ARC: Under Nameless Stars

by Christian Schoon

  “So, Master Van-coo-vehr, you wish to recoup your losses?” the Skirni leered at Jules.

  “Earnestly.”

  “In that regard…” Thrott said, bringing his hands together with a clink of heavy rings. “I have a proposition. I own an animal. A fighting slug. It is nothing special, a feeble thing, actually. Wins so seldom I don’t know why I waste my time with it. But if you wished to put a creature of your choice up against it, accompanied by a suitable wager, you could regain your losses several times over.”

  “A fight between animals?” Jules said, surprise audible in his tone. “Such events are illegal, are they not?”

  “We are star travelers. In the arms of the mother-void,” Thrott said, gesturing broadly at their surroundings. “The legalities in space are, shall we say, murky. With a little discretion, we could arrange–”

  “It is illegal! And it’s cruel,” Zenn said. All eyes in the room turned to her. She instantly regretted her outburst.

  “Oh, are you a qualified expert on the subject?” Thrott gave her a mocking, thick-lipped grin. “You practice interstellar law, do you?”

  “No,” she stammered. “But… I know animal fighting is banned. On all the planets. And it’s inhumane.” Her face burned hot.

  “But I am no human,” the Skirni said. “And so cannot be inhumane, har. Who are you, in any case, to lecture me? What right do you–”

  “She is correct to speak.” Jules cut him off. “And I agree. I will not wager on any such animal battles. It is regretful to hear you request such an event.”

  “Oh, I apologize for disappointing you,” Thrott sneered, sarcasm twisting his face.

  “The dolphin and the girl have it right.” The soldier gathered up his own colored discs as he spoke. His voice was… what? Commanding, Zenn decided. “We’re still in Sol space. Solar conventions in this case apply until we move out of the system.”

  “Ah, conventions. They are formulated to be interpreted, are they not?” Thrott gave the soldier a jowly grin.

  “The law’s the law,” the soldier said, unsmiling. “When laws are clear, interpretation doesn’t come into it.” Zenn realized then what it was about the young officer that kept his appearance from that of a cookie-cutter hero: his eyes. They were pale gray, almost silver. And she couldn’t define it, but there was something about them that seemed able to take in everything about whoever he looked at, as if he had some uncanny skill at reading those around him. Thrott’s own eyes looked away from the challenge of the soldier’s piercing gaze.

  “It is your loss, then,” Thrott growled at Jules. “And I will go now and spend your money on a jug of your excellent Earther tequila. Har.” The dolphin was about to reply to this when another voice sounded behind them.

  “Boarding passes, please.”

  Zenn turned around. The Gliesian steward was right behind her, his webbed, three-fingered hand outstretched. Panic washed all thought away and she drew back from him like a hunted animal.

  The Alcyon, who had been quietly observing the confrontation between Thrott and Jules, now unfolded himself from his chair. He thanked Jules for inviting him to the game, showed the steward his pass and left.

  Thrott brusquely showed his own boarding pass and moved toward the exit.

  “Forgive me; boarding pass, please,” the steward said to the Fomalhaut trailing behind Thrott.

  “This thing?” Thrott said, waving one hand at the cowering alien. “It is a slave, obviously. It cannot be expected to have a pass.”

  “I am sorry; all passengers must show a pass before ship’s departure from orbit.”

  Thrott sighed heavily and gave the steward an indulgent smile.

  “My good friend–” the Skirni reached up to drape one arm around the steward’s shoulder and with his other hand pulled his credit relay from beneath his robes “–I was mistaken. I have that creature’s pass right here. Shall we say… five units?”

  The steward glanced nervously around at the others in the room. Jules and the soldier both suddenly found something else to look at.

  “Five units?” The steward quickly showed his own relay to accept Thrott’s funds. “Yes. All is in order here. Thank you.” He then gestured for them to exit.

  Thrott gave the soldier a gloating grin.

  “There. You see? Even in Sol space, the interpretation of law has its place.” With that, he grunted at the Fomalhaut to follow him and waddled off.

