Aftermath (14 page)

I laugh softly. “You get high marks for stalling.”

He shrugs. “I really just want to jump.”

“You’ll be in demand, don’t worry. There will be shipping companies that’ll pay you a
fortune
at this point to get their goods moving again.”

“I’m ready for a job like that,” Argus says. “Relatively low pressure.”

“Had enough of the thrills, chills, and death-defying?”

His young face grows somber. “Esme died in the attack on Venice Minor.”

I remember her; she was the young blonde with whom he celebrated his first solo jump. Though I don’t say so aloud, he now knows what it’s like to be a jumper. Death stalks us through our days, taking those we love as if in warning not to forget how great a hold it has on us. Loss rides us from birth to grave, endless shadow cast over the euphoria that burns in grimspace.

“I’m sorry,” I say quietly.

“It stopped being a game then.” He’s older now. I should’ve noticed at once, but I was focused on sorting the training situation here.

“Did you love her?”

He gives the question thoughtful consideration, then shakes his head. “I didn’t bother getting to know her enough to say. I was just having fun.”

“And now you’ll never know if it might’ve been something.”

“Exactly.”

“We all lost people we loved on Venice Minor, and we can only go on as they would’ve wanted. Suffer the aftermath. War is bloody and awful . . . It leaves terrible wreckage to clear away. There are no heroes, only survivors.”

“That’s not what they believe on Lachion,” he says. “They sing of great battles and people who died well for their clan.”

“Do you still believe that’s true?”

“No. After what I’ve seen, I don’t see how it could be good or glorious.”

I feel sad for him, as he’s grown too much, and he can never return home. He cannot believe in their stories. But maybe a better life awaits Argus elsewhere, after a long career as a jumper. I can hope for that, even if I do not believe. Navigators like us don’t wind up surrounded by our grandchildren, full of satisfaction at a life well lived. Like most, he will die in the nav chair, unable to speak a farewell to those who love him.

A small part of me pricks up in protest. Times, they are changing, and that may alter his end, too. Despite Doc’s death, his gene therapy lives on. Unlike Evie, he wasn’t paranoid about theft, and I know where he backed up his data. We can use his science to save jumpers from burnout. Maybe one day, there will be no dire tales about what happens to navigators who give too much to grimspace.

But first things first. I’ve got to prepare this facility for training in volume, then run the classes. Gene therapy can wait until after there’s FTL movement on the Star Road again. I give Argus a list of things he needs to requisition, and he’s happy to have a job he can do while he’s on the ground. The stress flows away from him as I take charge; I can only imagine how tough it’s been for him to pretend he could do what they demanded of him.

Half an hour later, Vel and Dina show up, tools in hand, ready to begin revamping the existing equipment. By this point, I’ve learned the school layout, so I lead the way to the training room, which is inadequately equipped for the number of experienced navigators who need to be retrained. If I can’t find someone who can teach the new signals alongside me, then I’ll be stuck here for the foreseeable future. That would be just as bad as prison.

“Thanks for coming,” I say, as they set up.

Dina dismisses it with a wave of her spanner. “No problem. The sooner we finish here, the sooner we can move on.”

We.
She might not realize it, but that word means everything to me. It means I have friends who will stick by me, no matter how rocky it gets. I know better than to mention it, though, or she would rib me unmercifully. She hasn’t changed
that
much.

Soon, workmen deliver chairs and cables, stacking the crates three deep against the far wall. While Dina and Vel go to work, I unpack, sorting the gear as best I can. If I were better with my hands, I’d help them with installation, but I suspect I’d just end up creating more things for them to fix. So it’s better I just facilitate setup.

As it turns out, I wasn’t kidding when I told Argus we’d work through the night, but by morning, we have twenty training seats successfully patched into one nav chair. With Vel’s help, I tweak the programming to reflect the new pulses. That takes several more hours as I tinker, looking for precisely the right pitch. It’s a lot of trial and error, until I find the correct setting.

