This Gulf of Time and Stars

by Julie E. Czerneda

  For the second time in as many days, I wondered why other Clan had tolerated it.

  “Feel free to tell her my father’s been asking,” I suggested, starting to enjoy myself. Not that I expected the information to rattle Lydis Bowman, who’d faced down Jarad at his most powerful; I doubted anything could.

  The corner of his mouth quirked. “Let me find her first.” Morgan turned to the com.

  It should have been easy. It wasn’t.

  I’d lived on a starship long enough to value the small sounds the Fox made: the whoosh of air through vents, the bone-deep growl of lift engines, and the reassuring almost-whine that meant not only gravity, but that we were moving through subspace under power. Sound meant we were safe and all was well.

  Silence meant the opposite.

  Bowman wasn’t answering. A troubling silence from someone who lived by communication, who was never without a scary abundance of personal tech to be sure she could always be reached—and reach out—let alone that possessed by the Conciliator, the massive ship she rarely left.

  She’d received a message at the baby shower. Why couldn’t we reach her?

  I went to the galley for sombay while Morgan continued to try her code. He nodded his thanks on my return, but didn’t touch his cup, eyes intent on dials I’d yet to learn. He’d flipped the main console, bringing up that legacy of the Fox’s early days as a patrol ship: tech an expert could use to search and find. I sat, sipping, watching Morgan come to a decision and begin to key in other codes. I could guess whose. Terk, first. Failing him, his partner, the feathered Tolian, P’tr wit ’Whix.

  I’d no doubt Morgan could reach further. He’d contacts among the traders who plied the starlanes with us, as individuals or on family ships. I’d seen for myself how they’d put aside competition—temporarily—to act together at need. Morgan could well have others even I didn’t know. How far he went, I thought, would tell me how serious this was.

  I started as the com crackled at last. “Constable Russell Terk. Who’s this? How’d you get this code?—”

  Setting my cup on the side tray, I grinned with relief.

  “—Hiding your ident’s a Pact offense—”

  “Shut up, Russ,” Morgan broke in pleasantly. “Listen—”

  “Why should I? Signing off in one—tw—”

  “Kareen said to check in.”

  “—o.” A longer pause than seemed necessary, then a bland, “Understood. She’s with you?”

  Even I, who still often missed Human subtleties, grasped that Terk didn’t mean Kareen, his sometime lover.

  Morgan’s voice was a match. “No, not this trip. All’s good, then?”

  “Where have you been?” Nothing calm in that. Then, “News travels subspace. Keep up. Terk out.”

  While parked at Plexis, we’d picked up mail, including current news dumps. Our usual procedure was to send the Fox’s system through the unwieldy mass after keywords relevant to our next scheduled planetfall. Sitting together in our galley to go through the results had become a special pleasure for us both, except in those instances where what we’d brought to trade was suddenly the brunt of a new tax or banned. Or a local war was brewing. There’d been one of those lately. Better a lost cargo, Morgan had told me, than a confiscated ship.

  Neither of us claimed a homeworld, not anymore, not to care about. Morgan had left Karolus and its failed settlement behind long ago. I’d owned property on Camos, where I’d spent far longer as a Chooser and scholar, but the building was Enora sud Sarc’s home now. I supposed I’d kept the Clan attitude that whatever mattered to me, outside of trade, I’d learn from one of my kind.

  I’d been wrong. “It’s a lie.”

  “Is it?” Morgan froze the image. Instead of using the viewer on the table, he’d sent the replay to the wall that usually spun with stars. Words filled it, poisonous and wrong. Words that said Lydis Bowman, our friend, had an illicit fortune.

  Words that said she’d taken bribes for most, perhaps all, of her career.

  In growing horror, I skimmed passages stating she’d been suspended, was facing charges, that before she could be arrested, Bowman had failed to report back to the Conciliator and vanished.

  The message she’d received last night, I thought, had been a warning. She’d walked out the door without a word.

  And the hunt was on.

