Written in Light

by Jeff Young

  Looking up at him with a grin, Keeper said, “I’m glad you feel like getting off your arse. I wasn’t up for leaving you with the Circle. We’ll close her down. Finish up here or hell, just let it—it’ll be here when we get back.”

  After expending an unbelievable number of credits in bribery and some clever scoundrelry that left Zen’s head spinning, Keeper and Zen hopped a freighter and headed back to the Jovian sync orbit that held the Usurer’s Circle. Somehow the devil convinced the magnate (the grounder woman’s father) that he was not only a respectable businessman himself but that the incident was mutually the fault of both Keeper and the daughter, Chelsea. The entirely regrettable ensuing pregnancy certainly resulting from some finagling about on her fiancé’s part because prolonged exposure to the diffused Jovian core radiation caused permanent sterility.

  “Did you at least have the decency to use a different line on your conquest?” Zen asked disgustedly.

  Keeper furrowed his brow as if thinking and then replied lightly, “Of course not. You’ll see that the consistency will hold up.”

  “Gentlemen, I hate to interrupt,” the freighter captain called out. “But you have a problem here.” Zen and Keeper hurried over to peer at his monitor, cursing at the data before them.

  Usurer’s Circle had swung way out of Jovsync, in fact, too far out. As they stared at the projected orbit with its inevitable intersection point ending in Jupiter, the freighter captain began a series of quick calculations and announced suddenly that some fool must have pushed the Circle.

  “Can you guess when?” Zen asked, already dreading the answer.

  “Probably about the same damn time you were heading out to Ganymede. Her velocity is only increasing as she infalls. You could do that, if you maybe—” started the captain, and Keeper promptly interrupted.

  “Jumped your drive right over top of the mass. Her gods-bedamned fiancé used his transtellar ship to send the Circle into Jupiter’s well!” Keeper cried out bitterly, falling heavily into a chair.

  “I’m surprised that rock is holding up. It’s inside the tidal effect range,” noted the captain, his fingers flying over the console again.

  “Save your computer power for calculating the velocity curve necessary to lift the Circle out of the well. She’s saturated with fields to maintain her integrity. She’s really just a number of containment fields where the scoop miners drop off their alcho combinations from the surface and some grav pits, the actual area of the bar itself, and hollowed-out rock,” Zen stated and glared at the scrolling figures on the screen and the resultant curves. He snarled and barked at Keeper, “We’ve got a big-time problem. The Circle’s got too much velocity now. Even with the Ashe sisters’ ships and anyone else we can scrape up, it’s too late to deflect her.”

  Keeper stared at the screen numbly, his life’s work heading inevitably toward Jupiter. “Can we boost her out to a longer spiral?” he asked tentatively.

  “And hope for help later?” Zen mused, running the figures in his head, a hand wearily running through his short black hair.

  “No,” Keeper said slowly, “to give her a proper send-off. I think fate’s telling me to turn in my towel. It’s time to move on.” He got up from the chair and wandered off, distracted.

  Turning to the captain, Zen asked, “Do you mind if I borrow your transmitter? I’ve got a desperate call to make to Echo and Malachite and about several hundred invitations to send.”

  “As long as I’m invited,” the freighter captain replied, “I’ll get out in an Environ suit and push that bedamned rock into a higher spiral by myself.”

  Zen clapped him on the arm, forcing a smile. He made the transmissions as quickly as possible to get back to Keeper before he indulged in some severe alcohol poisoning in advance of the ‘celebration.’

  ~*~

  “Don’t tangent off on me now, Zen,” Keeper said, looking back at them as he keyed open the office, bringing Zen out of his reverie and back to the present. Blonde Chelsea stumbled in front of Zen and then righted herself, still unused to the Circle’s null-gee. The annoying Cherenkov blue of her insulsuit left trails in his vision. Zen stopped himself; he couldn’t blame all of this on her even if he tried. Christo, just let us all get out of here alive and whole. Once again, he thought briefly of being safe in the huge field-insulated scoop of Malachite’s ship and shook his head. He’d never shirked the risks of running with Keeper, and he wouldn’t now.

