The Light Years

by R. W. W. Greene

  “I just want to make sure you have somewhere warm and safe tonight.”

  “I have places. Some warm. Some safe. A few that are both. I’ll go to one of them.” He pointed at a pile of blankets the Hajj crew had scrounged and purchased on the way to the disaster scene. “Can I have one?”

  Adem handed it over with some coins. “Take more food, too. And this.”

  Raul refused the money. “Give it to the old woman. I can work.” He tossed Adem a jaunty salute and headed to the table where the Hajj rescue party had set up a supply cache. The wedding banquet had been supplemented by trips into midtown for basic staples. Adem watched Raul make himself a sandwich and stuff a bag of meal bars into his shirt. The boy waved goodbye and walked out of the range of the emergency lighting.

  Adem stepped over to the old woman Raul had talked into trying the cake. Her eyes were closed, and she was snoring, her nearly toothless mouth hanging open.

  “Grandmother?” Adem knelt down beside the woman. “Grandmother?”

  “Let her sleep,” someone said. It was the woman with the ruined fingers, which were now properly bandaged. Adem recognized his father’s handiwork. “She’s exhausted. She used to be the matron of the Children’s Village. She came here as soon as she heard.”

  “How are you?” Adem said.

  “The doctor said I was in shock. He gave me an injection. Did this.” She held up her hands.

  “Do they hurt?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “I need to go soon. My ship will be leaving orbit.” He jingled the coins in his hand. “Can you make sure she gets these?”

  “Give them to me. I will make sure they are used well. She would only give them to me anyway. I am the matron now.”

  “What do you do for them?”

  The woman gazed down at the trail of destruction the tower left as it fell. “Not enough. Food. Clothes. School. If the children want to stay in the Village, they need to take lessons.”

  “What about Raul?”

  “He lives in the Village sometimes. He doesn’t like school, but he’s a good boy.”

  “Yeah, I gave him my reader so he could take lessons on it.”

  “He might.” She held out her hand. “You can trust me.”

  Adem dropped the money in her palm. “I wish I had more.”

  “So do I.” She counted the coins. “Thank you for your help. We can take it from here.”

  Adem nearly laughed at the thought.

  The woman pulled a blanket off the pile and tucked it around the old woman’s shoulders. She scrubbed at her forehead with the back of her wrist. “Why would they do this?”

  “City security says it was a terrorist attack. Some local group.”

  The woman’s laugh was dry and brittle, more like a sharp bark of pain than anything containing mirth. “They would say that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Go back to your ship. By the time you return this will only be a memory. One disaster among a thousand others.”

  Adem looked around the triage area trying to estimate how much of the ship’s budget he had spent on supplies and rescue gear. He’d catch hell from some of the shareholders at the next meeting.

  The shuttle pad was six blocks away, and Adem covered the distance at a jog. The security guards at the door tried to refuse him entrance, but with enough waving of his ID stick and a couple of reminders about who he was, Adem made it onto the shuttle. He opened a channel to the Hajj. Lucy’s voice was thin and tired.

  “I’m on my way up,” Adem said.

  “Safe travels, little brother. You know it makes me nervous when you fly without me.”

  “It will be fine. They do this all day.” Adem signed off and stretched his shoulders as far as the crowded shuttle would allow. Along with the usual mix of tourists and tech workers, about a dozen well-heeled EuroD were waiting for the ride up.

  “Happens every time there’s an attack. Anyone with a vacation place on the station goes up to wait things out,” the man next to him offered. He was sweating heavily.

  “What’s your excuse?”

  “I work life support on the station. Keep everything running. My family owned a Trader ship. Engine went out about fifty years ago, and we leased it to the station.”

  “Is that where you work?”

  “I work all over. But I still live on the ship. As long as one of us does we keep our ownership rights.”

  “But it will never fly again.”

  “There are worse things. The engines failed about a week out, so we were already moving slow. Got a tow in and sold everything that wasn’t attached. We could have sold the ship outright, but we voted to lease the space. Now, every year we get a check. Most of the kids have jobs now, but it helps.”

