A Solid Core of Alpha (11 page)

“We can help you with that,” Cassie said quickly, and then looked at her husband. “Right, Marshall?”

Marshall caught his wife’s significant look and barely refrained from rolling his eyes. Yeah, Marshall could help with the technical stuff, but they all knew what Cassie’s real agenda was.

“Yeah, Cass. We can spare, say, Julio, and C.J. maybe, and they can copy the stuff that hasn’t been deleted from the data banks first and then go into the holo-memory and scan that into the computers.” He looked at Anderson with real praise. “The only step you missed was scanning, and we’ve got a holo-scanner right here at the station. It’s no worries, Anderson. Your colony’s memories are safe with… hey? What’s the matter?”

Anderson shook his head and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “It’s nothing,” he said quietly. “It’s… it’s just been a worry for a long time.” He swallowed and looked up at the three of them, his face working painfully as he tried to get his emotions back under control. He risked a smile that looked to C.J. like about the bravest thing anyone had ever done, and said, “I’ll take that real food now, thank you, and then I think I’d better get back to my ship.”

C.J. felt his sister’s sharp elbow digging into his side, and he glared at her, but he tried to do her bidding as well. “Uh, Anderson, maybe you want to sleep somewhere else tonight? Marshall and I have to check your ship for anything hinky you may have picked up during your journey, you know? We need to do some deep scans on the engine and everything underneath the hull. Sometimes there’s mechanical parasites in hyperspace that you never even knew about or radiation that your console didn’t register. That’s actually my specialty, and it’s why Cass called me in. It might be easier for you if you’re not there. We can set you up somewhere with a monitor to make sure you’re settling in all right, okay?”

Anderson swallowed. “The monitor isn’t necessary,” he said with a hint of a sulk. Well, yes, he would feel condescended to, wouldn’t he?

“We’ll set you up in C.J.’s room,” Cassie said smoothly, and C.J. looked at her sharply, and then watched her look away in guilt.

Oh
hell
no!

“Yeah,” he said with a glare at his sister. “We’ll set you up in my room.”

They turned down the nearby spoke and stopped at the food court that occupied the middle of it. C.J. liked this spot because the proprietor had a long-standing romantic arrangement with one of the freight shuttle captains, and the fruit selection was
outstanding.
He’d also put in a live-action holo on the ceiling, so it looked like they were looking at the rainbow of planets stretched out beyond the station toward Hermes-Eight-Prime.

“Here, Anderson,” C.J. said smoothly, still glaring at his sister. “You and Marshall stake out a table, Cassidy Jeanette and I will go scare us up some chow.”

Cassie flinched. “Okay, Cyril John,” she muttered, still trying to act like she hadn’t done anything wrong. “That’s a great idea!”

C.J. grabbed her elbow and hauled her barely outside of earshot. “You had my room
monitored
?”
he growled.

She shot back, “It was Mom and Dad’s idea!” before he’d even finished speaking.

“Mom and Dad? Are you
shitting me
?”

Cassie looked back over her shoulder, where C.J. could see Marshall’s “You got yourself into this, dear” look written plain across his face. “You know what a horndog you were, C.J.! They… they just didn’t want you to nail anything that was, you know, poisonous, or whose culture said one night meant matrimony or something. We haven’t used it in years, because, you know….”

“I’ve got better sense than that!” C.J. snarled, and Cassie grimaced again.

“Yeah. You had better sense than that back then too. I didn’t… I mean
we
didn’t see it until after the monitor had been all set up and everything and….”

“When?” he asked, his voice unforgiving.

Cassie had to stop and think. “Uhm… Zalandra, I think. Yeah, I think she was the last date we saw there, but it might have been Clint from that casino downside.”

C.J. frowned. “Zalandra… that was… that was right after I got here!”

Cassie nodded vigorously. “See? I told you, C.J., once I… I mean we figured out that you were, you know, using your head, we didn’t peek, I swear!”

C.J. just looked at her in disgust and shook his head. “I cannot believe you, Cass. You know that? Not everyone meets their husband at a virginal eighteen. You really have to ride herd over my love life from a molecular level?”

Cassie winced but tried to maintain her dignity. “I’ve
seen
the pictures of Jensen and Molly, C.J., with you in there with them. There is
nothing
molecular about that couple!”

“Jensen’s a good guy, and Molly’s a damned sight sweeter than you are!” he growled.

