Gravlander

by Erik Wecks

  Jo shrugged. “I don’t have ident papers, so I don’t really have that many options. I’ll have to find work on Tortuga or someplace similar.”

  The three women ate in silence for a few minutes until Soren said almost casually, “Would you consider working for me?”

  Jo took in a short breath and her eyebrows rose and disappeared into her hairline. “Oh?”

  Soren continued. “We need a medical person on the Clarion.”

  “But I don’t have papers. I’m not a citizen.”

  Soren’s eyes sparkled. “Come now. You were raised by Jack Halloway. You ought to know that things can be bought for a price. Half my crew doesn’t have proper paperwork. Who do you think it was that got Jack his stuff?”

  Jo shifted. She wasn’t sure that she wanted to work for anybody, especially a smuggler, and Soren’s eagerness to work with her made her even more wary. She wondered how long before something would go wrong here, too. She’d been eager to join the fleet and be part of the team when she started medical school. That hadn’t worked. Even before that, she hadn’t fit at school on Apollos, and when they had moved to Athena she had lived in the palace but been lonelier than ever. Then there was fiasco with the Timcree that had only fallen apart days prior. She wasn’t ready to step in again. It all felt too foolish, too much like standing on a landmine waiting for the moment she forgot and lifted her foot.

  On the other hand, she knew that Soren had just put herself through considerable cost and trouble—not to mention physical danger—to bring her back from who knew what fate. She might have woken to slavers or worse pulling her from that goo, naked and addled. Jo knew she ought to be grateful, but she couldn’t muster the feeling. Instead, her debt to Soren felt like another weight tied around her neck.

  For now, she let these thoughts remain hidden. “You smuggled stuff for Jack?”

  “Yep, back when he thought he was king of the universe for running a black market on Aetna.” Soren snorted.

  Jo crossed one arm over her chest. Even if he wasn’t her father, Jo didn’t like anyone who put down the man who raised her, but she decided to let it go. She didn’t want to get defensive with someone who had just offered her a job.

  When she broke the silence, she didn’t look up right away. She wanted to listen carefully. “So you’re a smuggler?”

  Soren kept her answer short. “Yes.”

  “But I don’t understand. Your ship is legally registered—”

  Soren interrupted. “So are most of the smuggling ships. If you want to travel in the galaxy, you have to use the gate system, and so you have to be registered—that is, unless you’re going to take risks like the Timcree or the Ghost Fleet. Don’t misunderstand: the Unity bureaucracy depends upon the smuggling network just as much as the rest of us; that’s why they let Maximus and the other syndicates continue to exist. For example, it was the current CEO, Randal, who hired Jack on Aetna way back before the war. The Unity doesn’t want to shut us down. They just want to harass us and keep us isolated so that we don’t start working together. They need us.”

  Before she could catch herself, Jo sighed and her shoulders slumped. “I’m not so sure I want to be a smuggler. Traveling that close to the Unity without legitimate papers sounds dangerous to me. Like I said, I really want to make a difference. I’m not that into money.”

  Looking up, Jo caught another meaningful glance from Soren to Vi.

  Soren smiled a little when she answered. “Ah, I see. Well, I’m glad you’re not motivated by money, because if you want to get rich, this isn’t your ship.”

  Violet joined her. “Yeah, strictly do-gooders here. The other kind of smuggler usually gets frustrated and weeds themselves out of our crew right away.”

  Jo fidgeted, listening carefully.

  Soren continued. “We smuggle things that are needed to the people who need them most. We charge enough to cover our expenses—sometimes. Sometimes we just do what needs to be done. None of us on the Clarion are living to get rich. In fact, half the time we’re just struggling to keep the boat in the air.”

  Jo’s forehead wrinkled, and her stomach felt like it had just swallowed an angry ocean. Inside, she chided herself. What’s wrong with you, Jo? This is exactly what you wanted.

