Red Planet Run (8 page)

Leif drew the flat edge of the storyknife across the sand and paused. “Shall I tell you her secret?” He looked around the room. “She never gives up.”

That was a lie, but only he and I knew it.

“Weather almost took out Navarin One a dozen times. During construction of Terranova she was the number one target for assassination on every Luddite terrorist’s list. The American Alliance bureaucracy tried to subvert the construction of Copernicus Base and Terranova, and when they failed, the Space Patrol invaded and took over Terranova. Star took it right back. She never quit. I don’t think she ever even slowed down. She had a dream, and she followed it to its end, and she didn’t let anything stand in her way. It’s because of Star Svensdotter that we’re sitting here tonight, one point eight astronomical units out from Terra, celebrating a custom inaugurated three planets and three hundred years away.”

I could feel him looking at me. I still couldn’t meet his eyes. “I want to be like that. I want to live my life that way. I don’t want to ever give up, I don’t want to ever stop trying.”

His voice firmed and rose. “I am Leif, grandson of Natasha Quijance, nephew of Carlotta Quijance, son of Star Svensdotter. I choose to be called Starsson, so that I will be known as Star’s son all of my life, to remind all who know me that I wear my name in her honor, and to remind myself that my reach should always exceed my grasp.”

I looked up just in time to see him return the storyknife to Mother, who sheathed it, and whose cheeks were wet when she rose to recognize and embrace him. “Leif Starsson.”

Charlie, too, was weeping. “Leif Starsson.”

Paddy and Sean and Alexei pushed up and were embraced in their turn. He kissed Axenia’s cheek; Crip and Simon wrung his hand; Roger Lindbergh and Perry Austin and John, Joseph, and James Smith, Maggie Lu and John Begaye, all pressed forward to congratulate Leif in their turn. They were all shaken by the ceremony, but then guests always were, and in this place, millions of kilometers from home and family, it was especially moving.

No less so for me. I waited for the crowd to thin before stepping forward, face to face with my son. He was so tall, so straight. Steel-true and blade-straight. “Leif Starsson,” I said. “You do me too much honor.”

“Your name lends honor to me, Star Svensdotter,” he replied, equally formal.

I embraced him. “You didn’t tell me.”

He hugged me so hard my ribs creaked. When had he gotten so tall and so strong? “I wanted to surprise you. Emaa knew, and her feelings aren’t hurt, if you’re worried about that. She understands.”

I wished I did. I turned to the face the crowd. “Ladies and gentlemen, at this point the ceremony ends and the celebration begins. Charlie’s laid on a spread that has to be seen to be believed. Eat, drink, and be merry.”

I felt a nudge in the small of my back and turned to see Helen with a drink in each hand. “Way ahead of you, Star.”

“Thanks, Helen.”

She nodded at Leif, back to holding hands with the still unknown brunette. “That was quite a testimonial.”

“He would have done better to take Mother’s name.”

“He didn’t think so.”

Her unshakable certainty annoyed me, and I said, “Let’s hit the food before it’s all gone, shall we?”

Charlie’s table was laid with what passed on Outpost for linen and crystal, every plate, bowl, and pot filled to overflowing. As I heaped my plate Charlie came bustling up, beaming all across her duplicitous face, and said, or rather gushed, “Star, you know John Begaye, don’t you? Would you steer him through the entrees? He doesn’t know his way around Filipino cuisine yet.” She bestowed a dazzling smile upon the two of us, somehow managed to insert my hand through the crook of John’s arm, and bustled off.

Two things occurred to me simultaneously.

One, that John Begaye was male and unattached.

Two, that this time I really was going to kill my sister.

Simon, who is not a genius for nothing, headed straight for the bar. “Would anyone like a drink?”

“I think I would,” John Begaye said.

“Attaboy. Scotch okay? Steve just brewed up a new batch.”

“Scotch sounds fine.”

“Water?”

John looked at me. “Neat.”

“Me, too.”

I bestowed a dazzling smile of my own in their general direction, discreetly reclaimed my hand, and doubled the amount of food on my plate. If I kept my mouth full, I might be able to keep myself from biting a chunk out of Charlie’s ass.

