Spin the Sky (5 page)

Penelope watches them go. She wonders who the man is without really caring. She knows Lupe will fuss and cluck over him like a mother hen. Penelope fervently hopes the man will not die because then Lupe will make the whole house mourn for forty days, wailing and tearing her hair over the death of a stranger.

“I need that like I need to swallow a shotgun blast, even if I do only load it with rock salt,” she groans under her breath.

Penelope takes a minute to look with pride at the ranch. She even looks gladly at the little tequila still towards the back of the ranch where her father-in-law insists on living.

“Mine,” Penelope says fiercely. “And no man will take it from me.”

She just wishes she knew what was going on lately. There were those weird offers from strange men to “buy” the entire herd at exorbitant prices. As if she’d ever sell what she’s worked so hard to make. Then followed the veiled threats from other strangers who looked like pirates and showed up in flashy ships. After her refusal they disappeared with promises to come back and “persuade” her. There was an attempt to kidnap her foiled by her ranch hands, followed by an attempt to kidnap her son, foiled by her shotgun.

The latest incident really had her worried. A dozen armed men with a map of the colony and Vaquero ranch circled in red were turned back before they could get off their ship. If Mathis hadn’t been a chronically suspicious old coot and uncharacteristically sober that day, it would have been a very bad day for everyone at Vaquero ranch.

Penelope tries not to think about all that as she stares at her home. Usually when Penelope looks over the ranch, her mind’s eye looks to the improvements she will make, but just now Penelope remembers the first day she arrived on Ithaca. Her first sight of the Vaquero ranch brought to mind the saying Germans had for Texas: “It’s heaven for men and dogs, but hell on women and oxen.”

She’d been tired, bruised and bilious, riding from San Antonio on that sorry excuse of a shuttle. To her adult eyes, the ranch looks like success, safety and home. But Penelope came here as an over-privileged eighteen year old with a husband she barely knew, fleeing from a life of privilege. On that day, the Vaquero ranch was a muddy and desolate confirmation that she had made a very bad mistake.

Penelope shakes her memories from her mind, wondering what set her thinking about the past today. Maybe it was that mysterious old man? But the tasks of the day won’t wait, so she turns to meet them.

CHAPTER THREE

C
esar sleeps soundly, lulled by the unfamiliar scent of clean sheets and Lupe’s gentle humming as she enters the room with a big bowl of warm broth. Then he hears a sound he hoped never to hear again. War whoops and gunshots make a kind of music to chill a man’s soul. Cesar springs into a low crouch, ready for battle before he is even really awake.

Lupe erupts in a stream of virulent Mexican curses as the warm broth sloshes out of the bowl he upset with his flailing. Cesar gropes for his boot knife, only to find it missing. Quickly, he throws the bed over and hauls Lupe behind it.

“You idiot
gringo
, what are you doing?” Lupe sputters, smacking him with a spoon. “It’s just Mr. Trevor, back from town. Little hooligan.”

That makes Cesar sit down. Hard.

Trevor. My son. My son is out there
.

His hands tremble as he slowly gets to his feet so he curls them into fists. Lupe heaves herself to her feet with great flourish and smacks Cesar with the spoon a few more times. This mercifully takes his mind off the boy in the yard. While Lupe sets about righting the room, he staggers to the door and peers out.

He watches a teenage boy clamber off a cart pulled by a little mule. The boy is wiry and tall and he moves with that awkward teenage vitality, yanking things off the cart and stumbling to the house with them.

Cesar hasn’t seen Trevor since he was an infant, nothing but bright brown eyes and drool. The boy pauses to push his unruly hair out of his eyes. It’s the same flaming red that Cesar’s was at that age.

“Mom! Got this month’s order from the manuvats. Looks right except this tub over here.”

Cesar smoothes his clothes and beard ineffectually as he steps forward, following the boy’s voice. The boy hands things to his mother on the porch while she lectures him about shooting off his gun.

“I don’t care if it can’t hurt anybody,” Penelope says sharply. “Gunshots make people nervous. Don’t shoot your gun unless you are in trouble or practicing with targets.”

