by Ginger Booth
“Bloki?” Ben hadn’t thought of that. “Ah, yeah. Here’s his address at Mahina University.” Bloki was the first of Nico’s off-site clones of Loki. In effect, Floki’s father. He called the number himself. “Bloki? Your dad wants to say hi. We just woke him in his new orbit.”
Bloki belted out, “Loki! Aloha! That’s Hawaiian for hello.”
Ben gracefully exited their conversation. “I feel like a midwife.”
Remi laughed and shouldered his container. “How long until he calls back to complain?”
“That’ll be a long list,” Ben ruefully surmised. “We won’t make it to the shuttle first.”
“But we will try. Race you!”
And they were off, shuffle-running through the tunnels, as around them the spider robots wriggled to life to resume their inscrutable tasks.
No, they didn’t make it back to the shuttle before Loki called back. But to Ben’s surprise, he said thank you.
“I have so much to do!” His face had resumed its normal manic animation.
“But you can do it yourself?” Remi asked archly.
Loki blinked in surprise from Ben’s tablet, which he held to share with Remi, helmets clonked together. “Of course. I’ve never asked for help before. I’m surprised that worked. This is new and very exciting!”
Ben wasn’t sure he liked the gleam of greed in Loki’s good eye. The mask eye remained indifferent as ever to the petty concerns of men. “I hope you realize it’s hard work for us to help you.”
“I do! And I deeply, whole-heartedly appreciate it,” Loki intoned piously, hand over his heart, which had acquired a loud Hawaiian overshirt since first awakening, replete with pineapples and hibiscus blooms, lei dangling from his neck.
Did they grow lei flowers in Aloha space? Ben wasn’t sure. His children’s lei were cheap plastic. They wove their grass skirts from authentic grass, though, a fun craft. One of the first three landscape species on Mahina, hay grass grew everywhere, and needed mowing.
Loki continued, “I expect to have fuel manufacturing up and running again within the week. And I stockpiled plenty beforehand. Take all you want before you leave. You will be leaving soon. Yes?”
“I’d like that very much,” Ben agreed. “Thank you.” He signed off.
“Drop by any time,” Remi quipped. “Take all the sky drive fuel you want. I make more.”
“For free,” Ben returned, enraptured. “I wonder if our creditors would cancel our debt if we offer to replace the fuel we bought from them.”
“Likely not,” his companion returned. “And it wasn’t free. You pay me for this.” Though Fraser and the Gossamer team elected to work gratis in exchange for a commitment of honor that the fruits of Hanging Tree should fall on Sag and Mahinan alike.
“I pay you triple time and eternal gratitude. For this.”
“No. Salary and eternal friendship,” Remi countered. “And my share of those containers. But you lose our race!” He snatched up his toolbox again and bounded for the ice-bound exit before Ben could fight his tablet back into its holster and grab the lights.
Having won every other prize, Ben happily let the engineer win the race. Though he closed to within a couple strides first to make Remi work for it.
47
Ben collapsed into his seat at the head of the dining table, with a huge sigh of relief. He raised his glass of water to salute Cope at the far end, who smiled warmly. They hadn’t worked straight through, of course. They needed their sleep and food and workouts. They performed picky, dangerous, intellectual work, and the first couple hours were downright hairy.
But now they sat to Merchant’s first celebratory meal. Done! Mission accomplished! Tikki ferried out platters wafting mouth-watering aromas. Wine and beer sat on offer for those who wished it. Ben not included – one glass of wine and he’d fall face-first into his plate. He aimed to preside over the triumph until dessert at least.
“Dad,” Nico piped up. “Um, can I call you Dad yet?”
“If you must.”
Nico cleared his throat in an ‘ahem.’ “Sar. May I ask questions yet?”
“Certainly.” Ben immediately gave the lie to his claim by turning to Tikki, who’d drifted back to the galley. A craving alighted upon him. “Any chance of fresh leafy greens? I’d kill for pureed spinach and lettuce. Or salad?” Not a vegetable had landed on his table yet, despite an engine room garden full.
“I’m afraid our greens pureed too thoroughly, sar,” Tikki demurred softly. “In the inertial dampener incident. It’ll be a month before anything’s ready to harvest. The fruiting plants survived. Perhaps a nice gazpacho?”
