Spin the Sky (11 page)

His two best scouts, Dino and Perry, went bolting down a hallway. Cesar turned on his heel and walked back into his ship. He had the rest of the crew repaneling the exhaust shielding and cleaning up the kitchen when the two scouts came rushing back.

“Captain, you won’t believe this place!” said Dino, a grinning ex-soldier. Even though he was only few years younger than Cesar, Dino somehow seemed barely old enough to grow a beard, which he occasionally did until someone forced him to shave off the pathetic thing.

“These folks have been sampling their own product, sir,” barked the older scout, Perry, as he limped up behind Dino, wheezing slightly.

“That leg still bothering you, Perry?” Cesar asked the man.

Perry shook his grizzled head and straightened up with an effort, “I’m fine, Captain. I think there’s a few pieces of shrapnel still working their way out.”

Cesar nodded. He did not believe for a second that Perry was fine, but what could he do?

“So they’re still making meds?”

“With a will, sir,” Perry said, coughing meaningfully. “Looks like mostly, uh, mood enhancers. And I doubt they have any left over to trade, if you know what I mean.”

Cesar was catching the gist of it. Before the War, the main products of the Poppy Ship were opium-based painkillers.

“There’s all these people in there running around in their underwear, smoking dope and listening to this really calming music,” the Dino gleefully announced to all within earshot.

Cesar arched an eyebrow.

This particular scout was like the human version of an adorable tiger cub, cute and wriggly with surprisingly sharp teeth. Discretion wasn’t really a word in the boy’s vocabulary and Cesar wasn’t exactly thrilled about the whole crew knowing they were in an opium den.

“You boys find somebody in charge?” Cesar asked curtly.

Perry nodded. “She’s right behind us,” he said, jerking a scarred thumb over his shoulder.

Two hours later, Cesar was trying to maintain his dignity as a Captain while squelching around on the floor on lumpy pillows, eating some sort of drippy rice dish with his fingers. He and a few of the crew were sitting in a large open room while many other people lounged on pillows around them, clad mainly in thin winding cloths and listening to a band play low, discordant music. The haze was thick here due to the number of pipes being passed around.

Cesar was trying to look casual and breathe mainly through his nose in a futile effort not to inhale so much smoke.

The woman in front of him folded herself into a serene lotus position, her long gray dreadlocks streaming down her back and her quite minimal clothing draped artfully around her. Cesar was beginning to doubt this woman was in charge or that anyone was really in charge here. She’d been lecturing him for the last half hour on the glorious enlightenment of the Poppy Ship, which she called the Flower of Hope.

As far as he could tell, the Poppy Ship started smoking their own product almost as soon as the War broke out and they stopped caring about much else since then. He sent out more of his crew to quietly scout around and they all confirmed this impression. This really didn’t bother him.

Medical supplies would have been worth their weight in platinum, but pharmaceutical-grade opium was still worth its weight in gold and a doped-up colony wasn’t likely to haggle too much over the price.

Cesar briefly entertained the idea of just taking a whole bunch of the stuff. It was unlikely that anyone here could stop them and quite likely no one would even notice. He sighed and discarded the thought. Repeat business would be lucrative if these people didn’t let themselves die first. Also, his Momma always told him stealing was wrong.

As the woman droned on, Cesar sighed and itched his latest radiation burn. Traveling the stars was a lot less romantic and a lot more uncomfortable than he had imagined.

He really wished the Poppy Ship would embrace the concept of deodorant. Cesar wondered why, of all the things he lost or injured during the War, he couldn’t have lost his sense of smell? It brought him more grief than joy, traveling between so many different orbitals, experiencing their smells.

The minute he started feeling light-headed and dreamy, Cesar politely excused himself and commanded his crew back to the ship. Some of them looked ready to protest, but they’d seen that black look on the Captain’s face before and they shuffled back to the ship without comment.

Once inside, Cesar sealed the door and gave orders not to cycle the ship’s air with the colony. Then he barked a few orders, mainly concerned with confining the crew to the ship, before he shut himself in his cabin and dreamed opium-soaked dreams. It took a ridiculously long time over the next few days, but eventually Cesar located a few people on the Poppy Ship who seemed relatively sane and sober.

