The Light Years

by R. W. W. Greene

  His breath was slow and steady. Mine was not. My heart hammered and before we had gone more than one hundred meters I had a stitch in my side. I began to wish I’d made exercise more of a priority.

  “Are you alright?” Adem said.

  I waved him on. “Go. I’ll catch up.”

  I lost sight of him around the next corner.

  I was sucking air and down to a fast stumble by the time I caught up. Adem had his hands raised to chest level, facing Rakin and two armed men. The gunsels switched their focus to me, then back to Adem before making an unspoken agreement to divide their efforts.

  Rakin beckoned me closer. “Perfect timing! We can all go down to the surface together.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you,” I said, gasping for air.

  “You have everything you need already, Uncle,” Adem said. “You can let us go back to the ship.”

  “You underestimate your value.” He spread his hands. “One weapons expert and one guarantee of Maneera Sadiq’s good behavior. Dr. Sasaki and the device will disappear into the black market in a couple of days, and you and my sister can go back to playing peddler.”

  Adem slid his right foot forward. “It’s going to be difficult to make deals after we report you to the Traders’ Union. They aren’t partial to thieves.”

  Rakin laughed. “The Union is doomed. It can only last as long as their ships do, and we both know that won’t be long. Then it will be every planet for itself, and I plan to be comfortable on mine.” He nodded to the thug on his right, a tall man with a scarred face. “Shall we?”

  There was a popping sound, and the other gunsel fell screaming, a flechette embedded in his chest and a surge of electricity overpowering his nervous system. Adem lunged, twisting the pistol out of the other man’s hand and bringing him to the deck in a brutal arm lock.

  There was a rush of footsteps behind us. Vee picked up the stunned thug’s weapon and pointed it at the man Adem was grappling with. “That’s enough!”

  Adem released his hold and rolled to his feet. The gunsel stayed where he was. His shoulder didn’t look right.

  “What are you doing?” Rakin’s cheeks shook with rage. “You have no authority!”

  Odessa put her arm around her android’s waist. “Reg, if he moves, zap him, too.” She raised her voice. “I did as your mother said and scanned the ship. Rakin has listening devices and cameras everywhere.”

  Adem woke the comm on his collar. “Rakin Sadiq, I formally accuse you of illegal trading practices and misappropriating assets of Hajj shareholders. In accordance with the Traders’ Union Bylaws, your property and accounts will be locked down until a hearing is held.” He paused. “The nearsmart confirms. It’s registered the complaint with the station.” He smiled. “Now we have the authority.”

  Rakin reached toward his jacket pocket.

  “Don’t do it, Rakin,” Vee said. “I grew up here. You don’t want to find out how good I am with one of these.”

  Rakin’s hand froze. “My heart. The shock. I just need my medicine.”

  “Bullshit. Keep your hands where I can see them.”

  Adem picked the second pistol up off the ground and handed it to me. “Do you know how to use this?” he whispered.

  “Not at all.” My breath was coming easier now, and the pistol didn’t wobble too much as I pointed it at the ground near Rakin’s feet.

  Adem moved away a few steps and used his comm again. His face was grim when he returned.

  “Station security is on the way, and I just spoke to the captain.” He looked steadily at Rakin. “You’re bound, Uncle. Assets frozen. It doesn’t look good. Mom’s sending some people to pick up the crate and anything else you might have on you. Don’t expect them to be gentle.”

  “Then what?” I said.

  “If he doesn’t contest the charges, we let him go here, minus his shares, anything he’s taken, and any property he might have on the ship.”

  “I can’t go to Nov Tero,” Rakin growled. “Not now.”

  “You could ask for asylum on the station,” Vee said. “Get protective custody in return for giving up some of your old friends to the authorities.”

  Rakin’s fists purpled at his side.

  “Option three, then,” Adem said. “Uncle, I am authorized to escort you back aboard to await a hearing before the Traders’ Union Board of Directors, held at that body’s earliest convenience. Is that acceptable?”

  “Yes, damn it.”

