Kwaide (The Ammonite Galaxy Series, Book 2)

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter 17

THE NEXT TIME Grace visited Kwaide, she asked Arcan to help her take a present over for Cimma. 

“For you, Magestra!” she said, stepping back while her mother opened up a flat package.

“What on Almagest … Oh!” Cimma twisted the canvas this way and that to catch the colours. “Grace! I like it!”

Grace shook her head. “It isn’t your real present, Maestra, it is just a joke present. Your real present is in your cabin.”

Cimma gave her a hug, her eyes filling with tears. “It is beautiful, Grace. I didn’t realize you could paint. How it reminds me of Valhai!”

“I wish I could! It is just something I like to do sometimes. It helps calm me down when I am alone.”

“I think it’s very good.” Cimma held up the landscape of the dark Valhai surface. “Whatever you do, don’t give this up.”

“I have no training.”

“No, and you aren’t likely to get any now, either. Never mind, you can find plenty of pointers on any interscreen. But I really think you should develop this – I think you have a lot of talent.”

“Like the Xianthan highlanders!” teased Grace, reminding her mother of some paintings she had bought solely because she had liked them, despite their only possessing a 300 to 1 cost to bulk proportion.

“Yes, just like them.” Her mother’s eyes glowed. “How I loved those sweeping Xianthan colours!” She gave a sigh. “Of course your father wouldn’t hear of it. He was such a Sellite sometimes.”

“He made you return them.” Grace reminded her.

“And I hid them on the 41st floor,” Cimma said. “I still go – that is I still used to go – to look at them from time to time.”

“Not any more, you won’t. Xenon and Amanita are back in residence on the 49th floor. But I will try to smuggle them over here for you.”

“So what is my ‘real’ present, if this is not it?”

Grace giggled. “I brought you – that is Arcan brought you – something we thought you might be missing over here on this freezing planet of discomfort.”

Cimma raised her eyes towards Lumina. “Freezing is the right word,” she said. “This is the worst place in history’s memory. Those icy winds that can kill you!” She gave a shudder. “But there again, the rebels are nice and I feel I am doing something really important over here.”

“I know. You won’t come back to Valhai now.” It was a statement.

Cimma shook her head. “To be the politically correct mother-in-law to Amanita? No, I thank you. I shall stay on Kwaide. They need me here.”

“And that is the reason for the present.” Grace pulled her mother along by her arm, anxious to see the reaction. “Come ON!”

They made their way together over to Cimma’s cabin, on the other side of the camp. It was by far the biggest, reinforced with thick wooden trunks against the bitter weather. Their footsteps made a hollow sound as they went up the steps to the front door.

Cimma opened the door almost cautiously. “I don’t have the least idea what you could have thought—” She stopped suddenly. “—Oh my goodness!” Her hands went up to her face with surprise.

“Are you pleased?” Grace smiled.

“Am I pleased? I should say so!” Cimma laughed. Then she approached the present warily, as if expecting it to disappear at any moment. “And you brought both of them. Oh, thank you!” The Sellite woman took a happy hold of the staircase and climbed with enormous satisfaction into the empty sarcophagus, first fondly patting the full and sealed one on the other side. “Now I have your father with me. Thank you. This is the one thing I was missing from Valhai. The rest doesn’t matter. You can leave it there for Amanita and Xenon. I don’t care. I shall be able to sleep well now.”