To Trade the Stars

by Julie E. Czerneda

  Dark brows creased together, but she didn’t deny it. “Noisy creature,” Ruti told him, her voice pitched as low and aimed at his elbow. “It would have been more work to keep out his thoughts. But he knew the craft. Almost as well as I do. I cooked at home.”

  “You’re telling me a Clan does manual labor.”

  “Cooking isn’t manual labor,” Ruti said firmly and with every indication of sincerity. “It’s an art form. My—House—is renowned for our ability.”

  “Would this have anything to do with why you chose my door to haunt of all Plexis?”

  Definitely a glowing pink blush this time. “It might.”

  Huido snapped his claw to bring the nearest server rushing over. “Take this trumquin soufflé over to the table—?” he paused.

  “Twenty-five”, Rubi supplied without hesitation and with the beginnings of a smile.

  “Twenty-five. And keep an eye on the Whirtles to make sure they don’t die before paying their bill.”

  The server looked askance at Ruti, but hurried off with the dish.

  “Maybe this isn’t going to be a total disaster of a day after all, little Fem,” Huido pronounced. “What other useful tidbits did you steal from that excrement’s excuse for a brain? Everything you’d need for a promotion from washing dishes, I assume?”

  Ruti really did have the kind of smile Humans called mischievous.

  For her sake, Huido hoped she’d learned very well indeed, given the Carasian now understood why the last available Master Chef on Plexis had so abruptly lost his good sense and decided to serve his fellow beings a little too literally.

  Clan were infamous for manipulating others to get what they wanted.

  Huido’s eyes focused on Ruti, delivering multiple images of her confident expression.

  Did she know Carasians never forgave being used?

  Chapter 3

  THE Fox was free of visitors, if not their consequence. The Rugheran had stayed only a handful of seconds longer, the reason for its departure as much a mystery as the reason it arrived in the first place. Let alone how.

  Which hardly mattered to me. Morgan was not happy. His displeasure sent a discordance through our Joining, like a sound that, however faint, clenched one’s teeth. Perhaps this explained why most Clan pairs lived as far apart from one another as possible, something I didn’t want for us. But how would it be to have this intimate connection to the feelings of another, if that other had no warmer feelings than this to share?

  There could be nothing worse, I thought, then looked at Morgan’s grim face and knew I was wrong. It was infinitely worse to be connected, with love at its core, and have wounded one another.

  “A new sentient species,” he was saying, in a clipped, angry voice. “A chance to be the first to trade with them. Explain to me again why you decided not to mention knowing their location?”

  “Why?” I countered, rising to stand. We’d taken our argument into the control room, sitting like civilized beings, he on the pilot’s couch and I on what had been the copilot’s when the Fox operated with a full crew, but was now mine. I wasn’t feeling particularly civilized after half an hour of debate. “I’ve told you why and you aren’t hearing me. The Rugheran homeworld is not just close to Ettler’s Planet. It’s close to Acranam. Too close! It’s within their range. Many of them wouldn’t need a pathway to reach it.”

  “Since when do Clan care about aliens—”

  “The Clan care about you!” I protested, cutting him off in midsentence. “And where do you think most of our enemies are now? Acranam!”

  “Sira ...” He somehow put a world of frustration into my name, then leaned forward, fixing me with those penetrating blue eyes. “Why are you so worried? You’re their leader—”

  “No, I’m Speaker for the Clan Council. The same Council Acranam rejects. Jason, don’t you see it? There’s no way I can guarantee my safety from them, let alone yours. We can’t trust them.”

  “Then we’ll be careful,” Morgan countered impatiently, throwing up his hands. “Traders always are—or they don’t last long. Thanks to you, we know what, or rather who, to avoid: the Clan. Nothing new in that, my Lady Witch. I don’t see the problem.”

  “I do.” I sank back down. “I see so many, Jason, and so much to fear. I’m not like you, not anymore,” I said, knowing he felt the despair suddenly filling me, but unable to hide it. “I can’t take risks. Not with so much to lose.”

