A Journey Deep

by Beth Reason

A

  Journey

  Deep

  By Beth Reason

  Copyright 2013 Beth Reason

  Table Of Contents:

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  About the author

  Chapter 1

  My life had changed and I was trying to decide how I felt about it.

  I'd packed already. I'd gotten the handful of possessions that had crammed my sleeping quarters for the past fifteen years shoved into my dad's old backpack. He said he "dusted it off" for me. I guess that's just another one of those sayings everyone assumed I understood. I didn't. What's dust? I could tell you what my HuTA would say. Probably something like, "Dust is a settled layer of formerly airborne particles, comprised of dirt, pollen, skin flakes..." I understood the concept, I'd just never lived with it. And I didn't understand why you'd actually want all those contaminants to fly back up in the air. If they settle, isn't that the point? I'd much rather walk on bug wings and pieces of skin and hair particles than breathe them in.

  Mother's had been going on and on about a million things like that. Sunscreen. Mosquitoes. Humidity. "Wiping your feet, young man," whatever that meant. She'd still be going on, in fact, if I was still with her. I was in the jump seat all geared out and even with her half a ship away, I swear I could hear her. She's just got that kind of voice that carries.

  "Don't let her get to you. You'll settle in just fine."

  "I don't want to settle in, Dad."

  I suppose I did make up my mind after all. Maybe it was when I was packing up. Maybe it was when I was filing my day's work with HuTA for the last time. Maybe that's when it hit me. Maybe it was Mother's nattering that made my mind up. Or maybe I hated it all along, when Dad would start to talk about Earth and "home". Maybe I've always hated the idea of going there.

  "Going back," is how Dad put it.

  Back? Home? No way. It might be his home. It wasn't mine, and it never had been.

  "Do you just want me gone?"

  Not only did Dad and Mother jump all over that one, the whole crew did, the geeks and squeaks included. It makes me feel a little better about my time with them all, even though I know that some of them were only saying it to save face in front of the others. Jenna would miss me. Stephan, he should, too, since I'd spent a year and a half doing all his work when Mother wasn't looking. Daniel, of course, since I'm the only one who's ever liked his cooking. Dad said it's only because I didn't know any better. Maybe that's true, but so what? Who was going to tell Daniel he was doing a good job and mean it once I left? I hope someone did.

  Xavier was glad I was going. He hated me my whole life. I used to let it bother me, but for the last few years I just accepted it, especially when I got old enough to realize he was really just a jerk. It wasn't personal. I really think he just didn't like anyone.

  "He's got a difficult job, Jakey. He's got to plot and plan every move this ship makes. It's a big responsibility, and a little kid poking around in his business makes it ten times harder."

  Mother always called me Jakey. I gave up trying to correct her. It was simply not worth it. Besides, as Ashnahta pointed out, it was the only time she didn't sound like a scientist.

  Ashnahta. I never even got to say good-bye to her.

  Yes, my mind was most definitely made up. I hated going. I hated everything about it. If they cared about their "home" so much, then shouldn't they have been the ones to jump home? Leave me there, in my home, I wanted to scream. I was almost a man. I had more training than any of them in every aspect of that space ship. Unlike them, I'd lived and breathed it since birth. They always told me it was unnatural, that it was an unnatural life to live. That's crap! It's my nature. It was then, and it still is now. The wires were my trees. The plasma projections were my scenic views. I used to wake up in my apartment and walk the half mile loop around my metal ship road, passing by my neighbors and listening to the chirps of the machinery and feel the warmth of the lamps on my face. How is that different from Earth, really?

  "The air you breathe is fake."

  No. It was just pure.

  "And the water you wash with has been generated by machine, not clouds."

  It was the same cycle, just on a smaller scale.

  "You've never wiggled your toes in the sand."

  Of course not! The thought was utterly disgusting to me.

  "Or caught a fish for your dinner."

  Like...an animal?

  "Or just sat under the night sky and looked up at the stars."

  It always came down to that with Dad. The same argument over and over. And always, I would say to him, "Aha! I have you on that. I'm surrounded by stars!"

  He always got sad. "It's just not the same, Jake."