  Yet it felt all wrong, like a perfect gift that turned out to be the wrong size, or like a professional musician who came in a measure early. She wasn’t ready for this. She needed to think and rest first. There was too much disappointment she needed to process. She really just wanted to be left alone. As she tried to put her thoughts together in order to explain, she felt both angry with herself and overexposed to the women across the table.

  Her jaw muscles clenched as she spoke, as if her body wanted to keep the words inside. She started hesitantly. “When the Timcree thing happened, I jumped at it as a place to have a fresh start, and now I’m starting over again. It feels like my whole life has been one constant restart. I’m not sure I’m ready to just say yes to something like that, at least not today. I need some time to recover. Living with the Timcree was lonely work and then to have it fail …” Jo’s voice trailed off.

  For an instant, she saw herself working with the young woman selling the synthetic meat in the market, and a sense of missing completeness came over her. This time, she looked up at Soren. “I was more thinking of just taking some kind of quiet job in a booth in the market selling kabobs or something. I’m not sure I can handle more than that right now.”

  Soren sat still, her face passive. Jo thought she saw her head nodding ever so slightly.

  Violet frowned, with her eyebrows knit together at the center of her forehead. Without looking at Jo, she picked up another bite of food with her fork and said in an almost dismissive way, “Not much of a way to make a difference.”

  Instantly defensive, Jo wanted to snap back. She didn’t feel heard. She was tired. She just needed a break. Maybe later she would be ready for the Clarion. But she still had another seven hours stuck in this tiny tin can, and she didn’t want to pick a fight, so she held her tongue.

  Jo thought she saw Soren put a discreet hand on Vi under the table. Soren leaned in a little. “So are the Timcree on Korg Haran going to die from that Unity engineered plague now?”

  Her throat became hard, swallowing almost painful. “No, Tanith is good with the scanner and an adept learner. They should be fine.”

  “So how did it fail?”

  Jo leaned away from Soren and rubbed the nape of her neck with one hand. Her eyes became blurry and hot. She blinked hard and rubbed them with the side of her hand. To her, the answer seemed obvious. “Well … I’m not there, and even when I was there, I wasn’t really able to help them. I had to do everything through Tanith.”

  Soren spoke quietly as she leaned toward Jo. “So you were really asking for acceptance from the Timcree—to become one of them.”

  Jo scowled, shifting in her chair. She unwillingly conceded the point to anyone but herself. “I guess so. I don’t know.”

  Refusing to look away from Jo, Soren’s eyes gently bored into her. “I’m not sure that was possible. It sounds to me like you’re asking them to change hundreds of years of prejudice and culture simply to accept you.” The older woman leaned back and raised her eyebrows a little. “You know, to my knowledge, there hasn’t been a Gravlander asked to stay on Korg Haran in over thirty years, and the last guest stayed three days. Hell, I doubt that there has ever been a Gravlander who stayed there more than a month, not even the anthropologist Caldwell, and you were there nearly what, fourteen months? From what I can tell, that makes you the foremost expert in the galaxy on the Timcree. But I guess that doesn’t really count for anything in your book, does it?”

  Jo sighed and then chuckled a little, even as tears silently dripped onto the table in front of her. Her cheeks flushed. “Something like that. It sounds kind of ridiculous when you say it that way.”

  Soren’s voice was full of compassion, almost motherly. “Maybe it’s a pe
rfectly reasonable expectation for someone who had their family taken from them at age four.” Jo looked up to see tears in the captain’s eyes. “There’s nothing you can do about the past, Jo. If you live in your past, you can’t be in the present.”

  Jo sighed and for a moment contemplated her hand and the eating utensil it held. She realized that her head was nodding in agreement before her mind had even caught up. “That’s probably true. I think Tanith was trying to tell me something like that in his own way. Listen, I wish I could take the job on the Clarion, but right now I’m not ready for it. It would feel like too much stress to try to make everyone happy. I need something small and quiet. I wish it were a month from now or a year, because I know it’s exactly what I want, and I think if I weren’t so tired, I could really do a good job.”

