Starship Summer ss-1

by Eric Brown

  I remembered the reason for my visit and called Hawk’s name. My voice echoed around the stark metal canyons but was not answered.

  I tried to find the ship that Hawk used as his office-cum-home, but I was confused by so many vessels that looked alike. Then I saw movement on the observation deck of an old scoutship across the yard—the quick appearance of someone in the hatch—and I recognised the ship from my first visit.

  The figure ducked back inside as I approached, and I recalled what Maddie had told me about the girl who lived with Hawk.

  I climbed the steps to the platform and said, “Hello? Is Hawk around?”

  Silence from within the ship. “Hello? Is anyone—?”

  A figure emerged, and I received the first shock of the day.

  For an instant, a fleeting second, she reminded me of my daughter.

  She was small and slight and fair and ineffably beautiful, but she wasn’t human.

  The Ashentay were humanoid, and might conceivably have passed for human—but a faerie strain of humanity, slim-limbed, fey, with small, broad faces that, while almost human, were also undeniably other.

  The more I looked at her, the less she resembled Carrie, for which I was grateful.

  Timorous, she peered out at me from around the frame of the hatch, one small hand to her mouth, the other fingering the perished rubber seal of the doorway. She was dressed in a simple brown smock and was barefoot.

  “Hello?” The sound was barely audible, a faint breath.

  I smiled, reassuringly. “Hi. I’m a friend of Hawk’s. Is he around?”

  “A friend of Hawk’s. Is he around?” She seemed to contemplate the meaning of my words as she repeated them.

  She stared at me with large blue eyes and said, “He is around, yes.”

  “Right. Good. In that case can I see him?”

  “See him?” she repeated. She thought about this, then said, “No, you cannot see him.”

  I smiled. I realised, then, that this was my very first encounter with an alien being. Sometimes, on Earth, my dealings with different races had been difficult, fraught with misunderstandings due to language and cultural differences. How much harder might it be to successfully communicate with true aliens?

  I tried again. “Will you tell Hawk that David is here? I’d like to talk to him.”

  “David is here… Like to talk to him.” She stared at me, and I found her inscrutable gaze disconcerting. She went on, “No, I cannot tell Hawk. You will have to wait.”

  I nodded. “But he’s here?” I persisted.

  She gave a slight nod, as if the gesture had been learned and she was still unsure how to use it. “He is here.”

  I smiled, trying not to laugh. “Then… look, will you take me to him?”

  “Take you to him…”

  Quickly, with a swiftness and grace that surprised me, she hurried from the hatch, slipped past me and danced down the steps. “Please come with me,” she said, turning at the foot of the steps and pointing to her chest.

  I hurried after her. We crossed the scrapyard. She took long, barefoot strides, a strange gait that was almost a run—yet another alien aspect of this strange extraterrestrial child.

  We came to a range of sectioned engine cowls, and before them stood a blue pod perhaps three metres square. Set flush into its facing flank was a sealed hatch. The alien squatted in the dust and pointed at the pod. “Hawk, he is in here.”

  I looked from the girl to the pod, then stepped forward and knocked on the hatch. “Hawk? You in there?”

  “Hawk, he cannot hear you,” said the girl. He can’t?”

  She blinked up at me from where she was squatting.

  Why can’t he hear me?”

  She stood quickly and skipped around the pod. A second later her blonde head reappeared and she said, “You follow me.”

  I stepped around the side of the pod and found the girl standing on tip-toe, peering through a small observation panel in the flank, her face pressed comically to the glass.

  She turned to look at me. “Hawk, there he is.”

  Unsure what to expect, I joined her and ducked to look through the panel. The interior of the pod was dim, but I could see Hawk stretched out on a flight couch, leads snaking from his upper-arm and neck. He wore a flight visor and was twisting this way and that on the couch, as if in the throes of a bad dream.

  Hawk was in a flight simulator, reliving his past…

  I didn’t know whether to be gladdened that he had recourse to this recreation, or saddened by his need.

  The girl was beside me, peering in and smiling.

  I said, “How often does Hawk use this?”

  “How often?” She thought about it and nodded. “Every day he comes here.”

  “Do you know how long he might be in there?”

  She looked up, at the sun, and said, “Nearly over. Out soon.”

  I nodded and moved from the window, the girl following me. I sat on the projecting fin of an old tug. The girl leaned against the flank, watching me silently.

  I found her alien gaze discomforting. “How long have you known Hawk?” I asked to break the silence.

  “Known Hawk?” She considered this. “Two years.”

  “You’ve lived with him that long?” I think I sounded surprised, the prude in me shocked.

  She repeated my question and nodded.

  “How did you meet?”

  “Meet?” She smiled suddenly, as if at the recollection, then said, “Hawk, he found me.”

  “Found you?” I couldn’t help laughing.

  She nodded. “My hive mother, she leave me in jungle for koah tree. Three days later Hawk, he finds me, brings me here, feeds me.”

  I tried to make sense of her first sentence. “And your mother, she doesn’t come back for you?”

  “Come back for me? Of course not. She left me for koah tree.” I nodded, feigning comprehension. “And you like it here, living with Hawk?”