  As Sector Chief, Bowman had ruled on treaty disputes among a dizzying array of races, including Human, sometimes in the open, before the Assembly of Trade Pact Board Members, but more often behind sealed airlocks, discretion being a hallmark of her command.

  She’d done it for the Clan. For me. “I don’t believe any of this.”

  Morgan shook his head. “Every agreement Bowman’s touched will be torn apart and reviewed.”

  “Including ours.” Not that the Clan was public knowledge, but the risk had to be acknowledged.

  “Yes.”

  I swallowed. Nodded. “Well, then. We’ll have to prove her innocence, that’s all.”

  “Sira—” It wasn’t often I surprised my Chosen. Or was it dismay he allowed past his shields?

  “Don’t we owe her that and more?” I jumped up to pace around the table, feeling Morgan follow with his eyes. “Bowman trusted us. Dealt more than fairly with the Clan. With me. You heard her. She told me we had something new. Trust. To hold on to it. She’s a good person.”

  “Who has more secrets than anyone I know,” he replied grimly. “Bowman’s on the run.” He shut off the screen, leaving the blank gray wall. “That tells me this is off our course and out of our hands, chit.”

  I stopped to glare down at him. “You don’t mean that.”

  “If she wanted us involved, she’d be here.”

  “As Terk thought. And my father. They believed she’d come with us.”

  “Let’s hope no one else does.” Morgan stroked the table absently, as if to reassure the ship.

  He was right to be concerned. On the realization, I sat and slumped. “I wish she had. One scan would settle this.”

  “Bowman has an implant.”

  I frowned. “You can get through it.”

  Morgan’s face lost expression. “No.”

  Meaning he wouldn’t, not couldn’t. Morgan had learned the technique inadvertently, while repairing the damage caused when Ren Symon had ripped his way into a mind with a similar implant. Kareen’s. “You’ve the skill to avoid harm,” I assured him. “You could prove Bowman’s innocence—”

  “Or disprove it.”

  Not condemnation. When it came to the law, Morgan had lived in the gray of society most of his life; that he’d made his own code to follow was to his credit.

  Disappointment? I didn’t reach to be sure, but he’d allowed Lydis Bowman closer than most.

  Neither of us trusted easily.

  “Regardless,” he continued in the same matter-of-fact tone he’d use to order up a docking tug. “It won’t happen. I won’t scan Bowman.”

  A vow, despite that tone; one he’d not break. At times, I could wish my Chosen a little less virtuous.

  But then he wouldn’t be Jason Morgan, nor my Chosen.

  So be it. I sketched an apology in the air between us, sending warmth along our link. “There’s someone who might have answers.”

  “Jarad.” Morgan glanced up; the galley’s light caught in his blue eyes. “I admit I’d feel better knowing why he called.”

  “Then I’ll ask him.” But how?

  I hadn’t realized my fingers were cold till Morgan’s laced between them. A lock of my hair slithered down to twine around both, as if to bind us together, but there was no need. Our thoughts met and merged, considering options all within a single, shared breath.

  Not the coms. He called on an open link. With a certain scorn.

  Humans were clever at subv
erting their own tech. I sent agreement. Words are the easiest way to lie.

  The Watchers refused to let Jarad enter the M’hir. I could bring him here.

  Denial! Wordless, that protest, and deep.

  Answered by my own. This was our home, our place. My Chosen was right.

  As I was right to flinch from the intimacy of contacting my father mind-to-mind.

  Then don’t.

  The decision having made itself, we pulled apart on our next breath. “I’ll go to him,” I said aloud.

  The corners of Morgan’s eyes crinkled with worry, not disagreement. “Don’t—”

  The rest was lost beneath my lips, a kiss both urgent and necessary.

  Besides, I thought to myself as his hands buried themselves in my delighted hair, I already knew what my beloved would say.

  Don’t trust Jarad di Sarc.

  As if I ever had.

