Whispers in the Dawn (9 page)

Brody ran the back of his hand across his mouth. His brother was becoming a whizz at ignoring tasks that needed to be done. “Didn’t you see that stuff?”

Jason took no notice of him. “He could be our man. But how do we track him down? Check the nut houses? Maybe he really is a starship pilot, but I just don’t believe it.”

Brody guessed a head of lettuce had rotted away in its plastic bag. He shrugged. Eventually he would have to make the kitchen ship-shape. Apparently, no one else would—except maybe Odessa, but she wasn’t there. If they didn’t find out what had happened to her, they’d probably have to burn and bulldoze the place.

“She might be dead, you know.” The speculation, voiced out loud, terrified Brody. Odessa was just a kid.

He chided himself. She was old enough to take care of herself, but what if they hadn’t been able to find her because she was buried somewhere? He didn’t want to think about that. Odessa had always sought adventure, always wanted to do what the twins didn’t dare. They were comfortable eking out a living on their apple orchard. Besides, someone had to take care of Uncle Peter.

Jason went on, “We got to find the sucker.”

Brody sighed. It was useless to ignore his twin’s ravings about the redheaded fellow being a starship pilot who had kidnapped Odessa. “Where do we go looking for him?”

“Where would you look for a con artist?”

“Some nitwit who’d broker our apples in outer space, at a space station. Imagine that.”

“And we gave him the best of last year’s harvest.”

“We should have tied Odessa down when she started getting all glassy-eyed over that crook.”

“Too bad we didn’t think of it sooner.”

“Think of what sooner?”

Brody and his brother observed their uncle, Peter who had joined them. He stood as straight as a telephone pole, but his shoulders sagged a little. A cloud of small white spears dotted his chin like porcupine quills. As was often the case, he hadn’t shaved.

“We should have stopped Odessa,” Brody replied lamely, aiming a glare at Jason to dissuade him from saying that a starship captain had kidnapped her for his harem. He straightened his shoulders and stood at an impressive six feet—a good eight inches taller than his uncle. Why hadn’t he noticed before now that his uncle had shrunk? Where had the time gone?

“She ran off with that redneck.” Uncle Peter nodded. “Thought so a while back. Some fool notion of taking apples into outer space to sell to some foreign ape aliens. Aliens don’t eat apples.” He drew his red flannel shirt closer, even though it was a sultry June evening.

The man was as old as the moon, but no one would ever have known from the way he walked with a sprightly step. He moved faster than some members of Brody and Jason’s generation did.

Jason shot Brody a look that said ‘I told you so’. Brody lifted his shoulders in a half shrug. “Then why didn’t you tell us before this?”

Uncle Peter snapped the black elastic of the suspenders holding up his faded blue jeans. “Now why would I do something stupid like that?”

“To enlighten us?” Maybe his uncle was getting forgetful. Brody tossed the idea aside instantly. His uncle was as sharp as he had always been. He’d raised two adventurous boys and a precocious girl on his own, hadn’t he?

“Son, when you get to my age, you’ll know everything, but you won’t be able to do one thing.”

Brody watched Jason grimace. It was time for one of their uncle’s pearls of wisdom.

“You won’t be able to tell a fool he’s a fool.”

“Sounds like common sense to me,” Brody said.

Jason’s face clouded over. Was he getting peeved at the old man for calling them fools?

Before Brody could tell him to cool off, Uncle Peter stepped in. “If I had told you your sister ran off with a redneck claiming to be a starship pilot, would you have believed me?”

“That’s what I’ve been telling him all along.” Jason waved a thumb at his twin.

“How can you tell me anything?” Brody shot back. “Uncle Pete doesn’t even believe man can go to the moon.”

“That’s not what I said, son. Man doesn’t belong on the moon. No business there when the green Earth is his home. What’s he doing up there with no air to breathe or gravity to anchor him down?” Uncle Peter slapped Jason’s shoulder. “Gonna get me a beer and watch the rest of the funnies.” The fridge opened and closed and off he went, beer can in hand.

Jason frowned. “I don’t get it. He doesn’t believe in going to the moon, but he believes in that starship pilot.”

“I heard that!” Uncle Peter called out. “You’re too young to get it.”

Brody grinned upon seeing his twin’s pinched features.

