Forgotten Suns (14 page)

Aisha let that sit for a handful of seconds. Then she said,
“Will you look after Jinni for me while I’m gone?”

Malia ran Ghazal’s reins through her fingers. Her eyes above
the black veil were impossible to read.

Aisha couldn’t read her inside, either. Not that she was
anything like perfect at that, yet. But tribespeople had barriers that she
hadn’t found in anyone else.

Malia blinked. The blankness was gone; in its place was
white-hot rage. “You’re going away. You’re going to die—and that’s if you’re
lucky. And you want me to be your stablehand? Isn’t there anyone of your own
people who can do it?”

Aisha twitched, stung. “No! No, there isn’t! Nobody else
knows what he likes. Nobody rides him right or feeds him right or—”

“All
right
! I’ll
do it!”

“Good!”

They both stopped, breathing hard. Aisha’s eyes wanted to
run over. She couldn’t let them. Not because anyone here would laugh at her,
but because once she started, there was no way she’d ever stop.

She swallowed hard. “Behave yourself,” she said. “Don’t
forget about Jinni.”

“Not in this life,” said Malia. And that, in the tribes, was
a solemn oath. “You come back. Alive or dead. Don’t you dare go away forever.”

“I promise,” Aisha said. “We’ll do what we set out to do.
We’ll find what we’re looking for. Then I’ll come home.”

At forty-seven hours and thirty-six minutes, Khalida
presented herself in front of the shuttle. Her uniform felt stiff and
unfamiliar, the captain’s bars oddly weighty on the collar. The hair that had
grown down to her shoulders during her leave was cut military short.

The wind blew cold on her bare neck. Seasons changed quickly
on Nevermore; literally overnight, summer had turned into autumn. It would rain
before dark, Vikram had said. Vikram was wise to the weather on this world.

Rashid and Marina had come out to see her off. Jamal
surprised her by wandering in behind them. Aisha was not there, nor did Khalida
expect to see her. She had pitched such a roaring fit when she discovered both
Khalida and Rama were leaving that her father had confined her to quarters.

That was Aisha: drama to the last. Between Aisha and the
antelope stallion, which had been screaming since the sun came up and seemed
likely never to stop, Khalida’s ears were ringing.

Khalida would miss Aisha, though maybe not the animal that
Rama had taken and tamed and then abandoned, damn him. She would miss everyone
in the expedition. She would even miss the planet. The quiet, when it was not
broken by stallion rage; the cleanness of air and water and sky. The emptiness,
with not even a ghost to remember the people who were gone.

Nevermore’s one and only ghost waited with her on the
windblown grass. For once in his life, he looked almost aggressively ordinary:
like a moderately well-to-do planetsider in a plain grey suit and a long coat,
with a hat drawn down over his eyes.

Khalida knew with absolute certainty that he should not be
allowed off Nevermore. It was her duty and obligation to preserve the safety of
the United Planets. If she let this man loose on the spaceroads, God and Allah
and Great Cthulhu knew what would come of it.

She kept her mouth shut and her eyes forward. Crew were
loading cargo in the corner of her eye: boxes of samples from the excavation
for the museum at home, and trade goods from the tribes.

As the last of them slid into the hold, the passenger access
finally opened. “All clear to board,” the pilot’s voice sang out over the comm.

Marina caught Khalida in a fierce embrace. Her husband was
directly behind her. Between the two of them they squeezed the breath out of
her. “You be careful,” Marina said. She sounded angry, which meant she was
trying not to cry. “Don’t get into any more trouble than you can help. Come
back soon.”

“As soon as I can,” Khalida said.

They let her go. Rashid kissed her forehead and her cheeks
and murmured a blessing in Arabic. Unregenerate atheist though she was, she was
glad to have it.

“Five minutes,” the comm said. “Five minutes to liftoff.”

Khalida had to go now or she never would. That alternative
tempted her sorely, but Lieutenant Zhao was waiting at the top of the ramp,
flanked by burly marines. She could go under her own power or under arrest.
That was all the choice she had.

