And Zanda had met Brit. He hadn’t finished the story. She was part of all this, which immediately made him think of the TSF weapons crate and the pistol at his hip. Had she known all this was going to happen? Or was he hoping again, dreaming that she might come back, that she cared, that she missed them, missed him. That she still loved him.
He nodded at time. “I am kind of tired, kiddo,” he said. “Are you tired? I think we earned the right to be tired for once, right?”
“Rabbit’s never sleep,” Cara said.
“What’s a rabbit?” Fran said.
“You’ve never seen a rabbit?” Tim said, giving her a disbelieving look. He held his hands over his head. “They have long ears and fluffy tails and they run fast because everything is trying to eat them. Wolves, dogs, hawks, foxes, lions.”
“Lions don’t bother with rabbits,” Cara said.
“Bears then. Bears eat rabbits.”
“Oh, a squirrel,” Fran said.
“Not a squirrel,” Tim corrected. “Squirrels live in trees. They eat nuts. Rabbits eat carrots.”
“Rabbits live in Rabbit Country,” Andy said. He glanced at Cara. “But they do sleep sometimes when they’ve got family around. That’s sounding pretty good right now.”
“What are you talking about?” said a tired voice from the corridor.
Andy turned to see Petral leaning in the doorway. Her clothes were still blood-stained but she was holding herself upright.
“Petral!” Tim shouted. “You’re awake.”
Petral squinted at him for a second, then nodded in recognition. “You’re the tiny dinosaur hunter,” she said.
“Yes, I am,” Tim said.
“How are you feeling?” Andy asked.
“I feel better than you look.” Petral nodded to Fran. “I see you’re still with us and the ship seems to be working like it’s supposed to. What else did I miss? I take it we’re nowhere near Cruithne?”
“Closer to Cruithne than Mars 1,” Andy said, wincing as he shifted in the seat and pain shot through is ribs. He was going to have to take a turn in the autodoc.
“Zanda’s dead,” Fran said.
“Dad killed him,” Tim shouted.
A flat expression passed Petral’s face. She blinked and then nodded. “So that means Ngoba’s dead, too?”
“No, Ngoba’s still kicking,” Fran said.
“That’s good. But it means Cruithne’s in for a blood bath. The Havenots aren’t going down without a fight.”
“Dad blew them out the airlock,” Tim said, seeming agitated that Petral wouldn’t acknowledge him. “They can’t get us anymore.”
“There are more, kiddo,” Andy said. “Let’s hope there won’t be any more fighting.”
Tim shook his head. “Are we really out of Rabbit Country, Dad?”
Andy’s ribs gave him another jolt and he winced, wishing he knew how to answer. “Someday,” he said finally. “Not today. We’re going to Mars, and then back to Jupiter.”
“Are we going back to Kalyke?” Cara said.
“Maybe.”
“I liked Kalyke.”
“Me too,” Andy said. “After that we’re going to a place called Proteus. It’s one of Neptune’s moons.”
“Quite a trip,” Petral said.
Andy glanced at her, realizing she hadn’t known where they were going, and that he probably shouldn’t have mentioned it.
“You want to come?” he asked. He turned to look at Fran. “You, too? We could use a crew. I can promise basic wages at least through Proteus.”
Fran’s gaze flicked to Petral over his shoulder and then the kids. “I’d like that,” she said. “I want to see how all this is going to turn out.”
Andy looked back at Petral and found she’d crossed her arms. She pursed her lips. “I don’t think so,” she said. “If Zanda’s dead, like you say, then I need to get back. Ngoba’s going to need my help with Karcher dead. Everything’s going to be a mess. I wouldn’t be surprised if the TSF tries to occupy Cruithne again.”
“Fair enough,” Andy said. He slumped in the chair, ignoring his ribs, and raised a hand to rotate the holodisplay in front of him. “Well, it looks like we need to make some adjustment burns.” He looked at Tim and Cara. “You guys should go buckle in.”
