"It's a galaxy," Jentry said. "Isn't it?"
Rue had reached out to trace the shape with her finger, just as she did now. "No it isn't. Is it a fossil?"
"Yes, Meadow, it's a fossil and not just any fossil, but the oldest kind of Earth fossil. This is an Ediacaran and it dates back to the very beginning of life. This is the first thing bigger than a microbe that lived. And it is ours."
"What's a fossil?" Jentry asked, annoyed.
Rue smiled at the memory. It was probably that single display of ignorance on Jentry's part that made Grandma decide to bequeath the pendant to her alone, instead of both of them.
It was all she had left of Grandma or her mom. And if she was going to make a life for herself in Erythrion, she was going to have to sell it.
Rue took a photo of the pendant and then sent a message ahead to inquire what a siltstone fossil from Earth, six hundred million years old, might be worth. She was pretty sure it would be a lot.
She traced her finger over the faint design on the stone. As an adolescent Rue had been sure the pendant held the key to understanding time. There was a mystery to the thing, because caressing it you could feel its age: life had turned to stone here without the intercession of Medusa, just by lying in deathly repose for sufficient aeons. Yet Rue could go outside Allemagne and scoop from their captured comet snowflakes that had formed three billion years before the little fluttering Ediacaran was born.
To have such a snowflake end its unimaginable life span by melting in your hand left no impression; somehow it still seemed younger than the pendant, since for over three billion years nothing whatsoever had happened to it or near it. The stars had changed. That was all.
During the ever-so-more-brief life of the Ediacaran fossil, on the other hand, comets had smashed into the Earth, trilobites and coelecanths had arisen. Mountains thrust up and wore down around the stone cocoon that held the Ediacaran. The planet's continents had collided and subducted numerous times. Dinosaurs had fought above the fossil's resting place; later men had missed it while blowing up cities and overturning mountains in their fight for resources. The Ediacaran had survived all these adventures unscathed, to be finally dug up and shot halfway across the universe. It was still in one piece.
Now that was time.
As Rue was turning the stone over in her hands, becoming increasingly depressed over losing it, the ship pinged to get her attention.
"What? Is it dinner time already?"
"The prospector scopes report an anomaly, Rue," said the ship.
She sat upright, forgetting she was in freefall. The pendant bounced through her fingers and drifted away.
"Show me!" She slammed her hand on the tabletop, bringing up the external view. There were the stars and the hundreds of little addresses; lately Erythrion had appeared among them. One of the little strings was flashing green.
"The prospecting scopes have spotted an object that is not registered with the Claims Bureau," said the ship.
"Is it a ship? A cycler?" For a moment she wondered if Jentry was following her— but that was preposterous. She had Allemagne's only shuttle.
"All ships in halo space are accounted for, and there are no more interstellar cyclers on this ring," said the ship. "This anomaly is not in the database."
"H-how big?"
"We will not know until we get a parallax view of it, Rue, but based on its spectral signature and occultation pattern it may be a kilometer or more in diameter."
"A kil-" She sputtered. There hadn't been a kilometer-sized comet discovered in the halos in half a century. "I'm rich! I don't believe— Wait, wait a sec, are you sure nobody else has staked a claim on this thing?"
"The maximal-burn course you asked me to take has brought us far from any stations. It is quite possible that their scopes have not picked it up, even though they are larger."
And if they're as gob-stupid as Jentry, they've all turned their scopes off to save power, since everybody knows all the ice in the area has already been found.
"Stake me a claim! Right now! I don't want to risk a single second. If that thing is as big as you say it is, we've got it made!" She wouldn't have to sell the pendant— quite the contrary, she could buy a box full of fossils. Speaking of which, where was it? Rue dove across the room and retrieved the siltstone from where it had drifted against an air grate.
"Preparing the claim form, Rue… claim sent."
"That's it? That's all you have to do?" The ship said yes and Rue proceeded to turn somersaults through the galley, screaming her relief. When she finally settled down, she fell to waiting nervously for the reply from the Claims Bureau. By the time it came— seven hours later— she was frazzled with nervous exhaustion. But the message was clear:
New object verified. Designation number 2349#MRRC, staked by Meadow-Rue Rosebud Cassels July 23, 2445.
She had escaped. She was going to see civilized society for the first time in her life. And she was rich.
2
THE MATRONLY WOMAN in the inscape window smiled broadly. "Meadow-Rue, you don't know me, but I'm your mom's sister— your aunt Leda!"
"Yeah, right," muttered Rue. She could see the family resemblance— but Mom had never mentioned a sister. "We heard that you're coming to visit Erythrion," continued the matron, "and of course you're family, so you can stay with us! We don't have anything special in the way of houses, just a little place in Treya. Here's my number. Call me right away and we'll arrange things. Oh, you're going to have such a good time here! I can't wait to meet you after all these years."
Rue had been cynically examining the woman, noting her brow tattoos and the jewelry studded around the lobe of her ear— symbols of wealth, surely, but she could still be a scam artist. But when she heard the name Treya Rue's mind went blank. The name was almost mythical. It was the most amazing place in all Erythrion, or so she had heard. And here this woman— her aunt? — said as casually as anything that she lived there. And that Rue was invited!
If this woman was really a long-lost relative, Rue might finally find a real home— one where she was loved and accepted. She doubted that. On the other hand, if this woman wanted to scam her, Rue was confident she could take her on. She hadn't gotten an education from roughnecks for nothing.
Either way, her opening gambit was the same. As soon as the message ended Rue was composing a reply. Surely Mom must have had a good reason for not talking about sisters if they existed, she mused, even as she was saying, "Of course I'd love to come stay with you, auntie! I didn't even know I had relatives in Treya. Tell me all about the family. And where do you live? Is it a city? What's a house? Does Treya really have a sun, like they say? Can you look at it or is it too bright? Heh, listen to me. Hey, how did you hear I was coming?" She didn't have to fake the enthusiasm; it would be so wonderful if Leda turned out to be for real. And as she asked how they'd heard about her, Rue's heart flipped when she pictured Jentry calling long-lost relatives, spreading poisonous slander about her.
There was still a significant time-lag on messages to Erythrion, so while she waited Rue brooded over the other piece of news she had received this week. A museum at Treya had finally replied to her query about fossils. It was a fake. Apparently somebody had shipped in a cycler cargo of the things thirty years ago, along with gems and carved wood, all purported to be from Earth. The fellow who had ridden down the beam with the cargo had sold it all for a fabulous sum and left on the next cycler, rich. It wasn't until years later that it was revealed the fossils were fake and the stones came from an Earthlike but fallow minor world in High Space. To this day, despite the publicity, not everyone knew that what they owned was worthless.