Sunborn (6 page)

    “I understand,” he said, and it was almost true.

    “And Ik and Li-Jared’s pain and anger and frustration were so strong...that is why I needed to get away.” She closed her eyes and breathed slowly and deeply. “I could not get it clear in my own mind.”

    “Does their presence bother you?”

    “What?
No,
my dear Bandie John Bandicut. They are my companions—”
rasp
“—friends. I would do anything for them.” Her hand turned and grasped his tightly, and he felt a wave of her feelings for Ik and Li-Jared. He also felt her feelings for
him,
which were...
different.

    “As I would for you,” she added.

    He nodded, swallowing.

    “And you, John—what do you feel about this?”

    “You mean, what Jeaves—?”

    “Yes—
no.
About that, but not only that.” She shifted position to sit cross-legged, facing him directly. “Where do
you
 belong?”

    “Well, I don’t know exactly what you—”

    She stopped him. “John.” Her golden-eyed gaze was intent. “Tell me...” She pressed her lips together. “Tell me, who did you love? Who did you leave behind? Who do you
miss
?”

    He felt a sudden upwelling of buried feelings, and a sharp lump in his throat, rendering him mute. His love for Antares, for this alien woman, this Thespi Third-female, auburn-maned and empathic, abruptly felt like a betrayal of the love he’d left behind, when a slingshot maneuver around the sun and a collision with a comet changed his life forever. He didn’t know what to say, or how to explain it. Antares seemed very human at times; would she feel human jealousy? But she was
not
 human. She was Thespi.

   
/// I think she’s asking

   
because she really wants to know. ///

   
/But where do I start?/

    “John,” Antares said softly. “Why don’t you tell me how you came to leave your home star. Can you do that?”

    He nodded. He’d told her much already in bits and pieces, but now he put it all together for her—how he had been working on Triton, moon of Neptune, as a mining surveyor. How he had found an alien artifact, the translator—and Charlie, the quarx now in his head. How Charlie had warned him of the comet that was going to slam into Earth, and how he was the only one who could save it—by stealing a spaceship and, with the help of the translator-stones, crossing the solar system to destroy it. By slamming into it and turning it, and himself, into a cloud of dust. But a funny thing happened on the way to the funeral, because he not only didn’t die, he wound up being slung halfway across the galaxy to the strange place called Shipworld—where he was almost immediately pressed into service to defeat an enemy called the boojum.

    Antares made a low humming sound. “Tell me, then, who did you leave? Who do you miss?”

    Bandicut suppressed a twinge.
Julie Stone—are you waiting for me, thousands of light-years from here? Or are you long dead and gone?
 He forced himself to breathe. “I miss my friends Georgia and Krackey, on Triton. And my niece, Dakota, back on Earth.”

    Antares leaned forward, tilting her head. “Your niece?”

    “My brother’s daughter. My brother and my parents...died, about ten years ago.” He barked a sudden laugh. “Ten years ago, when I
left,
I mean. I don’t know how long ago, now...”

    Antares closed her hand over the top of his. “I understand. We are both in the same...”

    “Boat,” he said. “Circumstance.”

    “Not knowing how much time has passed, out there. Yes, I have often wondered the same. Tell me about...Dakota.” Antares gazed at him with what seemed a very human expression of sympathy. He wondered if he was losing his ability to distinguish between human and Thespi. Besides the three-fingered hands, the silken body hair, and the four breasts. “Is she very...precious to you?”

    A smile came, and went. “Dakota was—or
is
—an incredibly sweet, bright kid, who was orphaned when my brother and his wife were killed in a tunnel collapse.” He hadn’t thought about this in a long time. It still hurt. “That left her with just me and her mother’s parents. So Dakota’s the only family
I
have. And I promised her...I would take her up into space someday. A promise I’ll never be able to keep now.”

    Antares waited a moment, then touched his cheek. “Is there something more? About Dakota?”

    “Hm? I guess not.”

    “Nothing? And yet it sticks in you, like a—”
rasp
 “—craw?”

