He was obscurely grateful the short-hop omnibus pulled up, with a soft whine of regenerative braking, right next to a door to the terminal building. Dazzling as that sight of (mostly) clear blue sky had been, going down the stairs from the orbit shuttle and across the well-worn duracrete and into the 'bus, his first steps on his now-adopted world of Marquesas, there was still something a bit unsettling about all that unlimitedly-open space and its air moving on its own.

{Shut ye up, Garrett}, he told his inner disquiet firmly. {If you'd'a wanted to stay away from all that, you could'a stayed on Mars.} He pulled his hand-case from the bag on the back of the seat in front of him, and looked over at Nick, a sight he'd never tired of beholdin' and doubtless never would.

"Ready?" she asked, in that staccato rythmn of hers, what he still perceived as the faintest trace of an Italian accent coloring her English. She had nothing to hand-carry, beyond what was already stuffed in the many pockets of her beige linen coat. ("Here the carriage companies compete against each other, always or almost always never to lose your luggage. So you can actually mostly trust 'em with anything.") "It's not like this is going to be 'One small step for a groom, one giant leap from Hypatia Colony' since you already went there, did that just now; but stepping into Astropolis Port Hall has been known to be... bemusing."

"Ready as I'll ever be," he found himself saying neutrally. And then, with a bit more of both the older British strains in his Hypatian accent and also firmness in his voice as he looked her in the eyes, "And that's enough."

Nick held out her left hand, platinum ring on her finger and silver bracelet on her wrist both winking in the unfiltered sulight. ("I want it all, the wedding ring on my finger and the Langmuirs' bracelets too, on one wrist for betrothed and both for married. And though I want enough gold in the platinum to make it a wedding ring, I want enough tungsten in it to make it structural. Diamond is for semiconductors and skyhook cables, not for me to wear.") And he took it in his right, as wordlessly, and he thought of (but did not sneak a look at) the platinum-alloy ring on his own left hand.("'And stronger than steel... That's the power of love,'" she'd quoted the old song as spec.) It was literally as strong as even high-alloy steel, with enough cobalt to make it quite magnetic, too, and almost twice as heavy as lead, to boot.

One more thing, now, they both shared.

They were, it turned out, the last people off the 'bus, and the driver even smiled and winked at them, as if it were obvious (or perhaps becuase it was). As he stepped down to the sidewalk, still half-bemused, he realized she'd matched him smoothly step for step and move for move. Perhaps, someday someway, he'd "carry her across the threshold" somewhere -- but he doubted it would be today, or even nearly that soon. And realized she, shadowing him so, was no more than keeping her earlier word. ("I want it to be like that line out of that old vaudeodrama: 'Whenever you look up I'll be there, whenever I look up there you'll be.' And that's what I mean to do.")

Besides, she was the native here; it was far more, in local terms, as if she was bringing him home than it could be any other way.

"Now remember, this is one of the oldest buildings on Marquesas, it was not just built to last but to impress. So don't be put off any by our 'fancy' as your kin back Redside might say.." As they continued to walk, just a few steps over the wide sidewalk and through the double doors that slid invitingly open well before they reached them.

Just inside the doors was a bright red line inlaid prominently in the (marble?) flooring. And a standing sign rimmed in the same with a red cord falling down to the line in the floor to make the connection unmistakable. BEYOND THIS POINT YOU ARE SUBJECT TO THE LAWS AND CUSTOMS OF MARQUESAS. And then in smaller, frillier type, "Use of appropriate lethal force is authorized."


And seeing it, stepping over that line with her, he found he knew what that old expression 'a thrill of recognition' meant... that last sentence applied to *him* now. Not only that lethal force could be applied to him, but *by* him.

Just as much, or very nearly, as by the girl at his side, daughter of Borgias old and new.

And he felt the weight of the Minetti-Gardner .32 automatic in the pocket of his own coat, a dozen and a half shots triple-base-propelled at 4300 fps, so unlikely or even vehemently contraband a thing almost any other port... not simply as a physical weight, but now as a responsibility, even an obligation.

"Garrett?" The one word was enough to stop him in his tracks, and his moving thoughts as well, though there was no tug on his hand.

"Look at me." They'd come far enough inside the Port Hall they could find an island of space by one of the large support pillars, all to themselves without being at all in the way. "Whatever they say, whatever happens at that party we are going to soon -- you're home, we're home, now you're home with me." And the blue-green depths of her eyes seemed, once again, deep as the deepest sea. "If they make me choose between them, and us -- I choose us." And by the same alchemy he'd seen only a few times before, those eyes flashed purest, Cherenkov blue. Not since that day they'd met, so far away, in fire and smoke and blood. Her hands had moved to hold both of his, as he'd done in return, as if there was no-one else there who mattered at all. Daughter of Borgias...

So many things he could've said, but... "I know. I have known, for some time now," was what he found himself saying without forethought. "And if we ever do have to go hat in hand to the Langmuirs to beg them to take us in, my dear lady, you're already dressed the part." And he looked at the 19th-century old American custom given 23rd-century life again on her wrists, under his hands.

And like a dark cloud riding away on the wind, a radiant smile replaced her earlier, radioactively... serious expression. She held her arms out to either side, as if she were facing the setting sun at Langmuir House, and said "Is mise..."

