The Gypsy Comet

by London, Lia

  Only when we laced our limbs together on our air mattress at night, huddled beneath warm blankets did he relax. In the darkness, everything looked the same, and he could close his eyes and imagine we were back in our quarters on the Arxon.

  Still, my family loved him for trying, and he responded with gratitude and grace. These were my father’s relatives, and they lacked some of the social finesse of my mother, but their kindness showed in their boisterous and fierce loyalty. In less than a month, they embraced him as one of their own and convinced him to let his hair grow out.

  Dag found a comfortable kinship with my cousin Paten who had profited from a short-lived Gypsy Educational Outreach program in the Jammu Colony. Before Crimson Guard protests filtered north, Paten managed to acquire four years of formal schooling beyond the most rudimentary literacy and mathematics universally offered to all children through the age of ten. He’d shown an aptitude for the sciences, so he and Dag found countless things to discuss.

  Four months into our stay, Dag’s weariness of outdoor living showed despite his increased strength. Over a mug of hot vegetable broth, Dag asked a loaded question. “So, if your family was willing to settle down in the Jammu Colony for all these years for the sake of Paten’s education, why not build a house and be more comfortable?”

  Paten’s father, my uncle Lorant, frowned at Dag for the first time, skepticism deepening the lines of his sun-weathered face. “Can you really be so smart and so stupid at the same time?”

  Dag bristled, and I shot Lorant a warning frown. “It’s an innocent question,” I said. “Others have been known to do the same.”

  “Only the mixed-breeds.”

  This time Dag almost stood up. “Is that a slur at my wife?”

  Lorant leaned his elbows on his knees and stared Dag down. “I’d never insult a gypsy, but haven’t you noticed Brita can blend into stationary society better than we do?”

  “I don’t understand,” said Dag.

  “To build a house, you must own land,” explained Lorant. “To own land, you must be a colonist citizen.”

  “But gypsies claim no allegiance to one colony over another and thus have no citizenship.” Dag finished for him, frowning. I could see his dawning understanding.

  Lorant spread his palms wide and nodded. “And there it is. Even if we want to choose a colony—because we do sometimes find one we love best—we can’t repatriate or expatriate because we never belonged in the first place. We aren’t even recognized on any formal records.” Lorant downed the last of his breakfast drink. “If we’re willing to renounce the desire to travel regularly, we might be permitted a small lot of land, but it isn’t in the gypsy nature to stay in one place exclusively for a lifetime.”

  “Colonists travel,” argued Dag. “They take vacations.”

  “Yes, but they go to tourist sites and then hurry right back home.”

  I sighed, feeling the need to point out the colonist view point. “The colonists feel responsible for their heritage in the system. It took our ancestors generations to get here, and it’s our job to take care of what they found. Treasure it. Keep it. Not treat it as disposable or transitory.”

  Lorant’s sideways glare cut my breath. I sounded like a stationary, but wasn’t that my right, too?

  Dag seemed lost in thought. “I suppose that’s how the ICS dwellers feel, though I’ve never heard it articulated that way. The ancestors came in giant ships, and there are many who feel they changed the course of humanity to become a space-dwelling species.

  Lorant snorted. “Except if you open a window up there, you all die.”

  Paten, who’d been entertaining Felly quietly, turned his head to join the conversation. “Speaking of which, how do they do the repairs on the ICS? They can’t go outside with a ladder and a hammer.”

  The men proceeded to speculate and elaborate upon the difficulties of city-station maintenance, and I was grateful to Paten for changing the subject.

  Taking Felly by the hand, I decided to take her exploring in a different direction than we usually wandered. She still toddled very slowly with a death grip on my finger, but she’d gained enormous strength in the short months we’d spent on the Surface.

  Lorant’s words nagged at me, and I wondered if I should use my colonist heritage privilege to procure a lot of land and a permit to build, if not for me and Dag, for the family at large. Perhaps if I sought a piece of land far enough out of town, they’d grant a larger portion.

  I was ruminating over this idea, absorbed in my own mental world, when I noticed the air changing around me. Felly and I stopped and searched the trees around us for an explanation. An energy almost pulsed around us, and from the silence, a soft clicking sound grew.

  Felly scowled upward. “Wain?”

  “No, sweetie. I don’t think it’s rain.” But the pattering sound continued to grow.

  “Mommy! Up dere!” She pointed into the branches.

  My eyes struggled to adjust in the dappled morning light. Bright shafts of gold struck the ground, sparkling with dust and obscuring a clear line of sight.

  But then I saw them. Eyes. Tens of pairs of bright glowing eyes.

  With a surge of panic, I lifted Felly into my arms, and as I did so, a rustling surrounded us, and faneps slithered down the trunks of the trees nearest us. Encircling us with wide eyes and open mouths, they seemed to hesitate.

  I forced myself to take a calming breath and think clearly. What was I afraid of? They barely came up to my knees. The tiny little humanoids ranged from green to gray to brown, each bald but for a little layer of fuzz on top. Though they were naked, I could not detect gender, nor could I discern age.

  A few of them crept closer, looking at me with obvious curiosity.

  “Don’t come closer,” I warned.

