The Ascension Collection

  *

  ‘So where did you grow up?’ Salem asked. Kalen smiled at him. In fact they were both wearing large smiles. The alcohol had definitely worked to good effect.

  ‘Ah, now I grew up in a little place called Spirit in Virginia. My dad got wealthy in the fusion boom era selling distributers. When Blue Clarity came along he went out of business and we moved into a little house in one of the rural districts.’ She took a long sip from her wine glass. They had bought a bottle of Aurelian Vintage. It was one of the pricier options as it had to be shipped in from the colonies, but he was paid well and couldn’t resist showing off.

  ‘That sounds amazing,’ he muttered. ‘You got to see all of world from your back garden. The best bits I mean. The bits that we haven’t paved over.’ She looked at him curiously.

  ‘Well the view from my back garden was of an old slaughterhouse. But I got a great view out of the front window.’ She laughed. ‘So where did you live, before that is.’

  ‘I lived in an apartment complex in Hong Kong. It was an old thing left over from the Alliance hegira. When they left to visit the stars, they also left a lot of prime real-estate. Up for grabs, just left everywhere.’ Her eyes darkened a little.

  ‘Why do you call it the hegira? Do you sympathise with them, even after what they did to you?’ Her voice had an edge to it.

  ‘Not exactly.’ He paused unsure of how it was best to proceed. ‘But if I didn’t respect their customs could I really claim a difference from them.’ He realised that his point was making little sense. She was never going to understand. ‘It’s just that all of these little slips of the tongue ended up causing all of this mess. Maybe I just don’t want to feel as though I am becoming part of the problem.’

  She stared at him for a while. Her eyes seemed to be weighing him up. He knew that she was intelligent and it made him afraid. Was she applying a thousand psychological models onto him? What would she deduce? But his fears were proved unfounded. She merely darted her eyelashes towards him and shrugged. ‘So how did you like the wine?’ she asked.

  He smiled back at her. Her eyes, he knew, had chosen to sympathise him. And so he said, ‘it is all the better for drinking it with you.’

  ‘Do you love me,’ she asked. The notion shocked him. He knew full well that emotions like this could not have built up overnight. ‘I’m not expecting you to be enthralled by my very presence,’ she continued, ‘but I have this little belief. I believe that it is indeed possible for you to love someone, and know it with certainty, from the moment that you first see them. What I want to know is whether you are sharing the same emotions as I am with you.’

  My god, she loved him. He knew he shouldn’t feel so exalted by it, after all, many people had warned him against meeting people like this, but he did. He nearly jumped into the air and proclaimed his love for her there and them. But that wasn’t him. He wasn’t that person. Instead he simply said, ‘I do’.