  “One more thing,” Adem said. “If you’re coming back aboard, Mom says you’ll be staying in the freezer.”

  ADEM

  Eight days from Gaul

  Adem unlinked his reader from the nearsmart. The Hajj’s second trip through a wormhole had resulted in zero damage and revealed the location of the plumbing leak he’d been tracking for so long. It would take a while for his quarters to dry completely, but that pipe would never drip again.

  He rubbed his face, and his fingers rasped over stubble. It had been a far longer day than he had planned, and he had a decision to make. Hisako came through the door behind him.

  “You’re still working,” she said.

  “Wanted to make sure everything was right before I turned in. I’m done now.” Adem slid his reader into the pocket of his utilisuit.

  “I don’t get what you’re trying to prove. Everyone else on your shift is asleep or drunk.”

  “Ordinarily I might be, too. But…” He shrugged. “Things have changed.” You changed it, he might have added. Adem turned his back on her and made a show of shutting down the console. “You’re not sleeping, so I guess you picked the drinking option.”

  “It seems to be the thing to do here. Your father is the only one I know aboard who doesn’t.”

  “He says it’s haram.” He laughed. “Dooley’s parents changed his name from Brian O’Dool to Abdul O’Dool and enrolled him in a madrasa as soon as they realized who they’d married him off to. He knows more about Islam than my mother.”

  “He doesn’t seem very devout.”

  “He’s not. He doesn’t drink because most of his extended family and friends were drunks.”

  She stretched her hand out to him. “Come back to your suite with me. I want to show you something.”

  Adem looked at her askance. “What are you doing, Hisako?”

  “Talking,” she said. “Come on.”

  Adem followed her to the suite and waited as she fumbled the door open. She gestured toward the bar. “Pour us some of that fancy vodka. Beats the hell out of the shit you make.”

  He looked at the label. “This is from Uncle Rakin’s stock.”

  “Wedding present,” she said. “It’s good. Try it.”

  Adem poured two glasses.

  Hisako sat down and swung her legs up onto the bed. “Play me something.”

  “I haven’t played in a while.”

  “I haven’t, either. We’ll swap some songs.” She leaned over to pull the Martin off the wall. “I think it misses you.”

  The old guitar had a habit of going out of tune when the nearsmart dropped the temperature for the night cycle. Adem tuned it by ear and tested his work with a couple of chord progressions.

  “What do you want out of life?” Her voice was louder than normal, and the question sounded almost like an accusation.

  Adem wasn’t sure how to answer. “Family, friends, work, a purpose,” he patted the guitar, “music, I guess.”

  “You know people collect your videos, right? Does that matter to you?”

  He used his sleeve to wipe dust off the Martin’s body. “I like that they like my work.”

  “Do you want more of that… fans and applause?” She lay back on the bed and balanced the glass on her stomach. “Living on this ship isn’t the way to make that happen.”

  The ghost of a song trembled in the air as he played with the strings.

  “So, there’s really nothing you want that you don’t have,” she said.

  “I wan
t Mom and Dad to have their asteroid. I want Lucy to be ship’s captain. I want the Hajj to keep going.” He was getting tired of the question. “I don’t know… Enough peace and goodwill to go around?”

  “What do you want for me?”

  Adem noodled on the strings for a moment or two before replying. “I guess I want what I’ve always wanted for you. I want you to be happy here and feel like it’s your home.”

  “What does that even mean, Adem? I eat. I drink. I shit. I have friends and a roof over my head. I’m potentially rich. What more is there?”

  Adem lifted his hands in surrender. “More. I don’t know. Love. The sky, maybe. People say they miss it. Fresh air.”

  “The sky we evolved under was blue not greenish brown, and the fresh air wasn’t made by crushing rocks.” She listened to Adem play for a minute. “Do you know anyone who’s happy?”

  “No one’s happy all the time, but I think that’s the way it’s supposed to be.”

  “Just live and be content with being happy sometimes. That’s life?”

