Second Star (Star Svensdotter #1)

by Dana Stabenow

  “So you knew about that?”

  “Yes. I figured you’d think it was strange if I didn’t ask.”

  “You were right,” I said. “But I still don’t understand. Why all the secrecy?”

  He smiled a little. “Pride.”

  I stared at him. “Pride?”

  “Not their pride,” he explained, “yours. They were afraid you wouldn’t go for it if you knew I was here primarily to ensure your safety, not Ellfive’s.”

  I could tell he was afraid I wouldn’t, either, but he had more reason. “I admit I don’t like being maneuvered, but that’s something I will take up with Helen. And I’m willing to do you the credit of believing the last few days haven’t been part of the game plan.”

  His face lightened and he leaned over to kiss me, pausing when he intercepted Elizabeth’s interested gaze.

  Go ahead, she told him. In a few years I’ll need to know how.

  When he sat back in his chair Elizabeth said, Not bad. Dad kisses Mom like that, when they’re making up.

  “Lucky Dad,” Caleb said, grinning. I kicked him under the table.

  Auntie Star?

  “What, honey?”

  What about Archy?

  We both knew instantly what she meant. “You mean that hiccup Petra told us about at the party?”

  And Roger, and Mom, too, if what she said about Blackwell was true and not just something to make Dad mad. It happened the same time we saw the voices.

  “I know, Elizabeth, we picked up on that, too. But when I asked him, Archy didn’t remember anything about it. He said it sounded like indigestion to him, and he’d never felt anything like the Webster’s definition in his life.”

  “And there’s no record of it in the maintenance program,” Caleb said. “I checked.”

  “So that’s that.”

  Elizabeth stirred. I don’t like it, Auntie.

  “I don’t either, but I thought you were the only one of us to think whatever happened was fun?”

  I was, and I did, but there has to be something more.

  “What?”

  Her small face was perplexed. I don’t know, Auntie. But Archy knows something, even if he doesn’t know he knows it. You know?

  Caleb stirred in his chair and, when we looked at him, said, “Well, maybe I was right. Maybe it was the Beetlejuicers saying hello.” He chuckled.

  I met Elizabeth’s eyes. She nodded her sharp, decisive little nod. I drank off the rest of my coffee and went to refill my cup. With my back to him I said, “There aren’t any Beetlejuicers, Caleb.” I turned to lean against the counter. I blew the steam off the cup and sipped, once again thinking longingly of the ripening coffee beans in the Nearest Doughnut.

  He looked from me to Elizabeth and back again. “What do you mean?”

  “Exactly what I said. There wasn’t any message from Betelgeuse. It was all a big lie Helen Ricadonna and Frank Sartre cooked up to put a little juice back into the space program. Helen is a linguist and a mathematician and she faked the message. Frank fixed it so the ‘message’ would be ‘intercepted’ by the Odysseus II probe and beamed back to Terra.” I grinned. “I don’t think either of them expected the magnitude of the reaction the message got, but I know they’re both very pleased with the results.”

  He sat back in his chair. “No message?”

  “No message.”

  “So there’s nobody out here but us?”

  “Nope.”

  He took it calmly. “Who else knows?”

  “On Ellfive? Simon and Charlie. Elizabeth figured it out for herself.” She looked up with a shy smile when I squeezed her shoulder. “On Terra, Frank and Helen, of course, and there must be a few people at JPL and the Deep Space Tracking Network who would need to know or the message would never have been ‘received.’ ” I spread my hands. “As far as I know, that’s it.”

  “That woman,” Caleb said thoughtfully.

  “Helen Ricadonna?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about her?”

  “It was her idea, wasn’t it?” I said nothing and he said, “She reminds me of Medusa. Eyes that could turn you to stone.”

  “Really?” I said. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  Oh, Auntie! Elizabeth said. And Helen’s eyes are not like Medusa’s, she told Caleb severely. Helen has eyes like—like Archy would have, not like somebody who has snakes for hair. Ugh.

  “Thanks, Elizabeth,” Archy said.

  “I thought I turned you off, Archy,” I said.

  “I know all, I see all, boss,” he replied.

  Caleb raised his eyes to the ceiling, his expression pensive. “There was a young cockroach named Archy,” he said at length, and paused.

  I gazed at him with my mouth slightly open.

