by Robert Culp
I busy myself with my own checks. I’m not looking at her, but it isn’t because I’m ignoring her. “I know. And I know you’re a great pilot. No harm, no foul. If it matters, I don’t think she tried to embarrass either of us. She hasn’t quite figured out that she need not say everything that comes into her head. She really is a sweet kid, though.”
Shawna switches us back to the All setting, “Launch in five…four…three…two… one…cutter is away.”
Gwen’s face is practically glued to the viewport for the uneventful flight to the surface. I know she is categorically blind, but she certainly doesn’t act it. As Shawna sets the launch down on a section of the coast where there are no people for about three hundred meters, the locals stop fishing and playing to watch the cutter descend.
Sherri remarks, “So far, so good. No one went screaming into the jungle. Not what I expected.” Gwen explains why. “They are not afraid. They are protected by Kretor.”
That’s ominous. “Who’s Kretor?” I ask.
“A pagan god worshipped by many primitive peoples. He goes by many names. I can feel his presence, but he is many miles away.”
That sounds really ominous.
Once Jonesy and Meeka are in position, Shawna opens the hatch, and the three of us step out onto the beach all smiles and waves.
Half of the locals go back to their regular activities. Why? Does this happen often? The other half continues to stand and watch our moves. Soon a young boy cautiously approaches with a wooden bucket full of pan fish. Each is about the size of an adult’s hand. As Meeka takes a knee to begin conversation, I see in her hand a translator unit that is certain to have been programmed from Viggo’s.
Over the Com I ask, “Gwen, are you sensing anything from the locals?”
“They are happy fisher-people. They are wondering if we are visiting gods.”
I practice my ventriloquism on Jonesy: I speak without breaking my smile. “Try not to be obvious about it, but keep an eye on the locals and the boy talking to Meeka.” He nods almost imperceptibly.
Meeka stands after a few minutes. “Well, they’re clearly not hostile. Simple fishermen, just like Gwen said. He says that anyone can go to the ‘sky building’ anytime they want, but no one has been there in a long time. I made sure he meant the observatory, and I have no idea how long ‘a long time’ is.”
I call the rest of the team out of the cutter. “Break out the Gemvee. Gwen, Meeka, Jonesy, and I are going to the observatory. Shawna, stay with the cutter. If you want to put on your bikini, wear both pieces please—at the same time. And try not to start too big a fertility religion. Thankyousomuch. Individual weapons and side arms only, leave any armor here for now. The rest of you: hang out here, swim, fish, or whatever. Just stay out of trouble. Any questions or comments?”
The Gravity Manipulation Vehicle (GMV or gemvee) is a pretty handy vehicle. It’s meant for transportation within an atmosphere. With the proper precautions, most models can achieve orbit, and they are capable of limited space flight, although there really are better craft for doing so.
“Gotcha, Boss.” Shawna is digging in her travel bag. “You know if you would just cross over once in a while, I wouldn’t be so bunched up...”
“Who knows?” I reply. “My boyfriend is giving me that pre-break up vibe. We’ll see what the future holds. But for the mean time: Shut it, Shawna.”
Someone—I think it was Dan—mutters, “Yeah, that might happen.” Everyone snickers.
We travel trillions of miles and never feel the first hint of movement. But who can resist a ride with the top down? The GMV has an open cabin and no artificial gravity. Jones is driving, Gwen, Meeka and I are all chuckling, playing with our hair in the flow field created by the vehicle’s flight. Jonesy tries to play it tough, but I can tell he wants to join in the laughter. Even his closely cropped hair is waving slightly. The observatory is in dense jungle, so it takes some pretty good maneuvering to get close. The building is made of fired bricks. We count fifteen levels. The tower is cylindrical and it appears to have a diameter of twenty-five feet all the way up for the first fourteen levels. The top floor is square and much larger, maybe forty feet across. We see a window at each level. The jungle is trying to reclaim the stones, as evidenced by vines snaking up the sides of the building.
