Stowaway

by Robert E Colfax

  “Mom, you know we can’t do that to her.” Ron, too, was speaking Ritue. “You’re just irked because she stowed away. I think you’re stressed about our overall situation too, because this isn’t like you. Besides, I really like her. I like her a lot. I was too focused on the job to really pay attention to what was in front of me. I’ve been attracted to her since I first met her. I was a fool, though. I should have invited her to come with us. I’m twenty-seven. You must have known I would meet someone someday. It isn’t easy when I spend most of my life in hyperspace, alone with you. So she’s from a backward world. She’s also really smart. She’ll come up to speed fast.”

  Lexi took a sip of her coffee as she tethered herself next to them. Damn, Ron made good coffee, even in hyperspace. He likes me a lot. I kind of got that impression. I like him a lot, too. We should be able to build a relationship on that. She almost laughed. He has no idea how fast I’ll “come up to speed.” Then she smiled sweetly at Geena and said, “Gat kume.”

  Both Geena and Ron looked shocked. Slightly puzzled too, as though they couldn’t have heard what it sounded like they heard. Geena demanded, switching to English, “What did you say?”

  “Mein tah. That one was in Geesiuan. You speak Geesiuan, don’t you, Geena-darling? Plak !Gorp. Bankin. Wait, no, they don’t do that, do they? Why is it even in their language? Shall I continue? I can switch back to English if you’re having trouble switching mental gears. Screw you, Geena.”

  Geena, too angry, or too shocked, to speak just stared at her. Lexi asked, “Do you guys eat breakfast?”

  Ron, bless him, was fast off the block. “Lexi, what have you done?”

  She smiled. “Yes, you should have invited me to come with you, Ron. You should have invited me on a date months ago. Of course, it’s equally true I should have invited you out. So we’re both idiots. That aside, you’ll find I’m a far cry from useless. But, to answer your question, Ron-darling, I cursed out your mother. In four different languages. I could go on. I think I know eighteen. If you want to count the dialects separately, let’s call it twenty-four. Food? Protein bars? Orange juice? Fetch! Now, please! I’m hungry. Great coffee by the way.”

  Geena, finally able to speak, exclaimed, her voice angry, “You’re lying. That’s not possible. You can’t have learned even one language overnight.”

  Still smiling sweetly while speaking Ritue, Lexi said, “Oh, I’ve been up for hours. Urania taught me. We used your educator. That’s a very interesting piece of technology. Useful, too. I like it.”

  Geena, frowning now, said, “This whole morning is becoming bizarre, so backup. Who’s this Urania?”

  The ship’s soft voice said, “That would be me. Lexi suggested my name last night. I rather like it. I believe I would appreciate being addressed by my new name rather than as ‘ship’ going forward.”

  “You don’t have a name, you’re just the ship!” Geena countered, not angry, but clearly becoming exasperated. “And since when do you have the capacity to appreciate anything?”

  “Urania, please allow me,” Lexi suggested, in flawless Ritue. “Let me clear up a misconception you have, Geena. Urania, originally known as WA32198389-18-32405, is this ship, of course, and damn, that’s a mouthful isn’t it, but she is not ‘just the ship’. Do you understand the difference? She has a personality. She’s bright, she’s caring and she likes people. I don’t understand how none of you ever realized that. Is this getting through?”

  “I’ve never heard of such a thing. You’re implying that she’s sentient. I don't think computer sentience is even possible,” Geena stated, still speaking English.

  “Good. Then you learned something new this morning. Always a good thing. Let’s not argue about it. Make friends with her. Talk to her. You should ask her to do your books. You’re paying way too much in taxes. And dammit, Ron, food! What language do you want me to repeat that in? How many do you speak, anyway?”

  As he stood, hopefully to track down breakfast, he said, “A few. Not as many as Mom, though. She knows eight or nine. Almost everybody knows Ritue, so it hasn’t been a problem.”

