“What will you do?”
“Help out if I can.” He smiled. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t terrified. Probably wouldn’t be doing it at all if it weren’t for the worm-drive.”
“And if that blows up on us?”
“With the best pilot in the worlds and a gene-spliced near-genius running the show? It wouldn’t dare.”
Lucy pulled herself up to sit next to her brother. “Are two shares going to be enough?”
“No idea. I’ll put the other two under you as proxy. Hey, listen to this.” Adem played his new arrangement of the “Crawdad Song.”
“Nice. I liked it better before I knew it was about eating bugs, but your playing has improved.”
“It’s called Travis picking. I found a bunch of videos in the Hadfield archives.” Adem passed the guitar to Lucy. “Give it a shot.”
He coached her on the technique and watched her try for a few minutes. “Do you think Mom really expected Hisako and I to fall in love?”
“Little brother, you fall in love with just about everybody you meet. That’s your biggest problem.”
HISAKO
Gaul, Mar 29, 3270
The taxi refused to take me to my mother’s apartment building, so I threaded my way through half a city block of ragged neighborhood before I got within the shadow of the building. I ignored the pleas for help the best I could and tightened my grip on my new stunner in response to the threats.
Taking the lift up to my mother’s floor was no longer an option, no matter how much money I offered it. I forged up the stairs, passing through a bivouac on every landing and grateful for the improvements nine weeks in the gym had made to my cardiovascular health. I arrived with hardly a wheeze and rang the bell.
Her door slid open, and we stood, blinking at each other for what seemed like forever. My father’s makeshift club was in her hand.
She broke the spell. “You’re back early.”
“You look the same.” Her hair was maybe a little grayer, but the years hadn’t changed her much.
“So do you.”
“It hasn’t even been a year for me.”
“You cut your hair.”
I’d cut it short, like Vee’s, and I still wasn’t used to how it felt. It was easier to manage and kept it out of my face during sparring and training. Maneera said I had promise. “How are you?”
“Things are worse.” She stepped away from the door to let me come in. “Are you hungry?”
“Not really. Is this a bad time?”
“I work the night shift a couple of times a week now. I was getting ready to leave, but I can call in. I have seniority now.”
We took seats in the small living room. I took the couch, and she sat across from me in her own chair. My father’s armchair was empty. I patted it. “I’m surprised you kept it.”
“It’s not in the way.” She studied my face. “You look good.”
“I am. I really am.”
“How is married life?”
“Interesting.” I had left Adem and Vee tangled in the sheets of my oversized bed when I’d headed for the elevator two days before. I wasn’t sure whether Vee or Dooley’s cocktails bore more of the blame, but since there was no chance of it leading to anything… “Mostly good,” I said.
“I’m glad.” Her face changed. “You left something here.” She crossed the floor and stepped into the bedroom she’d shared with my father for so long. It startled me to realize she’d been sleeping in it alone for even longer. She came back out with my father’s book of poetry.
I opened it at random and read aloud.
Maybe, just maybe he’ll come to love me,
Like the kind of love that takes you away.
The kind that sweeps you off your feet.
Or maybe he won’t and I’ll just be his doll.
Sitting pretty and collecting dust in a corner.
I don’t believe in a
Jesus
Buddha
Kami
God.
But if you are up there,
Then I pray,
With all my heart,
For you to send
Some love my way.
“I still don’t care for it,” my mother said. “Did you ever find out where it came from?”
“A friend – a man I was dating – researched it. He said it belonged to a EuroD girl who was in an arranged marriage. Her teacher – Dad’s friend Davet – tried to counsel her. She ended up killing herself, and he lost his job for getting involved.”
My mother winced. “Maybe that’s why your father kept reading it. He was trying to feel what you were feeling.”
I flipped to the back of the book where the picture was stored. Eleta. She’d only been sixteen when she ended her life.
“I’m sorry we didn’t give you a choice.”