It took even longer to negotiate his way to a hull full of opiates and a treaty for regular shipments, but Cesar did it. He spent the entire time dragging his crew away from the delights the Poppy Ship offered and keeping them sober.

It was exhausting.

Truth be told, he was tempted to try the pipe himself, but a captain can’t do these things and expect to maintain any kind of order.

Just as they were about to leave, his faithful old scout, Perry stood at attention in front of him. Perry cleared his throat and barked out, “Captain, I think I ought to stay here, sir. I think someone needs to stay behind and keep an eye on this place. I know my way around a colony engine. I’ll make sure this old boat gets back to the Lagrange point safe and sound. Can’t have a valuable colony like this just drifting off into the void.”

Cesar considered this. He looked at thick, red scars running down Perry’s injured arm and knew how far down the man’s body those scars went. He thought about the limp in Perry’s gait and the many times he’d woken up to find Perry walking the hallways, unable to sleep from pain.

Then he said, “That sounds like a fine idea. I need a man I can trust up here. Lord knows I’ll have enough problems unloading this stuff.”

Cesar clapped Perry on the shoulder to let the man know there was no ill will between them. He was rewarded with the clearest smile he’d ever gotten from the old scout.

Cesar felt a man had to make his own decisions and if what he wanted to do was dream away the pain of life for a while, then it was none of Cesar’s business. In Perry’s case, the man had more than his fair share of pain.

Cesar was feeling pretty good about that choice for exactly seventeen minutes before Dino scampered up dragging a girl behind him. She had long stringy brown hair and was only wearing what appeared to be several napkins tied around her scrawny frame. Dino himself had swapped his ship coveralls for a long piece of fabric that he’d wound around himself. He had strings of flowers and beads around his neck and ankles.

“Hey Captain!” shouted Dino, because the boy had no concept of volume control. “This is Petunia. We’re in love! I’m gonna stay here and marry her and learn how to be a transcendental farmer!”

The Captain also considered this.

Dino gazed languorously at the girl who stared at nothing. They both smelled like they’d been rolling in opium and maybe they had. Dino reminded Cesar of what he thought his son might be some day. Cesar considered what he would do if his own boy wanted to make this choice.

“Mutiny!” roared Cesar. “Boy, how dare you try to shirk your responsibilities? And
where
are your clothes?”

Dino shrank back, bewildered. “Aw, but Captain…”

“No, Dino!” Cesar said in his most impressive Captain voice. “You signed up for a tour of duty, you serve out your term. There’s no abandoning your post in the middle of a run. Get back on board this instant!”

“Captain, I’m a grown man! I can do what I want! I wanna stay here and you can’t stop me,” Dino shouted, grabbing the girl’s hand and throwing out his chest.

Cesar was having none of it. He dragged Dino back to the ship by his ear while the Petunia girl trailed listlessly behind. Eventually, Dino stopped howling and Petunia wandered off. Back at the ship, he tossed Dino into his bunk.

“Tie that deserter to his bunk and let’s get out of here!” growled Cesar. “And make a note to dock Dino’s pay for the cost of his coveralls.”

The rest of the crew snapped to it and the ship was flying away in record time.

Sitting in his chair and pretending to go over their planned flight pattern, Cesar wondered if he shouldn’t have let the boy make his own mistakes. He knew that he had taken more crew on this expedition than he really needed because he was unable to turn away any of his men who needed a job. He could have spared Dino. But if Dino were his son, Cesar would have never let him set foot on the Poppy Ship.

•

“What do you mean?” asks Trevor again.

Cesar scratches his white beard and wonders how to tell it. “Well, a lot of things changed in the War and the people on the Poppy Ship were making pain killers and sometimes life gets to be a bit much, you see, so they started taking the pain killers. When we showed up, things were kind of weird. I’m sure it was like that here, too. Didn’t things get a little weird after the War?”

Trevor shrugs. “The War ended when I was seven. I don’t remember how things were before.”

“Ah, that’s true,” allows Cesar as they plod along.

“So what happened on the Poppy Ship?” asks Trevor.

“Oh, nothing too much,” says Cesar. “We bought some of their product and sold it somewhere else and made a little money doing it. We had a regular supply run there for a while. Your dad loved you like hell, you know? He talked about you some and I know he thought about you every single day of his life.”