We orbit the structure a few times. We could land on it, but I’m not convinced doing so is safe. But we can hover close enough to step from the vehicle to the roof, so we move to a parking hover. Jones slips aside to let Meeka into the driver’s seat. She moves the vehicle to a spot over the building, about two meters above the deck. Jonesy drops down, rolling to let his body absorb the shock. He jumps up and down a few times, then moves to the door and peeks into the top floor. “Nobody here.” He shouts. “Seems solid enough. Come on over.”
I hold Gwen’s hands and lower her over the GMV. As I let go, Jones catches her. Then it’s my turn. Two meters is not a horrible distance, but it can sting, so Jones catches me as well. Meeka moves the gemvee into an orbit pattern to maintain surveillance. My plan is to search the building from the top down. Shawna calls to tell me we have maybe two and a half hours of daylight left. I do not want to be here after dark. We make our way through the trap door to the top level.
It makes sense to me that the top floor would house the telescope, but there isn’t one here. Nor is there any sign there ever has been. Instead, centered in the room is a huge round table, slightly concave upwards. It makes me think of a big salad bowl or soup plate. In the ceiling are twelve holes about four inches in diameter, evenly spaced around the circumference of the room. The question is: Are they to let light in or vision out? The walls are covered with endless streams of numbers and symbols.
“I don’t know why in the nine hells the Old Man doesn’t send Aria on these trips. She could process all of this data in ten seconds,” Jonesy whines.
“Remind me when we get back to the ship,” I say to him, “I didn’t bring any NSAIDs, muscle relaxers, or tampons with me.” That shut him up.
Gwen speaks, “People talk to Kretor from here. Kretor listens and replies. We are in the Baroon System. Two hundred sectors rimward of Ramaris.”
I make careful note of Gwen’s statement. That would make this more of a temple than an observatory. “Do you have any reason to believe that Kretor knows—or is concerned—about us?”
“I don’t know. But they believe Kretor knows everything, so it’s a safe assumption.”
“I’m betting that when the sun goes down, star light hits this table, and charts are drawn or compared accordingly. But we have what we came for. We know where we are. All right, let’s get out of here. I have all the faith in the world in Meeka’s ability as a pilot, but I’m not comfortable with stepping off the roof onto the gemvee, or with Jonesy tossing us up to it. Unless anyone has a better idea, it looks like we go down fifteen flights. Jonesy, take the lead, Gwen follow him, and I’ll bring up the rear. Meeka, did you copy?”
“I copy. We have a problem, Boss. Onboard sensors detect a large vehicle approaching fast from the south. You need to beat feet out of there. I can tell it’s armed with at least a heavy laser.”
“Team Leader, Mother Hen.” Aria says on my headset, “Get moving and take a heading of 004.7. Avoid that APC.” Thanks, Aria. Armored Personnel Carrier vs. Gravity Manipulation Vehicle is not a contest.
“Working on it. If you have a meteor you could throw at it to slow it a bit, that would be fabulous.”
I turn to Jones and Gwen. “Okay, team, basically free rappel. No more sightseeing. Get down these stairs as fast as your legs will carry you.”
“Meeka, how much time do we have?”
“About thirty seconds.”
We’ll never make it like this. I’m going to manipulate someone, I hope she’ll forgive me. I mutter loud enough for Gwen to hear “I hope that vehicle stops; if they find us they will want to hurt us.”
“Why would they hurt us?”
Goo
d, she heard me. That’s no mean feat considering our boots banging on these wooden stairs. “Because they don’t know us. People that send armed vehicles to welcome visitors tend to hurt people they don’t know. I’m not saying it’s right, I’m just saying it happens. Remember when you said the Captain is afraid of you? It’s the same thing. He doesn’t know much about you like they don’t know anything about us.”
Meeka is on the COM. “Looks like we get a reprieve. That APC just stopped, and there is no power signature coming from it anymore. There is plenty of heat though, and I see a smoke plume.” We emerge from the observatory to see our GMV in a one-meter hover. We squint against the thruster wash or ‘dustup.’ Jonesy scoops Gwen up and in, and then helps me in before hopping aboard himself. Meeka firewalls the engine, gaining altitude and velocity.
