Darkship Thieves

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  With his arms—both—wrapped tight around me, his body molded to mine, his mouth attacking mine with intent and malice, I felt like I was surrounded by Kit. I smelled the long-distance ship smell, but also the smell I'd come to associate with Kit—clean male with a hint of soap, but very male, warm and vaguely musky. I think I moaned, though I refuse to admit it. It might have been him for all I know. After all, our mouths were joined. Who knew who made what sound?

  Marry me, Thena, please.

  I tried to sigh and would have managed it, had he left me enough air space. If he intended on kissing me like this a lot, I was going to need a nose mask and oxygen tanks in the future. Yes, I said, reluctantly. I think I must.

  It was perfectly clear to me that the poor man had become disturbed in his reason, and in those conditions it would be cruel and unfair to send him to space alone, much less when space had become so dangerous. I must marry him, just to make sure he stayed safe. It was the least I could do, since I was fairly sure I'd started him on this road by trying to garrotte him and reducing his supply of oxygen to the brain.

  Yes, yes, you must, he said. It gets very boring in the Cathouse, without anyone to kick me.

  Poor man. Madder than a broomer hopped up on oblivium.

  Thirty-Four

  We walked back to the flyer, hand in hand. It seemed to take a long time, possibly because Kit felt the need to kiss me now and then. He said he had to check on my breath rate, because of the drugs to emerge from the hypnotics, but how you checked on someone's breath by stopping it was beyond me. Not that I was complaining. His kissing seemed to stop my brain for long periods of time, too. Which is the only reason I can give for why it took me so long to wonder if it was such a good idea to marry him.

  Oh, don't get me wrong. It was a good idea for me to marry Kit. In this world, where I seemed likely to be confined for a long time if not forever, Kit was someone. He had a profession that paid very well. His family was warm and welcomed me. And . . . well, I wanted him.

  The problem is that I did love Kit. At least, I thought I loved Kit. It was very hard to say for sure, because I had never even imagined I loved anyone before. Simon was a friend. The other half-dozen acquaintances and friendly strangers who had been my sometime lovers—including a very nice harvester in Circum, who had to be twice my age but who had been very sweet and kind—were just that: friends, acquaintances, gentle strangers. I'd never thought myself in love, not love like the poets talked about.

  I'd come to the conclusion that all the poets either lied or got hold of something a lot more potent than oblivium, and that all this nonsense they went on about was just that. Nonsense. Stuff out of their minds. I was fully with Shakespeare, in what I assumed was one of his more candid moments, when he'd said that men had died and the worms had eaten them, but not for love.

  Then there was Kit, and I found myself doing stupid things, like wanting to touch his violin while I slept. Thinking of him all the time. Feeling a bit lost and out of sorts when he wasn't with me. And if that wasn't love, I didn't know what else it was—and I hoped it was bacteria, so they could cure it.

  But the worst symptom of it was that I wanted Kit to be happy more than I wanted me to be happy. Which is why it hadn't mattered so much that I had declared my feelings in front of all of Eden. I was upset that Kit had heard it, because he would feel obliged. And now, after walking silently for a while, I started wondering if that was why he was doing this. Because he wanted to spare me embarrassment.

  I think I blurted it out, but I don't know if it was mind or voice. The result was a shout of laughter and my finding myself, again, suddenly captive in his arms and thoroughly kissed.

  "No, but is that why?" I asked, as I came up for air.

  "Thena!" He chuckled. "I'm not a philanthropist. I'm not a bad person, but I don't tend to put myself out. Ask my parents. I wouldn't endure a day's discomfort—much less a mismatched marriage—to save you embarrassment if I didn't love you."

  "Oh, but . . . but marrying me . . . Look, I'm no bargain. I have hell's own temper. And I don't get music, not the way you get music. And I have a weird sense of humor. And—"

  "And I don't vibro my clothes," he said, with a quirk to his lips. "What is your point? Were you under the impression that only angels could marry?"

