The Fountains of Youth - Brian Stableford [138]
“I suppose so,” she conceded—but I couldn’t tell whether she meant it, or whether she was trying to be kind to a no-longer-functional parent.
“I was nearly killed in the Great Coral Sea Catastrophe, you know,” I reminded her. “That was nearly four hundred years ago. Emily Marchant was a little girl, far younger than you are now. She saved my life, and I’ll never forget it. I’d be lying if I said that I remember it as clearly as if it were yesterday, because I don’t, but I know that that was the most important event in my life and hers. If it hadn’t happened, I would be a very different person, and so would she—and because of the influence I’ve had on your upbringing, so would you, however slightly. Maybe that doesn’t matter so much in your case or mine, but if Emily Marchant were different, Titan wouldn’t be the world it is today. The history of the whole outer system would have developed differently, and with it—to a small but measurable degree—the history of the human race.”
“Is she really that important?” Lua asked. She’d heard me talk about Emily many times before, of course, but she’d only ever been interested in Emily the child, Emily the survivor. I’d told her about the ice palaces, and she’d visited them in VE, but I’d never mentioned the highkickers’ grandest plans. I’d never discussed Julius Ngomi’s teasing inquiries about Jupiter in the hometree or taken time out to explain any of the other festering conflicts of interest between the Earthbound and space-faring humanity.
“I believe she’s as important as anyone alive,” I said. “It came as a surprise to me when I first began to see it, but I’m reasonably sure that she’s one of the rare individuals who can actually make a big difference. It’s partly because she’s so rich, but it’s mostly because of the way she got rich and the way she’s fed her wealth into ambitious projects. She’s a mover and shaker, not of rocks and trees but of worlds. Mama Maralyne could have explained the exact nature of her work far better than I can—and Mama Mica still can—but she’s more than just a gantzer of genius. She’s at the very heart of the enterprise that will extend the Oikumene to the stars.”
“And you saved her life when she was still a child,” said Lua, teasingly. “Everything she achieves is really down to you.”
“That’s not what I said,” I reminded her, although she was an adult, albeit a very young one, and she knew as well as I did that there’s always a difference between what people say and what they mean to imply. “Emily could swim and I couldn’t. If she hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t have been able to get out of the hull. I’d never have had the courage to do it on my own, but she didn’t even give me the choice. She told me I had to do it, and she was right.”
I paused, feeling a slight shock of renewed revelation even though it was something I’d always known and always accepted.
“She lost her entire family” I went on. “She’s fine now, but I’m absolutely certain that she hasn’t forgotten any one of them—and she had twelve parents, not the standard eight. She can still feel the force of their loss. That’s what I’m really trying to tell you, Lua. In four hundred years’ time, you’ll still remember what happened, and you’ll still feel it, but you’ll be all right. It’ll be part of you—an important part of you—but it won’t have reduced you in any injurious way. You’ll be a mover and shaker too, maybe of worlds.”
“Right now,” she said, looking up at me so that her dark and soulful eyes seemed unbearably huge and sad, “I’m not particularly interested in being all right, let alone moving and shaking. Right now, I just want to cry.”
“That’s fine,” I told her. “It’s okay to cry. Being over thirty doesn’t mean that you have to give