  Keeper pointed at two spots of red on the infrared scan where apparently revelers passed out. Echo let Malachite know, and soon other telltales arrived to carry off the inebriated.

  “We’re clear,” Keeper announced solemnly as he set the automatic sequence to vent the rest of the alcho and oxy in a controlled burst that would push the asteroid into a deeper destructive spiral. Quietly, Keeper and Zen surveyed the office one last time. “Anything you want, ya know as, well, a memento of sorts?” Keeper asked hesitantly.

  Zen considered quietly and then scooped an inevitable dust bunny off the floor and replied, “Nah, the memories I think are enough. Maybe I’ll take one of these damned things, though. It’s funny, but after a while, I might actually miss them.”

  Echo started to protest about him bringing the thing aboard her clean ship, and Keeper interrupted with a glare as he turned toward the door. Chelsea bounced recklessly off ahead of all of them as they filed through the narrow corridor down to the dock.

  Five hours later, Zen pulled himself away from Echo’s attentions long enough to find Keeper. Sitting in front of an arm-span wide port, Keeper played with the remote that would deactivate the stabilizer fields inside the Usurer’s Circle. Already, they were well inside the veil of Jupiter’s atmosphere. Visibility flickered, limited, and composed mostly of a psychedelic nightmare of fiery gas clouds. The Circle, just barely visible, wavered ahead of them. Keeper’s fingers pattered down in a childish dance around the button, and he looked up at Zen’s entrance with a ragged smile. “Did I ever tell you why I called her the Usurer’s Circle?” he asked.

  Zen clipped his line to a rail and drifted in midair, then answered, “Yes, if I remember correctly, that’s one of the circles in Dante’s Hell where all of the bankers end up. Am I right?”

  “As always,” Keeper chuckled and added, “I’m just imagining all of those blood-sucking lenders out there on the Circle and me here with the switch to really send them all to hell. There’s actually something amusing I never told you, though—”

  The entire ship jolted about them, and their line breaks sang, dissipating the shock.

  “Damn,” Keeper swore, rushing down the corridor hand over hand to the cabin where he’d left Chelsea sleeping off the excitement.

  Zen keyed an incom plate and shouted, “What in all circles of hell is going on, Echo?”

  “Hold onto your darling, tight arse, Zen m’dear—you too Keeper and Chelsea—some arsehole’s dropping heavy slugs at us.”

  Zen started up to the bridge and heard Keeper crowd in behind him. His mind raced. Who could be in the upper Jovian atmosphere dropping neutronium missiles at them? As he heard Chelsea’s quavering voice on the incom, he suddenly realized that you could take a transtellar ship into the fringes of the Jovian atmosphere. It had to be Chelsea’s ex-fiancé.

  “Guess someone’s a little pissed about the travel arrangements I booked,” Keeper quipped as he and Zen strapped into the crash couches to the left of Echo’s master seat. Zen shot him a quizzical look as Echo suddenly burst into laughter, whipping the ship’s guide around in a steep dodging arc.

  “Gods almighty,” Echo gasped out between laughs, “the lugs on this man. Don’t you see yet, Zen? This colossal arsehole booked his and Chelsea’s passage on her ex’s transhopper!”

  Zen couldn’t decide if he felt more pissed at the incredible stupidity of the act or the fact that Keeper hadn’t told him about his plans. Another sudden dodge caused the rebound fiber of his line break to sing as it expanded to absorb the shock.


  “How long until he gets an accurate bead on us?” Zen asked, gritting his teeth. Today was not the day he planned on dying. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Keeper change his grip on something, and he suddenly realized his intention. “Hard Port, full thrust,” he cried out as he saw Keeper’s hand depress the switch to set loose the fields on the Circle. Fortunately, Echo didn’t question, and the ship slammed them all hard into the chair webbings as the Circle receded off their bow.

  “Whyn’ all hells did you do that? “ Keeper cried, toggling the viewer to a magnified view of the now-imploding asteroid. “Well, there she goes,” he added morosely.

  “Tracking two more heavy slugs incoming,” Echo commented, her fingers doing a dervish dance over the keys.

  Zen leaned forward, a perplexed look on his face. “Can you key the view in tighter around the remains of the Circle, Keeper?”