“I know, Dad,” Cara said. “I set the course, duh.”
“Of course, you did,” Andy said, suppressing a grin.
“I want to talk to Petral,” Tim shouted, which brought a surprised look to Petral’s face.
“We’ll have plenty of time, kiddo,” Andy said. “Cara, will you make sure he’s strapped in?”
Cara nodded. “We’re going to fix Alice, right?” she asked.
“What?” Andy asked. “Yes, we’ll fix Alice. Right now, we need to put some distance between us and all that craziness behind us. Maybe take a nap.” He looked around the command deck, taking in each face. “Then I think we’ll make some shells and cheese. How does that sound?”
“Shells and cheese!” Tim shouted. “Yay!”
Andy gave him a tired smile. Borrowing a bit of Tim’s energy, he straightened at the console and raised his arms, shouting “Yay!” along with his son until Tim and Cara couldn’t stop laughing.
Feeling slightly restored, Andy ignored the pain in his ribs long enough to crack his knuckles. He started checking navigation commands.
Sunny Skies still had a long way to go.
Chapter Forty
STELLAR DATE: 03.22.2978 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Sunny Skies
REGION: Trojan Asteroids, Jovian Combine
Three Years Earlier
They were running cargo between the moons and asteroids of the Jovian Combine when the message came through that Brit’s father was dead.
The last time Brit and Andy had been on High Terra was for Tim’s birth, when Andy had insisted they have family and better technology nearby. The more time he spent with Brit’s family, the more he was certain they wouldn’t be much help, but it was nice to have a place where they could stay rent-free, with a park close by where Cara could play. Taras, Brit’s mother, had always treated Cara like an unwanted animal, and showed little desire to interact with Tim when he came into the world. Despite the fact that med-drones had provided most of the help in Tim’s birth, Taras still described the whole episode as a major inconvenience.
It was Brit’s dad, Jonathan, who expressed interest in the kids and wanted to hear about their lives on Sunny Skies. He had taken Cara for walks and, though he wasn’t much of a cook, had made breakfast on the mornings when Andy was too exhausted from staying up with Tim.
Jonathan hadn’t been old, barely two-hundred, and it was difficult to understand that he was gone. Andy couldn’t shake the idea that it had been suicide, that there must have been some seed of depression or disillusionment he had failed to recognize. They were supposed to live in a world where diseases were found and corrected even before birth. He also didn’t want to admit that if Jonathan had been depressed, then Brit could have the same tendencies. It would explain too much of her behavior since Fortress 8221, her obsessive ideas, her increasing withdrawal from even the kids. He had to make Tim stop singing, ‘Mommy’s moody’ whenever she shut herself away in the hydroponic garden.
While he hadn’t been great friends with Brit’s dad, he missed his own father terribly and had hated the idea that the kids would never really know either of their grandfathers. Cara might have a few memories and they would have recordings, of course, but it wasn’t the same.
“Your grandpa Jonathan died,” he told Cara and Tim in their room after they got the news. Brit told him she couldn’t do it and had withdrawn to the garden to check her tomatoes. “Do you remember him?”
“He has bushy eyebrows,” Cara said.
“I talked to him over the console,” Tim said. “He gave me the ichthyosaur.”
“He did. I think it’s safe to say he started your whole dinosaur obsession. We have a lot to thank him for
.”
“Is grandma all right?” Cara said.
“She’s going to be sad. It’s good to be sad when someone you love dies. It’s how you figure out how to go forward.”
“Go forward where?” Cara said.
Andy thought about what to say, looking around their room. He was sitting on Cara’s bed. They sat facing him on Tim’s bed against the other wall. The floor was littered with Tim’s beloved dinosaurs, one of Cara’s playback panels and random clothes. He realized that Cara was almost ten now and would need her own room soon.