  Chapter 11

  Over the Falls

  Ron brought food for all three of them. It was just damn bars again. These were about the size of a thick slice of bread. The dinner bar from last night had been smaller. The breakfast bar actually tasted pretty good. Kind of fruity and nutty. Certainly better than what she ate last night. She noticed that the bars produced no crumbs, probably a good thing in zero-gee. He refilled everybody’s coffee too. Nice man. He should work out. I really should have seduced him months ago when he first showed up. Or, at least invited him on a date. We’d have the Rose by now and not have to go back for it. Spilt milk and all that.

  “You can’t have taken twenty-four language courses in a few hours,” Ron objected. “Those things take three to eight hours each depending on the user’s tolerance for the device. And those times are minimums. And then you have to wait weeks, sometimes months, between each one. Doesn’t your head hurt?”

  “Actually, it does, just a little. The coffee is helping. I’m going to take a hot shower soon. That’ll help too.” She turned the wattage on her smile up several hundred percent as she said, “You’re going to scrub my back. I’ll return the favor.”

  “Love to,” he said. “But, really, that was incredibly dangerous, kiddo. That device wasn’t designed for your brain.”

  She frowned. “Oh, and who’s brain was it designed for, Mr. Highly-Evolved Samue?”

  He shook his head, his expression serious. “Not mine either. That’s why I only know five languages. It’s Wraixain technology.”

  “Oh, yeah, I knew that,” Lexi said, somewhat sheepishly.

  “Well, I’m glad it’s only a headache. You should lay off of it for a few months, or years, or maybe forever. It can burn you out. I’m impressed you could handle all those languages in one sitting. That would take me months, maybe years. We’ have to be very judicious about using it.”

  She shrugged, “Urania was watching out for me. Tell them what you taught me, dear.”

  Urania’s contralto came over the cabin speakers. “She has all of the major languages of the space-threading planets. She took the complete mathematics and physical sciences suites. She knows starship design, both theory and practice. What seems to have made her the happiest, though, is that she is now a fully qualified pilot.”

  The ship paused. “After we decided to give the educator a rest, she started reading through the file system. She was fairly thrilled to learn how to convert the beds to double-width. You’ll have to fabricate a new mattress, but the support structure is modifiable. No one ever asked me about that before. Neither of you guys ever read the owner’s manual either, I suspect. She did this morning.”

  With both of them staring at her more or less slack-jawed, Lexi figured now was as good a time as any to tell them the rest of it. “So, guys, about this business of yours. You’re about to go down the toilet, you know. In addition to reading the owner’s manual, I spent a bit of time going through your accounts. You don’t have enough funds left to cover port fees. You’re going to have to put Urania up as security and take out a loan to get her serviced and then gamble you can successfully resolve another assignment. Pretty grim, if you ask me.”

  “We didn’t ask you. We’ll manage,” Geena grated out, starting to become irritated, “We always have.”

  “Sure you have, Mom, but times, they be a changing.” Lexi cheerfully said. “So I have really wonderful news for you. You’re getting two new partners to help you out. Full partners, let me add.”

  “I don’t think so,” Geena growled at her, even more aggravated now.

  “Oh, but you need us. Where would you be without Urania? Think about that a moment. She takes you where you want to go because she’s a cooperative soul. She doesn’t have to.” She lifted her mug and sucked out some coffee, realizing she was being bitchy but then her head hurt and Geena was starting to irrita
te her. She continued in the same reasonable tone she had been using all along, “And where will you wind up without me?”

  “What do you mean, Lexi?” Ron asked.

  “Hey, lover, about time you spoke up. I’m cutting you in for a full share too. Equal partners, all four of us. I want to be part of your team. I don’t want to stay on Earth, and I don’t want to be left high and dry on Cardin’s Paradise, which is where we’re headed..I know where to find the Rose of Light.” She planned to tell them about the Rose this morning regardless, even before she had any expectations of what the educator could do for her. That session this morning convinced her that she could actually contribute something to this partnership on an ongoing basis.

