by Kelly Jensen
“Maybe we should talk about what you were expecting, then?” Gael prompted.
“How ’bout if we just see how it all shakes out?” Bram said, his words another brush of air across Gael’s cheek.
“You mean stay? But you don’t really know me. Or Aavi.”
“I know more now than I did thirty hours ago.”
The closeness was sending hot prickles of awareness into Gael’s skin. The quiet conversation, the scent of Bram’s words. Slightly crowded, Gael leaned away. He ducked his head so he couldn’t see Bram’s expression as he did so. Instead, he concentrated on fitting his back to the sofa cushions. Settling in. Call it practice for what he’d have to do here, on Alkirak, for the next however many days or weeks.
Bram shifted beside him and handed over a mug, then spoke a soft command and the HV started.
Sitting with Bram wasn’t the same as seeing the sun. The joy started slowly, more carefully. The warmth of the mug in Gael’s fingers seeped upward, and the warmth of Bram next to him crept inward. The simplicity of doing nothing but watching an HV. The lack of conversation—because it wasn’t necessary.
Neither he nor Bram moved, but by the time the credits rolled, the gap between them seemed to have narrowed. Was this why he was here? For simple companionship? The terms of their contract specified all kinds of things. Physical things. Bram didn’t seem to be in a hurry, though, and for once, Gael didn’t mind. Maybe he could learn to smile properly by the time they got around to more.
Maybe he’d even enjoy it.
Bram shoved a last mouthful of bread toward his face and started programming the beverage machine for coffee. Might be nice to take it outside and watch the other side of the crevasse brighten, and the sun set the clouds to glowing. Gael’s reaction the previous morning had given him a new appreciation for the way a day started.
A sharp cry burst his bubble. Bram put a hand to either side of the coffee maker, heart picking a ridiculous tempo, and listened. Would he hear the rooster all the way down here? Nope, and a second cry came from somewhere inside. Bram followed it toward the other side of the kitchen before he’d even thought about it, and was halfway down the hall when there was another yell, this one louder than the others.
He strode to the shadowed doorway at the end, and touched the stone surround.
“I didn’t! I didn’t! No!” Gael’s voice, panicked and full of pain.
Bram was about to step inside when Aavi started making shushing noises.
“Shh. Shh. I know. I know you couldn’t. Gael! I know. I saw you. I saw you there and I knew you couldn’t have done it. Shh. Don’t cry. Please? Shh.”
A quiet sob filtered through the door.
Standing there, separated from the drama by a convenient turn of stone, Bram drew in a shallow breath. What was his role here? Did he know Gael well enough to go in, or would that be intrusive? And what hadn’t Gael done? Did Aavi know, or were her words a rote incantation, spoken to bring her brother out of his nightmare?
Bram took a step back. He didn’t know Gael well enough. Not yet. It would be naïve of him to have expected Gael to be as uncomplicated as his profile. The reality was going to take some getting used to, though.
Returning to the kitchen, Bram picked up his coffee and took it out onto the lower terrace. He’d missed the turn from dawn to day. The sun was mostly up, making the clouds glow. Still, he stood there, soaking up the last quiet hour he might have until Aavi talked them into next week. He was back in the kitchen washing out his mug when Gael and Aavi emerged from the hallway.
“Good morning!” Aavi bounced on her toes.
“Mornin’.” Damn she was cute. “You two sleep okay?” Bram turned away to give the mug another rinse before he could search Gael’s face for traces of the nightmare. If their positions were reversed, he’d appreciate a little nonscrutiny.
Aavi answered for both of them. “Yes. Where’s your room?”
Was this a trick question?
Bram jerked his chin toward the HV room. “Behind there.” He chanced a look at the pair. Aavi was as bright as a seam of gold, and Gael did appear more rested than he had last night. So that was something. “I’ve got plans for another couple rooms down the hall where you are now. I can get started on one pretty soon for you, if you want a room each.”
“I want to stay with Gael until you two get married.”