  He wanted me to find out. Mother wanted me to find out. Everyone on deck wanted me to find out, except Stephan. And not one of them could tell me why. Or, more importantly, why then? Why were they all suddenly hellbent on shoving me out the door all of a sudden?

  Ashnahta would be dead when I got back. That thought rolled through my head over and over like a wave of air sickness. She would be dead and gone, just a memory, when I got back. If I got back.

  If.

  The life cycle of the Qitan is short. She was only about seven, by our human years, but already a full adult. Dad liked to talk about the amazement of the species that can only live about twenty years in our times and yet become so advanced. "I'll live to a hundred, and I won't know half as much by the time I die."

  "It is because we have learned what is important, and what is stupid," Ashnahta told me when I asked about it. "You waste time. We have none to waste."

  I didn't waste time. Everything I did had a purpose, and I got highly offended when she claimed otherwise. She just laughed and laughed. "Of course you do not," she said when she was done laughing at me. "You are a space man, not an Earth man. We have them, too."

  The Qitan had been space-faring longer than any other "tribe". Species is the term we use, but Ashnahta and her people got very angry when they learned the definition. I remember her mothers and how they raged at my mother about teaching her young "such vile ideas". It was a horrible day for the adults. I was only twelve at the time and was just fascinated that anyone could yell at Mother and get away with it. Not even Xavier did that.

  It wasn't until we were back on board that night that Mother sat me down and explained why they were mad, and why it was so important that I agree with them. "They have two legs, two arms, one head. They look different on the outside, but they have brains and stomachs and kidneys. They are right, and I was wrong. I almost cost this program all we've worked for. You remember that when you are around any of them. You adopt that philosophy and you'll become more valuable to this mission than anyone else on board. We look different, but we are the same."

  "Even the Ehkins?"

  I love Mother, but sometimes her way of looking at things was not even on the same planet as mine. She never liked the Ehkin tribes, not at all. The whole year we orbited and contacted, she was restless, annoyed. She constantly told Xavier he should pack and move on, go find "intelligent" life. They were intelligent, the Ehkin, just not in the ways that interested Mother. They had no space travel, because they did not care to mine the ores in their planet. They had no weapon
s, because they saw no reason to kill anything. Mother called the whole planet a "technological waste". She would insist up and down that our discovery of them was "scientifically intriguing", then beg Xavier to move on in the same breath. HuTA told me the word I was looking for to describe that mindset was "prejudice", but when I got the direct meaning of that, I disagreed with HuTA and it ended up giving me extra homework. Not prejudice. That seemed too...mean. Mother wasn't being mean about it. She was...bored? Hoping for more? I don't know. She didn't wish them harm. In their presence, she always treated them with respect. And she allowed me to play with the one they called "Little Blob". That's the best translation HuTA and I came up with. It was a good name. He really wasn't much more than a little blob.

  The Qitan knew about the Ehkin. They shared two stars. They insisted that even though there were many differences, the Ehkin were also one of their tribe. Mother rarely shouted, but I remember one night, not long after the mothers of Ashnahta got angry, that Mother vented on Dad for hours.

  "I don't understand what the Qitan see in the Ehkin, Lance. I just don't. They don't even have eyes, for god's sake! They aren't the same species, and I'm not being mean by pointing that out."

  "Now, Eunice, calm down. It's just a difference in the way you see the world..."

  "A difference? It's science, Lance! Science! And science cannot be ignored! We are not the same as the Qitan. We just aren't. And Morhal's assertion that we're anything at all like the Ehkin is...well, it's downright offensive! They don't even know how to make a spear. We're talking cavemen, Lance. Less than!"

  It was one of those nights where I felt very bad for Dad. Mother was both right and wrong, and I could see both sides of it. Maybe it helped that I had Little Blob for a friend. Maybe that made me appreciate them. So he didn't have eyes. So what? He was still the first friend I had off ship. He would lead me around and show me his world. His parents got mad at him when he strayed too far. I could hear the thoughts in mine. Feelings, more like it. They speak with feelings.

  Maybe that's it right there, why Mother could not "hear" them. She's always been too interested in science and not in feelings. If she'd just put down the com, stopped taking data samples, and forgetten that DNA existed, she might have had a better time with them.