  We’d planned to fill the Fox’s empty holds with nicnics, having calculated to the day when the region’s fresh crop would arrive at Snosbor III’s southern portcity. Without discussion, Morgan had popped out the course disk, replacing it with an intercept to Plexis. I understood. Coms couldn’t be trusted and if anyone other than Jarad might know the truth about Bowman and the newsfeeds, it was Huido.

  The Fox would arrive by shipmorning, hopefully giving Morgan time to figure out how to pay yet another docking fee.

  My mode of transportation had different concerns. I finished dressing, then followed my awareness of my Chosen to where he waited in the control room.

  Seeing me, Morgan’s eyebrows rose.

  I fought the urge to blush. Donning the robe of my “office” had seemed right in our cabin, its panels of embroidered white rich with history and significance. Standing here, amid the blinking lights and worn seats of our starship home, I felt—

  Stuck, between what my kind expected and what I wanted to be. “I’m not going as his daughter,” I said gruffly. In this robe, I was the First Chosen of the di Sarcs, holder of the Council seat for that powerful family, and, since defeating my father, High Councilor and Speaker for the Clan.

  “Fair enough.” He smiled suddenly. “You’re magnificent.”

  “Not helping,” I told him even as my hair responded, sliding over my shoulders in thick red-gold waves of approval and longing. Which was also not helping, but I’d yet to find a comfortable way to restrain it. Nor, to be truthful, did I care. “I’ll be back in time to calibrate the coils.” It being my turn this day-cycle and the coils being an excellent reason to keep my visit with my father brief.

  Morgan’s hands closed on my shoulders, the blue of his eyes darkening until I could have drowned in them. “And if you aren’t?”

  I didn’t ask if he’d tasted change again. If we’d learned anything from our lives together, it was to plan for the unexpected. “I’ll come here.” I flattened my hands on his chest, feeling the strong and steady beat of his heart. “Home.”

  Before my will could falter, I formed the image of Jarad di Sarc as I’d last seen him. I could have reached for his mind, evaded the Watchers, and found that cold intelligence. I would not.

  Instead, I poured Power into a heart-search, envisioning my father as he was, an image increasingly vivid until he might have stood between us, then . . .

  . . . pushed.

  Interlude

  TAUPE, NEXT. Morgan dipped his brush, tapping free a drop of excess, then aimed the tip where a new branch had begun its growth alongside the fresher stall. Painting was comfort and distraction, as much as a record of what he’d last found growing under an open sky, kissed by rain and wind. Pressed and dried bits of leaf and bark lay on the desk he’d pulled from the wall, welcome reminders of color and texture in a world confined and closed.

  A world empty, with Sira gone.

  From the ship only. He let himself stray into the warm golden space within his mind where she was, always, careful not to distract her. Their link was at its faintest—Sira’s thoughts sealed behind formidable shields—but unbroken. It couldn’t be, not while they lived.

  A fact Jarad abhorred.

  Morgan smiled to himself.

  It still astonished him, the power she had. To think of a remembered place or known person, form a locate as the Clan called it, and simply will herself there.

  Simply? Sira had taught him to move objects through that otherworldly dimension the Clan named the M’hir; he felt the drain on mind and body simply to push a pen from room to room. Not every Clan could do the same, he thought with some pride.

  Though he’d lost more than a few pens at first.

  But any Clan could move themselves, which he’d yet to do. Might never do, according to Sira, ever honest.

  He’d taken the Fox through the M’hir. That had to count.

  And be forgotten.

  The brush trembled, marring the intended stroke; he wiped the paint from the wall. “Branch,” Morgan reminded himself. Ruti had loved her gift. This would be for Sira, a welcome when she returned.

  He’d surprised her here, in his cabin, shortly after she’d arrived on his ship, staring wide-eyed at the plants painted on every available surface.

  She hadn’t been the first.

  “You were trouble then, too,” Morgan murmured, pausing to remember.

  There were risks, landing on worlds. Gravity was one. The other flashed badges.