“And I’m sorry I didn’t understand why you couldn’t.”
The muscles of her throat worked underneath her uniform’s collar. “I love you,” she finally said.
“I love you.”
There were tears, and, after that, I let her cook me something that tasted like my childhood. I told her about life on the Hajj and the friends I had made there. She told me about life in Versailles City. The last decade had been really hard on anyone who didn’t live in La Mur. Shortages, riots, bombings…
“Come back to the ship with me,” I said. “I’ll buy you a share and you can come on as crew.”
“Ha, what would I do on a Trader ship?”
“I happen to know the captain needs an executive assistant. I could put in a good word.” I took her hand. “It would be really nice to have my family with me.”
Over the next few days, I helped her pack. She protested when I hired movers to take her things to the elevator, but I showed her my account balance. Then, she insisted on bringing my father’s chair along and stopping for lunch on the way. While we waited for a car up, I told her about Rakin and the Hadfield. My team – minus Mateo who we’d dumped nearly naked on Nov Tero – had broken the squeezer down into spare parts. Then I got busy learning the ins and outs of the Hajj with Adem as my tutor. If I wasn’t as competent as he was yet, I was on my way.
Adem was the fifteenth person to debark after the elevator car touched down.
“You remember my mother,” I said. “She’s joining the crew.”
The bow he offered her swung the guitar case on his back dangerously close to her nose.
“Is that the Martin?”
He reached back to put his hand on it. “I left the terrible one with Lucy.”
“How much of the Hadfield data did you take with you?”
He grinned. “Only the safe stuff.”
“The captain’s not going to be happy about that.”
“She’ll get over it. You know how families are. They forgive each other a lot.”
ADEM
Versailles City, Apr 1, 3260
The guards kept the door and walkway clear, but outside the walls of the elevator depot was a wash of color and sound. Scrawny children chased each other in circles and ducked into dilapidated shacks that leaned here and there and upon each other for stability. Old men and women sat under crude canopies to drink tea and complain about the EuroD and the younger generations. The air was pungent with smoke and spices.
I found a spot along the depot wall to park my closet and used it as a seat. It didn’t take long for the children to notice and present their bowls and outstretched hands to me. My pockets were full of coins of the smallest denomination, and I traded them for names and stories.
My reader buzzed with a message from Hisako, who was already above the clouds and headed back to the Hajj with her mother. She sent me the name of a EuroD man she used to know and said he had a history of good works in La Merde. She also put me in touch with the lead singer of the Sandcats in case I wanted to pay my respects or crash a show.
An hour passed. Out of coins, I offered songs. My young audience kept time with me,
banging on their bowls, clapping their hands, and slapping their thighs. I taught them a few of the simpler tunes, and we sang together. My fingers and throat were getting sore by the time the battered cargo van pulled up.
I waved to it. “Is that the best you could find?”
Raul leaned out of the window. “You told me not to spend too much.”
I lugged my closet to the van. The money Lucy gave me for my shares had to last until the Hajj returned and transferred my share of the profits from the run.
Raul was taller and was attempting a mustache but otherwise looked much like he did when I gave him my best reader and told him to learn something useful. He put the van in gear, weaving it skillfully among the pedestrians and carts.
“Did you get the warehouse space?” I said.
“Right near the junkyard. Independent power source and a good space for a workshop.” He grinned. “Even a dry place to sleep if you’re not picky.”
I wanted to say that I wasn’t, but I had nothing to base it on. I’d spent my life on a starship, flying above and out of reach of it all. The next few weeks were going to be interesting. “What about a crew?”
“Twelve people. Basic engineering skills. Starting full-time next week.”
“Good work.” I stretched my back against the patched seat. “I have a pod of parts and tools coming down the elevator tomorrow. We need to come back and pick it up.”
“I’ll be doing a job for my uncle. But look.” He showed me that he had modified the truck so it could be operated by someone with one arm. “She can take you. Her name is Rosita now.”