  “It beats worrying about it. You’ve looked pretty happy working on the worm-drive. Maybe it’s about being useful to someone.”

  “That wasn’t happiness. That was–” She paused. “That was discovery.”

  “What’s the difference?” He set the guitar aside, leaning it carefully against the wall. “There’s joy in learning something new or figuring something out.”

  “What if it’s not enough?”

  “Then that’s what people are for. We make each other happy.”

  “Let’s try,” she moved over. “Get into this bed with me. Make me happy. Take tomorrow off. Take the whole week off. We’ll spend it here playing music and having sex.”

  “Let me get you some water.”

  “I don’t want water.” She pulled the covers up to her chin. “Hold on.” She struggled under the comforter for nearly a minute before she poked an arm out and dropped her coveralls on the floor. It was soon joined by her bra and t-shirt.

  Adem picked up the Martin again. “You should sleep. Let me play you something.”

  It was a short piece, a simple G-chord progression, with lyrics that were either about losing a loved one or leaving home, Adem had never been sure.

  Hisako listened with her eyes closed. “Who wrote that?”

  “I found it with the guitar. I imagine the original owner wrote it.”

  She shivered. “I can’t get warm tonight. Take your clothes off and get in here.”

  “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “No,” she said. “But I know I don’t want to be alone tonight. Will you stay?”

  HISAKO

  Seven days from Gaul

  I knew if I moved, he’d wake up and start apologizing. So I stayed perfectly still, barely breathing.

  My husband – there was that word again – smelled like machinery and conduit dust, but he didn’t snore. He was the bogeyman who had haunted my entire life, and he smiled in his sleep.

  My head throbbed. I’d had far too many of Dooley’s new concoctions with Vee. He called them Forget-Me-Nots, and they smelled like flowers and tasted like fruit-infused water. As advertised, they lowered your inhibitions without any of the other symptoms of drunkenness – no stumbling or slurring – and no matter how many you drank you remembered everything you did.

  Adem shifted. I held my breath, hoping it wasn’t a sign of consciousness. I counted to thirty, with not a sound in the room other than my pounding head, then let myself breathe.

  He was a bed hog, although that might have been the result of the spooning I had insisted on rather than a personal habit.

  My tongue was like leather, and the bathroom was all the way across the room. While I wished desperately for latent telekinesis to kick in, Adem slept on his side breathing gently into the pillow. He needed to shave. He always needed to shave, and it lent him a look of danger that didn’t fit what I knew of his personality. If we’d had sex instead of falling asleep, I probably would have been wishing for something to put on my beard burn. He had hair on his chest, too, and I resisted the urge to touch it to see if it was scratchy or soft. On Gaul, the men, at least the ones I knew, depilated all the body hair that grew below the neck. A lot of them did their faces, too.

  If I woke Adem up, he would get me some water, which might give me time to put some clothes on. I’d kicked my underwear off in the night. I’ve never liked wearing anything while sleeping. It drove my mother crazy.

  Adem was down to his shorts, at least he had been while we were spooning. He might have stripped down in the night, too. I didn’t know his habits. We’d been married nearly five months, and this was the longest I’d spent alone with him. I moved centimeters to the edge of the bed and rolled to my feet, scooping last night’s outfit off the floor on the way to the bathroom. While I guzzled water, I tried to figure out what to do.

  Vee and I had spent the whole night discussing her future, with me doing the lion’s share of the advice giving, which was ridiculous all things considered. If she sold her shares off now, she’d have a good bit of money to build a life planetside. If she stayed on the ship, she could take Dooley’s place in the medical center when he finally retired and bought that asteroid.

  Then last call arrived, and we’d had the brilliant idea that I should sleep with Adem to gain clarity. Now, I was trapped in the bathroom.

  I took some painkillers and a long shower. All I had to wear was last night’s clothes, and my nose wrinkled at the combination of stale sweat and near toxic alcohol that drifted from them anytime I moved.