  To Jo’s surprise, she didn’t get any sense that Soren was angry. In fact, she smiled. “I understand. I know some of the vendors on Tortuga. Maybe I could set you up somewhere to get some rest.”

  She paused and took a bite. All three women seemed content to let the silence linger.

  Later, Soren continued as if they hadn’t stopped talking. “I guess I need to let you know that I am in any hurry to fill that position, and there are other people who have shown interest, so if it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be, but …”

  Jo again found herself on the verge of tears, and she suspected that she was being a fool, but she couldn’t see how it would work out if she didn’t get some rest first. “I understand.”

  Soren caught her eye, and Jo saw a hint of respect there that surprised her. Soren smiled. “For now, maybe you could fill in until we reach Tortuga. It’s been a while since the crew had a good medical exam. It will give you something to do, and I’ll pay you for the time. That will give you a start while you get set up on the rock.”

  12

  Invasion of Privacy

  Eleven days after coming aboard the Clarion, Jo felt grateful that she would soon disembark. It wasn’t really the work—that felt quite similar to the work she did with the Ghost Fleet. It was the personal space, or rather, the lack thereof. Even Korg Haran felt spacious in comparison. With such tight quarters, everyone seemed to be in everyone else’s business. On ships like the Clarion, there could be no such thing as a secret.

  More than that, all twenty-eight different crew members seemed to want to be her friend. Before she left the Ghost Fleet for Korg Haran, Jo might have said that such care and attention was just what she wanted. Now, after fourteen months basically living with her own company, all the questions and interest felt overwhelming and intrusive.

  Currently, Jo was craving the one place on the whole vessel that was consistently her own—her bunk. She reached down to untie one of her boots, preparing to step into the head to change for her sleep cycle. One of her two roommates, Alia, had just begun to wake up and would soon be getting ready for her first down period, while up on the bridge, Violet was supposed to be relieved about now. The other two just undressed and changed in their shared quarters. Jo tended to step into the head.

  They were scheduled to dock at Tortuga in around twelve hours. Jo had intentionally scheduled her last clinic to start right after they docked. The crew seemed so buzzed about arriving at the little red rock that she hoped the ship would empty on arrival so that she could spend her last clinic tidying up and finishing her charting before leaving the Clarion behind.

  Bunkrooms in the small crew quarters on the Clarion were assigned, so theoretically each crew member was supposed to get eight quiet hours in the bunk, but in practice it never worked out that way. There was the transition time where one person was coming and another was going, and while Violet and Jo could generally keep steady schedules, Alia, who worked in cargo, didn’t seem to keep to any schedule that Jo could see. The job of a longshoreman on the Clarion seemed to be a full-speed or full-stop operation. Some days Alia worked far past the end of her C shift, which meant she was often sleeping while Jo and Vi were in the room. That made their already tight quarters even more cramped. Jo found the lack of personal space most disheartening.

  Violet stuck her head in. “Hey, Jo? Do you want to get some food?”

  Jo’s hands clenched. She smiled faintly. “No. I was planning to get some sleep.”

  Vi shrugged as if she didn’t care and then continued. “No worries. Well, when were you planning on disembarking tomorrow?”

  “I’ve got a clinic starting just after we arrive, and then I’ll have to get my things together and report to the captain, so I’m not sure.” Jo reiterated her tight smile, trying not to sound standoffish.

  She was sure that she saw Vi’s shoulders slump, but her tone remained upbeat. “Suit yourself, but even the locals usually pair up on Tortuga. You can get Shanghai’d there if you’re not careful.”

  Jo nodded politely. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “At least join us for a drink. I know you’ve only been one of us for a few days, but it’s kind of tradition. After we dock, we’re meeting at six standard at The Container. It’s a level down from the bazaar in the Blue sector. You can’t miss it.” Vi’s smile remained warm and natural.

  Jo thought she could handle getting together with the crew for a little while, and she didn’t want to be the one to disappoint them, so she said, “Sure. That sounds nice.” She figured that she could show up and have a drink, then get herself settled into some small accommodation before checking out some of the leads that Soren had given her for work.

