by Joe Pace
“Yes?” There was that inflection again, that islander’s cadence, though with a deeper timbre coming from Ochoa.
“Sir? I am Commander William Pearce, of His Majesty’s Navy, here to see Fletcher. I mean, Christine. Your granddaughter,” he finished, feeling a bit foolish.
“I know who all of those people are,” replied the baronet, his eyes twinkling. “They are all here, and are expecting you, though perhaps not at this hour. Please come in, Commander.” He stepped aside, and spread a hand toward the interior of the house by way of invitation. Pearce followed into a hallway that was shady and cool, with a breath of a breeze. Windows, or another door, must be open somewhere in the house. That was a novel concept to Pearce. Why not merely close up and activate the climate management system for ideal temperature and humidity? He noticed then that Ochoa was holding his right palm out in greeting, so he thrust out his own and they shook hands.
“Welcome, Commander.”
“Please, sir, call me William, or Bill.”
“Then you must call me Miguel. Christine has spoken of you often. She respects you, Bill.” Pearce found himself absurdly grateful for the secondhand compliment, though it was most likely a routine courtesy.
“She is too kind, I’m afraid. Your granddaughter is an exceptional star-mariner.” Miguel nodded, though he did not smile. He is being polite, Pearce thought, but he is not pleased to see me.
“She is on the porch, with a friend.” Ochoa pointed, and Pearce thanked him as he headed down the hallway in that direction. Something had changed during his brief conversation with Fletcher’s grandfather, but for the life of him he could not figure out what it was. It had begun amicably enough, even with a shared laugh, but in scarcely more than a heartbeat, the old man had cooled considerably. It made Pearce uncomfortable, but he had no time to consider it at the moment. A square of blue-white sky beckoned, and, assuming that was the door to the porch, he moved toward it.
The door was another antique model, a sliding glass door that was operated manually. It was already open a crack, creating the source of the wind in the hallway. Sounds were coming in as well -- a low, repetitive beat that Pearce recognized as the Latin music Fletcher would play sometimes on board ship, and the giggling conversation of two young women. Through the clear glass, Pearce could see them, sitting with their backs to him in low, brightly colored chairs. Heads topped by long, dark hair poked above each chair, and beyond them was the low wall of the veranda with nothing but sky beyond. It was breathtaking. Pearce had seen so much openness before, but always on other planets. Here, it almost made him dizzy, as though he might fly off the face of the Earth itself and be lost forever. Gathering himself, Pearce pushed open the slider and stepped onto the porch.
“Papi?” asked the woman on the left, with a voice that he recognized as Fletcher’s.
“Sorry, no,” Pearce replied. “Try again.”
Fletcher got up from her seat, and right away Pearce saw that she was mostly naked. She had on a very small orange bathing suit bottom, held together by silver hoops at each hip, but that was it. A scant meter away she stood, her brown skin glistening with what Pearce assumed to be some sort of lotion or oil to protect her from the sun, her breasts young and round and tipped with dark brown, almost black nipples. Pearce forced himself to think of Mary, of her milky white skin, but all he could picture were her sagging mother’s breasts and puffy pink nipples. Turn away! He wrenched his gaze to the side, staring out into that endless blue. He had noticed, to his Anglican dismay, that the other young woman was equally topless, equally young, and equally perfect.
“Christine,” he managed to blurt out, “do…do you mind?” She had told him of this strange, archaic habit once before. Sun-bathing, she called it, sitting outdoors and warming your body in the sun. It seemed a peculiar pastime, and he had never imagined it was the sort of thing you would do undressed, certainly not undressed and with a friend.
“What? Oh.” Fletcher lazily picked up a nearby towel and wrapped it around her chest, and her companion did the same, laughing. “Honestly, Bill. It’s as if you’ve never seen tits before. You’re on the island, sweetie. Relax.” She put a hand on his arm, below the elbow, where his long sleeves covered his own pasty flesh. She kissed him lightly, on the cheek. “I am happy to see you, though. Early, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” Bill exhaled, recovering his equilibrium, chastising himself for his vague disappointment that she had covered up. “My shuttle got in early, and as we say in the service, there’s not a moment to be lost.”