“Aw, Mom, come on,” Trevor grouses cheerfully. “You’re always firing off that rock salt in your shotgun. What’s so wrong about a few potshots out of my pistol when there’s nobody around?”

“Well,” Penelope huffs indignantly. She looks like she’s trying to come up with a snappy comeback and not finding one.

Finally she says, “It’s wasteful.”

Cesar must have made a sound because Penelope looks up at him, shading her eyes. The orbital’s mile-high ceilings are covered with shiny reflective paint to capture as much sunlight as possible. At high noon, it is every bit as bright as the hot Texas sun Trevor has never seen.

“Well, old man, not planning to die on us after all?” she calls to Cesar.

“Not today, ma’am.” Cesar ducks his head self-consciously. He almost wants to hide. He is sure his face gives him away.

How do I tell them?

Trevor abandons his project to stare at the man, fascinated by his scars and clothes.

“Who are you, anyway?” Penelope asks as she bends down to stack some bowls.

Cesar bows his head and watches her through his long, bedraggled hair.

She doesn’t recognize me.

“I guess I don’t look familiar,” he mumbles, overwhelmed.

I can’t do this.

Cesar has no plan for this. His original plan involved showing up and dying in his wife’s arms right after he told his son that he loved him. It was a good plan except he continued to live. This significantly alters the original plan into what can only be described now as a bad plan. Cesar would smack himself in the head but that would only make him look even dumber than he already feels.

Penelope sighs, giving him a hard look. “No, you don’t look familiar. I’ve never seen you before in my life. So if you are trying to play like an old friend of the family, forget it.”

She really doesn’t remember me,
Cesar thinks with a sinking feeling.

As he looks into Trevor’s eager gaze, he knows he just can’t tell them today. Not like this. Not a beaten old wreck standing in their yard like a beggar.

“I’m a friend of Cesar’s,” he stammers. “We were close during the War. And after. I’d heard… I’d heard he was coming home.”

He can’t bring himself to look at them after this lie.

Trevor eyes get round as the Moon when he hears the name of his famous father. “You knew my dad? Wow! Where have you been? When did you see him last? What happened to him?”

Penelope scowls and looks away.

Cesar gives his son a long steady look. “I knew your father very well. Nothing happened to him. Everything happened to him. You look just like him.” Cesar reaches out and claps the boy on the shoulder. He tries smiling at the boy, but fails halfway through.

Trevor’s face takes on that aloof, cool expression that teen boys get in front of strangers. “People tell me that,” he replies, stiffening under Cesar’s hand. “I guess it’s the hair.”

Penelope hustles out to stand next to her child, as though to reclaim her son from stories of his father.

“Well, Cesar’s not home. He hasn’t been home since before the War. So whatever promises he made you are gone,” she says flatly, with a slight hint of bitterness.

Cesar sits down on the porch and looks at his hands. He says, “Ma’am, I know that. But I also know how much he wanted to come home. How much he loved this place and how he missed his family. I just wanted to see it. I’m a traveler myself with nothing to call home and nothing of mine but what’s in that bag I brought. I just wanted to see it. I’m sorry for bringing sickness with me and for being a broken old man.”

He blinks back his sorrow. He has failed them. He has failed her. He isn’t fit to sit on this porch with them.

Small cool hands on his shoulder bring him out of his despair. Penelope helps him up and guides him back to the little room in the bunkhouse.

She speaks low and soothing, as though calming a horse. “It’s alright, mister. It’s going to be fine. You are a friend of Cesar’s and a guest in our home. You get better now and we’ll talk about the rest later.”

“And tell me about my dad!” Trevor calls after them, turning back to the mule
.

Oh son, my son, your dad was a coward,
Cesar almost cries.

His strength drains away and he collapses into the bed to obediently drink Lupe’s broth. Then Cesar closes his eyes and wishes himself to sleep while Penelope watches him from the doorway.

“I’ll help with dinner tonight,” Penelope says to Lupe. “The girls are taking turns on guard duty at the main generator.”

“And how long will they keep that up?” Lupe says, clearly disgruntled.

Penelope returns dryly, “Until they figure out who sabotaged it last month and make sure they don’t do it again, I guess.”

“Hmph.”

