Desert Stars (33 page)

Just like my
parents,
Jalil realized.

“
How does a merchanter
settle down and have a family?” he asked.

“
It depends,” said Nash.
“A lot of family businesses start out with a single ship, usually
bought with borrowed money. The ship becomes your home, since
living on board is cheaper than paying for an apartment you hardly
ever use. After you pay off your ship, the next thing is to
establish a home port and start building a fleet.”

“
How do you find a wife?”
asked Jalil. “Do your parents arrange for you to marry?”

Nash chuckled. “No, not usually. We do
things a bit differently than they do in the Gaian
desert.”

“
What do you
mean?”

“
Well, usually it’s up to
a young man to find his own wife. He spends some time courting
young women, until he finds a girl he likes who seems willing to
take a chance on him. He asks for her hand, and if she says yes,
they get married. If not, well, he finds someone else and tries
again.”

Jalil nodded. “And have you chosen
someone?”

“
Yes.”

“
Who?”

Nash paused for a moment. “Can you
keep a secret?”

“
My lips are
sealed.”

“
It’s
Michelle.”

“
I see,” said Jalil. “She
is… very spirited.”

“
Yes, and not a bad
engineer, either.”

“
I admit, I’ve never seen
a woman so good at that. She will make an excellent wife for
you.”

Nash chuckled. “I hope so. I plan to
ask her when we get to Kardunash IV in a couple days.”

“
God-willing,” said Jalil.
“God-willing, my brother.”

At that moment, a gentle pinging noise
sounded over the ship’s loudspeakers. Jalil braced himself—the
sound meant that they were going to make another jump. He clenched
his teeth and gripped the nearest handhold as his stomach fell out
from underneath him. It wasn’t as bad as the first few times, but
it still jarred him something awful. He opened his eyes and took in
a deep breath, sweat clinging to his forehead.

“
How many more jumps are
we going to make?” he asked, leaning against the wall for support
as he rose to his feet.

“
About two dozen,” said
Nash. “After a while, you get used to it.”

God-willing,
thought Jalil, doubting he ever would.

Set against the starry backdrop out
the forward window, he saw a giant, spherical object in the
distance. It looked almost like a planet, except that it was dark
gray, with a squarish platform jutting out of the middle on one
side.

“
What’s that?” he
asked.

“
What?” Nash said, looking
up from his console. “Oh, that. It’s a jump station—a waypoint
along the starlane. Their drives are what propel us from point to
point, so that we can travel much faster than our ship could
alone.”

“
I see,” said Jalil. “And
how far do we have to go?”

Nash shrugged. “Twenty light-years,
perhaps less.”

“
Light-year?”

“
Yes. Karduna is almost
eighty light-years from Gaia Nova, which means that if we
accelerated our ship to just below the speed of light, it would
take over eighty years to get there.”

Jalil frowned. “Light has a
speed?”

“
Of course—that’s why it
takes several hours for a signal to travel from one end of a star
system to another. The stars are so far apart that the light from
them has traveled for years and years, sometimes even centuries, to
reach us. When we look out at the starfield, we’re not only looking
back across space, but also across time.”

“
What?” exclaimed Jalil.
“You’re saying that we can actually look backwards in time, by
looking at something from far away?”

Nash shrugged. “Sure—why not? It would
take one hell of a telescope, though.”

One hell of a
telescope,
Jalil thought to himself as he
stared out at the myriad stars. The thought of looking backwards in
time filled his mind with wondrous possibilities. What would he
see, if he could look back far enough? Would he see his parents
crash land their ship on Gaia Nova? Would he see himself growing up
in the desert, driving across the mountains and sand dunes in his
tiny little caravaneer? And what about Karduna? Was he staring at
an image of the star as it appeared while his parents were still
children? Before they were even born? Was it possible, even if only
in theory, that he could see himself as a baby, with his real
mother watching over him?

“
If it’s possible to look
back in time, is it possible to send a message?” he asked aloud,
half to himself.

Nash chuckled. “I don’t think so, but
honestly, who knows? It took our forefathers almost a thousand
years to invent the jump drive. Until then, they thought that
faster-than-light travel was impossible.”

Jalil nodded, caught up in his own
thoughts. If he could send a message back in time, what would he
say? Would he tell his parents not to go to Gaia Nova? Would he
save them from crashing into the desert, and keep himself from
being separated from them?

Strangely, he didn’t know if he would.
Yes, if his parents had never crashed, he would still be with
them—but what kind of a person would he be without the Najmi tribe?
The thought filled him with fear, from the pit of his stomach to
the ends of his fingers.

And what about Mira? What if he’d
never met her, or shared that time with her on the pilgrimage? The
thought of living his life without ever knowing her filled him with
a surprisingly poignant sadness.

“
Gavin?” came Nash’s
voice. “Gavin, are you all right?”

Jalil blinked and came back to the
present. “Uh, yes,” he said. “I’m fine.”

“
Are you sure? You seemed
a little distraught.”

“
No, I’m fine. I was just…
thinking.”

“
Well, don’t think too
hard. The universe can be a mind-boggling place.”

“
Yes,” Jalil said softly.
“It can.”

* * * * *

“
Why so gloomy?” Surayya
asked as she helped Mira hang the laundry. “You should be
happy—you’ve got a suitor, after all.”

“
I know,” said Mira,
trying not to look as glum as she felt. She opened the creaky hatch
of the laundry compressor and pulled out a wad of garments, clumped
tightly together. Though the compressor had sucked out most of the
water, it was still slightly moist to the touch—enough that she
held it at arm’s length as she shook it out.