  They paused, some tilting their heads to one side. My stomach grew uneasy as I noted they were eyeing Felly. Did they think she was one of their own?

  “Stay away from me. Don’t touch my daughter.” I lifted Felly up to sit on my shoulders.

  “Mommy,” she whimpered.

  “They’re called faneps,” I whispered. “Hush dear. Don’t frighten them. We don’t want to make them mad.”

  “Mommy…” She gripped my hair tightly in her fists, and I held her in place with both hands.

  Suddenly the closest faneps spiraled in toward me, as if synchronized with a slow-motion whirlwind. Four of them raised their hands up to me, reaching.

  “Stay away from my daughter!” I growled, the adrenaline in my body preparing me to fight for her life.

  They closed in around me so tightly, I could not move without tripping over the first line and falling into the rest of them.

  “Get back!”

  On my shoulders, Felly let out a yowl of fear.

  One of the faneps scrambled up my skirts and clung to my waist. I tried desperately to shake it off, beating at it with one hand, but then an unexpected sensation of peace passed through me, and I held very still. The fanep gripping my clothes rested its head against my abdomen as if listening to my stomach gurgle.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, trembling.

  The fanep swiveled its head up at me, chittering. Its toothy smile held no menace. Still facing me, it listened again to my belly and closed its eyes in obvious pleasure. “Baby grows inside.”

  I yelped with surprise to hear its gravelly voice.

  “You can speak?” I gaped at the others around me. “You can talk?”

  They clicked and grinned in response, but it communicated no animosity. The fanep at my waist let out a tiny squeak and leapt back down to the ground. In an instant, the swarm of faneps ascended the trunks of the trees and disappeared into distant branches, no doubt leaping and climbing from one tree to the next as they left the area.

  I exhaled heavily, barely stopping myself from stumbling when my knees buckled with relief. “Come, Felly.” I lowered her into an embrace and held her tight against my body. “Let’s get back to camp
.” I didn’t tell anyone what had happened even though my eyes never stopped searching for the faneps’ return.

  Nine days later, Dag confirmed I was expecting our second child.

  30 ~ An Unexpected Home

  The weather turned cold, and gypsies began to migrate to warmer climes or take to space for a quick turn.

  “Should we go into town and petition for a lot?” asked Dag. “We could have a main house with a barrack wing for the family members who come and go more.”

  I gazed at him with my mouth hanging open. “Dag Artemus, are you sure you’re a spacey?”

  He chuckled. “What? I’m used to living in tight quarters. Where’s your community spirit?”

  Bumping against him gently, I grinned. “Do we have enough currency to even think about such a thing?”

  Dag shrugged, his face clouding. “After so long living off the land, we’ve hardly spent anything, but…”

  I took his hands and stood nearly nose-to-nose with him. “Dag, are you sure about this? You’ve been bartering your tremendous skills for food and supplies. If we spend all our currency to build a home, wouldn’t we be stuck here? You can’t very well open a real medical practice in the forest. We’d need to move into a town, but…”

  He chewed his lip. “I want you to be happy, Brita.”

  “And how can I be happy if you’re miserable?”

  “Does it show so much?” His face fell. “I’ve tried not to burden you with my discomforts. I’ll get used to it all.”

  “Dag, I’ve seen you in your element, in the lab on the Arxon, working with patients. This is survival for you, not a happy existence.” I rested my forehead on his chest and stared at the ground. Was it even possible for us to be together and not have one of us hate the environment in which we lived? We’d both shown we could adapt. But adapting wasn’t the same as thriving.

  As if reading my mind, he put on his studious face. “Let’s explore two or three options. It’s time for research, then action.”

  “All right.” My skin prickled with the uncertainty until my mind captured a fleeting thought. “Dag?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have a name for the baby.”

  “But we don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl yet.”

  “It won’t matter,” I said, grinning now at my crazy idea. “Let’s name the baby after the comet we saw when we first met.”

  Dag blinked. “CAZ935?”

  I poked his ribs playfully. “Without the numbers, of course. And we won’t spell it out. Just Caz.”

  “Caz Artemus.”

  “Has a nice flow, doesn’t it?”

  “It’s very unusual.”

  Thinking of the faneps, I nodded. “I have a feeling this baby will be very unusual.”

  OOO

  While Lorant and I considered possible floor plans of an extended-family homestead, Dag went into town to find out how he might expatriate himself to the colony and if that would allow him to purchase a plot of land. Though proud of him for navigating himself so well in stationary society, I couldn’t settle my nervous energy until I heard him coming through the forest.

  Running to greet him, I stopped him outside of camp. “Well? Good news or bad?”

  Dag licked his lips and combed his long bangs back from his face. “How about unexpected news?”

  I bounced on my heels. “But good or bad? Can we legally buy land?”

  “Yes.”

  My heart skipped. “And…?”

  “Or we can move into a luxury suite on the Arxon as Chief Medical Officer.”

  “What?!” I roared with a mixture of surprise and disbelief. “What happened? How is that even possible?”

  He let out a breathy laugh and leaned against a tree. “I used the SWaTT to contact Sid Lew, thinking he could get me some information about what the ramifications of expatriation from a city-station were. I couldn’t get through at first.”