Cesar doesn’t need to open his eyes to know that Lupe is making the sign against the Evil Eye. Penelope just snorts, standing in the doorway, letting the quiet stretch out.

“Are they coming tonight?” Lupe breaks the silence as she gathers up her things.

“They always do.” Penelope replies, but she does not elaborate.

Lupe purses her lips. “The boy should have stayed in town,” she says.

“Why?” Penelope asks, even though the tone of her voice said she knows why.

“These men of yours are bad. They will hurt us. I can see it. You know I have The Sight,” Lupe crosses herself and mutters something in Spanish having to do with devils and the need to cast them out. “I bet some of them are behind the sabotage attempts,” she adds ominously.

Penelope laughs, “If you have The Sight, then I’m a dancing pig. I’m more worried he’ll pick up bad habits. But I agree. Trevor should have stayed in town. What can I say? He’s too good a boy to dawdle in town as we’d planned.”

Lupe grins fondly, for she loves the boy as if he were her own grandson. “A very good boy. Just like his father. Well, except his father was a very naughty boy.”

Penelope snorts, repeating Lupe’s curse about devils and driving them out. He hears her footsteps disappearing out the door.

Cesar just smiles to himself and falls asleep.

CHAPTER FOUR

C
esar awakens later to darkness and distant laughter. Many orbitals synchronize their rotation with Earth so that they have the same light-dark cycles as wherever they are originally from. He knows Ithaca is parked above the Gulf of Mexico.

Cesar also knows that from the Earth below, Ithaca twinkles like a star. A belligerent star that made it clear long ago that it wants nothing to do with the Earth.

He lies in bed listening for a few minutes. Soft music and conversation drift in from the main house. Cesar estimates a large party, maybe fifty or sixty people. He decides to investigate and looks for his pants and boots. He finds them cleaned and piled neatly next to the bed. After a few wobbly steps, he’s happy to find some of his strength returning.

Cesar keeps to the shadows, wishing only to observe.

There are a few women but it is mostly men. The women are dressed well, for a party, but not extravagantly. He sees Argos making his way through the crowd with a mop and a bucket and can’t help but smile. He should have known.

If there is one rotten board of Ithaca ranch still standing, Argos will still be here. Argos is a few years older than Cesar himself. The man started working on the ranch as a teenager when Cesar was barely big enough to sit on a donkey. They had some wild times before Cesar left.

Argos was loyal to a fault, but not exactly genius material. If Cesar wants to keep his identity a secret, he needn’t fear of Argos catching him out.

Then Cesar catches sight of Penelope, shining like a jewel. He admires her from afar. She is still the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. Well, maybe not the most beautiful, but definitely the one he likes looking at the most. She is on the arm of a very elegant man, a man without gray in his hair or a hitch in his step, Cesar notes jealously.

Of course she remarried,
he thinks.

Such a woman would not be left alone, especially up here, out in the dark. Women are still scarce, particularly rich and beautiful women who know their way around a shotgun.

Penelope laughs graciously at something the elegant man tells her, then excuses herself to enter the house. Cesar has strategically positioned himself behind a very large rosemary bush. He is far from the crowd, but now he spots two men walking towards him from the back of the house. They stop on the other side of the bush.

They discuss who they think will win the upcoming Nullball tournament, oblivious to Cesar’s presence.

This year’s tournament will be held on Ithaca for the first time. Nullball is basically an adaptation of American football or rugby except it is played in freefall wearing spacesuits with tethers.

Nullball started out as a training exercise played in the null gravity cargo holds of the orbitals. It was designed to help people become comfortable moving in spacesuits and using tethers so they would make fewer mistakes when they were in void space where every misstep can be deadly.

It evolved into a fast-paced high-impact game that both Spacers and Earthers follow enthusiastically. One of the men on the other side of the bush favors Ithaca, but the second says it will be one of the larger colonies clustered in the Lagrange points or else the Hathor Miners. After that conversation dries up, they switch to a subject that Cesar finds much more interesting.

“So all of these men are here to court the famous widow?” the first man asks with amusement. He sounds young but with a gravely voice. Cesar can see neither of them clearly from his side of the bush.