I wasn’t absolutely sure what he meant to have them eat: the way to make the powerpods grow? How? If in a data gem it wouldn’t be that hard to eat. Perhaps he meant the powerpods? Impossible. Those were man-sized and radioactive. It wasn’t really safe to ask, when Kit was in this mood. He’d probably come up with yet another cryptic utterance that would cost me sleep for days as I tried to figure the mechanics of it. So I just said, mildly, What have weasels ever done to you?
Which got me a puzzled look and an I don’t know. There are no weasels on Eden. Are they sort of like rabbits?
I avoided this side-rhetorical line. I’d long ago decided that my husband only introduced talk of Earth animals and his utter ignorance of them in order to make me laugh or distract me. I wasn’t in the mood to be distracted. You really think we can do it? I said. Avoid all the traps laid out for us, escape all their plotting and manage to do what the most powerful people in the world are intent on stopping us doing?
He grinned. We got here despite the Good Men.
Yes, but the Earth is larger…there’s more places to escape. Here…
Here we have Doc and Zen to help.
You trust them that much? And how will we communicate with them?
I trust them that much, he said, and gave me a smile that said not to worry my pretty head about it. We’ll manage it, Thena.
I didn’t like it. Look, my life had given me no reason at all to trust the judgment of others. In my experience, outside my own judgment and my own capacities, everyone was trying to pull one over on me.
But Kit was still smiling at me with that expression like the canary that ate the cat. Or in this case, perhaps, the Cat that thinks he can win over the bureaucrat. I glowered at him. You are the most exasperating man. I don’t have the slightest idea why I love you.
The smile curved and became wicked, in a way that made my heart skip a beat. No? Let me take a bath and I’ll remind you.
IN THE HOPPER
Over the next few days, there was precious little time for Kit and me to indulge in his specialized memory-enhancing techniques.
The very next day a call from the center sent Zenobia and myself down to inspect the ship they would allow us to use. The Hopper wasn’t so much a ship as a shell. What they told me was that the couple who had taken it out last had got badly radiation burned. Only one of them had survived the long trip home, and she had apparently decided to retire. The ship had been repossessed by the Energy Board and stripped almost to the hull to clean it. That hull had then been placed in a cavernous bay which was not used for anything else. And we were told where to find it.
Before becoming Kit’s navigator, I had worked as a mechanic for the Energy Board for many months. I had repaired and reconditioned ships. I’d never seen one as bare as this. It was perfectly round, as most darkships were, and it was painted in the same dark, unreflective paint as the Cathouse.
The resemblance stopped there. Part of this was good. The Cathouse was a ship of very old vintage, which had been designed as a training ship. It had been foisted on Kit, first, because he was a Cat flying missions alone, and therefore at higher risk of losing the ship. Also, alone, he’d only been able to bring in much lower harvests, which meant that he couldn’t afford to pay the fees for the rental of the better, more expensive ships.
Even when I’d joined him, they didn’t trust us. I was an Earthworm, with questionable training for the job. For one, I’d never learned mechanics, or studied it consciously. It was as though I had an instinct for it. The first time our brooms, back on Earth, had needed repair, I’d studied the manual and known how to do it, and it had been the same with Eden’s ships. I’d discovered, just before leaving Earth that this, like the ability to communicate telepathically, had been bioengineered into the man who called himself my father—and therefore presumably into me. But it wasn’t like the Eden navigator ability, and we couldn’t convince the board I was as good. So, we’d been stuck with the Cathouse. I didn’t mind it so much, but the fact that it had been designed as a training ship, instead of a harvesting ship, presented some liabilities. The nodes for various circuitry, for instance, were easier to access for trainee navigator/mechanics than those in the more modern ships. But what made them accessible was their being on the outside of the ship—protruding out of the skin like pimples. This meant that a mishap in the powertree ring could destroy one of the nodes.
