Clarion: The Sequel to Voyage (Paul's Travels)

by C. Paul Lockman

  “The Stars be with you,” the trader offered courteously as the mercenary rose to leave.

  “Fuck the Stars,” he growled, and left, following the cart which carried his rum. As he did so, the trader tutted loudly at the profanity, shaking his head at the disrespect so many showed towards their sacred Five.

  “Low culture,” the trader commented to the crowd. “I’m ashamed that such a sandworm will consume my finest rum.”

  “A sandworm with money is a sandworm readily forgiven, eh?” offered a neighboring trader.

  “You deal with your customers, and let me deal with mine.” He paused, surveying the crowd at this stall, and the paltry group at his neighbors. “With so few, you’ll be able to give them your fullest attention.”

  The Bazaar loved exchanges like this, and soon the crowd was egging them on. In the midst of the braying mob, Julius held aloft the yellow-gold card in the hopes it would garner some attention. It worked immediately.

  “Hey there, young Sir?” the trader called over the din. “What’s your pleasure?”

  “Your finest,” Julius asked brazenly. “Ten flagons.”

  The trader leaned carefully over racks of brim-full rum vessels and took the glittering card from Julius’ hand. “Ten, eh?” Some of the crowd turned to eye the newcomer. “Got a birthday coming up?”

  “Why is less your business than how much,” Julius reminded him. “Perhaps I might enjoy a discount on so weighty a purchase?

  The trader gave a beckoning whistle and seconds later another boy appeared, smaller and grubbier than the first. “Ten flagons of the Eccithist for this young man,” he ordered loudly, as if to boast of this fine sale to his struggling competitors. It was another act in the Bazaar’s endless drama; profit and loss, good luck and bad, straight deal or bent, fair means or foul; all were part of a day’s trading. The cut-and-thrust of daily mercantilism was so much more efficacious without the interference of the authorities. “I trust there will be no surprises when I scan the card?”

  Julius waved away the trader’s concern but still, he held his breath. Beside him, the flagons were loaded onto a second motorized cart whose engine was already started. The small boy, perhaps half Julius’ age, tapped his feet in anticipation. The crowd had turned their attention to yet another brewing melee, further down the alley, which was filling the air with noisy insults.

  Ignoring the more-than-typical contretemps, the store-keeper swiped Julius’ card; straightaway, his face turned sour as he read the screen. “Well, there’s a name I haven’t scanned in a long while. Captain Pakaan’s crew, is it?”

  Julius stood blankly, summoning a calm that surprised him. “That’s right,” he confirmed. Twenty yards away, fists were being thrown as a noisy rum transaction turned violent.

  “And should I be scanning payment simply for these ten, or for the twenty-seven already on Captain Pakaan’s account?” There were whistles of surprise from the distracted crowd. Ten flagons was a lot, but the funds required for thirty-seven could not possibly come from legitimate sources. Some eyed him more suspiciously while others focused on the punch-up further down the alley, which had begun to promise genuine entertainment. “What shall it be?” the store-owner demanded.

  Julius smiled and nodded in apparent acceptance, reaching to his back pocket. As he did so, there was a yell of, “Gun!” from the tussling mob down the alley, and seconds later the report of a firearm echoed throughout the market stalls. The sound was startling, echoing loudly down the alley. All heads turned to locate the shooter, and Julius saw his chance. There was just enough confusion amid the ruckus for him to hastily board the motor-cart, where he gracelessly shoved the boy into the dirt and gunned the engine. There were shouts, threats, more gunfire and chaotic crashing sounds behind him, but he ignored the melee and steered the cart back up the artery and into the domed entrance hall, scattering people and animals as he sped down passageways which resounded with shouting and the shriek of the cart’s little motor.

  Looking back as he careered through the entrance arch, Julius was both that he still had most of his cargo, and that the machete-toting crowd was now too far behind to catch him. He kept the cart’s struggling engine at maximum power, taking side streets at breakneck speed and dodging through traffic until he approached the spaceport’s access tunnels. Grateful to be under cover once more, he followed the mercifully empty passageways back to the Orion’s bay and brought the cart to a neat halt just by the lowered ramp.