  I had another glass of water and opened the bathroom door. Adem was gone, and, in spite of my fervent wishing of a few minutes before, I was almost disappointed. If nothing else, he might have been happy to see me, and he had a great smile. Instead, there was a message flashing on my reader: “Checked my to-do list and decided to go in after all. I feel pretty good after a full night’s sleep. Thanks. Maybe we can talk later.”

  A question mark at the end of that last sentence could have meant that he was hoping for a talk or even asking for one. An exclamation point would have meant he was twelve. The period might mean a talk was a possibility, but one he wasn’t much worried about. Or maybe I was reading too much into his punctuation.

  My reader lit up with another message, but it wasn’t from Adem. It was from his mother.

  The invitation led me to the exercise deck. Maneera was waiting for me in a well-padded corner, barefoot and wearing what appeared to be pajamas.

  “Tea?” She bent to a small table and tea tray set up at the edge of the floor mat. She handed me an over-sized shot glass of dark, sweet tea. “We have some things to say to each other.”

  “I can’t think of a single thing.”

  She crossed her ankles and lowered herself to the floor mat. After a moment of awkwardness, me looking down and her looking up at me expectantly, I did, too, albeit with less grace. The mat smelled musty.

  “I’ve apologized for losing my temper and threatening you,” she said.

  “We were all having a bad day. I don’t blame you for that.”

  “But you blame me for something.”

  It wasn’t a question, but she’d come to the wrong conclusion. “That’s not the word I’d use anymore.”

  The corner of her mouth turned up. “The Hajj hasn’t been as bad as you feared.”

  “No.” I’d been challenged mentally, given responsibility and agency, improved my skills, made friends and money, maybe even changed the course of human history. “But being here wasn’t my idea.” Saying it out loud made it seem petty, but there it was.

  “Ah, the word you’re using now is ‘resent.’ Where would your own ideas have taken you, I wonder.”

  “I guess we’ll never know.”

  “You have plenty of time for your own ideas. A lifetime of choices to make.” Maneera sipped her tea and made a face. “Too sweet, but that’s how my mother taught me to make it.” />
  The tea tasted fine to me. I’d had similar in the cafeteria and delivered to me in the workspace. Without the sugar, black tea was too bitter.

  “You created me, Maneera. Without you I might not have been born.” I laughed. “I certainly wouldn’t have lived as well as I did or gone to fancy schools. I guess I’m grateful for that, but you didn’t do it for me.”

  “I spent the first year of my life traveling so close to the speed of light that I vanished from the calendar,” Maneera said. “When I was six, I had to ask the nearsmart to calculate my birthday. It’s in March. I forget the day. Adem was born in June.”

  It sounded almost like she wanted me to feel bad because I knew my birthday down to the standard hour, but I didn’t bite. “People who live on the ground aren’t real to you. That’s how you can be so blithe about manipulating them to fit your plan. If it doesn’t happen on the ship, it doesn’t count.”

  “That’s a good theory. You can see how living this way might lend itself to that outlook.”

  “So, you thought nothing of reaching down and changing my life?”

  “Not much. Not deeply. I wasn’t kidnapping or enslaving you. I needed a worm-drive expert, relatively unattached and ready to go when I needed her.”

  “Here I am.”

  “Yes.”

  “I mean absolutely nothing to you beyond what I can do for you.”

  “Hardly. You said it yourself. You’re on my ship now. You count.” Her lips tightened. “I didn’t ask to be born into this, either.”

  “You stayed.”

  “So far. I can always change my mind. So can you. Take control. Make choices.” She rolled to her feet without spilling her tea. “In the meantime, what do you know about jiu-jitsu?”

  ADEM

  Six days from Gaul

  Lucy forwent the door’s intercom and barged into Adem’s suite. The complicated finger-picking pattern he was attempting with his right hand dissolved into discordance.

  “I got your message.” She threw herself onto Adem’s bed, violently rocking them both. “Have you talked to the captain about this?”

  “We talked in the vicinity of it. I was straighter with Dooley.” He played the melody line of “The Kesh” – his father’s favorite jig. “Makes better sense now than it ever did. His words.”