Starbound

by Brenda Hiatt

  After one last cheer, people slowly (so slowly!) drifted away from the center square in twos, threes and family groups. It was all I could do to remain upright until I was sure I was no longer the center of attention. Keeping a smile pinned to my face, I headed toward the O’Garas, waiting a short distance from the platform.

  A few people hovered nearby, clearly trying to catch my eye despite Liana’s words. I was relieved when Mrs. O shook her head at them, though I pretended not to notice. That Sean did was obvious from the way he threw a possessive arm around my shoulders.

  Though I would have preferred Rigel’s touch, I couldn’t deny Sean’s was comforting. I had to resist an urge to lean against him for more physical support as we walked back to our guesthouse. The distance seemed a lot longer than it had two hours earlier.

  It’s okay, M. Lean on him if you want. You’re exhausted. Plus, people are watching. The faint tinge of jealousy that accompanied Rigel’s thoughts was nothing to the sleepiness I sensed from him. I remembered he hadn’t had a nap like I had.

  I almost asked Mr. and Mrs. O who those shouting men were but was afraid it might lead to a discussion I was too tired to face tonight. Tomorrow would be soon enough.

  As we walked, I listed toward Sean until I really was letting him partly support me. If he seemed too pleased I never knew, since I never looked up at him, too busy focusing on putting one foot in front of the other. After what seemed like forever, though it was probably only five minutes, we were back at the house and both Sean and Rigel helped me up the stairs to my room.

  Zombie-like, I managed to put on pajamas and brush my teeth before falling into a dreamless sleep, too worn out to worry about whatever challenges I might face tomorrow. Or the next day, or the next.

  CHAPTER 14

  Teachneaglis (TAK-nee-glish): the minority of Nuathans and Echtrans who prefer to do without most modern advancements, primarily found in the villages of Bailerealta on Earth, and Keary and Eriu on Mars

  “And what might be your pleasure for breakfast this morning, Excellency?” Mrs. Cleary, our brown-haired, motherly hostess greeted me when I entered the dining room after ten solid hours of sleep. “Just you name it, and I’ll whip it up in no time at all while you have a bit of toast and jam with your tea.”

  The four O’Garas and Rigel (who looked way too heart-stopping in his uniform for so early in the day) were already seated around the big table demolishing enormous breakfasts of their own. Apparently I hadn’t been the only one to sleep late.

  Mindful of protocol, I took the chair on Sean’s right. “Whatever you’ve already made is fine. I’m not picky. Scrambled eggs, oatmeal, whatever.”

  “Well, aren’t you a dear? I’ll have both out in a jiffy. There’s fresh tea in the pot and toast under the warmer.” With a little bob of her head, she bustled off into the kitchen while Mrs. O poured me a cup of tea.

  “Did you sleep well, dear?” she asked.

  “I slept great, thanks. I feel ready to take on the world. Figuratively, anyway.” I suppressed an errant Grentl thought by voicing a different concern. “I was too tired to ask last night, but what was the deal with those guys who started shouting during my speech?”

  Mr. O slanted a wary glance at me. “Were you able to understand what they were chanting?”

  “Sure. It was English, after all. No more Royals.”

  “Actually, that was in Martian.” He gave me a faint smile when I blinked.

  Martian? Really? Thinking back, I realized their actual words had been Na ga Rioga. My tired brain must have translated without my even knowing it. Which was cool…except for what it meant.

  “So, who are they? Are they Faxon supporters?” I’d hoped after the big battle in October and the destruction of those nasty Ossian spheres, there weren’t any more of those on Earth.

  “No, rather the opposite,” Mr. O assured me. “Some—though not a large or organized group—feel the reconstruction of Nuath is going perfectly well without a Sovereign in place and are opposed to another hereditary ruler.”

  That actually made perfect sense to me. I’d always thought the Nuathan system was antiquated. “So they want free elections and stuff? That’s what I thought they said.”