“Well,
I’m
not going down on you in front of my husband, now am I?” she snapped back, and then both of them stopped and grimaced.

“Ewwwwwww!” he muttered, and she agreed.

“Worst. Example. Ever. Sorry about that, C.J. You’re right, okay? You’re right, I… we…
I
was wrong, and we should have trusted you, but, seriously, it was seven years ago. Until I thought about where to put Anderson up, I didn’t even think about it.”

C.J. shook his head, still disgruntled. “Cass, you keep telling me that I didn’t get this job through nepotism alone. Do me a favor and… just, you know, have a little faith in me, okay?”

Cass pulled up one side of her mouth. “Yeah, well, just once you try not to think with that thing between your legs, and I’ll try that whole credit thing.” With that, Cassie flounced off to give her and Marshall’s order, and C.J. made faces behind her back, because if she could be an immature princess snot-bag, well, then so could he.

With a final snarl, he walked up beside her and started placing the order, looking over his shoulder at the young man he was ordering for.

“What would you want if you’d been living off synth-rations for the last ten years?” he asked himself, but Cassie heard him. She looked behind him, to where Anderson was looking above him at the holo of the planets in their rainbow dance. His expression would go from wide-eyed and open-mouthed to pinched and fearful and then back again, depending, C.J. imagined, on what he thought of from moment to moment as he looked at the view. What part of that made him joyful? What part of it seemed to hurt? If they were going to dig into those holograms, C.J. imagined they would get an up close and personal glimpse into Anderson Rawn’s heart. C.J. hoped that it wasn’t so broken that it fragmented them all.

“Anything,” Cass said softly, obviously thinking the same thing. “As long as I could have oatmeal between bites.”

C.J. bought a portion of every fruit he could, as well as some protein, like free-range mammal-bird, and some aquatic avian from Hermes-Eight-Beta, and some hybrid grains as well.

And some good ol’ Terran oatmeal.

A
NDERSON
didn’t eat nearly enough. He smiled at the taste—the peaches were a definite hit—and he dutifully tasted everything, but he was obviously used to skipping meals to save the synthesizer.

“We’ll have to get you fattened up,” C.J. said with an encouraging smile. “Trust me, there’s enough.” C.J. packed the leftovers to put in the cooler in his quarters and tried to tempt him with some sweets—ice cream, chocolate, a cookie—but Anderson politely declined, looking more and more overwhelmed with every offer.

In fact, by the time lunch was over, he was looking damned close to losing all composure.

“Hey, Anderson, we still have to check out the ship, but how about I take you to my quarters. They’re small, they’re homey, there’s a vid screen with some vids I bet you haven’t seen.”

“Comedies?” That lower lip trembled in a way that was positively wistful, and C.J. smiled gently.

“Yeah. Comedies, lots of ’em. My favorite vid.”

Anderson’s smile was sweet, that open to the universe smile that C.J. was starting to associate with the peculiar feeling in his chest. “Good,” he said softly. “Because we haven’t seen anything new in a while.”

C.J. shared another look with Cassie, and then he stepped into the breach. He took the lead and guided Anderson down the color-coded beige corridors of the employee quarters ring while Cassie and Marshall followed.

“Which ones are
your
favorites?” C.J. asked, making the emphasis casual.

Anderson smiled guilelessly. “Bobby and I tend to like the dumb ones. You know, the ones that make you want to crawl out of your skin because the main character does something so totally stupid, and then in the big climax at the end it becomes this big public embarrassment? But Kate likes the ones with the wordplay, the subtle ones, where you have to watch them a couple of times before you get it all. Henry likes action movies, the kind with the one-liners at the really tense parts, and Risa likes the sweet romantic stuff.”

It was the longest, most confident speech he’d made so far, and C.J. went with it.

“What about Alpha? Which movies does he like?”

That guileless smile and the youthful enthusiasm leached out of him like calcium from a bone. “Alpha doesn’t like vids,” he said quietly. “He thinks they’re a waste of time and power. Is your apartment here in the middle? Yeah,” he answered for himself. “You said that. You work for the station, so this is where you live. It’s nice!” He smiled as they came out of the spoke to the middle hub. “I like that the living quarters have carpet. We didn’t have any carpet at the colony. Things were pretty spare.”