  "No . . ." We walked a bit more, and then I thought of something else. I didn't know if it was important here. It was damned important on Earth and at my level in society, though I'd never thought about it much, because . . . well . . . anyone marrying me, wouldn't be marrying me. He'd be marrying Daddy's inheritance and my own little flaw wouldn't disturb him much. But I'd never thought I'd marry a man I loved. I took a deep breath. "You should know," I said, "that there have been . . . others. Not many. I mean, I don't have to take my shoes off to count them, but—"

  He actually stopped and looked at me with such an odd expression that I wondered if I'd been speaking Glaish or if my brain was so scrambled I'd been making senseless sounds. He frowned. "Woman, are you trying to tell me you're not a virgin?"

  I swallowed. "Ye- Yes."

  "Oh, well, then," he said. "Of course you can't be my wife, then. We might be able to squeeze you in as second concubine, at half pay, if you promise to behave the rest of your life and wear a chastity belt while away from me."

  If it weren't for the quirk of his lips and the unholy spark in his eyes, I think I would have run away. As was, though, I slapped him. Or I tried to slap him. An open-hand slap across the face was all I intended. Practically a caress. But of course it never landed. His hand caught my wrist halfway and he pulled me to him and kissed me again. "You are such a strange creature," he said when he was done scrambling my brain some more. "It will shock you to know I am not a virgin, either."

  "You were married," I said with considerable annoyance.

  "Ah, so. Well, I wasn't a virgin when I married, either, and she was not my only lover. Are we really going to swap lists of everyone we've ever been with? I'd rather presume it's all in the past and we love each other now?"

  "Yes," I said. I took a deep breath. "Please. It wasn't . . . I've never loved anyone before."

  I half expected him to laugh at that, but he smiled. "Even that," he said, "is more than I require and far more than I ever expected."

  We'd somehow reached the outside of the flyer, and he was handing me in. He climbed in on his side. But he didn't lean forward to put his finger in the genlock. Instead, he frowned intently at the dashboard.

  "Uh . . . what . . . what are your plans for your wedding? I mean . . . how did you ever imagine it being?"

  I blinked. This seemed like the oddest of times to plan the wedding. Oh, sure, I supposed we had become officially engaged. But did we need to do a bridesmaid count right now? "Big, formal, uncomfortable," I said. "I always assumed too that Daddy Dearest would need to have me either doped, tied up or under some sort of blackmail, to get me to agree to marry whoever the bright boy was he had found."

  He looked at me and, unaccountably, looked terribly relieved. "So . . . so you don't have dreams about a specific dress, or . . . or . . . specific music or . . . roses or all that."

  "Roses would be nice . . ." I said. "But I don't have any specific dreams about my wedding, no. Or my marriage. You see, I never thought I would marry—not really. I thought eventually Daddy Dearest would sell me to the highest bidder, but that's not the same."

  He nodded.

  "I suppose we can do whatever you and your family want," I said. "I don't care. It is the after the wedding I'm interested in."

  He nodded again, then took a deep, loud breath. "I had a big wedding once, with a Gaian priestess and fertility rites and . . . a banquet and dances and things . . ." He frowned at me. "Would you mind terribly if we don't echo it?"

  I shook my head. As long as I still got him, we could just shout it from the rooftops and be done with it. It was all the same to me.

  "You're not just saying it to . . ."

  "
No," I said. "We'll do what you want."

  And he smiled, and his eyes sparkled and he said, "You were absolutely right, Patrician Sinistra. I will definitely do better with a compliant wife."

  At which point I'd have kicked him, but he was starting the flyer and it would have been difficult.

  We flew back to the center, stopped by a florist and bought me a half-dozen white roses. And then we'd flitted back to the judicial building.

  Weddings were performed at a machine, mostly because marriage was a fairly standard contract, and the computer simply the means of performing it. Kit touched the sensa screen without asking me my preferences, though I was sure he knew I'd stop him if I disagreed with anything.