  Sira. Just my name, but with it an upwelling of joy to catch my breath in my throat. Aloud, though his eyes gleamed, “I would never put you—or us—in jeopardy. But there’s a difference between a foolish risk and a calculated one. The Fox is a trader. We’re traders, Sira. The Rugheran homeworld is the chance of a lifetime—do yo know how long it’s been since a new system was added to the trade routes? New materials, new forms of art, information, culture—it’s the reason I chose this life in the first place. To roam the stars and discover what’s out here! What could be better?”

  “We don’t know if we can talk to them,” I protested, even as part of me responded to his enthusiasm—shared it. Perhaps I was, slightly, curious myself.

  A flaw to be resisted, like a fascination with cliffs.

  “Trust me,” Morgan urged. “Trust yourself. Don’t you see it? No one but you and I together could do this! Why else did the Rugheran come to us?”

  “Good question,” I muttered darkly.

  Morgan leaned back, his couch curling to accommodate him. “Did you sense any harm from it?” he insisted, a rather premature note of triumph in his voice.

  Mine was decidedly surly, but I didn’t care. “How should I know? Maybe the happiest Rugherans are the hungry ones.”

  “We can take the Fox to Drapskii,” my Chosen continued, warming to his theme. “Get her refitted there—I assume our credit’s still good with the Makii—while we talk to your friends about the Rugherans.”

  I saw another possibility and brightened. “We could leave the Fox and take the Makmora!”

  My Human’s lips pressed together in a straight, thin line, then pushed out again. He seemed to be waiting, his lips repeating their interesting new movement, nostrils flaring slightly each time.

  He didn’t need to speak, and I didn’t need to dip into his thoughts. Ossirus give me patience.

  “Of course, who needs a mammoth freighter with four hundred beings on board dedicated to preserving our lives at any cost when we could go by ourselves in the Fox. Alone.” I’d meant it to sound light and humorous; my voice broke shamefully at the end, making it anything but.

  I stared at my hands involuntarily gripping one another, holding in my presence within our connection just as tightly. “What has happened to me?”

  “What’s wrong?” he demanded, sitting up straight.

  “I’ve—I’ve become a coward,” I said it with a kind of sick wonder, the way one might confess an addiction, as if it must belong to some other, weaker self. “I’m terrified of everything outside this ship, Jason. Is this being Chosen? I knew I’d become more cautious—it’s only reasonable—but this ... ?”

  Hands wrapped around mine—warm, strong hands. I raised my eyes to meet Morgan’s. He crouched on his heels before me, eyes full of compassion. I felt his Power trying to offer comfort as well, but kept myself and my misery impervious. He nodded, as if acknowledging my need for my own pain, then spoke in a quiet, steady voice, words that didn’t make sense at first. “I can’t know what you should feel as a Chosen Clan, Sira. But fear? It comes with the territory. You aren’t alone in it.”

  Locks of my hair slipped over my arms to stroke his cheeks, then rested on his shoulders in quiet curls of red-gold. “I don’t understand,” I answered numbly, ready to admit when I was lost.

  Morgan’s thumbs rubbed gently over my clenched fingers. “Perhaps, in this, a Human has the advantage, my Lady Witch,” he mused slowly. “Humans are brought up with the literature and legends of love. We hope it lives up to its promise; we dream
all our lives of finding that one great love. And we’re warned of its cost if we do.”

  I mouthed the word. “Cost?”

  “To risk love is to risk loss. The greater the love ... ?” He brought my hands to his lips.

  “The greater the loss,” I finished reluctantly. No wonder Humans seemed to live under a shadow at times. “You aren’t reassuring, Jason.”

  “I can’t be. If I measured my love for you in terms of that fear,” the Human said so quietly I had to strain to catch the words, “I wouldn’t be able to take another breath, dooming us both.” His eyes devoured mine. Louder, firmer: “Sira. Accept, as I do, that what is now—” his fingers tightened on mine, “—is what matters. It’s all we can control. It’s all we should try to control. Do you understand that?”

  In words? Slippery, misleading things. But there was more. Morgan’s thoughts abruptly whirled around and through mine, providing a maelstrom of concepts. I gasped under the impact, fighting not to keep them out, which I could have done with ease, but to sort them into coherence. The harder task. The worthwhile one.