C.J. looked down at the short-cropped, easy-care tan and blue carpet beneath his feet and realized he’d never really thought of it before. “Yeah,” he said, surprised. “We’ve got it pretty good. Here we are.” He looked up at Cass, who nodded. “Cass and Marshall are going to go take a look at your ship and get the download of the remaining info started, and I’ll get you situated here. Is that okay?”

Anderson bit his lip and nodded. “I, uh… I’d really like it if I could spend the night aboard my own ship. Can I do that?”

It hurt to say no.

“If we want to get your records downloaded, I think we’re going to have to have the place to ourselves for a while, okay, Anderson?”

Cassie said it, and C.J. was grateful. The truth was, all they really needed access to was the bridge. The hard, cold fact of it was that not one of them wanted to let Anderson back into his little bacterial breeding ground of whatever it was on that tiny ship that was hurting him.

Anderson’s look went from “uneasy” to “acutely uncomfortable” at Cassie’s words. “You have to understand,” he said pleadingly. “They’ve never had a night without me. They… they’re going to be afraid. The ship will go into sleep mode, and they’ll go to sleep, and we programmed the video to play for the recorder, and they’ll
know
that. They
know
that time passes when they’re unconscious, and I won’t be there, and they won’t know that they’ll wake up.”

His forehead furrowed and his jaw tightened, and he tried again. “It’s really important that they know they’re going to wake up,” he said earnestly, and Cassie was the one who spoke.

“Anderson, Kate knows me. If I tell her that we’re not going to cancel their programs, will that be enough? Look at you, honey. If anyone needs a night’s sleep in safety, it’s you. Let us take care of your friends tonight, okay? I promise,” she said somberly, “we won’t let anything bad happen to them.”

Anderson’s shoulders started to relax, and C.J. thought he’d add to the comfort moment. “Cassie keeps her promises, Anderson. She’s never let me down.”

Anderson nodded slowly, and Cassie and Marshall turned to leave.

“Uh,” Anderson spoke up, “could you guys tell Bobby not to provoke Alpha, okay? They need to just leave him alone. I don’t know what he’ll be like tonight.” He blushed then and looked at them unhappily. “He… he tends to get angry at change.”

Cassie nodded like she took warning about holograms all the time, and Marshall gave a little two fingered salute, and they took off. C.J. noted that their hands were tightly intertwined—Marshall’s pale, slightly gold-tinted, attenuated fingers engulfing Cassie’s dark, tense little ones in all of the comfort they could give.

C.J. smiled reassuringly at the shorter Anderson and hit the I.D. panel with his palm. The vacuum swish of the door opening ushered them in.

“Warm,” Anderson said as he walked in, and C.J. blushed a little as he walked to the tiny kitchenette and the small cooler to put the reusable take-out containers inside. He liked warm colors—gold, red, orange, burnt umber, tans, and browns—but he also liked the cool ones as well. The living room was decked out warm. The walls, the couch the pillows, and the carpet were all earth and sun. His bedroom was blue and green, lavender and violet, and silver.

He opened the connecting door to show Anderson, and Anderson turned that gorgeous, open-to-the-universe smile on him. “Cool,” he said with a little perk and almost a giggle.

God, C.J. liked him.

“Yup, just like me,” C.J. bragged expansively, and Anderson grinned.

His expression faded after a moment, and he said, “I made my room yellow and gold and green. I… I really missed the sun and the earth.”

C.J. swallowed. “We get four weeks down planetside for every twelve weeks up here. I spend all my time outside. I have a yard and a garden, and I live near the ocean. God, I love it down there.”

Anderson looked at him in wonder. “Then why do you work up here?”

C.J. shrugged. “I love it here too.”

What C.J. was starting to think of as Anderson’s true smile burst over his face, making his thin, pale features look sun-kissed and whole. “So you’re like the rooms. Coolness of space and water, warmth of earth and sun. That’s nice. I like that.”

C.J. didn’t know what to say, and he was lucky, because Chips spoke up into the silence. “
Chips is a dirty bird!
”

Anderson jumped about a foot and looked into the corner of the living room at what he’d probably assumed was just a decoration.

“What in the
fuck
is that?” The exclamation was followed by his hand slapped in front of his mouth like a child, and C.J. fought the urge to laugh at him. The last time Anderson had been around anyone but his own peers—as C.J. was thinking of them now—Anderson had
been
a child. God, what a mindfuck. C.J. figured that part of his mission here was going to be to teach Anderson to swear in public without feeling the need of a public smackdown.