Spin the Sky (27 page)

What is it he wants from her? He doesn’t want the herd, but he always seems to be pressuring her to sell it and leave here. Why? Penelope often suspects that she is just a game that he wants to win.Penelope blinks hard and tries to think practically.

Asner sounds sincere. They all do, but they are only here for the herd, these men. All their solicitous good will and helpful donations are just to butter her up so she’ll sell out.

What a bunch of vultures.

Fortunately Lupe creates a distraction when she comes bustling in with a tray full of drinks and snacks that she hands around, whether anyone wants them or not. She keeps wiping her nose and muttering Spanish prayers and in general, disrupting the scene as much as she can. It gives Penelope a chance to think.

What if Trevor doesn’t come back?

She finally allows herself that thought. Without him, what is the point of all this? Maybe she
should
give up, sell out, and go away. Maybe she should go find wherever it is all the people in her life keep going. What is it that was so interesting out there?

The truth is that she still yearns to travel. That wish never died, but she’s been tied to the ranch all these years. She’s had to stay safely at home because she knows that if something happens to her, there was no one else out there as psychotically obsessed with getting Trevor to adulthood.

But she failed anyway. Penelope feels exhausted. She feels a million years old. She doesn’t want to fight any more. Penelope slowly pulls her hands away from Asner. She carefully keeps her face blank as she edges away from him.

“So you think I should sell the herd?” she asks them loudly. But for Lupe’s outraged gasp, there is nothing but stunned silence. Then the men all start talking at once.

Penelope almost laughs to hear them tripping over themselves to make polite but definite offers. She lets them bid against each other for a while before saying, “Thank you for your generous offers. I appreciate it more than I can say, but how am I to choose? Do I sell to the highest bidder? Do I sell the ranch and everything or just part of the herd?”

“Whatever you want, Penelope,” says Asner, standing too close again and giving the other men sharp looks, like a dog guarding a bone. “I am not bidding, of course. I am only interested in your welfare. But I know Uri Mach will make you a very generous offer if you need to have some of this responsibility taken off your beautiful shoulders.”

“Thank you, I’ll keep that in mind,” Penelope snaps before she can stop herself. Why must he always be crowding her?

She pastes a smile on her face and says graciously, “Gentlemen, I have had a very long day and much to do. I see the value of your counsel, but I will need time to decide how to settle my finances.”

“Of course,” says wily old Castor smoothly, kissing her hand while Asner scowls. “Take all the time you need, my dear.”

Then he pauses and, as though he just thought of it, Castor says, “But Ithaca is to host the next Nullball Tournament, isn’t it? Surely you do not need that responsibility on top of everything else? Manny would love to host. We’ve got that huge stadium he built and we hardly ever get a chance to use it.”

Penelope may contemplate selling her home and her life’s work, but she isn’t about to tolerate the suggestion that there is something Ithaca can’t handle. The man is practically insulting her colony right to her face! She doesn’t need Lupe grumbling behind her to know that.

“No, thank you very much,” she says in a clipped tone. “We will be more than ready for the Nullball tournament. The damage was really quite minimal and, as you know, Ithaca’s team is quite strong even if they got banged around a little today.” She smiles at Castor, but it feels more like she is baring her teeth.

“But the tournament is only days away,” protests Castor. “Surely you won’t be ready by then.”

As sweetly as she can, Penelope says, “I would hate for our team to beat yours as badly as I think they will on your home court. We’d better keep it here.”

The other men chuckle and begin moving off. Penelope made a good show of convincing them that both she and Ithaca are going to be just fine.

Asner steps close again and Penelope wills herself not to flinch. With an intense look, he asks, “Will you have made up your mind by then? Will you sell?”

Penelope feels her shoulders slump in defeat. Biting her lip, she nods. “Yes, I’ll sell. I’ll choose at the tournament.”

“Perhaps you should sell to whoever wins,” laughs Finomus, trying to make light of this sad affair in his own excitable way. “We could make a bet.”

Penelope peels back her lips and forces herself to chuckle, “Then I bet my team wins the tournament despite this vicious attack today. If I lose, I’ll sell my home and my life’s work to the highest bidder.”

