Spin the Sky (19 page)

Cesar’s sudden anger drops away and he sits down again.

Larry gets up and refills Cesar’s tin cup. Chewing on a bit of tortilla, Larry says almost gently, “Now, whether she’s got a bit of tail on the side, I can’t really tell you, but she’s got no steady man. Hasn’t had one as far as I know.”

“Huh,” replies Cesar.

He is relieved, but knows he didn’t have a right to be. He mulls over what she said last night, but finds he keeps getting sidetracked on the more physical parts of the evening and can’t think straight.

Cesar grunts, “That Uri Mach is no good.”

“Oh really?” asks Larry, somewhat surprised as he pours some orange juice into his cup of tequila. “The Seven Skies trader guy? What makes you say that?”

“I met him before,” says Cesar grimly. “Trust me, he’s much more evil than he looks.”

He is tempted to add
“and I think he’s after my wife.”
But he doesn’t.

“Well, that’s not good,” grunts Larry. He scratches himself happily for a minute and then asks, “Did he recognize you?”

Cesar shakes his head. “I don’t think he will either, but I won’t take any chances.”

“You think he means harm to her or the boy?” Larry asks, swirling his drink around thoughtfully.

“Don’t know,” replies Cesar with a shrug. “Guess I’ll stick around and find out.”

Cesar’s dad sighs deeply and props his feet up on a box of tequila bottles. “Son, there have been a lot of attacks on the vitals of this colony lately. Sabotage. Nobody knows who or why. Whoever it is doesn’t seem to want to kill us outright, but they sure do seem to want to make life difficult. It’s getting hard to make ends meet with all these expensive repairs.”

Cesar says that he’s heard about this and maybe they should look into it. Larry agrees and sits in silence for a long minute, his mind elsewhere.

Still swirling his drink, Larry asks casually, “Son, were you planning to come out here and pretend to be a stranger to me too?” And then Cesar knows that age must have changed something after all, because he’s never heard his father sound hurt before.

“No Dad,” he sighs theatrically. “Fooling you and avoiding an earful was too much to hope for.” Then he cracks a grin and gives his dad a big hug.

“You crazy kid,” laughs Larry, his big hearty self again. “It’s good to have you back.”

“You won’t give me away, right?” Cesar asks him. “You’ll let me keep my secret a little longer until I know what to do?”

“Well, I don’t know,” Larry says, pulling a long face. “I never was a great hand at keeping secrets and telling fibs like you. Don’t keep your secret too long. I’m old. I got a bad memory.”

“Dad!”

“Oh, come on. I’m messing with you. Who would I tell?” The only person I see is Lupe when she comes to bring me food and haul off the latest shipment of tequila. I make a bunch of money selling it, you know.”

Cesar looks around the squalid little shack.

If his dad makes money, he sure isn’t spending any of it here. “Are you sure Lupe’s not just pouring it down the reclaimer to keep you from pickling your liver?”

Larry empties his cup of tequila and coughs like he’s about to die. “Well, if she’s is, she’s fighting a losing battle.”

They laugh and thump each other on the back for a while before getting down to the business of swapping stories of Cesar’s travels and the War and every detail of Trevor’s life that Larry can remember—drool, diapers and all.

They even talk about Cesar’s mother and her death.

Late in the night, after far too much food and tequila, they also make a few plans.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Y
ou kiss a man and he’ll always make you pay for it. Penelope is certain of that fact all day.

Sometimes they brag about it to all their friends like it is a game and when you kiss them, then somehow they win and you lose. Sometimes they lure you off with promises of seeing the stars and living in the sky but you wind up raising a baby and feeding cows surrounded by strangers in a dirty metal can, hotter and stinkier than anything back home. Sometimes they get you all hot and bothered in the laundry room and then hint at it right in front of your son the next day, followed by casting aspersions on one of the most upright citizens you know before wandering off without explaining anything.

Men.

She would hate them all with a clear conscience if she didn’t love her son so much. For Trevor’s sake, she has to keep an open mind about the filthy testosterone-infested creatures.

“God, are you trying to kill the elevator, Mom?” Trevor bursts out, lounging against a wall next to her. “I’m pretty sure one more kick like that will do the trick.”

