Gardens of the Sun by Paul McAuley

Author:Paul McAuley [McAuley, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, General, Science Fiction, Adventure, Space Opera, Space Colonies
ISBN: 9780575079366
Google: iC9AAQAAIAAJ
Amazon: 1616141964
Publisher: Pyr
Published: 2009-11-18T11:00:00+00:00

3

The two men sat on weather-bleached canvas chairs in the shade of a big boxy hangar, off to one side of a runway aimed at a technicolor Texas sunset. Cash Baker working on his third Antarctica beer; Colonel Luiz Schwarcz drinking iced tea. They’d been playing catch-up, but after Cash had brought Luiz up to date, telling his old friend how he’d turned his life around by joining the Reclamation and Reconstruction Corps, there’d been a stretch of silence. At last, Luiz said, ‘Man, one of the things I miss most, up on the Moon, are sunsets.’

‘We have good ones here,’ Cash said. ‘Especially like now, when the wind blows from the northwest and hangs some desert dust in the air. And there’s an awful lot of dust up there right now because we’re in the middle of a drought. A real bad one. But I guess you don’t hear about things like that, up on the Moon.’

‘Perhaps we don’t pay as much attention as we should,’ Luiz said.

‘I don’t blame you, man. You have your work, and you have your family, too.’

‘I got lucky, I know.’

‘Hey, it’s okay,’ Cash said. ‘I’m not trying to get in a pissing contest. I screwed the pooch, sure. But I got over it.’

There was another stretch of silence.

Cash said, for something to say, ‘I still think the best sunsets I ever saw were the ones around Saturn. The sun dropping through the rings, burning down behind Saturn’s limb.’

‘A glorious sight,’ Luiz said.

‘Like a thousand H-bombs going off.’

‘Do you remember much of that stuff?’

‘You mean before I had my ticket cancelled? I really can’t tell any more. It’s like, I know me and Vera Jackson flew into Saturn’s atmosphere on that operation. Deep Sounding. I know those pirates - the ones who called themselves Ghosts? - sent drones chasing after our singleships, and we escaped a close encounter by blasting straight up into space. But that’s because I watched the video we shot over and over, hoping it would tickle some memory. Until one day I realised that I couldn’t tell the difference between remembering watching the video and remembering actually being there . . .’

‘You were there. Most definitely.’

‘You ever run into her, these days?’

‘Vera? I believe she went back to Europe. I don’t even know if she’s still flying.’ Luiz took a sip of his iced tea, said, ‘Did you ever have a close encounter with her?’

‘There’s something I’d definitely like to remember,’ Cash said.

‘I bet you tried,’ Luiz said. ‘I know the rest of us did. She was a glorious piece of work. Beautiful, yet fierce. All business.’

‘From what I’ve seen, she was definitely some kind of flier.’

‘She was. Like many of us, I had my doubts, bringing the Europeans into the programme. It was a political move, which meant that it was born out of some kind of compromise. Neither side getting what they really wanted and ending up with a deal that was neither one thing nor the other.

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