There is an awkward pause. Penelope isn’t very good at hiding her feelings just now. But they still shake her hand and take the bet.

“If you win, I’ll give you a platypig,” cries Mr. Finomus, enthusiastic and sweating more than a little. “And if you lose, you can come live with me. You’ll love the swamps.”

Penelope laughs with the others and tries to be genial as she ushers them off her land. When she can see them no longer, Penelope sits down and puts her head in her hands. What will she do now?

If those men were to see the fell light gleaming in her eyes, they might reconsider the wisdom in pushing a woman who just lost everything she loves.

Lupe sits down next to her. “I got something I should tell you,” she mumbles, twisting a rag. Then she starts sobbing again, her round little body quivering.

“What is it?” asks Penelope without interest.

“It’s about that man. Ulixes. The drifter,” sniffles Lupe. “You are going to be so angry and so sad.”

Penelope really doesn’t see how it matters now, but Lupe is family, so for her sake Penelope persists, “What about him?”

Lupe opens and closes her mouth a few times without a word. Penelope’s interest is piqued. Lupe never has a problem saying what is on her mind. Usually her problem is quite the opposite. Then Lupe sighs theatrically, “I have to go tell Larry first. This will kill him for sure. Just kill him.”

With that, Lupe rushes off the porch and into the dimming light. Penelope watches her go with a furrowed brow.

What in the spheres was that about?

CHAPTER TWENTY

T
revor’s fragile escape pod is losing pressure.

Cesar knows these pods often sit for years unused. Even a good crew can forget regular maintenance on escape pods. It is only to be expected that they develop a few cracks here and there. The harsh void of space finds every single one. Trevor only has about an hour until the air leaks out and the cold seeps in to end him. The little cruiser won’t go fast enough to get him to Ithaca in time.

Cesar frantically tries to figure out how to load the escape pod into the cruiser, but there is no way. It just won’t work. Not in the time they have left.

There must be a way to save his son.

He presses his hand against the viewscreen, over the image of the tiny pod, willing Trevor to survive. Cesar blasts the empty space around them with every scanner and distress call he can find. He doesn’t care if Asner’s pirate cargo ship finds them now. Anything for Trevor.

The blip on the radar is like a sign from God. A ship close by! It has a strange radar signature, but Cesar doesn’t care as long as it has people on it that will let his son aboard. Carefully he steers towards it, hailing them on all channels. He doesn’t pause to breathe when he finally sees the ship with his own eyes. He won’t relax until Trevor is out of danger. He just keeps scanning and rescanning the pod, deciding how he will get Trevor safe as fast as possible.

Cesar notes the huge solar sails flung out from the ship without interest. At another time, he’d be carefully scrutinizing the massive nets full of old satellites and rocks. He’d try to figure what it all meant about the people inside.

Today, he only cares for one thing.

Cesar carefully loads the escape pod into the rescue bay. It’s rare for people to survive space disasters, but Spacers are nothing if not optimistic about that sort of thing, so most orbitals and ships have a bay for escape pods to dock with emergency facilities right there.

It takes Cesar almost two hours to finally stumble out onto the strange ship’s rickety docking platform. He forces himself go slowly. He can’t afford to make a mistake. He doesn’t have enough fuel for a do-over. The entire time, he is tortured by visions of Trevor lying unattended in that tiny ship. When the final gear clicks into place, Cesar leaps out of the cruiser.

There are two people, a man and a woman, waiting on the docking platform to catch him. Otherwise, Cesar would have dropped to the floor with exhaustion. He pauses only long enough to balance himself and then begins looking for Trevor.

“He’s alive,” says the man, holding Cesar steady with a hand on his shoulder. “Your son is going to be just fine.”

Cesar turns to him. The man looks younger than Cesar but he has dark, close-cropped hair and a few wrinkles around his eyes. The man is speaking in the firm, gentle way that kind people do when they are helping a distraught stranger or calming a wild animal. When Cesar looks him in the eyes, the man suddenly squints, his gray eyes darting over Cesar’s face like he’s looking for something.

Remembering his current set of lies, Cesar opens his mouth to protest that Trevor isn’t his son, but he just doesn’t have the energy for lying right now and can’t remember why he started in the first place.

