Voyage Across the Stars

by David Drake

  “Bless them all,” Harlow sang. “Bless the fat and the short and the tall . . .”

  The first vehicle pulled up at the base of the ramp. It was a tractor pulling a twin-axle flatbed trailer. A cab-over pickup truck followed, and there were two or three similarly utilitarian vehicles behind those.

  Men piled onto the trailer. Toll Warson got up on the tow bar and began chatting with the driver.

  Dewey and Bonilla headed for the pickup. “Hey, Dewey!” Westerbeke called. “Why’re you going along?”

  “Hey, I’ve got nothing against women!” Dewey replied.

  “I haven’t had anything against a woman in seventeen years,” Bonilla said. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to turn down a chance at booze and a cooked dinner.”

  The tractor pulled around to circle back. The motor had a heavy flywheel/armature to prevent it from stalling in a muddy field. It thrummed with a deep bass note.

  “Lissea,” said Herne Lordling. “I want you to understand that I’m doing this only—”

  “Get aboard, Herne,” Lissea said tiredly. She turned her back on the scene.

  The pickup drove away with a full load. A jeep and another pickup took its place. Herne got into the jeep beside the driver. The Boxall brothers took the back pair of seats.

  Arlette Wiklander drove the second pickup. She looked at Ned and said, “Are you the last, then?”

  He nodded. “I guess,” he said. “I wasn’t sure, but I guess I am.”

  He put a boot on the side-step and lifted himself into the back instead of riding in the cab with the driver. “Ready when you are,” he said.

  Arlette turned sharply. The headlights flashed and flickered from the tree-trunks. Ned looked over his shoulder. Lissea was watching him. Her face was without expression.

  The clear sky above Liberty was bright in comparison to the forest canopy, but at ground level the truck’s headlights slashed visible objects from a mass of blurred shadow.

  Many of the houses had their porch lights on. In a few cases, mostly at the end of the street near the community building where the tractor-trailer was parked, the exterior bulbs were switched off but light glowed through heavy curtains.

  Several houses were dark and shuttered; but as Lissea had said, there were still plenty of willing takers for the Swift’s small crew.

  Toll Warson stood on the porch of a house with blue trim. He was turning to leave. When he saw Ned in the back of the pickup, he called, “Hey Slade! This one says she’s waiting for you. Shag her twice for me, okay, handsome?”

  Warson waved cheerfully as he walked toward the house next door. The brothers had bragged that they were going to fuck their way up one side of the street and down the other, but that was just the friendly exaggeration of men old enough to wonder secretly about their performance.

  Arlette slowed the truck to a crawl. “Ah—sir?” she called out the side window. “Shall I stop?”

  “Yes ma’am,” Ned said. May as well. “Please.”

  He hopped down from the bed and dusted his palms against his utility trousers. There was a pistol in the right cargo pocket, not obvious to an outsider but a massive iridium pendulum every time his thigh swung.

  He didn’t imagine the weapon would serve any practical purpose. It was a security blanket in a situation that confused Ned more than it seemed to affect the other mercs.

  “Her name’s Sarah,” Arlette said quietly. “She sat beside me when we met with you and Captain Doormann.”

  The blonde, then.

  “I’m the community’s doctor,” Arlette said. “Well, Sean and I, though the hands-on side never appealed to him.” She looked down the street. Most of the mercenaries had disappeared within houses by now. “I’m going to be busy tonight.”

  Ned walked up the three steps to the porch. The door was already open halfway. Behind him, Arlette drove off in the truck. As Ned raised his hand to knock on the jamb, Sarah appeared in the opening and swung the door wide.

  “Will you come in please, Master Slade?” she offered. “I was hoping you might. . .”

  Sarah’s dress was a lustrous beige synthetic, probably one of the cellulose-based polyesters. The cutwork collar was handmade but not particularly expert. She moved with a doelike grace and beauty.

  How did she learn my name? Maybe from Toll Warson?