  A tone sounded and a light flashed over the seating area.

  “Launch warning,” the man grimaced. His knuckles were white on the arms of his seat. “I really hate this part.”

  HISAKO

  Three hours out of Gaul

  My husband opened the door to his cabin the third or fourth time I rang the buzzer. He was shirtless and tall.

  “I want my own place,” I slurred. “Dooley said it would be alright.”

  “What time is it?” Adem scratched his ear. “Are you okay?”

  I stomped my foot. “Did you hear me?”

  “Yeah. Come in.” He pulled a shirt over broad shoulders and a surprisingly well-muscled chest. “I’m sorry I haven’t been here. I barely made it back in time for our launch window.”

  “Vee showed me around.”

  He froze.

  “It’s okay.” I held up my hand. It wobbled. I felt wobbly. Vee and I had ended up back at Terry’s Place for more terrible cocktails with her friends. She said it was my bachelorette party and that it didn’t matter if I had it after the wedding. “It’s oh-kay. She told me you’d been sleeping together.”

  “Is that why you want your own place?”

  “No.” Wobbly. I put my hand on the wall to steady myself.

  Adem pulled the chair out from the desk. “Here. Sit down before you fall down.”

  “I’m not drunk.” I sat carefully in the chair and crossed my legs.

  “Sure.” Adem smoothed down his hair with his hand. “You can have this suite. I modded it with you in mind. Just let me get a few things out of it, and I’ll move into one of the empty crew suites.”

  “No!” I shook my head too firmly. “No. This is your…” I nodded off. By the time I had opened my eyes, Adem had stripped the bed and stuffed the linens down the laundry chute. I watched him remake the bed. He was good at it. Tight corners. Smooth bedspread.

  “You look like you need to sleep it off.” He filled a big glass of water from the tap in the bathroom, put it on the bedside table, and pulled a guitar off the wall. “I’ll just take this for now. And this.” He plucked a reader off the desk and slid it into his pocket. “There’s aspirin in the bathroom for when you wake up.”

  I was having a hard time sitting in the chair. Something was wrong with gravity. It was pulling me sideways. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “I fixed this room up for you. It makes sense that you should have it. There are empty suites closer to the engine room. I’ll take one of those. You sleep.” He pointed at a half-sized sliding door on the wall. “Your closet has already been installed. I’ll have mine moved by the end of day tomorrow.” He stopped at the door. “I am glad you’re here, Hisako.”

  A door closed somewhere. My head was heavy. I messed up Adem’s beautifully made bed and crawled inside.

  I woke up around four in the morning with a splitting headache and blessed Adem for leaving me the water. Then I cursed him for making me get up to get the painkillers. The bathroom was small but clean, and my bladder was thankful. I took my hangover back to bed. Adem had made the room cozy by hanging rugs and woven mats over the hard metal of the walls. There were three guitars and a mandolin hanging on hooks, obviously not as special
as the one Adem had taken with him.

  The next time I woke up, Lucy was shaking me by my shoulder. I burrowed deeper into the covers to escape. Adem had good taste in beds.

  “Rise and shine, spacer.” Lucy flicked my ear. “How’s your head?” She was enjoying this.

  “Ugh. Did Vee tell you we went drinking?”

  “I was there for the third hour. You were not, apparently.” Lucy tapped the side of her head scarf. “Plus, I see everything the ship sees, and I don’t have to be on the bridge to do it. I could fly the Hajj from the shitter, if I wanted. Mother just likes me on the bridge.”

  “Lovely. Does the ship’s pilot usually serve as the wake-up service?” The pain in my head was more of a dull throb than a blinding spike, a vast improvement.

  “Only to new members of the family enjoying their first morning aboard. And only if I like them. Besides, Adem said you kicked him out, so he wants to give you space. I am his proxy.” She carried my empty water glass to the bathroom and filled it up again. “I’m sorry I missed the end of the party. It looked like you were having fun.”

