"Falna said you wanted to speak to me."
The child’s jaws almost grind, its arms ridged at its sides, the hands flexing beneath the covers. "Yazi Ro, have you ever been frightened?"
Frightened?
I lower myself into the chair vacated by the human and land like a bag of sand. I sit there stupidly as emotions safely locked away for years bubble forth leaving me torn between laughter and tears. "Yazi Ro?" I turn my head and Haesni is looking up at me, its eyes wide. "Ro?"
I take a deep breath, blink my eyes, and sit forward, my elbows resting on my lap. "Child. Have I ever been frightened?" The tears win over the laughter. I feel them streaking down my cheeks. I wipe them away with my hands and nod. "Yes, Jeriba Haesni, I have been frightened." I look at the child. "Many times."
Ty’s child looks away, its face softer. "What do you do with the fear?"
What do I do with fear? "Often I do nothing with it. Fear does what it wants with me. I have nightmares. Sometimes, during waking hours, I use the fear to make me watchful. In sleep, though, I have nightmares."
"Do the nightmares ever end?"
"I don’t know."
Haesni’s hand steals out from beneath the covers and holds mine. "Tell me something that scared you, Ro―that scares you still."
I think of a hundred battles, Butaan Ji and the man who wanted me to end his pain; Douglasville and the man with the flute; Stokes Crossing; Gitoh; Riehm Vo; so many. The horrors, the pain, the endless terror of it all. It aids nothing, though, to give the child a heavier burden of nightmares. There are other fears, and I pick one.
"The cliff in front of the cave, Haesni. Its height. It frightens me. It took all I could find to climb down to the bottom. I hate standing on that ledge."
Haesni looks at me, its eyes wide in disbelief. "You are afraid of heights? Heights don’t frighten me."
I shrug and smile at the child. "A little bit of smoke doesn’t frighten me."
The child looks at me for an instant, and laughs. I laugh with Haesni. I stay that night next to Ty’s child, sharing warmth, bad dreams, and the night storm’s wrath.
TWENTY
Early the next morning, the sky still dark, we take the first repast, Estone Nev, Haesni, Zammis, Ty, Falna and Davidge at the table. Afterward, Zammis and its driver streak me toward First Colony to an environmental suit outfitter near the port. From there we proceed to the port and Zammis and I meet with a Vikaan, Rotek I Hye, the representative of the chartering service Zammis hired, The purpose of the visit is to inspect a ship for the voyage. Mirili Sanda arrives after us and joins us in the charter service’s office,
Rotek I Hye is the first Vikaan I have ever seen. Tall, thin, and fragile-looking, her smooth face is set with huge greenish eyes. As with everyone else on Friendship, she dresses as though in the midst of an ice age. Nonetheless, her words of greeting are crowded with sentiments of the allegedly approaching spring.
After she conducts her search on the link, there is only one ship and crew on register and in port that is ready to depart at a moment’s notice equipped for an indeterminate stay on Timan. This seems to simplify the selection process for me. The coincidence of there being only one ship at the port, available, and fitted out for Timan bothers both Sanda and Zammis. As Zammis, Rotek, and I leave to inspect the ship, Sanda remains behind to check out the histories of ship, crew, and owner.
The ship is the Aeolus, a fifteen-year-old refitted USEF attack transport serving as a small passenger and cargo vessel. It carries up to ten passengers and a crew of four: pilot, co-pilot, engineer, and a cargo master who also serves as the ship’s steward. Although old, the ship appears new and well cared for, its hull sleek and gloss black.
The pilot, Eli Moss, is a human and I think approaching forty years, although it is hard to tell with humans. He is dark with a cap of short black hair above unblinking brown eyes set in a serious face. No taller than Davidge, he seems unusually muscular. He conducts the tour of his ship with the distaste of one allowing peculiarly endowed aliens to fondle its underthings.
The tour through the ship is thorough and quick, from the cockpit and crew’s quarters, to the cargo bay, suspension pod bay, and passenger cabins, arranged in single rooms according to human custom. The only two places we are not taken is the engine room and the captain’s quarters because, as Eli Moss puts it, "None of you have any business in either."
The suspension pods look like elongated silver teardrops gathered into two circles, the points aiming toward the centers where are located the life-support monitoring banks and connections. There is room in the compartment for six other such circles, but they have been removed and the space given over to exercise equipment and more cargo space. It is going to be a six-month trip to Timan, and as the captain points out, in the space between takeoff and landing, life on the Aeolus is much like doing time in prison. Upon relating that bit of information, he smiles his only smile.
"Captain Moss is making it sound worse than it really is," assures Rotek I Hye after we return to First Colony Charters. "You’ll be in suspension for most of the trip, with probably one or two interruptions for health checks and maintenance. While you are in suspension you can go blank, as they say, leaving your trip with only a total of perhaps five or six days in real time, or you can use the time either to entertain or educate yourself."
Zammis makes a joke about being on a trip to Earth once and stuck in the middle of a work called Moby Dick for twenty-eight days until it was rescued by a maintenance and exercise break. "Damn your eyes!" shouts Jeriba Zammis, "what’s that pump stopping for?' Roared Radney, pretending not to have heard the sailors' talk, Thunder away at it!
"Aye, aye, sir, said Steelkilt, merry as a cricket."
And so on. In a more serious vein, Zammis points out that, if I want to, I can have The Talman programmed for the voyage. "It would give you a solid foundation for memorizing the work, for when you stand the rites."
The charterer apologizes and says that in another six days there will be a second ship available for charter, and in a month a third. Moving a charter from a larger port on another planet would effectively triple the price and would take at least forty days.
Sanda joins us at the charter office and Rotek I Hye excuses herself and leaves as the investigator reports using its pocket computer to refresh its memory. "The ship is registered on Rhana and is one of three such ships owned by Moss Transportation, which is wholly owned by Eli Moss, captain of the Aeolus. Although he has never actually been charged with violating any laws, he has a bit of a reputation as a smuggler."
I ask, "Was Moss in the military?"
Sanda nods as it pages to a particular reference. "He was an attack pilot in the USEF, seeing action only in the Buldahk Insurrection eleven years ago. Shortly afterward he was dismissed under dishonorable conditions for disobeying orders and striking three superior officers. After his dismissal, he flew as a mercenary for several quadrant powers, principally for the Dracon Chamber. Five years ago he took his savings and began his cargo line."