Good Cats weren’t supposed to have mishaps of that nature, and the only one I knew of had happened while I was trying to strangle Kit during our star-crossed meeting. But that didn’t mean that it wasn’t a greater risk.
This ship didn’t have that liability. It was just a large ball, perfectly smooth, completely black, unreflective. It was in fact a ball that projected the idea that it wasn’t there at all.
I walked around it slowly, while Zenobia walked purposely up to it and stuck her finger in the genlock. The door opened, which I supposed made perfect sense, as it would be keyed for us. The way the hatch doors opened on the darkships always made them look a little like they had an open mouth and were carnivorous. Normally this impression was dispelled by the exit area itself which was painted some cheerful color, and faced onto another inner lock, normally open whenever the outer door opened.
This one wasn’t painted any color, but the bare, unreflective black ceramite of the inside of darkships before they were finished. It looked like a dark mouth, or a vortex of ill omen, waiting to swallow us.
Zenobia climbed up the stairs that had extended when the door opened and into the airlock space. She touched the walls, gently, as if to reassure herself of their solidity and looked incredibly out of place, with her red hair and pale skin in that almost aggressively dark space. “I guess they stripped it to its barest shell before cleaning it, then reapplied the ceramite coating,” she said.
I had a feeling she was talking to herself and not to me. I said, “Maybe it was never finished,” and she whirled around, to look at me, her expression surprised.
“What? Oh. No.” She shrugged. “It used to be golden. Len said we really couldn’t afford much, but we could at least make the entrance look like going into a palace.” She stopped immediately, but she had said too much. I felt my heart sink somewhere to the vicinity of my shoes.
She was a navigator whose Cat had died. She’d limped home with her ship. Her ship. They’d given us her ship. I cleared my throat. “The Hopper was your ship?”
She nodded and cleared her throat, then pushed to open the membrane separating us from the inner areas.
I’ll say this for the Energy Board. They might be sending us to space in a coffin, but at least it was a completely stripped, scrubbed and really clean coffin. Nothing in it could possibly remind Zenobia of when she had shared with her late husband. Except it obviously did. From the bare entrance hall, she wandered the corridors, touching here and feeling there, looking like a child lost in a house she’d once known, looking for something that should be there but wasn’t.
I thought up some really interesting swear words, but didn’t say anything. Instead, I set about inspecting the interior in a completely different way.
The navigation computers had been removed. It didn’t worry me, or not too much. I—and I presumed Zenobia, who had been trained in the more normal way of Eden—could calculate a path to Earth. But some navigational computers would be needed, I thought, or one or the other of the pilots—either Kit or Doc Bartolomeu—would need to be on duty the whole time. And shift on/shift off with just two people would be exhausting.
Since Eden was on a highly eccentric orbit, it could be as much as four months or as little as two away from Earth. Usually the trip there and back took six months because what you lost on one leg, you made up on the other.
They’d told us to make lists of what we’d need, and they’d furnish it, and they’d given us weight and mass guidelines beyond which we couldn’t go. I’d started making a list on a disposable electronic memo pad when Zenobia came in to th
e inner area.
I was once more taken aback by her resemblance to Botticelli’s painting. Don’t misunderstand me. There was nothing exact to this resemblance. I’m sure if I had the painting handy, I’d find her features were all wrong, and I was sure her hair was darker red than the woman’s in the painting. But her green eyes had the same expression as that of Venus in the painting—the distant look of staring out at vistas invisible to mere mortals.
She was wearing a blue mechanic’s whole-body suit. Not that all mechanics in Eden wore one uniform, any more than anyone in Eden was fond of uniforms. Back when I worked as a full-time mechanic, there were people who came to work completely naked, as well as those who came to work in floor-length dresses more appropriate to an Earth ballroom. But the blue mechanic’s body-suit was the most common outfit, because it would fit over practically everything—except maybe the floor-length dresses—and it would protect the more expensive clothing. Also, it had deep and plentiful pockets, into which one could sink tools or parts and avoid walking back and forth to get them, or even wearing a cumbersome belt. The suits were so common for people engaged in manual labor, and so cheap, that they were sold at vending machines throughout the two docking complexes: the Energy Board’s and the Water Board’s.