  He stepped into a parlor furnished with a sofa and three chairs, all very solidly made from wood with stuffed cushions. Though they were all of similar design, the sofa’s cabinetry was of a much higher order than that of the smaller pieces. The differences probably indicated the learning curve of a white-collar professional finding a new niche in the colony.

  The shaft of the floor lamp was a column of three coaxial helices. It was an amazing piece of lathework which would have commanded a high price on any planet with a leisure class.

  Sarah closed and barred the door; there was no key lock. The windows were already curtained.

  “I’m Ned,” he said. “And Dr. Wiklander said that your name is Sarah?”

  Sarah looked up in startlement. “She told you that? Ah—but yes, I’m Sarah. I, ah . . .”

  She looked away. The parlor filled the front of the house. Behind it was a kitchen/dining room with separate doorways from the parlor into either half, and a staircase to the second floor.

  “I’ve made supper, it’s a game stew and vegetables or there’s cold ham if you’d like it,” she said in a quick voice like a typist keying. “And I have drinks, it’s all local but I’ve bought some whiskey from Juergen that’s supposed to be very—”

  “Sarah.”

  “—good!”

  Ned put his hands on the woman’s biceps, just touching her, until she raised her eyes to meet his. She giggled.

  “Look,” he said, “dinner later would be very nice. But you’re nervous and I’m nervous. Either I ought to leave, which wouldn’t be my first choice. Or we ought to make love.”

  “You’re direct,” she said. “That makes it easier.”

  She stepped away from Ned and turned off the lamp. The kitchen was still lighted. When Sarah came back, she pressed her body close and kissed him. He turned slightly to prevent her from noticing the pistol. He undid one of the front buttons of the dress. She wore no undergarments above the waist.

  Sarah’s breasts were fuller than he’d expected beneath the slick, stiff fabric. Ned took off his commo helmet with his free hand and tossed it onto the shadowed sofa.

  “Upstairs,” she said. She giggled again. “Maybe on the sofa later, if you like.”

  She drew him after her up the narrow staircase. The open jalousies let in moonlight, though the sun was fully down. The upper story was a single room, narrowed by the roof’s pitch. The bed stood in the center, with storage chests lining the long sides.

  Sarah turned at the head of the stairs. She kissed Ned again as he stood on the step below her. He slipped her puffed sleeves further down her arms to bare her breasts, then kissed them.

  “Most of the colony came as couples,” she said, playing with his hair. “I was . . . Sean and Arlette are my parents. I married Charles here in Liberty.”

  She twisted back into the room proper and began undoing the rest of her buttons. Ned took off his tunic. He slit open the pressure seal of his utility trousers with an index finger, then realized that he needed to take off his boots first. He undid them, glad of the semidarkness because he felt as clumsy as a mule in ballet class. After you knew somebody a while, you didn’t think about that sort of thing anymore; but he never would know Sarah better than he would this night.

  He lowered the trousers carefully to keep the pistol from banging against the wooden floor.

  “Come,” Sarah said, sitting on the edge of the bed and drawing him over on her as he knelt to kiss her, “later we can . . .”

  Somebody began hammering on the front door.

  “What?” said Sarah as she sat bolt upright.

  “It’s one of the guys who forgot the grou
nd rules,” Ned said grimly, feeling for his trousers. He took the pistol from the cargo pocket and held the garment as a shield in front of him and the weapon. “I’ll go talk to him.”

  His penis had shrunk to the size of his thumb. He wished he had time to put the trousers on. They wouldn’t stop a determined mosquito, much less a powergun bolt, but they’d make him feel less vulnerable.

  He didn’t recall ever having been this murderously angry before in his life.

  “Sarah, you whore!” the man on the porch shouted. “Open the door! I know you’re in there!”

  “Good lord!” she said. “It’s Charles. It’s my husband.”

  Oh boy.

  “Look, I’ve got to go down to him,” Sarah said pleadingly.

  “Lord, yes!” he agreed as he stuffed the pistol back in his pocket. He began pulling the trousers on. He’d stopped using underpants when he noticed that none of the Swift’s veterans wore them.