Shawna breaks squelch: “Take up a heading of double ought six, cupids two AGL.” Meeka steers to the new course, rising to an altitude of 200 feet above ground level.
“Tally ho!” Meeka sees the cutter. Aria must have given them an order to get packed up and airborne. The back ramp is open.
“Cutter velocity is one fifty miles per,” Shawna reports. “My bubbles are level.”
Meeka counts off the distance as we approach. I give Gwen a wink and a smile. She blows me a kiss. The GMV enters the cutter. When Meeka chops the throttle to zero, the vehicle settles to the deck plates. There’s a metallic clang as the magnetic locks grab the gemvee before it can slide back out the cargo door. Dan closes the cargo door and Shawna yells, “Hang on!” and sends the cutter towards orbit. Once we are safe, Meeka begins to shake.
I put a hand on her shoulder and say, “That was pretty exciting.”
Jonesy snores loudly, mocking my assessment. As Meeka’s head whips around to glare at him, he winks at her and grins.
The flight to Night Searcher is blissfully boring. We spend the time getting out of wet swimwear and into work clothes and generally preparing to be back aboard. Aria arrives in the small craft bay as we are securing the cutter. “Sonia, report to the Captain immediately,” she says.
“Right away.” I am going to the toilet first!
I give my report to Aria while we walk from the Small Craft bay. “According to Gwen, we are in the Baroon system, double check, but I think that’s on the order of two-hundred sectors rimward of Ramaris. I’m going to dump my gear and report to the Captain.” I make the turn to my stateroom, and Aria continues to the bridge.
18 AZAZEEL
Minutes later, I knock on the Captain’s door. “Chief Engineer MacTaggert reporting, sir.”
“Sonia, please come in. It pleases me that you live. So, we are extremely rimward of Ramaris. We will need to find a course back to Atlas. If I am to die, I want to die at home. So, did the child do anything unusual on the trip?”
“With respect, sir, ‘unusual’ can be applied to almost everything she does. She sensed the religious attitude of the populace towards an entity she called ‘Kretor.’ She determined our location. I have no objective evidence to corroborate, but I’d stake my reputation on its accuracy. And I think she stopped an armored vehicle closing on us dead in its tracks. We had some pretty tense moments, and she never lost her composure. I’m quite pleased with the way she behaved. I’m pleased with all of them, but with her—as a child—a little more so. And on a purely personal level, I really enjoyed spending time with her. Will it be possible for her to move back in with me in the near future? I have missed her terribly.”
The captain stands and pulls his robe around his body, like he is bracing to go out into a cold wind, which would be quite a trick on a starship. He walks to his view screen and stares at the star field, as if he’s gazing through a window. “Sonia, I have become very powerful. I can do things with my mind that to anyone else would be considered magic. I command one of the most powerful vessels in known space. But I am a tick on a Rison bull’s backside compared to one of her kind. Aria made a snap—and truthfully, ill considered—decision in making Gwendolyn your ‘daughter.’ I would have preferred she consult me, but what’s done is done. However, I think in the fullness of time, we will see it to have been a good decision though, the right one. I return her to your care. But please, be careful. And by all means continue to use Anya for all her schooling and care when you are otherwise engaged. A ‘nanny’ I believe was the old term. Anya is yours, too. I have plenty of concubines and slaves. Dismissed.” I nod and leave.
Aria meets me in the hallway. “Well, I guess that went well,” she says.
“Better than I would have expected: I have my daughter back. I just hope the ‘having’ is as satisfying as the ‘wanting.’”
“I am sure it will be,” Aria replies. “You have missed her, have you not?”
“I really have. Granted I’ve only known her a handful of months, but when I saw her playing in the psi lab, when I heard her telepathically call to me, that was when I realized just how terribly I had missed her. Not brushing her hair in the mornings, not tucking her in at night. Not laughing when she unintentionally embarrassed someone.”
“On another point, your relationship with the Captain is improving as well, is it not?”
“It is; I think we’ve really established a rapport. The strange part is, and I think I’ve told you this before, for my first two weeks aboard I was scared to death of him. Now I feel nothing but compassion for him, bordering on pity. But I know better.”