There was no way that Zenobia should look graceful with her hands deep in the pockets of the oversized, bulky uniform, but she did. I had a fleeting thought about her having been friends with Kit since childhood, and a stab of unreasoning jealousy.
Had Kit had a crush on her? I knew he’d loved his first wife dearly, not just because he had told me, but because I knew. Once, our minds had become so intertwined that the normal barrier to the transmission of images and memories had failed; I’d got his memories of their affair.
Jean, Kit’s father, called Kit’s first marriage a boy and girl affair, a bad case of puppy love, because neither of the participants had known any better, or knew anything of how to make a relationship work, or even that relationships could work. Perhaps it was that. Kit’s love of his first wife had that rosy nimbus quality that edged all her memories with thoughts of how wonderful she’d been. But he’d told me when he’d proposed to me that he’d had other lovers before his marriage. He’d made it sound as if they hadn’t mattered at all and perhaps they hadn’t, but looking at Zenobia’s graceful walk, knowing that Kit never called her anything but “Zen”—surely an affectionate nickname—which Doc used also, I wondered if she’d been one of his crushes or even one of his lovers before marriage.
I’ve always been suspicious of women like that—naturally beautiful and effortlessly poised. Even when not doing something strenuous, I became sweaty and disheveled. The only time I looked graceful was when I used ballet moves to kick someone. The only way I’ve ever stunned a man with my mere presence was by adding a punch to his head.
So I might have been less than cordial as I glared at Zenobia, standing there, lost in her reverie. “Well?” I asked.
She shook a little, like someone awakened from a dream. Had she been in the past? Reliving her last trip in this ship? Or in the future, planning our trip and trying to anticipate all that could go wrong?
She looked vaguely guilty. Then she cleared her throat. “I’ve looked all over. There doesn’t seem to be anything here that shouldn’t be.”
I must have blinked at her, because she looked at the pad in my hands and, without giving me time to figure out what she’d do, grabbed for it so fast it might almost have been Cat speed. She read what I had on the screen under the words “parts to requisition.”
Then she typed quickly and handed me the pad back and resumed her sleep-like walking around the cabin, looking at this and touching that.
I wasn’t sure what I expected her to have typed. It could, I supposed, be anything from poetry to calculations. But when I looked down, I found out that the note was perfectly rational and clearly intended for me: DON’T LET US MAKE REQUISITIONS. IT GIVES THEM A CHANCE TO SLIP SOMETHING IN THAT COULD BLOW UP THE SHIP OR WORSE. AND LET’S MAKE SURE THIS BAY IS LOCKED AND THE LOCK CODED ONLY FOR ME, YOU, KIT AND DOC BARTOLOMEU.
I raised my eyebrows at her and she looked back at me and nodded in a way that somehow managed to ask if I was agreeable to the plan.
I was. And Zenobia had found a way to communicate that the Energy Board couldn’t bug, unless they not only had mikes all around but also fortuitously aimed cameras—or had covered the interior of the ship in them.
The disposable pad I’d picked up from the children’s learning room at the Denovo complex would be perfect for this. I’d picked it up because it was cheap and I didn’t need to worry about returning it. But the advantage of such a simple implement, produced by the hundreds of thousands every year was that it would be very difficult for the board to know which one would make its way to our hands, much less to hack it.
I despised the way we had to think of all these things. I despised being so paranoid. But as my upbringing had proven, sometimes you really were being persecuted. And I certainly remembered how to do it.
THE TRAITOR AND THE DAGGER
Two weeks later we had assembled most of the needed machinery for the ship. Kit and Doc—I never knew where they planned it or how they contrived it—had procured it. Now one, now the other of them showed up, bearing parts or something on our wish list.