  Little Blob cried for me when I left. He had no eyes. He ate through osmosis. He couldn't ever run on two legs because he didn't have any. But he cried for me when I left. He was my tribe.

  And then just about a year later, I made my best friend, Ashnahta. While we were orbiting the Ehkin home planet, we received an invitation from the Qitani. The Qitani satisfied Mother's science side. It's why we've spent so much time on what Xavier insisted was called v-2447 and what the Qitan had really named Laak'sa. All the crew but Xavier called it Laak'sa. Dad outright ordered Xavier to call it that as well. "I outrank you by a lifetime, Xavier!" Dad reminded him.

  "It's on my charts as v-2447 and that's what I'm calling it."

  "But it's not ours to name you...you..."

  "Watch it, Captain. Your brat's right there."

  Laak'sa is a Qitani word that means "Peaceful Center". HuTA said it is almost a mythological reference, that the center has something to do with the soul. Or a god. Something like that. He must have been right, because the people themselves are so far from peaceful that it can't be literal. I was allowed to meet Ashnahta only because it was unsafe for me to interact with anyone without knowing their customs. Morhal, a great leader and Ashnahta's primary mother, told my mother that when I was on their soil, I must have Ashnahta by my side.

  Ashnahta was not shy. Why should she have been? She was the daughter of the two leaders of Laak'sa and could pretty much do whatever she wanted. There was nothing to be shy about for her, so she wasn't. Or very nice, for that matter. Not at first, anyway. She did not know my language and it was clear it would be my job to learn hers since it was beneath her to learn mine. I was the one that had to suffer the embarrassment of trying to get my tongue to make the weird slurring words they use. It was almost a year of torture before she accidentally let it slip that she could communicate like the Ehkin. She was "talking" to a friend of hers in her language, and I was listening, trying hard to translate in my head, when all of a sudden it all clicked and I understood exactly what she was saying. She was telling her friend that my clothing was particularly silly that day, and wondering why it was I did nothing at all to try and make myself look less like a joke. Something to that effect.

  "It's not my fault I need a suit here," I said in my defense.

  She turned to me quickly. "What?"

  "My suit. I know it's stupid, but I have to wear it. I'm sorry it's not as nice as your jewels." That's what I meant, though I doubt that's exactly what I said.

  She was frowning. "I wasn't talking about your suit," she said slowly. And then I heard, or felt is more like it, her ask her friend if she thought I could inspeak. Her friend said that "none of them" could. I heard, or felt, it. But her friend wasn't speaking.

  It was natural. I could do it without even trying. It was simply how Little Blob and I spoke. I couldn't teach anyone how to do it. It just...was. I got mad when I realized they could speak the same way. "You mean I've spent this past year making myself look like a moron trying to say your impossible words when we could have just done this all along?" I didn't say it out loud. I didn't have to. And while in oral language there are things that never translate, in feelings, in thoughts, the brain automatically puts the ideas in terms the other can understand without trying. I was angry because I felt like I had been tricked for the amusement of others. Ashnahta was just astounded that I was smart enough to inspeak. That offended me even more until she explained that her primary had been trying all year to teach Mother or Dad or anyone on the crew to do the same.

  We had many hours of many days in mutual thought on this subject. I think I'm right when I say that the adults can't do it because they learned early on that they could not and accepted it. No one inspeaks on Earth. In fact, I had it on HuTA's authority that those who try are considered ridiculous on Earth. When Mother found out I could inspeak, she believed it was something Little Blob did to me, no matter how much I've tried to convince her otherwise. He did nothing to me. He just talked. And I heard.

  Maybe Mother was prejudiced, in her way.

  Morhal learned our language. She had several others learn it as well. Mother and Dad struggled, but got Qitani down to a passable level. And then the adults who could finally understand each other spent their days and sometimes nights exchanging information and we children were left alone.