“I am told that is a common response. Of course, compassion is not an emotion I have been programmed to emulate.” We chit chat for a while, but she has to see the Captain, and I have a department to run.
We’re still in orbit, so I have everyone gather in the Transit drive room. It’s much quieter there and there’s plenty of room. “Everything is going to remain status quo for the moment with the exception of Viggo. You’ll be assisting on the armor project until you’ve demonstrated proficiency. At that time, I’ll turn the project over to you, and I’ll be going back into the Propulsion Engineering pool. On an as needed basis, of course. There will naturally be a salary associated therewith. What does that mean to Ginny and Gorb? Gorb you’ll be back by yourself for a while, Ginny, you need to be available to back him up from time to time. As will Viggo. And of course in the event of a major mishap, we all come together and get greasy. For those who didn’t know or haven’t guessed, I’ve named Ginny as the Assistant Lead Engineer. In my absence, she’s the boss. Any questions or concerns?” There are none. Gorb smiles and claps. He is happy for Ginny. The other team leaders nod; my department is back in harmony; any ill will towards Ginny is either gone or is on its way out.
When he walks away, I hear Gorb’s slogan: “Everybody loves Sonia. But ‘Gorb loves to help,’ everyone says it, so it must be true.”
I head to the LEO to do some of that Chief Engineer ‘administrivia.’ While I’m there, I make an appointment to see Anya and Gwen for supper at 1800. It’s difficult, but I manage to keep myself busy until then.
Anya admits me to the apartment for supper. Gwen is seated at the table, she smiles when I walk in. “You look happy,” she says.
“I am. I have what I hope is good news. The Captain has decided to return you to my care. I hope you are as pleased with that as I am. But I’m not interested in turning your world upside down again, so I will leave the final decision to you.”
“I understand, Chief MacTaggert. I will be the best I can.” Not the warm response I was hoping for, but it’s a start.
“I know you will, sweetheart. And when we make mistakes—and we will—we’ll get through it. Do you want to stay in this room or move back in with me? I’ll let you decide.”
“Anya provides my activity environments as directed by the Captain. But I would like to have a ‘home’ to go to at night. So my answer is I would prefer to move back in with you.” The rest of our meal is filled with banter about wormholes, hyperspace, and the elastic properties of modeling clay.
After supper, Anya begins to c
lear the plates away. When she’s finished, I send Gwen to pack up whatever she wants to take with her. There’s no reason she can’t stay over with me tonight, and we’ll do the official move tomorrow.
While she’s doing so, I discuss future arrangements with Anya. “The Captain has also given me your services. I would like you to continue on in your current capacity as teacher and mentor. The sad news is that being a primary staff member on this ship keeps me hopping. So I don’t really have the time, much less the knowledge or wisdom, to shape Gwen the way she needs; I will depend on your help with that. I want you to fill the daily grind. The time I’m off duty and with her will be your down time. I need you to be on call in case of emergency, of course.” Both of us agree that, given the circumstances, this is about as good a situation as can be hoped for until Gwen is able to join the school. “Two of the words the Captain used when we were talking about you were ‘slave’ and ‘concubine.’ I don’t know—nor do I care—what your relationship with him is, but I don’t need you for either of those. I’m more than happy to compensate you for being Gwen’s au pair. Is twenty-thousand annually enough?”
“Thank you, Ma’am. But whether you call me ‘slave’ or not, I am still catalogued as your property. And I don’t really have any need for money. How about a favor instead? Can you put me in contact with that pilot, Shawna Landers? I would be most grateful.”
“Why yes, I can. I’ll give her your perCom code and let the two of you work things out. Is that okay? And you may think of yourself as ‘property’ but I do not. If you’re not an employee, then I suppose you just have to be a friend of the family.”
“How very nice of you! Thank you, ma’am. I mean, ‘Sonia.’”
“Not a problem. I’ll call Shawna while I’m waiting for Gwen.”
Shawna answers her perCom on the second ring. “Hey, Baby. How they swayin’?”
