Beyond Heaven’s River by Greg Bear

Author:Greg Bear [Bear, Greg]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780575123434
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2015-05-24T07:00:00+00:00

TWENTY

“I laid a false trail,” Anna said. “We have two days left on Earth before the Peloros can take advantage of a conjunction. Where do you want to go?”

“I heard Nakamura say we had an appointment in Kyushu.”

“It’s been canceled.”

“Then let’s keep it.”

Anna smiled. “I know why you’re doing so well. You’ve got a devious mind.”

He shook his head. “I have two places to visit there. I have read of a man I would like to meet, and a museum I would like to visit.”

The surface effect ship, rented just hours before, made its leisurely hundred-knot passage with almost no sound but the whoosh of spray and music coming through speakers in the bulkhead. They sat on an upper deck, letting the sun shine on them between the shadows of high, woolen clouds, watching the blue-gray-sea and the distant haze of the Japanese coast. Just an hour before, they had passed a maritime city farm, like a giant snowflake laid gently on the sea, surrounded by thousands of submarine pens marked with brilliant orange buoys.

Now the air was cooling, and it looked like a storm was coming. Nestor handed Kawashita a pair of polarized glasses and told him to look through them. He peered up and saw a distant curtain of shimmering light marching across the sea ahead.

“Weather controls,” she explained. “We’re entering a planned low-pressure disturbance. I’ll tell the pilot where to take us, so he can chart his course and skirt the weather.

When she returned, he said, “This ship is old. Can it stand the strain?”

“Easily. They’ll sling a tarp across the upper decks, warn us we’ll get wet, then go below. About the worse that can happen is we’ll blow a little off course. Do you want to stay up here or go below?”

“What are you going to do?”

“I haven’t felt a big blow in fifteen years. I’d like to stay.”

“Then I will stay.”

“Why?” Nestor asked.

Kawashita patted her hand. “In case you go overboard, I will throw a life ring.”

“I mean it,” she said, her face straight and serious. “We’ve been around each other for a long time now. Everything has gone smoothly, we always stick together, we never complain. We joke and laugh and sympathize. Why do you want to stay around me?”

“Not because you remind me of. Mother, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Kawashita said. “I could find someone else to guide me. But I’m curious about you.”

“Why, because I’m famous?”

He shook his head.

“Rich and powerful?”

“Oh?” He smiled. “I didn’t know that.”

“I said I’m serious. Why?”

Kawashita looked uncomfortable. He took off the glasses and folded them, then swiveled back and forth in his seat, tapping the railing with one foot. “I haven’t used any of the devices in the laboratories,” he said. “And I haven’t accepted any requests for shared quarters.”

“So?”

“I think things would go badly between myself and someone from the future—my future. I’d seem childish, a savage. Japanese men are not by nature discreet. But I’m not really from the past now, am I? I’ve been too many people, lived too long.

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