Eternity or Bust: Mission 16 (Black Ocean)

by J. S. Morin

  Carl clapped his hands together to get everyone’s attention in the cargo bay. “All right. Listen up. This is the big show. Earth. I know most of you weren’t around for my little pep talk on Phabian.”

  “It was nice,” Esper said, looking around the gathering. “Very thorough and paranoid.”

  “But,” Carl continued. “This is Earth. Phabian may be high security, but Earth law enforcement doesn’t wear padded gloves. No crime of any sort. Pay for what you want to eat or wear or take home with you. Keep your fingers out of other people’s computers. Physical violence of any sort is off limits, as is magic… period. Now, I think except maybe for our two laaku crewmen, we’ve all been to Earth before but—”

  Esper’s hand shot up. “I haven’t. This is very exciting.”

  Amy grinned. “I know. Isn’t it?”

  Carl slapped his forehead. “I keep forgetting since you grew up pissing distance from here. Simple stuff: on Mars, flashing hardcoin makes you look like someone important; here it makes you look shady. If you get the feeling that you’re being watched, go with it. You probably are. Security cameras outnumber people ten to one. If you ever don’t feel like you’re being watched, worry. Everything’s going to be stupidly expensive, like a planet-sized tourist trap. No one’s trying to gouge you; that’s just the cost of living here. Laaku are A-OK on Earth. We don’t even have Rai Kub along to make people uneasy. It’s… honestly a little weird to be down to an all primate crew. Can’t hardly remember the last time that happened.”

  “Day before we hired Mriy,” Roddy said.

  “Anyway, I think that about sums it up. Ceremony is 4:15 tomorrow afternoon at a Gillespie Club function room. Reception right afterward. Anyone who wants to bail on the reception will be forgiven. Earth’s big and shiny and has lots of places to visit. Anyone who misses the ceremony can find their own ride back to Pleasant Valley.”

  The crew—small as it had grown for this trip—dispersed, heading down the lift to the local mass transit system below. Esper lingered just long enough for a hug with Amy that elicited squeals of excitement from both.

  Carl didn’t get it.

  He was looking forward to the wedding. There was just something that made the universe feel like a comfortable old jacket having a woman at his side under the premise of “till death do us part.” But the two grown women acting like schoolgirls over it baffled him. Amy had flown hundreds of combat missions, an adrenaline spike Carl had never experienced anywhere else. Esper commanded the forces of the cosmos like a painter with a set of brushes. And yet, confronted with the prospect of flower arrangements and a white dress, they both melted into adolescents.

  Amy took hold of his hand when they were alone at last. “This is it. It hardly feels real.”

  Carl shrugged. “It’s Earth. The last real stuff around here is locked up in museums or owned by the Convocation.”

  She squeezed harder. “You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah.” Carl’s eyes strayed down, pausing only briefly over Amy’s growing bosoms. He could envision their son tearing down the corridors of the Mobius, running across the grasses of Pleasant Valley, and always pretending to be flying a starship until the day he finally could. “Hard to believe.”

  With a tug, Amy towed Carl away from the ship.

  They headed into Vegas Prime and window-shopped. Carl had to force himself not to plan heists everywhere he looked, even if he’d never seriously consider carrying them out.

  Along the way, they had lunch at a cafe where sandwiches ended up setting them back over eighty terras apiece. Carl bit back a snide comment about what he expected from a sandwich for those kinds of prices and remembered to pay with digital currency.

  The one errand they couldn’t avoid took them to a jewelry store. Since their official engagement had been Amy’s asking and within the past week, they agreed that she should have been the one to offer a ring. Carl graciously declined, citing how diamonds clashed with his blaster. But they still needed wedding bands. Simple gold rings shouldn’t have cost as much as a month’s fuel for a starship, but that was about the size of the price tag. Carl didn’t even look when presented the final total.

  “Just take it,” Carl said, pressing his thumb to the currency reader. “If my account doesn’t kick back an error, we’re good.”

  “Thank you,” the jeweler replied with a smile. “I wish you all the happiest memories and a joyous life together.”

  Amy laid a hand on her stomach. “We’re working on it.”