After that, I wake Argus to test them, and he tries them one at a time while I sit in the center. Each time he joins me, I sense his tension easing a little more. He knows I’ll handle the situation; I’m humbled to realize the depth of his faith, even after the mess I’ve made.

“It looks good,” he says, after we complete the testing. “Are you going to be up to doing the first classes today?”

“Probably not,” I admit. “I’m pretty tired, and I don’t want to start off on the wrong foot.”

“Another day won’t kill them. I suspected you wouldn’t want to start so soon, so I gave them two days off instead of one.”

I give him a tired, admiring smile. “You’re not just another pretty face. Well played. But I’ll definitely take the first class tomorrow morning.”

“Will it be as fast as it was for me?”

“I have no idea. We’re breaking new ground, here. Some may not be able to learn at all, for all I know. If they’ve been jumping too long, their brains may not be able to hold the new patterns.”

“So you think the fact that I’m relatively new helped me?”

“Maybe. I won’t be able to extrapolate until I see more.”

To my surprise, Argus hugs me. “Thanks for saving my ass.”

“I’m the one who put you in this situation. It’s the least I can do.”

He shakes his head. “The least you could do is run. But you wouldn’t.”

No. That’s not me. Not anymore.

Today I train twenty students at a time, and some of them learn faster than others. Turns out I was right—the young ones learn like Argus, but the older jumpers take longer, and a couple of them can’t seem to grasp the shift, even after hours in the simulator with me. A veteran jumper named Ashley seems broken with disappointment.

“I know it’s different,” she says tearfully. “But I don’t understand how.”

I’ll keep working with her over the next few days, but I suspect she’s never going to get this. Her career as a jumper is done. I’m sorry as hell to have done this to her, but maybe I did her a favor. People rarely quit our profession voluntarily, so maybe now she has a chance at a normal life. Given the addictive nature of the job, she’ll probably turn to chem and burn her mind out that way. But she has a chance, however slim, at something else.

She storms out of the session angrily, muttering curses, as I welcome the next batch of students. It will be my last of the day because I’m finding this more tiring than I expected, especially with the veteran jumpers. Some of them mutter at having to deal with me; I hear whispers of
murderess
and
vile bitch
. I pretend I don’t hear it.

I fire up the nav chair and the console, waiting for them to join me inside. They do so with varying levels of eagerness. Most of them erect partitions so I don’t glimpse their emotions, but others take pleasure in showing me their scorn. I ignore them and focus on the colors streaming in my mind.

Clear your thoughts,
I instruct the group. And then, as I showed Argus, I demonstrate how things have changed, the paths subtly altered. A couple of young jumpers catch on right away, and of those two, a girl flashes the same message I did.
Perfect duplication.
After her display, glimmers of understanding echo through the web.
She can teach.
We run the drill several more times until well over half the jumpers jacked in understand the difference.

Not surprisingly, it’s the girl who caught on first. She’s eager to test herself, and she performs the jump flawlessly.

A general sense of assent, underscored with a hint of confusion and resentment. The old Farwan jumpers aren’t happy with change, and even less so at my hands. I was the one who destroyed their world the first time, after all.

We drill until I sense that their exhaustion outstrips their ability to focus. At that point, I dismiss the class and jack out. But I ask my prodigy to stay behind.

“What’s your name?” I ask.

“Faye.” She’s shy, unable to make eye contact. Or maybe she’s afraid of me. I have a reputation these days.

“You have a talent for pattern duplication. How would you like to teach?”

She shakes her head. “I want to jump. Just as soon as I can get back out there.”

“You can go back to jumping after we get the rest of the navigators back up to speed,” I say persuasively. “It could mean the difference between life and death for some of those colonies waiting on supplies.”

Yeah, that struck the right note. She pales. “I guess I could stay a couple of weeks and help out.”

“I need you,” I tell her bluntly. “We’re facing a challenge unlike anything that’s happened in all the turns since we discovered phase-drive technology.”

