The Phoenix Legacy by M.K. Wren

Author:M.K. Wren
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Diversion Books
Published: 2018-03-06T00:00:00+00:00

2.

Castor’s days weren’t so short at this latitude in the summer, but they still ended abruptly. The ochre hills on the horizon held a frosting of light, but the starry sky was black.

Dr. Lile Perralt had been a guest in Adrien’s icecap retreat on many occasions; he was one of the few people she allowed here. Sometimes, he knew, she invited him because she thought he needed the rest and solitude it afforded, although she always had a plausible excuse that had nothing to do with his needs. And sometimes her needs were the reason offered, with total honesty.

Loren Eliseer had commissioned the building of the retreat as a solace for his daughter’s grief nearly five years ago and let her oversee its design and construction, and Perralt had always particularly admired him for that. She needed it then, both the place of retreat and the distraction provided by the planning and building. It became a very personal expression ultimately, and she was fortunate in having a sympathetic architech. Now it was a shining islet on the edge of the northern icecap, 2,500 kilometers north of Leda, well beyond the encroachment of any human habitation, approached through the rugged gap between the Troyan and New Andean Mountains. A two-leveled structure of white marlite, an airy circle enclosing a courtyard graced by arched arcades, every room looking inward into the court on one side, and on the other, outward to the icecap or the Barrens, with the atmobubbles enclosing a landing area on the south, and a pool and garden area on the north.

Lile Perralt sat in a chair by the windowall in his bedroom staring out at the ghostly white patterns marking the edge of the icecap. A long-range transceiver rested in one hand, but he wasn’t ready to use it yet. He sat motionless, breathing slowly, waiting for the pain in his chest to abate. He’d found it necessary to triple his usual daily dosage of medication, but that wasn’t surprising. He was only glad it was still effective. The time would come when it wouldn’t be. He was a physician and recognized that, and he knew he should talk to Ben Venturi about his heart.

Not yet. After the wedding, perhaps. He couldn’t leave Adrien before that, especially not after today.

He took a long breath and let it out slowly. A tragedy, the Selasid marriage, but it was too late to stop it now. Both he and Kahn Telman had tried to make Loren Eliseer realize what an error it would be, Kahn on an economic and political plane, himself on a personal one. But Eliseer believed he had his back to the wall, and perhaps he did.

Perralt had his own reasons to regard it as a tragedy. He opposed the marriage because he loved Adrien like the daughter he never had. He had attended her birth and come to love her wholeheartedly before she was a year old. He watched her grow from a gamin of a child

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