  He picked Mutual Obligation—as opposed to one obeying the other, Common Property, Indefinite Duration and Official Mediation Required Before Divorce Granted. All of which were good because when he woke up tomorrow morning and he realized what he had done, I wanted it to be difficult for him to run screaming into the night without thinking it over. And then we'd pressed our thumbs to the gen-sensor in the computer, and we were done.

  We took a very brief moment, after that, for him to send notifications of name change to the Center and to all his creditors, as well as to insert a notice of our contract into the midday and evening news.

  I was ambivalent about the name. "You don't have to change it," I said.

  But he'd given me a serious glance and said, "I want to. Partly because everyone expects it and it takes too much effort to correct people over and over again. And partly because . . . I want to change it."

  I didn't ask anymore.

  And then the exasperating man insisted on taking me to eat at a very small restaurant where the tables seemed to have been booked months in advance but where a mention of "Doctor Bartolomeu's table" got us—after a quick call to the doctor—seated in a quiet corner and assiduously attended to.

  By the time we got home, his family had seen the news and moved my belongings to Kit's room.

  There was also a small, gold-wrapped box, which Kit's mother said had been delivered by a messenger from Doc Bartolomeu.

  We opened it, not without trepidation. I think Kit half expected a challenge to a duel. Instead, inside there were two gold rings, matching, broad and flat, engraved with bas-relief roses. It looked like medieval work, though of course it couldn't be. Inside, each was engraved with Je Reviens and a note saying that Doc Bartolomeu had had them made for us and that he hoped my ring fit, as he had it made from his sight estimation of my size. He didn't say when he had them made and I had a feeling I didn't want to ask.

  On Earth, wedding rings had long since been abandoned, though women often had a ring tattooed on their finger. But in Eden they were customary, even if, like everything else, they weren't enforced.

  They fit us perfectly.

  Thirty-Five

  We didn't linger on in Eden. Kit had an invitation to play at the music center, but even that couldn't hold him. He told them he'd play when we came back. He also bought what he called a good, serviceable violin to play in the Cathouse. His father's violin had been built by his father and aged being played by him, and it was not something that Kit would risk to space travel.

  Part of the reason for leaving was the ever-increasing roll of casualties. The Earthers—how quickly one got used to thinking of them that way!—must be getting more efficient at darkship hunting. I told myself it had nothing to do with me, they'd just decided to get serious about catching the thieves.

  There was the chance, perhaps, that they'd become this interested because my father's goons had seen Kit in that bay. I didn't know what Kit had done to them. His most complete explanation had been, "Held them at bay with a burner. Grabbed you. Got back to the Cathouse."

  But even if they'd seen, it was more likely in the rush of the moment, in the darkened bay, they'd think that they'd imagined the cat eyes and the fast movements. It wasn't likely they'd understand it was one of the darkship thieves. Father, maybe, if he was alive, but more likely Good Man Navre, my friend Gil's father, had decided he needed to be seen doing something about the darkship thieves.

  I told Kit that many times, when I woke up in the night catching stray bits of guilt from his mind. But other than that and his grave expression when the lists of casualties came in, marriage suited us. I'm not going to recommend it to everyone as a universal panacea, and in fact I'd had doubts that someone with my own, negotiated sanity, could live that closely with another human being in peace, much less happily.

  But we were happy. I liked waking up next to him, or often on him, as he didn't seem to mind—given my mass—if I curled up half on top of him, with my head on his chest. The rest were almost the same things we'd done before, only now we did them together. If I was tinkering with some piece of machinery, trying to figure out how it worked, he was reading or practicing violin nearby. If we went to the music center, we held each other's hands.

  I suspect marriage made us less sociable, rather than more. We'd no need of others while we had each other.

  I'd quit my job at the Center and Kit and Kath had more or less bullied the people at the Energy Board into giving me provisional nav certification. They kept saying that I couldn't be a nav, but Kit insisted he was taking me aboard his rented spaceship and I would work as his nav, so they might as well certify me.

