Spin the Sky (12 page)

This is Penelope’s standard answer to questions about her parties, but it doesn’t satisfy even herself tonight. She gets up and paces restlessly as she watches him work. Her mind turns over the situation with Wilhelm Asner from the Ex-Austrian Engineering Complex. She is not looking forward to spending time with him tonight. He is one of the men who really does want to have a relationship with her, if only for her fortune. Rejecting him without offending is difficult.

“So how did you decide to start giving these parties?” Ulixes asks, breaking into her inner monologue.

“Oh, gods, who knows?” she replies, throwing up her hands.

And then she decides to let her guard down for once and just tell the truth: “Well, all right, so couple years after the War, I started getting a few hints from men that I worked with. They seemed to think that my husband wasn’t coming home and that I couldn’t possibly run this ranch by myself so perhaps I ought to find myself a man or else sell out. Hike up my skirts and run back home to my parents.”

Penelope snorts indignantly, “My husband disappeared and then my mother-in-law died. Soon after, my father-in-law became too sickly to manage the ranch, you see,” she explains.

Ulixes hisses and she turns to look at him. He quickly flaps his thumb and sticks it in his mouth like he’s just hit it. She arches an eyebrow at his carelessness but Penelope does not exactly have the handyman moral high ground right now, so she doesn’t say anything.

Penelope pushes her hair out of her eyes and stretches her back. “All the men that could went off to the War, off course, so the whole colony was short-handed. That’s when my cowgirls started showing up, looking for work. As you see, we get along just fine.”

“A few men were very pushy,” she continues, not noticing the sudden violence with which Ulixes is clamping the pipe. “I told them I was fine and I didn’t want to sell or shack up with some man, but they didn’t seem to believe me.”

Her words come faster now. She doesn’t bother to filter out the fear and worry of these past years.

“When all the men left Ithaca for the War, they took almost all the weapons. So here I was sitting on a goldmine of beef and manure with just a shotgun loaded with rock salt. Anybody who wanted could walk in and take the place and what could I do to stop them? What could I do to protect my son? I couldn’t just throw these men out and have them ride back to attack when I least expected it. Sure, we have a bit of a militia now who might look into it if the Vaquero Ranch suddenly had a new owner, but we’d still be dead and decaying in the compost bins, so what good is that?”

Penelope kicks a pipe, but gently in case she breaks something else. As nice as it is to vent a little, she really needs to head back and get everything ready before her guests start arriving.

“So, you went for a bluff then?” asks Ulixes, finished with the pipe and gathering up his tools. “You start inviting all the men with guns over to keep an eye on each other? Because no man would stand for someone else getting the prize? You don’t have to worry about defending yourself because you set all the foxes watching each other instead of trying to pick the biggest fox to defend the henhouse?” Ulixes looks at her with disbelief.

Penelope shrugs her shoulders. “Well, yes, I guess I did,” she admits. “It’s not a great plan, but it’s been working for almost six years.”

Ulixes laughs out loud and gives her a frankly admiring look.

“Lady,” he chuckles. “That’s pretty damn clever.”

He looks for a minute like he might hug her and Penelope’s breath catches just a little, but he just grabs his tools and marches off towards the ranch house.

She catches up with him and says, “But with all these attacks and threats and sabotage attempts on the colony lately, I don’t know. I guess if I were smart, I’d sell and take Trevor somewhere safer.”

The man walking next to her gives her a long look before replying, “Well, in my experience if we were all smarter, the world would be a lot duller. Besides, there’s no place safer. The entire galaxy has nowhere that’s really safe. Trust me.”

“Hey, how did your trip into town with Trevor go?” Penelope asks, changing the subject. She wonders what it is about this man that makes her so twitchy. Catching her breath like a schoolgirl? It’s ridiculous.

“All right,” grunts Ulixes, taciturn again.

Then he says carefully, “The boy asks about his father. I don’t want to tell him stories that would upset you, but I don’t know…”

He trails off, but Penelope is sure she knows what the man is asking. “Oh, you mean all the whoring around my husband did?” she retorts.