  The soldier stood and flashed his pass at the steward. As he moved to the door, he had to wait for Zenn to step out of the way. He watched her, the pale eyes regarding her with what seemed like a bit more curiosity than before.

  “You mentioned your father knew the dolphin here – on Earth,” he said. “You don’t sound quite like a citizen. Do I detect a Martian accent?”

  “Oh,” Zenn said, grasping for an answer. “Yes. We… moved. When I was young.”

  The soldier considered this.

  “Well, thank your for the game, Jules,” he said. He gave them both a quick smile and was gone.

  “Yes, if I may trouble you–” the steward popped his glass-globe eyes at Zenn “–boarding pass?”

  Her heart sank. It was over. What could she say? That she’d lost her pass? There was no convenient sandhog to serve as a distraction this time.

  “Your… boarding… pass?” the steward asked again, speaking slowly, as if to a young child. “If you please.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Zenn saw the dolphin suddenly sweep one mech-hand across the tabletop, pushing his discs onto the floor.

  “Oh,” he said loudly. “Look at this. You.” He gestured at Zenn. “Pick this up. Immediately obey me and pick these gambling materials up.” Zenn stared at him. So did the steward. “Are you such a lazy slave? Pick this up, I command you.”

  It took Zenn another moment to understand. Stooping, she gathered up the discs and clutched them in both hands. Then, she bowed her head as she’d seen the Fomalhaut do and moved to stand meekly behind the dolphin.

  “Yes, she is an unsatisfactory indentured servant, this one.” The dolphin shook his large head at her disapprovingly and held out his pass for the steward’s inspection.

  “Ah, I see, Guest Vancouver,” the steward said, looking from the dolphin’s pass to Zenn and back again. “They allow this? For dolphinkind to possess such an… item ? To possess an Earther human as slave?”

  Jules had no reply to this.

  “I’m not an Earther,” Zenn said. She added, in what she hoped was a suitably slavish tone, “Forgive me speaking, but as I said, I’m from Mars. Not Earth.”

  “Yes, a Martian,” Jules said. “Perfectly allowable, you will agree. For me to have a Martian slave not from Earth.”

  The steward bulged his eyes at them. She could see he was wavering, trying to decide if their story made sense.

  “And for your understanding,” Jules held up his credit relay. “Please accept this gratuity. Five units, shall we say?”

  Without hesitating, the steward brought out his own relay to accept the “tip”.

  “Yes. This is in order,” he said, pocketing his relay. Zenn was quite sure she’d just witnessed the second blatant bribe the steward had accepted in the last few minutes, which, apparently, neither dolphin nor Gliesian viewed as unusual in the least. “Thank you, and I trust you will have a pleasant journey onward with us.” The steward flashed them a black-toothed grin and left them.

  “Thank you. For doing that,” Zenn said, watching the steward make his way out of the bar. “I must have forgotten my boarding pass. In my cabin.”

  The dolphin looked at her for a moment. “You are welcome, Miss…”

  “Bodine. Zora Bodine.”

  “Zora Bodine. And your father is, then, Mister Bodine, I will assume.”

  “Yes. Bodine. Um, you don’t remember him?” she said, clinging to the desperate hope that she could feel her way to something like solid conversational footing.

  “No, I’m afraid I don�
��t,” the dolphin said brightly. He must know by now she was lying, but he seemed unconcerned. “I associated with only a few humans on Earth. None were named Bodine. Or are in any way likely to be your father.”

  “No, of course not. My mistake.” She felt her face flushing hot beneath the scarf and moved toward the doorway.

  “And I am wondering, Zora Bodine, if you would like me to call the steward back… perhaps he could help you return to your cabin and locate your pass?”

  “No,” Zenn said quickly. “I can find my way. It’s not a problem. I’m sorry I bothered you.”

  “But there is some problem, isn’t there, somewhere?” The dolphin crossed his mech-arms in front of him. “I hazard to guess that you are in a form of trouble.”