Penelope sighs and stops kicking the elevator. She spends a brief moment trying to justify the kicks on the grounds that men probably made the elevator and therefore it is inherently evil, but even she knows that is too ridiculous.

“Sorry, Trevor. I am not a morning person,” she sighs, yanking her hair back out of her face as the elevator shudders and rattles its slow way down to the Ag Level.

“What are you talking about?” snorts Trevor. “You love mornings. Every day, you start annoying everybody at the crack of dawn by singing and shouting orders.”

“Yeah, well, not today,” she grumbles. “Besides, it’s not the crack of dawn. You just want to sleep all the time.”

They pass the next few moments in a discontented silence before the elevator finally opens with a groan and a squeak and lets them out.

Finally, Trevor says in an over-casual voice, “So that Ulixes guy seems pretty handy, huh?”

Penelope is horrified. Has the man said something to Trevor? Did Trevor know she was shamelessly making out with Ulixes last night? The absolute last thing she wants to do is talk to Trevor about her love life, however nonexistent it is.

She wants to crawl in a hole and die, but instead Penelope shrugs as nonchalantly as she can. “He seems nice. He sure knows how to fix things around the ranch and he’s got all those stories. But you know I don’t like to keep men around. It’s too disruptive.”

“Hey Mom, don’t do that. Don’t send him away already. He’s not disruptive. Everybody likes him and he sure is a big help, right?” says Trevor, now overly enthusiastic. “He’s been everywhere it sounds like, even down to Earth.”

Penelope snorted, “So what? I was born down there.”

“Well, I’ve never been off Ithaca,” retorted Trevor. “I sure would like to see some of the other orbitals like he has. I really want to try flying a cargo ship. Mathis says he’ll teach me if I want. Cargo ships aren’t as dangerous as tinker ships.”

Trevor acts like he hasn’t brought this up four times already. Penelope always does her best to ignore or “forget” his dream of piloting.

“No.”

“Aw, Mom, come on. I can’t stay here forever.”

“Yes, you can.”

“Mom! Be serious!” Trevor cries, kicking a clod of grass. He seems on the verge of a teenage tantrum, but instead he takes a slow deep breath.

In his most reasonable voice, Trevor says, “You know how much you complain about what the shipping company charges? If I was delivering our stuff in a cargo ship, it’d be cheaper and I’d be home practically all the time. Really often, anyway. It makes sense if you’d think it over.”

Penelope thinks it makes sense except for the part where it involves her only child out in the void with only a thin wall of metal between him and death by decompression or pirates or god knows what else.

“You are too young,” she snaps.

“I won’t be too young forever,” he snaps back. “I’m only asking to spend a few days in town each week so Mathis can teach me.”

“I need you here,” she says with a shake of her head.

Penelope knows she is running out of good arguments. With a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, she wonders how much longer she can play the “Because I said so!” trump card. Eventually, Trevor will realize he can leave, just like his father. The thought makes her stomach churn.

“No, you don’t,” cries Trevor triumphantly. “You’ve got Ulixes and he’s way more useful than me.”

“Ulixes is passing through,” Penelope protests.

“Oh come on. Passing through to where?” asks Trevor. “He’s got nowhere to go and he loves it here. You can’t kick him out.”

“I can if I want to,” Penelope replies firmly. “You know I don’t like men here. Besides, he seems like a wanderer. Once he’s healed and Lupe’s fattened him up a bit, he’ll be off.”

“Well, then there will be someone to go with me when I start flying,” Trevor shoots back. “Ulixes flew with my dad. He can fly with me.”

They arrive at the corral. Penelope never remembered the walk taking this long before. She thinks many unkind thoughts about Ulixes for putting these ideas in her son’s head, but eventually cleaning hooves and checking tongues burn the anger out of her.

Penelope realizes that she will have to be smarter than this if she wants to keep her son safe. Threats, commands and arguments didn’t work on Cesar, not from his parents and not from her. Penelope winces a little, thinking about him. Cesar is another topic she tries to avoid thinking about. In theory, she’ll eventually forget him.

She returns her mind to a safer subject, Trevor. She can’t make him stay. She knows that. What can she do?

Penelope mulls the question over all day.