Bram concentrated on not choking on air while Gael blushed a deep scarlet that looked downright painful.
“Might be a bit, sweetheart. Gael and I, we need to get to know each other some.”
She squeezed Gael’s hand. “Okay. I’ll keep him until then.”
Bram’s heart might have melted, just a bit. Then a bit more at the tiny uptick at the corners of Gael’s mouth. A smile.
“So what all would you two like to do today?”
“I want to see everything!” Aavi started bouncing again.
Gael’s smile was still narrow, but the same interest brightened his eyes. So Bram showed them everything they hadn’t seen the day before.
Aavi liked the animals most. Bram didn’t have many—he was only one man and machines were better at tending crops than livestock. He had gin hens and red-tailed rabbits, both hardier species imported from a desert-type colony. The hens were smaller than the plump chickens he’d grown up with, and the rabbits were long and thin. So far, they’d adjusted well, though. He’d been thinking about trying a goat, but shipping one to the far corner of the galaxy cost about the same as one Gael Sonnen, so he might have to wait a while on that, or at least until he identified the mineral deposit down in the crevasse.
“What’s this one’s name?” Aavi asked, poking a finger through a ventilation hole in the plassex front of the hen house.
“She doesn’t have a name.” Bram waved her back. “Watch out, she might—”
Aavi retrieved her finger with a cry and immediately stuck it into her mouth. “Why don’t any of them have names?” she asked around it.
Because they’re hens didn’t seem like the right answer.
“Probably because we might eat them,” Gael provided. “I wouldn’t want to eat someone I’d been introduced to.” And damn if his expression didn’t indicate that might have been a distinct possibility on Zhemosen. Someone needed to update the Galactipedia entries on that place. Expose the dark underpinnings of the City Without End.
Aavi was clearly waiting for him to explain the hen situation.
“I only eat the old ones,” Bram said. “The ones that don’t lay anymore.”
Aavi’s crystal-blue eyes widened with horror. “You can’t eat Caroline!” Caroline? “Or Martha, or Trixie, or . . .”
He was never going to eat roast hen again, was he?
Aavi also named the rabbits—Bram didn’t have the heart to tell her he ate rabbit a lot more often than he did hen—and wanted to know where the cows were.
“I don’t have cows. Not enough land to support them. I think a fellow over in Landing Crevasse is trying some out.”
“Then were does your milk come from?”
He took them on a tour of the soybean field and explained all the ways soybeans figured into his life.
Gael showed a lot of interest in the crops. He asked about every single variety, nodding at the answers as though memorizing the details. They were over in the strawberry patch when Gael picked a caterpillar off a leaf and held it up. “Do you harvest these too?”
Aavi made a choking noise. “I am not going to eat bugs.”
Bram smiled. “No. I, er, throw them away for the most part.” Over the side of the terrace and into the poison mists below.
Gael studied the caterpillar with a pensive frown. “But you could eat them, right?”
“Sure.”
Aavi ran off yelling, only to stop and coo at the small flower garden Bram had arranged around the base of a wind turbine.
By the end of the day, Bram felt pretty comfortable in the knowledge that Gael understood the basics
of the farm. Aavi, while sometimes frivolous—which seemed appropriate for her age—was enthusiastic about helping where she could. The pair cooked dinner again, which consisted of the same meal as the night before retrieved from cold storage and reheated. Except for the custard. Gael made that fresh.
Aavi didn’t fall asleep at the table, though she talked just as much. Afterward she excused herself, saying she wanted to shower before bed. Gael started clearing things away and Bram stood to help. He hadn’t ordered himself up a companion just to watch him cook and clean. Bram took a stack of bowls out of Gael’s hands and carried them over to the sink. The autochef spat out food on edible plates. They tasted like moldy paper, but apparently delivered all the nutrients a body could want in an approximate thirty-hour period. Bram wasn’t a fan, even though food cooked on an actual range required actual dishes. He opened the faucet and ran a little water.