  Sarah took a robe from the rack beside the mirror-topped dresser and wrapped it around her. She padded quickly down the steps, still barefoot. “Charles!” she called. “I’m coming.”

  Ned grabbed his socks and boots. The tunic could wait, but he wanted his boots on no matter which way the next few moments went.

  The door bar slid back on its staples. The man’s voice boomed again, though it quickly sank to noise rather than words Ned could understand. Charles was either drunk or so angry that he slurred his syllables. Sarah’s voice lilted like a descant above the deeper sound. The parlor light went on.

  Ned donned his tunic, but he didn’t bother to squeeze the seam shut. He stepped to the big window at the end of the room opposite the dresser. The glazed sashes were already latched open. The jalousies were mounted on dowels, not cords, but he could swing the whole set out of the way.

  The stairs creaked behind him. He turned, stepped away from the window that would have backlit him, and reached into his pocket.

  “‘Ned?” Sarah whispered from the doorway. She was tugging the robe close about her with both hands.

  “Right,” he said, also pitching his voice too low to be heard on the ground floor. “Look, I was just about to leave.”

  “Oh, Lord, I’m so sorry,” she said. She stepped toward him, then stopped and convulsively smoothed the patterned bedspread where their bodies had disturbed it. “You can come down the stairs. Charles is in the kitchen. I’m so sorry, but I think you’d better leave.”

  “No problem,” Ned said. He pulled the jalousies back from the window ledge and looked down. Less than three meters, and smooth sod to land on. He’d had to jump farther in training while wearing a full infantry kit.

  “I hope it works out for you all,” he said as he swung himself from the window. Sarah started toward him again, perhaps to kiss him good-bye, but he deliberately let himself drop before she reached him. The wooden slats clattered against the sash.

  An easy fall. The physical one, at any rate.

  Though the ground-floor windows were curtained, Ned ducked low as he rounded the house. A high-wheeled utility vehicle pulled into the yard, but Charles hadn’t stopped to connect it to the charging post.

  The parlor was dark again, perhaps to provide privacy for Ned leaving. It was a useful reminder that when reason fought with emotion, the smart money was on emotion to win.

  A pickup accelerated down the street from the community building. Ned stepped off the pavement—the small community didn’t have sidewalks—but the vehicle pulled up beside him.

  “Is there a problem?” Arlette Wiklander asked. “I heard shouting.”

  Ned squatted to put his face on a level with hers, so that he didn’t have to speak loudly. “No problem,” he said. “Ah—the lady’s husband seems to have had second thoughts, but it’s no problem.”

  Arlette winced. “I see,” she said. “Ah . . . There are other, ah, houses.”

  Ned looked down the street. Several mercenaries were walking from house to house already. Like the arsenal disgorged at the banquet on Telaria, it was a form of boasting; but the weapons the crew carried to the banquet had been real also.

  “No, ma’am,” Ned said. “That’s all right. I’d appreciate it if you gave me a lift back to the ship, though. Or—”

  “Master Slade, I’m very sorry,” Arlette said. Her intonation was almost precisely that of her daughter. “Of course I’ll take you back, if that’s what you want.”

  “Bloody hell!” Ned said. “I’ve left my helmet in there, on the sofa!”

  Arlette shut down the truck and got out. “I’ll take care of it,” she said.

  Ned stayed by the vehicle. He didn’t hide, but he was ten meters from the door and as much out of the way as he could be. Arlette marched up on the porch, knocked hard, and called, “Sarah, it’s your mother. Would you come to the door, please?”

  The panel jerked open. The man who stood in the doorway said, “Couldn’t wait to come laugh, could you, bitch?”

  “Charles, I need to talk to Sarah for a moment,” Arlette said. “Then I’ll get back to my other business.”

  “Sure you will, Mother dear,” he snarled. “You didn’t want her to marry me from the beginning, did you?”

  Charles was tall but stooped. He looked down as he fumbled with his belt. His bald scalp gleamed in the light from the houses across the street.