  I fixed my eyes on his, turning my hands so our fingers intertwined, willing to also grasp what he offered—no matter how alien—if I was able. “You’d prefer I’d be as willing to spend my life now, as I was before our Joining—despite knowing you’d die as well.” I shook my head in disbelief. “How can you feel that way?”

  “Because otherwise, you turn us into different people.” Morgan’s hands loosened and withdrew. “And risk losing more than our lives.” His eyes were somber now, as though my reaction pained him in some way I couldn’t feel.

  What I did feel was the cold emptiness of my hands and frustration with his Human mysticism. “Only death loses this,” I said roughly, then widened my awareness of our link through the M’hir until close to drowning myself in Morgan’s thoughts and feelings, involuntarily matching the rhythm of my heart to the slower, stronger beats of his. It caused him discomfort—the Human mind had never adapted to such a link with another’s, let alone the M’hir itself.

  At the same time, it exposed me to depths I would never reveal to anyone else.

  Explaining, I supposed, why he smiled. “This is what makes us the same as other Joined pairs,” my Human said, with a nod. Then he raised one hand, and lightly ran his fingertips down the side of my face, as if needing the touch to know its shape. With the touch came an inner warmth, a caring so deep tears welled up in my eyes and tumbled over my cheeks before his fingertips rested on my lips. “This,” Morgan went on, more or less steadily, “is what makes us different. Love came first. Now, do you understand?”

  I wasn’t sure. The Council preferred any M’hiray Joined to live apart, unless performing their function to produce offspring. The distancing enhanced their Power through the M’hir, an enhancement which perhaps not coincidentally enriched the food source for the living things within the M’hir itself. An uncomfortable, possibly unsafe thought, that somehow our pairings were being distorted by the needs of others.

  Togetherness such as ours was brand new, yet ancient. Those who dared, said the Clan had been like this once, with pairings built from more than the instinct for Power. The evolution of our kind into the M’hiray, those who could enter the M’hir, had changed that; selection for Power had ended it.

  “You’re warning me that while our Joining will last until death, your—love—might not?” This would have sounded better if I hadn’t hiccuped over the last word. “That if I change in some way, you no longer care—”

  “No, never!” Morgan denied hastily, looking quite reassuringly horrified. “I’m only saying we’re both afraid of taking chances, because we’d lose one another. That’s natural, Sira, but we can’t allow it to influence our decisions about how we live.” He hesitated, then went on in an earnest tone: “We can only live now, Sira. And living includes taking worthwhile chances.”

  “You want me to be a cliff dancer,” I said with sudden, rather alarmed, comprehension. I felt him remember the little animals who lived near my former home, the Cloisters, how their mating behavior included a daring and sometimes fatal display along the sheer cliff face. It seemed only those most willing to tempt their fate were able to attract mates.

  “Not quite,” he said, smiling slightly. “A cliff dancer with an antigrav harness. And a partner.”

  I could manage that, I thought cautiously, drawing a deep breath. Then I gave my Human a stem look: “As long as you remember the first one to fall takes the other as well.”

  You don’t become either coward or cliff dancer in one conversation. As we set course for Drapskii, I considered both. Morgan gave me room for my thoughts, busying himself with records from historical first contact situations, his presence becoming a distant glow of happy preoccupation.

  I stayed on the bridge, nominally in charge of the Fox, which gave me a chance to talk to the ship. It didn’t matter that I spoke and my respondent blinked a few lights in an order totally unrelated to my meaning. I’d seen Morgan do the same and seem comforted. It was my habit now as well.

  As long as he wasn’t anywhere nearby to catch me at it.

  “You’ll only get a minor refit,” I insisted, having already enumerated the list of what had to be done and what could be left until we had a bit more in the holds for credit. The Makii would likely give me anything I asked, but being indebted to the Drapsk had its own price. “If we ask for all the repairs you need,” I warned the Fox, “theyll doubtless smile, suck a few tentacles, and suggest I be a Mystic One while the work is underway. You don’t know them like I do. It’s amazing how many polite and inevitable ways they can find to interfere with a straightforward, common-sense plan.”