“Well, if we say that people make the world, that you and me and your mom all make our world, along with Sunny Skies and your grandparents on High Terra and Earth, then if one of us leaves, now we have to figure out how to live in a new world. That can be confusing and sad and sometimes you just don’t want to do it. I was very sad when your Grandpa Charlie died. I didn’t want him to go but he did.”
“He didn’t choose to die,” Tim said.
“No, he didn’t.”
“Did Grandpa Jonathan choose to die?” Cara asked.
Andy swallowed. How had they gone down this path of questioning? He hadn’t wanted to talk about suicide. He wanted to explain how you could learn to live without someone.
“I don’t know how Grandpa Jonathan died yet,” Andy said. “People die. That’s why it’s important to show people that we love them every day.”
Where had these words come from? His mom? He couldn’t recall the words but her face came to mind when he thought about expressing love, her face as she looked at her family, even his dad gone most of the day.
Brit struggled to talk to the kids about her dad. In the four weeks it took to get back into InnerSol—with a layover at Mars 1 to resolve a customs issue with last-minute cargo which Andy wanted to tell himself wasn’t stolen—she skirted the subject and finally snapped at Cara, announcing that she didn’t want to talk about it.
The expression on Cara’s face was no different than if her mother had slapped her. Andy wanted to tell Cara that her mother wasn’t herself right now, that she hadn’t meant what she had said. But he also knew he couldn’t keep defending Brit while also acknowledging that her inability to maintain a certain composure with the kids indicated deeper problems.
Could he blame her, though? Her father was dead. She wasn’t looking forward to time with her mom. High Terra was the last place she wanted to be. Everything added up to more tension the closer they came to Earth.
Brit had left Sunny Skies while Andy was dealing with the Mars 1 customs agents and for a heartbeat, something in her eyes made him wonder if she was coming back. He’d pushed the thoughts aside.
“I’ll be back in a couple hours,” she’d said. “We need a few parts for drive interface system. There’s a repair shop near the dry docks where I can pick them up used.”
“Why don’t you take the kids? They’d love to get off the ship?” he’d asked.
“No,” she said, surprising him with her flat tone of voice. Brit caught herself, seeming to realize how she sounded. “We don’t have time. You’ll be done with this soon and I don’t want to hold us up. We need to get out of here.”
“Sure,” he said.
As she walked away from him, slim shoulders straight, he appreciated how she’d kept herself in great shape, working out daily and running through the TSF martial arts forms that he barely bothered to remember. Chasing ship failures kept him in shape. There was a time when she’d even started teaching Cara the basic forms but had stopped for some reason.
When she didn’t return with the parts, saying they hadn’t had what she’d wanted, he’d been too busy with flight planning—with Tim sitting in his lap pointing into the holodisplay to think about it. Maybe she just needed some time away.
* * * * *
When they arrived on High Terra, Brit’s mother wasn’t at the shuttle docks to meet them. After navigating the busy terminal with the two kids in tow, they took a transport train to her parents’ neighborhood. Andy had to remind himself to start thinking of it as Taras’ neighborhood. Tim stood in his seat with his hands and face pressed against the window, watching sectors slide by, asking why everything was so clean.
“Where do people live?” he’d asked. “Why aren’t there any chickens? Don’t they have chickens?”
He didn’t listen when Brit told him to sit down and Andy had to explain that people who lived on High Terra didn’t have to grow their own food like those in the Jovian Combine. Tim had been fascinated by a station where they’d dropped cargo last year, where a boy his age had given him a tour of their fastidiously maintained system cycling worms, flies, chickens, fish, plants and ultimately people. Afterward, Tim had wanted to know why Sunny Skies couldn’t use fish tanks as radiation shielding and why he couldn’t have a pet hen so they could have eggs for breakfast every day.
Watching him stare in fascination out the window, Andy wondered if Tim’s curiosity about biology had all started with the ichthyosaur Jonathan had given him, proof that everything changes.
Also proof that everything dies, Andy thought.