  After that, evening set in. Vegas Prime merely shifted color schemes from bright and cheery to brighter and garish. Boutiques and bakeries mixed seamlessly with nude bars and brothels both electronic and live-partner. Cosmo doctors advertised with before and after images atop their storefronts. Gambling of all sorts was legal here by ancient tradition. Chemical euphoria was offered with closer medical supervision. Body modification studios resculpted flesh and genes, grafted bio and tech together, and tried to make the process look sexy instead of creepy as hell.

  Vegas Prime was the pressure valve on planetary morality. A good 80 percent of what happened legally there was outlawed on the rest of Earth.

  Amy pointed past a xeno-pet store to a tower lit in gold faux neon. “There’s our hotel.”

  Carl patted his pocket for the tenth time, making sure no one had pickpocketed their wedding rings. “Looks cozy.”

  The sign at the top read Babylon VI.

  A few changes of clothes had been delivered ahead of time, ordered over the omni by Amy. One of the bellhops escorted them up to their room. Carl reached for a terra fiver to tip the guy before remembering he’d left all his hardcoin back on the Mobius. As Amy wandered in to explore their accommodations, Carl pressed his thumb to the bellhop’s currency reader and agreed to whatever extortion the guy suggested for walking with them from the lift to their door and pressing the button for them.

  Still fuming about the cost of everything on Earth, Carl caught up with Amy on the hotel room’s balcony, looking out over the city of Vegas Prime. Their room wasn’t as tall as the tallest buildings in the city—they were only on the ninety-fifth floor, after all, but they could see down to the multiple pedestrian layers, all latticed together like a bird’s nest when viewed from above.

  “Incredible, isn’t it?” Amy asked without looking back. “So easy to forget what real civilization is like, living out in border space.”

  And that was just the view outside. The hotel room was posh. Full wall flatvid headboard. Hot tub with a holo-projector on the ceiling hanging down above it. Stocked wet bar. Carpet that was like a massage just to walk on barefoot. And yet, by Earth standards, this was a regular room, nothing noteworthy.

  Carl walked onto the balcony and wrapped his arms around Amy from behind, careful of her stomach. She moaned and leaned back to nuzzle against Carl’s cheek as her breasts rested atop his forearms, her own arms pinned to her sides. “You thinking maybe we settle down here?”

  Amy snorted daintily. “Of course, not. This is the prettiest cage in the galaxy, but it’s still a cage. We’d go stir crazy here, the both of us. Besides, even if I could live like this, I wouldn’t marry you just to chain you to a rock. No… this is just a wonderful place to visit.”

  “You just say the word, and—”

  “Stop,” Amy ordered gently. “The word is ‘stop.’ Marriage isn’t about me. It’s about us. Stop trying to do everything I want and enjoy what we’ve got. I asked for one thing: a marriage on Earth with my mom there.”

  “I’ll never stop doing things for you that make you happy,” Carl protested, kissing the side of her neck.

  “Traditionally, the bride and groom sleep separately the night before the wedding,” Amy said. “But fuck that. I want you to hold me all night, just the way you are now.”

  “I can do that,” Carl said.

  They fell asleep that night in their hotel room, curled up together in maternity pajamas and boxer shorts respectively.
/>   # # #

  Esper paused to look over the railing on Las Vegas Boulevard, Level 4. It certainly was a long way down. Somehow, she mused, technology would try to save her if she fell or jumped over the edge. Knowing Earth, the system would work flawlessly. But would her own innate magical instincts confound the technological savior? Would she splatter to the plasticized steel of the Level 1 thoroughfare because her magic and the local science argued too long on the way down?

  With a sudden wave of vertigo, she stopped looking down. Magic wasn’t magic here. Deep down, she knew she could force a thing or two through, but this was a land where science held sway. The home of Galileo, Newton, Volta, Tesla, Einstein, and Hawking carried the weighty opinion of those grand ghosts of scientific enlightenment. This was the planet where the fabled apple had fallen, where the atom bomb had been tested, where the first humans had taken flight.

  At least it was pretty.

