The Light Years

by R. W. W. Greene

  The matchmaker hugged everyone at the end of the ceremony. The fuzzy tang of her perfume made me want to sneeze. There was more hugging and handshaking, but I’m not sure who was doing what to whom. I felt like I’d had a stroke. My arms were numb, and the smile on my face threatened to melt without constant support. It was exhausting.

  Adem sort of loomed over everything, swaying back and forth slightly. He looked younger than I’d expected. He took a position slightly behind his sister and stayed there like it was an assignment. My mother left early for the reception, and Lucy summoned a cab for the rest of us.

  “How did your dissertation go?” she asked me once we’d settled into the seats. She was in her early thirties, pretty, and spoke good French. I’d have bet she had lived on Gaul for at least part of her life.

  “There was some talk of publishing it. We’ll see. It really didn’t come to much.” UA physics and engineering was more of a parlor trick than an actual discipline, something for idle EuroD to drink coffee over and speculate about. However did those crazy Americans do it?

  “Have you ever been off-planet?” Lucy said.

  I rubbed my forehead like a punch-drunk boxer. It felt cloudy in there. Too much, too fast. “I lived on the space station for a couple of years and went out to the asteroid belt twice for research. I don’t expect ship life to be much different.”

  “When everything works right it’s not. One fault in mass-grav though…” Lucy faked a shudder. “But that won’t happen. It’s a good ship. Old, like all Trader ships. But she’s sound.”

  “Have you spent your entire life on board?”

  “I spent about a dozen years on Versailles Station to study navigation and get fitted with these.” She slid her headscarf aside so I could see the link ports installed in her scalp.

  “What’s it like being linked to the nearsmart?”

  “Sometimes it’s pretty boring. Other times, it’s better than sex.” She grinned. “You should try it.”

  “I haven’t had the nanosurgery.”

  She slipped the scarf back in place. “The link makes it a lot easier and quicker, but I can show you how to use my mother’s old rig. It’s almost as good.” She frowned. “Well, it’s not bad.” She kicked her brother in the ankle. “Adem, talk to Hisako. Prove to her that she hasn’t married a goon.”

  Adem flushed. “It was a nice ceremony.”

  “Was it?” Adem and I had held hands through part of it, and the physical contact failed to open previously undiscovered channels of agape and eros. “It went by so fast I think I missed most of it,” I exhibited the ring on my left hand, the key to my two-share wedding gift and the deeds that listed me as part owner of an ancient starship, “but it looks like it worked.”

  Lucy patted my arm. “I apologize for my little brother. He doesn’t get off the ship much, and he is apparently afraid of strangers.”

  Adem squared his shoulders. “Not true. I get off ship every planetfall.”

  “Doesn’t count,” she said. “You go down and take a walk and moan about how much things have changed. Then you come back to the ship, and you’re moody for weeks.”

  “Where do you walk?” I said.

  “Depends on the planet,” Adem said. “Mostly just from the elevator to somewhere else I need to go. The refugee areas have kind of grown up along the route I take here.”

  “It’s like cancer,” Lucy said. “I was on the station when they really started to grow. Before that the EuroD kept a tight rein on it. Lots of low-income housing developments spiraling in from midtown.”

  “They’re just trying to make a home.” Adem fought with his collar like it was trying to strangle him. “It’s happening on every planet that accepts refugees. Nov Tero. Freedom. Gaul. They just call it by different names.”

  “Why do you walk?” I said.

  “I’ve seen a couple of centuries of this planet’s history first-hand. That’s a lot of change over time. I’ve met people who don’t exist anymore, people who no one else remembers.” He let go of his collar, and it arranged itself back into its original position. “I guess I’m bearing witness.”

  “Which is why he is always in a bad mood,” Lucy said. “If you ever lose track of him, let me know. I will point out all of his little hiding places. You’re sure to find him in one of them, moping and playing his guitar.”