    He chuckled. “Sticks in my craw. Okay. See, I created a trust fund for her.”
How do I explain a trust fund?
 “It’s a savings of money—resources—to help her go away to a good school someday.”

    “This is good. Why does it stick in your craw?”

    “Because I don’t know if she ever got it. The government thought I was a deranged criminal, and they might have seized it; or her grandparents might have, I don’t know. So—” his breath caught and he had to force the words “—maybe I
did
keep my promise to her, through that. If she took the money and used it to pay for a good education, that could get her into space.” He drew a deep breath. “That’s what I
want
 to think.”

    Antares parted her lips with a sigh. “Then perhaps that is what you
should
think.” He nodded and sighed. She gave him a moment, then continued. “There is someone else, though, isn’t there? You’ve told me...what is her name? Julie? Why don’t you want to talk about her?”

    “I—well—” Now he was struggling again. “I didn’t know her that long, really—just long enough. I really...hated to leave her. Especially the way I did—not even getting to tell her what I was doing. I can’t imagine what she thought.” He felt a pressure between his temples, and wondered if it was coming from Antares.

   
/// Don’t you know? ///

   
/Know what? It’s a hard memory to focus on./

   
/// I’m not even human, and I can see it,

   
plain as day. ///

   
/See what?/ Bandicut felt a scowl surface on his face. He tried to wipe it away with his thumb and forefinger.

   
/// You don’t want to deal with the pain. ///

   
Bandicut muttered a growl at Charlie. Antares squinted. “Are you talking to me, or to Charlie?”

    “Um, sorry. It’s just that—”

    “It hurts?”

    “Well,
yeah
—”

    “It’s important,” she said softly. “That’s why I want to know about it.” She clasped his hand between hers. “John Bandicut, your thoughts and feelings about
her
will have an effect on
us,
 will they not?”

    He nodded. “Yes, I suppose so...” His face grew warm again as he drew forth the memories. “She became the person I trusted the most, the one I wanted to be with all the time. I was falling in love with her just when I had to leave forever.”

    “And you are wondering, will you ever see her again?”

    “I don’t see how I ever can. Even if she’s still alive, what are the chances I’ll ever return to Earth?”

    Antares’s breath whistled out. “I do not know. And yet, in a way, does it even matter? You still feel what you feel, yes?”

    He nodded, shutting his eyes. “Yah...”

*

   
For some time after Bandicut and Antares left, Ik gazed into the fire—pondering sentient stars, and unseen masters who catapulted them off on hazardous missions. Despite his misgivings, he was intrigued by the possibility of sentient stars. Intrigued and frightened. A flaring sun had destroyed his homeworld—and along with it, his lifebonder Onaka and everyone else he had cared for. Had his own sun been a sentient being? Had it known what was happening? Ik drew a long swallow of the Earthman’s ale and held the half-full mug up to regard it against the dancing flames of the fire.

    “Ik?”

    He turned his head, looking at Li-Jared through a slight mental haze. The ale seemed to be doing more than just giving him a warm glow. /Please reassure me that my normalization is handling this ale,/ he said silently to his voice-stones. He remembered a very bad time on the Neri world, when the normalization had
not
 protected him adequately from the local food. Without Bandicut and Charlie’s intervention, he might have died then and there.

   
“Ik, are you here with me?” Li-Jared demanded. The electric-blue slits across his gold eyes reflected the flickering firelight, giving him a look of great urgency.

    “I am,” said Ik, still waiting for a response from his stones.

   
*All appears within limits,*
 reported the stones.

    “Are you with me in opposing this insanity?” Li-Jared was nervously fingering the tall glass holding his cream-elixir. He raised it as though to drink a sip, then lowered it again. “Yes?” he asked.

    Ik tensed. “I, like you, have serious reservations.”

    Li-Jared’s fingers began twitching. “
Serious reservations?
 Ik, this is a mad thing they want us to do! This robot, Jeaves—these Shipworld masters—they want us to take off on a suicide mission.”

    Ik sighed through his ears. “Possibly so.”