  “Hawk, he is a kind, good man.”

  “He looks after you well?”

  She stared at me, then said, “No. I look after him. I make his life worth living. He tells me this.”

  “You don’t miss your people?”

  “Miss my people?” she repeated, then shook her head. “My hive mother,” she explained with what might have been infinite patience, “she give me to koah tree.”

  “Right,” I said. “I see.”

  She looked at me, and then asked her first question. “You are David Conway, yes? Hawk’s new friend?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  “Hawk says you are a good man.”

  I smiled. “I’m pleased he thinks so. I think Hawk’s a good man, too.”

  As if on cue, to put an end to the vicarious compliment session, the hatch cracked with a pressurised sigh and Hawk ducked from the simulator and straightened in the sunlight, stretching as if to ease aches from his tall frame.

  Then he saw me and smiled—a little uncomfortably, I thought. The girl pushed herself from the flank of the tug and danced across to Hawk, standing on tip-toe and whispering something in his ear. He smiled, then limped across to where I sat, the girl beside him.

  “She wants me to tell you her name,” he said. “You see, it’s impolite for the Ashentay to tell a stranger their name, until the stranger asks. Only then can they become friends.” He shrugged and smiled. “When in Rome… David, this is Kee. Kee, David Conway.”

  She smiled and inclined her head.

  Hawk pulled her to him, kissed her forehead and said, “We’d love a couple of beers.”

  She hurried off and Hawk hitched himself onto the fin beside me. I watched her go. “Strange child,” I said.

  “She’s alien,” he said. “What do you expect? And don’t be deceived by appearances. Kee’s no child.”

  I glanced at him. “No? I had her down as around twelve.”

  “She’s thirty Earth years old,” Hawk said. “A mature Ashentay adult. What do you think I am, Conwa
y?” he laughed.

  “Kee said you found her. Something about her hive mother giving her away to a koah tree?”

  “Many humans would call the Ashentay primitive.” He shook his head. “I’d rather say they’re just very different. Alien. They live in hive tribes, with a single mother spawning as many as twenty children in a litter. They have a ritual—the twentieth child of every birthing, when they reach maturity, is left with the koah tree. A kind of gift to the gods of the jungle.”

  “But they die?”

  “Well, that depends what you believe. The Ashentay believe the spirit of the twentieth child is special, and blessed. It’s an honour to be left with the koah tree. Their spirit is absorbed into the tree, and they enjoy extended life.”

  “So your finding her and bringing her back here…?”

  Hawk smiled. “The koah tree was dying. I effectively saved her life.”

  “She wouldn’t have left the dying tree, sought her people?”

  “Her destiny was with the tree. I had to show her that it was dying. Only then would she come with me—she couldn’t return to her people, according to ritual. Her destiny is with me, now.”

  “Some responsibility, Hawk,” I said.

  He shrugged. “I love her, Conway.”

  Kee came back a minute later, carrying three beers. She passed two to Hawk, then climbed onto the fin and stretched herself out behind us, the bottle resting on her chest. She closed her eyes and basked in the sun.

  Hawk passed me a beer. “Social visit?”

  “The ship you sold me,” I said. “It’s haunted.”

  He gave me a look. “Haunted?”

  I told him about the apparitions. “I went through the ship yesterday, looking for what might be causing it. I found nothing, no projectors, nothing like that.”

  “It’s an alien ship. They might have had different systems we don’t recognise.”

  “That’s another thing,” I said. “As far as I could tell, the ship didn’t belong to any of the known space-faring races.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  I shrugged. “So maybe I’m wrong. But the projection didn’t resemble any of the known races, and the dimensions of the ship don’t correspond with the sizes of the space-faring aliens, as far as I could tell.”

  Hawk thought about this. “Let’s go over to the office. I have a com system there, records that might tell us something.”

  We slipped from the fin and left Kee sleeping in the sun, the beer still standing on her chest. As I glanced back at her, I was reminded, fleetingly and with a sudden pang, of my daughter sun-bathing on the beach at Vancouver.

  It was cool in the dim interior of the scoutship where Hawk had his office. The room was big, but he had managed to stuff it full of com-terminals and unidentifiable chunks of machinery, and the walls were hung with plasma graphics of starscapes and alien vistas.

  We sat in comfortable swivel chairs before a big screen and Hawk tapped a series of commands into the touchpad.

  “These are the specs of all the types of alien ships in existence,” he said, “belonging to the Qlax, the Mathan and the Zexu.”

  The screen filled with glowing columns. “I did wonder if it might have been a Zexu exploration vessel,” he said.

  I handed Hawk a sheet of paper scribbled with measurements I’d made yesterday. “It’s not Zexu,” I said. “They’re way too tall for the ship.”

  “And the Mathan and Qlax are too small,” he said.

  “So… maybe it belonged to a race so far undiscovered?”

  He stared at me. “And I gave it away for five grand!” he laughed, shutting down the screen.

  “Hey, I wouldn’t claim all the glory. We’ll split everything fiftyfifty.”

  Hawk finished his beer and said, “Look, the best thing would be for me to come over to the ship and go through it inch by inch. If it’s projecting alien images, then there’s some mechanism doing that, maybe some data system we can access.”