  Enforcers had boarded the Fox on Stonerim III, the officials ostensibly aiding the local Port Authority in a hunt for smuggled Skenkran eggs, a treaty-breaker if found in Human hands. Having that very morning closed his air lock behind a pair of passengers assuredly not on the Fox’s manifest, the timing had felt ever-so-suggestive of another kind of search.

  As law-abiding traders—meaning any captain who wanted to keep their good rating and landing privileges—opened their ships and holds when asked, Morgan unlocked his air lock, allowing Enforcers and Port Jellies to spread through the Fox like a plague.

  Then took a cup of sombay to his cabin to keep out of their way, trusting the locks on his control panels if nothing else.

  Morgan was unpleasantly surprised to find one of the Port Jellies already there, not searching his belongings, but sitting at ease on his stool, surveying his artwork with a thoughtful frown.

  Human female, short and sturdy, with glossy black hair gathered in a knot at the base of her neck and a uniform worn thin at cuff and elbow, as if she couldn’t be bothered to requisition a new one. There was a noteplas on the table—his table—unopened.

  Leaving a cluster of flowers, the woman’s gaze found him. She didn’t lose her frown. “Didn’t expect this.” She circled a blunt finger at the walls.

  “Can I help you, Constable?” Morgan countered, standing in the open door.

  “Depends.” The finger beckoned. The back of that hand, her right, bore an angry, barely healed scar.

  She was angry, too. No, furious. He felt it through the protections he’d learned to keep between his mind and all others, though her face showed only mild impatience.

  Not a telepath, he concluded, who’d have protection as well or go mad, but a mind sensitive enough to project. Perhaps one made uneasy around any use of power.

  Vulnerable.

  He didn’t believe that for an instant. Morgan came in, the door sliding closed behind him. His cabin was the largest in the Fox, making it roomier than a closet with the bed tucked away; he leaned politely against a wall so as not to crowd her.

  That it gave him a clear view of the weapon she bore was no more than habit. With the Fox crammed with her colleagues, he’d no intention of causing trouble.

  And every wish to avoid it.

  The constable flipped open her noteplas and consulted it with a glance. “I know what arrived on this ship, Captain,” she announced crisply. “Do you?”

  “I’
m no smuggler.” Not this trip.

  “You had passengers. I don’t care about their documents,” this before Morgan could protest again. “I’m interested in why they bothered with a starship. This starship.”

  A warning trilled along his nerves. To hide it, he took a slow sip from his mug, regarding her over the rim.

  “It’ll be worth your while.”

  He lowered the mug. “Offering me a bribe, Constable? Usually it’s the other way around.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You’ve joined a game bigger than you realize, Morgan of Karolus. Yes, I’ve done my checking,” at whatever he hadn’t kept from his face. “This isn’t the first time you’ve brought the Clan to my planet in secret and I want to know why.”

  How did she—? Morgan didn’t take passengers on the Fox if he could help it. Be confined with others, inflicted by the bedlam of unprotected thoughts and emotions? As it was, the moment the Fox settled on her fins he was ready to call up a tug, and stayed downworld only as long as it took to conduct his business.

  Kurr di Sarc, and his younger brother Barac, were a pleasant exception, their minds soothingly invisible. They looked Human, but he’d known they weren’t, not with the immense power he’d sensed testing his mind’s protections at their first meeting. Clan, they had to be. He’d been certain they’d come to eliminate him. Wasn’t that what rumor claimed Clan always did to Human telepaths?

  Maybe it was. He couldn’t say. He came to believe these two were more interested in the novelty of spaceflight—and not coincidentally avoiding the notice of their kind—than in the thoughts of a ship’s captain.

  Didn’t hurt they paid well and were decent company shipboard. One trip became two, then several. Kurr’s passion was hunting artifacts in the ruins of Norval—whose Morgan didn’t ask. It was a popular, if dangerous, pastime, the pancaked layers of the city having squashed its three earlier versions deeper into the marshy ground with no sign the collapse was done.