Far from the Spaceports

Part 1 - Arrival (second section)

A month before, I had been in England. I had only recently got back from the lunar south pole base, and had been looking forward to a period of well-earned rest back in England. At least, I thought it was well-earned, but apparently the management team thought otherwise. Slate, in the Harbour Porpoise, docked up in the spaceship marina at the leading lunar Lagrange point, had flicked on the message within a couple of femtoseconds of reception. On Earth these days it was almost impossible to persuade anybody you were out of contact.

I was away in the Northumbrian national park, walking the Bernician Way with nothing but one of the recent model v-tents and Shayna. Neither of us were at all interested in walking long-distance footpaths, but we both liked the absence of neighbours. A couple can make a lot of noise out in a national park, without thinking someone else might be disturbed.

But there it was, that morning, the message alert blinking silently on my shirt lapel where I'd discarded it for swimming in the North Sea last night, almost hidden by Shayna's NuFleece. She might not like long distance walking, but she loved the prospect of skinny-dipping in sea water not far above freezing, and then thinking of inventive ways to warm up. That was so much easier when you could come out of the water and straight into a v-tent micro environment set at whatever climate you wanted. Right now we were in a Middle Egyptian May – temperature, humidity, everything.

Shayna liked to say that the chosen location was part of her genetic heritage, and she was in search of her roots. I was never sure about that, but I had no great preference myself. She had configured it just as soon as I had set the tent up, and it had taken under a minute to climatise itself.

So all through the night, with a North Sea winter gale blowing up and down outside, there we were in the Valley of the Kings. You didn't mind so much going into cold water with all that warmth waiting. We'd polarised the fabric, silver from the outside and clear from the inside, and we lay together watching the half moon slide in and out of the curving clouds.

We'd arrived at low water, but I'd pitched the tent well up the beach, on a strip of pale sand between some levels of flat rock. High tide was in the early hours of the morning, and the waves had washed close up against us in the cosy dark.

I scowled at the lapel badge, wondering if there was any way to pretend I had not seen it. There wasn't, not really. Slate would have acknowledged receipt of the incoming at the same time as redirecting it, and would have tagged its reception with all kinds of logging. It was far too late for me to try hacking anything. The real question was whether I could get away with avoiding it for more hours than I had already, but I already knew the answer to that one as well.

I tapped the lapel, and listened to the message sullenly. Recalled to London... first opportunity... Twelve hour SLA. I sighed, and entered the release commit. Slate would do the rest for me. Then I turned to look at Shayna. There she was in the morning light: brown skin enjoying the warm air, dark hair spilling over the pillow, and dark eyes opening with an air of frustration as she saw me working the lapel.

"I suppose you're going to say there's no more holiday now."

I nodded.

"Recall at first available. Back to London for me." I paused. "You could stay here?"

"Oh, Mit. Where's the fun in that?"

She closed her eyes again briefly, but I could see the little muscle movements in her face as she interrogated her Stele. Rocky, she called him, and he was male in persona as well as voice. It was fair enough: Slate was undeniably female.

"We have three hours before the east coast express stops at Alnmouth. A quarter hour to pack up, half an hour to Craster, quarter hour transfer. That gives us another swim and time to warm up again afterwards."

I loosened a vent a notch or two, listened to a sudden gust of wind, imagined what the air and water would be like.

"We could miss out the swim and just stay warm?"

She reached past me and tapped the door release, inviting the gust inside the tent where it contended unsuccessfully with the thermal regulation.

"Wherever it is they are going to send you now, you won't have water like this. Out you go and enjoy it one more time."

I shook my head, but got out and stood up anyway, naked in all that volume of cold rushing air. The tide had fallen again, and the sea froth was a little way down the beach. Shayna pushed past me and ran, arms waving above her head, shrieking with excitement as the wildness of the wind encircled her soul. I followed on, but she reached the water well before me, and threw herself in to the tumble of the waves.

Twenty years ago I would never have done this, but things had changed. Anyway, she was right: wherever I was going, it wouldn't have wind and waves like this. I followed her.

Something close to two hours later we were outside the tent again. I pulled the deflate tag, let it collapse, then folded it into my pocket. Shayna had configured her NuFleece into a layer a couple of molecules thick that wrapped itself around her figure closer than I could, plus a swirly skirt and top that left her decent for walking the Bernician Way and sitting on the train with other passengers.

"You owe me the rest of this holiday when you get back. And then something to make up."

She stood there, buffeted by the fierce wind, but almost as warm in the fleece as if she'd still been lying in the sunshine of Egypt. I nodded.

"Sounds fair. And I'm sorry. This wasn't supposed to happen."

We started walking south again. She ran ahead up a grassy mound beside the first of the ruins of Dunstanburgh, and let the fleece billow out into a long scarf trailing downwind towards me. She just loved changing the shape of her clothes – where some people fiddled with a pad or stylus, she would be constantly adjusting this or that part of the garment. NuFleece could have been invented just for her.

"It always happens, Mit. We're always interrupted. What kind of alert raised with ECRB is so urgent that it needs you to come back from holiday? But whatever it is, you still owe me the rest of the time we're losing now."

We walked past the castle and into Craster. She took my hand, tenderly, for the last stretch, all the way along that wide grassy stretch which runs gently down to the sea on our left. The waves were crashing against the rocks, and the wind seemed even stronger here than it had been all night.

"Where you're going, can we vid each other this time?"

I pursed my lips.

"Just now I don't know where I'll be. If it's back to the moon again then it's, what, a second or two lag. We could manage that, just about. But they could send me anywhere. Even Mars can be up to twenty minutes signal time away. It's just not possible to vid. We can't even chat with that lag. And, look, Shayna..."

I hesitated. She nodded, and gripped my hand more tightly.

"I know, you don't know when you'll be able to. And maybe it'll get me into trouble if there's a link to you. Forget I said it. We'll catch up when you get back."

Just for a moment she looked bereft, but it passed. She ran ahead a few yards and ballooned the top of the fleece out into a headpiece that remained improbably in place, despite the efforts of the gale.

"But you will be making it up to me when you get back."

The east coast express did its usual efficient job, and by late afternoon I was on the travelator band going down from Kings Cross towards the City. I stood on the semi-fast strip, zoning in to one of the tech bloggers that Slate thought I'd like. She was ranting about the decay of real coding skill, and I listened while paying just enough attention that I could get off at Moorgate without a scramble. I turned into Finsbury Circus and pushed through the doors of the London office of the ECRB – the Economic Crime Review Board. Six hours since I had seen the message, and about ten since it had been sent. I had made it in time.

I saw that Elias was in the canteen as I passed by. He finished putting water on his mu tea mix – a regular idiosyncrasy of his – and waved to me.

"Made it then, Mitnash? We had a sweepstake going whether you would or not. Your Stele told me it was doable though. Pick up a drink, then join me in the pod over there and we'll talk."