Cape Grace

by Nathan Lowell

  “What are those?” Sarah asked, pointing.

  “Cargo haulers. Some are going on station to pull cargo cans. Others are going back to the marshaling yard to pick new ones up. A few are provisioners. They deliver food and supplies.”

  A larger yellow and black ship floated past. A big M showed on the side of the hull.

  “That’s a tug. They’re probably going to pull a ship out so it can get underway.”

  Sarah stared, her gaze jumping from detail to detail, from the various shapes of the huge ships nuzzled up to the station proper to the swarming vehicles just beyond. They came in a mind-boggling array of shapes and colors. The light seemed too bright, the shadows too dark. The striking contrast made the entire scene feel unreal.

  She turned to find Lette looking at her, a huge toothy grin pasted on her face. “What?”

  “It’s amazing, isn’t it?” Lette asked.

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Come on. Let’s get some dinner. What do you like to eat?”

  “Everything,” Sarah said.

  “What can’t you get down below?” Lette asked.

  Sarah shrugged. “I don’t know. We eat a lot of fish.”

  Lette laughed. “All right. No fish joints. What else? You like Asian?”

  “Asian?” Sarah asked. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  Lette paused and stared at Sarah for an uncomfortably long time. “What did you have for dinner the last night you were at home.”

  “Fish chowder,” Sarah said.

  “The night before?”

  “Baked mouta.”

  “The night before that?”

  “Leg of lamb.”

  Lette made a dramatic sweeping motion of her hand across her brow. “Oh, thank heaven. If you’d said fish I’d have died.”

  Sarah laughed at Lette’s antics, not really sure if she should feel like she was being made fun of or not. “I told you. We eat a lot of fish.”

  “All right.” Lette pressed her lips together into a tight line and stared at Sarah. “Is there anything you don’t like to eat?”

  “Probably, but I haven’t found it yet.”

  Lette blinked a couple of times. “Not the answer I expected but I can work with it.”

  “I don’t get out much.”

  Lette laughed. “All right. Let’s try this. Will you trust me to get you some delicious food that you probably have never heard of, let alone tasted?”

  “Sure. Why not?” Sarah asked.

  Lette shrugged. “Some people aren’t very adventurous.”

  “What if I don’t like it? I’d hate to waste it.”

  “Don’t let that worry you. Your great-gram can afford it. I don’t go for the spendy places myself.” She looped Sarah’s arm in hers. “Come on. I know a place that makes ramen to die for.”

  “What’s ramen?” Sarah asked.

  Lette gave her a look and shook her head. “This is either going to be great or a catastrophe.”

  “What?” Sarah asked. “Are you making fun of me?”

  Lette hugged Sarah’s arm and smiled at her. “Never. I’m delighted to be able to introduce you to what looks like a whole new world of food.” She paused and bit her lower lip. “I’m just not sure how you’re going to take to it.”

  “Does it taste good?” Sarah asked.

  Lette nodded. “Heavenly.”

  Sarah smiled back. “Let’s do it.”

  * * *

  Lette took them to Six Deck where a long string of walk-up food joints along the promenade provided a bewildering variety of foods. The aromas alone made her mouth water although she had no idea what she was smelling.

  “This might be more people than I’ve ever seen in one place before,” Sarah said, leaning in to Lette. “Do they all live here?”

  Lette snorted. “This is nothing. Probably half these people work on the station. Some of them are on a meal break, I suspect. The people in the jumpsuits all have the station logo on the chest.” She nodded at a pair of women in matching coveralls.

  Sarah noticed the patch on the upper left. She couldn’t make it out in detail, but enough to get a feel for it. She looked around and spotted more people wearing the same outfit. “What about the rest?”

  Lette shrugged. “Not sure. Some are spacers on liberty from their ships. This is a good place to grab a cheap meal. Some are flea market peddlers. They come up from the surface to offer their goods for a few days before going back down.”

  “You can do that?” Sarah asked.