The evening progressed, the conversation the usual mixture of business and pleasure, SOP when you live where you work and your work is your life. “We’ve received an inquiry from a group of bioengineers on Terra, Star,” Ari reported. “They want to commission a World, and Archy says their credit rating—”

“A-one, boss!” chirped my communit. You couldn’t beat Archy away from a party with a stick. It was, he had informed me once, an ideal opportunity to brush up on his social skills. It certainly increased his vocabulary.

“—is A-one,” Ari repeated patiently.

“Do I hear a ‘but’ in there somewhere?”

He nodded. “They want their world to be absolutely antiseptic when they move in. No possibility of bacteriological contamination from anyone or anything but what they bring on board themselves.”

“Are we having fun yet?” I said. “Neatniks of Terra, unite and move off-planet. Can we do it?”

We argued about it for a while, and decided we could do it but we wouldn’t. “Sterile suiting for everybody who works inside? Decontam for every tool? Forget it,” Maggie said.

Charlie snuck up behind me and cooed in my ear. “And how are we all? Everybody have enough food? John, you need a refill. Star, get him a refill.”

A blunt instrument. A big, heavy, blunt instrument. No Outpost jury would ever convict. I got up and refilled John’s drink. He thanked me profusely, until Simon’s elbow in his ribs shut him up.

“Dear,” Mother said, “we’re having some difficulty with the miners on 6666Lucifer. They say they’ve found evidence of some kind of pre-disintegration religious icons, and if they let us come down for surveying and core sampling we’ll be desecrating a shrine. They’re saying they’ll shoot on sight.”

“Infidels beware,” Simon said cheerfully.

Crip said, “We’re getting the same kind of noise from the Save the Rocks League.”

I caught sight of the expressions on the twins’ faces, a kind of dreamy expectation, and wondered apprehensively what it meant.

Ari groaned. “Oh Christ, what’re they up to now?”

“Not Christ, but the local equivalent. Brother Moses.” Crip scratched his shaved head. “As near as I can figure, he’s kind of absorbed the Promethean sect into his movement.”

“What the hell is a Promethean sect when it’s at home?”

“What is this crap?” I demanded. “Prometheus doesn’t exist any longer, if it ever did. All we’ve got to show for it or them, or whatever the hell used to be in this orbit, are the remnants of a fuel storage facility, a couple of debatable artifacts that might once have been used to hold somebody’s soup, maybe, and seventeen different theories about how the Asteroid Belt might once have been a planet.” I avoided looking at Helen, who was being remarkably reticent and self-effacing. “We haven’t uncovered any graven images so far as I know, let alone any evidence of organized religion.”

Crip shrugged. “Tell that to the guys on Lucifer. All I know is Brother Moses is starting to figure Promethean deities prominently in his revival meetings.”

“What Promethean deities!” From the corner of my eye I saw the twins become even more Sphinx-like.

Charlie joined us, pushing in between Simon and me, and in the process shoving me up against John and very nearly into his chicken adobo.

Speech trembled on the tip of my tongue but Crip beat me to it. “This isn’t World business,” he said, one wary eye on Charlie and the other on me, “but while we’re all here—”

“Yes?” I said, my spine straight, my words clipped. “What is it?”

“We’re getting crowded, Star. Outpost needs more room.”

“Like how much more room?”

He looked at Simon, and Simon nodded. “I’d say go for broke and build on a second wheel, connected by axle to the first.”

“The original wheel’s getting a little shabby, too,” Simon added. “If we’re going to expand, we might as well do some R&M to the original station as well, get it all done with at once.”

“Is Terranova going to sit still for a slowdown in World production?” Maggie asked. “Or, God forbid, an interruption in ore delivery, while Outpost adds on?”

I looked at Helen, who everyone seemed to have forgotten was there. “We’ll start it up and tell them about it after, the way we usually do,” I said. “We’re on the spot, we know what’s needed. If the work on Outpost begins to interfere with World production or ore shipment, hire on temps.”

“With what?”

“With what we always hire them on with.” Simon made a gesture that vaguely indicated a geodome down the rim from us. “A walk in Central Park.” He hooked a thumb in the opposite direction. “A kilo of Outpost Kona Coffee.” He waved his hands in the air in an all-inclusive gesture. “Free membership in the Outpost library.”

“Free?” I said with revulsion.

“Get John some of that long rice, Star,” Charlie purred. “I don’t think he’s tried it yet.” She leaned around me. “Doesn’t Star look nice in blue, John? That shade matches her eyes perfectly, don’t you think?”