  “Come over tomorrow afternoon, before dinner with Matt and Maddie.”

  “How about another beer?” He fetched two ice-cold bottles from a cooler and we moved out onto the observation deck and sat on the command couches.

  I stared across the yard, towards the blue flight simulation pod. Nearby, Kee was still flat out on the fin, soaking up the light of Delta Pavonis.

  “Kee said you used the pod every day.”

  Hawk smiled. “We all have our vices, David.”

  “I thought your jacks were sealed?”

  He looked uncomfortable. “My spinal ports are well and truly,” he said. “But the left bicep and occipitals are fine. I use these and go spinning round the Expansion.” He smiled like a schoolboy. “Got to get my kicks someplace.”

  I refrained from asking him how his spinal jacks had become unusable, and changed the subject. “Maddie called round yesterday.”

  “How is she?”

  I shrugged. “She seemed fine. Hard to tell. She always seems so buoyant, considering her condition.”

  He looked across at me. “She told you?”

  “We had a few beers and she told me all about it.” I shook my head. “What can you say? I can’t imagine the hell she must live through.”

  “She’s a remarkable woman, Conway.” He paused, then said, “Did she tell you we had an affair a few years ago?”

  “No, but she did say that you were close.”

  He smiled. “Close? I loved the woman. Still do, if I’m honest with myself.”

  I took a drink of beer. “What happened?”

  I thought at first he wasn’t going to reply, but after a few seconds he said, “Maddie came to Chalcedony about ten years ago. She lived at the sanatorium just north of Magenta. At the time I had an apartment in the settlement, before I moved here.” He smiled to himself. “We both took walks along the beach, and I managed it so that I just happened to be out when Maddie passed by. She’s such an out-going person that it wasn’t long before we were meeting in the Jackeral.

  “…I knew there was something unusual about her—her clothing, the mugs and utensils. I plucked up the courage and asked, and she told me about the operation. Anyway, one night we both got drunk and I took her back to my place and we tried to make love, with a piece of polymer sheeting between us. Just molecules thick… but it was an effective enough barrier, and when we ripped it off and held each other… ”

  He trailed off, eyes distant, and shook his head. “Maddie screamed as if I’d slit her throat. We’ve never touched each other since.”

  I wondered if Maddie had felt Hawk’s pain that day, sensed the reason for his jacks being sealed and puckered with scar tissue.

  “We’ve had a strange relationship since then. We both feel a lot for each other, but without being able to consummate that feeling physically… Something’s missing, and I think Maddie hates herself for it, and as a result maybe hates me a little for making her hate herself. Does that make sense?”

  I nodded. “We’re complex beings, Hawk.”

  “And Kee doesn’t help. When I took her in, began living with her, Maddie was sarcastic, to say the least. I accused her of being jealous—I was drunk at the time, and Maddie’d been sniping—but she said she wasn’t jealous, just ashamed that someone she knew was exploiting an alien. It wasn’t at all like that, and I tried to explain, but Maddie wouldn’t listen. She’s mellowed since then, but we still spar from time to time.”

  I smiled. “I’ve noticed.”

  “But deep down we still feel a hell of a lot for each other.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah… I’m sorry, too. For Maddie. She’s one of the nicest women I’ve ever known.”

  “And now she’s going through it all again with Matt,” I said.

  Hawk nodded, but said nothing.

  We had another beer and watched the sun plummet into the sea. As darkness fell and the Ring of Tharssos brightened overhead, I left Hawk, still drinking on the observation deck, and d
rove home to Magenta.

  SEVEN

  The following afternoon, before Hawk arrived to inspect the Mantis and the others came for dinner, I left the Fighting Jackeral with a beer and walked along the creaking, sun-warped timbers of the jetty. I came to the end and peered down at the silver, sequinned water of the bay as it sucked at the jetty’s barnacled columns. A young girl was sitting cross-legged nearby, a small blonde kid of about ten, fishing with a net. A part of me wanted to strike up a conversation with her—for the very same reasons, I supposed, that I had made myself confront the heaving waters below, and had come in the first place to live beside the sea. I needed to banish the fear, the fear of the element that had robbed me of Carrie. And I needed to get over the pain I felt every time I saw a girl who might have been an older version of my daughter. The hell of losing a child is that the future, the parental fantasy of the years that stretch ahead and the shared joys that will fill them, is suddenly ripped away, leaving you with nothing but fading memories of the past and an empty present. Self-pity is one refuge, but it’s way too easy and self-destructive. I know. I had gone down that road in the year after Carrie’s death, which was one of the reasons why my wife had left me. I could have gone two ways, after that: gone further down the futile road of self-pity, propelled by what I saw as Sally’s desertion, or faced the fool I had become and done something about it. I’d chosen the latter path, left Earth behind me and come to live beside the sea at Magenta.

  Now the swell of the bay sickened me, and the child looked up and smiled hesitantly at my tears. Very quickly she jumped up and ran off clattering over the loose boards of the jetty.

  I thought of Maddie and Hawk and Matt, my new friends who all carried the scars of the past, and I knew I had come to the right place.