Desert Stars (27 page)

Puzzled, Jalil pulled himself beneath
the hatchway and looked up. To his surprise, Michelle was standing
on the ceiling on the other side. Although she was upside down, her
hair hung down by her shoulders as if she were on solid ground. She
tilted her head back and looked down at him.

“
This way,” she said.
“Watch yourself—it’s a little tricky.”

Tricky?
Jalil thought to himself, a little irked at her
condescension.
It’s not too tricky—I can
do this.
While she looked down at him from
above, he kicked off from the floor and sped towards the open
hatchway.

Michelle’s eyes widened, and she
reached up with her hands as if to shield herself. “No,
wait—whoa!”

As Jalil passed through the hatchway,
an invisible force grabbed his body and pulled him up. Before he
knew what was happening, he was falling straight towards her. She
shrieked and ducked, but it was too late. They collapsed in a heap
on the hard metal floor.

“
Ow!” she said. “Take it
easy!”

“
Sorry,” said Jalil, blood
rushing to his cheeks. His shoulder stung a little, but her body
had softened the worst of the fall.

“
Well, what have we here?”
a boy’s voice said, clearly amused. A pair of hands lifted Jalil by
the arm and pulled him to his feet.

“‘
Chelle?” came a second
voice. “Are you all right?”

Jalil glanced up to see a strikingly
tall young man with wavy blond hair—blond hair, much like his own.
Although he was clean-shaven, he had to be at least five years
older; the look of concern on his face only added to that
impression.

“
I’m fine, Nash,” said
Michelle, groaning a bit as he helped her to her feet. They
embraced, but didn’t kiss on the cheek—a strange greeting, if that
was all it was supposed to be.

“
You all right?” the first
voice said. Jalil looked over and saw a boy about his own age
standing apart from the others. His mouth was curled up in a
lopsided grin, and he had a friendly look in his eyes. Like Nash,
his face was clean-shaven, and his dark hair was cut
short.

“
Yes. Thank you,” said
Jalil.

“
The name’s Lars,” said
the boy, extending his hand. “Lars Stewart.”

“
Gavin Farland,” said
Jalil, taking it. “Is Michelle your—”

“
Sister? Yep. Our dad’s
the owner and captain.”

“
So this is the new guy?”
said Nash in a voice noticeably deeper that Lars’s. Jalil turned to
him and bowed.

“
I’m so sorry,” he said,
apologizing profusely. “I didn’t mean to—”

“
Don’t worry about it,”
said Michelle. “Gavin, this is Nash. Nash, Gavin.”

“
Welcome aboard,” said
Nash, shaking Jalil’s hand. His grip was much firmer than Lars’s,
and though he wasn’t unfriendly, he did not smile.

“
Nash is our copilot,”
Michelle continued. “He goes on when Dad takes his sleep shift.
You’ll probably be bunkmates.”

“
And cram the three of us
in the same room?” Lars interjected. “Sheesh, it’ll be like the
academy all over again.”

“
Oh, so that’s why you
dropped out,” said Michelle, putting her hands on her
hips.

Lars shrugged. “Eh, classes were
boring.”

“
Lars is going on your
sleep shift, ‘Chelle,” said Mark, entering the corridor from a
doorway at the far end. “Nash and Jalil will go on the
other.”

“
Are you serious?” said
Michelle. The tone of her voice made it abundantly clear she how
annoyed she was.

“
Three is too many for the
bunkroom at one time,” said her father, “and it doesn’t make sense
for us to start up a third sleep shift with only one crewman.
Besides, I need to spend more time training Lars.”

“
Why couldn’t we have
picked up another girl?” Michelle muttered as she stormed off down
the narrow corridor. Nash watched her for a moment before turning
to face Jalil.

“
Looks like we’re
bunkmates,” he said. “Have you ever flown a starship
before?”

“
Uh, no,” said Jalil,
thoroughly confused. “I used to drive buggies in the desert, but…”
his voice trailed off.

Nash stared past him for an
uncomfortable moment before answering. “Well, I’m fairly certain I
can pilot the ship on my own. I hope you’re a fast learner,
though.”

“
Of course,” said Jalil.
“I—”

But Nash had already left to follow
Michelle.

“
Here,” said Lars, putting
a friendly hand on his shoulder. “Let me show you around the
ship.”

“
Good idea,” said Mark.
“Stow his gear while you’re at it. We’re scheduled to jump out in a
little under an hour.”

“
Gotcha,” said Lars. With
a nod, Mark slipped through a nearby hatch, leaving the two of them
alone.

“
Did I do something
wrong?” Jalil asked. “With Michelle, I—”

“
Don’t worry about it.
Here, let me help you with that.”

Before Jalil could object, Lars picked
up his bag and headed down the corridor.

“
It’s a good thing you
didn’t bring much stuff with you,” Lars said. “We don’t have many
free compartments in the bunk room. There should be enough space
for this, though.”

He palmed a keypad on the wall, and a
narrow door hissed open. Jalil followed him inside. “This is the
bunk room,” said Lars, dropping the bag on the floor.

The room was tiny: barely ten feet
long, and so narrow that the two of them had to turn sideways in
order to slip past each other. On the left, two bunks jutted out of
the wall, while almost a dozen locker compartments took up most of
the space on the right. The bunks had less than three feet of
clearance in which to sleep, and barely enough room to stretch
out.

“
Who sleeps in this room?”
Jalil asked.

“
All of us.”

“
All of you?” He looked
around for another set of bunks, but the two on the left were the
only ones visible.

“
Well, not all at the same
time,” said Lars. “You and Nash will take the first shift, me and
‘Chelle the second.”

“
Michelle sleeps in
here?”

“
Of course! Where else
would she?”