And then dropped her arms and shook her head. "No, I'll save that. Let's go."

And as he turned to take her again-outstretched left hand and move deeper on into the Hall with her, he began to see, and really for the first time, where they'd been standing.

{Soaring}, he decided to himself. {That's what this building feels like}. Two or three normal stories up to an arched and cross-vaulted ceiling that looked as built to last as an Old Earth cathedral. And there were pictures on the ceiling, inspired (he suddenly felt certain) by Old New York's Grand Central Terminal.

But what really seized your attention were the models. Years ago he'd done a virtour of America's Washington's Smithsonian Air and Space Collection, all the original aerospacecraft hanging from the ceiling. And though these were surely only repros, and many had to be far-smaller scale models, massed as they were (and parsecs from Old Earth), they were... wholly impressive. And he found himself just looking, no talking, knowing Nick would follow his lead in that, while she led him wherever they were going next.

X-15 hypersonic. The LEM "Eagle" of Apollo 11. The first BFS, fully reusable to orbit. "Though the Truth May Vary" of the first Jump around space instead of through it, courtesy of the Westenra sisters. USSF "Torch of Liberty" with her system-spanning gas-core-reactor drive, by those same twins. "Wright Flyer" that conquered the air at last. Giffard's "le Premier" that had nearly done the same 50 years before. "Spirit of St. Louis" that had first...

And he realized they were approaching one of several desks, or counters, here under a wide-spread flag that looked even to him like the old Borgia coat of arms -- but surely there'd never been an ink-dripping dip pen there, far less a prism dispersing light (to blazon Cally Borgia's ancestral Marquesan invention of a means to measure absolute velocities, surely).



Borgia. Ceoghan, or Cohan. Freydisdottir. Vargasz (or Vargas in Hungarian). Langmuir. The Five Great Houses of Marquesas, which together were either the five governments of this planet, or nothing at all of one, as you pleased.

There was also a wide banner 'Minor Houses' with assorted badges around the words too small for him to see, and a plain other 'Tourists and Aliens' too.

She had dropped his hand to pull out a handheld from her coat, as she fronted the person at the counter, some sandy-haired man about her age.

"Nicola Anastasia Erzébet Teller-Borgia, de Borgia, returning. Re-registering as Nicola Anastasia Erzébet Teller Fitzgerald-Borgia, de Borgia, newly married." To his ears, that whiff of Italian in her English had just gotten notably stronger.

"Yes, I see, and congratulations, Mrs. Fitzgerald-Borgia. Is that provisional?"

There was a slight, edged chilling of her expression, probably invisible unless you knew her well. "Until the Newlyweds' Ball." (Each House had its own way of making a choice whether or not to accept an offworld marriage. But if they did, the spouse, or spouses as with the three Langmuirs recently, became full not provisional citizens and remained so for life. If not... well, sometimes they lost a child to another House.)

"Very well, then all is in order. Welcome back, and good luck go with you."

But she made no move to move away, fiddling instead some more with her handheld. "Introducing to you Garrett Fitzgerald-Borgia, late of Hypatia Colony on Mars." And *then* she moved aside.

"Garrett Allan Fitzgerald-Borgia, arriving. Provisional," -- and he found himself taking, quite despite himself, a long look at his wife -- "until the Newlyweds' Ball." And the smile she gave him in return for that, was what some men had been known to walk half the Valles Marineris in a pressure suit to earn. "And till then probationary of House Borgia." He was amazed by how easily all the words came to him. And how that weight in his pocket was a duty, now, to protect his new countrymen around him as he could and was needed to do.

"Very well, Mr. Fitzgerald-Borgia, congratulations. Wecome to Marquesas, in a way I don't often get to wish. And if I might... blessed be."

He'd actually noticed the hammer pendant hanging at the man's heart, but some way or other not... taken much notice of his notice. "Blessed be ye, and may the Three Ladies of the Well guard your Wyrd with skill and grace."

And then, just that swift, he was flying among the past again.

"That was well done," Nick was saying to him. "Though as we'd just discussed a minute or two ago, we might even have to do something like that again."

"Most worlds, you couldn't ever do that. Go, what could you say? Government shopping..?"

"Hah. A pox on all grabby offworld 'governments' and their power monopolies. 'Our way or no way,'" she quoted,  in what was briefly even a creditable Hypatia Colony accent, hard and edged. "Here on Marquesas, we know how to share."

She leaned closer to him, and raised up only a bit on her toes, so their faces were barely any distance apart. "And I do mean, Garrett Fitzgerald-Borgia de Borgia, we know how to share." And though she came no closer and made no move to kiss him, the sound in her voice and the look on her face promised him... everything. Absolutely everything, in bed and out, through fire and smoke and blood. Per momento, per sempre, as they said in her native tongue. For now, for always. And he smiled, as he realized he'd spoken aloud.

"Per momento, per sempre," they said to each other, as if by arrangement.

And they walked, hand in hand, under the machines that had brought Man to the waiting stars, toward their world waiting before them.

(Based on some pre-existing background and settings.)

(This is even a bit longer than usual. Sometimes inspiration is... plentiful.)