Last Song (Heinlein's Finches Book 3)

by Robin Banks

  The fuzziness is gone when I wake up in the morning. It is the morning, too – I slept the whole night through. The miracles will never cease. It still takes me a while to process everything.

  I didn’t die.

  That’s a good thing.

  But I’m going to die sometime soon.

  I don’t know yet if that’s a good or bad thing.

  My life hasn’t changed at all, and two days ago I wanted to check out of it. Now I’m not so sure, but how I feel about it doesn’t matter if the prophecy is right. But if time is running out on me, I want to do some living. I could resent the time I’ve already wasted, but that’d waste more time. So nothing is quite as I’d like it to be, not by a long shot. Everything that happened haunts me still, and I still feel like I’m too fucked up to ever get what I wanna get, do what I wanna do, and be who I wanna be. But here and now I’m alive and there’s some good to be gotten out of this, there’s some living to be done, and I wanna do it as well as I can.

  When I’ve got all of that straightened up in my head, I realize that’s not the right place for it. My head gets distracted by bullshit and is wrong as often as not. I can’t think my way through this.

  I want to live well and I want to live right. I want to do right by those around me, and by me, too. I’ve been me long enough to know how it feels when I do that, when I’m in the right place at the right time doing the right thing, when I do something that seems to align with my fucking cosmic purpose or that kinda crap. I don’t even believe in all that, but I feel it when it happens. It’s nothing like happiness: it doesn’t feel the same, and happiness has steered me wrong a bunch of times. That other feeling hasn’t, though, not up to now. If it ever does I’ll find something else to go by, but for now I want to let it lead me.

  Well, that’s the long-term ‘for now’. For now-now, I want to be with the people I love, listen to music, play guitar, and save Kolya’s planet. For right this minute, I want some fucking food.

  We stay parked up for another day, which turns out to be another day of general chilling out and not doing much at all. I’m still feeling sore and frayed. My head is clear and my mood is good, so good it’s almost scary, but my body feels battered and doesn’t want to do much. For a change, I listen to it. It rewards me by getting better. Maybe, just maybe, the two of us could learn to get along.

  When day three rolls in and promises to shape up to be more of the same, I end up having an argument with Alya. It’s not just a disagreement: it’s a proper screaming fight, like we had sometimes back in the days when we were with the circus. Unlike those fights, though, this time I’m right and she’s wrong.

  “We can’t stay here doing fuck-all ‘cause you’re scared to get me into space. We’ve got shit to do.”

  “And we’ll get to it as soon as I know you can do so safely.”

  “We’re not even leaving a planet. There’ll be fuck-all g-force changes. We’ve made what, eight departures and landings in the last four weeks? And I’ve had zero problems.”

  “I didn’t know about your fucking heart then, did I?”

  “If you think my heart gives a fuck about what you know about it, then you’re deluded. I was fine then and I’ll be fine now.”

  “If you got lucky then, you might not get lucky again.”

  “You said it could take weeks or months for my heart to get back to normal. And with the Devin thing…”

  “The Devin thing is none of your fucking business! I fucking told you that!” She pokes me in the chest and I have to stop myself swatting her hand off.

  “It’ll be my fucking business if the Patrol rolls up, or his friends!”

  “No, it won’t. It’s all in hand. You don’t trust us?”

  “I don’t trust you! I don’t trust you to be rational about anything anymore, ‘cause you’re not! We don’t have the time to sit here and pander to your paranoia!”

  “We have all the time I say we have!”

  “No. If you don’t go with me, then I’ll just go.”

  “Where? How?”

  “To finish the fucking job. Yours isn’t the only ship here. There’s bound to be one going in the right direction. If not, I’ll make my way there by approximations.”

  “If you even think about doing that…”

  “I’m thinking about it. I’m leaving here today with or without you.”

  She looks about to let me really have it when she spots that I’m getting out of breath. She goes from angry to concerned in no time flat.

  “Luke? Sit down. Are you alright?”

  Watching her be so scared for me, I can’t be angry at her either.

  “Yeah. I’m just getting out of puff ‘cause I’m not used to screaming my brains off at people like you, you dozy mare. I’m as alright as I was three days ago. Better, probably. You just know more about it, is all.”

  She’s panting a bit, too. “Kid, I don’t want to risk you.”

  “You’re not. I’m risking myself. I’m not, really: I know what makes my chest hurt, and g-force ain’t one of those things.”

  “What does, then?”

  “Memories, mostly. And when you’re upset at me.”

  She stares at me for a few seconds, then she launches herself at me and wraps herself around me. When she lets go, she looks more like her normal self: hard as fucking nails, congenitally pissed off, and willing to do whatever it takes to do what needs to be done.

  “Ok. So we follow our course. We could go tomorrow and still get there in plenty of time to intercept our killer.”

  “We could go now and not waste another day.”

  “Alright. But if you don’t make it through, I’ll kill you.” She turns to Raj, Asher, and Quinn, who’d been watching our little exchange from a safe distance. “If the owner and the captain agree, I propose we leave this godsforsaken shithole as soon as everyone is packed up and strapped in.”