  I was a child, anyway. Ashnahta was quickly becoming a lady. I couldn't understand. I still almost don't, to tell you the truth. I was fifteen, almost sixteen, in human years. I was just starting to get a mustache. I'd finally grown into my space suit and no longer had to hold it on with straps and belts and tape. And I could see out of the entire helmet. And yet, I was no where near being a man. I was not an adult. And Ashnahta, she was half my age, and she was being pressured to wed and have her family. When I actually sat and tried to wrap my head around it, when I tried to compare to what I knew of my own progression, the stories of my parents and the crew members, it was just too great of a difference for my mind to overcome. So, I simply didn't. I did what my parents and the other adults on board could not...I ignored it. I accepted the difference and moved on. There was no need to hyper analyze every single detail. If I had, I would have been in the same rut as the adults. I didn't want to be in a rut. I just wanted to play with my friends.

  Everything on Laak'sa was fast. Mother staunchly insisted that it was the same on any planet. Not v-2445, Little Blob's home world that had no native name. Everything was slow and easy there. But Mother said everywhere else was as fast as life on Laak'sa. I don't know if that's true. My world was a small metal ball rolling through the universe. It took time to get anywhere new, even when we'd wormhole. There are moments of hustle on any ship, when an alarm goe
s off, or if I overslept and had to get to the de-con chamber for its daily cleaning before Dad got around to inspections. But nothing is ever exactly fast in a tin can. It's not a fast life. Mother always said I was going to grow up lazy if I didn't get "home" and "learn how things really work".

  I wanted to live on Laak'sa. "If you want to kick me out so bad, kick me out there."

  Mother was horrified. Even Dad shook his head.

  "What? What's so wrong with that?"

  I was sitting there, ready and waiting to jump. Dad was next to me, trying not to look like he was going to cry. And I couldn't stop thinking about it. Ashnahta. If they wanted me gone, that was fine. But not once did I get a reasonable excuse as to why I couldn't just live with her.

  "But she's my only friend."

  Mother walked away then. Dad patted my shoulder and started talking about inter-species relationships and I got so mad that he still wouldn't think of them as a tribe that I stormed out and wouldn't listen to the rest.

  Little Blob was my tribe. Ashnahta was my tribe. Hell, even grumpy old Xavier was my tribe. I belonged in the tin can. Or on Laak'sa. Or even the Ehkin home world. They could have dropped me off there.

  Ashnahta always told me I was not a human. She didn't say it in a mean way. She just meant I was different. "We have space people who live away from Laak'sa. Born on the rocks, like you." They call their space ships and stations rocks, like meteors. It made more sense to me than calling ours a "ship". I had seen pictures of ships on Earth. They sailed on water and were shaped like bananas. I lived in a circle of metal that rolled through space...like a meteor. I never shared that revelation with Mother. I doubt she would have appreciated it.

  "What happens when they come home?" I asked Ashnahta. I did not know at the time that I'd be leaving. It puts a whole different spin on the conversation looking back now.

  "We think they are odd. They come home to get a wife and to settle a family before they leave again."

  "They don't stay?"

  "Why would they? They live in rocks."

  I lived in a rock. I always had. I always thought I would. Was I going to be treated like the Qitani treated their space travelers?

  "When you jump, your body will not like it," Dad said for the hundredth time.

  "I know."

  "It'll be like our jumps without gas, only worse since you have a ship as a point of reference for your mind. And you're going to feel sick as a dog for about a week. Like you're trying to catch up to yourself."

  "I know."

  "And then it'll feel kind of like it's all slamming in to you."

  "And I'm to lay there and let the doctors take care of me and wait it out and do exactly as I'm told."

  Dad gave me a small smile. "I sound like a broken record, don't I?"

  I shrugged. What's a record?

  He sighed. "Oh, Jake." He patted my leg through my gear. "I can't believe this day has come. I'm really going to miss you, you know."

  "You don't have to send me away."

  "I'm not. I'm sending you home."

  "It's not..."

  He held his hand up. "It is. You just don't know it. Your mother and I...we didn't ever mean to put you in this place. What a crappy childhood. If we had only understood what it would mean..."

  I did not want to hear anything like that. "I had a good childhood."

  He gave a sad laugh. "Playing with wires and robots? That's not a childhood. You should have been making mud pies and catching frogs. You should have had detentions and gotten your hair pulled. You should have skinned your knees and caught fire flies and ridden a bike and learned to swim and..."