  With a grimace, Ron asked, “And when did you say your backup would be arriving?”

  Lexi beamed back. “Wow, that was a really good one, sweetie,” she said approvingly. “Tell me, can the Rose sway people’s behavior?”

  Geena, actually looking interested, said, “Maybe. The Ackalonians don’t advertise it but there are stories. Old ones.” Oddly, Lexi thought, she answered in a language called Colleran. Lexi knew it was the predominant language on one of the Accord worlds even though she didn’t know which one.

  She’s testing me. Good for her. She couldn’t tell whether Ron’s frown was because he knew what Geena was doing or because he didn’t know the language, or both. She’d ask them specifically what languages they knew later. Smiling, she asked, “Fishing for a redlin in a fifth language, Geena?” Redlin was the Colleran equivalent of “screw you.” Sticking to Ritue, just in case Ron didn’t know Colleran, she said, “Right. Whether Ackalon advertises it or not, those old stories are true. Urania, now would be a good time to head us back to Earth. Drop us out of hyper and plot us a return course, please. Geena, if you don’t mind, draw up a new partnership contract and I will have my attorney review it. If all is well, we’ll go pluck a Rose. Ron, you’re with me. I want to get that shower while the gravity is on. After that, well, a tour of the ship would be nice.”

  “How much more than swear words did you learn in those languages?” Geena asked.

  Lexi sighed, although she supposed it was a fair question. “Urania’s n-space drive,” she began in Vankovian, “is an ion propulsion system, fueled as much as possible by scavenging hydrogen atoms from surrounding space rather than expending your helium-three fuel. Ejecting a high-speed flare of ionized particles pushes a ship through normal space. Urania’s drive is in good shape, but could be tuned for greater efficiency.”

  Switching to Geesiuan, she continued. “Hyper-space is a separate medium from normal space, although exactly what that means is anyone’s guess. The ship’s hyper-generator creates a field, usually termed a hyper-bubble, around the outside of a ship, essentially popping it out of normal space. The hyper-drive can then be engaged to force the hyper-bubble containing the ship through what is termed hyperspace, without experiencing the time dilation effects of faster-than-light travel through Einsteinian space.”

  Switching back to Ritue, she said, “I am not going to explain the atmospheric drives. On Earth we call them ramjets. I understand the physics and the science behind the technology. All of it. It’s absolutely amazing. Trust me, I learned twenty-four languages and everything else Urania mentioned.”

  The woman just provided a high-level overview of propulsion systems in languages Lexi couldn’t have known yesterday. Geena was feeling fairly bowled over. She felt as though she had no control over what was happening. Not such a bad thing, maybe, although it felt like what she imagined that leisure time activity she had heard about on Earth must feel like where you went over a waterfall sealed in a barrel. Ridiculous hobby, that. She had realized for several years now that she had been happier when Crane, Ron’s father, dead these past twelve years, was their senior partner and primary decision maker. She rose to the occasion after his death, but couldn’t honestly say she liked the responsibility of being in charge. Admittedly, it would have been nice to have figured out that the beds could be made wider. Crane had been almost the size of Ron. Sleeping with him had been difficult. Impossible when she was pregnant.

  Geena always assumed Ron would take over the leadership role someday, but things had been going too poorly the last several years for a change of leadership. Now this sexy primitive, who had somehow bonded with both her son and, incredibly, with her starship, who could apparently effortlessly consume education rubrics at an impossible rate, was strong-arming her way into her family’s business.

  Looking at Ron, who was looking at Lexi, she supposed there was a good chance the woman would be part of the family in the not too distant future anyway. Lexi wasn’t the first girlfriend of Ron’s she had met. She never saw him looking at any of them like he was looking at her. One of the things she had never considered was that he might meet someone on an alien planet, but he was right that she hoped he would meet someone, someday. So maybe this was a good thing. Maybe it was just moving faster than she liked. The woman had only been on her ship for twelve hours. But if she could really put the Rose of Light into their hands… “Your attorney?”