“Pretty good all right,” John, who was no dummy, said through stiff lips.

“The League of Saint Joseph’s talking strike,” Ari said desperately.

Simon swore. “We just gave those damn riggers their third raise in eighteen months. What do they want, blood?”

“I think they want to stay home and have us mail them their checks.”

The evening was almost saved when Charlie brought out coffee and the chocolate cheese mousse. She must have spent the last week down in the galley. The mousse was topped with whipped cream and a piece of bittersweet chocolate. When the first spoonful slid over my tongue, my irritation began to fade, and with the last bite I relaxed. Charlie might live to see morning after all.

Whereupon Charlie batted her eyelashes at John, whose expression indicated he was hoping for a massive explosive decompression event anywhere on Outpost, preferably within the next thirty seconds. “I don’t know if I happened to mention it, John, but the twins are staying here tonight.”

Charlie was saved only from certain death by the door sliding back and a breathless Renee Rothschild erupting into the room. “Star!”

Her alarm pulled me to my feet. “What?” Visions of the carnage at Dock 4 ran through my head. “What’s wrong?”

She paused, panting. “Brother Moses is down at Piazzi City, calling for your head.”

I looked at her, around the room. “So what else is new?”

There were a few chuckles, but Renee wasn’t smiling. “It’s not funny, Star; they’ve got weapons on their sleds and they’re rounding up as many crazies as they can get to come up here and kill you!”

Blankly, I said, “Why?”

She looked me straight in the eye and said earnestly, “He’s green, and he says you did it.”

Surely I hadn’t heard right. “He’s what?”

She lost patience with me. “He’s green! Brother Moses is green!”

I stared at her. She was dead serious. I couldn’t help it, I started to laugh.

“No, Star, I mean he’s really
green
—skin, teeth, beard, and everything in between—and Nora at Maggie’s says
everything
in between, if you know what she means.” She added, “It might just be reflection, but I think the whites of his eyes are going next. Everyone who’s eaten or drunk anything on 55Pandora during the past week, all of them are turning green. Brother Moses says it has to be you trying to discredit his congregation. He says this has to be how you’re getting back at him for the Save the Rocks League’s interference with the latest ore shipments.”

I gaped at her stupidly and she grabbed me and shook me. “Star, I’m telling you Brother Moses is down there arming for Armageddon! You’ve got to do something!”

Somewhere deep inside, a penny rolled down a chute and dropped with a firm, solid click into the right slot. Hydroponics. Mom and Pop. “Clap if you believe in kobolds.”

My head, manipulated by an invisible wire, swiveled until I was staring directly at Paddy and Sean, sitting side by side against the wall. A Paddy and Sean who had abandoned the now passé look in Sphinx for the latest in seraphim, cherubim, and thrones. “Gosh, that was great adobo, Auntie Charlie,” Sean said brightly. “May I have some more, please?”

Mute, Paddy held out her plate, too.

I took a deep breath. “Okay,” I said. John Begaye backed up a step.

I blew the breath out. “That’s it,” I said. Even Charlie looked apprehensive.

“I quit.”

I looked at Helen. “I’ll go to Mars for you.” I looked back at the twins. “So long as it’s a package deal. The twins come, too.”

The angels were abandoned to their own devices to be immediately replaced by astonishment and gathering dismay.

“I wouldn’t dream of separating the three of you,” Helen said, and her fleeting, ephemeral smile slid out of the room as quickly and unobtrusively as it had slid in.

Once more, once more, to go to sea once more
A man must be blind to make up his mind
To go to sea once more.

 

—old sea chanty

 

I FELT MORE LIKE SPAM
in a can than the god in the machine.

“How we doing, Crip?” He didn’t reply at once. “Crip?”

“In a minute, dammit.”

“What’s the matter with you?” I demanded. “In thirty years and a kazillion launches, I’ve never heard you this edgy.” He mumbled something, probably uncomplimentary. “What was that?”

“Hold on,” he said testily. “I gotta make a course correction.”

“What? Why? I thought we were plugged into insertion.”

He didn’t answer, and I waited, strapped into my deceleration couch, which on Mars would be my bed, and stared at the opposite bulkhead, which on Mars would be the ceiling of my stateroom. In a few moments Crip came back on. “Friggin’ IMU, nothing’s worked right this trip. It’s the goddam Great Galactic Ghoul, is what it is!”