“All right, Cindy! I just hope Captain Hayakawa understands how important a cargo he’s hauling.”
They linked hands, and she pulled herself closer, putting an arm around his waist and her head on his shoulder. The hair that drifted up around his nose was short-cropped (nothing else was practical in zero-G), but it shone in the Earth-light, smelling faintly of Colorado Mist shampoo and flowers. Her gaze went back out to the curve of the planet above.
“Well,” she said, “he is carrying part of something precious.” At his glance, she added: “Hope, for our tired old mother there. Up here, where there’s room to breathe.” She dimpled. “Even if there isn’t much air . . . ”
“You’re a romantic,” he laughed. Somberly. “And the Snakes are here, too.”
She nodded. “Like our shadows,” she said, sadly. “Or like an ancient set of armor with nothing inside but a corpse that’s rotting and pitiful and thinks it’s alive, walking and clanking and killing and trying to eat . . . ”
“For a nice person, you’ve got a way with images,” he said, shivering slightly at the thought. It was appropriate, though. The Domination was something that should have died a century ago. And it’s my job to bury it, he thought as they turned and braced their feet against the crosswire.
“Gently does it, honey,” he said.
They pushed off, floating down the ten meters to the deck; he kept his arm around Cindy’s waist as they twisted end-for-end and landed. The ripstick on their slippers touched down on the catch-surface of the floor, with a rack sound as the miniature plastic hooks and loops engaged. The crew supervisors from the Pathfinder were shepherding their passengers into one of the radial exitways. As they passed the dogged-open pressure door, he had another flash of twisted perspective, and now they were at the bottom of a long well five meters broad, lit by strips, with handholds in regular receding rows. It was lined with close-cropped green vines, part of the air system, and a contribution to the eternal rabbit protein of the spacer’s diet. The joke was that you shouldn’t leave gravity if you couldn’t face rodent.
Or there was fish, of course. Frontier Five had a big watertank, like most industrial-transit stations with a population over a thousand; all you had to do was take a multitonne lump of Lunar silicon and point mirrors at it, inject some gas and continue to heat. Voila, as Maman would say. An aquarium, a convenient heat-sink regulator and fuel store. You could rent a facegill and go swimming there, if you didn’t mind sharing the water with trout and carp . . . the other inevitabilities of life in space . . .
Why am I thinking about this? he asked himself as they passed a junction and caught a main-tube beltway. Cindy snuggled closer as they rode the strip of conveyor. Incoming traffic passed them on the left, and there was another set above. They could see the heads of the passengers whipping by three meters beyond. Because it’s a distraction, that’s why, he thought.
The departure lounge was thronged. Most of the exit docking tubes led to the thrice-daily Luna shuttles, off to the moon settlements of Freetown and Britannia, and New Edo. One of the larger tubes had a rosette of four MPs in Space Force blues hanging around it; they snapped his colonel’s bars a salute, and the three men eyed Cindy with respectful appreciation.
Washington and Simon Bolivar were in, he remembered, downlined with skeletal crews for new thrust plates and repairs to their drive feed systems. The Ethan Allen was up at one of the L-5 battle stations, doing final calibrations on her drive and getting the auxiliary comps burned in; it was policy to keep as much of the deep-space fleet as possible away from Earth. Too many heavy lasers and beam weapons between here and the moon, too many missiles and hardened launchers, too many sensors. A warship needed room to be effective . . .
Another exit, with the circular railing guard and a crewwoman in Trans-American silver. Briefly, his mouth quirked; the early skinsuits had been that color, for insulation. Someone had wanted to call the Space Force the Silver Service, back then, until a tabloid came up with the inevitable “Teapots in Space” headline. The display beside her was flashing: Flight Hermes 17A—Trans-Am Ship Pathfinder—now boarding for Ceres.
“This is it,” he husked.
Cindy stood for a moment, then seized him in a grip that nearly tore him loose from the deck. “I’ll miss you, honey,” she whispered, her forehead pressed into his chest. “Vaya con dios, mi corazon.” Tears drifted loose, glinting like minor jewels; one landed on his lips, tasting of salt.
“I’ll miss you and the tykes, too,” he said, his own voice a little husky. Stepping back, he held her hands for a moment. “Go on then, have them all charmed silly by the time I get to Ceres!” he said.
“Will do, Colonel, sir,” she said, smiling and wiping at her eyes with a tissue. She put a hand on the rail and stepped over, pulling herself down the access tube feet-first to keep him in view a moment longer.
“Shit,” he whispered to himself, as she passed out of sight.
CLAESTUM PLANTATION
DISTRICT OF TUSCANY
PROVINCE OF ITALY
DOMINATION OF THE DRAKA
MAY 7, 1982
“Well, Myfwany,” Yolande began.
The graveyard was empty now, save for the dead and her. Gwen had come, to solemnly lay her handful of wildflowers on the turf; she was down by the bottom of the hill now, playing with Wulda, their new ghouloon. He had been expensive, but her daughter was entranced; she could hear the happy high-pitched shrieks from up here, see the girl-doll tiny with distance and perched on the transgene animal’s shoulders as they romped by the car. For the rest there was silence, and the warm sweet smells of early summer in Italy: clover, wild strawberries from the hedgerows. Bees hummed among the banks of trembling iris that lined the flagstone pathways.
“Gwen’s growin’ like a weed,” Yolande continued quietly. She was kneeling by the headstone, a simple black basalt rectangle with name and dates inlaid in Lunar titanium; she thought Myfwany would have liked that. “And gods, she’s smart. I love her mo’ than I can tell, sweet. Goin’ to be tough and fast like you, but sunnier, I think.”
She paused for a minute. You could see a long way from here, between the trunks of the big oaks and cypresses. Over the vale and the morning mist, past the terraced vineyards to the Great House shining in its gardens, into the blue-green haze of the hills beyond.
“I’m havin’ a baby, by you brother Billy,” she said. “Took Jolene in fo’ the seeding yesterday . . . don’t know exactly why she volunteered, maybe she misses you, too, darlin’.” Suddenly Yolande pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. “Oh, gods, I miss you so! I try, sweet, I try but I’m not strong like you . . . I wish you could tell me what to do.” A shaky laugh, and she lowered her hands. “I know, darlin’ I’m being soppy again like you used to say. Hated hearin’ it then, and now I’d give mah soul to hear you rake me over the coals again. I’ve gotten a new command, though, love.”
She rose to her feet. Her voice whispered. “And I swear, by you blood below my feet, Myfwany, I’ll make them pay fo’ you. Pay, and pay, and pay, and it’ll still never be enough.” Aloud: “Good-bye fo’ now, my love. Till we meet again.”
She turned to walk down the hill; there was the flight to catch. Why don’t I cry? she thought. Never, here. Why?