“Where does the water come from?” Gael asked. He’d hardly spoken through dinner, and his question caught Bram in the middle of a daydream—or more a musing about how nice it was to have company for such a mundane task as doing the dishes.
“A couple places. There’s water at the bottom of the crevasse. It’s pretty toxic, like everything down there, but easily filtered. Pumping it up is the expensive part. I’m pulling water from a side fissure about halfway down. That’s what I use for the farm between storms.”
“Storms?”
“It rains a couple times a month. We’re ’bout due for one.”
“It hardly ever rained in Zhemosen.”
Of course not. Damned city was the eleventh circle of hell or something.
“Well don’t go standing out in it here unless the rain is heavy enough to leave dents in the ground. Then you might just want to watch your head. It’s the light rain and mist you want to steer clear of. Mostly comes up out of the canyon and it’ll peel the skin off your back.”
Gael’s eyes widened.
“I’ve also got a cloud garden,” Bram said, trying for a distraction.
“Cloud garden?”
“A couple of kilometers up the canyon. I’ve got a small terrace in the clouds. A hobby crop or two and a water collection set up. That’s what we use here in the house for showers and such. We reuse it a couple times, then it goes out to the farm.”
Bram could see Gael figuring out the various cycles. He liked that Gael took the time to consider things. Meant they had more in common than had immediately been apparent.
“Gael!” Aavi called from the end of the hallway. “Can you come here?”
With an apologetic smile, Gael disappeared only to return a moment later with Aavi wrapped in a towel. “She has no other clothes.”
Of course she didn’t.
Bram went to see what he could find in his closet and ended up standing there, staring at a stack of old coveralls until the brown and gold blurred into a shade similar to Gael’s skin. He was an odd color. Pale, but not fair complexioned like Bram and Aavi. It was as though he’d been designed to live beneath the sun and then denied it—which was basically true. What would the skin below his simple tunic-style shirts look like? Paler or darker? Did he have curly hair on his chest? Lower?
He’d gotten to laying an apparently naked Gael out on his bed, and wondering how Gael’s callused fingers would feel against his back, when he realized that he was still standing in his closet. Fantasizing. Not that there was anything wrong with that. He hadn’t brought Gael out here on a whim.
Gael had sure turned up with one, though. A vivacious and talkative whim that needed something other than a towel to wear.
Bram grabbed a stack of old T-shirts and, as an afterthought, some of the more beaten-up coveralls from his mining days. Maybe Aavi could cut the sleeves off and wear them like a dress or something.
Or something.
Hell, he’d hoped to have a few years to consider dressing a child. A few years to get ready for all that came with the family he so desperately wanted. What was that old saying about being careful with wishes? Heh. He’d sailed right past that one.
It took Gael about four days to figure out that Bram didn’t really need any help on the farm. Alkirak wasn’t a technologically advanced colony planet, but even though Bram filled his days with a lot of manual labor, what he mostly did was maintain the machines that tended his farm. That kept him busy, but didn’t require two of them. Bram spent the other hours he was awake on what he called his projects: trying new seeds, experimenting with hybrid crops, charting weather patterns, testing the soil, and carving puzzles out of interesting rocks he found.
Of an evening, he relaxed with a book—sometimes one of his own making, though he was quick to tuck that one under his thigh if someone happened by. Otherwise he watched history programs on the HV. The most surprising thing about him was that he was messy. Left his stuff everywhere. He kept a pretty strict routine, but it was easy to tell he’d been alone for a long, long time. Probably a lot longer than his couple of years homesteading.
What Gael couldn’t figure out was why.
His tenth morning at the farm, Gael woke to a tingle of excitement. Another night had passed without a nightmare, and the air pressing down on him had a friendly aspect, as if to say, Today is going to be a good day.
He glanced at his Band, though it would tell him nothing but the time, and not even the local time. The thing was too cheap to sync with the Alkirak satellites, and he had no idea if he could update it manually. It had become nothing more than decoration, and not a particularly attractive one. But he kept it. The bracelet was his mark of galactic citizenship, and he was still grappling with the idea of being “real.”