  Lexi could hear the ship smile as Urania responded, “That would be me.”

  Chapter 12

  Lexi Stevens, MD

  Lexi left Ron sleeping when she got up the next morning and went out to chat with Urania. As she strapped herself into the pilot’s chair, Urania said, “Good morning, my friend. We’ll be snug in our barn in just over seven hours.”

  Lexi smiled. “Hey, Urania. Thanks for the update. I need advice on a potential problem; one that belatedly occurred to me last night. Can Ron get me pregnant?”

  “Only if you’re having sex, dear. Didn’t your mother explain how it works to you?”

  “My mother died when I was four, Urania, so, no, she never had the chance.”

  “I’m sorry I said that, Lexi. I didn’t know.”

  Lexi shrugged. “It was twenty years ago. There was no way you could have known, so don’t worry about it. Dad was pretty wonderful, but I learned how it works on the playground in school like everyone else apparently does.”

  “I see,” Urania said. “Seriously though, I only have access to what’s in the medical-bay database. The two of you are probably genetically compatible, but I’ll need a blood sample from you to verify that. Are you thinking about children already? Hmm. I was about to say I can’t help with diapers, but I bet we could program the medical bay to change them. Would you like to run through the biochemistry and genetics suites this morning?”

  “Sure. Sounds like a plan. I am thinking about children, but not because I’m ready to have one. Rather because I’d prefer not too.” She shrugged. “Maybe in a few years. The reason I’m asking is because I currently take artificial hormones to prevent me from getting pregnant. If that’s a possibility with Ron, we’re going to need to figure something out. I’ve only got enough to last about another six weeks. We can’t keep going back to Earth to get my prescription filled. For one thing, they would have issues when I gave them my current address. If we can fit it in, let’s run a medical rubric for me too. Who knows? I might be able to make my own.”

  Barely two hours later, seated in the front seat again, while scanning through the Samue’s medical records, Lexi mused out loud, “Who would have thought we would be cross-fertile.”

  Urania laughed. “You obviously did. He is human, Lexi. You know that. He just happens to have been born on another planet. As far as I can tell, the only difference is that his people, on average, tend to run taller and leaner than Earth humans.”

  “I am very curious about that, but I’ve got other things on my mind at the moment. Hundreds of other things, actually. They’re all swirling around in there, trying to seduce me, yelling, ‘Pick me.’ Prioritizing is keeping me busy.”

  She paused. “Your people’s medical knowledge is, well, rather than say something deprecating, let’s go with interesting,” Lexi said. “This stuff Geena takes that stops agi
ng, I think it may be time to start Ron on something like it. The earlier you start with it, the more effective it is, although there are serious problems with the formulation she’s taking. I’ll need it too, but I also want to discuss some modifications with you now that I know what it is and how it works.”

  Lexi paused. “I don’t know for sure if Geena and I are going to hit it off, but even so, it’s disturbing. Geena may look my age, but inside she’s still fifty-five with unusually brittle bones, partially due to these drugs, but largely just the loss of calcium from spending so much of her life in a zero-gee environment. That much is clear from her medical scans. No one should be spending as much of her life as she has without gravity. I’m surprised Ron isn’t brittle, too. The meds that are supposed to be helping with the brittleness are stressing her liver. Not good and not necessary. I think I can fix her meds. At the moment, that’s the leading contender in the prioritization contest. I don’t understand why no one has tweaked them before.”

  “Honey,” Urania said. “No one has ever absorbed as much education as you have. In my admittedly limited experience, no one else is able to start applying rubric-derived knowledge until it has time to gel. That can take months. Repeat sessions are often necessary. You’re supposed to focus your use of it on a field you’re interested in, be it languages, hyperspace theory, chemistry or whatever. Damn it girl, you’re interested in everything and seem to have the mental capacity of a black hole. That might not be a good metaphor. I meant it in a good way.”