I wiped the dust off the inside of the windshield so I could see out and tried to find a comfortable position on the bench seat. I had an appointment at New Sorbonne University, but it was still hours away.
“They say war is coming soon,” Raul said. “What will we do then?”
“Try to stay out of it. I didn’t come here to fight.” In the name of Allah, the merciful, the compassionate…
“What was that?” Raul said.
I hadn’t realized I’d said the last part aloud. “Just something my great-grandmother used to say. Are you hungry? Let’s find something to eat then we can take a look at this warehouse you found. We have a lot of work to do.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am grateful to the Rob Greene of 2015 for his work on this book. He set the alarm for 4:30am so he could write before going to work and spent day after beautiful day indoors on the project. I am also grateful for the forty year-old Olympia SM9 typewriter Past Rob used to bang out the first draft. Thanks to both of them for not breaking down.
Many of the characters in The Light Years were inspired, in spirit, by students I worked with at Nashua High School South in Nashua, NH, USA. I taught for more than a decade there, working with trans kids, short kids, gay kids, gender-fluid kids, brown kids, bi kids, white kids, smart kids, cis kids, funny kids, anime-loving kids, feckless kids, bookish kids, weird kids, sporty kids, community-minded kids… beautiful, brilliant kids. They had more than forty different languages among them and came from all walks of life and all over the world. These kids filled my head and leaked into the universe I was imagining. I cannot picture a future that does not have them in it. Two of them, Samantha Janosik and Emily Kim, wrote the poems for this book. Thanks, guys.
The Light Years grew out of a short story called “Love in the Time of Light Speed,” and I offer thanks to Scott T. Barnes and Susan Shell Winston of NewMyths for buying it for their quarterly and later republishing it in Passages: The Best of NewMyths Anthology. The good folks at NewMyths, along with many other dedicated publishers, are keeping the short story form alive.
My thanks to the good people at Angry Robot, especially Etan Ilfeld, who sent me a near-Christmas message asking if The Light Years was still available; Gemma Creffield, who held my hand every step of the way; Kwaku Osei-Afrifa, who read the thing when it was ugly and helped me make it better; copyeditor Amanda Rutter; Head Robot Eleanor Teasdale, and Francesca Corsini who designed the cover.
This is where I acknowledge and thank you, the Reader. This book would exist without you, but it would be sad and unread.
It takes more people to make a writer than it does to make a book. My mother and father, Marion and John Greene, through referrals, endless repetitions of The Poky Little Puppy, and rides to the library made reading as fundamental to me as oxygen. I have been gifted with grand mentors – Merle Drown, Katherine Towler, Craig Childs, Elaine Isaak, and James Patrick Kelly, to name a few – and I’ve shared the road with the best possible fellow travelers: Robin Small, John Murphy, Iain Young and E.C. Ambrose, all of the Bigfoot Appreciation Society.
Fortunately, there are many synonyms for the word “thanks,” and I can offer my appreciation to my beta readers Dan Brian and Ala Yamout, as well as to the New Hampshire Writers’ Project, Omar Saif Ghobash for his book Letters to a Young Muslim, and to OmniCalculator.com.
Lastly, to Brenda Noiseux, who has built a life with me that has room for our creativity to flourish and tangle together like puppies: I love you, and I thank you. We should get married.
(If I have forgotten to thank you, I am sorry. My thanks to you, whoever you may be.)
Enjoy sci-fi space adventure?
Take a look at the first chapter of
The Bayern Agenda by Dan Moren
Out now from Angry Robot Books
CHAPTER 1
Loitering was an art form.
Especially when one was loitering with purpose. Simon Kovalic’s gray eyes cast over the shelves with just the right mix of interest and vacancy. Not so bored that somebody would want to engage him in conversation, and not so interested that he missed what was going on around him.