  "Dad, it's fine." I hate that he felt so bad about it all. I don't feel like I missed out on anything. I honestly don't. I never have. "Who wants to get their knee cut and catch bugs? It sounds horrible."

  "And that attitude right there is exactly why you have to go."

  I'm not going to lie. I was sure I wasn't really going to miss Mother all that much. I knew she loved me. I knew she had always wanted the best for me. And I knew she was put in an impossible situation having me on the first deep space scientific mission that had any real chance of succeeding. I knew these things because I'd heard them all my life. But for years, I felt that she was ready for me to leave. I never held it against her. I just didn't plan on missing her. Dad, though...

  I was determined not to cry for many reasons, the biggest one being that I was almost sixteen and I was convinced that I had passed the point in life where crying was okay. But that meant I couldn't look at Dad while we waited. I couldn't think about our card games. I couldn't think about him slipping me some wine the crew made or his terrible jokes or him helping me pretend I ate my veggie mash when it was Mother's turn to cook or... I couldn't think about any of it. So I turned my mind to think about the jump.

  The process of jumping relied on human tech that had significant Qitani adaptations. Every family has a history that they pass down, even Little Blob and his kind. It's important. Mine is that my parents are smart and figured out the wonder of wormholes. Oh, they weren't the ones to find them. They weren't even the ones that figured out how to plot and plan where they came and went. I only made the mistake of pointing that out once.

  "And what good did that do any of them? Honestly, Jakey, I thought HuTA was teaching you better than that!"

  Nothing, that's what good those other discoveries were. So humans knew what wormholes were and where they went. That's all fine and dandy. It wasn't until Mother, Dad, and the rest of the geeks and squeaks in my clan that humans figured out how to use them. They weren't the first to hop through. They were more important than that. They were the first to hop through and live. They were the first to hop through one and keep going. They were the first to keep going while sending information back to Earth. They didn't find the mountain, but they did climb it again and again. That's how Dad always put it.

  The ship we used was the key. To our knowledge, we had the only one in existence. Dad said we were laying the foundations, while the ones Earthside were working on the more long term plans. "We are forging ahead here, while they are building bases to take off from there." Luna base was completed before Mother and Dad left, but the Mars base was only started. Mother assured me it was not only completed, but heavily populated. I said something about it being quite an accomplishment in only fifteen years. "Will you never understand deep space travel?" she said back in that disgusted voice she used whenever I said something incredibly stupid.

  Will I ever understand? Probably not. I don't get it. I never have. I can't understand why it was only fifteen years for us, and more than eighty for them back on Earth. "But I'm a teenager. I was conceived on Earth sixteen years ago. The same Earth."

  "It's relative," my father would try and explain. Dad was the only one with patience for the question. "Time is relative."

  HuTA was no help. It spit out the textbook explanation and I ended up doodling Little Blob with a mustache on my holotab. HuTA had no emotions, but sometimes I would swear he learned to get annoyed. The closest anyone has come was actually Xavier. "Boy, we're flying so fast that time doesn't have a chance to catch up."

  "But I thought worm holes made time equal."

  "It does. For us. We get here faster. But they're not in a worm hole, see? Now go away. I'm busy."

  So Mother and Dad were some kind of geniuses. But no matter how smart they might have been, the Qitani were smarter. They learned more and learned it faster. They didn't need whole ships to jump. They made jump gates, fah'ti, placed through the wormholes in their galaxy. Mother insisted it was the same technology, just in a different format. "The science is the same, Jakey. It proves I'm right, that it really does only work one way."

  "Then why do we need the whole ship?"

  "Because it's portable! The Qitani need to create a port everywhere they go."

  "But that saves time and lets anything through."

  "Yes, and that's fine...if there's a fah't
i on the other side. Which means what?"

  Life was always a lesson with Mother. "It means that they have to take a new one with them and activate it just at the right time or else their molecules will be scrambled to their base components."

  She sighed. "That's close enough."

  I was set to jump with Ralph. He'd go a millisecond before me and deploy the first Qitani fah'ti to our galaxy. I'd been assured that the suit was the key, that Mother combined the Qitani tech with ours, combining the portable with the non-portable. Over and over everyone assured me it was all set and very safe.