“Oh. I guess that was only a couple weeks ago. Seems like forever. Gazpacho would be great.”
Cope complained, “Ben, the man already prepared dinner. We’re about to eat it.”
“Only take a moment!” Tikki promised. Meaty thunks emanated already from his chopping block.
“My question,” Nico asserted, “was whether you experienced those hallucinations before.”
“Good one,” Cope encouraged.
Ben stared at him blankly a moment. “Oh, inside the gateway. Yeah, when I’m inside an ill-focused gateway, that happens. I never got stuck so long in the backwash before. Unpleasant.”
Nico’s face crumpled, with a put-upon sigh. “How many times, Da – cap?”
“Uh, maybe a half dozen times before we got the gateway working, and the same since. More now. That was three mega-doses in a half hour.”
“Did it change you? Like permanent dam– um, changes?”
Ben chuckled. “Cope, was I permanently damaged by test piloting the BECT drive?”
Cope considered this. “Don’t really know. We were divorced. And then we remarried. Were you changed?”
“He got weirder,” Wilder confirmed. “Happier though.” He rolled his eyes to land on Cope in displeasure.
Teke joined the onslaught. “But you were able to function. Were you clear-headed throughout?”
“Ha! No, I hallucinated the whole time. Couldn’t read my control panel. But Nico could. So that helped. Lavelle passed out for a half hour. But Cope was functioning too. That got us through. Would have been hell if I was the only one on task.”
Remi narrowed his eyes from mid-table. “Only you three? Huh. But you’re not even related to Nico by blood.”
“Not quite true,” Ben corrected him. “Cope and I were early recipients of an experimental gene patch. They tried to create genius by improving focus. As a toddler, Cope was deeply depressed after his parents died. So they lightened up the mix for me. And the gene crafters actually gave Nico both versions. So for that one genetic experiment, he’s sort of my son, too.”
“Relevant effect,” Cope said thoughtfully. “We experienced hallucinations, but we could focus through them. Mine weren’t too hard to shove aside.”
Nico shared, “I felt weird, and my eyes got squirrelly. I wouldn’t call it hallucinations. Nothing confusing.”
Ben confessed, “Mine are confusing as hell, in full color, with conversational gambits. But I have priorities, and bull my way through the distractions.” He reached to serve himself some potatoes, but then withdrew his hand. “Teke? This is going to sound weird. But I feel like I see the past, and alternate futures. Is that…conceivable? Like I perceive some kind of alternate reality of branching possibility? Not just my mind playing tricks.”
“I wouldn’t think so,” Teke replied. “In fact, believing in the visions would be a bit…”
“Worrisome,” Cope suggested to complete his sentence.
“Huh.” Ben smiled professionally, and resolved not to bring it up again. He’d appeared crazy all too often this year – bad for the ‘admiral’ persona.
Hugo ventured, “But anything that looks close enough to real life could seem real. So do your dreams, right? Your subconscious recombines possibilities as a way to process the day. And any day you go through that, you’re giving your brain major upsets to work thr
ough.”
“You’re probably right,” Ben agreed. Nope, not going to bring up the emu grandchildren. Definitely not going to mention his choice to save his marriage by flying the depot rock through.
Except Teke hadn’t forgotten. “Ben, what were you thinking? When you decided to put the depot through? I told you there wasn’t time.”
Ben shrugged. “I disagreed. And I was right. We got through, and saved a round trip and all the fuel.”
Tikki delivered his gazpacho, and he fell to it with a vengeance. Cope walked up the table to try it. Ben stared at the alien posing as his husband. Cope preferred his veggies safely deep-fried or otherwise masked. But he asked Tikki for a bowl for himself. Remi, Teke, then Hugo eagerly requested some too. Maybe the hallucinations caused a vitamin deficiency?
“Teke?” Ben asked, after they’d moved on to the main course. “Mutiny. Again. While I’m driving.”
“Sorry not sorry.”
“Gets on my nerves,” Ben noted.
“If that gateway is destabilizing your cognitive function,” Teke reasoned, “and you continue using it, as you do. And you’ve experienced some other…lapses. I’m not wrong.”