Instead he asks, “Where is he?”

The woman takes his arm and says, “This way.”

Cesar wastes no time in following her. She has brown hair coiled in braids around her head and she is wearing a soft faded blue coverall with plenty of zipper pockets. The man is wearing something similar, but in a dark red.

They have already moved Trevor to a sick bay. The boy lies on a stretcher with an intravenous line pumping fluids into him. Cesar looks the boy over as Trevor groggily opens his eyes. There is a nasty bruise across the boy’s jaw and an ugly decompression burn down one arm. Cesar winces when he sees the cracked and puckered skin.

Trevor turns to Cesar, looking confused. He tries to rub his eyes, but the IV drip stops him.

“What happened?” Trevor asks, his voice thick and hoarse.

Cesar blinks. A wave of terror-induced nausea crashes over him. Looking away from Trevor, he finds the man in the coveralls staring at him with a frown. While Cesar clears his throat to cover his sudden discomposure, the woman brings Trevor something to drink. It seems to wake him up a bit.

The man and the woman keep darting expectant glances at Cesar, waiting for him to tell his story. Cesar opens his mouth to start explaining, but then shuts it again. He doesn’t want to have to introduce himself as Ulixes and go through the whole charade again, but these people are going to start asking questions soon.

Cesar is suddenly exhausted. He slumps against the wall and stares at Trevor for a while, overwhelmed. He finds it soothing to do so. The boy is alive. Trevor looks pretty banged up but he is basically in the same condition that he started the day in. Meanwhile, Cesar’s son thanks the woman politely and asks where they are. He is delighted to find himself in a junker ship.

“I’ve never actually been inside one before,” he says, craning his neck to look around, although the room is the same nondescript tan plastic you find in almost any ship sickbay.

Junker ships make a living cleaning up space junk. The thousands of dropped hammers, broken ships, and general garbage floating around the Spacer’s spheres add up. It was a problem back in the beginning of space exploration and now that the orbitals around the Earth are filling up with people, junk collection is practically an industry.

Junker ships have special solar sails to catch debris and funnel it into the nets trailing behind the little ship. Most orbitals pay to have a junker periodically sweep the space around their orbital to keep it free of hazards. The junkers, in turn, sell their catch to ironworkers and other people who can reuse it.

“It’s a living,” laughs the woman. “Not exactly high status, but it lets us sail wherever we want with our kids and that’s what we like.”

She smiles at the man and, smiling back, he takes her hand.

“Well, I guess you can tell we’ve had a spot of trouble,” Trevor says ruefully as he prods the burn on his arm. “I wish I could tell you more about it, but I think I was out for the really exciting part.”

Cesar is looking at the floor, but he can feel three sets of eyes on him.

“Trouble isn’t following us,” he says lowly without looking up. “You needn’t worry about that.”

Cesar knows he’s stalling. He just doesn’t want to talk about what happened. He wants to pretend it was all a bad dream and go take a nap. He’s had a very long day and it is, apparently, far from over.

Trevor breaks the awkward silence by introducing himself. The man the woman are delighted to meet Trevor Vaquero of Ithaca and take turns gently shaking his good hand.

“I’m Jane, by the way. I’ll get the kids up to meet you in a little bit. They’ll be so excited,” he woman says warmly to Trevor. “My husband here flew with your dad. He’s told them quite a number of stories.”

Cesar snaps his head up, his eyes darting up to the man. The man stares back, grinning at him. With a jolt, Cesar realizes he is looking at Mike, that crazy Earther kid from his tinker ship days. Mike has aged, but he looks happy. Cesar finds himself grinning back.

“You knew my dad?” Trevor asks Mike.

Cesar feels the grin on his face fade away.

This is going to be awkward.

Without taking his eyes off Cesar, Mike says, “I heard you ask everybody for stories about your dad. That true?”

“I do,” Trevor replied eagerly. “Geez, look. The recorder on my comm still works. You got a story about my dad?”

Cesar gives Mike a hard look, trying to threaten the man with his eyes. Mike sees the look and only grins wider, looking more like the insane kid Cesar remembers. Back then; Cesar frequently wondered what would eventually kill this kid. Mike’s whole personality was tied up in his incredible death wish.