  “Whose boss she could be very starchy.

  When I asked him why,

  He said merely, ‘Oh, my,

  Don’t upset the Svensdotter monarchy.’ ”

  And the big man looked at me expectantly.

  I recovered enough to say, “I thought I was the only person in this century to read Don Marquis.”

  “Not even the second. My father read me ‘archy and mehitabel’ for bedtime stories when I was little.” Caleb looked at me. “Why did you tell me? About the Beetlejuicers? You didn’t have to.”

  I mumbled something and studied my coffee absorbedly. Elizabeth smiled at him. Never mind Auntie Star, Caleb. We told you because you’re family now, and she went around the table to give him one of her rare hugs.

  We commandeered one of the unpressurized solarscooters, squeezing Elizabeth in her tiny p-suit between us in the front seat. I dispensed with the services of a driver and took the left seat myself. Not since my first EVA had I trusted a solarscooter pilot to drive me anywhere, the majority of whom were by definition certifiably insane. It was a short trip anyway, a mere sixty degrees and two hours from Ellfive, through the Warehouse Ring and past Mitchell Observatory. We buzzed the canopy and Tori waved at us enthusiastically through a viewport. Sam shot us the finger. Elizabeth hung out over Caleb’s side of the scooter to watch as we passed over the tiny, sparking jewels of Terra’s solar power stations and the larger, multifaceted gem of GEO Base. LEO Base was eclipsed by GEO and barely visible. And then we were landing at Copernicus Base. Terra was rising over the lunar horizon as we settled down into the crater.

  Pretty, Elizabeth said, pointing at the blue-white globe.

  “From here,” I agreed.

  We hiked from the landing field to the terminal’s airlock. Jorge Velasquez was on the other side of the door and he grabbed for me with both hands when my visor popped. He was shorter than I was, and heavier, with a clean-shaven head, bright brown eyes, and a round, creased face that looked as if it might burst into joyous song at any given moment. “Hola, Star!” he shouted, kissing both my cheeks and, standing on tiptoe, taking a longer time over my mouth. Kissing in a p-suit is not exactly an erotic experience but that never stopped Jorge.

  Eventually he stepped back to arm’s length and I saw for the first time the lovely woman with the Mona Lisa eyes and the madonna smile standing behind him. “Marisol de la Madrid, meet Star Svensdotter.” He grabbed her hand and hauled her forward. She was as dark as he was, with heavy, shining black hair braided in a coronet around her head. “She’s the load supervisor for the mass launcher, and my new roomie.”

  “Nice to meet you, Marisol.”

  “And you, Star. Jorge has told me much about you.”

  “And who is this hombre, eh, Star?” Jorge said, hooking a thumb at Caleb. “He looks almost big enough to keep you in line.” He laughed boisterously at my dour look.

  “Caleb Mbele O’Hara, meet Jorge Velasquez. He took over at Copernicus when I left. Caleb is the new security supervisor on Ellfive.”

  Jorge’s eyebrows raised. “So?” He gave the other man a measuring glance and evidently approved of all he saw. “I am glad. It was more than time.”

  He turned to Elizabeth
. “Hey, pequeña, do you remember Jorge’s enchiladas?” Little Elizabeth, divested of helmet and p-suit, nodded vigorously. “Bueno, we eat.”

  Some of the best home cooking in the system, next to Charlie’s, could be found in the base commander’s quarters at Copernicus. We ate cheese enchiladas in mole sauce with rice and refried beans on the side, served with the ceremony and reverence due an unreconstituted meal the likes of which few Terrans had eaten in decades. As he mopped up the last of his mole sauce with a corn tortilla, Caleb’s eyes were streaming from the jalapeños Jorge grew on his own section of Copernicus’s underground plantation and heaped upon everything he cooked with a lavish hand.

  “Cerveza?” Jorge said helpfully. “I brew it myself.”

  You’ve been hanging around Paddy, Elizabeth accused.

  “Ay de mí, my cerveza is nothing like that Irish witch’s brew,” Jorge said with a wounded look.

  Paddy is not a witch, Elizabeth said indignantly.

  “She may not be a witch, pequeña, but that Irish moonshine she makes es el agua de la bruja nonetheless,” Jorge said firmly. “Now. Cerveza, anyone?”