  The fragmenting debris whirled in the screen, and Zen stabbed a finger at strange bright spikes that appeared to be flying out of the Circle’s remains. Keeper tightened the view. Zen gasped when he saw hundreds of dust bunnies flying out into the atmosphere. As each left the external pressure and atmosphere, an odd change overtook them. They imploded into strange, elongated silver spikes that rapidly shot up away from the debris. Keeper tracked them as they grew wings and whip-like tails and began gliding along in a flock. Everyone fell silent at the wonder of it. Who would’ve guessed the damn dust bunnies were the spores for a non-organic life form?

  Suddenly, the dull black bulk of the transtellar ship cut through the upward flowing stream. Echo cried out in horror, “Hold on, fer god almighty’s sake. The idiot’s going to run through the flock,” as she dipped the ship, scoop field-first at the other vessel, engaging the field on full to block any debris. Moments after several of the aliens flew into the open bay of the other ship, the resulting explosion washed over the front of the field and shoved the scoop ship careening off into the atmosphere.

  Selectively blanked, the screen slowly came back on tracking the rapidly receding wreckage of the transtellar ship and the Circle.

  Zen said dully, “Must’ve hit something sensitive.”

  “Yeah, the bay they were off-loading the neutronium from,” Echo added, shaking her head to try to clear it.

  Keeper stared at the screen dully and finally, under Zen’s prodding elbow, remarked, “Guess I’m gonna have to make new travel reservations.”

  ~*~

  In the second-rate grounder bar on Ganymede, Keeper pulled Zen aside after an uncountable number of toasts to his prosperity. “Here, this is yours,” he said, pushing a disk voucher at him. Zen stared at the amount displayed on the tiny screen and laughed, pushing it back to Keeper.

  “No offense intended. I always knew you ran Usurer’s Circle at a profit maximum and had it all paid off. I don’t need this, you do,” Zen said earnestly. “Look, remember the dust bunny I saved? I already turned a sharp profit on that as a specimen.”

  “Fine. Come on, the girls are waiting.” With that, he grabbed Zen’s bicep and pulled him toward the table.

  “Did I hear the magic words dust bunnies? Quite a job our Zen did there,” interjected Echo, past a somewhat dejected-looking Malachite. “He also cut quite a sweet deal with my dear sister. He cleaned up all those pesky dust bunnies that tagged along with everybody in her scoop ship. Didn’t even charge her too extravagantly from what I understand. “

  “To make a long story short,” Zen concluded, “I sold those at a profit that has me considering having another asteroid towed in so I can set up business where yours used to be. “

  “That’s my profit-motivated man,” Echo said, reaching under the table and causing Zen to suddenly jump in Malachite’s direction, who leaned into him with a vicious smile.

  “I’d keep a good tight grip on him, sister. He seems quite comely to me also,” she quipped, her green eyes flashing.

  “Now there’s a position I can envy, Zen,” Keeper chuckled and jumped himself as Chelsea’s elbow caught him in the kidney.

  “Okay, okay, one last toast before this dissolves into total hedonism,” Zen said, standing and raising his glass.

  “To the finest barkeep in the system, Keeper Nader, his gorgeous sidekick the erstwhile grounder, Chelsea, and their eminent offspring,” —which earned him two kicks in the shin, from two shapely legs, on either side—“who shall henceforth be numbered among the sky fallers. Best of luck in his new venture among the Epsilon Eridani Rocks. Cheers!” Zen cried out, and on completion, tossed off his entire glass.

  Keeper slammed his empty glass down on the tabletop and cried out, “I’m dry again, where’s the gods-bedamned bartender in this place, anyway?” with a broad grin.

  Two redheads leaned together, and Echo could just be overheard to say, “Hear what he’s planning on calling the new bar?” When Malachite shook her head, Echo continued, “The Adulterer’s Circle.”

  Chelsea looked up at this and, scowling, considered the rest of her unfinished drink, which she turned to empty in Keeper’s lap. A second after Keeper’s shocked gasp, their laughter filled the small bar and went on for some time.

