Evening's Empires (Quiet War 3) Read Online Free PDF Page A

said why not? It was as if he still inhabited the dream reality of the play. Anything seemed possible. But when they started across the crowded
space Agrata materialised out of the throng and told Hari that Sora’s mother wanted to congratulate him on his performance. And Agrata’s look told Hari that she knew. She knew all about
his plan, his private fantasy.
    He submitted, of course. He didn’t know what else to do. Following Agrata, smiling and nodding while Sora’s mother talked, hardly hearing what she said to him or what he said to her,
Sora somewhere else in the big, crowded, noisy volume, the moment lost. And that was that. The next day,
Pabuji’s Gift
docked at Trantor, unloaded its cargo of refined rare earths,
let off a few passengers, took on a few more. Sora and her family were among those who disembarked. And Jyotirmoy vanished. Abandoned his parents and jumped ship.
    Agrata didn’t say anything about Jyotirmoy’s defection or Hari’s unrequited love for Sora, but one day, during a discussion about reconfiguring passenger accommodation, she
began to talk about the early days of the ship.
    ‘There wasn’t much to it,’ she said. ‘Just two modules powered and pressurised, one for crew, one for the farm that fed the crew. A handful of gigs, most of them still in
need of complete overhaul. Very little in the way of equipment. Your father refurbished it himself, with the help of a small crew he recruited from people who answered a note he’d posted in
the commons. We were idealists, but we were not daydreamers or utopians. We knew what was possible and what was not. We were practical. We made plans and we worked together to make those plans
possible. We were all like your father, in short. As he was then.’
    ‘He changed, and you didn’t,’ Hari said.
    ‘I’ve told you this many times before, I know. Yes, he changed. There were just ten of us, when the ship set out on its maiden voyage. Nominally, we were a collective, but Aakash was
in charge. A benevolent despot who ruled by charisma and an intimidating intellect. No one could argue with him because he had an answer to every question, every objection. I remember when he tried
to introduce democracy to our little crew. One of his enthusiasms. He had so many, in those days. It was part of his charm, and bled off his excess energy. Like most of them, democracy did not
last, but it was fun while it did. Now we’re all bound by custom. Even your father. We do things in a certain way because that’s the way we do things.’
    They were sitting in the omphalos, at the heart of the passengers’ quarters. Pale walls of architectural weave wrapped around an open cylindrical core lightly webbed by walkways and
ziplines. The architectural weave knotted at various levels into platforms, like the one on which Hari and Agrata sat, or thickened into suites of rooms. Only a few people were about. Hari usually
liked the drowsy peace of the omphalos, but now it seemed to close in on him like a helmet filled with stale rebreathed air.
    He said, ‘I’d like to take this ship to new places. Places people don’t go any more. To Neptune’s Trojans. To the Centaurs, and the scattered disc. To the Kuiper belt.
There are all kinds of places out there, places no one has visited for centuries. Who knows what we might find?’
    Agrata said, ‘You want to shake things up.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Yes, why not? The family needs to be challenged if it is to stay strong. But I don’t think you’re telling me what you want to do,’ Agrata said. ‘I think
you’re really telling me what you don’t want to do.’
    ‘You think I should do what I’m told. Even though I think it’s wrong.’
    ‘Rakesh once said more or less the same thing. He was about your age, as I recall.’
    ‘I suppose we’ve all done the same things or wanted the same things,’ Hari said.
    Sometimes he felt that every thought, every idea, was an echo of the thoughts and ideas of