One's Aspect to the Sun (4 page)

I finished my conversation and, without glancing back, followed the breezeway to the docking ring where the
Tane Ikai
lay berthed. I still felt an itch between my shoulder blades, as if someone were back there watching me, but I tried to shake it off. No-one had even gotten out of the flitter. What I couldn't figure out was why they'd followed me. I had made no secret of where we were docked, so if someone wanted to find me, they'd taken a round about route to do it.

PrimeCorp
bastardos
. I'd be damned if I'd let them rattle me. I resolutely put the whole incident out of my thoughts. I had enough to worry about.

I emerged onto a silent bridge, all the consoles dark and the skimchairs empty, the viewscreen black. It was like coming home to an empty house, depressing and lonely. I made my way down the short corridor to my own cabin to work. At least it wasn't unusual to be alone there.

The door of Baden's cabin slid open as I passed. “Captain! Back so soon? Thought you'd be visiting your family.”

He'd changed out of the marine-blue biosuit he usually wore shipboard and was wearing street clothes, a chameleon-fabric shirt that clung to his upper body and cycled gradually and subtly through a range of cool colours, from aquamarine to emerald and all the gradations in between. His pants looked like denim, but they were more likely bio-weave from the planet Renata. One of two inhabited planets in the Delta Pavonis system, Renata did a big export business in the organic fabric that had an inherent temperature-modulating feature.

With his cocoa-brown hair still damp from the shower and the planes of his face freshly shaven, he looked, quite simply, gorgeous. He reminded me of Hirin when we were young, and it didn't improve my mood.

“Don't be too long if you're leaving the ship, Baden, we're probably shipping out again soon.”

I must have spoken more sharply than I intended, because he raised his eyebrows. “What's—
okej
, Captain.”

“Was all the cargo delivered?”

“Yes, the last client left about fifteen minutes ago. The hold's clear and the bots are sweeping up.”

“
Bona
.”

“When you say, 'soon,' Captain, do you mean—?”

I relented. “Not before tomorrow night at the earliest, Baden. Probably not even that soon, really. Just check in tomorrow, all right?”

He looked like he'd say something more, but he only nodded and left, his footsteps echoing in the corridor. I turned and went into my cabin. Baden had tried his charms on me for a while when he first joined my crew, but eventually he'd accepted my rebuffs graciously. It would have been easy to say I was married, but that would raise more questions than it would answer, so I'd simply acted as if I wasn't interested. If it hadn't been for Hirin, I might have been, but we'd never had that kind of marriage and I wasn't about to start now, even in the strange circumstances that had entwined us. I thought that Baden and Rei sought solace with each other occasionally, especially on the longer runs. If it made them happy, it was fine with me.

It was something I never got used to, though, being the odd one out after all those years flying with Hirin.

I sighed and got down to work. The request for passage to Kiando was there on the job log, and the name matched Hirin's information. I sent an offer to the researcher, a Dr. Ndasa, knocking ten percent off the usual passenger fee just in case he had a tight fist. I did a quick scan for cargo offers going to Mars, the Cassiopeias or other systems en route, and sent out a few tenders. Might as well have the cargo pods full wherever we were going.

A knock sounded at the cabin door and Rei poked her head in. She looked fabulous, skin glowing, hair down and flowing around her shoulders like water. I wished suddenly that I'd gone for a facial, too. I could use some pampering.

“You're back!” she said, echoing Baden's words.

“I'm back,” I agreed, “and on the trail of a new job. A few new jobs. We might not be here very long.”

I'd tried to keep my voice matter-of-fact but Rei knew me too well. She came into the cabin and shut the door behind her. “What's wrong, Luta?”

“There have been some—unforeseen developments.” I leaned back in my chair and tucked my feet up under me.

Rei flopped gracefully into my big reading chair, the one that I allow myself as a captain's luxury. She, too, was dressed in street clothes, if you could call them that. I know I wouldn't be seen on the street in them. Not even in my cabin. It was a two-piece golden biosuit, with flowing fabric bits intermixed with something that looked like medieval chain mail. Whatever you wanted to call it, Rei could carry it off.

“Hirin?” She said it softly.

“Well, yes, but probably not quite what you think.” I thought maybe if I talked fast, I wouldn't start crying again. “He had a few bits of news. One was a possible lead on my mother. On Kiando.” Rei was the only person in the crew who knew I was looking for her—but she didn't know everything about why.

Her eyebrows shot up. “That's a long run. Do you think it's worth investigating?”

I shrugged. “Might be. We might have a job that would take us that far. Hirin doesn't have much longer to live,” I blurted suddenly.

“Oh, honey,” she said, but that was all.

“But here's the interesting part.” I swung my legs down and leaned forward, resting my elbows on the clear desktop. “He wants to ship out with us when we leave Earth this time. He wants to die in space.”

There, I'd said it, and I still wasn't crying.

She thought about it. “Well, the guest quarters are empty,” she said matter-of-factly. “I'd put him in there, it's closer to your room than the passenger cabins.”

“So you think it's a good idea?”

Rei nodded. “If it's what he wants, I don't see any harm in it—except that it will be harder for you, right?”

I clamped my lips together tightly, because she'd hit upon the thing I'd been too cowardly to admit to myself.

“In the end it might be better for both of you this way. It's been a lot of years with a lot of distance between you.”

I nodded. The incoming message alarm chimed and I shamelessly used the distraction to change the subject. As I'd hoped, it was from Dr. Ndasa, and I pressed the screen to take it realtime.

“
Saluton
,” I said in Esper. “Good afternoon, Dr. Ndasa.” He was an older Vilisian male, the amber-coloured flesh around his jowls wrinkled, the tips of his low-set, slightly upswept ears poking through ebony hair pulled back into the usual thick braid. A few pale amber streaks ran through his hair, the Vilisian equivalent of grey. He looked at me with eyes the shade of dark violet common to his race.