  “First class!” beamed the Captain. “You’ll have to pay for the broken ones, though.”

  Julius jumped out of the cart and motioned impassionedly at his precious cargo. “Do you see any broken ones?” he demanded.

  “I mean the ones you dropped in the Bazaar. Don’t worry, you can make it up to me.” He made to head back into the Orion.

  The incident replayed itself quickly in Julius’ head. “How the fuck did you know about those?”

  “Let’s just say I’m well informed.” He combed back his thinning black hair. “Ready for your next assignment?”

  Julius sat on the front wheel of the cart and let out a sigh. “You’re a crazy person.”

  “And you’re just dying to fly around in space with me. Who’s the crazy one?”

  “Me, for certain,” came a voice from inside the ship, “just for taking the two of you seriously”. Mesilla appeared wearing her tight flight pants and a similarly flattering halter-top, and jogged down the ramp. “I hear you caused quite a commotion at the Bazaar.”

  “That was about... six minutes ago!” Julius observed, incredulous.

  Zak tossed Julius a leather satchel. “Extremely well informed,” he reminded the teenager. “Don’t open that under any circumstances.”

  “Why, what’s in it?”

  Zak ignored the question. “From time to time, this crew has found it prudent to make select investments,” he preened. “I have a particularly tasty lead in this very city but,” he turned to Mesilla with an anguished face, “sadly, I have no safe means of making bank deposits.”

  “Such a bind,” she agreed, not without a sarcastic smirk.

  “Don’t tell me,” Julius smirked. “There were some ‘previous incidents’.”

  “Sadly so, sadly so. If only,” the Captain continued, enjoyably rhapsodizing on this theme, “there were a man in my service equal to the task of depositing such an investment”.

  Now this, thought Julius to himself, was much more his scene. His year as a courier driver and general problem-solver for hire had given him a well-honed skills set. “’Name the place, name the time, there’s the price, get in line,’” he chirped. “Where’s the drop?”

  It took a few moments to talk Julius through the often arcane process of Qelandian investing. Finance houses on this peculiar moon were bound by ancient laws pertaining to the physical ownership of money. “It doesn’t all go into some central account. Instead,” Mesilla was explaining, “individual investments are separately banked in special underground caches of... well... cash,” she said, drawing a wry smile from the Captain. “The physical movement of the money from bank to business to investor is all done literally.”

  “Sounds like a pain in the ass, doesn’t it?” asked Zak. “But, wouldn’t it give your investment greater meaning if the coins on the table were the very same coins your father left you in his will?”

  Julius tried not to think of home, or his parents, but it pained him that he would never receive a bequest from his father. He had crossed too many lines; there was that business with the wheelwright’s daughter, then his appalling school grades, then his all-to-abrupt departure for the big city. His mother had been mortified. His father, though, grudgingly accepted that the narrow confines of their village would not contain his son’s curiosity and growth. Julius had naively taken his consent as an approval, but he later realized that he’d probably broken the old man’s heart.

  “It would indeed,” Julius agreed. Money itself had gained an intrinsic, em
otional value, a heritage which would be entirely lost if the funds were amalgamated.

  “So, you understand this is pretty important.”

  “Understood.”

  With a slight hesitation, Zak placed the satchel in Julius’ hands. “Give me your lectern.” He swiped another card, bringing up an address in the center of town, perhaps two miles from the Bazaar. “Go straight there, do exactly as your lectern says, and come straight back. If you are shot at, just keep going.”

  Julius blinked and began to object, but Zak was already racing Mesilla back up the ramp. “Good luck!” she called. “Remember, all the nice girls want to fuck a hero!”

  Chapter 17: Phoenix Reborn

  It was silent except for the distant hum of ventilation fans. She became aware of them as she began her slow swim upward, regaining the sensations in her throat and mouth, in her fingers and toes, welcoming the gradual unfreezing of her central nervous system.