  "Then why do we need to bring the fah'ti?"

  It was small. The first time I heard about a wormhole gate from Dad I pictured something huge, a fantastic door with lights and flashy bits. I was very upset to discover it was only about the size of head and not even really a gate at all. It simply guided any and all nearby matter to its coordinating head-sized ball at the other side of the worm hole. Mother launched in to a very excited speech about the brilliance of such a small matter manipulator while I looked out the plasma display at the very tiny, very boring ball of fah'ti. Sitting there with Dad in my ill-fitting Qitani/human jump suit, I had one resting on my knee. It was going to activate itself when the gravity of the galaxy at the end of the worm hole could be felt.

  "Some of ours seeps into the hole," Alex had explained. "You went out for a ride with that little Qitani of yours on the Gukki Sea, right?"

  It was one of the best experiences of my life. I couldn't touch the water, of course. I couldn't even smell the air. But we sat on the back of a great log and let ourselves be carried down the raging river into the sea. We spent most of the day floating around under their two suns until Ashnahta's secondary mother found us and yelled at us good. We were very lucky it was Ta'al who found us and not Morhal. We may not have made it out alive otherwise, and that's not an exaggeration. I have seen Morhal kill her children for less. In her defense, they did know the rules. So did we. It was great luck indeed that Ta'al found us, even if Ashnahta was clearly everyone's favorite.

  "Yes, I've been on the sea."

  "You rode the river down and then got into the sea, but did you notice you kept going the same direction of the river? It's like that. Imagine the galaxies are oceans, and the worm holes are rivers. Only these worm holes flow either way, depending on how you enter. Does that make sense?"

  It did. Almost made calling our space vehicle a "ship" instead of a "rock" make sense, too. The pull of the Milkyway gravity was supposed to turn on the fah'ti...or something. That's one of those concepts I like to think I understand, but know deep inside there's a good chance I never actually will.

  "You jump, then they'll be along within a month to pick you up, if my guess is correct. Your suit has plenty of life support to handle easily double that, just in case. Oh, but don't worry," he said quickly to set my mind at east. "StarTech wants you. Bad. Even if they don't know about you. They'll detect an object with life signs and get to you before you know it. They aren't going to let you bob around space for long." Daniel was sure. Stephan was sure. Jenna, Phil, Colleen, Mother, Dad...they were all so sure.

  "I'll be a tiny little dot. What if they miss me?"

  Dad had laughed and laughed over that one. "Jake, I don't think you fully understand the way things work. And you shouldn't. You're just a kid. Trust me. Trust StarTech."

  Trust the organization that hated my very existence. Because that's what it came down to. Mother had no idea she was pregnant with me when they left. Dad had unfortunately told me more than once it was because they had a few quick moments right before take off and that was how I came about. They sent their confessions to StarTech, and before they left the galaxy had received a reply asking for clarification and potential consequences if they were transmitting the truth. Though Mother and Dad sent more information, they never heard back. They knew the policy, though. The law. They broke it to have me.

  By the tone of the transmission, Mother and Dad were sure StarTech was furious I existed. They also knew StarTech believed my birth was intentional, though whether they actually had proof of that or just worked for them long enough to know what was meant but not really said, I'm not sure. Mother has pointed out several flaws in their assumptions, the main one being how the whole crew had to scramble to make accommodations for a child. "I may not be the best mother, but I certainly am good at planning! Don't you think I would have requested the basics for child rearing? You didn't learn to use the toilet until you were three. That was three years of no diapers. Think about it. It simply does not make any sense."

  So they didn't want me then. I was an illegal problem at best, if I actually existed to them. As I said, we had no way of knowing how many of our transmissions were received over the years since we jumped galaxies. They didn't want me then. Why think that they suddenly wanted me after sixteen years? Mother said the knowledge I had was invaluable. She told me to think of how much I could teach them all. Dad, he wanted me to know what it was like to walk on a surface and breathe real air. I only had one day to prepare, and that was spent listening to them both go on at length about what they thought. It was only after they both got quiet that I could begin to address what I thought.

  "When am I coming back?"