  The conversation hit a lull, and my head started spinning again. If I kept everyone talking, I wouldn’t have time to think. Lucy had just said something about Adem’s guitar, so… “I was in a couple of bands when I was a kid.”

  Adem brightened. “What did you play?”

  “Punk-classical fusion. Then proto-punk. I gave it up when I got serious about my studies.”

  “Science makes the worlds go round,” Lucy said. “I have a couple of advanced-science degrees. Adem has one in aerospace engineering.”

  “And one in Earth History,” he said. “Mom has a couple of doctorates. She gets them for fun.”

  “Life can get a little dull out there,” Lucy said. “If you’re not working, you might as well be learning something. The classes are run by the nearsmart, so they might not be as good as you’re used to, but they’re all certified.”

  “I just got out of school,” I said. “I don’t know that I’m in a big rush to go back in.”

  “Of course not,” Lucy said, “but it’s an option. You’re going from large to small pretty quickly. Ship life can be limited, but it’s not prison. We even have a pool. Two, if you count the leak Adem still hasn’t found.”

  “It’s not that big a leak,” Adem said. “Maybe twenty-five gallons so far. Every ship has a leak or two.”

  The cab pulled up to a building uptown. Lucy put her ID stick into the pay slot. “My treat. I programmed it to take the long route so the Moms had some extra time to set things up.”

  We entered the building and walked down a long hallway. Lucy slid open a door with a flourish. “Welcome to your party, little sister,” she kissed me on the cheek. “Come on in and meet the family.”

  A small crowd greeted us on the other side, clapping and smiling. My mother was in the front with one of her sisters. Most of the others were strangers: Adem’s family – my family now – and crew from the Hajj. Someone put a drink in my hand.

  “Hey, Sako.” A tall man in worn clothes clinked drinks with me. I blinked. He’d put on about fifty pounds, but it was definitely Johnny. He waggled his eyebrows. “Your mom invited me.”

  I had never let my mother meet my friends. “How did–?”

  “She must have gone through your contacts.”

  My stomach clenched. If that was so, there was no telling who was going to come crawling out of my past. Now that I knew what to look for, a few of the guests’ faces started to look chillingly familiar.

  “I know we haven’t talked in a while.” Johnny’s skin looked waxy and damp. “But your mom said there would be food and an open bar.”

  I forced a smile. “What have you been up to?”

  “Nothing really. I got into some trouble a few years ago. My dad pretty much cut me off after that. He still pays for my flat, but that’s about it.” He drained his glass. “Hey, is the bar free the whole time?”

  “No idea. I had nothing to do with this. Are you still doing music?”

  “Films mostly. I don’t make them, but I let them use my place to make pornos. Sometimes I–”

  I cleared my throat. “This is Lucy Sadiq and this… this is my husband, Adem.”

  Lucy said something polite, and Adem stuck his hand out. “Pleased to meet you,” he said. “Didn’t catch the name.”

  Johnny gripped Adem’s hand listlessly. “Sako and I used to hang out. Hey, do you know where the bathroom is? I need to piss.”

  “We just got here,” Adem said.

  “I’ll ask someone else.” Johnny clutched his crotch and stalked away.

  “Interesting,” Lucy said. “I see this party is going to be a lot more amusing for me than
it will be for you.” She looped an arm around my waist. “Let’s introduce you to the captain.”

  Adem made a sound that rode the border between acceptance and panic and trailed after us as Lucy led me toward a short woman who looked like she could break me over her knee. “Mother,” Lucy said, “this is your new daughter, Hisako Sasaki. Hisako, this is the captain.”

  The woman took my hands and stood on tiptoe to kiss me on both cheeks. Her smile made her stern little face beautiful. “Call me Maneera when we’re not on duty. Welcome to the family.”

  I offered her the formal bow from my grade-school etiquette lessons. “It is an honor. Thank you for my life and education.”

  “This is awkward, I know,” the captain said. “But beginnings always are. I’m glad we could help your family out. Hopefully, you won’t find life with us to be too much of a burden.”