Idly, he wondered if Aavi’s Band had synced with Alkirak Orbital, or the single local satellite. A knot of dread moved through his insides, landing in his stomach. Sun, why hadn’t he thought of that before?
As though wakened by the prickle of alarm, Aavi rolled over and curled into his shoulder. Loic had never curled against him, but Gael had cuddled up to his brother plenty of times. He missed that. Being close to another being. He glanced over and Aavi yawned.
“Is anyone going to be looking for you?” Gael asked.
She blinked sleepily. “No.”
“What about your family?”
Aavi rolled away. “Don’t have one.”
He knew how that felt.
The sense of unease traveled into the kitchen with him, however. Spying one of Bram’s handheld task panes, Gael considered doing a little poking around. Besides his concern for Aavi, he worried after Price, but didn’t want to burst the bubble of happiness he’d found in perhaps the unlikeliest place in the galaxy.
He picked up the handheld, activated the display, and waited for the holo to stabilize before checking for a signal. It was weak. Alkirak Orbital acted like a comm beacon for about a quarter of the planet and an auxiliary satellite covered the rest, meaning they got a signal twice a day for an hour or so, and the strength of it depended on the weather north of the farm.
He’d have to be quick.
Gael had Price’s name half pecked out on the virtual keyboard when it occurred to him that such a direct query might not be the best angle. He wiped the letters away and tried District Twenty-Eight. Apparently Zhemosen wasn’t the only city to host numbered districts. After narrowing his search, he began scanning headlines for any mention of, well, anything. He hadn’t dared try this aboard the freightliner. Even now, his palms sweated and his heartbeat flickered at the back of his throat.
“What’re you looking at?” Aavi asked.
Gael jumped high enough to bump his knees on the underside of the table. Then the kitchen door slid open. Gael swung around to see Bram standing there, frowning at the scrubbed circle of stone where his boots had been. “Where’re my boots?”
“I cleaned them up for you!” Aavi announced brightly.
Gael waved his hands through the display, dismissing his query, and glanced over his shoulder. Bram looked put out.
; “I’m sorry I didn’t ask—”
“I don’t care if you use a task pane, Gael. I just want to know where my good boots are.”
Aavi disappeared down the hall leading to Bram’s room. She came back a minute later, arms filled with boots. “Which ones are the good ones?”
Grumbling, Bram sorted through the various boots Aavi had gathered in her arms. “Did you clean all these?”
“They were dropping mud on the floor.”
“Hmm. This pair.” His brow creased into a collection of deep wrinkles. “Thank you.”
Clearing his throat, Gael asked, “Anything I can help you with today?”
Bram seemed taken aback, as he always did when someone offered to help him.
Too much time alone.
Brow furrowing, he scratched his cheek. “Well, I was going to work in the packing facility today.”
“I can help!” Aavi surged forward.
Bram cracked a smile. “You’re a little short to reach the conveyor. How about if you come count the boxes for us when we’re done?”
“Okay. I’ll keep cleaning, then.”
“Cleaning?”
“There’s dust everywhere.”
Bram’s brow wrinkled again, his expression plainly stating: Well, yeah. It’s a dusty planet. Instead of voicing his thoughts, he grunted and turned to Gael, one eyebrow raised.
“I’ll get my shoes.” Gael hopped up.
Packing processed soy wasn’t the most boring activity Gael had ever participated in, but it neared the top of the list. Bram tried to engage his interest for the first fifteen minutes by narrating the journey of beans from kettle to cooler, to cutter, compressor, cuber, and finally to packaging. Still, he got to work with Bram and took to watching his expression move from a lightly veiled curiosity to placid satisfaction as each cube disappeared beneath a square of thin, waxy plastic.
After an hour, Gael’s back ached from standing over the conveyor, where he nudged a cube now and again, making sure they lined up for the packing chute. When Bram asked how he was doing, he mustered a smile.
