science department, and he served as your campaign chair during your first campaign for the Kharzh’ullan Assembly.”
Grevesh smiled widely, his teeth yellow with age. “Yes, I remember! Oh, so long ago.”
“Thirty-seven years ago, sir,” said Tev. “Twenty-five Earth years,” he amended, no doubt for Gomez’s benefit.
“How is your father?”
“He passed away, six years ago.”
Grevesh’s blurry red eyes narrowed, and Gomez thought she could