She opted for dignity, such as it was. Rama had already
disappeared into the shuttle.

~~~

She had to give him credit for courage. When the doors
shut and sealed and the shuttle powered up, he sat perfectly still across from
her. The only sign of tension was the greying of his knuckles on the arms of
his seat.

As they lifted above the plain and set course for outer
orbit, he relaxed visibly, and probably with intent. Lieutenant Zhao and his
marines had taken over the rear seats, and they were watching.

Khalida wondered what they thought of Rama. His clearances
were beautifully forged. She would not have suspected that they were false if
she had not known who he really was.

According to the records on file with the shuttle and the
transport, he was one Madhusudana Rama, citizen of Dreamtime, certified
traveler-on-walkabout, moving on from Nevermore, destination indeterminate—as
it should be: that was the meaning of walkabout. The list of previous stopping
places went back a handful of years, fading into a somewhat dull and thoroughly
blameless existence on his supposedly native world.

It was rather impressive, as covers went. MI would have done
better, but not by much. The fact that an eleven-Earthyear-old boy had done it
with a house computer, even with a psi master to help, would terrify Khalida
when she had the energy to spare. Psycorps would never get their claws on
Jamal, but MI would be all too interested in him when he was older.

Once the shuttle was in the air, Rama let out the breath he
must have been holding since the flight began, and leaned toward the viewport.
There was no telling what was in his mind as he watched his world drop away
beneath him.

The blue of the sky gave way to the blackness of space, with
the planet’s curve diminishing below. Rama sat back. There was still a deep
tension in him, but on the surface he was a traveler of worlds, marveling at
their various wonders. He took off his hat and unfastened his coat.

He was not so ordinary to look at now. He wore the torque
that Khalida distinctly remembered not seeing while he waited for the shuttle.
Now there it was under the high collar of his suit—right in front of Lieutenant
Zhao. Was he trying to flip the bird in the agent’s face?

Khalida closed her eyes and sighed.

~~~

She caught what scraps of sleep she could. There had been
too little of that last night. Her head ached dully, as if her skull were too
small for her brain.

The slight jolt of docking startled her awake. The
crewmember who had been looking after the passengers, a slender young woman
nearly as dark as Rama, glided through the cabin. The shuttle had gone to
half-gravity to match the setting in the landing bay: easier for unloading.

Khalida should have thought to warn Rama. He was holding
himself together, probably by sheer will.

Lieutenant Zhao and the marines were waiting for Khalida.
There was nothing she could do for Rama but hope he lost control after Psycorps
was out of there.

She could make that happen, at least. She stood up, taking a
moment to remember how to balance. It came back fast. Her first step had a
fraction too much bounce: she caught herself before she hit the ceiling,
recalibrated, and settled into the low, gliding motion that the crewmember had
demonstrated before her.

She felt Rama’s eyes on her, recording and studying. She
felt when his attention turned away, too. It was rather too much like living
with her skin off.

The shuttle bay opened in front of Khalida. Half a dozen
other shuttles were docked along it.
Leda
was a heavy cruiser, big enough for troop transport; this was a patrol run
through Ceti Quadrant, which happened to be convenient for both Psycorps and MI.

She forced herself to put Rama out of her mind. He was the
universe’s problem now. She had problems of her own, beginning with the
detachment of marines that fell in around her as she reached the end of the
bay.

“Am I under arrest?” she asked the one at her right
shoulder.