  Mrs. O gave a dismissive snort. “We already have free elections for most of the legislature, and even the Sovereign only takes power after being popularly Acclaimed. These rabble rousers willfully ignore this, which is no doubt why there are so few of them. Most of our people are smarter than that.”

  “What Mum said.” Sean patted my hand. “You heard the crowd last night. They loved you. But there are a few crazies in every crowd.”

  “In any event, they’ve been dealt with.” Mr. O smiled reassuringly. “Don’t worry, they won’t be bothering you again.”

  Alarmed, I set down my cup. “Dealt with? What do you mean? What did they do to them? All they did was speak out. That’s not a crime, is it?”

  He seemed startled by my reaction. “Not a crime, merely a social breach. They’ve simply been asked to leave Bailerealta until the launch, after which they’ll be free to return. Though they’re likely to be ostracized unless they come to a more reasonable way of thinking.”

  I still didn’t like it, raised as I’d been to revere free speech. Mrs. Cleary came in with my breakfast so I allowed the subject to drop—for now. I made short work of the eggs, sausage and oatmeal, wondering how I could be so hungry when all I’d done since dinner was sleep. But both boys put me to shame, eating twice what I did on top of whatever they’d consumed earlier.

  Sean swallowed a mouthful of fried potatoes. “If you want, Molly and I can show you around Bailerealta this morning, then some local sights after. There’s part of a castle not far from here, and a tower at the Cliffs of Moher with great views.”

  I broke off my silent conversation with Rigel about how cool it was to have breakfast together. “Sounds great. I’m ready when you are.”

  When we headed outside a few minutes later, Sean immediately grabbed my hand. “Let’s walk the circle—it’s the quickest way to see everything.”

  “Sounds good.” Resisting the urge to pull away since there were a few people around, I spoke lightly, smiling up at Sean. For show!

  Like always. Rigel felt more resigned than upset.

  The four of us strolled around the loop, Sean and Molly pointing out the tiny school, the ice cream shop next to the pub, the dry goods store. Everyone we passed greeted us cheerily. The O’Garas’ previous home was now occupied by another family, but they seemed honored at Sean’s request to let us peek inside.

  “About like most other houses here,” he commented as we glanced around the main living area. “Ionic sanitizers in kitchen and bath and a food recombinator, which we don’t have in Jewel. Have you seen one?”

  I shook my head. “But if there’s one at the Clearys’, you can show me there. We shouldn’t go messing in the Kilcannons’ kitchen.”

  “We don’t mind, Excellency.” But I could tell Mrs. Kilcannon was a little uncomfortable, despite her smile.

  “Thank you so much, but we’re already trying to squeeze in a lot of sightseeing today. I really appreciate you letting us look around.”

  The whole family bowed to me as we left. I didn’t think I’d ever get used to that.

  Gonna have to work on it, Rigel remarked.

  I know. Doesn’t mean I have to like it. If I ever act like I do, smack me, okay?

  Oh, yeah, that’ll go over well. Not I’d ever need to. You’re the least stuck-up beautiful girl I know.

  Hiding my smile at the glow his words gave me, I longed to at least brush Rigel’s hand. We were halfway around the loop now and hadn’t managed a single touch. To hide my frustration, I asked, “Didn’t you say the far side of the village is where the, um, technophobes live?”

  “The teachneaglis, yeah, just up ahead.” Molly pointed. “Some are more extreme than others, but most use electricity and modern plumbing, at least.”

 
“You mean some don’t?” Rigel was clearly startled. “Seriously?”

  Sean nodded, squeezing my hand slightly—which I ignored. “Mostly just the Kellens and the Gleesons and their extended families. Their grandparents, or maybe great-grandparents, came here right after the Great Unplugging, when they didn’t think it went far enough.”

  “The what?”

  I glanced at Rigel, surprised he didn’t know, then remembered he hadn’t been cramming Martian history like I had.

  And you never mentioned it, he commented silently as Sean started explaining.