Regretfully, it seems the best course is to let him learn to pilot a ship. It will keep him complacent, at least for a few years. Perhaps that will be enough time for him to grow out of this pilot fantasy and into something safer. If not, better he leave in a few years as a trained pilot than an ignorant runaway.

Trevor works all day in a sullen silence that he doesn’t break even when they stop for lunch. Penelope knows her son is giving her the silent treatment as he chews angrily on one of the sandwiches she packed. That is fine by her. It is long past noon, almost sunset, when Penelope calls it quits and they start walking back to the elevator.

“Fine,” says Penelope.

“What?” Trevor grunts. He is sure his mom is going to start up the argument again.

“Fine. You can learn to fly,” says Penelope, matter-of-factly pushing the button to start the elevator’s ponderous trip back to the ranch. “You can go into town and learn from Mathis. How often do you think you should go? Twice a week? I’ll ask around and see if we can’t get some other pilots to teach you too. It would be good for you to have experience with a variety of ships. And you’ll need to start studying astronavigation. I’ll download the texts when we get home.”

“Mom!” Trevor shouts gleefully, giving her a hard hug. He manages to grind his bony elbow into her side as he does it, but Penelope doesn’t mind. “This is awesome! Don’t worry about astronav. I passed the competency exam six months ago. Can I get propulsion physics though? Ulixes says I’ll need a solid grounding if I ever get stuck with a broken engine.”

“Sure,” she sighs, still wishing he was a baby and she could cuddle him in her lap.

“So, you’ll let Ulixes stay? At least for a while? He knows a lot,” Trevor asks, his mind spinning with plans and fantasies.

“I don’t know,” Penelope replies because she really doesn’t and she feels she’s made enough mature decisions for one day.

“Then what will you do with him?” Trevor asks, not really paying attention.

It was an excellent question.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

C
esar is walking the walk of shame. That inevitable stumble home the morning after an evening that involved far too much fun and went much too late, only Cesar is doing it as the sun sets because he’s been with his father for a day and a half.

His hair is grimy and his clothes are rumpled. His head feels like it’s swollen to at least twice its normal size and his eyes are sticky. His stomach has declared open rebellion against a steady diet of enchiladas and tequila and is now trying to crawl out through his nose.

Cesar concentrates on the most important goal and that is to sneak back into his little room before Penelope sees him like this. His secondary goals involve a shower and bland food, but he isn’t sure how to accomplish them without Penelope seeing him. The woman is everywhere. He is bound to disgrace himself in front of her.

There was something to be said for a woman not being so all-fired effective
, he thinks.

“Young man, you look like death on a cracker,” Lupe snaps.

Cesar whirls to find the little old woman standing behind him, scowling.

Women.

They are everywhere on this ranch. He’s gone months at a time in space without seeing so much as a hint of one and here he can’t walk two steps without them popping out of the grass like… some sort of thing that popped.

“You been back there carousing with that old pirate,” Lupe sniffs. “You smell like a distillery.”

“That’s because he’s got a distillery back there,” Cesar replies, trying hard not to slur. He considers the possibility that he is not entirely sober yet. He thought he was when he started walking, but now he isn’t so sure.

Lupe grabs his shirt and starts hauling him towards the main house. Cesar knows this is exactly the place he doesn’t want to go so he digs in his heels like a mule.

“Relax, Romeo, she’s down with the herd,” chuckles Lupe. “But you only got maybe an hour to clean up and, trust me, you got a lot of cleaning up to do.”

“Romeo?” asks Cesar weakly. He allows himself to be dragged now that he knows there will probably be soap at the end of this journey and not a Penelope giving him the stink-eye.

Lupe cackles gleefully. “
Ay carumba, muchacho
. I see the way you look at her. It’s no problem. All the men are in love with her.”

Suddenly she turns and produces a wooden spoon from one of the pockets in her skirt. Before he knows what’s happening, Lupe smacks him hard on the arm with the wooden spoon.

“But she’s too good for a drifter like you!” she says fiercely. “So unless you got a gold mine somewhere that you haven’t mentioned yet, you behave yourself,
gringo
.”

Cesar rubs his arm.

“You just hit me with a spoon.” He knows this isn’t the most intelligent thing to say, so he tries again. “I know Penelope is too good for me.”