  Dad did not answer. Have I mentioned how uncomfortable that suit was? Qitani are the same basic shape as us, but their torsos tend to be thinner and their legs are longer. Because of this, my feet didn't quite reach the hard base, and my life support apparatus dug into my ribs. The longer the silence got, the more uncomfortable the suit became.

  Finally Dad gave my leg another pat. "I'm going to miss you, kiddo. You have no idea how happy I was when we found out you were going to be born."

  I couldn't look at him. Think about the suit, I ordered myself. Concentrate on the suit.

  "It was the happiest day of my life. And I always hoped that some day we could find a way for you to get home."

  "It's not my home," I said again. That was the one thing I could say because it filled me with so much anger that there was no way I'd break down and cry. "My home is here. With you. With Mother. With Ashnahta."

  "Ashnahta will die when you are a young man, and then what will be left for you?"

  I turned to him in surprise. "Then a whole world! And you don't know that she'll die. They've got our science now, too! They're working on ways to increase longevity and...and..." I stopped because of the look in Dad's eyes. He was far smarter than I'd ever given him credit for.

  "And you will be left a young man with nothing and nowhere to go and nothing to do. And you will be an outcast, both here, and there, and on Earth. You are my son. You are the best thing I have ever done in my life. And some day, I hope you have a child and know what I'm feeling right now."

  "So you're sending me away to get me away from Ashnahta?" I couldn't help feeling bitter. I can still taste the bile that rose in my throat after that revelation. "I expect stuff like that from Mother, but never from you."

  "Why? Why never from me, hm?" Dad sat up and crossed his arms over his chest. "You think your mother is the only one that makes sense of inane situations? Hm? Tell me, Jake. Where are you and Ashnahta going? What are you going to do? You can't even breathe her air."

  "She can breathe ours," I grumbled.

  "For short bursts. A fish can't live in the air, and a bird can't live in the sea."

  Ha! I had him on that. "Wrong. Mud skippers and penguins."

  "What?"

  "A fish that can live on land and a bird that can live at sea." I felt very smug for that.

  "That's what HuTA's been wasting time teaching you?" He shook his head. "And like usual, you didn't pay attention. A mud skipper can live on land for short bursts, and a penguin still has to return to land to lay eggs."

  "But they adapted."

  "On the same planet."

  I give him my best glare, the one I reserved for Mother when she said something particularly offensive about Little Blob o
r Ashnahta. But Dad would not back down.

  "Your mother may be wrong about the morality of classifications of people. You are a person. The Qitani are people. Ehkins are people...we're all people. That's what the Qitani consider important. It's a spiritual definition. Your mother is right, however, about the scientific classification. There are differences in these species. Great, huge differences. And if you're blind to that science, on the one hand I commend you. But on the other, you're a fool."

  Dad had never spoken to me like that before. I had a niggling thought that I should have been mad, but really I was just confused. Was I wrong about him the whole time? Was he really just like Mother and I never caught on? "But she's my friend, Dad. And you aren't even letting me say good bye." I hate that it came out sounding like something a little kid would say.

  "You have to trust that it's better this way." Ralph waddled to the jump seat next to me, and I didn't have a chance to talk to Dad alone again. Dad clipped a link from my suit to Ralph's.

  It was almost time. I swallowed hard at the sudden weight that filled me.

  Ralph was like an uncle to me. That's how Dad put it. They were close in school on Earth and when the mission came about, Ralph was right there with them. He used to help take care of me when I was a baby. I like Ralph. But sitting there, I was suddenly wishing it was Dad making the jump with me, no matter how angry I was at him for some things.

  "You miss Earth. Come with me."

  Dad turned around and motioned for me to stand. "I can't. You know that. I'll never leave Eunice. We're a pair, the two of us."

  "And I'm just in the way." It was unfair for me to say it, and I regret it now. In the moment, I was beyond mad. I was scared, if you want to know the truth. And in the blink of an eye was going to lose everything I'd ever had for family, friends, a world. And for what? Oh I was angry then. Angry and hurt.

  "Please don't be angry, Jake."

  Xavier's voice came through my suit. "Sleepy sleepy little one. Bon voyage." There was a hiss and Dad's face got very dark in front of me.