  “I think I was. Today I’m not so sure.”

  “That’s how everyone feels after a night at Terry’s. People say Dooley adds something to the alcohol to make everyone’s hangover worse. He wants to keep them from drinking quite so much the next time, but it never works.”

  “It might have this time. I am never drinking again.”

  “You’ll keep that promise for about fifteen hours. Adem and Dooley are playing tonight, and it’s my turn to take you out.”

  I pulled the covers up to my chin. “What am I supposed to do today?”

  “Get to know the ship. Evacuation routes, safety protocols, that kind of thing. Make sure you won’t be in the way if we have an emergency.”

  “I thought an emergency would kill us instantly.”

  “Most of them will, but we might get lucky and die slowly. It’s an old ship. Adem keeps it running pretty well, but bad things happen. Tomorrow you start a rotation in engineering. Uncle Rakin is officially the chief engineer, but ignore him. He doesn’t know his ass from a laser cutter.”

  She pulled my reader from a pile of clothes on the floor and tossed it on the bed. “Your schedule should be in here. Mother will want to meet with you soon and get you started on the project.”

  “What project?”

  “Classified.” She swatted my leg. “Move over. I have a little maneuver coming up, and it’s hard to do astrogation and stand at the same time.”

  I wriggled over, and she lay down beside me. “Good bed. Adem spent some time on this. Go get a shower. I’ll have it all squared away by the time you come out, and we can go get breakfast.” Her breathing slowed, and she looked like she’d fallen asleep. Her eyes darted under her lids like she was having an intense dream. “Go,” she said. “You’re staring at me, and you smell like a sweaty distillery.”

  I climbed out of bed and swallowed more painkillers. The water pressure in the shower was fantastic, and a handy timer counted down the minutes of hot water I had been allocated. I had time to lather and rinse twice. I wrapped a towel around myself and went back to the main room. Lucy was still on the bed, her eyes closed. “I gave you a couple extra minutes of hot water,” she said. “Go ahead and get dressed. This part is tricky.”

  My closet slid open to reveal the jumble of things I’d packed. No one had said anything about a dress code, so I put on the coveralls I usually wore when doing lab work. They sort of looked like an utilisuit with fewer pockets and D-rings.

  “You’ll have time to change before we go to Terry’s tonight,” Lucy said, sitting up.

  “Is changing course always that hard?”

  Lucy led the way through the door and turned right at the end of the hall. “Changing course was the easy part. The hard part was convincing Versailles Station that we had a good reason to. We’re not supposed to deviate from the shipping lanes. Makes it hard for someone to come out to rescue us if we have problems.”

  “I’m surprised anyone would come.”

  “It would cost more than the ship is worth, but it beats death for some people.”

  “Only some?”

  “Trader families can lose everything that way. Anyway, I told the station we’d been having problems with pirates, which is an enormous lie. We’re kind of taking the scenic route.” She waved me through the cafeteria door ahead of her.

  Lucy had let me sleep late enough that we’d missed the breakfast rush. Only a few people were in the cafeteria lingering over coffee, and we had the buffet line to ourselves. I picked up a breakfast tray and tried to figure out which foods would make me feel the least nauseated. Lucy picked with more alacrity, and she was already fork deep in a plate of scrambled hash and eggs when I joined her at a table.

  “Do you have to wear that scarf?” I said.

  Lucy touched it. “Does it bother you?”

  I sat down. “Not at all. Your mother doesn’t wear one and–”

  “And you wondered if it was a religious thing. It keeps my head warm. I had my scalp depilated when I got my implants. Plus, it keeps dust out of my ports. You wouldn’t believe what a pain in the ass it is to clean them out.”

  “I read a little about, you know, Allah and all that when my parents told me I was marrying into a Muslim family.”

  “Did it freak you out? Gaul is pretty secular.”

  I tried the toast. “Not really. It seemed kind of like a fairytale when I was thirteen. All those rituals and rules.”

  “I think you’ll find we’re all pretty deep in the atheist-agnostic side of things. The wake crews gave up most of their religious baggage during the trip out here.”