  They all nod silently. I guess the way Alya and I settle our differences isn’t to everyone’s taste, but it works for us and never escalates. As far as I know, we’ve both only ever hurt people in self-defense. I trust her not to snap over nothing. Seeing a bunch of big guys practically piss their pants in front of her is hilarious. She catches my eye as I catch hers and we both break out laughing. That doesn’t seem to reassure the guys at all.

  She smirks. “Come on, then, gentlefolk. Onwards and upwards. Time to go catch us a killer.”

  The only thing that bothers me about the departure is that Alya is clearly paying more attention to me than to her piloting. I can tell, though I’m no expert, because her controls are in front of her and I’m sitting behind her. Much as I trust her, she’s got a job to do, everyone’s safety depends on it, and she’s not fucking doing it. We have a bit of a screaming session about that, too. It’s kinda nice, like we’re back to the Good Bad Old Days, like we’re ourselves again. The guys don’t seem to be as spooked by it, either. It’s gonna be fun seeing how they respond if they ever end up finding out that this is not even close to Alya’s maximum volume. If they think they can deal with her, they’re in for a shock.

  It’s a hell of a long transit, both because we’ve got a long way to go and because my time perception seems to have gone to shit. I don’t know what it is, whether it’s ‘cause I thought I was dying or ‘cause my brain got scrambled by the drug or what, but I keep getting all tripped out on stuff. I’ll be looking at something, anything, dust floating in the light or Alya smiling at Raj or the shine on my guitar, and I just get all caught up in it. So many things are so very beautiful when you pay attention to them.

  Alya keeps making fun of me. Every time she catches me spacing out she clicks her fingers in front of my eyes, pulls my hair, or pokes me. I don’t mind: it seems to amuse her and it gives me a chance to take a good look at her. I’m filling a folder in my head full of pictures of her. She’s smiling in most of them. I hope I can take them with me when I go.

  That’s the easy bit. The hard bit is not paying atten
tion to the most beautiful thing on this ship, when what I want to do nothing but.

  For the first few days after my little mishap, when Quinn looked at me there always seemed to be worry at the bottom of her eyes, swirling around with those caramel dots. Then I guess she worked out that I wasn’t going to just keel over and croak it, and the worry turned to something else, but I can’t tell what. She looks at me weird, that’s for sure. I can’t blame her. I keep catching myself staring at her, even though I try really hard not to. Everything she does is so fucking beautiful, though. How she tilts her head sideways when she looks up at Asher. How her eyelashes flutter whenever he says something remotely suggestive. How the corners of her mouth always seem to turn up a little, as if she’d spent so much time smiling that her face defaults to it. How her fingers move when she’s talking. How her hands always seem to find Asher’s. How everything about her seems soft and hard at the same time, with no straight edges.

  It’s so damn hard not to look at her. It’s all I want to do, just watch her do her thing –and every time I think that, I know I’m lying. Watching would be enough to start with, but then I’d want something more, and that’s not going to happen. It can’t, and even if it could it shouldn’t. So it’s better not to even start, better not to watch and want. It gets harder every day, though. I keep slipping up and she keeps catching me. The only hope I’ve got is that reaching our next destination will snap me out of it.

  When we get to the next station, Alya gets all worked up about my heart again. The landing doesn’t bother me, though. Nowhere near as much as it bothers her, anyway. She doesn’t much care for tori. I know this, because she started saying it as soon as the donut-shape appeared in our sky. After the millionth time she’s muttered that she ‘hates fucking tori’, I snap.

  “Don’t fuck it, then! It’s not even anatomically possible! What were you gonna do, give it a rim job? Just land the fucking ship on the fucking thing and leave it at that!”

  She looks about to snap back at me, then she pouts.

  “I guess I’ve been a little bit whiney about that.”

  “Just a little bit. The fuck bothers you about tori, anyway?”

  “I grew up on one.”

  “You what? You were some kind of first-classer or something?”

  “No, dipshit. I was what first classers use to do their work for them. And guess what? The reason you never heard that is that I didn’t want you to know, so shut the fuck up about it. You know what, though?”

  “What?”

  “I hate fucking tori.”

  When I chuck a shoe at her Asher barks us both down.

  I like this ship. It’s good to be here.

  I don’t really understand how much Alya really hates tori until we land. I’ve never been on one before and I find it freaky as hell. There’s a lot of room, which makes a nice change, but the floor rolls up at you in all directions until some of it becomes the ceiling. My eyes don’t much like it and my stomach is taking their side. Alya seems to be a lot more affected than me, though I bet it’s only Raj and I who can spot that. Quinn can too, maybe, and I don’t know about Asher, but no way a stranger could. Alya isn’t one for letting people know that shit is getting to her. She goes all cold and rigid as soon as we land, though, and stays like that all through the security checks. When we enter the torus proper, she goes so stiff and blank that I really worry. She doesn’t seem to chill at all when we get to our rooms. I wonder what the fuck happened to her when she was a kid. Something must have, for sure. She’s not precisely oversensitive.