  A soft beep seemed to answer.

  “No, really,” I assured the ship. I lay back on the copilot’s couch and let it curl up under my knees. “I love them dearly, but getting anything done around the Makii is like building a tower of feathers on a windy day. You’d better supply glue.”

  Beep.

  “Yes, they mean well, but if Copelup even suspected I was heading toward the Rugheran system—”

  BEEP!

  The ship had never interrupted me before. I glanced at the com panel and realized I’d been so preoccupied I’d missed an incoming signal. Not surprising, since we were translight and such signals were notoriously expensive propositions for the sender—unless the sender was close by. Interesting choice: urgent or we had more company.

  I lunged for the board, summoning Morgan as I did so, having learned not to simply reach and 'port him to me when something like this happened. The last time, he’d been using a plasma welder to fasten two critical parts. Needless to say, it was a good thing the Fox had automated fire control in the main holds.

  Coming, he replied.

  “This is the Silver Fox, Karolus Registry, Sira Morgan speaking,” I told the com, quite pleased by the professionalism in my voice. At the same time, I sent a tendril of Power searching outward, as Morgan was doubtless doing. Nothing. So. Urgent it was. But who?

  A blast of static, until I refined the settings. Then a woman’s voice came through the speakers, clear, crisp, and familiar: “Bowman. Sorry for the intrusion, Fem Morgan. We need to talk. Would you prefer us to dock or—” the suggestion of a throaty chuckle “—will you ‘pop’ over yourselves?”

  Much as I admired Sector Chief Lydis Bowman, and valued the work of her Trade Pact Enforcers, I scowled at the panel. So much for my scan of our surroundings. Her ship, the Conciliator, could be right beside us but, because she and her people had mind-deadening implants, they would remain invisible to my other sense. It was more than disconcerting—there was something ominous about any technology able to counter my Power.

  “I’ll check with Captain Morgan,” I said primly. “He should be here any moment. Fox out.”

  “Well,” I told the now-silent ship, sighing fatalistically, “if you think the Drapsk can interfere with a straightforward goal—just wait until you see wha
t Bowman can do to one.”

  INTERLUDE

  “It’s straightforward enough, Rael,” Barac said, waving his curved Drapsk eating utensil in emphasis. “If this is Drapskii ...” he stabbed a hapless vegetable and held it in midair, “... and this is the M’hir ...” his other hand flailed a napkin in the general direction of the vegetable, but about an arm’s length apart ”... all we need to do is get them closer together.” The Clansman draped the napkin over the vegetable and beamed across the table. “Simple.”

  “Simple,” Copelup echoed enthusiastically, then hurriedly sucked all six tentacles as Rael’s fierce glare swung back to him.

  Barac had half expected his cousin to simply ‘port away the instant she’d seen he’d lied and a Drapsk was joining them. Instead, Rael had set herself to eating her meal with the grim determination of someone tricked into an unpleasant social gathering.

  Mind you, if she’d spoken one word, both Barac and Copelup would have been less prone to play with the vegetables.

  “You have the technique from Sira,” Barac went on valiantly. “Surely we can give it a try, Rael—”

  The Clanswoman put down her utensil, lining it up precisely with the other six, then spent a long minute shifting her wineglass to more exactly fit the previous impression it had left in the woven layers of flower petals serving as a tablecloth.

  Copelup’s antennae sank lower. In fact, his entire body seemed to slump. Barac kicked the being’s nearest leg under the table. The last thing they needed was for the Skeptic to hide himself in a ball of comatose Drapsk. Copelup responded to the contact with a sharp “yip” of surprise, all his tentacles flaring out in a ring of outrage. “Mystic One!”

  “Which is,” Rael spoke slowly, as though begrudging the need to speak at all, “the crux of our problem with your people, Copelup. We are not mystical beings. You persist in seeing us as more than we can possibly be, without paying attention to what we truly are. Barac and I came here to do a job and you turn us into some sort of idols. I, for one, find this—unwelcome.”