  The examination was easy enough, testing all the areas in which I already knew I excelled—mechanical ability, navigation and my mind link to Kit. That one was a little strange, as it seemed to stretch farther than any other cat/nav link. I could hear him when he was at home and I in the center, miles away. I suspected it was farther than that. They might have too, but they didn't test it. After all, better than needed was not a problem.

  And then a week after that, a month and a half after our marriage, we bid our farewells to friends and family and got ready to leave in the Cathouse. Due to my provisional status, we were still not allowed to rent a better ship—not the least because they'd lost so many ships and so many were in need of repair, that finding another ship would have been a problem.

  Kit's family had gone back with us to the center, to say goodbye. The women hadn't yet decided to go back to space and everyone was a little tearful and a little worried. The hugs lasted a little longer, and I—who didn't remember being hugged by anyone but Kit, since my mother's death—was bewildered at finding myself passed down a line of hugging relatives, not only the Denovos by birth, but Denovos by marriage. I felt my eyes unaccountably moist as I stepped back to hold Kit's hand.

  And Doc Bartolomeu came up, pushing through the family group. He pulled Kit into what would be a bear hug if Doc Bartolomeu were of normal height, and not a small, stooped little man. At best it was a racoon hug. Or, given the fierceness of it, perhaps a wolverine's.

  He let go of Kit very quickly, then hugged me with the same fierce fervor. Stepping back, he said, "You know you shouldn't go to the powertrees. Not just now."

  "We'll be fine," Kit said. "I was fine before and I was alone."

  But the doctor sighed and recommended that I not do anything stupid and Kit not be a hero. We assured him that we had no intention of doing either of those. All we wanted was a quick and successful trip. At the price powerpods were now, it would put a considerable dent in our debt, and besides we wanted to be allowed to rent one of the bigger and newer ships.

  As I've said before, we always get what we don't want.

  The trip out was uneventful. Kit had brought his violin and treated me, late into the night, to renditions of the Passacaglia from the Rosary Sonata, or to Bach's Violin Concerto number one. I liked it. I might not understand the music as music, but when Kit played, his feelings invaded my consciousness. It was a lot like being in mind contact with him, if less clear. And if Kit spent any time at all in the virtus, I wasn't aware of it and that was doubtful, as we were more or less always together barring the fresher, and that only because it was too small to fit both of us—in fact, I
was still not sure how it fit him.

  Our approach to the powertrees was equally uneventful. At first we were both very tense, having timed it perfectly to go in while the powertrees were on the night side of the Earth. One of the great mysteries was why the powertrees were pegged to orbit the Earth at a latitude and speed that meant they were in darkness for two six-hour periods for each of Earth's days. It seemed like a strange idea to have solar collectors in the dark for half the day. But it was assumed there had been a good, sound reason. Some theories said it was to allow the trunks to grow, so they could support new powerpods. The others said that it kept the growth of powerpods more even. And many others forwarded other reasons.

  The pet explanation, in Eden, was that it was done to allow the darkships to move among them undetected. I'd thought this was crazy when I'd first heard it, but after hearing Jarl's story, I thought perhaps not. Oh, he wouldn't know of Eden, as it would exist, but he might very well have anticipated a time when his kind would need to steal powerpods.

  We'd waited, tempering our approach to make it at night—found a cluster of powerpods where I expected it to be based on the maps given by a returning navigator, from which I'd extrapolated three months' growth.

  I was in the nav's cabin, looking at my screens—which were considerably better for my eyes than Kit's screens were—calculating the changes in the computers there which worked only with raw numbers and therefore couldn't give anything away, and trying to figure out where the next cluster was because this cluster had only five pods, and our ship could take ten. Eden, in power-saving brownouts as it was, could use as many as we could bring.

  At the same time, by sight and voice, I was directing Kit—giving him a second pair of eyes on his collecting work.

  To the left a smidgen, Kitty Cat.

  Princess, his amused voice came over the mind link. Have I mentioned what impresses me most about you is the depth and breadth of your precise scientific vocabulary? Smidgen?