“In the…” Fletcher drew back for a minute, and a smile began to dawn on her face. “Bill? Is that a Navy uniform you’re wearing?” She looked down to where her hand was touching his arm, and her fingertips brushed the three gold bands embroidered above the cuff. “Commander? Bill, congratulations!” She hugged him, something she had not ever done before, and Pearce, momentarily at a loss for how to respond, finally gave her a small pat on the back, located strategically on the wrapped towel.
“Thank you,” he said huskily as she disengaged.
“But I’ve been rude!” she cried. “Jacinta, this is my friend, Bill Pearce. He’s a Commander in His Majesty’s Royal Navy!” The other young woman stood up, thankfully clutching a towel of her own over her breasts. She was pretty, in truth prettier than Fletcher, but she regarded him with a cool, jaded eye and shook his hand diffidently. He’s so old, she mouthed to Fletcher before sitting back down in her chair. Fletcher laughed.
“Don’t mind Jacinta. She’s in the market for a man, and I think I got her excited when I mentioned your rank.” She kicked at the chair playfully. “He’s married anyway.”
Bill had to smile himself. In the past few days he had almost forgotten Fletcher’s talent for lighting up a room, her infectious spirit, her laughter. And her reaction warmed him. He had told her more than once of his ambitions to return to the Navy, on their long journeys as shipmates. He had not, however, expected her to react with such joy at his news.
“So that’s why you made the jump over here,” she was saying. “All these years I’ve been inviting you to visit, and now you come so we can drool over your stripes? I thought you had another cargo commission for us already.”
“I do,” he said, without hesitation. He had thought of how best to broach this ever since he had secured Exeter’s agreement the night before, and he had finally settled on the direct approach. Reaching into his pocket, Pearce withdrew the small white envelope with her name written in neat script on the front. He handed it to her, and waited.
Fletcher held the envelope in her hands for a moment, and he knew she was wondering at the use of paper. Merchant charters always came electronically. Only one entity still relied on paper for formal communications. Soon enough she tore the seal open and unfolded the sheet within. Pearce watched, holding his breath.
“The Navy.” It was a statement, not a question. Her tone was flat, and betrayed no hint of what was going on in her mind. Pearce could not afford to let her decline.
“I need you for this, Christine…Lieutenant Fletcher.”
****
“I’ve followed Bill’s orders in space before, Papi. This wouldn’t be any different.”
Fletcher stacked the plates and took them into the kitchen, placing them into the machine to be sterilized. Coming back into the spacious dining room where they had eaten, she picked up fistfuls of silverware. It was late; it had been a long afternoon and evening, and she was tired. Pearce clearly was as well, having already retired to one of the guest bedrooms. Ochoa sat in a rocking chair near the wide bay windows that overlooked the front garden. They were cracked open, and the smoke from Ochoa’s pipe drifted out through the gap into the purple night air.
“That is where you’re mistaken, child. It would be completely different. Listen to yourself. Bill, you say. He comes to your home, you embrace him as a friend.” Ochoa raised a hand, deflecting her interruption unspoken. “I do not
say any of this is wrong of you. But it would no longer be like this. You will call him Commander, and Sir. His orders will carry the weight of the Crown. If you accept this commission, you must know that your relationship will change. What is more, you will change. You will have to.”
“You are so melodramatic,” she said. “I haven’t told Bill whether I intend to accept or not. In any case, from what he tells me, this is a science mission on behalf of the King and Minister Banks. You always say how much you like him.”
