The Vanished Birds

by Simon Jimenez

  “There you are,” she said.

  It took a minute for Nia to recognize her—she had only seen Fumiko Nakajima’s face in passing on the Avenue Strip bannerlights.

  She was much smaller in person, not only in size but in significance, dressed in an opal blouse and black pants—a simple, professional outfit; almost comically underdressed when compared to the nobles. Her hair was black, tied into a bun that hung loose at the nape of her neck, and her face—average, with some features too large for her small frame—held two dark eyes that gazed at Nia with startling clarity. She was waiting for Nia to speak. Only one question came to mind.

  “Why did you invite me?”

  Fumiko considered this question for a moment before she leaned forward and whispered in her ear, “He’s in my loft. Endure these fools for a few more hours, Nia, and I’ll take you to him.” And then, without another word, she led the stunned captain back into the heart of the crowd, who applauded her entrance, the crowd whispering among themselves theories of how the captain of a small commercial transport ship knew the most famous woman on the station—and later, once the dancing was done, why the two of them left together, and where. Not even the head consul had the answer, and, when asked, shrugged with a look of amusement, and told the people how difficult it was to predict M. Nakajima.

  * * *

  —

  Fumiko’s loft was halfway down the station’s neck. Like its owner, the place was unspectacular. There was a small kitchen area, partitioned from the living room by a marble counter, and from there, a hallway that led to an office, and a single bedroom, for one. “It was modeled after an Old Earth apartment,” Fumiko said as she drew a circle in the air, and piano music began to play from an old speaker system by the couches. “Go on, sit. Make yourself comfortable. I’ll go fetch him.”

  She did not sit. As Fumiko walked calmly down the hallway, Nia stood by the counter, steadying herself with a hand placed on the cool marble. The situation was fortuitous to a degree that was impossible, and she wondered if maybe she was dreaming. There was movement down the hall: the sound of a door opening, the quiet murmur of voices. She wiped her arm across her brow as she heard footsteps on wooden flooring, preparing herself for the possibility that Fumiko would return alone, this night an elaborate prank orchestrated by a woman driven mad with power. But this was not the case. When Fumiko returned, she was followed by a blond woman, who in turn ushered forth the boy.

  He wore a plain shirt and cotton pants. His cheeks were flush, as if he were freshly showered, and his big dark eyes, once narrow, uncertain, now brightened like suns when he saw her. Nia’s heart swelled as he let go of the blond woman’s hand and walked up to her. She put a hand on his shaven head, rubbed her thumb on the buzz.

  “It’s good to see you,” she whispered.

  He sniffed, nodded.

  The reunion was short-lived. “Come to my office, Captain,” Fumiko said from the hallway. “We have things to discuss.”

  * * *

  —

  The job, as Fumiko explained it from behind her glass desk, was simple. Nia was to take the boy on board the Debby, and bring him to fringe space, outside the territorial regions of Umbai and its Allied partners. Once there, they were to wait for the day when they would rendezvous with Fumiko at an arranged time and place. Whatever Nia and the crew of the Debby chose to do in fringe space during the wait was inconsequential to Fumiko. “As long as it does not place the boy in physical or psychic harm, you can do as you please.” They were not to leave fringe space. They would be able to visit stations owned by companies who had neutral or antagonistic relationships with Umbai, but even then, only for a few days at most, before they must move on—as for where, it didn’t matter, just as long as they kept moving. “As a safeguard against possible interference from these stations, you will have to register as the boy’s permanent guardian.” Fumiko pushed the contract across the glass. The wording was different from Umbai’s, short, with terms stated clearly, and directly, in a numerical list.

  One, the boy could not die.

  Two, the boy could not be abandoned.

  Three, the boy must be returned to Fumiko, at the specified coordinates, at the determined time.

  Four, Fumiko Nakajima must have access to the Debby’s folding logs, so that she could adjust her own travels accordingly.

  Five, if, for whatever reason, the Debby must be abandoned and they fold on another vessel, Fumiko Nakajima must be notified.

  Six, the boy’s nature could not be disclosed to anyone not preapproved by Fumiko Nakajima. “The gist is,” Fumiko said, “any action that prevents you from meeting me when and where I tell you, with the boy safe and unharmed, will constitute a breach of contract. If you breach contract, you will be in violation of company law. Your captain’s license will be revoked, you will be forbidden from entering the stations, and your accounts will be frozen.”

  Nia flipped the contract over, her brow furrowed. “This mentions nothing about how long the job will take.”

  “It will be a number of years, but how many is dependent on the boy.”

  “Why is that dependent on the boy?”

  As Fumiko stared at her, all the reservations that Nurse had disclosed were now percolating, and Nia was suddenly unsure of who it was she had been chasing after all this time, and why this woman had a vested interest in his future. It amazed her that she was considering the offer at all—any other suspicious job, given by any other suspicious employer, she would’ve walked out on, moved on, and lived satisfied with the knowledge that she hadn’t been irresponsible with her livelihood. But the responsibility she felt for the boy compelled her to stay in her seat.

  “What is he?” she asked.