“Oh,” says Trevor.

Cesar watches as several emotions flick across the teen’s face. First there is surprise—that wasn’t what he expected the old man walking next to him to say. Next, there is disappointment—he expected epic adventure not mushy parental love stuff. Following quickly after that, there is a rueful grin.

Trevor looks back at the old man, but Cesar has turned his head to study the horizon so Trevor won’t see his smile. He has a strong temptation to reach out and ruffle the boy’s hair, but he resists. They don’t say another word for the rest of the journey.

That is, until the monster attacks.

CHAPTER EIGHT

B
ack at the ranch, Penelope is sexually frustrated. Or more precisely, she is frustrated because she doesn’t want to keep thinking about sex, but somehow she can’t stop today. She wants to think about fixing the heating system or finishing the contract for the New Siberia shipment or what she will wear tonight at her party.

Instead, Penelope is thinking about how long it’s been since she’s had sex. It’s been a very long time.

“Surely the urge goes away eventually? How long does it take for the sex drive to die? What do nuns do about this?” Penelope sighs to herself as she oversees the food preparation for the gathering that happens here, without fail, every Friday night.

Usually, Penelope tries not to think about sex on the theory that if you don’t think about it, eventually you’ll forget about sex and be the happier for it. So far, fifteen years of practice has still not scratched that particular itch. Penelope finds this extremely vexing. And today she just can’t keep it out of her mind. She sighs again as her mind is filled with a lurid fantasy involving a warm night in this kitchen with a big bowl of ice cream.

Lupe snaps, “Where’s your head today?” as she pushes past Penelope with a large pan of smoked brisket.

“In the gutter,” Penelope says, but she puts a bite in her tone to play it off as a joke. A humorless joke.

“Because that’s how you could summarize my sex life,” Penelope mutters to herself.

Before Lupe can ask her what she means, Penelope sweeps out the door, determined to find some labor so intense that she’ll be too tired to think about anything, especially the state of her hormones. She gets as far as the nutrient capture filters on the water lines and spends a pleasant hour banging away on a dented valve with a sledgehammer before Ulixes shows up.

“Heard you could use some help,” he shouts over the din she is making.

Penelope looks up into those warm brown eyes, deep and entrancing, looking at her with such caring. He leans forward and puts a gentle hand on her arm to stop her. Penelope can see his hard rippling muscles as the roughness of his calloused palm sends shivers up her arm. She is acutely aware of how rapidly he is improving since his illness. With a few extra pounds on him, he looks more and more like the kind of man she wouldn’t mind…

“
Dios me odia,”
cries Penelope with disgust, moving away from him before she did something insane. She is so crazed by some sort of hormone disorder that she is actually getting in a tizzy over some stranger. What is wrong with her today?

Ulixes pulls his hand back as though he’s been scalded. “If God hates you, then at least you can rest assured that you’re not the only one,” he says sourly. And then he chuckles and somehow that makes it all right.

“So, do you want to fix that pipe now or do you plan to go on breaking it, ma’am?” asks Ulixes politely.

Penelope looks at the hammer in her hand and then at the pipe in front of her. Her shoulders slump when she realizes that she really ought to drop the hammer and let Ulixes fix it.

She does, but Penelope hates letting men fix things for her. It is degrading. She ought to be able to do these things. Penelope sits down on the ground and contemplates her many failings while she watches Ulixes grapple the pipe with a large wrench he brought.

They don’t speak until Ulixes rumbles, “So Lupe tells me the house will be full of your many suitors again tonight?”

There is a hint of amusement in his voice but also a question. Penelope knows the man has been too sick to notice the other parties in the past few weeks, so this will be the first one he really sees. Penelope waves her hands in the air to deny the word “suitors.”

“Oh, that Lupe is wicked,” she cries, dusting off her hands. “No, Mr. Ulixes, they aren’t my suitors. Please. Some of them would like to buy me out, sure, but most of them are here for social reasons. There’s no real government in the colonies so it’s important that we get together like this and talk. So we all know what’s going on and can decide important issues together. I’m happy to be able to provide a place for us all to meet. And who turns down a good party with free food?”