He did not even flick a glance at her. Bad sign, that. Her
headache went from distinctly annoying to blinding.

~~~

Khalida would hardly have been surprised to find herself
in the brig. The captain’s office was only marginally more reassuring, even
with the person at the desk slipping smoothly out of at least four uplinks and
a comm ping, rising and stepping around the desk and pulling Khalida into a
long, fierce hug.

The marines and Lieutenant Zhao had discreetly evaporated.
They would not have gone far, but for now it was enough.

Captain Hashimoto held Khalida at arm’s length and shook her
so hard her teeth rattled. “
Damn
you,
woman! Don’t you ever answer your messages?”

“I was hiding,” Khalida said.

“On a planet with a total human population of five.” Captain
Hashimoto dropped Khalida a good few centimeters, which was a feat: she was
barely taller than Khalida’s chin. “Don’t do that again.”

She tipped Khalida backward into a hoverchair and dropped
into one that drifted around to face it. Khalida sat for a moment and
concentrated on breathing.

Hashimoto Tomiko had that effect on people. Khalida found
herself smiling—and that was not what she had intended at all. “I suppose
several dozen of those messages were to crow at me about how you got yourself a
ship.”

“And that I was coming to get you, whether you wanted it or
not,” said Tomiko. She tucked up her feet, frowning. She looked like a child,
but anyone who made the mistake of treating her like one lived to regret it. “You
did pick an interesting place to disappear to. Whoever slapped the Perpetual
Preserve designation on it was either damned lucky or had damned good
connections in high places. If U.P. Admin had any way to touch that much
pristine Earth-class real estate, they’d have it colonized before you could
blink.”

“The planet is not empty.” Khalida surprised herself with a
rush of anger. “It has inhabitants.”

“A few thousand primitive tribesmen,” Tomiko said. “U.P.
would fence off an island somewhere and turn them loose.” She waved the subject
aside before Khalida could erupt. “Never mind. They’re there and you’re here,
and the universe is back the way it should be.”

“You think so?” Khalida said.

Tomiko kicked her chair over toward the wall, which opened at
her approach. She pulled out a bottle and a pair of glasses, filled them deftly
as she floated back toward Khalida, and handed her the fuller of the two.

Khalida drank a long swallow of smoky fire. It burned its
way to her stomach. She held the second swallow in her throat until her head
spun with the fumes, then let it slip down to join the first.

“Tell me there aren’t any orders,” she said. “You pulled
rank and abused your privileges shamelessly to get me off Nevermore.”

“I did that,” said Tomiko, “but there are orders. MI’s
calling you back.”

“Voluntarily? Not because you exploited a few connections?”

“I didn’t have to: they’d already cut the orders. I’m taking
you to Centrum.”

“The long way or the short?”

“Mostly the short,” Tomiko said with regret.

“That’s still a solid tenday,” Khalida said.

“Most of it in jump,” said Tomiko, “and cut off from the
subspace feed.” She saluted Khalida with her glass. “To mystery and suspense.”

Khalida returned the salute. “To hiding your head in the
sand.”

They grinned at each other. Soldiers’ humor: coal black and
sharp enough to draw blood.

It was good to be back. That feeling was strictly temporary
and had a great deal to do with Tomiko’s bottle of brandy, but Khalida enjoyed
it while she had it.

Aisha’s plan had succeeded beautifully so far. She and
Jamal had worked it out when he was in his pirate phase, in case they ever
needed to stow away on a spaceship.

Not that she’d said a word to him or to anyone but the
grandmother and Malia. What her brother didn’t know, he couldn’t tell.

All it took was a shipping container, a portable
life-support system with backup chargers, and a supply of food and water. They’d
commandeered the equipment last year and stowed it in one of the outbuildings.
The supplies weren’t too hard to siphon off from stores.

With everybody busy excavating or cataloguing or researching
or hacking systems for Rama, nobody had noticed Aisha coming and going around
the shuttle. Adding one more container to the manifest was a little harder, but
Jamal wasn’t the only hacker in the family. He always got the blame, but as
often as not it was Aisha who’d done the hacking.

She’d figured three earthdays to get off Nevermore and onto
the ship, then wait for the first jump. Once they were in jumpspace, turning back
was much harder. And
Leda
had orders
that didn’t allow much room for unloading a stowaway.

They might space her. She had considered that. The ship had
lifepods and she knew where they were; she’d have to hope she could get to one
before the marines got to her.

But that was in the future and might not happen at all. Her
chrono said she was two days in. She’d run through most of the databeads she’d
brought with her reader. She still had enough space rations for another
shipday. She wasn’t quite ready to run screaming through the spaceways. Yet.

She was horrendously bored and missing Mother and Pater and
Jinni and even Jamal so badly her insides hurt. The rumble of sheer terror
underneath, not just for Nevermore but for herself now she’d done this enormous
and irreversible thing, made it almost impossible to think.