Yuen-Mong's Revenge (20 page)

     
He was searching through the things, finally settling on the loose
cabin clothes lying on the bed. He was just pulling the top over his head
when he felt her arms around his chest and her naked body pressed
against his back. For a split second, he was shocked and then felt the urge
in his groin.

     
"Atun, let’s do it," she murmured. "Please, teach me."

 
     
Oh, how he wanted her. His need was suddenly overpowering, but
something held him back. She was too precious to lose in this way.
"Yuen-mong, you’re drunk. You’ll regret it later."

 
     
"I may be slightly — what is it called? … tipsy, but I know exactly
what I’m doing and I never regret things that cannot be changed anymore.
I want to. Come."

 
     
She pulled him onto the bed.

     
"But you may get pregnant," he tried lamely, yielding to her already.

     
"I don’t think so, and if I do, that is fine. I want a child sooner or later
and I would like you to be the father. Come, Atun, love me." She pushed
him down on the bed and lay on top of him. "And don’t be afraid. You
will not hurt me. I broke my hymen when I was twelve."

* * *

She lay awake long after he had fallen asleep. He had been gentle and she
felt contented, relaxed and in peace with herself. She could still feel the
intense surge of his feelings just before he came, which triggered her own
release.
Another step into womanhood.
It felt right. She snuggled up
closer to him, and he put an arm around her, his hand cupping one of her
breasts. That too felt good. The last thing she remembered before sleep
took her away was the complete stillness of minds. Only an occasional
mild stirring as Atun was dreaming.

     
When she woke, she was disoriented for a short moment. Where was
she? The warm body next to her, was it her mother’s? Then she smelled
Atun’s musky odor. It was pleasant. Turning to her side, she leaned on
him, watched his sleeping face, and caressed the fine stubbles that had
again formed on his chin and jaw. She smiled, remembering that they had
felt smooth when he had played with her breasts. She blew into his face,
and he opened his eyes.

     
"Come, lazybones. We have work to do."

 
     
"Yuen-mong," he whispered.

     
She sensed his concern.

     
"Yes."

 
     
"I love you." It sounded hesitant, almost pleading.

     
"That is good, Atun. And don’t be worried. I’m fine." She kissed his
cheek and got up.

     
Holding up one of her mother’s briefs, she asked: "Is this what
women wear under their clothes?"

 
     
He sat up and replied: "Yes. They also wear bras."

 
     
"What for?"

 
     
"To support their breasts, hold them in place."

 
     
She looked down at hers. "They seem to hold in place by themselves."

 
     
"Yes, you’ve beautiful, firm breasts."

 
     
"You like them?"

 
     
He laughed. "Yes I do."

 
     
She smiled and put on the loose top and pants. "I will prepare some
breakfast muesli," and she left the cabin, going first to the bathroom to
empty her full bladder and have a quick wash.

* * *

‘Where shall we go first?" Atun asked her. They were on the flight deck,
looking at a three-dimensional map of their galactic region displayed in
the holoscreen. "The closest space station is the mining planet of
Santori." He pointed at a dot in the image. Its name appeared above and
behind the dot, with the number 12. "But it does not bring us any closer
to Palo or Andromatis. It only has the advantage of allowing us to update
our data system quickly. The landing and takeoff fees are low, but
supplies are expensive. See, it would take us about twelve standard days
to get there."

 
     
"How long is it to Palo and Andromatis?"

     
He pointed at to other dots. Names and numbers appeared. "About 36
days to Palo, maybe only 32 to Andromatis."

 
     
"Could we make it to either?"

 
     
"According to the ship’s status report, yes, but it may be more prudent
to call on Old Earth which is only a small detour, although it has no HST
link." He pointed at another dot. "We could make it there in 16, and from
there to Andromatis in another … 20, or to Palo in another … 25 days."

 
     
"I would like to stop over on Old Earth and I sense that you would
like to go to Palo, right?"

 
     
"Yes, but this is your ship, so you decide."

 
     
"Atun, this is our ship. We are in this together… In fact, who owns
this ship now?"

 
     
"By Galactic Law, any ship lost for more than ten years becomes the
property of whoever finds it."

 
     
"So it is ours, yours and mine." She smiled.

     
"Yes."

 
     
"And we will not run into trouble when we call port anywhere?"

 
     
"No, not as long as we can pay the fees."

 
     
She pondered the question of where for a while. To do or get anything
in these worlds, even a drink of water, she needed credits, not like on
Aros, where she could do anything she wanted or take anything that was
within her physical reach. It gave her a sense of insecurity. "I would like
to go to Andromatis first and see if I can still recover my mother’s
property. If I can, then we are rich and can do anything, my mother said."