  “I’m afraid I won’t make it out of this room if I do,” I said.

  “I’ll be lucky to make it out of this chair as it is,” Caleb groaned.

  Marisol cleared the table as Jorge sat back on his culinary laurels and beamed. After the coffee was poured and anointed with homemade Kahlua, whipped cream, and chocolate shavings, I said, “What’s this I hear about my old friend and previously unreconstructed rebel being elected head of Copernicus Base?”

  Jorge looked at me, appearing somewhat shamefaced. “How did you hear that?”

  “Bolly monitors your broadcasts and puts the best of them in the Gazette. Tell me about it.”

  “Well.” Jorge shrugged uncomfortably. Marisol was smiling at him with quiet pride. “Things have been run pretty loosely, as you know, Star, but now that the contracts are coming to an end we’re close to proving up here at Copernicus. Some of us wanted to set up some kind of government, and, Dios mío, somehow I wound up at the head of it.”

  “Tell us about it,” I urged.

  He scratched his head. “Well, we incorporated.”

  “How?”

  “I’m not really sure.” Marisol laughed and Jorge looked sheepish. “When we saw how close we were to paying off the Alliance we took a vote to take a vote, and then half a dozen people sat down and thought up a constitution, and then we published it for thirty days so everyone could have a look at it and put in their peseta’s worth. We had a public hearing, made a few amendments, after which it was voted in unanimously.”

  Unanimously?

  Jorge shifted under Elizabeth’s intent gaze. “Well, no, pequeña, there was one ‘no’ vote.”

  Only one?

  “Ask him whose,” Marisol said.

  Jorge glared at his soulmate and let out a string of Spanish. She loosed a brisk torrent in return. Jorge flushed brick red right up to the roots of his hair, lunged up out of his chair, and yanked Marisol up out of hers. They embraced. Passionately. Elizabeth observed them with the interest of an emerging connoisseur. I remembered the previous night, and felt my face get hot when Caleb looked over and caught me at it.

  Marisol kind of melted back down into her chair and Jorge strutted back to his seat. “Mine was the ‘no’ vote,” he said, settling back in his chair and looking unbearably self-satisfied. “I’ve always felt that if everyone is for a thing, there has to be something wrong with it. So I voted against it so it would be all right, compréndeme?”

  Elizabeth made a circle around her ear with one deliberate forefinger, and Jorge shrugged and grinned. “We’ve gone shares—real shares counted on stock certificates. Copernicans will earn them by working for the habitat, and they will vote them in assembly elections. No one can earn more than a hundred shares. Upon their death the shares automatically revert back to the government. Their children do not inherit, but must earn their own voice in the community. Oh, and nobody is allowed to vote until they pay taxes for the first time.”

  “Ah, yes. And what about taxes?” I said.

  “One dime out of every dollar. No exceptions, no excuses. Payable quarterly.”

  I thought it over, from different angles. “I like it,” I said slowly.

  Our eyes met in perfect understanding. “I thought you might.”

  “So what do we call you?” I inquired. “Your Highness? Generalissimo?”

  Jorge’s chest puffed out. “Presidente.”

  I cleared my throat. “Well, Señor Presidente, I’m here to find out who or what has been holding up the H2O shipments to Ellfive.”

  The rotund little man exchanged a glance with Marisol, and shook his head. “I was afraid of that. You aren’t going to like it, Star.”

  “I don’t already.”

  Jorge looked at his watch. “Es muy tarde, Estrella mía. We will go to bed, some of us might even get some sleep, and in the morning, after breakfast, I will show you what you came to see.”

  · · ·

  Breakfast was eggs and sourdough pancakes with what I could have sworn was real maple syrup and honest-to-God Kona coffee.

  Jorge looked up from scanning the news and said, “Didn’t you always have a soft spot for the Tycho Brahe Society, Star?”

  “What are they up to now?” I said, going to stand behind him and peer over his shoulder at the viewer.

  “They’re coming to Luna, it says here. They want to conduct a scientific experiment that they say will prove finalmente and beyond a shadow of a doubt that the sun does revolve around the earth.”

  I shook my head admiringly. “You have to admit that an organization that names itself after someone who got his nose sliced off in a duel to the death over long division is an organization that must be reckoned with.”

  Did you know Brahe replaced his lost nose with a gold prosthesis. Auntie?