  Aptitude

  Blame it all on Shy Hagen, Cameron thought. He shook his head, running a hand through his blond brush-cut before starting down the hall again. He remembered reading the news links about how a growing manufacturing company, JANs Corp., had found Shy. She seemed an ordinary little girl who’d turned the R&D plastics division upside down during a company field trip. So, the corporate heads at his company rethought their visitation policies, desperate to find the next Einstein at a young and impressionable age. Shy became a well-looked-after wunderkind on her way to the fast track once she graduated from high school. In the meantime, without advertising it, companies began their own searches.

  As head of security, the nursemaiding aspect of his job gave Cameron endless headaches. Sure, the kids were bright, intelligent, curious, or just downright disruptive and obnoxious, but any one of them could spell the future for MNOS Ltd. When the executives up on the Balcony decreed the new schedule of invitations/invasions, Cameron could only plan ahead and try to make the best of it. As he moved along, occasionally glancing downward to check for text updates that appeared in the lower edges of his glasses, Cameron ran his tongue over his teeth. A nervous habit, but it kept him from thinking about missing a cigarette. Passing by a cross hallway, a shadow caught his attention, one too small to be cast by an adult.

  The boy was just another kid dressed in one of those slick jackets that the whole field-trip group wore. Of course, he didn’t belong near the hallway leading to some of the more sensitive areas of MNOS. The kid should be with the rest of the tour group starting to play the VR games specially designed to search for nascent talent. Sometimes, the children occasionally managed to drift away from the group. To a point, it wasn’t necessarily discouraged because just such a situation led to Shy’s discovery. An intelligent, inquisitive child might be bored with the basic tour, and everyone needed to keep an eye on them. Cameron kept an eye on them for other reasons.

  “Hey, pal, the group’s back this way. Did you miss a turn?” Cameron crouched down slightly to bring himself closer to the boy’s frame of reference but didn’t go down on one knee, which could be interpreted as condescending. He looked the child squarely in the eye and smiled in a reassuring fashion. He briefly considered the kid’s jacket. The material had an oily sheen. Silver with a slight overlay of some reddish and bluish material that shifted as the light caught it. The effect reminded him of something, but he couldn’t place what that was right away. He tipped his head forward, meeting the child’s eyes again. Maybe seven or eight years old, the kid wore the same black, fringed bowl cut as more than half the boys. No real identifying marks. The child just looked bored. Fine, just a lost sheep, get him back to the flock, and all would be fine.

  Cameron reached out to put a hand on the kid’s shoulder to swing him around back toward the rest of the tour. The fabric
felt funny, and then he recognized it. Made of an optical fabric, the jacket carried images on its surface like a television screen. In fact, he remembered schools of fish swimming on all their jackets when the group had come in. The Customer Relations Representative had the children turn off the jackets before starting the tour because they were too distracting. But the material under his hand reacted to his touch, changing color. At some level, the jacket was still on. The coloration reminded him of a reflector but in reverse. A nasty suspicion formed in his mind.

  Designed to collect light and store that information maybe, he thought. Then the real revelation hit home. No wonder it looked familiar—light sail material. They weren’t too far from the materials lab. Most kids were only mildly interested in the section where MNOS developed a film for solar sails. Showing them the optics area tended to fascinate them more.

  The boy sensed his hesitation and started to step back. Cameron grabbed a fistful of the jacket as the kid turned to run. The runaway struggled for a moment, and the jacket snapped him back into Cameron’s hands. Then things went all to hell. For a second, out of the corner of his eye, Cameron saw a mermaid. It flowed across the back of the jacket, winked directly at him, and then the side of the jacket facing Cameron flashed with blinding white light.

  Suddenly, he hit the floor, the pain so intense. The only thought he could form, at least I still have the jacket. Luckily, he hadn’t been looking directly at the jacket. Subvocalizing as he struggled to his feet, he called the security center to alert the team. The bead mic at his throat recorded the vibrations, interpreted them, and displayed the relevant text on every security officer’s glasses display. He warned them about what happened with the jacket and set the alert.

  What are we dealing with? he wondered. Cameron paged Loris, the security officer with the group, asking where the children had been for their first tour of the day. She hesitated a moment and replied.