His jaw drops, but she just chuckles, “Don’t worry. You won’t shock me. I’ve heard dozens of stories about women he got involved with, from one end of the sky to the other. A girl in every port, apparently.”

Ulixes drops his tools, looking deeply shocked. He stammers, “No, ma’am, that is not what I meant at all. I just didn’t know if it was all right to tell him…”

Penelope interrupts, “It’s really no problem. Now, I’ll thank you to keep the stories as clean as you can, but if Trevor must keep asking people about his dad then he’s going to have to deal with learning what his father was really like. I sure wish I had bothered to ask a few more questions before I married the man.”

She bites her lip after that last part. That is a little more truthful than she meant to be.

Ulixes cocks his head to the side, studying her as he picks up his tools. “Ma’am, I don’t know any stories about your husband and other women. I was asking about whether you’ve been telling the boy his daddy was a hero or a villain. I don’t want to confuse him or contradict you.”

He fidgets for a minute and then continues, “I know your husband sure loved you as much as a man could love a woman. He always wished he were a better man for your sake. But I can see why you’d regret marrying him.”

Then he murmurs, “He ran off and left you with all this and a kid to raise and never came back. It’s unforgivable.”

But he says it like it’s a question.

Penelope clasps her hands, suddenly very uncomfortable in this conversation. She says briskly, “Well, does it really matter one way or another if he was faithful to me out there? He’s either dead or never coming back, so who cares? To be honest, I barely remember him. Tell Trevor whatever you want.”

She strides past him, the conversation over as far as she is concerned. Penelope reflects that the opposite is also true. If he is never coming back, then what does it matter if she is faithful or not? She is tempted to turn back to the man behind her, but she knows it is just her treacherous libido trying to get her into trouble today.

When she gets back to the main house, everyone is in a tizzy about Trevor’s near-death experience with a charging platypig.

“What’s all this?” asks Penelope loudly, interrupting a much-too-pleased-with-himself Trevor as he holds court from atop the kitchen table.

“I didn’t do anything, Mom, I swear,” grins Trevor. “This platypig just started charging and he was wicked vicious. I was a goner for sure. Mr. Ulixes here, well, he just popped it one in the snout. He says they got really sensitive snouts. Sent that old pig crying back to its master. Would have ripped my leg off, Mom.”

Trevor nods solemnly while a few of the younger cowgirls sighed with admiration. Penelope snorts skeptically, giving Ulixes her best stink-eye for not mentioning this little escapade earlier. He looks embarrassed.

“Oh, well, Mr. Trevor may be exaggerating,” mutters Ulixes in the kind of thick drawl that Penelope has only heard from other Ithacans or true Texans. She reminds herself to ask the man where he’s from the next time she gets a chance.

“Seems a man was bringing a platypig from someplace swampy to show you,” Ulixes says. “I talked to the man who brought it. He said you showed him a dillo-bear the last time he was here and that’s what gave him the idea. The platypig thing was running loose and getting all riled up. It took an unreasonable dislike to Mr. Trevor here and, well, in my experience, getting punched in the nose brings everybody up short. That’s all.”

Penelope gives another “Humph!” and looks at her son.

Trevor widens those big brown eyes of his. “Honest, Mom. He saved my life. It was bigger than a bull and it has poisonous quills,” he says earnestly.

“Huh,” says Penelope.

Ulixes coughs, “The man said the creature’s poisonous quills had been removed, but it does have plenty of claws and teeth and it was awfully angry. I think I’ll go see about that heater out back, if you don’t mind? Argos said it needed some attention before tonight.”

He shuffles off before Penelope can thank him for helping her son. She hugs her boy and then claps her hands, “What are you all thinking, lollygagging around like this? Get a move on! We’ll have company here in less than an hour and I need this place to sparkle tonight!”

ESCAPE FROM HEDONIA

Excerpt from Trevor Vaquero’s “Tales of my Father” Archive

A tall Asian woman told this story to me. She came up to me in town, stared at me for a minute and told me I was Cesar Vaquero’s son. Then she let me record this tale before she disappeared.