  “Charles, let me see what Mother needs,” Sarah said softly from within the parlor.

  Charles turned his head. He hadn’t hooked his belt properly. When he took his hands away, his trousers dropped around his ankles with a loud thunk! against the board flooring.

  He bent down and came up, not with the garment but with a pistol.

  “You think it’s fucking hilarious that I’m not any kind of man, don’t you, Mother?” he shouted.

  Sarah grabbed her husband’s arm from behind. He shrugged violently and threw her away from him. His right forearm was vertical. The gun muzzle pointed skyward.

  “That has nothing to do with being a man, Charles,” Arlette said in a calm voice. “And we’ve always wanted the best for you and Sarah.”

  Part of Ned’s mind wondered at her control. He’d drawn his own powergun, but he kept it out of sight at his side. He wasn’t a good snap-shot, not good enough to trust himself in this light and the two women in the line of fire. He didn’t dare aim now, though, for fear of precipitating the violence.

  “Charles . . .” from within the room.

  “Sure you did,” Charles sneered. “You and dear Sean, such sensitive people. I’m sure it really pains you that your son-in-law can’t get it up!”

  He put the muzzle of the gun against his temple. Arlette reached for him. He fired. The red flash ignited wisps of Charles’ remaining hair as the bullet kicked his head sideways.

  He fell onto the porch. Sarah screamed. Charles’ heels drummed against the boards and his throat gurgled, “K-k-k . . .” The sounds weren’t an attempt at words, just the result of chest convulsions forcing air through the dying man’s windpipe.

  Both women knelt over Charles. Mercenaries and some locals poked their heads out of windows, wondering whether they might have heard a door slam closed.

  Ned thrust his pistol back into his pocket. He got into the truck and switched the motors on. “I’m going back to the ship,” he called generally to the night. “The truck will be there.”

  He still didn’t have his commo helmet. He wasn’t about to go back for it now, though.

  Lissea was sitting on the ramp when Ned parked the truck. She drank from a tumbler. Only the cockpit lights were on, so the illumination spilling from the broad hatch was soft and diffuse.

  Ned got out of the vehicle. “There was a problem in town,” he said carefully.

  Lissea nodded. “All taken care of,” she said. “Arlette Wiklander radioed us.”

  She tapped the ramp with her fingertips, indicating a place for Ned at arm’s length from her. “Want something to drink?”

  “I’m fine,” he sai
d. He sat down. He supposed he was fine. His blood and brains weren’t sprayed across a doorjamb, at any rate.

  Lissea drank from her tumbler, looking out into the night. “Arlette says nobody blames you,” she said.

  Ned laughed. “I don’t blame myself,” he said. “I’ll take responsibility for what I’ve done, but that whole business was somebody else’s problem.”

  He stopped talking, because he could hear his voice start to rise.

  “Arlette said the husband had had more than his share of problems in the past,” Lissea said to the night. “He was a good deal older than the girl. The . . . It was the sort of thing Arlette had worried about happening years ago. The sort of thing.”

  The communications suite crackled. Lissea turned her head alertly, but Raff handled the query himself. Night creatures trilled.

  “Do you ever think about what makes somebody a man, Lissea?” Ned said.

  She frowned. “As in ‘human being,’” she said, “or as in ‘male human being’?”

  “Not exactly.” Lissea’s tumbler was three-quarters full. “Can I have a sip of that?”

  She handed it over. She was drinking water laced with something tart.

  “You know,” Ned said, “man—as opposed to wimp or pussy or whathaveyou.”

  Lissea laughed harshly. “Having doubts, Slade?” she asked.

  “Not really.”

  “Well, don’t,” she said. “You became a fully certificated Man the moment I signed you on for this expedition. Is that why you volunteered?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I’d like to think there was more to being a man than that. I’d like to think there was more to it than being able to get my dick hard, too, though that isn’t something I worry about either.”

  Lissea held a mouthful of water for a moment, then swallowed it. “My parents think I want to be a man myself,” she said. Neither of them looked at the other. “My mother, especially. She’s wrong.”