  There was no natural beauty to Vegas Prime. Nothing natural was visible at all except for the sky above. But after spending the night aboard the Mobius rather than paying the extortionate rates the local hotels were charging, she wanted to see some of the city.

  Starting with the boutiques.

  There was something special about shopping on Earth. Back home on Mars, she’d kept up with local trends, but those were usually a month or two behind Earth. Earth was first in everything. A frail, wayward memory buried deep inside remembered shopping trips with school friends.

  Every time a member of Esper’s clique came back from the cosmo surgeon, it was an excuse for them all to go shopping. New eye color? Accessorize to match. Bigger breasts? Narrower waistline? New wardrobe. Dental replacement, vocal reshaping, or skeletal restructuring? Sympathy shopping.

  While Esper did her best to force back the tides of those lifetimes-old memories, she had become painfully aware how out of place her pink sweatshirt looked among the slick and stylish Earthers.

  A digital bell tinkled as she entered Au Contraire. While she had plenty of nice dresses courtesy of Emily’s pirates, she wanted something special for the wedding that afternoon.

  She was greeted by a condescending woman with teal lipstick and a dress that looked sprayed onto her skin. “Can I help you?” she asked in a phony old French accent. By the hand resting on her stuck-out hip, the woman expected that question to end Esper’s visit.

  “I need a dress for a wedding this afternoon. It’s an impromptu affair, but I just found out on the way here that not only is there a wedding, but I’m maid of honor.”

  A look of world-weary ennui blanked the woman’s snooty outrage at a sweatshirt-clad trollop barging into her store. “Try Caroline Carre, two blocks over. She might do… your kind of work.”

  Esper held up a hand. Curled within her palm, the crest of the Convocation appeared. “Do you take unlimited credit?” she asked. Carl had admonished her not to use magic, but this hardly counted. Nothing in the boutique flickered or fizzled. And it could take weeks for the Convocation’s paper-based bookkeepers to sort out that an unauthorized wizard had used their credit.

  The shopkeeper’s eyes blazed with sudden avarice. “Let’s take your measurements.”

  # # #

  Roddy and Shoni sat at a human-sized counter atop red vinyl-upholstered stools with their legs dangling halfway to the floor. If any of the human patrons around them thought anything amusing about the laaku pair, they kept it to themselves.

  Shoni put down the menu placard and gave her companion a stern look. Leaning close, she whispered, “I’m not seeing anything that looks conducive to reproductive health here.”

  “Relax,” Roddy said. “One day of Earth food won’t turn you sterile. This is Carl’s homeworld. I figure, while we’re here, we ought to get at the core of the human experience.”

  Leaning in close again, Shoni whispered, “So what? We should conquer a small star system while we’re here? Irradiate some of our own people?”

  “No,” Roddy said, setting down his menu. “But we should stuff our faces full of food that’s barely fit to—”

  “May I take your order?” a young human in a white apron asked. “Our special today is the fried chicken a la Joey. We also have the district’s best flapjacks. Can I maybe start you two off with a beverage?”

  “Beer for me,” Roddy said, taking the waiter aback. To the kid’s credit, he was one of those “customer is always right” sorts and didn’t pitch a fit about it.

  “Distilled water,” Shoni said with a polite smile. It was an insult on Phabian to ask for something that could only be described as scientifically grade clean. It implied that you didn’t trust their beverage choices.

  “Comin’ right up,” the lad said cheerfully.

  “You don’t have to go nuts,” Roddy said once the waiter was out of earshot. “If you get anything Friendli Foods, it’ll come out of the same package as if you ordered it back home.”

  “I’ll go with you as far as sampling an authentic human delicacy, but I’m limiting my experimentation to one variable at a time. I’m still not sure I’ll survive the day.”

  “Wedding caterer is kosher,” Roddy said. “I can pass on the religious side of it, but it’s a cut above the regular human slop as far as knowing where it came from. But what I’ve got in mind ain’t halfway kosher.”

  Sliding her menu away, Shoni just closed her eyes.

  When the waiter returned bearing both their drinks, Roddy suspected that the “distilled” water was just from the regular public circulation system. He hoped that Shoni wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

  “You two ready to order?” the waiter asked with a bright smile.

