Gardens of the Sun Read Free Page B

continued to be useful. And to be useful she needed to work, not waste her time on chit-chat and posing.
    Then there was the political dimension. Less than a decade ago, the Pacific Community and Greater Brazil had almost gone to war over control of the Hawaiian islands. Both power blocs had stepped back from armed confrontation and had slowly restored diplomatic links, but a great deal of mutual antipathy and suspicion still remained. And although it had cooperated with Greater Brazil and the European Union during the brief war against the Outers, the Pacific Community had come late to the campaign and had made only a minimal contribution, and its intentions were still obscure. Arvam Peixoto wanted Sri to wheedle some morsels of useful intel from the PacCom liaison secretary, and although she liked that kind of game even less than ordinary social discourse, she had to play along for the sake of her son, and for herself.
    Fortunately, the liaison secretary, Tommy Tabagee, turned out to be sufficiently intelligent and witty to keep her mildly amused throughout the long and formal dinner. A slight, limber man with coal-black skin and a Medusa’s crown of dreadlocks, he was very proud of his Aboriginal ancestry and fanatically dedicated to reconstruction and remediation of his native continent, telling Sri about what he called his modest contributions to the levelling of cities and erasure of every sign of the sins of the age of industry, a great work that would take centuries to complete.
    ‘It won’t ever be the same, of course,’ he said. ‘For one thing, the climate is still completely buggered. There are places where it hasn’t rained for a hundred years. But we must let the land find its own direction. That’s the important thing. And we have had some small successes. Before I was assigned here, I had the honour of working with a crew in Darwin that was restoring a portion of the Great Barrier Reef. Using real corals to replace the artificial ones. Oh, it will never be as glorious as it once was, but if it works half as well as they claim, it has some small potential.’
    Sri questioned Tommy Tabagee about the artificial corals, startled him with a few insights and ideas. Around them the other guests ate and drank and chattered, and marines in white jackets brought plates of food and took away empty plates and refilled glasses. Tommy Tabagee drank only water and ate quickly and neatly, like a machine refuelling, telling Sri that people like her were desperately needed back on Earth, it was a pity she had to waste her time out here.
    ‘I wouldn’t call investigating Outer technology a waste of time,’ Sri said. ‘I learn something new and useful every day.’
    But Tommy Tabagee didn’t take the bait, telling her instead that he’d also learned a thing or two in his brief time in the Saturn System.
    ‘Best of all, as far as I’m concerned, was discovering that these moons have their own songlines,’ he said, and explained that songlines had been the key to the survival and civilisation of his ancestors. ‘In the long ago, my people lived in a country that was mostly scrub or desert, with scant and unpredictable rainfall. So they had to lead a nomadic existence, moving from waterhole to waterhole. These not only supplied food and water, you understand. They were also places where neighbouring tribes met to conduct ceremonies and exchange goods. Using a barter system very like the Bourse which regulated the economies of the Outer cities and settlements before the war, as a matter of fact. So they were important in all kinds of ways, and they were linked by paths called songlines, because the principal trade was in songs. Each tribe had its own song cycle, and traded verses with other tribes. Trade in goods was secondary to the trade in songs. And the songs, you see, they defined the land through which they passed.’
    ‘They were maps,’ Sri said.
    She was thinking of the web of static lines that her crew had