“We’re too young? Since when?” Jason asked.

Brody burst out laughing. “Guess there’s no telling a fool he’s a fool, right?”

“That still doesn’t solve our problem. Where do we look for Odessa now? We don’t have a starship, and neither do we have money to invest in one.”

“Seems like the stars are a good place to start. Do you remember the name of the space station that redneck raved about?”

“Naw. Too foreign a name. And look at all those stars. Have you seen the night sky lately? There must be gazillions of them.”

“Mind-boggling.”

“The choices are limitless.”

“Want some apple pie with me?”

“Got paper plates?”

“Nope.” An innovative but not unusual idea struck Brody. “Why not just eat out of the pie plate? You from that side, me from the other.”

Jason gave him a thumbs-up. Uncle Pete could bake an apple pie that would make your mouth water even before he got it out of the oven. As Brody pulled the pie plate from the fridge, he wondered where exactly he and Jason were going to start searching for their sister. “We have to learn about those stars. Like which ones starships travel to, and from which points on Earth they leave. And also try to remember what the space station’s name was. Roland Baylon mentioned it a few times. Maybe we can call one of those space agencies and see if we can book a flight or two.”

“To where and with what?”

“Why not start somewhere close? It can’t be that expensive to start asking if anyone saw a girl board a starship.” Brody shoved the pie plate to the centre of the table and started eating from the nearest side.
Damned good pie.

“But that means we have to leave the orchards and Uncle Pete. How can we do that?”

“Don’t worry about me, son,” the old man called out from the living room. “I can take care of myself. Been doing it for eighty-some years, give or take a few days.”

“I thought you said he was hard of hearing,” Jason muttered, digging into the pie on his side.

“I am when it comes to hearing stuff I don’t care to hear. Want advice? Just watch for those girls in space. I heard they’re supposed to be hot stuff.”

Brody winked at Jason. “Sure, Uncle. Thanks for the helpful tip,” he managed in a deadpan voice. In a whisper, he said to Jason, “Our kind of space. What you think?”

“If they’re hot, here I come!”

His brother slapped him on the shoulder. “You forgot something.”

“What’s that?” Jason asked with his mouth full.

“The reason why we’re travelling to the stars. To get Odessa.”

“There’s nothing like mixing work with pleasure. No play and all work makes Brody boring.”

“I think we need a vacation. When was the last time we had one?”

“Five years ago,” their uncle shouted. “No one ever asks me the last time
I
had one.”

Brody detected guilt on Jason‘s face and spoke first. He didn’t feel that much better. “Want a piece of apple pie?”

“I want a vacation with Joanna Petrocheeni. On a lonely planet. Just me and her.”

“You mean the actress?” Jason called out. Softly, he asked Brody, “What’s he going to do with her? She’s slim, three times younger, and might already be secretly married.”

“The way those actors get married and divorced, you wonder how they stay married for more than six months,” Uncle Peter called out.

“I thought his hormones had withered away,” Brody whispered.

“Naw. It’s only his body. Look at the way he’s been chasing Mrs Oglethorpe.”

The woman had to be more than seventy-five, going into her second childhood. She habitually wore an eye-bruising neon pink bodysuit. Brody stuck his tongue out. “You never know, she might marry him and she’ll clean up this mess.”

“Don’t worry about her. ‘Sides, we can take care of ourselves, just like Uncle Peter.” Jason lifted the phone speaker to his ear. “Where shall we go, kemosabe?”

“Before we go anywhere, can’t we check with the flight stations if Odessa left on a particular ship?” Brody felt odd mentioning starships and flight stations that were far out of his normal frame of reference.

“I don’t know if the flight stations give that information to just anyone. If we have to buck the bureaucratic red tape, it might take years.”

“Might take years to get to that lonely planet with Joanna,” Uncle Peter volunteered.

“What happened to Mrs Oglethorpe?” Brody asked with a grimace. His uncle’s choice of a girlfriend was nothing less than spectacularly baffling. The woman never stopped talking, even when she was eating. And she snorted her soda. She was grosser than Jason.

“She’s okay, but she doesn’t have the fantastic boobs Joanna’s got.”

“Yeah, I hear you,” Jason said. “A woman without great boobs, well, she ain’t much to look at.”

