“It’s not fun, Jeremy!” Nerves made him speak out, and he gained a shocked look in return. “It’s not fun,” he reiterated. “Listen to the captain who’s done more of hitting them than anybody.”
“Maybe he’s getting old.”
“Maybe he always knew what he’s been fighting for! And maybe you’re too young to know.”
“I’m not too young!”
“I’m too young! Pell’s been at peace, but the idea of no enemy anywhere? I’ve never known that. But I lived with creatures who never fight each other, who don’t steal from one another, and people on this ship do! I’ve at least seen peace, and you haven’t!”
Jeremy looked at him, just stared, as if he’d become as alien as the downers.
“Maybe we can’t be like that,” Fletcher said, sorry if he’d hurt Jeremy’s feelings, and sorry to be at odds with him. “But we can be happy living a lot closer to that, where people don’t get killed for no good reason, and where you’re not taking what we could spend on building places for forests and blowing it all up.”
Jeremy didn’t look happy. Or informed.
“ Take hold ,” the intercom said. “ Belt in, cousins. We’re about to move .”
“Somebody’s got to get Mazian,” Jeremy said. “Downers couldn’t get him.”
“Did you hear the captain? We are getting him. We’re getting him worse than if we blew up a carrier. Downers didn’t get him. But they watch the sky and wait.”
The count started. Then the pressure started and the bunks swung.
“I still wish we got that ship!” Jeremy shouted.
“I’m going to be happy if we get there in one piece!” Fletcher yelled back. “It’s no game, Jeremy. Get your head informed! You never saw what the captain’s looking for, you’ve never been there. But you’ve seen that tape I’ve got. They didn’t take that. You want to borrow it again? I can get it up to you!”
“No!” Jeremy shouted back. “I got a study tape to do.”
“Scare you?” he challenged the kid. “Doesn’t scare me.”
“You scared of Champlain ? I’m not!”
“Scared of a thunderstorm? I’ve walked in one!”
“Seen a solar flare? That’s scary! I’ve seen Viking spit!”
He grinned, in this war of top-you. “I’ve seen the Old Man in his office!”
“That’s scary,” Jeremy said, and he could hear the grin in Jeremy’s voice. They played the game in increasing silliness until they’d reached bilious vats of synth cheese, and the pressure made talk difficult They were moving. Faster and faster.
“My sides hurt,” Jeremy said, and they were quiet for a while.
Then Jeremy said, “I don’t know what it’d be like, to just have liberties all the time.”
“Is that what you think we do, on station? We work jobs!”
“No, I mean, if we just went around to stations having liberties and trading and going to dessert bars and seeing girls and that.”
“And that . What’s that ?”
“ You know.”
He knew. Another grin. “Kid, your body’s going to catch up to your ambitions someday and the universe will make sense to you.”
“It makes perfect sense now!”
“Out there without a chart, junior-junior. Someday you’ll know.”
“You sleep with any of those Belizers?”
“If I had I wouldn’t tell you!”
“I bet you didn’t.”
“You’d be right. I’m particular.”
“You ever?”
“Maybe.”
“What was it like?”
“Like you’ve read in those books you’re not supposed to be looking at in that Mariner shop!”
“No fair. I was looking at the next row!”
“I’ll bet you were.” His ribs were getting tired from talking, but it whiled away the time, and fought the discomfort as Finity climbed toward jump. Finally voices gave out, and Jeremy resorted to his music tape.
He lay and stared at the underside of the bunk, then shut his eyes, asking himself how he’d worked his way into this, and suddenly thinking no one at home would even understand the exchange with Jeremy. That was, he supposed, when you knew you’d become different, when you started sharing jokes with Finity ’s youngest… and knowing nobody back home would understand.
It was… when you settled in to a run like this, knowing you could make a fireball in the night, five or so lightyears from making a glimmer in anyone’s telescopes, and do it with a philosophical turn that said, well, it was more likely you’d get to Voyager instead.
And, it was a place he’d never remotely imagined going. It was mysterious and dark and primitive, by all he knew. It was a doomed and damned kind of place.
He’d say that to his stationer cronies of his junior-junior years and they’d say, Wild, and talk about going. But when they got to his age, they’d begin to talk about savings and getting more apartment space and whether to work extra hours for the bigger space or take the free time and live in a closet.
On Finity you got damn-all choice what you’d work, what you’d wear, and you didn’t retire. He did live in a closet, and shared it, to boot. They were out here with someone who was trying to kill them. For real.
God.
What made him settle in and say they’d probably make it?
What made him say to himself he didn’t need the stick to read Satin’s message, and that they might in fact be what Satin was waiting for? He was in the heavens Satin looked to for her answers.
“ Approaching jump ,” the intercom said. “ Trank down, and pleasant dreams, cousins .”
“You awake?” he asked Jeremy. He hadn’t heard a sound out of the top bunk for the last hour. “Yeah,” Jeremy said. “I got it. How are you?”
“Fine,” he said, and pulled the trank packet from where Jeremy had taped it a month ago.
Stuck it to his arm and felt the kick, not even having worried about it.
“Pleasant dreams,” he said.
“You too,” Jeremy called down.
“ We are in count, plus five minutes ,” Com said. “Boreale has gone for jump and we believe Champlain has gone out of the continuum ahead of us. We have had no indications of hostile action. Stand by for post-jump crew assignments. We will transit Voyager space in ordinary rotation, third shift to the bridge, fourth to follow. Operations in all non-essential stations are suspended for the duration. Galley service will go on, that’s Wayne, Toby B., and Ashley. Laundry, scrub, filter change all will be suspended. Translate that, get your rest, cousins. You’re going to need it when we dock. That’s four minutes, twenty-nine seconds… ”
Fletcher drew a deep breath, listening to the periodic reading of the count.
“I bet we could have gotten Champlain ,” Jeremy said at the one-minute mark.
“Maybe we could,” Fletcher retorted, feeling the creak in ribs long protesting the acceleration. “But Mazian’s going to be madder if we cut off his supply.”
“You really think we can do that?”
“You got to study something besides vid-games, kid! You can’t make bread without flour, and you can’t get flour if the merchanters don’t move. And flour’s far scarcer than iron for missile parts in this universe!”
“ That’s thirty seconds. Twenty-nine …”
He tilted his head back against the strain. The engines cut out for that moment of inertial drift that generally preceded a jump.
“ Sweet dreams ,” he yelled at Finity ’s warlike youngest. “Think about it! Grain and flour, Jeremy! What the downers grow, what they lend us the land to grow! Bread’s a necessity for us, far more than ice and iron!”