The Shores of Death Read Free Page B

behaviour, of personal control and civilised demeanour. It was a nice way of life, but it didn’t offer any hope.
    Nothing offered that any more.
    She saw that Clovis Marca was standing up, probably preparing to leave. He was pointing into the air, towards a black carriage hovering above him. Barre Calax was nodding. Automatically, she restrained her impulse to go to the carriage. Then she thought, No, it could be now or never, and without saying anything to Andros, she squeezed her arm against the gravstrap and began to rise into the air, guiding herself gently towards the black carriage.
    Andros shouted after her. Then he saw where she was going and shrugged. He moved aloft towards his own carriage, shouting something to her which she didn’t catch.
    She reached the black carriage before Marca and his friends. She drifted over the side and sat down on one of the deep blue couches, waiting for him.
    As he, Velusi and Calax came into view, she noted his quickly-controlled look of surprise and then the amused smile. He hovered beside the carriage. “Do you want a lift?” he said lightly. He moved upwards and then drifted down beside her and switched off his gravstrap. She had never been close to him before and his presence was so vital that she almost backed away from him.
    Calax and Velusi were talking, seating themselves on the opposite couch. They nodded to her and continued their conversation.
    “I think you know me,” she said. “Fastina Cahmin.”
    “Aha—my female nemesis—not so odd as the male. You’ve caught up with me at last.” He was looking at her with curiosity. “Do you know a pale man who wears dark clothes and holds his head in a peculiar way?”
    “I don’t think so,” she frowned. What does he think of me? she thought. She had to make a good impression. Perhaps she had been wrong to do this. She smiled. “I wanted to make you a proposal. I want to know if you’ll marry me?”
    He seemed relieved. “I had an idea it was something of the sort. But you must know my reputation—I like women very much, but I’ve never found one I’ve wanted to marry. What can you offer me?”
    “Very little besides myself. Can I share your company for a few days—see what comes of it?”
    “It would be impolite to refuse—but you know that I’m involved in something very important to me. Something much more important than sex, or even love. I am a happy man, Fastina. There is only one thing that mars my happiness, and I’m afraid that it is becoming the dominant factor of my life.”
    “Will you tell me what it is?”
    “No.”
    “Well, are you going to be impolite? Refuse me my chance?”
    He smiled. “No. I am staying at Narvo’s house for the time being. You can come and stay with me there if you wish—though I’ll be busy most of the time.”
    She felt elated and she felt confident. Without realising it, she had sensed a weakness in him—a weakness that she could employ to keep him.
    The car was moving away from the Flower Forest, passing over the occasional house or village. There were no social centres, now, no conurbations, simply the vast underground computer network and the villages or houses surrounded by gardens, mountains, lakes and forests, where a man and his friends or family could land their buildings in the scenery they preferred. Calax’s house was situated at the moment close to Lake Tanganyika in what had once been known as the continent of Africa.
    Soon she could see the lake ahead, a sheet of bright steel flanked by hills and forests, the sun hot and the air still as the car drifted down to land on the mosaic roof of the tall house.
    Clovis helped her out—gentle, civilised, but with an odd look in his eyes that did not seem at all civilised, as if he stared into some secret part of her that she did not know existed, some organ that she possessed which, if inspected, would tell of her real ambitions and her future. She thought of him, at that moment, as an ancient,