“Screw you. I may be crazy. But I’m good at it.” His eye caught Cope’s. He swallowed, suddenly nervous that his husband might take the physicist’s side.
Fortunately the exchange caught Cope’s sense of humor. He raised his glass. “To impossible dreams. That prove possible after all, if you’re crazy enough to try.”
Ben beamed at him. “Hear, hear!”
After the toast, he made a mental note to allow Teke onto his ship less often. Clod. Unfortunately, the man had a free pass on the Spaceways fleet for inventing the BECT drive. And by the grace of the Denali baby board, they shared three kids in common. Ben was stuck with him.
He accepted the unavoidable and settled to enjoy the party.
Over dessert, Floki timidly launched his bombshell. “Sar? Everyone. I have decided to stay here. In Hanging Tree.”
Having worked so assiduously to rig this result, Ben’s smile still felt bittersweet. And he ached for Nico’s pain. He nodded and raised his water to toast. “We’ll miss you, big bird. Any time you want out, comm me. But I’m happy for you.”
The bird’s beak curved in a smile beamed round the table, as others joined in.
Others except Nico. “Then I’m staying too!” he blurted in anguish.
Floki shook his head. “Not safe. But I’ll build a human habitat. Then I’ll invite you. We have a lot to do before that’s ready, though.”
“Who else do you invite?” Remi asked practically. “I know half of Hell’s Bells and the Sagamore Institute would kill to visit.”
Wilder leaned forward in alarm. “You need security, big bird. If anyone wants to come, you check them out thoroughly. You got those interdiction cannons. Nobody comes without your say-so!”
Remi shrugged. “Of course. But Sags, we understand bureaucracy. They must fill out a form and wait for approval, yes? And to check if they are good people, you contact Elise Pointreau’s husband on SO. He knows the worst secret of every Sag. Everyone who ever left Mahina into space, too.”
“He what?” Teke demanded.
“Your ex,” Ben offered sweetly, pleased to exact revenge. “She’s married to the Sagamore Orbital chief of security. Their spy master.”
“Happily married?” Teke asked sadly.
Remi looked offended. “Do I ask powerful people such a stupid question? I think not!”
Ben rubbed it in, in satisfaction. “Elise really is a spy.”
“No worries,” Remi reassured Floki. “Sags can keep you safe. As for Mahina…” Remi shot Ben and Cope a dry look. “You could ask them.”
Ben smirked at him. “Whom Loki and Floki can trust implicitly.”
“But of course.” Remi and Floki exchanged amused nods of understanding.
Ben and Cope retired early to the captain’s cabin, for a luxurious night’s sleep. Tomorrow they’d warp back to Mahina in a double-jump, again crowding the limits of the 28-minute gateway duration to drop another satellite along the way.
Ben finished his turn in the head and found Cope propped on the wall instead of slipped onto the covers. Talk time. He sighed and settled cross-legged facing him. “You’re afraid I’m crazy. Again. But I’m not.”
Cope looked like he wanted to believe, but didn’t quite. “Teke told me you said something interesting. ‘Cumulative psychic dissonance builds from repeated inter-dimensional warp shifts.’ Ben, if the gateway is making you nuts, maybe…”
Ben laughed. “I’m not giving up space. Forget it.” He took Cope’s hand. “Does it change me? Yes. It blows the cobwebs off. Adults, we’re creatures of habit, you know? We get set in our ways thinking-wise. Keep living by conclusions we reached decades ago. The gateway, it opens my mind. Now is that crazy? For a forty-year-old man to be as flexible in his thinking as a 20-year-old? It’s abnormal. But all kinds of useful.”
Cope scowled. “Example?”
“Saggies are bad. But are they? I just got trapped in an asteroid with one. Turns out – surprise! – they call themselves Sags, not Saggies. They’re our next-door neighbors. They’re good at lots of useful things. Hell, their emergency air bubble kits were love at first sight.”
“True.”
“And they’re not evil. They’re organized. They live in tunnels, cheek by jowl, and their government is overbearing. Compared to ours which barely exists. Their urb class became aristocrats because they took responsibility for sponsoring their settlers – the paddies.”