  “Yeah, nearly three hundred years ago on Mars, things were a lot like they’re getting now on Earth—instant communication, social media, more and more personal entertainment options, stuff like that. At one point, nearly every person over the age of ten had a headset that kept them constantly connected to the grechain—our internet. Some even got sensory implants. Like having an omni—or at least an iPhone—attached to your face 24/7.”

  “I thought it sounded kind of cool when I read about it,” I admitted. “But then, I’m the girl who’s never even had a cell phone.”

  Molly grinned. “I thought that, too, until we studied it in school. It got to where everyone who could, worked from home. But instead of spending the extra time with their families, people got more and more isolated, spending so much time online they practically stopped talking face to face at all. Finally some Social Scientists convinced Sovereign Aerleas—your great-grandmother—that our whole society was being damaged, and she agreed.”

  Mention of her name immediately brought to mind what else I knew about her—things I immediately pushed from my mind. Instead, I thought back to what I’d read about the Great Unplugging. “Not her most popular decision, right?”

  “That’s for sure.” Sean laughed, squeezing my hand again. “The way our grandmother told it, it triggered the closest thing to an uprising in centuries.”

  “But not with actual violence,” Molly was quick to assure me. “Not like the uprisings Faxon engineered. Before people even got protests organized, families started talking to each other, and to their neighbors, and realized how much they’d missed it. So it turned out to be a good thing. We might have ended up, I dunno, cyborgs, otherwise.”

  “Resistance is futile,” I muttered under my breath. Only Rigel seemed to hear, his silent chuckle just for me.

  “I wonder if we’ll be smart enough to keep that from happening here on Earth, or if we’ll all be assimilated?” he said aloud.

  Panic lanced through me at an unbidden image of the Grentl coming back to do more experiments. I suppressed it, but not before Rigel caught enough to glance at me in alarm. What?

  Nothing. Not now.

  Molly, meanwhile, was grinning at him. “Bluetooth headsets do kind of look like cybernetic implants.” She’d caught the Star Trek reference after all. I kept forgetting people on Mars had access to our old TV shows.

  “Do you want to wander through and meet some of the teachneaglis?” Sean nodded toward the two side streets and their twenty or so houses. “It’s almost a village within a village. They even have a blacksmith.”

  “They’re not anti-Sovereign, are they?” I was remembering last night.

  “They mostly keep to themselves but as far as I know, they’re not political at all—in any direction.”

  We spent the next half hour exploring what felt like a two-hundred-year-old Irish village, though the teachneaglis didn’t dress or speak any differently than the other Bailerealtans. They seemed pleased to see me, eagerly explaining their reasons for shunning most technology.

  “Not that the Sovereign has that luxury, of course,” Kevin, our self-appointed guide, added at the end of a litany on the virtues of manual labor.

  “Unfortunately, no.” Luxury? Rigel’s mental laughter had me struggling mightily to keep my lips from twitching. “You’ve been very kind, Kevin. Thank you.”

  I waited until we were at least a quarter mile away to say, “They seem happy enough but, sorry, you couldn’t pay me to live like that.”

  “Luckily, they usually aren’t into proselytizing.” Sean shrugged. “You were great, by the way. If any of them had doubts about you before, they won’t now.”

  I glanced up at him, startled, to find him regarding me with that warm expression that made me quickly look away. “I, uh, hope you’re right. I didn’t do anything special.”

  “Except make them feel special, every one of them. That’s a lot.”

  He’s right, Rigel thought before I could argue. I’ve noticed it before and it’s a real gift you have.

  Gift? What, paying attention when people talk to me?

  It’s more than that. But if I try to explain you’ll over-think it, so I won’t. All you need to know is that you’re doing fine, just being yourself.

  “Something wrong, M?” Sean suddenly asked. “It’s like you…go away sometimes. You’re not worrying about Mars again, are you?”

  “Oh, um, maybe a little. But I’m trying not to…yet.” Which was definitely true.

  He looked sympathetic. “I know it’s hard, but what’s that saying? No point in borrowing trouble?”

  Which was also true. “You’re right. What’s left to see in Bailerealta?”