  “After you sign the contract.” Fumiko pointed at the sheet in Nia’s hands, as if to emphasize the point. “All you need to know right now is that the boy is of no danger to you or your crew, and that it is in everyone’s best interests if he is allowed time and space to develop outside the purview of federated space.”

  The contract sat on her lap like a granite slab. It pressed into her with insistent force. Nia had fantasized about what it would be like, to take the boy in, to raise him on board the Debby and teach him the life of the stellar traveler, but in these fantasies there were no caveats, no contract explicitly stating the consequences should she fail in her appointed task. Up until now, she had thought of the boy as a window outside of herself. Now he was a prison sentence.

  “How long do I have to decide?” Nia asked, dry-mouthed.

  Fumiko glanced at the cuckoo clock on the wall. It was an elegant construction, made of real wood, with smoothed surfaces and tapered edges. A hollow click for every second that passed.

  “Not long,” she said. “An hour, at most.”

  She left the office to give Nia space to consider the offer.

  * * *

  —

  The cuckoo clock ticked musically, and on the desk, a miniature rock fountain burbled with cold water, spilling into a well before being vacuumed back up and spilled out again in an unending cycle. Nia rested her face in her palms. Once she signed the contract, there was no going back. Her life, the life she had scraped together, would be gone, and as frustrating and lonely as she often found that life, it was hers. Once she signed the contract, she would be tethered to the fate of a child who, as Nurse had pointed out many times, was in essence a stranger.

  He was a stranger.

  Nia paced around the table. She considered the possibility that Fumiko had lied, that the boy would in fact be a very real danger to the livelihood of her and her crew. She considered the possibility that, even if Fumiko had not been lying, the boy would grow into an unbearable presence; that he would develop into the sort of person she would despise. Someone capricious and cruel. Selfish. Stubborn. There were no hints of these traits now, but she knew that anyth
ing was possible, knew from experience that people could change into any sort of sloth or monster. But most of all, Nia was afraid that at the end of the contract, when the job was done, however many years that would take, she would look back and realize that it had all been wasted time. That the boy offered nothing more than a distraction from her late-thirties rut. A dangerous, reckless distraction.

  Nia knew what she had to do. She had to go to Fumiko and decline the offer. She had to tell the boy that she was sorry, but that she could not help him.

  She had to leave.

  She made it to the door, had her hand wrapped around the brass handle, when, with the startling abruptness of curtains thrown open to light, Deborah’s face flashed in her mind, overwhelming her.

  She let go of the knob.

  I’ve been here before, she realized.

  * * *

  —

  Nia signed the contract. She did it in one quick scribble, afraid that if it wasn’t done furiously, she would lose heart. The paper shimmered with new data and then went dead, the course of her life now set. She sat down in her chair and breathed out, fighting the shake of her hands as the door behind her opened and Fumiko walked in, expressionless, as if she were not at all surprised by the outcome. She sat on the other side of the desk and thanked Nia for her amenability. She told her that she had made a wise choice. That she looked forward to their partnership.

  And then she told her of the future of interstellar travel.

  * * *

  —

  It was six in the morning when Nia made the call. She waited in the common room of the Debby while, over the following hour, her crew arrived for debrief. Durat was hungover, his neck peppered with love bites. Baylin was blinking away sleep. Sonja was alert, smirking as she did when something curious was about to take place. And Nurse was frowning, as though she had already divined the motivations for this early-morning meeting, and had steeled herself for the worst. After the crew were seated, Nia took a moment to look at them all, for a moment questioning whether this truly was the best course of action, even though she knew there was no going back. She had already signed away her rights. “A few hours ago, I signed a contract for the Debby’s next job.”

  The room was quiet. Durat knuckled his red eyes. When he spoke, his voice was rough from a phlegm-coated throat. “Wait. Weren’t you just at a party?”

  “That was where I was hired.”

  Nurse folded her hands on her lap. “What’s the job?” she asked.

  There was no point in delaying it. Nia sat down and told them what she was able to. “Fumiko Nakajima hired me to escort the boy out of Umbai corporate space. For a period of years, a maximum of fifteen, real-time, I’m to provide the boy a safe environment where he may live and mature. During that time, the Debby will be on the move within unfederated fringe space, taking jobs where available, until the day comes when the Debby is to rendezvous with Fumiko Nakajima, completing the contract. To reiterate, there is a chance that the job will last for fifteen years, lived time.” She cracked a smile. “There’s a close to one hundred percent chance I’ll turn fifty before the contract is completed and I can dock at a federated station again.” She paused, letting the first dose of information sink in. Durat’s hangover evaporated. Baylin blinked. And Nurse stared at Nia as she continued: “There are severe penalties for failing. Should the boy die, or we fail to bring him to the rendezvous point when the time comes, we will be exiled from station space, our financial accounts will be frozen, and we will be stripped of our licenses. I’ll lose the Debby. None of us will be allowed to work on a vessel again.”

  Somewhere in the vents, there was a click as the conditioner reset its cycle.

  “What’s the pay?” Sonja asked slowly.

  “Two billion iotas for each signed contract.”

  No one breathed. It was enough money to last three decades of vacation. The room was silent as everyone considered the potential windfall. Nurse chewed her nails.