  “No. I just came in here to…” It was no use. She knew it. And this dolphin knew it as well.

  “I will tell you what I see as the facts,” he said, hydraulic legs whirring into action as he stepped closer, bright obsidian eyes fixing on her. “You wished to be seen as someone who knew me through your father. A father I have never met. You also show reluctance to interact with the ship’s authorities to display your boarding pass or to go to your own cabin. My surmise is that your trouble is awaiting you at your cabin. Possibly, you have no ticket. Yes. Or no cabin, even! Furthermore–” he clapped his mech-hands together in growing excitement “–I will wager you that you are… a stowaway.” He again held up his credit relay. “Shall we say ten units?”

  “You… want to make a bet?”

  “I would win it, would I not? You are a stowaway. I am correct?”

  Zenn nodded miserably. With enough misery, she hoped, to evoke sympathy. If she could just convince him to keep her secret, she might still be able to remain aboard somehow.

  “Yes, correct.” He seemed deflated at the thought. “It would not be a fair bet now that I know the truth of the situation. I withdraw the wager.” He lowered his relay and looked at her for a moment. “So, a stowaway,” he said, with what to Zenn sounded almost like admiration. “But this is thrilling. Are you running from unjust persecution? Is that it? And you could not buy passage on this ship… because you have no funds? You are impoverished, a poor wretch living only on your wits? Have you had your rightful inheritance stolen by low scoundrels, perhaps? And you are now seeking your remedy in an escapade formulated to right this wrong? I have read of similar events. In the printed-on-paper novels of several ancient Earth writers. It is the stuff of imagination and adventure. Is it like that with you?”

  “No, not exactly,” she said, wondering at his enthusiasm but recalling that dolphins could be prone to impulsive behavior and fixations on certain elements of human society. While he appeared harmless enough, she simply didn’t know how much she should divulge. “I’m looking for my… for someone. That’s why I stowed away. I followed somebody aboard who might know where this person is.”

  The dolphin bobbed his head at her. “Truly? By coincidence, I am looking, too. For someone. But that is another story. An adventure of its own, I can say, with drama and twists, and like yours, not yet finished.” He stood before her, hydraulics humming softly. “And you are alone here? What of the remainder of your family? You are young, and they would be missing you, would they not? I’m sorry, but you see how my need to satisfy my curiosity requires my asking.”

  Zenn did see. It was perfectly understandable.

  “But I am rude to impose my questions without offering hospitality,” he said. “Please, accompany me to my own cabin and we will discuss the mystery of your situation further.” He gestured to the door, but Zenn hesitated. The dolphin’s fixed smile and inexpressive eyes made it impossible to read him. “There is no need for anxious concern.” He raised both mech-hands in the air. “I am eminently worthy of trust, I assure you. It is a large and spacious cabin where we will be most comfortable as we speak. And we have established your own options at the moment are limited. What is there to lose? Nothing at all. This way.”

  Without waiting for her to answer, he strode out of the room, mech-legs hissing and clicking, his tail flukes held aloft behind him as he walked. He was absolutely right, of course. There really were no other choices for Zenn to consider. Suddenly, she felt the full weight of where she was, the hopeless task she’d set herself. And then, despite everything she’d been telling herself since leaving Mars, she desperately, and irrationally, longed for the reassurance of Liam Tucker’s self-centered, annoying, towner-boy presence. OK, a little less annoying since he’d tried to come to her rescue back on Mars. So, where was he now? Had he found a place to hide? Or had he, like her, been confronted by a steward’s demand to see the boarding pass he didn’t have? If nothing else, Liam was a solid connection to home, to safety, to all she was leaving behind. She could try to find him. But where would she even begin to look? Besides, she couldn’t risk being distracted from her primary aim: find a place she wouldn’t be noticed. Then locate her father.

  Focus, Zenn. Focus.

  Realizing she still clutched Jules Vancouver’s gambling discs in her hands, she stuffed them into her jumpsuit pockets and hurried to follow the dolphin out into the passageway.