  “At first?” I narrowed my eyes. “What? Are they all right? Is Jana—?”

  “He’s the new stationmaster!”

  I coughed out a laugh of delight for our friends. “That’s incredible! I’m so happy for them!”

  “And he wants us to come home!” His body wriggled in a sort of happy shiver. “He’s the boss now, so he can put me in as Chief Medical Officer, and no one can do a thing about it! He’s been talking up how I saved Jana and Ryon, and public opinion about me is shifting again.”

  He wants us to come home. The words sifted through me and lodged in my heart. Dag saw the Arxon as home, of course. He’d lived there almost his entire life. Could I do the same?

  “Do you think it would be any different?” I was skeptical that new position for him would do anything to elevate me in the residents’ eyes.

  He seemed to think on it for a long minute. “I do. There is such a social weight placed on the hierarchies, and we’re talking about an endorsement from the highest officer of the most important ICS in the fleet. Except for the Granbo Charter Council, it doesn’t get much higher than that.”

  The reverence in his voice reflected his spacey heritage, and I couldn’t begrudge him his reality because it worked for him.

  I just wasn’t convinced my sanity would survive another year in space. “If we go,” I said slowly. “Will you let me go down to a Surface for a quick drop once or twice a year?”

  His eyes widened. “Is that all?” He hugged me tightly, breathing deeply. Happiness seemed to radiate from him at the very thought of returning to the Arxon.

  “You’ll be the top doctor in the System,” I said. “There’ll be no living with you and your celebrity.”

  He snickered. “We’ll both have legitimate invitations to all the dignitary parties you could ever want to attend.”

  “As long as you’re with me to beat off Ambassador Ramon,” I teased.

  “And have you seen the luxury suites? I mean, of course you have. Jana…” He hummed a gleeful but tuneless melody and hooked my arm under his. “What do you say, Mrs. Artemus? Are you ready to put the disparagers in their place?”

  My mind swirled with the possibilities as we walked back into camp. Dag would have wealth and position, neither of which I cared so much about, but it would allow me to travel easily and glean information for the Gypsy Network, something I’d been useless to help for a while. I’d had no way of communicating with Saloma while on Caren, and the mountain hiding place was too far away to visit without a surety that we’d find her.

  But maybe if I were on the Arxon again, she’d find me. That’s where she believed me to be, after all.

  31 ~ Caz

  The night before Caz was born, I dreamed a reprise of my experience in the woods with the faneps, except Felly was not there. Even in waking, I wondered if I’d really heard the creature speak.

  “Baby grows inside.”

  How had it known? And was it significant that the faneps acknowledged the baby more than Felly?

  As I cradled her the first night, coaxing her to latch on to me and feed, I studied her face. She took after my features more, except for her paleness, and something about her spoke of strength, physically and mentally. She’d been more restless in the womb, eager to get out and see the world.

  “Sorry, Caz,” I whispered, kissing her downy dark hair. “Nothing much to see up here on the Arxon. But when you’re older, I’ll take you with me on the quick drops. I’ll show you every place I’ve ever visited, and maybe we’ll explore some new ones together.”

  Captivity in space grew more bearable knowing I would get away, and in the meantime, I enjoyed Caz. Whereas Felly clung to her father’s knee, Caz squeezed my fingers and seemed to tug me around even before she could walk.

  I soon fell into a contented rhythm marked by time with the Lews. Jana and I would talk about whatever caught her interest while Felly and Ryon played. Felly’s gentle nature pleased everyone, and even the grumpiest critics agreed her time on the Surface had not spoiled her at all. Because of her young age, the memories
of Jammu Colony faded quickly, replaced by more pressing thoughts of ice cream and holographic games.

  I attended more and more of the parties, honing my socialite act until Jana exclaimed I was the most popular woman present every time. It was silly, really. I simply smiled and asked questions. If my technique differed from Jana’s it was that I could offer compliments specific to the various locations I’d visited, though always with the guise that I’d merely learned about their world, not experienced it.

  When the parties ended, I invariably returned to our quarters, scooped up Caz, and walked with her to an observation window. If we could see a planet, I’d tell her about it and the ambassadors or governors I’d met. Too young to understand or even ask questions, she contented herself with watching the colored globes spin beneath us.

  I rocked Caz in my arms and wondered what kind of changes would or wouldn’t happen by the time she was old enough to recognize the flaws in our System.

  32 ~ Drops

  The next two years passed in a blur. Residents seemed to have made a conscious decision to accept me as an influential spacey. Petty politics mattered in a closed community, and I could play the rules as well as anyone. It helped that Dag was immensely popular after the birth of Ryon Lew became legend.

  Felly blossomed like the pretty little flower for which she’d been named and found favor in everyone’s eyes as well-mannered and perfectly unextraordinary. Caz, on the other hand, displayed a rambunctious, impatient nature that often mimicked the hidden workings of my own heart. She, as a toddler, could get away with it, whereas I continued to keep my frustrations locked behind a placid expression.

  In all regards, my circulation in the spacey and colonist worlds was successful without drawing enough attention to garner enemies.