“Everyone likes Banks,” grunted Ochoa. He took his pipe from his mouth and pointed the stem at her. “That is not the point. The point, I think, is that you are restless again. Not that you ever stopped being restless, so perhaps it is better to say you are restless still. The stars call to you, as they did to your mother. And along comes a man, a good man, an honest one, and says to follow him out there, and just like your mother, you do.” He paused, looking out the window. Lights glowed from every house on the street, pushing back against the dark of night and obscuring any stars that might be overhead. Still, Ochoa stared into the heavens, and Fletcher knew that he was thinking about his daughter, who had gone out there and never come back to him or her children.
“Please, Papi. It’s nothing like that. Mama was in love with Daddy.” She set down the forks and spoons and knelt on the floor by her grandfather’s feet. “I’m not in love with Bill. Far from it.”
“You don’t want to sleep with him, you mean,” Ochoa said, replacing his pipe between his teeth. “That doesn’t mean you don’t love him. There is love, and then there is love. You’ve been with him more than any other man in your life, except me. But this Pearce, he does not truly concern me. You seek to roam, and he is merely a convenient excuse.” He stroked her dark hair, then lifted her chin with one of his gnarled fingers. “What has he told you about where you are going, girl? What do you know of Cygnus?”
“A little,” Fletcher replied. “It’s far. About as far as anyone has gone. I suppose I’d be lying if I said that didn’t intrigue me. He said the natives there are fascinating, at least some of them. And he mentioned that Captain Baker died there.” Ochoa took his hand from her chin and rubbed his eyes.
“You are too young to remember,” he said. “Captain Jane Baker is a name in a history book to you, a story from a vid, but she was more than that. She was a folk hero, a legend. And she was killed by these Cygni your Bill Pearce finds so fascinating. No matter. I have long ago learned that trying to give you advice doesn’t work.” Fletcher could almost hear her grandfather creak as he rose from the chair, slowly unfolding to his full height. “And I am tired now, but I will just say that this is not something you can do on one whim, and then simply undo on another. The Royal Navy takes things very seriously.” He fixed her with his steeliest gaze, beneath those bushy eyebrows. “Far more so than you ever have, girl.”
Ochoa turned, and shuffled toward the stairs. Watching him go, Fletcher was filled with the sudden premonition that she might never see him again, and that her last memory of him would be a rambling, disappointed lecture. It was more than she could bear.
“Papi,” she called, and he hesitated on the bottom stair. “I love you.”
“There is love and there is love,” he said again. He then turned, just enough to look over his shoulder at her. “Someday, I hope you find anything, on this Earth or off, to love as much as I have loved you and your sister.” His eyes were wet and ancient as he smiled. “Good night, Christine.”
Five
In His Majesty’s Royal Navy
The orbital dockyards at Spithead were a busy place, with the loading and unloading of merchant craft, the human flow of passenger traffic, and naval vessels in refit. From the viewing platform she watched them all, rapt, her nose all but pressed against the floor-to-ceiling window like a schoolgirl less than half her age. She had never been off-planet before, never even to these orbital yards a scant thousand kilometers above the surface of the Earth, but she had always loved starships. The very idea of penetrating the black veil of space and groping into the unexplored corners of the galaxy both terrified and thrilled her.
Only twenty-two, Hope Worth was the daughter of an officer in His Majesty’s Royal Navy, and just that morning had put on her midshipman’s dress uniform for the first time, for her commissioning. She had modeled it for her parents, the crisp white pants, the trim blue jacket, even the ceremonial cocked hat resting atop her close-cropped brown hair. Her father, retired Captain Samuel Worth, towering over her by nearly a third of a meter, had smoothed the white turnbacks on her jacket collar, briefly polishing the gold buttons there with his sleeve. He had removed her hat then, handing it to her and saying, his voice little more than a raspy whisper, that she should never wear it indoors.
He’s proud of me, she had thought. My father’s proud of me.