  I felt a hand on the small of my back. “Don’t mind my daughter, Maneera. She takes a little while to warm up.” My mother’s dress uniform flattered her while still making her look like a martinet.

  “I have some thoughts about your guest list, Mom,” I said. “I keep wondering what new horror is going to appear out of the crowd.”

  My mother shrugged. “We worked with what we had. I asked you to make a list, but you said you were too busy. I used a parental override into one of your old readers.” She gestured to the guests milling around the room. “This is what you get.”

  “I haven’t seen some of these people since grade school.”

  “Then I am sure you have a lot to catch up on,” the captain said. “Adem, don’t just stand there. Go get your mothers a drink.”

  “I’ll have one, too, little brother,” Lucy said.

  Adem just about looked at me. “Hisako?”

  Getting drunk seemed like the best defense. I agreed and watched him thread his way to the bar.

  “Is he all right?” the captain said. “He’s acting like someone we just unfroze.”

  “He’s just being Adem,” Lucy said. “It takes him a while to adjust to new things. He’s like a cat.”

  “Do you have one?” I said. The Sadiq family seemed to have ridiculous amounts of money. Surely they could afford a real cat.

  “My grandmother did.” Lucy smiled. “It died when I was a kid. I always wanted another one, but Dooley said he didn’t want all that hair in the air filters. Do you have one?”

  “I had a sandcat for a while. He got eaten.”

  “Animal?”

  “Neighbor.”

  We chatted. Adem was taking a long time with the drinks. I had visions of him being regaled with stories by Johnny and Maki and all the other regrets and bad decisions my mother had so thoughtfully invited to my wedding reception.

  “Did you have a good summer?” my mother said. “I haven’t seen much of you since you graduated.”

  “Good enough. Dr Martineau helped me revise my dissertation for publication.”

  Francis Martineau had said a lot of things over the summer, mostly when we were both naked in his tiny apartment. He had La Mur tastes and a midtown budget. Dulled by cognac and afterglow, he’d once offered to buy out my contract with the Sadiqs but never mentioned it again after I told him how much it would cost.

  “Did I hear my name?” Francis swept past me and bowed to my mother. “There is no doubt it will be published. It is only a question of where and when. Lovely party, Mrs Sasaki. Thank you so much for the invitation.”

  I glared at him. “You didn’t tell me you’d be here.” He’d had plenty of opportunity, including that morning when I crawled over him to get to the shower.

  He spread a paternal smile across his face. “I wouldn’t have missed this for the world.” He took the captain’s hand. “You are running away with one of my best students. She could have made a good living in research.”

  The captain smiled. “She still can. What better place to research physics than onboard a starship?”

  “Point taken. Maybe I’ll sign on, too.” He tried a leer on Lucy. “Are you married? Would you like to be?”

  “Silly boy.” She smothered a yawn. “Buy a share, and you can sign on as crew. We can have you back here in twenty or thirty years.”

  Adem returned with the drinks. We hadn’t told him what we wanted, but he’d made good choices. He greeted Francis and stuck his hand out. “Adem.”

  Francis shook the offered hand. “I have heard nothing about you. Dr Francis Martineau. I taught little Sako everything she knows.” He put his hand on the small of my back in a gesture meant to tell Adem that he had been there first. Adem didn’t appear to notice.

  “I skimmed a paper you did on using natural singularities for FTL. I couldn’t follow the math, but it seemed like an interesting theory. The other side of the singularity has to show up somewhere, right?”

  “Right.” I’d actually written most of the paper, but Francis had judged me too junior for a co-authorship. “The problem is, it’s completely random and–”

  “Seems completely random,” Francis said.

  I acknowledged his point. “And in an infinite universe, the exit point could be anywhere. None of our probes have reported back yet. Which means–”

  It was Adem’s return to interrupt, “Which means they could be so far away that the signal won’t get here for years.”