“Son, you better get your mind out of the gutter and find Odessa, ‘cause I’m too old to be traipsing around the universe.”

“But we didn’t say we were going anywhere.” Brody slapped his thigh and smiled. “You would go if Joanna came along, right?”

“In a heartbeat.”

“Why can
he
have his head in the gutter, but we can’t?” Jason protested, getting to his feet and throwing the empty pie plate onto the stack of leaning dishes. The metal clunked against the china.

“That’s because you’re too young,” the old man shouted back.

Jason shrugged before he gave Brody a wink meant as a seal of approval. “Aren’t we a chip off the old block?”

“Okay. I guess I’ll take the leap and call the Galactic Transportation Agency.” He dialled. “They placed me on hold. This might take forever.”

“Good things happen to those who wait for them,” the old man said.

When Brody finally got a live person on the other end of the speaker, they battled for several minutes.

“So you’re telling me you can’t tell me who got on what ship without authorisation?”

Brody listened as the too-friendly voice explained, “I’m afraid, sir, you don’t understand. I can’t give that information out unless you’re the FBI, CIA or I have a judge’s warrant.”

“But you can book flights to outer space?”

“There are no public starships out to the star bases. If you’re interested in travelling to any planet, you must contact one of the carriers, which are all privately owned and operated.”

Brody cupped his hand over the earpiece. “That will cost a fortune.”

“We don’t have a fortune,” Jason whispered.

Brody tried another tack. “So how does a beautiful woman get on a starship?”

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“Look. I have a problem. About three months ago, my sister took off with this redneck—”

“You should just tell her that Odessa took off with a russet potato. That will work wonders,” Jason grumbled.

“Will you shut up?” How was Brody supposed to get any information if his twin was whispering in one ear and the woman was talking in the other?

“Sir, there’s no need to be rude,” the woman said, her voice getting huffy.

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t talking to you. My brother is telling me what to tell you, and I can’t listen to two conversations at the same time.”

“Perhaps you should hang up then.”

Real smartass
, Brody thought.

“What I need is information. Can I get a trip on a Winger to anywhere I want?”

“Of course, sir. What is your destination and your starting point?”

“My destination is a star, and my starting point is Wenatchee.”

“Which star, sir?” Now the clerk was being somewhat more helpful.

“I don’t know. Pick the nearest one.”

“I’m not allowed to do that, sir.”

“Can you name a few?”

She rattled off a few names that sounded like badly damaged items in a discount store.

“The first one will do fine,” Brody said.

“Do you know the call letters for those ports?”

“Don’t you have something in your computer?”

“I’m sorry, sir. There’s no such place as Wenatchee. My computer crashed a few minutes ago and is still giving me trouble.”

Jason’s grin reached from ear to ear. “I told you that wouldn’t work.”

“Son? You need help?” Uncle Peter walked in and glanced at the two boys.

“No, sir,” Brody replied. “It’s tough enough for a
young
person to get a ticket to anywhere he wants to go.”

The woman had obviously heard him. “How old are you, sir?”

“I’m thirty-one and my brother, Jason here, is thirty-one too.”

“Are you single?”

“At the moment.”

“Sir, I meant if that would be a single round-fare trip.”

“What do you mean ‘at the moment’?” Jason asked. “You’ve been single since Lucinda decided you were too much of a country hick for her fine tastes.”

“How long ago was that now?” Uncle Peter asked. “About four years? Too scared to go out and try again, huh?”

“Uncle!” Brody protested. “Women aren’t like chickens. You don’t just mate them with any old rooster.”

Jason’s eyes twinkled with amusement. “You got that right.”

His uncle raised his hand with his palm out in a stopping motion. “I don’t need the riot act read to me, son. And what on God’s green Earth do roosters have to do with women?”

“Sir? Are you still there?”

“I’m still here, but now I’m getting cross winded two ways. From my brother and my uncle.”

“How old is your uncle?” she asked.

“Older than the moon, I think.”

“Watch your tongue, son. I’m eighty-eight. Although my theory about halving my age works fine too. That makes me forty-four.”

“Hey, your uncle sounds just like the kind of man I’m looking for,” the service representative said, with a lilt to her voice. “Do you think you can put him on the speaker?”