  “No kidding?” I was delighted. “Where did you come across that little tidbit of information, Elizabeth?”

  Jorge’s communit beeped and he held a brief low-voiced conversation with his caller. The message seemed to please him. “Estrella mía, you have timed your visit well.” He drained his coffee, ran his hand down Marisol’s behind when she leaned over to retrieve his empty cup, and stood up. “Got something I want to show you. You’ll have to get back into your p-suits. It’s quicker to walk around than through.”

  We suited up and followed him through the airlock and out onto Luna’s dusty surface. “Can everyone hear me all right?” Jorge asked. We made radio checks with him, one by one. Elizabeth lifted her hand and made a circle with her thumb and forefinger. “Bueno. We will be walking over to the launch tower.”

  “There really is a concrete technical problem, then?” I said.

  I could hear the smile in his voice. “ ‘I am a Spaniard, a man without imagination.’ ”

  “You, sir, are a Mexican from Ojocaliente, Zacatecas, and a man without shame or scruple,” I retorted. “And please, no more Ortega y Gasset.”

  “ ‘Rancor is an outpouring of a feeling of inferiority,’ ” he said piously. “Now I suggest we shut up and save our O2 for the hike.”

  Movement on the landing field caught my eye and I turned to see two sister spaceships, standing on their finned tails side by side in identical silver severity. Small figures in p-suits were scurrying about beneath them, or scurrying as much as they were able in Luna’s one-sixth gee. “Jorge?”

  “What?”

  “Whose ships are those?”

  I saw him pause and look. “That’s the Conestoga and the Tall Ship.”

  “That’s right, I remember. Space Services is moving into emigration, right?”

  “Es verdad.”

  “Who’s on board?”

  “El capitán Roland Lavoliere and company. Sound familiar?”

  “No, I—Lavoliere?” I trudged a few steps, thinking. “Oh. The BioScience Engineering and Ethics Committee?”<
br />
  “Sí.”

  “Ah, on Terra, the American Alliance formed such a committee in—1995?—to explore research ethics into genetic engineering, form patent laws, develop a working relationship between academia and industry, and establish a clearinghouse of information to prevent overlapping studies and mistakes in research.”

  “It was formed in 1994, actually, but for the rest your memory is remarkably good.”

  “There were all kinds of experts on that committee, genetic engineers, lawyers, philosophers, entrepreneurs. I think they even included a few members of the general public.”

  “Right again. Half of that committee is with Lavoliere now, on those two ships.”

  “Only half? Last I heard they were working on getting the legal clout to make private industry and the Alliance government toe the line in genetic research, splicing and cloning. What’s only half of them doing here?”

  Jorge paused and I almost ran into him. EVA on Luna, you don’t exactly stop on a dime. “Where have you been, Estrella? El capitán Lavoliere quit.”

  “He quit the chair?”

  “He resigned the chair, he quit the committee, he quit Princeton, he quit the American Alliance, he quit Terra herself. I am surprised you missed it, there was nothing else on the trivee for a week. He quit. He said—I think I quote him exactly—he said that he and the rest of the breakaways were rejecting the stifling restrictions of the conventional minds and mores on Terra to embrace the intellectual freedom of deep space.”

  “So now they’re here. Are they staying on Luna?”

  “I am happy to report that they have filed a flight plan for the Belt.”

  “Oh.” I walked on. “Well, I guess that’s far enough away to grow as many little monsters as they want to without government interference.” The thought made my flesh creep.

  All around us, caught between the blue glow of Terra and the bright glow of Sol, business was brisk. A rover whose body was dwarfed by bulbous tires pulled a crane across the floor of the crater. A swarm of riggers perched on the skeleton of a geodesic dome riveting roof plates to the frame with powerdrivers. A technician rappelled in graceful bounces down the face of one of a long line of antennae dishes. From where we were we couldn’t see out into Mare Imbrium, but I knew from experience that the hustling outside equaled the hustling inside the crater. The road over the north wall was shrouded in a haze of dust that in the one-sixth gravity created a permanent pall over Luna’s Route 66. Copernicus Base was two thirds of the way through its two-week day and people were scurrying to finish tasks that required an extra effort from the solar generators with which the batteries, stored in square, spare buildings squatting on the perimeter of the crater, would not be able to cope.