Chapter Three

Meridian sighed. Armillaria hefted a rack of sterilized bottles and set them down on the lab bench with a clattering thump.

“Oooh,” she squealed at Meridian, “but he is so cute! A real sugarhunk.”

Meridian looked up from the computerized autosampler she was programming. Armillaria, her assistant, was practically vibrating with excitement. An assortment of charms and good-luck stones hung around her neck on leather thongs; these, and the many bracelets on her forearm clanked as she moved. Armillaria tossed her waist-length, somewhat ill-kept blonde hair back over her shoulders.

“I saw him riding past this morning, on, like, a red bicycle. He came right past me, up close, and I could practically feel his aura. His chakras, were, like, on fire. It was so intense.”

Armillaria sighed, gazing dreamily into space.

“I just know he’d be amazing in bed,” she said.

Meridian blinked.

“You know this because of his chakras?” she repeated, cautiously.

Armillaria giggled.

“No, silly,” she waved a roll of labelling tape in the air, “I know because he has, like, really tight buns.”

She smacked her lips, then dropped the tape to the counter with a flourish.

“I can’t believe it,” she said, turning to Meridian. “You’re, like, living right next door to the sexiest guy in Mescon and you haven’t even noticed.”

That was not exactly true. Meridian had noticed her neighbour, or rather, the potted plants he had deposited on his front porch. Once in a while she would spot him coming, or going, but he kept pretty much to himself and Meridian, for her part, had no wish to intrude uninvited upon his privacy.

Although Mescon was the first and largest settlement on Ception, it was still very much a small town, Meridian reflected. The ratio of women to men in Mescon was roughly three to two. The poor guy came in on a lightsail schnooner, enough of an event here to make him a nine-day wonder, and from then on his every movement was monitored and giggled over by bored, sexually frustrated women like Armillaria.

“Did you know,” Meridian replied, mildly, “that ‘Armillaria’ is the genus name of a phytoathogenic fungus?”

Armillaria’s dark eyes, magnified in the lenses of her thick catseye glasses, narrowed.

“I sense a great deal of hostility in you today,” she replied frostily, yanking a segment of tape off the roll.

A brief silence fell while Armillaria scribbled information on pieces of tape and stuck them to the bottles.

“You know,” she said, finally, “it wouldn’t, like, kill you to get out and enjoy life a little. Honestly, you live like a nun.”

She dropped the tape and stalked off, her long patchwork skirt trailing behind her. Meridian closed her eyes, briefly, then rose and began stuffing the labelled bottles into her work pack.

A system of biofiltration ponds in the Arboretum, linked together by rivers and waterfalls, helped purify the colony’s water supplies. She wanted to take water samples and check all the arboretum pumps and filters before noon, so that she could let the water samples process overnight and have the afternoon to herself. She hefted her pack and left Armillaria behind her, loading glassware into the lab dishwasher and singing along with the music on the radio.

A short while later she was walking along one of the Arboretum’s many paths, planning her day beneath several of the Arboretum’s many bioengineered trees. These ones were some sort of hybrid oak, with thick, nodulated leaves able to assimilate nitrogen from the air as well as carbon dioxide. They weren’t pretty, but they were functional.

The quickest way to get everything done properly was to start at the upper pond, then move along the waterway until she reached the lowest pond in the park. So preoccupied was she when she reached the upper pond that she almost didn’t notice the figure sitting quietly on a rock near the water’s edge.

He was hunched over a pad of paper, his back toward her, and as Meridian watched he stretched himself, one long arm waving a pen in the air. Strands of long, curling dark hair spilled down his back, loosely caught in a ponytail at the nape of his neck. The mere act of moving his arms about in the air seemed to give him a great deal of pleasure. As she drew nearer, he looked up, first into the sky, then behind him, as if sensing her approach. The expression on his face was neither welcoming, nor hostile, but a study in blank neutrality. Whatever he was thinking lay buried in a pair of large, intelligent dark eyes. His nose, Meridian noted, was perfectly aquiline.

Like David’s had been.

She watched him for a moment, fingering the strap of her work pack. It would be simple to walk up and casually introduce herself. Hi, I’m your neighbour, she thought, no, how about: Hi, my name is Meridian, I think you’re my neighbour—

A shrill voice made her freeze.

“Meridian! There you are! I haven’t seen you for weeks!”

Meridian spun around, only to see the two hundred pound, six-foot plus frame of Madame Avesta bearing down upon her in a cloud of purple rayon, yellow silk and heavy floral perfume. The Madame was a well-intentioned, but smothering, woman of an indeterminate age which could be anywhere between forty-something and sixty-something. She was retired, but Meridian wasn’t sure from what sort of job; Avesta claimed to have had many careers, most of which strained credulity, including high school art teacher, opera singer, corporate spy, trapeze artist, shuttle pilot, military tactician. Her late husband had left her a small fortune, which Avesta spent freely on bizarre costumes, romance novels, high-fidelity opera recordings, gourmet food and drink, and other amusements. She had recently begun a campaign to build an opera house in downtown Mescon, a campaign which seemed doomed to failure, given that the governor favored a stadium for monster-truck rallies. Avesta regarded Meridian as one of her closest friends, mostly on the basis of the fact that Meridian was consistently polite to her. Most people thought the Madame was an idiot; Meridian wasn’t so sure.

Meridian managed to back away a few steps before she was enveloped in a crushing, matronly bear hug. Gasping for air, Meridian inhaled a lungful of perfume; she choked and sneezed.

“Gesuntheit!” Avesta bellowed, cheerfully. “Such a sickly child, you must eat more. Now tell me: what do you think of my outfit, darling? Isn’t it just sensual?”

Avesta’s vast arms swept outward in a theatrical pose; Meridian backed away a few paces, wondering for the thousandth time just what was it that drew eccentric people like the Madame to Mescon. Perhaps it was the fact that, being a relatively new colony, laws and social customs on Mescon were still evolving; as long as you didn’t hurt anyone, you could still do pretty much what you wanted. Gods knew that Avesta’s costume would probably break some sort of law on other worlds.

Today Avesta was wearing a yellow and violet polka-dot peasant-style dress, with a low-cut bustline that threatened to spill her voluminous cleavage each time she took a deep breath. A frilled violet apron was tied around her huge, billowing waist, and her long, red-dyed hair was pinned up in French braids. She had pencilled in fake freckles under her eyes, across her cheekbones. Meridian struggled for words that would be truthful, yet not unkind. Fake eyelashes fluttered at her from under heavy makeup.

“Very creative,” Meridian replied. “In fact, er, I can’t imagine anyone else wearing it.” This was taken as a compliment, and Avesta giggled.

“Ooooh! I feel like Julie Andrews!” Madame Avesta bellowed, throwing up her arms again. The dress creaked alarmingly.

Avesta began to twirl, almost, but not quite, gracefully.

“The hills are aaalive—”

Meridian looked back over her shoulder, but her mysterious neighbour had vanished.

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