 
     
"It may be too late."

 
     
"Do you think my mother’s family would deny me my rights?"

 
     
"Possibly. They could claim that you are an imposter."

     
"We have to take that chance. There is somebody on Andromatis who
my mother claimed will help. A friend of hers who is a lawyer."

 
     
"Andromatis then. Anyway, from there it’s less than eight days to get
to Palo."

* * *

Vishnu was programmed for a 24-hour day and they set a course for Old
Earth early that morning. Yuen-mong watched with a heavy heart how
Aros shrunk ever more rapidly and then dissolved from the holoscreen
when they went into hypertransition. Would she ever see it again?

     
That same day Atun gave her a thorough introduction into the ship’s
AI system, while at the same time checking it out himself. He drilled her
in all aspects of flight and communication, both short distance and
intergalactic. Although her father had explained to her that interstellar
communications within the Galactic Federation used two different
modes, the HST mode, standing for ‘hyperspace transmission’, which
allowed transmission speeds about 12854 times faster than the speed of
light over a network of links, and the ‘standard’ which occurred at the
speed of light and was used only for relatively short distances or where
no HST link existed, suddenly having access to such technology was
exciting.

     
Later in the day, she spent time reading in the poetry book that had the
name of her mother written inside. She knew the first one by heart. Her
mother had often recited it. She also searched through her parents’ mementos. There was a video-cube with short scenes: her parents’ wedding
— her mother’s face was glowing with happiness; shots in the mountains; swimming in a lake; her mother reading on the veranda of a house,
briefly showing also its outside. She intended to watch those again and
again.

     
When Atun wanted to shift her father’s clothes into the adjacent
cabin, she stopped him. She wanted them to share her parents’ cabin. It
felt right to have him close at night, and he needed little persuasion.

     
Over the following days they explored the official log entries of her
parents. She learned that her father was a researcher with UniCom, the
company that according to Atun had developed the HST system and still
ran it as a monopoly. It was one of the most powerful companies in the
Galactic Federation. The request to take samples of Aros’ ring had been
a last-minute addition on their return trip from a mission testing the
extension of the HST network to Santori, and it specified that samples
should be sought over the width of the ring.

     
"I’m still puzzled why there’s no official record of that mission, even
if it failed, in fact, particularly since it failed," commented Atun. "It’s
essential information for further explorations. If I had known that two
previous missions had failed, I would have been much more cautious."

 
     
"Maybe it was meant to be that way, or you would never have come
to rescue me," she said, smiling.

     
"It was you who rescued me, more than once." After a moment, he
continued: "I can’t shake off the feeling that there was something fishy
about the whole thing. Why would they send a communications
researcher to do mineral exploration?"

 
     
"My mother was a chemist and going to Aros meant only a small
detour for them."

 
     
"Possible. I guess we’ll never find out. There may be nobody around
who even remembers anything about that mission. Look, there are three
archives, one labeled Zoshan —"

 
     
"— that is my mother’s first name."

 
     
"The second, labeled Takash —"

     
"— my father —"

 
     
"— and the third, a huge one, called research, all three of which need
a password for access. I presume the first two are personal files of your
parents, the third probably contains records on the research projects they
were working on at that time. Did they ever talk about that?"

 
     
"I know that they were working on some revolutionary mode of
instant communication. I think this is how they met."

 
     
"Instant communication? What do you mean by ‘instant’?"

 
     
"No time delay."

 
     
"Seems impossible. HST has cut the time delay by a factor of 12854.
It may be possible to do even better. But there will always be a time
delay. The farther the distance, the longer the delay. It’s a basic law of
physics."

 
     
"Maybe if you get access to these archives, you will find out."

 
     
"But what could be the password? Do you have any guesses?"

 
     
She thought a while about that. She doubted that they would have
used some significant date or name in their lives. That would have been
too evident, too easy to crack. So what else could they have used? In a
sudden flash of inspiration she exclaimed: "Whispers."

 
     
"What?"

 
     
"Try ‘whispers’, the title of the first poem in that poetry book."

 
     
"You think so?"

 
     
"It is a poem that both my parents loved and often recited."

 
     
He called up the archive Zoshan and entered ‘whispers’. It opened and
revealed several directories with names like ‘reflections’, ‘to do’, ‘diary’,
and so on.

     
"I’ll leave those for you to explore," he said, briefly glancing at her.

     
She was touched by his sensitivity. "Thank you, Atun."