    “Don’t you remember what they’ve put us through? How they threw us into an ocean—not once, but twice? Are we going to let them keep doing this?” Li-Jared started to rise again, looking agitated.

    Ik gazed at him silently. In fact, he did remember, all too clearly. There had been another time—before the Neri, before meeting John Bandicut—when a star-spanner bubble plunged Ik and Li-Jared into the ocean of an alien world. That time, they hadn’t sunk into the depths, but bobbed on the surface, where a fishing-float rescued them. The nearby coast was populated by a strange fisher folk. Intelligent but not spacefaring or highly industrial, they were in grave danger from their planet’s fluctuating magnetic field and radiation from their sun. Ik and Li-Jared had the impossible task of persuading them that they
had
 to shield themselves or move underground, or risk terrible losses. By the time they’d convinced the leaders of the impending catastrophe, Ik and Li-Jared were nearly executed as mutant spies.

    Li-Jared was still talking. “Is there any reason why they couldn’t just pull us back to Shipworld with the star-spanner, the way they did from the Matuni world? Don’t we deserve a—”
rasp
 “—break?”

    “I don’t know,” said Ik.

    “But we intend to find out, yes?
Truth,
 Ik! Truth is what I want to hear!” Li-Jared’s bright eyes glared out of his brown-haired face. When Li-Jared was angry, it made even his friend Ik want to step back.

    Ik sighed again. The ale seemed to make his thoughts foggy. “Truth, yes,” he said at last. “But first perhaps we should do what Bandie and Antares have done. Get some rest.”

    Li-Jared growled under his breath, but did not say no.

Chapter 5

Unscheduled Departure

    “Morning” was marked by light streaming in through translucent squares high in the bedroom walls. Bandicut blinked his eyes open, wondering for a moment where he was—until it all rushed back with a jarring urgency. He pushed himself upright, washed and dressed, and walked with Antares through the empty common room. On his way, he picked up a mug of coffee and something that looked like a scone. Antares took a dark roll and a mug of sweet tea. They ate their breakfast standing up, before pushing open the front door.
    Jeaves was waiting outside. “Good morning,” he said. “Did you sleep well? Would you like to stretch your legs?”

    “Fair, and I suppose so. Are Ik and Li-Jared up?”

    “They went to take a look at the ship. If you hurry, you can catch them. Walk that direction.” Jeaves pointed to their left. “You’ll find the path. It’s a short walk to the docks.”

    Bandicut glanced at Antares. She hooked an arm through his, and they followed a narrow path winding through the woods. There was a certain surrealistic feeling in walking among trees dressed in russet and yellow—many of them reminiscent of Earth, others with strangely curved branches that ended in spherical clusters of leaves. Bandicut was about to ask Antares if there were trees on the Thespi world, when he spotted the glint of a different environment ahead through the woods. Space docks?

    They quickened their steps, before they heard Li-Jared’s twang: “There they are!” The path broke out of the trees into a large, high-ceilinged area with a floor of a hard, pebbly gray material. Directly ahead loomed a huge spacecraft hangar.

    Most of the floor space was taken up by empty docking cradles. Li-Jared waved them toward the nearest, the only one holding a vessel. Napoleon and Copernicus circled around it, taking readings from the strange-looking craft. The size of a small yacht, it was shaped like a melted, slightly deformed lozenge. Its surface was translucent and milky orange. It was enveloped in a nearly transparent haze, which on closer inspection was filled with almost invisible, silver glitter. Nano-assemblers? Bandicut wondered, remembering a seafloor factory that had manufactured submarines.

   
/// Nano-shit for starships? ///

   
Charlene mused.

    /Maybe./

   
Whreeeek-whreeek!
 The sudden sound was like a shriek of badly tuned violins. A flurry of angular black shapes, part bat and part tattered black rags, fluttered around the spacecraft—and disappeared into the hull. “Hrah! Shadow-people!” Ik cried. Fractal beings, the shadow-people only partially inhabited the familiar dimensions of spacetime; but they were a welcome sight. It appeared they were hard at work on the ship.