  Eyes still closed, Shoni muttered in Atik, “Please don’t kill us both.”

  “Sure thing,” Roddy said, ignoring her antics. “Two chili dogs, please.”

  # # #

  Yomin took the tram halfway across the continent. Well, maybe not halfway but a good third at least. Thanks to modern electromagnetics and ancient gravity stones, the trip to Baton Rouge only took half an hour, including a stop at New Orleans to switch lines.

  “Gotta love the old county,” she muttered as she left the tram station.

  The walk to downtown was warm and breezy. The whole heart of the city had been engineered to carry the winds and keep the whole area smelling fresh from the air sanitizers.

  It had been years, even before the crash of the Odysseus, since she’d been down here. Despite the names changing on many of the shops and restaurants, the city still had the same feel as the last time she’d come to visit Laramie.

  The Magazen Taso hadn’t changed. It was a bluesy bar and grill with live music every night and a license to farm fish in underground vats beneath the restaurant, ensuring the day’s catch was always fresh.

  Yomin snaked through the crowd, feeling naked without her datalens. But there were just some things a woman needed to keep separate in her life. For her, they were family and crime.

  “Who’s that I see?” a bass voice boomed over the crowd. “I got a comm from a dead woman and look who walks in. The ghost herself.”

  Laramie’s patrons ducked aside as the heavyset restaurateur crossed the taproom with his beefy arms spread wide. Yomin grinned as she was crushed in a bear hug. He kissed her on top of the head.

  “Everyone, listen up!” Laramie bellowed. “Next round’s on the house, to celebrate my own sister come back from the dead.”

  Yomin grunted as Laramie hefted her off her feet before releasing her. “Laramie, it’s not even noon yet.”

  “First come, first serve. Can’t help it if some stuffy old prudes wait until dinnertime,” Laramie replied at full volume to a chorus of cheers from around the room.

  Yomin grinned. This wasn’t home, but it was close. Laramie had moved up from New Orleans years ago. The restaurant was the spitting image of Mom and Dad’s old place on the waterfront. The dark stained imported wood, the gleaming brass of the taps along the bar, the cargo netting hung f
rom the rafters… all down to a tee.

  “Hey, Lare, mind if we take ours out back?” Yomin asked quietly once the ruckus died down.

  “Sure, Yo,” her brother replied. “Love to hear all about your—”

  Yomin put a hand over Laramie’s mouth. “Not out here.”

  He nodded and led the way through the kitchens and up a flight of old-world wooden stairs to the office above. There were modern amenities like a computer console and air recirculator vents, but the decor was as old as the building looked.

  Laramie parked in his office chair. “What’s the hush job about? My baby sister comes back from dyin’ out in the Black Ocean. No word from no one official like. What’s a fella supposed to think?”

  “He’s not supposed to think at all,” Yomin replied. “He’s just supposed to thank his lucky stars for a miracle and wait to see if the news feeds pick up on the story or whether the navy squashes it.”

  “That bad, huh?” Laramie asked.

  Yomin shrugged and sat on the edge of his desk. “You look good, Lare. Restaurant looks good. You don’t need to worry about me. I’m out there looking after myself just fine.”

  “Then what are you doing back?” Laramie asked. “Is it money? Because—”

  “Oh, God, no,” Yomin replied. “Look, things run hot and cold out there, same as anywhere, but I’m all right. I’m just back for a friend’s wedding. Probably not a good idea any of us hang around long, but while I was here I wanted to see you. Maybe we don’t stick together as much as we used to—”

  “Hard with you being in the navy or dead all these years,” Laramie commented dryly. Damn, she’d missed that wry humor.

  “But we’re all each other’s got left.”

  “How come you just tellin’ me now then you’re still alive?”

  “Not the kind of thing you can transmit,” Yomin explained. It sounded lame, and it was lame. She could have told him as soon as the tech came back online at Ithaca. “You never were much with tech. Data Security 101: the bereaved are the easiest targets of identity fraud. Anyone could have dummied up a phony ID and done some research on me, hit you up for cash. Even a couple hundred terras woulda been worth the effort for a hacker.”