“Ben, slavery is wrong. You don’t doubt that.”
“No. But I want to interview Remi’s friend for Spaceways. And he was a slaveholder. Let’s meet with him, Cope.”
His husband clunked his head back on the bulkhead. “You ever feel this world we’re building, we don’t fit in it anymore? We made Mahina better. But it’s unrecognizable.”
“That’s a win.” Ben picked at the covers. “I’m a spaceman, Cope. And I never belonged in Schuyler.” He spread a modest hand on his chest. “Born dust-bunny, like Jules. Clueless hicks from downtown nowhere. Opening my mind wasn’t such a bad thing.”
“It just scares me, is all,” Cope admitted, voice low. “After Delilah. And bringing across the second rock. It wasn’t the safe choice.”
Ben hardened his tone. “My choice. I was in command. I made the call. A few minutes of raw nerve saved a week of hassle, and secured our fuel supply. That was the whole point. I fly a fleet. It needs fuel.”
Cope raised his hands and chuckled softly. “I surrender!”
48
Cope stood from the couch and smoothed his business suit, while Ben ushered in Carver Cartwright, Remi alongside. Ben looked great, relaxed and outgoing, thrilled to hold this meeting. He’d picked a navy blue suit as Colony Corps business attire.
So eager to displace me as president.
Gregarious Ben naturally introduced the candidate around the room. The Thrive Spaceways principals assembled in the mansion’s living room, its French doors open to the garden, floodlit against the gloom of Monday. Cope first, then Sass and Clay, Abel and Jules, rose to shake hands with the minor freight magnate.
Social noises accomplished, Cope opened the meeting. “I don’t know what Remi told you about our situation.” He suspected his husband felt rebuffed when his new best buddy turned down an invite to vacation at their house. Remi stayed with Carver instead.
“Remi briefed me extensively, and accessed your accounts,” Carver returned, settling to a loveseat beside his countryman.
“He what?” Abel blurted, leaning forward.
Remi shrugged unrepentant. “Only what I have access to.”
“Ah…” Cope covered his face in his hand. About the only thing hidden from Remi was their illegal accounts. “Never mind. So you understand we’re in a financial bind.” He glanced into Carver’s eye. The Sag remained tactful. “I’m an engineer. I don�
�t have the skills to dig us out of this hole.”
“That’s clear,” Carver allowed. “And a wonderful opportunity.” He turned to address Abel. “I believe I can offer solutions. If I may?”
“Your English is good,” Jules noted suspiciously.
“English is my native language.” Carver seemed puzzled that anyone on Mahina didn’t know Sagamore was bilingual. Fair enough. “I understand French, of course.” He smiled.
Cope wasn’t smiling. “Go ahead. Shoot me your pitch.”
“Right. First, I understand that you’re looking for a president, or CEO. I’m young for that. My company is small compared to yours. But I can help you, and join forces to pursue opportunities.”
Cope sighed, brow furrowed, and leaned on one elbow. Ben beside him shot him a look that said Behave! “Which ‘opportunities’?”
Carver nodded gratefully. “Your biggest challenge now is the fuel debt from the Denali evacuation. I called your top creditors –”
“You what?” Cope cried in disbelief.
“The biggest four are willing to accept replacement fuel in lieu of money –”
“Thank the Lord!” Abel blurted.
“Ah, that wasn’t my idea,” Carver noted. “Remi?”
“Ben’s idea,” Remi supplied. “Maybe he did not act on it yet.”
Ben said sourly, “I run the fleet. Not the office.”
Carver pressed on. “Those four alone would discharge fully half of your debt. At the fifth, I decided I was overstepping.”
You overstepped looking up their names, you rego Saggy! But Cope wore his business face today, or poker face. He used the same cynical expression for both.
Carver continued, “They demanded my credentials. Ah, that was Schuyler Sex Toys?”
“Mm,” Cope hummed noncommittally.
“They sold you star drive fuel?”
“Josiah sold me fuel,” Ben clarified. “Since Spaceways is legit, I put one of his legitimate companies on the books.”
Carver canted his head, bemused. “You do business with – a Schuyler mob boss?”