“Captain Paixon?” He seemed startled, looking at me with what, even on a Vilisian face, seemed an odd expression. “Th-thank you for your message,” he stammered.

I couldn't imagine he had a problem with my speaking Esper; the Vilisians were generally good linguists and he could probably converse with me in several Earth languages, although they often clung to the older, more stiffly constructed Esperanto. When we'd first become allies with the Vilisians, during the Chron War, they'd had to use clunky computerized speakerboxes to converse with us, Vilisian voices being pitched too high for humans to hear. In the long years since then they'd fixed the problem with some kind of implant, and a distinct accent replaced the stilted mechanical voices. I gave him points for pronouncing my last name correctly,
pay-zon
and not
paxon.
Of course, he'd already encountered Hirin, so he had a head start.

“Were you interested in travelling on the
Tane Ikai
?” I asked. Perhaps he hadn't been expecting a female captain.

“Oh . . . oh yes, I am,” he managed. He must have realized that he hadn't yet greeted me properly, and hurriedly made the usual Vilisian gesture, the touch of a palm to eyes, lips and heart. Then he blinked and seemed to make an effort to shake off whatever had made him uneasy. “I haven't had many other offers.”

I wasn't surprised. Kiando was a long run—three wormhole skips with long insystem stretches between—and there wasn't much passenger traffic direct from Earth to the Cassiopeias. I mentioned Hirin, hoping to put the alien more at ease, and his face broke into a smile, the wrinkles in his skin thinning and flattening.

“My good friend Hirin Paixon! He is family?”

“He is family,” I agreed. “He may be making the trip with us, so you can speak with him again if you like.”

“But his health! Is it wise?” The doctor seemed truly concerned, which made me like him despite his initial weirdness. Maybe it was just an alien thing.

I shrugged. “It is—irrelevant,” I said finally. “He wishes it.”

The doctor nodded his head sagely, and we turned the conversation back to business. Rei waved silently to me and left the room.

When we had completed our conversation and terminated the connection, I sat back from the screen. Dr. Ndasa's words rang in my head.
Is it wise?
I smiled. No, it was not wise, but wisdom had not been a notably guiding principle of our lives together. It was too late to start taking much notice of it now.

Chapter Three

I was busy following up cargo tenders an hour later when Yuskeya hailed me over the ship's comm.

“Captain?”

“Right here, Yuskeya.”

“Do you have a minute? I have the wormhole data. I think you'll want to see it.”

“I'm on my way.” I went to the galley first and fixed myself a double caff. My eyes felt bleary after staring at cargo manifests for too long, trying to decide which were the most advantageous offers. If we made the skip to Kiando our first priority, which I wanted to do, it didn't leave much leeway for arranging other stops. The trip to Mu Cassiopeia involved skipping through three wormholes, taking us through the MI 2 Eridani and Beta Hydri systems. I could take on cargo for Mars, the planet Eri in MI 2 and either Vele or Vileyra in Beta Hydri, but that was as far as I wanted to stretch it for cargo hauling. Any more stops would add too much time, and the mysterious female scientist on Kiando could leave long before we got there. It had to be a balancing act.

I sighed and breathed the caff's enticing fragrance in deeply, the mug warm in my hands. Was she my mother? Was there really much chance, or was I still hanging on to a groundless hope that I'd been chasing for thirty years now?

Our life had been fairly normal, as far as I could remember, up until the time I was nine. Mother was a scientist and worked for PrimeCorp. I knew she worked on anti-aging research, but that was all I understood. She talked to me sometimes about how someday we'd live forever, would have probably found a way long before then if it hadn't been for the Chron War and then the Retrogression, but hell, I was nine, how closely did I listen? I went to school, I had friends. I was happy.

One day my mother came home from work and took Father into the study. They had a long, low-voiced conversation that lasted until my little brother Lanar finally pounded on the door and demanded some supper. They didn't say much when they came out, although they both looked grave. The next morning we woke to find our entire apartment packed up to move, and we left on a far trader before noon. There wasn't much in the way of explanation, only that this was “the way it had to be” and that it was for our safety. A succession of travels, moves, and midnight getaways continued until I turned fourteen.

That's when Mother said she couldn't keep putting all of us in danger and that she'd have to “go away” for a while. They fought about it, she and Father, but in the end there came a morning when she just wasn't there. For a while we received sporadic, untraceable messages, saying she loved us. Then—nothing. Father never believed that anything bad had happened to her, and after I'd stopped being angry and started noticing how neither Lanar nor I aged past about thirty, I didn't want to believe it, either. I wanted to find her. Lanar had used the opportunities presented by his Protectorate career to search for her for a long time, too.

“Captain? Are you coming?” Yuskeya's voice on the comm broke my reverie.

“Sorry, I'll be right there.”

Yuskeya had been fidgeting while she waited for me; all the workstations were tidy, all the screens wiped clean. Yuskeya's one of those people who cleans when she needs to calm her mind. I've never understood people like that, but it's handy sometimes to have one on your crew.

Anyway, it was a good sign. It probably meant she had something interesting to tell me.

“
Okej
, what did you find?” I was hopeful there might be something to help on this new job, but I wasn't letting myself get too excited. Wormholes that actually made any of the trade routes shorter didn't turn up very often. In the first place, they were dangerous to explore and there weren't many hole-spelunkers. They're mostly either already rich or already dead. In the second place, wormholes didn't have to make sense. They simply existed, had probably been around since the creation of the universe. They weren't all useful. If a wormhole led to a system with a habitable planet, eventually we colonized it, but most of them didn't. Occasionally a new one provided a shortcut to somewhere we wanted to go.