Worlds Apart (ThreeCon)

by Carmen Webster Buxton

  Before Prax could answer, Rurhahn came in and looked around the room. His eyes stopped when they found Prax. “The chief wants to see you, Prax. Hop to it.”

  Prax got up and left the room without responding to Chio’s comment. When he knocked on Hari’s office door, Hari’s voice called, “Come.”

  As Prax came into the room, he saw that there was someone already sitting in Hari’s office. He was a Shuratanian, a stranger to Prax. The thickness of his neck suggested he was male, but Prax had no idea how old he was.

  “Sit down, Prax,” Hari said. “This is Rufouchh shu Fahr. He’s one of Mistress Trahn’s counselors—her lawyers. I asked him to come down here to make sure that your contract is legal. It’s difficult because it’s written in Standard, and you don’t read Standard yet. We’ll give you an oral copy as well as a written one, and Rufouchh is going to go over it with you very carefully before you sign it.”

  Prax nodded. He hadn’t known what a contract was until Hari explained it to him. Rufouchh smiled politely and began to go over each paragraph in a clipped, precise tone, outlining Prax’s duties and the rate he would be paid. “This paragraph is very important,” he said to Prax. “It makes your contract almost like an enlistment in ThreeCon. You agree to follow the schedule set down by Security Chief Ijeomah, and to follow any orders he gives you, so long as they do not require you to break the law. If you do not follow orders, or if you break any of the other rules, you agree to submit to whatever disciplinary action that Chief Ijeomah chooses to impose. Do you understand that?”

  Prax nodded.

  “This is a standard contract for the House of Trahn,” Rufouchh went on, “with one exception. It’s for an indefinite period of time, but you can be released from it at any time simply by filing a request. In effect, the House of Trahn has offered you unlimited employment, while allowing you the option to quit at your discretion. Quite a generous offer,” he said dryly. “Although, of course, you still have to abide by its terms.”

  Prax didn’t really understand why they needed all these words for a matter of duty.

  “Do you have any questions?” Rufouchh asked.

  “No.”

  Rufouchh laid his monitor down flat on the table in front of Prax and handed him a stylus. Prax signed his name in Elliniká, as he had no idea how to write it in Standard.

  “Press your right thumb here,” the Shuratanian said, indicating a square on the side of the monitor.

  Prax pressed his thumb down firmly. Hari did the same, representing the House of Trahn, and Rufouchh peeled a printed copy of the agreement off the monitor for Prax to keep, even though he couldn’t read it yet. Hari handed Prax a small square box and told him it contained a digital copy of the contract that could be read aloud or printed.

  “Very good,” said Rufouchh. “I’ll go and see Mistress Trahn now,” he added, speaking to Hari. “I have a few things to go over with her also.”

  “She’s in her office,” Hari said. “You know the way.”

  “Indeed, I do,” said the Shuratanian. He smiled again, bowed slightly, and left.

  Prax stayed in his chair.

  “Do you need something?” Hari said.

  Prax nodded. “I want to ask a question—two questions.”

  “Okay. Shoot—I mean, ask.”

  Prax took a second to phrase the question carefully. “Why is Mistress Trahn paying me a salary? I am working for her to pay back a debt. Why should she pay me?”

  Hari’s lips curved in a subtle smile. “I hadn’t thought about it, but I can see why you might be confused. The short answer is that if she doesn’t pay you a salary, she’ll get in trouble with the law. It’s illegal to make people work for no money on Subidar.”

  “Is there a longer answer?”

  Hari shrugged. “You can ask her, but I think it’s obvious. Rishi doesn’t need anyone’s money. What she needs is loyal service. I assume that’s what you’re going to give her.”

  Prax lifted his chin. “As best I can.”

  Hari nodded approval. “Great. What was the second question?”

  “What happened to Mistress Trahn?” Prax leaned forward in his chair. “You told me once she had had a hard life. Thulan has a tongue that can cut like a knife, and yet she treats Mistress Trahn as gently as if she were made of glass. Why?”

