Illa Preneur stepped out of the open-topped transport, dust eddying around her in Tabit's light gravity. The train ride from Downer's Landing eight hundred kilometers to the south had been just long enough to give her a false sense of acclimation to the two-thirds g. The thirty kilometer drive over compressed matter roads from Leaglenn Station had restored her caution.
I won't be here long enough to get really used to it, she thought, looking up at the farmhouse. Three people waited on the immense porch that wrapped around the entire open-walled first floor. The second and third floors squinted at the world through narrow windows, and the roof grew over it all like a displaced hill, the shingles bright like hot coals in the noon sun. The other buildings looked plain and utilitarian, prefab modules probably dating from the earliest days of the colony. The main house reserved all the character of the stead to itself.
"It looks Cetian," she mused.
"Is." Skaner Vahi came around the front of the transport. His friend, Jos Kurlen, pulled Illa's bags from the storage. Skaner was taller than Jos--who lived with the Vahis and worked on the stead--but Jos was thick across the chest and appeared the stronger of the two.
"I knew the first colonists here were from Tau Ceti--"
"Vahis are first wave from Homestead," Skaner said, a hint of pride in his voice.
Which made Skaner and his brother Rafir fifth generation.
"I'll take these up?" Jos asked, holding Illa's two big packs.
"Guest room," Skaner said. Jos nodded, smiled quickly at Illa, and bounded up the steps and into the house. "Let's meet." Skaner gestured for her to precede him.
In the shade of the porch, Skaner said, "Pater, Mater, this is Co Illa Preneur, from Sol. Co Preneur, this is Co Corum Vahi and Co Rilana Vahi-Strethem and Co Vida Strethem, my aunt." He tucked his hands into his hip pockets then stepped back, duty done.
Illa hooked her righthand thumb in the V of her shirt and tucked her other hand out of sight under her ankle length coat, an aesthete's greeting, as familiar as a smile or a handshake in the circles she normally moved. Here it jarred. All they would see was an intruder from the Inner Pan who probably saw them as unsophisticated and dull, found their speech amusingly rustic, and their values unnecessarily austere. Illa counted on that cultural wall to buffer all of them. They had enough pain to bear already; she wanted neither to add to it nor share in it.
Skaner's father was a wiry man, his bald head seeming too large for his body. Skaner had the same deepset pale eyes, but where in him they gave an impression of thoughtful intelligence, in Corum Vahi they looked only mistrustful. Corum had a fine tracery of cracks in his dark skin, earned in a lifetime spent under Tabit's glare.
Rilana and Vida differed strikingly for two people who looked so much alike. Dark hair, dark eyes, olive skin, and features more suggestive than revealing. Taller than Corum and broadshouldered, Rilana showed the same tight sinews as Corum, grown from the daily labor a stead demanded. Vida exhibited the physique of an athlete, muscles smooth and rounded. Skaner's mother exuded a kind of negligent competence while the aunt was clearly aware and proud of herself.
Then Illa spotted the ring on Vida's right hand middle finger. A black band with a single sapphire. Armada. When she looked up at Vida, the woman smiled slightly, reminding Illa of her own mother. For a few moments she felt vulnerable, exposed; everything she was doing could easily be undone by a simple inquiry to the right office, all her careful subterfuge destroyed by a close look.
"Thank you for welcoming me," Illa said. "I don't wish to seem rude, but if I may I'd like to see your son before anything else."
"I can take her," Vida said, already starting to turn toward the interior.
"No," Rilana snapped. "Skaner, show her." She frowned for a few moments. "After, there's tea. We--"
"That would be wonderful," Illa said. "I won't be long."
Rilana nodded and a heartbeat later so did Corum.
She followed Skaner through the screen, the field tugging at her lightly. Inside, the warmer air smelled of spice and bread. Low couches and pillows formed a kind of maze to the central stairs. Through the back she saw cultivated fields shifting gently.
Skaner took her up to the third floor, to the last door at one end of a long hallway. Illa entered a room brighter than she had expected--tiny refractors lined the window frame that directed any light that fell on them inside to bounce off the white walls and ceiling--a warm light with an amber quality. There was a wall-length bureau and a few chairs around the large bed.
The young man there lay embraced by a shape-shifting cocoon that regulated all his biofunctions. From time to time his limbs trembled from the impulses that worked his muscles. No scars, no braces, no bruises, no deformities or disfigurements, the only sign of his injury a slight discoloration of the interface caps on his fingertips. In fact, Illa noted, he was an attractive man. His features favored Rilana rather than Corum. Dark eyes and hair, thin lips. Tall. Before his damage--
Illa stopped the thought. She had seen ten others like Rafir Vahi. Fine body, beautiful almost, and a blank face. His dark eyes stared, half-slitted, occasionally blinking, at nothing. They did not track her when she crossed in front of him. She touched his cheek lightly.
"Hello, Rafir," she said. "I'm here. I'm going to end your nightmare."
She stepped away from the bed. Skaner leaned against the door frame, watching. For the moment it was easy to see his father, latent in the doubt in his eyes. Illa studied the biomonitors attached to the bedstead, but she already knew what they showed--Rafir Vahi suffered link coma, caused by a shock to the interface branches that trailed throughout his nervous system and brain, creating a closed loop that fed back on itself, effectively nullifying all sensory stimulation. His brain pattern showed as a long, sinuous sine wave, no spikes, no variation. He was trapped inside himself.
Hanging on the wall above the bureau stretched an enormous set of wings with a harness attached. Brown and tattered, they appeared to be made of a pair of big leaves. Holes opened in the complex web of veins, and reinforcing rods showed through along the top edge and in the center. The surface glistened faintly, like plastic coating.
Directly below, on the bureau, was a plaque that said "Rafir Vahi, Piric Canyon" and a datachit.
"Trestling," Skaner said. "Rafir holds the record for Piric." He straightened. "Tea, Co Preneur."
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