  FIVE

  Zenn wasn’t sure what she had expected a starship passenger cabin to look like, but the dolphin’s accommodations still left her looking about in wonder. Unlike the shabby corridors open to the general public, this large suite of rooms was well maintained and sumptuous. The walls were ornamented with richly embroidered tapestries and antique oil-on-canvas paintings of rural landscapes and portraits of people dressed in old-fashioned clothing. In the central room stood furniture with plush cushions. On a long table by the wall was a ceramic bowl filled with apples, bananas, kipfruit and what looked like an assortment of dried fish morsels wrapped in clear plastic. One wall held a large viewscreen that currently displayed a changing display of the ship’s various passenger decks, recreation venues, retail shops and other areas. Off to one side of the main room were three doorways leading to what Zenn assumed were the bath and sleeping quarters.

  “As you can see, a plentitude of space,” Jules Vancouver said, gesturing at the room. Zenn just stood, looking around herself. She felt herself beginning to relax. Was this Jules someone she could trust? She was beginning to think he was. “Please, you must unburden yourself. Sit, do.” He watched her as she slipped off her backpack, set it down on one chair and sank into the cushions of another.

  “So, Zora Bodine,” he said, pouring them both glasses of an orangish-pink liquid from a cut-glass decanter on the central table. “You must tell me of your adventure. How you secreted yourself aboard this ship. And why. Perwynk cider? It’s freshly crushed.”

  “Thank you,” she said. She unwound the scarf from her head and took the offered glass.

  “Your hair. It is quite red,” Jules said, leaning in for a closer look. “Is this a true color? Or have you altered the hue artificially?”

  “No,” she said, smiling at him. “This is its natural color.”

  “I am sorry. Do I presume upon you too much with my personal questions? I am intrigued, you see, by your situation. I am eager in fact, to hear your tale if you would tell it. Would you? Tell it to me? Or do I insert my nose in where it is unwelcome?”

  “No, of course you don’t,” Zenn said. “You kept me from being thrown off the ship. You have every right to know what I’m doing here.” In fact, she thought, without this obliging cetacean, her so-called “plan” to save her father would have been over before it started. There was only one course to take: she settled back in her chair and started talking.

  She told him everything. How she was in her novice year of exovet training at the Ciscan Cloister training school that her uncle Otha ran on Mars. How she’d recently found herself sharing thoughts with some of the alien animals being treated at the clinic, and how these “links” became so intense her uncle thought she might be having a mental breakdown. She told him about Vic LeClerc’s attempt to have the clinic closed s
o she could steal the Cloister’s land for growing crops to feed the struggling colonists in the Arsia valley. She explained how the woman forced her nephew Liam to help her, and how Liam had finally changed his mind and exposed the plot, causing Vic to be arrested along with her thuggish foreman, Graad Dokes. Then she told him as much as she could recall about how the Skirni had paralyzed her with some sort of toxin and then kidnapped her, how she’d woken up afterward imprisoned at the Pavonis launch port, and how Liam had found her there. Finally, how she, Katie and Liam had smuggled themselves aboard the Helen of Troy in the sandhog’s shipping crate.

  “Kidnapped. This is simply amazing. But why?” Jules asked, pouring himself another glass of juice. “Why come onto this starship at all? Why did you not escape back to your home place?”

  “Because when the Skirni was in my room at the cloister, I linked with his mind and… saw his memories. I know how that sounds.” She held up her hands to stop his incredulous objection. None came. “I saw my father, on Enchara, being taken. I saw him held in some kind of room, a room with medical equipment. Unusual equipment. Later, I overheard the Skirni say he was going to the Helen of Troy. I had to follow him.”

  “You believe you saw this Skirni’s memory… of your father… kidnapped? Truly?” the dolphin exclaimed. Zenn was certain he was about to tell her the story she was spinning was simply too far-fetched and impossible to waste any more of his time on. Instead he said, “But this is most marvelous and deeply fascinating.” He rubbed his big mech-hands together excitedly. “And what transpired then?”