-Trevor Vaquero

I
t is important that you hear some truths about your father, O son of Cesar. It is good you keep these records. There is much about your father that lends itself to legends, but among all the souls in sky, you must know Cesar Vaquero for the man he truly was.

Who am I?

Names are of such monumental insignificance, child. Your father had a most unusual sense of humor. He used to call me “Athena” when he was feeling fanciful, but it’s just a string of letters, like all other names. These days, people most often call me “Asia.”

I am sure you have heard many far flung tales. The inhabitants of London blow that laser raid all out of proportion. They hardly ever used that bridge, anyway. I know for a fact that your father never did more than shake the hand of that girl on New Siberia who claims to have born his triplet love children. And our involvement in the uprising on Alpha Seti Six was very minor, no matter what the history archives say. That footage was doctored.

You see, Mr. Trevor, I flew with your father, the Captain, on a tinker ship many years after meeting him in the Spacer War.

No, he was not my Captain in the Spacer War.

I was actually fighting against him during the Spacer War and he bested me without ever being aware of my existence. If he had not, the War would have ended in a very different manner, but that is another story.

For years, it was apparent to me that your father was flying as fast and as far as he could from the demons of his youth, whatever they were. I believe he felt he had wronged you and your mother, but he did not confide in me and I do not like conjecture.

About three years ago, he appeared to undergo a change of heart after losing a ship near the Lazar House colony. He spent quite a bit of time building that ship, stocking it with a fortune in weapons. This was just after the uprising on Alpha Seti Six where we lost track of Mike, a dear friend, a good soldier and almost certainly dead. Your father took it very hard and his thoughts turned to those he cherished most… you and your mother.

Please excuse me. I do not make it a practice to think of the past. I have just learned that he has still not returned to this colony. I owe him so much I cannot repay. When I heard you were collecting stories about your father, I became snared by the allure of discharging a small portion of that debt.

So I have come to tell you a story. Please forgive my manner. Telling secrets is not in my nature.

To resume, your father determined to return himself to this colony, but he did not wish to come home empty-handed and we had nothing of value at the time. When he heard there was work on Hedonia, Captain decided to go. I followed, hoping to discharge my blood debt.

I must be indiscreet, but it is important for you to understand that your father and I were never lovers. Some have mistakenly assumed we were because we traveled so much together, but those were not the roles we chose to play.

We went to Hedonia to try our luck as grunts. I attempted to discourage him from menial labor in favor of returning to tinkering, a lifestyle that was more suitable to both our talents, but he declared himself through with the life of a small-scale merchant. He felt his curse made it a fool’s errand.

Captain felt he had bad luck, you see. He thought it was a punishment for his actions at the end of the Spacer War. I am sure you have heard about that. They call him Cesar the Scorcher. He felt he deserved all the punishment the world had to offer, but it always seemed to me that he was the luckiest man alive.

The heavens poured their blessings on him. It was just that he gave them all away. I could easily spend the rest of my days naming the lives he saved, but he never saw that. He only saw failures.

So we arrived at New Hedonia and took up work. A charismatic woman named Seersee led a small religious group, truly a cult of personality, to recolonize Hedonia. She was the leader at New Hedonia and her word was law. She preferred to call the colony “Temperance,” though outsiders referred to it as New Hedonia.

Her followers saw Seersee as the second coming of Jesus Christ, uncorrupted by the years of Earther influence. It was a bizarre viewpoint, to say the least, but I’ve seen smarter people do far stupider things in my travels.

Now, let me tell you about Hedonia.

Before the War, Hedonia was a rich man’s playground, a high-tech fat farm. People came to eat and drink and make merry and get as fat as a hippopotamus with a thyroid problem. When they were too large to walk or clean themselves, robots intervened to keep them alive. The man who originally commissioned the orbital actually died from overeating, not long after the Spacer War started. His lungs collapsed under the weight of his own bulk, despite keeping the gravity in Hedonia much lower to accommodate the obese colonists.

It was always twilight on Hedonia’s habitation level, the hour of possibilities. The agricultural level was totally given over to rare delicacies. What they could not grow, they imported and the cost be damned.