  Anne Scott vaguely wondered what time it was. Within these white and green plastic walls, under these low-energy lights, day and night had become fused. If her rasping thirst were any indicator, she had been asleep for many, many hours. She had lost count, but this could have been the twentieth, or perhaps thirtieth time she had awoken since...

  She stretched her back slightly, arcing upwards, and as she did so her thought processes restarted along familiar lines. There were images of the Aldebaran, her family, and their panicked escape in the Epsilon. Reminders of their struggles on this airless moon. And then, as one piece connected with a another the memories returned in far too much detail. It was hard not to slip back down into the haze once more, where such tragedies could not bother her. But she forced herself to stay awake, to shake off the comforting cloud of sleep. To begin facing the harsh realities, once again.

  She grimaced as her toes curled for the first time in days. A nagging sore inside her elbow told of a difficult IV insertion by one of the girls, but at least the nutrient drip had kept her alive. She coughed, the spasm painful in the desiccated channel of her throat. Other muscles were awoken by these tremors, allowing her to move towards sitting up. She dragged herself back against the pillows and brought her aching back upright. The effort was massive; it felt as though she were recovering from temporary paralysis while enduring the first chapters of a monstrous hangover.

  Anne reached for her bedside table, where the girls had laid out water and a small dish of pills. In combination, they addressed the terrible the dryness of her throat and the pain in her long-unbent knees. She finished the water in a sequence of thirsty but careful sips, and then reached up to tie back her hair into a rough ponytail, if only to keep it out of her eyes. Her arms ached badly as she flexed them, but the pain passed, replaced by a tiredness which she knew would last until she ate something.

  This was always the toughest decision. If I eat, she knew, I will go on living. Every time she woke, over the weeks and months, she faced this same choice. Do I want to go on? What benefit would it bring? Would she be merely another mouth to feed, unable to properly work or care for the two girls. She reprimanded herself. They were, very definitely now, women, like her. They were mature, intelligent, and adapting remarkably well to this intolerable environment.

  And one of them was a murderer.

  She put the memory aside, as she knew she must. I can stay here and reminisce, and die. Or I can go out there and help them survive. Her feet hit the cold floor and it was a long moment before she mustered the strength to stand. Her first uneven, hesitant steps took her to the white, sliding door of her sick-chamber. The door budged on the second try and she gingerly stepped out into the circular hallway which surrounded Epsilon.

  “Good afternoon.” Then silence.

  There had been two words. Uncertain that the voice was not simply the product of a ravaged mind, she waited.

  “Good afternoon, Anne. How are you feeling?”

  She returned to her bed and leaned unsteadily against it. “Who?” she rasped painfully.

  “Anne, it’s Hal. We’ve spoken before. Please tell me how you’re feeling?”

  “Hal?”

  The machine was patient. He knew how broken the human mind-body could become. It was only reasonable to allow her some time to adjust; these were her first steps in sixteen day, her first words in nine. The girls spent many hours here, and usually helped Anne to take her first steps on uncertain legs. Both happened to be asleep, but Hal would contact the ship’s computer to alert them.

  Once before, Anne had been told about Hal, how he was here to look after her, but they were facts she only faintly understood. During each of her lengthy, induced sleep periods, medically little different from a coma, her short-term memory seemed almost to reset itself, and so she needed repeated reminders, upon waking. For Anne, though, the alternative to these deep, week-long slumbers was too awful. Sleep was less taxing her sanity.

  “Come and sit with me in the farm, Mom.” Anne instantly recognized her daughter’s voice. She headed back towards the door and pushed it open, holding its frame for a long moment as she took in the interior of the ship and reminded herself of its layout. With every meter of progress came waves of memories.

  The farm was mercifully close, only the second module in the succession of six which ringed this central node. The door slid open automatically and Anne reveled in the explosion of vibrant green, the sudden pungency of the soil. Three deep breaths seemed to mollify her inner malaise; she was able to stretch her tight muscles, and carefully rearranged her unruly, hazelnut hair. Only then did she look around for Haley.