He took in the antique shop in a glance, eyeing the few other customers on this frigid false night. Regulars, most of them, he guessed, with a sprinkling of tourists from elsewhere in the Illyrican Empire. Though why anybody would voluntarily choose to visit Sevastapol he had little idea; it wasn’t as if he would be here if it weren’t for the job. But he went where the Commonwealth told him to go, even if it meant going deep into enemy territory to a moon where even the nice parts didn’t get far above freezing for much of the year.
Still, humanity – or the Illyrican portion of it, at least – had decided this rock was worth colonizing. Mineral deposits were one reason, but when it came right down to it Kovalic was pretty sure that they’d done it just because they could. Even in their pre-Imperial days, the Illyricans had felt they’d had something to prove, and what better way to do so than to tame a wild planetoid to their whims. It didn’t really matter that it was a barren, snowy rock; it had a breathable atmosphere and temperatures that were within the habitable range – if only barely.
Through the thick, insulated windows Kovalic could see the snow hurling down outside. Blizzards were all too common on Sevastapol, and they were brutal and unforgiving; there were more deaths from exposure than almost anything else. Weather-related accidents were a close second.
Inside, however, it was perfectly comfortable; tapped geothermal pockets provided efficient heating for much of the populace. Kovalic had unwound his scarf and unzipped the parka he was wearing, stowing his balaclava and gloves in one of the coat’s voluminous pockets. He raised his arm, the motion splashing a colorful display across the fabric which included the local time. Orbiting a gas giant gave Sevastapol an irregular day/night pattern; they were in false night, the sun itself down, but the light never quite extinguished as it reflected off the huge mottled planet that dominated the sky.
“’Scuse me,” said a gruff voice, as a compact figure brushed past him.
“Not at all,” said Kovalic.
The shorter man continued on, browsing a shelf of antiquated books, most with faded printed covers, others covered in moldering leather. He didn’t seem to be reading them, though – mostly just staring glumly at the shelves.
“Anything?” murmured Kovalic.
&
nbsp; “Not a thing, boss,” said Tapper. “Quiet as my Aunt Mary’s funeral.”
“Wasn’t that the aunt who wasn’t actually dead?”
“Yeah, but she didn’t want anybody knowing.”
“Right. Well, stay sharp. It’s almost showtime.”
“I was born sharp.”
Kovalic coughed to cover his smile. The general consensus was that Tapper was in his sixties, but nobody was sure exactly how old he was – even Kovalic, and they went back twenty years. But, despite the hair that had long gone steel gray and a face like a worn leather boot, Kovalic would have put him up against any operative half his age.
“Any of these good?” Tapper asked, nodding at the books.
“From a reading perspective or a collector’s?”
Tapper shrugged. “Your pick.”
Kovalic scanned the titles. “Definitely some classics among them, but I don’t collect them. Ask Page.”
“I don’t get it,” said Tapper, shaking his head. “These things just take up space. You can download any text you want. Why would you want to clutter up your home with these musty old things?”
Kovalic ran his fingers over the spine of one of the books. There was something tangible about it, he supposed: a connection you got with a physical book from turning its pages, that you didn’t get from reading the same text on a screen. The idea that, for hundreds of years, the same volume had passed through the hands of countless others, linking all of them together in one continuous thread. Not that he had any intention of starting his own collection: they were a serious pain in the ass to move.
A sedate chime tinkled from the door at the front of the shop. He checked his sleeve again; it was just about time.
He nodded to Tapper. “Go mingle.”
“Aye aye,” said the shorter man, drifting off towards another corner of the shop.
Kovalic returned to perusing the shelves, taking his time before casually turning around to survey the display behind him. That gave him a chance to study the front of the shop and its occupants. Besides the shopkeeper – a tall, thin man, with tufts of gray hair that looked like they’d been glued on – there were a few other men and women scanning the shelves with the hungry looks of collectors searching for a find, and a couple who were poking about in the furniture section of the shop, wearing bright new parkas and exclaiming about each new item. Those would be the tourists.
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