She nods. “I’m in. Just tell me what I need to do.”

Over the course of the month, Faye and I train the classes together. In time, she becomes skilled enough to handle the younger, fast-adapting jumpers on her own. We develop a testing system to make sure the navigators who leave the program are competent enough to handle jumps, and gradually, interstellar travel resumes.

But more and more jumpers turn up; it seems like the job is endless.

Luckily, we find a few old-school folks who can teach the new beacons but are too set in their ways to want to use them to travel. So they’re content taking jobs passing along patterns they will never use themselves. These days, I rarely have a moment to myself, running from class to class, or supervising a test. That’s just as well, because as long as I’m secluded here, I don’t have to think about what’s going on in the greater world.

I slam into Vel on my way to an exam; it seems like ages since I’ve seen him. Honestly, I have no sense for how long it’s been because I’m running on a twenty-four-hour schedule. I sleep little, and thanks to the nanites, I can get away with it for longer than most humans without going crazy. They take up the slack, sharpening my mind.

“You are pushing yourself too hard,” he tells me.

“I broke it. I have to try to fix it.”

“You bear too much guilt.” Hit said it first—in a different way—but coming from Vel, who knows me better, it carries more weight.

“I blame March.” It’s not wholly a joke. Before loving him, it never would’ve occurred to me to take on so much. I lived party to party, jump to jump. Most would argue he made a better person of me, but I’m not as happy as I used to be.

“Come. I have something to show you.” Without asking my permission, he calls another teacher and instructs him to take over.

I raise a brow but don’t protest. This is unlike Vel enough that I’m curious what he has in store. So I follow him through the school halls, down to the comm center. He commandeers the controls from the man working there, and tells him, “I believe it is time for your break.”

It would take more bravery than most can muster to tell an Ithtorian no, so the guy scarpers, leaving Vel in charge of the various screens. He tunes them to public bounce channels without another word. With growing puzzlement, I watch.

Five minutes in, I understand. There’s no news about Sirantha Jax or the six hundred soldiers. The public is now focused on a representative from a world that just joined the Conglomerate, who apparently has seven wives, though that’s against the laws on New Terra. There’s a big debate about whether his whole family—legal on his colony—can accompany him to sessions in Ocklind without facing social censure. Though the Conglomerate promises to uphold all religious and political freedoms, they cannot mandate that the natives behave in a friendly fashion. The representative is crying prejudice and discrimination in his interview; he’s the new nine-day wonder.

“It’s not news anymore,” I admit. “That doesn’t mean they’ve forgotten . . . or forgiven. Nor should they.”

With his customary bluntness, he says, “It is more to the point to ask whether you have forgiven yourself.”

I’m sure he knows I haven’t. It’s a steel shard, lodged in my heart, not because I feel I made a mistake but because so many paid for my decision with their lives. I never wanted that kind of power. I only ever wanted to jump.

“Sirantha,” he says gently, “you may work yourself to death, and it will not bring those soldiers back. You try to atone, but you do not mourn. You must cede their loss and give them over to the Iglogth.”

He’s wise—and he’s right.

“I don’t know if I can,” I whisper. “I’ve seen some tough times, but this is the worst because I can’t get their families out of my head. I must be such a monster in their eyes.”

In a lightning gesture, he lashes out with a claw, drawing a shallow X over my heart. The blood wells through my sliced shirt, and for a moment I am too shocked to move. I can’t believe Vel hurt me. I would’ve sworn he never, ever would. I guess this means he hates me, too. The agony sears way more than it should for the size of the wound, burning from the betrayal, and tears spring up in my eyes.

When I see my pain reflected in his side-set eyes, I know why he did. So I can cry. Even though it hurt him, too, he gave me the wound that permits me to let go. It’s a selfless thing, because I can see by the twitch of his mandible that it injured him, too. He has a friend’s blood on his bare claws, a horrendous thing—and lovely, too.