She thought it again now as she watched the ships, marveling at the size of them, as a massive Navy cruiser slipped its moorings and began to drift past. The HMSS Cromwell, as the proud markings along the shimmering silver-blue hull proclaimed, took nearly half an hour to ease its bulk out of the yards. If anything dimmed Worth’s excitement, it was her near certainty that she wasn’t posting to a battleship. HMSS Harvest, her orders had read, and that was no name for a cruiser. More likely a service tender, or a science vessel. In the end, it hardly mattered. She was going to space, as her father had thirty years before.
“That’s a big ship.”
Worth was momentarily startled to find she wasn’t alone on the platform, and then a little embarrassed she hadn’t even noticed the man at her elbow until he had spoken. Now that she turned from the window and looked at him, she realized the descriptor “man” was somewhat generous. Young as she was, he seemed younger still, little more than a boy, and yet he was dressed exactly the same as she was, even clutching his hat with the same awkward grip, careful not to ruin the brushed felt. He was short, though not as short as she was, thin and gangly, and pale, with splotchy patches of red creeping up from his collar into his cheeks. His eyes were an unremarkable muddy hazel, but sharp, focused intently on the stern of the Cromwell as she got under way. And he was vaguely familiar, though she couldn’t place him.
“Yes, she is,” Worth replied politely. It was only then that she realized she wasn’t only excited, she was lonely, too. She had gone from her family’s house in Boston to the Royal Naval College at Greenwich, where her days and nights had been filled with the noise and presence of instructors and fellow cadets. She had never really been alone before, and feeling suddenly and absurdly grateful for the company, she sighed. “I wish I were posted to her.” She smiled at him. No one had ever called Hope Worth beautiful. Instead, she suffered under the perpetual labels of cute, or perky, or something equally nauseating. Starship captains aren’t perky, or cute, she thought. But she had been told, and truthfully, that her smile was her best feature, and she used it now on her fellow midshipman. “Hope Worth,” she said, adding “midshipman,” unnecessarily.
The boy swallowed, and ventured a smile himself, which fell well short of hers. His teeth were crooked, the mark of common roots, but it was an honest smile that lit up his entire face. Her own family was no less common, of course, but her father’s rank had entitled her to advanced medical services, including dental work.
“Charles Hall,” he replied, and after a small pause, he, too, added, “midshipman,” holding out his hat as if it were some kind of evidence. They both laughed, a little, and nervously, at their own awkwardness. Into the silence, Hall ventured, “I know who you are, though. We were at Greenwich together.”
So that’s where I’ve seen you, she thought, though even with the context she couldn’t cull a single specific memory of him from the last three years.
“I’m posted to the Harvest,” he said, filling what was fast becoming an awkward silence.
“Then we’ll be shipmates,” Worth said, her smile returning, and even broader than before. It
made sense, of course. There couldn’t be that many Navy ships filling their crews at the moment, certainly only one that was ordering its midshipmen to report to Pier 12B on the evening of the seventeenth, no later than 1900 hours. Whoever the commander of this Harvest was, he clearly wasn’t afraid to go to space with junior officers right out of Greenwich. Either that, thought Worth with a twinge of unease, or we’re all he can get. As if by some unspoken mutual consent, Hall and Worth turned back to face the now much emptier spacedock, and it was then that they saw the HMSS Harvest for the first time.
After the elegant expanse of the Cromwell, even with her modest expectations, it was a disappointment. Certainly it was not the kind of ship Worth had dreamed of as a child, when she went to sleep picturing her father on the command deck. Far from the majesty of a star-cruiser, she was a dark, unlovely gray from stern to stem, her hull pockmarked by thousands of tiny encounters with countless meteorites and the galactic detritus of deep space. She was squat, her lines awkward and ungainly, little more than a bulbous cargo hold.
“A merchant ship,” muttered Hall, his voice as full of disappointment and disapproval as her heart. “Barely even refit.”
“And your home for as long as you last,” growled a low voice from behind them, “so you’d best learn to speak of her with some respect.” Turning around, the first thing both midshipmen noticed was the double yellow stripe on each dark blue sleeve of the man who had spoken. Worth quickly touched her forehead with a knuckle.