  I put getting to know her background on the list of things I’d like to do before I croak it. I know that I don’t have much of a chance of being able to do that, not with what I know of her already. I’m the same, I guess. One of the first things you pick up in juvie is that getting nosey about people’s pasts is neither polite nor healthy, and neither is moaning about your old crap. You don’t wanna show your cracks in case someone decides to use them, metaphorically and literally. That kind of lesson stays with you, even when you don’t want it to.

  I trust Alya more than I trust myself, but I haven’t told her half my shit. I haven’t told anyone. The people who knew me back then aren’t in my life anymore. When I was younger I thought that may give me a chance to start again, to reinvent myself. It was disappointing to find out that the real problem is that wherever I go, there I am. I can’t seem to leave myself behind. I don’t know if Alya has, either, though she’s sure better at life than I am. There’s no time for me to fix my crap now, I don’t think, but I hope I’ll get a chance to get to know what past Alya carries. In the rank mood she’s currently in, that’s pretty damn unlikely, though.

  Alya’s cold anger doesn’t spread to the rest the guys, mostly because they have their own personal reasons to hate being here. All tori have their specialist purpose, and this one is an entertainment resort. It’s packed with first-classers, which gets Asher’s back up. Raj has got a particularly slimy high-ranking Fed officer to cozy up to. Quinn hates all Fed stations equally and fiercely. As things stand, I’m the happiest one of our bunch, which is saying something.

  They’re all missing a very important point, though. This place is perfect for us. It’s a fucking entertainment resort, for fuck’s sake. We all love music, apart from Quinn who can take it or leave it. She loves anything beautiful, though, so I’m sure we’ll be able to find something to cheer her up. They all need cheering up, that’s for sure, and, unlikely as it is, it looks like it’s up to me to make that happen.

  20. Quinn

  I get up early even though I didn’t get to sleep till late. I don’t mean to: it just happens. It’s probably because I feel so happy to be out of our little ship. Although being on a station is not a patch on touching dirt, being able to go for a walk is a luxury I don’t want to waste. I can sneak out for a quick stroll and get back while Asher is still in bed. That would make for the best kind of morning.

  When I get into the kitchen, Luke is already up. He looks like he’s been up for a while, too. I feel and most probably look as if half my brain was still under my pillow, but he’s fully alert and going.

  He looks up at me and seems to steel himself.

  “I did something. I don’t mean to cause you offence by it. I can undo it.”

  “What?”

  “There.” He points at a box on the table. “If you want it, it’s for you, kinda. If you don’t want it, I’ll take it back and we never have to speak of it again. But I’d like you to listen before you say no.”

  I’m nowhere near awake enough to come up with a good response, so I mumble something incoherent. He takes it as assent and carries on.

  “We all want this mission to succeed. That’s why we’re here. That’s why Raj and Alya are doing all of this: it’s not for you guys, it’s ’cause they want to. They’re willing to invest whatever resources are needed into this. Asher may get away with playing his part with no credit in his pocket because plenty of pilots piss their wages as soon as they get them, or sooner, but if you were Raj’s bit on the side you’d be loaded. You’d be going to all the cool places, wearing the fanciest shit he could get on you. You wouldn’t be roaming the streets hanging out with the likes of me.”

  “If I had all the credit in the world, I’d still want to hang out with you.”

  I didn’t mean anything by it. I didn’t mean to say it at all, and I’m not sure where it comes from, but when I think about it I find that it’s the truth. He seems to find it even more shocking than I do, because he freezes. Damn my big mouth.

  “Luke, I enjoy your company. The gods only know why, because you can be a total dick when you want to and you seem to want that most of the time, but I do. How much credit I have or don’t have has no bearing on that fact. That’s what I meant. Ok?”

  “Alright.” I’m not sure he means it, but he shakes himself off and goes back to his speech. “So you don’t want to ask Raj for some credit, or to ask him to take you out somewhe
re posh and buy you clothes. I get that, but it does the mission no good.”

  “What’s wrong with the clothes I wear?”

  “Nothing. Hell, I don’t know: what the fuck do I know about clothes? But is that what you’d wear if you were loaded?”

  “Probably not. Ok, definitely not.”

  “There you go. Raj should be decking you up fancy. That’s an operational need, not a whim.”

  “Maybe. But I’m still not asking him, and I know he won’t ask me.”

  “I know. That’s why I got that. You don’t have to take it if you don’t want it: it’s up to you. But I got it for the mission, because I think it’s needed. And I definitely didn’t get it to insult you.”

  He drops his eyes to the floor and shuts down. It looks like he’s planning on staying closed off indefinitely, so I do the only thing I can think of and open the box. It’s full of colors.

  “What is it?”

  He shrugs. “Stuff. Scarves, kinda. Big ones. They wear them around here. I figured you could put them over the stuff you’ve got and, like, brighten it up a bit. And when you get home you can share them with Gwen, though you’ll have to wrap them round her a dozen times or she’d trip up. They’re way too big for Mattie but maybe she’d like one on her bed or something. I don’t know. I don’t know what girls like, but I figured if you got one each it would be better.”

  “This is very kind of you.”