  “There is no one I would rather have with me than the four of you,” Nia said. “You are some of the best operators I’ve had the pleasure of working with, and I would consider it an honor if you served again. That said”—and here she looked at all of them—“I only want you to accept if you are one hundred and ten percent sure you are up to it. You were paid a good amount for our last job. The pay should last you a number of years’ vacation on a pretty rock somewhere, and should you want for another transport gig, you’ll have your pick of ships to serve on under my recommendation. You have options. I signed my contract with Fumiko. There’s no walking back, for me, or for this ship. But there is for you. You have three hours to decide if you want to follow.” She drummed her fingers on the table. “That’s the short of it.”

  “This is crazy,” Baylin muttered.

  “Fifteen years lived time…” Durat shook his head. “I’d be forty-five by the time I saw Pelican again.”

  Nurse asked, almost in a whisper, “What is he, Nia?”

  The question was a virus. It worked its way into the others’ systems as their eyes narrowed, they too beginning to question the boy’s identity, the suddenness of the contract, the incredible paycheck waiting at the end of the years-long stint in fringe space; a place to which Nurse never wished to return. “Why does the contract pivot around the boy’s development?” she asked, and then, more insistent, “Nia, what is he?”

  “I can’t tell you that.” She was not about to breach her contract hours into the job, even though she wished she could tell them that he was in all likelihood just a kid caught up in a thousand-year-old psychopath’s game. “Only those who have signed the contract can know the full details. What I can tell you is that he isn’t dangerous, mentally or physically.”

  Durat groaned. “That’s reassuring.”

  “The job will be skirting the law, but we won’t be breaking it. All we would be doing is creating a bubble of privacy around him in the less-visited regions of the galaxy.”

  “A nice euphemism,” Nurse said. “I almost died in that ‘less-visited region of the galaxy’ when the ship I served on went derelict and there was no one to pick up our distress beacon.”

  Baylin grimaced. “None of this sounds right, Captain.”

  “I know,” she said. “Like I said before, and like every job we’ve ever signed up for, if you aren’t certain this is for you, then this is where we part ways.”

  “But this isn’t like the other jobs,” Nurse said. “The other jobs were within federated space. They were signed with companies and approved businesses. They had safety nets. And if we failed, there wasn’t the threat of exile.” Her voice was raised. Baylin was nodding as she went on. “Stop talking to us like this is fair, because it isn’t. You throw this job at us with countless unknown variables before morning while we’re exhausted, promising everything and nothing, like this is just another day, like we’re just coworkers in an office on some City Planet. Like this ship isn’t our home.”

  This made Nia smirk. “You said yourself this ship isn’t a home.”

  Nurse slapped the table. “Because I was making a goddamn point! A point I stand by. Which is that this isn’t a home, not for a child who has no real choice in the matter. A child, by the way, who you keep hinting is special in some way, yet you refuse to trust us with any specifics about his identity. And while I understand you’re under a nondisclosure agreement, I wonder if even you know what he really is.” Her cheeks were flushed. “You say he’s not dangerous, but considering the absurd amount of money on the line, how do you know that Nakajima hasn’t lied to you? Baited you with this paycheck to keep you distracted from what’s real? For all you know he’s a science experiment that could erupt into a nuclear explosion if he eats the wrong kind of sweet. And don’t you dare accuse me of being paranoid again, because nothing about this situation is normal.”

  It took everything Ni
a had not to bring down the hammer and tell Nurse to shut the hell up and listen. She would not win them with impatience. She even agreed with the consensus: that she had put them in an unfair position. That to sign the contract was to go against all self-preservation instincts, but that to walk away would be saying goodbye to what was, for all intents and purposes, their home, for however many years they had served. “You’re right,” she said. “You are absolutely right.”

  Nurse blinked. And then, the spell of tension broken, she shriveled. “Nia,” she moaned. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Because I need to.” The words came out cracked; clumsy things that dribbled out of her lips, delivered with barely any conviction. Beneath the table her hands fought. The job was ludicrous, but that was, in the end, irrelevant. She would be with the boy. She had to remind herself that that was all she wanted. The boy, the boy. “I’ve made my choice,” she said. She stood up. “You have three hours to make yours. Come to my hatch when you’ve decided.” And then she exited the kitchen, leaving behind her a hard silence. She left the hatch to her quarters open and sat down at her desk. She didn’t take out her notebook, didn’t even make the pretense of writing. Just sat and waited, her stomach roiling with angry acids, eager to eject the alcohol she had consumed at the Canopy, which by now seemed like years ago. You’ve made your bed, she thought to herself. You have no control over what happens next.

  Baylin was the first to come. He stood at her hatch, his answer clear by the contempt on his face. “Nurse is right,” he said. “What you’re doing isn’t fair. This was my home.” He stared at the floor, his mouth working itself over difficult thoughts. “You’re my first captain. Don’t want you to be my last.”

  “I respect that,” she told him, though it still hurt to hear it. “I’ll send your stats out to the other ships. The Helena Basho is looking for a second engineer. You’ll have a place by the end of the week.”