The Ashfords lived in a collection of housing units connected by small parks and community gardens. Taras had two box planters on either side of her door that Andy didn’t remember from the last time they had been here. The boxes were full of irises in full bloom, so perfect and fragrant that he suspected some kind of micro-climate control.
Brit didn’t bother to knock. She used her access token and the door opened in response.
“Mom!” she shouted in the doorway. “We’re here.”
Taras’ voice sounded gravelly, as if they had woken her.
If she was using her Link she could easily be watching them right now. Andy set down their bags and herded the kids to the couch in her front room. A picture window looked out over the community garden while another wall showed silent images from some entertainment program. Early in her life, Taras had been a professor of twenty-second century media and still liked to watch their shows on a random loop.
Cara and Tim were immediately entranced by the image of a teenage girl in her bedroom.
“Can we turn on the sound?” Cara said, looking around. “Where’s the control?”
“Let’s say hello to your grandma first,” Andy said.
“Where is she?” Tim said.
“We woke her up,” Brit said. “She’ll be here in a second. Are you thirsty?”
Brit went into the kitchen as Andy sat with the kids. He didn’t hear any further response from Taras and figured she and Brit must have switched to a private channel. Since they couldn’t find the sound control he made up voices for the girl and her friends and encouraged Tim and Cara to join in.
“Dad,” Cara complained. “You’re ruining it.”
“I like it,” Tim hooted. “Do more!”
When Brit came back out with two glasses of water, Taras followed behind her, looking like an older version of Brit with a softer face and shoulder-length hair. They had the same piercing blue eyes. Taras had been crying.
“Cara,” she said, voice still tired. “Tim, would you like to give me a hug?”
The kids looked to Andy and he nodded. “Go on,” he said.
Tim stood and crossed the room to give her a hug but Cara kept watching the silent program on the wall.
Taras patted Tim on the back, squeezing him for a second. She looked at Cara then nodded. She let go of Tim and sat in a nearby chair. Brit gave Tim and Cara the glasses of water and sat beside Andy on the couch. He took her hand and found her palm moist with sweat.
“It was a very nice ceremony,” Taras said. “We had
it in a chapel in the outer observation section. Luna was very bright. A lot of people came. More than I expected but I should have known. He had so many friends.” She lowered her face.
“You don’t have to talk about it right now, Mom,” Brit said. “We have plenty of time to talk about it later.”
“I know you’re wondering,” Taras said. “He stepped in front of a train. A train of all things. You think they have safety measures in place. They’re supposed to, but they didn’t work in this case. Systems anomaly.”
Brit’s hand clenched around his.
Andy glanced at the kids. Both were watching her with wide eyes. He cleared his throat. “Have you eaten, Taras? We can take a look at the kitchen and make something to eat. How’s that sound? Cara’s very good at rolling pasta. You should see it.”
Taras was crying again. “He could have left me if he was so unhappy. He didn’t have to stay here. You know? A person can always go do something else. They don’t have to quit altogether. That’s like. That’s the ultimate sort of slap in the face.”
“You don’t know that it was about you,” Andy said. “If that’s even why it happened.”
“He told me,” Taras said. “He told me what he was going to do.”
Andy slapped his knees and stood. “Cara,” he said. “Tim. Come on. Let’s go in the kitchen and make something to eat.”
“I want to watch the show,” Cara said.
“Come with me,” Andy said, putting command in his voice. “We can find the show anytime you want later.”
“I don’t know what it’s called.” She looked at Taras. “Grandma, what show is this?”
“It’s called Gina’s Rules, dear,” Taras said.
“Remember that,” Andy said. “Come on, now.”
The kitchen was mostly empty except for some shelf-stable prepared meals filling one cabinet. Andy stared at them for a minute before pulling them down and instructing the kids to open and separate them into various ingredients. They wasted a good thirty minutes pulling apart the packages to dissect their contents.
Lyssa's Dream - A Hard Science Fiction AI Adventure (The Sentience Wars - Origins Book 1) Page 30