  “Oh, yeah. It’s a pretty good market. Locals mostly selling to spacers but there’s a pretty wide variety of goods. Art work, textiles. Yarn is big because of the sheep.”

  “You have sheep up here?”

  Lette laughed again. “No. You have sheep down there.”

  It took a few heartbeats for Sarah to catch up. She laughed. “Sorry. I’m a little dazed.”

  Lette patted her arm. “I promised you ramen. Come on.”

  They walked arm in arm through the crowd. Lette pointed out various kinds of foods. Some were things that Sarah knew—like pizza—but others were completely strange.

  “What’s shawarma?”

  They stopped for a moment. Lette pointed to a collection of vertical, rotating spits in the back of the booth. Each had some kind of meat on it as it rotated slowly around. The workers behind the counter took orders, sliced the meat off the spit, and wrapped the resulting meals in a waxy paper. “It’s a spicy meat dish. Very old. Very traditional. Those workers probably learned it from their parents and grandparents back through the ages. Some say thousands of years ago. Back before the Great Diaspora.” She stopped. “You know what that is, right?”

  Sarah nodded and grinned. “I’m sheltered, not ignorant.”

  They continued on their way until they came to a booth that had a few stools in front of a counter. One older-looking woman stood behind the counter, tending a big pot on a burner against the back wall. A couple of people sat at the stools, hunched over their bowls.

  “Ramen,” Lette said. She dragged Sarah to a pair of open stools and sat down.

  The woman turned to them and raised an eyebrow.

  Lette raised two fingers.

  The woman nodded and pulled a pair of large rounded bowls from a pile. She pulled some cooked noodles from a vat in the back with a pair of tongs, dropping a helping in each bowl before adding some vegetables from another pan in the back. With a big ladle she scooped hot broth from her pot and poured it over the noodles. “Chicken? Pork?” she asked.

  “Chicken,” Lette said.

  Sarah shrugged. “Chicken.”

  “You’ve had chicken, right?” Lette asked, leaning over to speak quietly in Sarah’s ear.

  The question struck Sarah’s funny bone and she giggled. “I’ve even seen a live chicken.”

  Lette made an “I’m impressed” face and grinned. “Look at you, all rural and farmy.”

  “I know more about fish,” Sarah said.

  “Fish?” the lady asked, tongs poised.

  “Chicken,” Sarah said. “Please.”

  The woman smiled and looked back and forth between Lette and Sarah a couple of times. She nodded and finished the dishes by adding more chopped vegetables on top. She placed a bowl in front of each of them and set a set of utensils rolled in paper beside each bowl. “You want something to drink?”

  “Water?” Sarah asked.

  “Hot tea,” Lette said.

  The woman nodded and looked back at Sarah. “Hot tea?”

  “Just water, thanks.”

  “You bet,” the woman said and returned in a few moments with the drinks. “Enjoy.”

  Sarah opened the packet to find a fork, an odd spoon with a short handle and a flat bottom along with a chunk of wood. She looked at Lette who had already opened her packet and chosen the fork. Sarah gave an inward shrug and followed suit. She took a few noodles wrapped on the fork and tucked them into her mouth. The flavors exploded acr
oss her tongue and she froze for a moment.

  “You all right?” Lette asked, leaning close.

  Sarah nodded, savoring the noodles as she chewed and swallowed. “What is this?”

  “Ramen.” Lette grinned. “Good, huh?”

  “It’s noodles. Like noodle soup.”

  “Yeah. Ramen means noodle in some old Earth language where this came from. There are about four different booths here, each with its own broth. I like this one best.”

  Sarah picked up the block of wood and raised an eyebrow.

  Lette nodded at the other diners down the counter. A few of them used sticks as pincers to grab the noodles from the broth. Sarah looked at the wood and realized it was perforated. “Chopsticks,” Lette said. “I never figured out how to use them. Don’t have the patience for them. But they’re traditional.” She shrugged. “Fork works for me.”

  “What about the spoon?” Sarah asked.

  Lette grinned. “You don’t want to leave the broth. That’s the best part.”