  “Not much.” Then Sean grinned. “But Mum said we can take the car to see other stuff. The Cliffs of Moher and O’Brien’s Tower are closest, but Dunguaire Castle is a lot older. Which are you most interested in?”

  “Can’t we see them all?”

  “Sure, but they’re in opposite directions. Tell you what, let’s hit the Cliffs and the tower, grab lunch, then go north to the castle after.”

  “Sounds good to me. Molly? Rigel?”

  I needed to talk to Rigel out loud occasionally or it would look odd to everyone who knew we were really still a couple. Which here meant just the O’Garas—who seemed to be pretending we weren’t. Maybe they hoped we’d forget we were bonded if they ignored it hard enough. Not a chance.

  “That plan’s okay with me, too,” Rigel said. The cliffs and castle thing, not the other, he quickly clarified. That’ll never happen.

  “Wow! Guess a lot of people come here in summer, huh?” I looked around at the enormous, mostly-empty lot across the street from the Cliffs of Moher as we climbed out of the car half an hour later.

  “Yeah, it’s a big tourist draw. Has been forever, I guess. O’Brien’s Tower was built for tourists, not defense, way back in the early eighteen hundreds. You’ll see why in a minute.” Sean locked up and came around to my side. “Come on.”

  He reached for my hand again, but I stuck it in my jacket pocket. “There’s no one around we need to convince now.”

  Sean’s jaw jutted out stubbornly, though there was something vulnerable in his expression. “I didn’t think you minded that much.”

  “I don’t—as long as it’s only for show. Let’s go see the Cliffs.” I turned away before the hurt in his eyes could make me feel guilty.

  I was tempted to take Rigel’s hand as we walked, but didn’t quite dare. I couldn’t absolutely know there were no Echtrans around and I didn’t want to risk getting Rigel into trouble—though he’d changed into civvies before we left Bailerealta.

  Hey, I’m supposed to worry about you, not the other way around. He brushed my hand with his, making it look accidental. An electric thrill went through me at the contact, our very first of the day. I’d missed this—needed this!—so much. It was all I could do not to shudder with relief and pleasure.

  A moment later I was marveling at the way the green velvet top of the Cliffs abruptly gave way to sheer gray rock plunging hundreds of yards straight down. Looking along the long, curving edge of the cliffs, I watched the sea crashing magnificently against the rugged vertical rock faces and a free-standing spire thrusting up from the waves that showed where the cliff face must have been, once upon a time.

  “Wow,” I breathed. Land-bound as I’d been all my life, I felt overwhelmed by the raw
power of the ocean. I could feel Rigel echoing my awe from a few inches away.

  “It’s something, isn’t it?” Sean murmured from my other side. “I was hoping to be the one to show it to you. Your first real view of the sea.”

  I glanced up at him, startled he’d picked up on my feelings so accurately. But of course I’d mentioned more than once to him and Molly that this would be my first time seeing the ocean, so it really wasn’t so strange after all.

  Molly broke the awkward moment. “Let’s go see it from the tower.”

  We climbed the path, then the tower’s steep, winding stairs and admired the view from the top for a few minutes. Then both boys simultaneously declared they were starving.

  “Sheesh, when aren’t you?” Molly rolled her eyes. “But we’ve pretty much seen it. Ready to go, M?”

  “We can’t have these guys fainting on us. Let’s go have lunch, then visit that castle.” I was loving Ireland more than ever.

  By the time we reached the parking lot, there was a hungry-irritable edge to Rigel’s feelings and I could actually hear Sean’s stomach growling. Boys really were bottomless pits.

  “Maybe we should have brought a picnic, like those people.” I slowed down to point while the others continued toward the car. “Then we could—”

  I broke off with a gasp as somebody grabbed my jacket collar, yanking me backwards. “Hey! What the—?” I twisted around to see two strange men behind me, one still gripping my jacket.

  “Yeah, that’s her.” The other man reached out to seize my arm. “And this must be—” He glanced toward Rigel just as Rigel’s fist slammed into his jaw.