“
So why the sad look?”
Surayya asked, opening the hatch to pull out a tangled clump of
colorful headscarves. “I mean, I know you’re still getting over
Jalil, but he left almost a month ago. You’ve got to move on
sometime.”

Mira bit her lip as she clipped the
laundry to the line. The dusty wind whistled overhead, but
surrounded on all sides by the tents and adobe walls of the camp,
the laundry was safe from the sand.

“
I don’t know,” she said,
reaching into the compressor to pull out another misshapen lump.
She didn’t know why, but it felt wrong to forget Jalil so
quickly.

“
What do you mean, you
don’t know?” said Surayya, putting her hands on her hips to give
her a stern, sisterly look. “Ibrahim is your first cousin—if
anything, he’s the one who has claim on you, not Jalil.”

“
I know,” Mira said, not
meeting her sister’s eyes. “If it weren’t for Jalil, I’d probably
be marrying Ibrahim anyway. But—”

“
But what?” asked Surayya.
“Jalil abandoned you, Mira. I know you had feelings for him, but
you can’t let those get in the way, especially now.”

“
So that’s why you think I
should marry Ibrahim?” Mira asked, her body trembling. “Because you
don’t think I’ll ever get anyone else?”

“
Of course,” said Surayya.
“You do realize what will happen if you refuse, don’t
you?”

Mira stared at the ground, her fists
clenched in frustration by her side. Surayya set down the laundry
and put a hand on her shoulder.

“
I know this must be hard,
but if you don’t marry Ibrahim, Father’s going to have to banish
you. There’s no other way to preserve the family honor.”

Honor?
Mira screamed inwardly.
What honor?
The “family honor” is all a lie!

Before Mira could answer, however,
Amina slipped into the courtyard. “Hello, sisters,” she
said.

“
Hello,” said Surayya.
Mira remained silent.

“
I’ve got a message,”
Amina said, giving Mira a mischievous wink. “It’s from
you-know-who.”

Mira frowned. “Who?”

“
Oh, come on,” said Amina,
rolling her eyes. “Who do you think?”

Ibrahim.

“
What does he say?” she
asked.

Amina glanced both ways before
gleefully stepping closer. Surayya leaned in so that she could
hear.

“
He wants you to meet him
at Lena’s tent,” Amina whispered. “Just after dinner.”

“
Aiiee!” cried
Surayya.

Mira’s legs went weak, and her hands
started to shake. “Are you sure?”

“
One hundred percent,”
said Amina, still grinning. “He told me to bring you
this.”

She pulled out an apple—old and
somewhat wrinkled, but still bright. Surayya clapped both hands
over her mouth, while Mira numbly took the gift. It reminded her of
the strawberries at Lena’s wedding—the strawberries she would never
have.

So it’s come to
this,
she thought to herself, swallowing
hard as she bit her lip.

“
You’re so lucky,” said
Surayya, barely holding back the squeal in her voice. “Not only
does he want to marry you, but he actually likes you,
too!”

“
Well, can you blame him?”
said Amina. “Mother always said she was the prettiest.” She glanced
at Mira and winked.

What am I supposed to
do?
Mira wondered. After Tiera’s warning,
she didn’t know what to think of him anymore.

“
Mira?” said Surayya,
concern flooding her voice. “Mira, are you all right? Your face is
as pale as a sheet.”

“
Nervous, huh?” said
Amina. “Don’t worry. Ibrahim might be a beast, but when he bites,
you’ll like it.”

Jalil would never push me
like this,
Mira thought to herself.
He would never use my own sisters against
me.

In that moment, she knew her
answer.

“
I—I can’t,” she
whispered. “I, uh, have some chores to do this evening.”

“
Oh, Lord of Earth,”
Surayya muttered. “You’re not thinking of running away from him,
are you?”

“
She’s not running away,”
said Amina. “She’s just playing hard to get. Right?”

“
Right,” Mira
whispered.

“
As long as you know you
can’t do that forever.”

Mira’s head swam; that was what she
was afraid of.

Chapter 16

Jalil stared out the forward window at
the speckled blue orb of the planet below. White clouds stretched
across the atmosphere like blemishes in a marble, while the
boundless oceans spread out to the curvature of the horizon. The
greenery where land met water reminded him of the cultivated fields
and forests of Aliet Dome. Instead of the rust-red desert and
craggy mountains of Gaia Nova, rivers stretched like veins from the
gentle, rolling hills down to the deltas along the abundant
coastline.

Here and there, Jalil picked out the
large black structures of planetary domes, but they seemed smaller
than the ones at Gaia Nova—smaller and more interspersed. Instead
of dominating one hemisphere of the planet like an unsightly
plague, they grew out of the landscape like natural landforms. If
they weren’t so uniform, he almost would have thought that they
were natural.

“
Receiving a
transmission,” said Nash, leaning forward in his chair. “Port
authority has cleared us to dock at terminal AE-2.”

“
Copy,” said Lars.
“Feeding data to the autodocking routine. Stand by.”

Michelle leaned back and ran her
fingers through her blond hair. “Man, it’s been so long,” she said.
“I can’t wait to go planetside.”

Jalil glanced over at
Nash, and for the briefest moment, their eyes met. A smile came to
his lips as he remembered their conversation the previous
day.
Godspeed, brother.

“
We’re not through yet,”
said Mark. “There’s still the unloading to do.” He turned and
motioned to Jalil. “Since the work is relatively straightforward, I
think you shouldn’t have any problems with it. Am I
right?”

“
Yes, sir,” said Jalil.
Out of the corner of his eye, Michelle pumped her arm and silently
mouthed the word “yes.”

“
Will you need any of us
to stay behind as well?” asked Nash.