  Sarah grinned back and addressed her bowl once more. Every bite tasted as good as the first, yet each slightly different. The chicken melted in her mouth and the broth filled her. She came to the bottom of the bowl and sat up looking around, feeling a little embarrassed that she’d apparently wolfed down an entire bowl of ramen without taking a break.

  “Good?” Lette asked.

  Sarah looked at her and nodded. “I might have gotten a little carried away.”

  Lette laughed and gave her a one-armed hug. “You’re adorable.” She raised a thumb to the attendant who nodded and brought the tab. Lette thumbed it and stood up from the stool. “Shall we wander a bit?”

  Sarah pushed her bowl back from the edge of the counter and stood up, straightening her back and stretching. “That was delicious.”

  Lette nodded. “I know. Come on, we’ve got more treats to try.” She hooked her arm in Sarah’s and they started along the promenade again.

  As they walked Sarah couldn’t help but think of the curved walkway as a different kind of beach. The tide brought people instead of water, the ebb and flow timed to a different kind of moon. She tried to listen to this tiny, metal world the way she would have listened to St. Cloud on a sunny morning with the tide receding.

  She felt the peace of a full belly and no worries. The orbital felt different. Only a little more than a whole day away from her father, away from the cottage. She found it so completely strange on so many levels but still with so much in common.

  She let her mind wander over the shrinking crowd, smelling the aromas in each kiosk and stall, feeling the heat of the cooking as they passed those places that sold hot food. They got about halfway around the promenade when the sense of wrongness drew her. She stiffened and stopped.

  “What?” Lette asked, turning to Sarah. “You’re not getting sick or anything?”

  Sarah shook her head and scanned the people passing by. “Something’s not right.”

  “What’s not right?” Lette asked, looking around herself. “It looks fine to me.”

  Sarah shook her head as the sense grew stronger. A weight grew in her chest, heavier in each passing moment. She found herself panting, trying to draw breath. She pushed a hand to her breastbone and held it there, feeling her heart beating under the surface and hearing the whooshing of blood in her ears.

  “You’re not allergic or anything are you?” Lette asked, tugging at Sarah’s arm. “It’s not something you ate?”

  Sarah shook her head. “No. Not me.” She kept scanning the crowd and then she saw him leaning against the outer wall of the promenade, partially curled over, sweat making his face shiny. He wore one of the station jumpsuits and hugged his own chest. “Him.” She pointed and Lette looked.

  Sarah pulled out of Lette’s grip and all but ran to the man’s side. “What’s wrong?”

  He shook his head as his knees buckled and he fell to the decking, curling into a ball.

  Lette caught up to her and shook Sarah’s shoulder. “What’s happening?”

  “I think he’s having a heart attack. Call for help.”

  Lette pulled her peda out and punched some keys. A crowd gathered around, growing thicker by the minute. “They’re coming.”

  It was less than a tick before the medical team pushed through the onlookers and began assessing the man lying on the deck. Sarah stood up and backed away. The wrongness nearly overwhelmed her but it eased as time went on and she pulled back more.

  The medics pulled out a folding stretcher, got the man on it, and started running down the promenade, one of them rattling off a series of statements that made no sense to Sarah. As they got farther away, the wrongness faded until it suddenly clicked off.

  Sarah took a deep breath and leaned against the wall, propping herself up with her knees locked.

  The crowd thinned out on its own, only a few people stopping to stare at her for a moment before moving on.

  Lette put a hand on Sarah’s shoulder. “How are you?”

  Sarah nodded, not quite ready to trust her voice.

  Lette looked around them before stepping closer. “You knew,” she said, her voice barely audible over the sound of the people walking by.

  Sarah shrugged. “Apparently.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. I was listening to the ... well. Listening to the orbital, I guess. Then I felt it.” She shrugged again. “I can’t explain it.”

  “What do you mean, listening to the orbital?” Lette asked. “Like the sounds?”

  Sarah shook her head, still trying to steady her breathing and get a handle on her emotions. “No, it’s more than sounds. It’s opening up to the whole place. Becoming aware of everything. Everybody around you. We do it on the beach back home all the time. My father calls it listening to the world.”