  I steeled myself. I hated talking about this kind of thing but… “I didn’t kick Adem out. All I said was that I wanted my own place for a while.”

  “I know. He knows, too. It was probably kind of a relief for him. We’ve been telling him horror stories about families that lock the bride and groom in a room until they fuck.” She smiled. “Don’t get me wrong; it’s not the fucking that would bother him. It’s the awkward silence before and after. He’d have no idea what to talk to you about.”

  “Me, either.” Aboard the Hajj, my marriage made even less sense. Adem wasn’t some lonely space weirdo. He was good looking, smart or smart-ish… Hell, he’d been hooking up with Vee for months. He didn’t need a wife, especially not one who wanted her own suite. “So, why am I here? Adem has less interest in me than I have in him, if that’s possible.”

  “Maybe I’ve always wanted a little sister.” Lucy drained her coffee cup and refilled it from a spigot built into the table. “Alright, fine. I’m going to tell you something that only my mother, my father, Adem, and I know. Don’t spread it around.” She took a breath. “You’re the closest thing out there to a worm-drive expert, right?”

  “As much as anybody. The whole field is mostly just wishes and wannabes.”

  “There’s not much use for a worm-drive expert without a worm-drive for her to play with.” She plucked a slice of toast from the breakfast tray. “Get it?”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “That’s what I said! You ever hear of the Christopher Hadfield?”

  Madame Stavros floated into my head and pointed a gleaming fingernail at me. You know this, Hisako. “It’s the ship that destroyed Makkah.”

  “Close. It was the backup to the ship that destroyed Makkah. It never fired a shot, and it’s been out there floating in the Makkah debris field all this time. We boarded it and salvaged the drive.”

  “I thought nothing survived the squeezer.”

  “Nothing did,” Lucy said. “The ship’s dead. Her engines were tinsel. We met her as her orbit poked her out of the cloud and pushed her farther back in after we were finished. She’s rubble by now.”

  “And your mother wants me to make the drive work for the Hajj.” Which meant… “My contract was never about Adem.”

  She seesawed h
er hand. “You might be a good match for him. Mother usually has two or three reasons for everything she does. It wouldn’t surprise me if one of her motives was to see Adem happy.”

  “But a working worm-drive was higher on the list.” For this I’d spent my entire life not letting anyone get too close to me. “I’ve never even laid hands on a worm-drive. No one has, and no one knows how they work.”

  “But you’ve seen one,” Lucy said. “Your mother told me you were on the Sun King for a couple of weeks.”

  Gaul’s one and only warship. It hadn’t fired a shot in anger in almost a thousand years. It had a worm-drive, but it was never used in case the one time proved to be the last time, stranding the ship and crew millions of kilometers away from home. “Just to read the user’s manual and write a paper! Do you have any idea how complex they are? One bad calculation and the other end of the wormhole could open up in the middle of a planet!”

  “You get it working; we’ll make sure the math is right. Are you going to eat those crepes? Chef doesn’t make them much.”

  “Keep your hands off my crepes.” I pulled the plate away from her. “What happens if the drive doesn’t work?”

  “Rakin takes over and turns the ship into a slave hauler. I sell my shares and find something else to do.”

  “What happens to me?”

  “You can sell and leave with a nice little nest egg, or stay aboard and make a living off human misery.”

  I pushed the plate of crepes across the table to her. “I can’t believe this was the plan.”

  “The captain plays the long game. She has to. She’s always looking twenty to fifty standard years out, trying to figure out what people will need by the time we come into port.” Lucy attacked the crepes like they were her first course. “Based on the elevator attack, she figures there’s a good chance Gaul will be in the middle of a civil war the next time we’re back this way.”

  “Is she going to supply weapons?”

  “She’s a bleeding heart like Adem. She’ll get some do-gooder group on Freedom to pay us to haul humanitarian supplies. It won’t make much of a profit, but most of us will sleep better at night.” Lucy made the last piece of crepe disappear.