  “Are you behind the planters?” she asked, a smile entering her voice. “Are we playing hide and seek?”

  Hal had played this game once before, with Haley’s permission. By imitating Haley’s voice – so accurately, he noted proudly, as to convince her closest relative – he was able both to keep Anne mobile and positive, and to lure her into the farm.

  In the three weeks since their arrival, Hal’s construction robots had produced a long queue of machines, resources and tools, including his own inventions in the field of mental health diagnoses. Interviews with Haley, Kiri and, during her periods of lucidity, with Anne, as well as non-invasive scanning, enabled Hal to diagnose her problems and synthesize a remarkable treatment plan.

  The farm was now host to a patch of tall, curved umbelliferae, each rising on a slender stalk which ended in a profusion of green stems and white flowers. As a plant, they were solid and pleasing rather than genuinely pretty, but Hal’s innovative design incorporated a startling capability: these plants exuded clouds of anti-depressants into the farm’s air.

  Basing the plant on one of Garlidan’s designs, Hal knocked out three genes which limited growth; the stems now grew absurdly quickly – close to a half-meter a day – and the flowers produced time-released clouds of highly specialized pharmaceuticals, dispersed into the air upon the release of a chemical catalyst through the irrigation system.

  The change had transformed Anne. She attributed it to the sights and smells of the farm. Who could feel sad, Hal remembered her exclaiming, when surrounded by lush, thick ferns, and the colors of flourishing carrot greens, radishes and beets? She sat amid the greenery, awaiting Haley and breathing in a cocktail of beneficial aerosol drugs. Gradually, Hal was introducing other plants, including a purple-red shrub which laced the air with stimulants, in a bid to realign and encourage Anne’s ravaged neurochemistry. Hal was focused on returning Anne to the best of health. Nothing was certain, but he insisted that she become lucid enough to decide on their most critical issue: Would she travel with them on the Phoenix?

  He chewed it over with Paul, who had made a point of staying well clear of Anne, her room, even that whole section of the base. Although she was asleep for better than ninety percent of the time, Hal insisted that Anne never know that Paul was there. Adding an unexpected visitor, especially a male, would only have invited complications. Instead, Paul coordinated their preparations for departure,
acted as designer-engineer for upgrades to the Phoenix, and prepared to lead their mission to intercept Julius.

  The principal issue was logistical. “Can we even adapt Phoenix to hold four hypersleep tubes?” Paul asked as he studied Hal’s modification proposals. “We’ve only ever had one on board, and even three is going to be a tight squeeze.”

  “You’ll all be in the deepest sleep. I can’t imagine you’ll need to stretch your legs,” Hal responded.

  “We won’t be spending our entire time asleep, Hal. What would be the point of that?” Paul objected.

  “So, you’d prefer to consume additional resources and time in touring the local systems?” Hal had grown tired, in some ways, of the willful illogic of these humans with whom he worked. Everything seemed to take far longer than necessary; why couldn’t they just get on with it?

  Paul rolled his eyes. “I just want to show my passengers a few things before we head off to intercept Julius. I mean, we’ve got 2000 years to make it there, right?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Well, is it 2000 years or not?”

  “I require further data. The journey depends on many variables.”

  Paul swore colorfully in Haley’s language, a crass metaphor involving body parts and gardening tools. “Hal, I thought our route was locked in? You’re telling me that you’re not sure about it?”

  “I’m telling you that I’m tired of you second-guessing a genius,” he growled, and just then their door slid open a fraction.

  “Paul? Hal?” It was Kiri’s soft request.

  Paul muttered under his breath, just so that Hal could hear through the communicator at his ear. “To be continued, big-brain.”

  Paul greeted Kiri and they walked together to sit on the inner steps of the farm module, where it met the central hub. “She’s awake, and in the best frame of mind I’ve seen her since it all happened.”