Jalil’s cheeks flushed red as he
remembered the night with Mira from the spaceport. An awful sinking
feeling welled up in his gut, and he opened his mouth to speak, but
all he could do was stutter.

Lars laughed. “Don’t worry; the sleep
shift lasts a good eight hours. She won’t catch you naked or
anything.”

He winked, and Jalil blushed a little
harder. Fortunately, Lars turned his attention to the compartments,
opening one while Jalil recomposed himself.

“
I’m putting all your
stuff in compartment 3C. It’s open access right now, but if you
want to program a lock, that’s up to you. The rest of us just trust
each other to keep out.”

“
That’s fine,” said Jalil.
It wasn’t as if he had anything valuable anyway—besides the locket
around his neck.

“
Good. Then let me show
you the rest of the ship.”

Lars led him back into the corridor,
which was empty. Through the bulkheads, however, he heard Nash and
Michelle talking in another room.

“
The space in here is used
for storage,” said Lars, pointing to a closed hatchway directly
across from the door to the bunkroom. “The captain’s quarters—where
Dad sleeps—are down there,” he said, pointing to the second door to
the right, “and the bathroom is right here.” He palmed a keypad on
the wall between the captain’s quarters and the bunkroom, and the
door hissed open.

“
It looks… cozy,” said
Jalil, peering in. Although the porcelain equipment looked much
nicer than anything he’d had out in the desert, it was all crammed
in about a quarter of the space. With barely enough room for a
person to stand, he wondered how anyone used the place.

“
Most of the ship is like
that,” said Lars. “We’re a small, family-owned cargo hauling
operation, not a luxury liner—unfortunately.”

“
No, no, that’s perfectly
fine,” said Jalil, worried that Lars had taken offense. “I like it
better this way.”

“
Yeah, yeah. We’ll see if
you’re still saying that nine months out. Come on; let me show you
the bridge.”

Though Lars’s comment
seemed good-natured enough, Jalil wanted to object—at first, simply
to be a good guest, but then because he realized it was true. Even
though everything was packed into such a narrow living space,
he
was
perfectly
fine with it—in fact, it felt natural.

Eerily so.

“
Those hatches lead up to
the shuttle airlock and down to the cargo bays,” said Lars,
pointing to a ladder running along a niche in the wall; hatches led
to rooms above and below, while the corridor ended in a narrow
door. “Engineering is further back that way—you’ll spend most of
your time with ‘Chelle in that half of the ship.”

“
I see.”

“
Down this way is the
bridge, the mess, and the lounge,” Lars continued, leading him down
the corridor past the captain’s quarters. They passed a pair of
long, narrow windows on either side of the corridor. Through the
one on his right, Jalil’s eyes were drawn to the face of the planet
below. The rusty red desert spread out below them. With the sun
nearing the horizon, the shadows made small wavy lines, tracing
patterns like the waves of an ocean. The mountains, with their
sharp ravines and jagged peaks, looked like the discarded bones of
ancient animals, their long vertebrae stretching across a landscape
the color of old blood.

“
Beautiful, isn’t it?”
said Lars. “We’re in no rush; take your time.”

“
Thank you.”

As Jalil watched, they passed over to
the night side of the planet. The rust-red desert landscape turned
to pure black, unbroken by the lights of cities or
domes.

I’m crossing the sky on
one of the satellites right now,
he
realized, a lump forming in his throat.
If
Mira’s down there, she can probably see me.

The thought filled him with a strange,
insatiable yearning, one that he couldn’t quite put out of his
mind.

* * * * *

Mira was the first to see the camp. In
the harsh, rocky desert, it stood out like the last surviving
bastion of humanity in the midst of a barren wasteland. The
colorful tents from Lena’s wedding were all gone, and the camp
seemed almost abandoned. The adobe huts and sun-faded tents could
have been a cluster of ancient ruins, and the rusty old windmill
jutted up into the sky as if defying its own inevitable
decay.

As the caravaneer raced across the
desert in the early morning light, she stared at the dismal scene
and wondered at how small and insignificant it seemed. Compared to
the mighty pylon cities in Raya Dome, or the nearly endless expanse
of the sea in Terra 2 Dome, the Najmi camp was a mud-hole in the
midst of a waste. After all she’d seen on the pilgrimage, it felt
strange to think that this was her childhood home.

“
That’s strange,” said
Surayya, perking up as Hamza pulled into the dusty open space of
the compound. “Where is everyone?”

They’re too ashamed to
acknowledge my return,
Mira thought to
herself. She grew tense under her headscarf as Hamza drove up next
to the garage and parked the Jabaliyn caravaneer. Once he shut off
the engine, the only sounds came from the creaking of the windmill
and the low whistling of the desert breeze.

“
Everybody bring something
in,” Hamza ordered as he disembarked. Wordlessly, Tiera and Surayya
complied. Mira picked up the camp stove and cooking supplies,
hauling them in as she followed the others.

Her mother was waiting for her just
inside the tent door.

“
Leave those there,”
said
Shira
, her voice cold. Mira
hesitated for a moment of uncertainty before setting them down on
the dusty carpet floor.

“
Come with me.”

A chill shot down Mira’s neck as she
followed her mother inside. She glanced down at the old peephole
and saw a pair of eyes staring out at her from the shadows. How
many times had she spied on her father’s guests from that same hole
as a little girl? Now her sisters were peeking out at her, as if
she were a stranger, an outcast.

Perhaps that wasn’t too far from the
truth.

Her mother led her through the tents
and into the kitchen, a short ways off from the living quarters. It
was unlikely that anyone would overhear them through the thick
adobe walls, but Mira knew that the rumors would spread either
way.

“
So,” her mother started,
letting the rug door fall shut behind them. “Where is
Jalil?”

Mira swallowed. With the only
illumination coming from the small vent in the ceiling, she could
barely see anything.