  Hari sat silent for a moment. “It’s a long story.”

  “I don’t go on duty until tomorrow.”

  Hari leaned back in his chair and put his feet on his desk. “I guess I should tell you. I think everyone else on the staff knows. Certainly, it’s no secret. If you were from anywhere else but the plains of Celadon, all I’d have to tell you is that Rishi’s family lived on a world called Prashat.” He paused, but Prax said nothing.

  “You’ve never heard of Prashat?” Hari asked.

  Prax shook his head.

  “How about the Lycandrians?”

  “I never heard of them, either. Who are they?”

  “It’s who were they now, thank God,” Hari said. “The Lycandrians were an alien species, the only truly hostile species we’ve ever encountered. They wiped out the colony on Lycandria, where we first discovered them, then headed into space. Prashat just happened to be in their way.”

  Hari paused as if he were remembering. “The House of Trahn was headquartered on Prashat. Ilya Trahn had been the head of it for well over a decade. He and his wife had three sons and two daughters. The two older boys were married and had children of their own. Rishi was the youngest. She had just started her training in the family business.”

  Prax tried to picture the woman he knew as an inexperienced girl and couldn’t. Her commanding manner was subtle, but a part of her.

  Hari went on. “Rishi wanted to learn the business, so her father had sent her on one of the company’s ships to learn trading from the bottom up. I was living on Prashat, too.” Hari rubbed his eyes with one hand. “I had left ThreeCon several years before and gone into private security work. I moved to Prashat when Ilya hired me to run his security force. After a few years, I met a local woman, and a year later, we got married.”

  Hari rested his chin on his chest and stared off into space. “Her name was Juli. We had just found out she was pregnant a few weeks before Ilya called me into his office. He was worried Rishi had gotten entangled with a fortune hunter.”

  Prax frowned. “A what?”

  “Someone who was interested in her only for her family’s money,” Hari said. “Ilya wanted me to get her clear of it. I knew Rishi—I’ve known her since she was just a kid. So I agreed to go straighten her out.”

  He paused. Something in his tone told Prax that the other man had looked back at that decision with mixed feelings.

  “I said goodbye to Juli,” Hari said, “never knowing it was for the last time, and I left Prashat and caught up with Rishi’s ship. I was with her when we heard the news that Prashat had been attacked. It was days before we heard the details, and weeks before we knew for sure what had happened to our families. Whole cities were wiped out. The planet was unlivable after the Lycandrians finished with it. ThreeCon finished them off after some devastating battles in space, but it was too late for Prashat.”

  Hari breathed a deep sigh and let his feet drop to the floor. He sat up. “I lost Juli. Rishi lost everyone—all her family, her friends from school. She has two second cousins who were off planet at the time of the attack, but everyone else was gone. She went from being the youngest child in a large and loving family to an orphan with no close relatives. And she became the primary owner and head of the House of Trahn at the age of twenty.”

  Hari looked at Prax. “So you see why Thulan is gentle with her. She’s got wealth and position, but she’s the loneliest person I know.”

  Prax sat very still. Rishi had faced a terrible tragedy at a very young age. It explained a lot, but it al
so brought up a new question. “Is that why Mistress Trahn saved my people? Because of what happened to her family?”

  “I don’t know.” Hari sounded genuinely uncertain, and Prax’s gift told him the statement was true. “I suppose that was part of it. But I don’t think Rishi would be comfortable watching genocide even if they were all alive today.”

  “Thank you for telling me this.” Prax stood up and paused on his way to the door.

  “You’re welcome. Now, get some rest. Tomorrow’s your first day on the job.”

  Prax went to his own room and sat on the bed. It was bearable to be inside if he left the door open. He thought about all the things that had happened that day. When he remembered how Thulan had bossed him in the kitchen, his homesickness came back. He missed the sense of community, of belonging, that had been his all his life.