  “Or your probes were destroyed by the gravitational forces,” Lucy said, “and you’ll never hear back from them.” She sipped her drink. “I read the paper, too.”

  “Interesting work,” the captain said. “We try to keep current on anything that could save us some time. The Hajj isn’t cheap to run. We’re always looking for a shortcut.”

  Someone cleared his throat noisily behind us, and we turned to see an older, thickset man approaching. “Someone should introduce me to my new niece,” he said.

  “Hisako,” Lucy said. “This is Rakin Sadiq. My uncle and now yours.”

  “Rakin is from Nov Tero,” the captain said. “He only recently bought back into the crew.”

  “Crew? I own three percent of the ship,” Rakin said.

  “When you ran away to Nov Tero you had ten percent, Uncle,” Lucy said. “You lost some standing in the transition.”

  Rakin kissed my proffered hand instead of shaking it. His lips were moist. “Don’t listen to them, my dear. I trust you will be as good an investment for the family as you will be a wife to my favorite nephew.”

  “I will certainly try, Uncle.”

  The captain slid her arm through mine. “Let’s leave the business for the conference room, Rakin. This is a party and the banquet is ready. Shall we? I had to guess what you’d like, but we carried some of this all the way from Freedom for the occasion. I hope you enjoy it.”

  The banquet was amazing, but the party stayed awkward. At one point Francis asked me to dance and spent the entire song with his hands on my ass. I returned to my seat next to Lucy with my face flaming. “I hope your brother didn’t see that.”

  “Even if he did, don’t expect him to ask the good doctor to step outside to settle it. First, he’s not the jealous type. Most Traders are pretty open about that kind of thing. The men don’t have pissing contests over us because they know we’ll do what we want anyway.” She took a sip of her drink. “Second, Adem could break your professor in half without trying. He doesn’t fight unless it’s for fun or deadly serious.”

  I looked around the reception hall. “Where is he?”

  “Probably taking a walk or sitting in a corner somewhere. He’s not the most social of men, and he’s not a fan of crowds. This may be the largest one he’s ever seen.”

  “I thought he was a musician.”

  “He’s fine on stage. He knows his role there. At something like this…” She adjusted her dress. “Who is he supposed to be? The groom? The Hajj’s jack of all trades? He’ll downplay everything he does to the point no one thinks he does anything, but the ship wouldn’t fly without him. The captain decides where we go. I get us t
here. Adem holds the whole thing together.” She pointed toward the bathrooms with her drink. “There he is. You should grab him and spend some time with him.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Tell him about yourself. He’s a good listener, but don’t expect him to share much at first. Everything you are is exotic to him, and he’ll think he has nothing interesting to offer.”

  “Okay.” I gulped the rest of my drink. “Wait, what’s he doing?”

  Adem had pulled one of the event staff aside and was whispering to him, gesturing. The waiter nodded and jogged toward the kitchen.

  Adem put his back to the bathroom door and redirected Francis who approached it. Denied his chance to pee, Francis came looking for me.

  “Quite a party,” he said, sliding into a seat next to me. “Hubby says there’s someone passed out in the bathroom. He spent the last twenty minutes bringing him back to life.”

  “Who is it?”

  “He didn’t know. One of your guests, I imagine. The parameds have been called, so we can just drink and watch the–”

  I lifted the hem of my dress so I could make better time and ran across the dance floor to Adem. “What’s going on?” He seemed sharper, more focused than before.

  “Someone overdosed,” Adem said. “I got him breathing again and put the docbox on him. I don’t know how long he’d been out before I found him.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Maybe you can tell me.” Adem opened the door. “Let me know if he’s gone down again. The doc should keep him alive, but you never know.”

  Johnny was lying on the polished tile floor with a docbox strapped to his chest. It was breathing for him and keeping his heart beating. I didn’t know what good brain activity looked like, but none of the telltales on the docbox were in the red.

  “Johnny, you idiot.” I dropped to my knees as if there was something I could do that the doc wasn’t already. Johnny opened his eyes.