I didn’t know how the Energy Board—or Castaneda—felt about it, nor did I want to know. We’d arranged so that only the four of us could come in and out of the bay, and, because Zenobia managed to be even more paranoid than I was—a feat that ranked up there with the great deeds of humanity—we’d rigged hidden cameras that kept watch on the ship night and day.
We needed only a computer now, strong enough to make calculations and do the piloting but simple enough to be wiped bare of all data before we got near Earth. The data would be in our own heads and safe from discovery.
I had been given to understand, through Kit’s mind-talk, that getting a computer for the ship wasn’t as simple as walking into a shop and walking out with the required computer. It wasn’t even as simple as ordering it, special order, from some manufacturer. You see, Kit, and particularly Doc were afraid of subtle sabotage induced by our enemies, if anyone knew the computer was for us.
Have you found it? I asked, as I emerged from the ship to find him leaning against the wall, his hands shoved deep in the pocket of his dark red pants. The tunic he wore with the pants was a bright green that made me think of absinthe, but there was nothing for it, and I’d got used—kind of—to my Cat’s taste in clothing. Kit wasn’t the worst of it, for that matter. Every Cat I knew had horrible color sense. Kath didn’t seem to be able to wear anything not covered with spangles. And at least Kit’s tunic matched his eyes. Sort of.
The computer? he asked, straightening and smiling at me while giving me an all-over appreciative look.
I smiled at him and nodded. I’d never expected to be loved. I know what I am and that most people would prefer chewing their own arms off at the elbow to being married to me. But Kit not only loved me. His eyes went all soft and…interested, even when I was coming out of a ship with coolant gel all over my hands and wearing sweaty, stained, baggy coveralls.
Doc Bartolomeu thinks he can get it this evening, Kit said. And we’re hoping to leave tomorrow early.
So soon?
Kit nodded, pressing his lips together. The sooner we leave, the less time there will be for funny business. Doc thinks that they…Castaneda and whoever else, are planning something.
What would the something be?
Who knows? We thought they meant to sabotage the parts we brought on board, but we’ve been very sneaky in procuring them…He smiled, a little, and for just a moment looked too young. At least Doc has been. So sneaky he’s left me out of the loop most of the time. It’s all high cloak and dagger, and I’m sure he’s enjoying himself. The little I’ve done involves taking a message to so-and-so and bringing a message back and being in a certain place a
t a certain time. He shook his head. I think the Doc is a romantic and is trying to live out one of those adventure books he reads all the time. But I do think we’ve been secretive enough. Even I have no idea where the parts…or the computer, are coming from.
At least I wasn’t the only one who’d been left out of the loop. I tended to feel left out, but in this case so was Kit himself. So, why the urgency in leaving?
Because Doc Bartolomeu is afraid if they can’t get in by sneaky means they’ll do it bluntly.
Bluntly? I asked. How…how could they do it bluntly? You mean, they might just kill us? Wouldn’t that be murder and set off a blood feud?
His expression turned momentarily bleak. Don’t ask me how he knows this or who his informant might be, but Doc thinks that the plan, when we landed, was to blow us out of the sky. Since the dock controller forced their hand, they couldn’t do that, but there are accidents that can be…He swallowed. That could be arranged. A few hours without power during the night and my family compound would contain nothing but corpses. A fleeting smile. Or at least they might think so, though Jean has made arrangements, but all the same…The less time we give them to strike, the less danger we can bring to my family, or to the people who are helping Doc. Zen’s family, fortunately, immigrated to the Thules a couple of years ago. So she only had her husband.
And he’s dead, I thought, half to myself and half projecting. I was not exactly mad-fond of Zenobia. For one, she didn’t give me a chance to be. Sometimes, I had inklings that there might be a nice, perhaps even friendly woman under the brittle shell of silence and distance, but no more than glimpses. It was clear that for some reason she didn’t consider me someone to confide in. Either this was her normal character, not unlike Kit’s, who sometimes gave the impression one should pull the words out of him with a corkscrew, or she was suffering from shock at the death of her husband.
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