  He got up and got his bouzouki, then sat on the bed again, and began to play a song from home, a sad song. Absorbed in the music, Prax was startled when a woman’s voice spoke.

  “That’s beautiful,” the woman said. “You play very well.”

  Prax looked up. Nakamura leaned against the doorjamb, feet together, head tilted, a warm look in her eyes. He couldn’t help but notice that, even wearing her uniform, her pose did nothing to hide her body.

  “Thank you,” Prax said.

  “Don’t you know anything happier?”

  Prax began to strum a lilting air, a happy love song.

  “That’s better,” Nakamura said. “Does it have words?”

  Prax nodded. “I don’t think I could sing it in your language. The words wouldn’t fit the music.”

  “Sing it in your own then.”

  Prax started to sing in Elliniká. The song was very simple—a young man described the beauty of his true love’s eyes. Prax had a wholesome baritone voice, pleasant rather than distinguished, but he knew he could carry a tune, and it didn’t bother him to sing in front of people.

  “I’ll bet it’s a love song,” Nakamura said when he finished.

  He nodded.

  “Do you know any others?”

  “Yes, but I have to go now.” Prax put the instrument back on its shelf.

  Nakamura moved away from the door frame and stood up straight. “That’s right. You have to go sit with Mistress Trahn.”

  Prax didn’t speak. Her tone bordered on scorn, but the words themselves held no insult.

  “She can’t own you,” Nakamura said. “Regardless of what she may have done back on Celadon, she can’t own you here.”

  Why did everyone assume he felt owned? Didn’t they understand about duty and obligation? “I know that.”

  “And she can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do.”

  “She hasn’t.”

  “Not yet,” Nakamura said darkly, tossing her head.

  “Don’t you like Mistress Trahn? Has she been unkind?”

  “No,” Nakamura said. “But I don’t like the idea of somebody asking for somebody else like a pet.”

  Prax flushed. There was no denying that the circumstances had embarrassed him. Still, his people had precipitated the situation. “It was her right to ask for whatever she wished. That was what we offered her.”

  “She couldn’t have asked for some nice handicrafts, maybe some jewelry?”

  Prax smiled at the question. His life would have been so much simpler if Rishi had only wanted handicrafts. “Perhaps that’s what they were expecting, but that’s not what Mistress Trahn asked for.”

  “If she had been a man asking for one of your sisters, what would you have done?”

  Prax thought about it. What if it had been Hari asking for Penelope? He would have been worried for her, but he would have known better than to interfere. “So long as my sister was old enough and had a choice, I would say first it was up to her to make the decision, and second that there’s a difference between asking and demanding.”

  Nakamura sniffed. Prax waited politely for her to move out of the way before he went through the door. Nakamura took her time, but finally, she stepped to one side.

  Prax got as far as the kitchen before he realized he didn’t know where he was going. Thulan looked up when she saw him come in.

  “Through there,” she said, pointing to a door in the far wall. “She’s waiting for you. And see that you do justice to my food,” she called as Prax went through the door.

  Prax didn’t bother to answer.

  RISHI looked up when Praxiteles came into the small dining room. He looked just a little apprehensive. “Good evening,” she said. “I was wondering if you’d fallen asleep again.”

  “I’m sorry, lady.”

  She noted how much more natural his Standard sounded after ten days of speaking nothing else. “It’s all right. Sit down and tell me what else you did today, besides take a nap.”

  Praxiteles glanced at the chair as if to reassure himself that it was an ordinary chair and sat down. “I watched some of the staff play poker, and I signed a contract with the House of Trahn.”

  Rishi helped herself to the main course. Thulan had prepared thin layers of grilled meat stacked between even thinner layers of pastry and topped the whole thing with a creamy sauce. “I’m glad the contract is taken care of. The next thing is for you to learn to read Standard so you can understand it if you want to read it yourself.”

  Praxiteles served himself some of the meat and pastry. “Yes, lady.”