  Vi shut the door again and headed off to get some food.

  Alia rubbed her eyes sleepily and leaned up. “Don’t worry about Vi, Jo. If she could, she’d organize the social calendar of the whole ship. You should see it when she decides that one of our crew needs a boyfriend.” Alia gave a mock shiver.

  Jo laughed. “Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind. Mental note, don’t let Vi be my wingwoman.

  Alia laughed with her, and Jo stepped into the bathroom.

  Jo was in a much better mood when she departed the Clarion eighteen hours later. Her post-arrival clinic had worked like a charm. No one had shown up. Jo was able to finish her charts and turn them over to Soren on time. It only took her a few minutes to gather her personal effects, drop off her ship-issued datapad, get paid, and leave. She had expected more of a response from Soren, perhaps some effort to make her stay. Instead, she received only kind words and a short hug that surprised her and made her both grateful and uncomfortable at the same time.

  She was supposed to meet one of Soren’s contacts about a room in a few hours, and then she was planning on meeting the crew from the Clarion for a drink after that—a commitment that Vi had reminded her about again that morning.

  After nearly two weeks on the crowded ship, Jo felt like a caged bird set free, and despite Vi’s sensible advice to pair up, Jo wasn’t about to let someone else come with her. If she was going to live on Tortuga, she was going to have to figure it out for herself. Besides, no matter the risks, it felt good to be alone, and although her plan for a quiet clinic had worked like a charm, she had barely scratched the itch.

  Jo arched her back and stretched. After the corridors of the Clarion, the vaulted ceilings on Tortuga seemed palatial. Jo grinned to herself. Compared to the palace she had once inhabited on Athena Prime, that was a ridiculous statement. Any one of the palace guest suites would have been bigger than the berth and dockyard she stood in. Jo took a deep breath of the acrid air and started walking.

  As soon as she entered the central market, brightly dancing holis burned her eyes with ads for everything from computer parts to protein bars. Of course, many of them only half functioned, and all the stalls lay covered in a thin red film. In any other context, she might have called it all shabby, but now it just seemed authentic in a way that the bright spaces of her past did not. This is real life, she thought. People smiled as they jostled by or called her to their booths. She politely declined every vendor’s invitation.

  Without a specific aim
, Jo found herself wandering absentmindedly toward the area of the market where she thought she would find the kabob stand and the smiling young woman. It turned out to be surprisingly easy to find, but to Jo’s great disappointment, she wasn’t there. Instead, the front side of the booth was being run by an old woman, stooped and rounded by age. She wore her long gray-speckled hair in a knot on her head. It was only when she smiled that Jo recognized her as either the mother, or more likely the grandmother, of the young woman she had seen previously. Their smile carried the same warmth and authenticity.

  Behind her, a man about the same age vigorously stirred a giant pot of sweet-smelling meat while a young man wrapped small mounds of the meat in palm-sized dough balls and set them aside. After a few minutes, he walked over to a large and oddly stacked set of metallic rings standing on a red-hot ceramic stone. The whole stack was topped with a clear poly lid, and steam leaked out from between the rings.

  Starting from the top, the young man disassembled the steamer and removed the finished buns from each level, grouping them in several piles on a large flat stone, which was then placed in the case at the front of the shop. Jo stood to the side, watching with unvarnished curiosity as the old woman put the aged buns in a basket, making way for the tray of fresh wares.

  A cynical part of Jo wondered whether her extreme exhaustion and her relief to be living among humans once again had combined to cause her to romanticize a rather mundane and boring daily life, but she quickly dismissed the idea.

  Right now, mundane and boring is exactly what I need, thought Jo.

  Unexpectedly, the aged woman stepped out of the stall and without a word, pressed a warm, soft bun into Jo’s hand. She didn’t say anything, but for a moment just smiled at Jo, wrinkled cheeks held high, eyes turned to half moons.

  The act of kindness took Jo so off guard that she forgot to say “thank you” before the woman wandered off to a group of ragged-looking children playing in an intersection nearby.