  “You walk on the beach with your father?” Lette asked, her head tilting a little. “Really?”

  Sarah shrugged. “Sometimes alone. I’ve been walking the beach all my life. As soon as I could walk. I think he took me out even before I could walk.” She blew out a big breath and straightened up. “There. I think I’m better now.”

  Lette frowned at her. “What’s your father do?”

  “He’s the village shaman.”

  “There are really shamans?” Lette asked.

  Sarah nodded. “Sure. Thousands of them. Why?”

  Lette shook her head, her eyes widening. “I’ve heard of them. I thought they were some kind of myth.”

  “A myth?” Sarah felt the incredulity bubbling just inside.

  “Yeah.” Lette looked up and down the promenade for a moment. “You know. Like everybody knows about the whelkies. Some kind of magical spirit animal totem thing carved by the shamans on the South Coast. I thought it was like a marketing thing.” Her voice trailed off as she looked into Sarah’s eyes.

  “That’s silly,” Sarah said after a moment, trying to process what she’d just heard.

  “Silly?” Lette asked.

  “Yeah. All the shamans carve whelkies. Even the ones up-country and in the crofts. I have no idea where they get the driftwood and shell, but every shaman does it.”

  “And there are thousands of shamans?” Lette asked.

  “Yeah. My father’s one. If I were a boy, I’d be one.”

  “If you were a boy?”

  “Yeah. I’m not the son of a shaman. You have to be the son to be recognized as a shaman.” Sarah shrugged. “Where are you from?”

  Lette blinked. “Me? Here. Born on the orbital. Grew up here.”

  “Never been down to the surface?” Sarah asked, intrigued by the idea that somebody might be born in space and never see the ocean.

  “No, I’ve been down. My class took a trip to Starvey Bay to see how the fishing industry works. We were supposed to visit an Allied Agriculture farm but the weather turned bad and we came back up.” She shrugged. “I’ve vacationed down there. Long weekends sometimes, just to get a break from the orbital. It’s
a little weird being outside like that.”

  “You’ve been down but you don’t know about shamans?” Sarah asked.

  “It never came up,” Lette said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult your father or anything. It’s just not something I ever came in contact with.”

  “You know about whelkies, though.”

  “Sure. Everybody knows about whelkies. I just thought the whole shaman thing was part of the lore. Make the customers think the whelkies are worth more or something.”

  “Worth more?” Sarah asked.

  “Sure, they’re collectibles.”

  “Collectibles?”

  “Yeah. You know. People like to collect them. Like art.”

  “Art,” Sarah said.

  Lette nodded. “They’re beautiful things. Your father must carve them.”

  Sarah nodded. “He does. I wouldn’t call them beautiful but they’ve got a certain power to them.”

  Lette started to say something but closed her mouth before it got out. “Honestly, I’ve only seen the ones for sale here in the flea market.”

  “For sale?” Sarah stiffened. “Somebody’s selling them?”

  “Sure. There’s a guy who comes up every so often. Has a table full of them. Sells them over a few days and goes back down. Claims to be a shaman.”

  “Does he carve them?” Sarah asked.

  “I don’t know. I thought he did but maybe he just gathers them up and splits the take when he gets back.”

  Sarah shook her head. “Shamans don’t sell whelkies.”

  “What?”

  “Shamans don’t sell whelkies,” she said again. “It’s just not done. It’s like ... well ... I don’t know what it’s like. It’s just not done. Ever. Shamans give whelkies to the people who need them. Whelkies find the people who they’re supposed to help. It’s what they do.”

  “I’d suggest we go up to see if he’s there but it’s closed now.” Lette stared at her, looking into her eyes. “You’re sure you’re all right?”

  “Yes,” Sarah said, biting off the word. “I’m fine.”

  Lette nodded. “All right. I’m just checking.” She offered a tentative smile. “Wouldn’t want my boss to think I wasn’t looking out for her great-granddaughter.”