  “Someone is coming to the house tomorrow to get you started.” Rishi helped herself to a side dish of crisp, almost raw vegetables sprinkled with a slightly sweet seasoning. “He’ll give you some lessons and things to study, and then you can work on it at your own pace.”

  “I can study in the evenings, when I’m on call or whenever I am not on duty.”

  Rishi nibbled on the vegetables and watched Prax eat. He sniffed the plate of food once, and then dove in with his fork. Really, it was quite pleasant to have someone else at the table when she ate. It didn’t hurt that he was so easy to look at, and never criticized anything she said or did. “That’s commendable. But don’t feel you can’t have time just to relax. What do you do to relax, Praxiteles?”

  Praxiteles finished the last of his vegetables. “I play my bouzouki, or I carve with my knife, or I run until I can run no more.”

  “Is a bouzouki the same instrument we heard at the Elliniká feast?”

  He put down his fork. “Yes, lady. I brought mine with me.”

  “Do you sing as well as play?”

  Praxiteles shrugged. “I can sing well enough. I don’t have a strong voice, but the alogos don’t bolt when I sing, either.”

  Rishi laughed. His absence at lunch had made her realize how much she had come to enjoy his company. “Will you play for me sometime?”

  “Certainly, lady. Anytime you wish.”

  “You’re not eating,” she said. “I’m asking you too many questions. I’m sorry. It’s just that it’s nice to have someone to share meals with me.”

  Praxiteles picked up his fork. He started to eat quickly again, then slowed down when he saw her eating more slowly.

  “Thulan is a very good cook,” Praxiteles said, after he had disposed of a good part of his dinner.

  “Yes,” Rishi agreed. “I’m lucky to have her to cook for my household. She’s a good person as well as a good cook. She’s so very kind.”

  Praxiteles’ mouth curved in a skeptical smile. Rishi was instantly suspicious.

  “What?” she demanded. “Did Thulan abuse you terribly? I know she’s sometimes very frank, although never with me. What did she say?”

  Praxiteles stared down at his plate, his expression stricken.

  What could Thulan have said to throw him into such a panic? “You can tell me. What did Thulan say to you?”

  He opened his mouth, but
no sound came out.

  Rishi frowned at him. “Tell me!”

  “She asked me if I were sleeping with you for money,” Praxiteles burst out, raising his head and looking off into space.

  Rishi had been aware of the gossip generated by Praxiteles’ arrival, but it hadn’t occurred to her that anyone would put quite that slant on the situation. “Oh! That was frank, wasn’t it?”

  “I’m sorry, lady,” Praxiteles said, finally looking at her. He seemed very distressed about the aspersion. “I told her it wasn’t true.”

  “It’s all right. It’s harder for you than for me. No one says anything like that to me.”

  His expression hardened. “They had better not. You have only to tell me if they do.”

  Rishi smiled with confidence. Wealth gave her a cushion, she knew. “Don’t worry about it. They won’t.”

  “What did you do today, lady?”

  “I sold a company,” she said, taking the last bite of vegetables on her plate. “Some years ago, my father bought a small company that traded in luxury items. It was doing very well at the time, but tastes have changed. I sold it for a good price to someone who doesn’t realize how much that market has diminished.”

  Praxiteles nodded, although she suspected he hadn’t entirely understood the answer. “Is that what you do? You sell things?”

  “Part of the time. My business consists of finding the things people want and don’t have, and selling them for more than I paid for them. The only trick to it is to be sure you don’t spend more money than you make.”

  He seemed genuinely interested. “Where do you sell things?”

  “Everywhere. The House of Trahn trades throughout this galaxy. We have hundreds of ships and many branches on many worlds. We don’t have stores, though. I don’t own any shops. Stores sell to individuals, people who order specific goods, or who walk in and want to browse. We sell to stores, or more often, to wholesalers who turn around and sell to stores.”

  He had that bemused look again. “My people don’t use money. If we need something, we find a way to make it. We trade for things we can’t make.”