Unconstant Love

by Timothy J Meyer

  {Thirdseed is cold}.

  “And that,” Odisseus searches for the right words as he nudges the next door open, the one that leads into the Lover's cargo hold, “fucking sucks. It just does.”

  The abovedecks doors rattle apart, revealing the shadowed expanse of The Unconstant Lover's abandoned cargo hold. Devoid of cargo, the place is stark in its emptiness. The molecular strip has been disassembled and stacked somewhere out of sight. Every click of the Ortok's claws echoes hollowly in this cavernous space.

  “Me and them,” Odisseus continues, humping the torridity unit down the companionway steps, “and everybody on the ship worked and hurt and fought really hard for that money. One of my friends,” he explains, startled at the term he uses, “died for it. And we were operating off some bad information about you and your planet–”

  The thudding of the unit against each step interrupts him, seeming to dispute his characterization of the essential facts.

  “There're lots more excuses I can make,” Odisseus realizes. “None of them make things any different or easier for you. You don't have control over what's happening to you, of where you're going right now–”

  The unit slams into the hold's teltriton floor and Odisseus swallows what was rising in his throat. “And that sucks too.”

  {Thirdseed is confused}.

  Up ahead, Odisseus can see the light that beams through the open airlock, the unhealthy yellow of Thuwo Minor's Warp Gate Junction. Mustering his strength, he strives onward, plodding reluctantly across the great faded blue digits of the Lover's registration number.

  “It's gonna seem like exactly the opposite,” Odisseus warns the seedling, lowering his voice lest he be overhead chatting with a houseplant, “but you gotta remember – he doesn't own you. You can't own people,” he states through fangs clenched against emotion. “You're very small right now but, soon, you're gonna be big and strong like the rest of your people and you're gonna be able to put him in his place. You understand?”

  The airlock yawns open and he pauses a little, certainly visible to Brondi and the rest of them. He's only able to utter one last warning before he's forced to turn and face the light that streams in from the Junction. “Don't let,” he exhorts the sapling under his breah, “what they told you when you were small make you a prisoner.”

  {Thirdseed is curious}, is the Gitter's reply and Odisseus must consider this a victory.

  Each footfall heavier than the last, Odisseus plods back aboard Thuwo Minor's Warp Gate Junction.

  There's a moment of reverent silence from all assembled when he does actually emerge, clutching the genuine potted article in his paws. Brondi and his people are particularly awed and none of them, to their credit, makes a peep – no muttering, no gawking, no spiked eyebrows. Instead, they simple stare and, as necessary, shuffle backward to make room for the Ortok and his most precious treasure.

  His own crew are a little less agog. Righty and Lefty slacken a little in Moira's grip. Flask pauses in his inspection of the steerage crates of cash to consider Odisseus. Nemo stops pretending he's not picking his nose and actually pays attention.

  To break the tension, Odisseus strides up to Garrock Brondi and plops the plant in his lap.

  No sooner has he done so than the Ortok starts to rattle off all the necessary instructions for Thirdseed's care – the correct temperature, the humidity and moisture that Thirdseed can withstand, the conditions most harmful to its health. Uncomprehending at first, Brondi silently appeals to the Lover's crew and it's Nemo, on reflex, who provides the translation.

  When he finally runs dry on pointers, Odisseus adds one final stipulation. “And it only speaks Ortoki, so. I'd invest in a fucking translator, were I you.”

  When the translation comes through, Brondi raises an eyebrow. “It speaks?”

  This is too much for Odisseus. He spins and stomps away, headed back through the airlock and into the darkened Unconstant Lover, pretending the whole time he can't smell Thirdseed's confusion or curiosity.

  Flask can't quite read the room. There's only one other person in this room – the Captain at The Unconstant Lover's helm – but Flask is still uncertain whether he should say anything and what, if anything, he's expected to say.

  Far as he can tell, this should be a happy occasion. They'd finally, finally sold the moons-damned tree, for good and for all and for more money than they'd any right to expect from anyone anymore. Now, they should be in the free and clear, nothing but a single uncomplicated warp between them and escaping this whole bloody affair.

  Yet, as Nemo unmoored from Thuwo Minor, the mood aboard the freighter was surprisingly somber. A glowering Moira, upset that the Captain's insolence cost them three million, retired to the galley, to count and distribute the money into its equal shares. A glowering Odisseus, upset about bloom-knows-what, retired to the engine room, to grumble and putter about and do whatever the Ortok actually did with all the time he spent down there.

  The Captain is glowering too, over there in the helmsman's seat. It undoubtedly has something to do with Brondi, Flask knows, and the crew's unanimous emnity towards him.

  It went without saying that Flask didn't give a hot drongo shit about Garrock Brondi. To him, Brondi was a nice enough fellow with 65 million credits burning a hole in his well-tailored pockets. By all accounts, this was precisely the right person to know in their situation and precisely the wrong person to hold an unreasonable vendetta against.

  All the same, here they were, moping and groaning and bellyaching about the mind-boggling amount of cash that was currently riding in their hold.

  The Unconstant Lover detaches from the Junction's airlock with a gentle sway to port. Flask starts to run through the pre-warp shielding protocol, a thoughtless habit by now. Nemo, meanwhile, simply stares out the viewport, piloting the Lover more on autopilot than the actual and dreaded autopilot.

  The Junction is a lumpy gray pustule stuck to the side of the Gate's graceful hoop and it slides more and more into view through the Lover's viewport as she disengages from it. Repositioning to warp far, far away, there's only one other vessel visible to the Briza and her crew – a Vbeck & Rhissol CL1 Courtesan-Class, now docked alone at Thuwo Minor's Warp Gate Junction.

  “That's Brondi's?” Nemo grunts, the first words he's uttered since they'd reboarded the ship.

  “Must be,” is Flask's curt reply.

  Simply put, the ship's a show-off. Sexy as she might appear, the only reason someone flew a flashy vessel like that, racing stripe and all, was to unambigously establish the length of their own dick. The pride of showrooms and collections galaxywide, the sleek and inefficient Courtesan was hardly the primary spaceship of Bad Space's premier smuggling kingpin. It was clearly a fashion statement, no doubt intended to wow and aggravate the Lover's crew with its ostentatious show of wealth and extravangance.

  Nemo frowns in appreciation. “Sweet ride,” he allows, his finger already pressing the torpedo launch button.

  Flask can only watch as a solitary torpedo jets from the Lover's forward-facing tube, trailing a little stream of exhaust on its unerring way to the Courtesan. Nemo doesn't bother arcing the Briza away from the coming explosion, determined to stay and watch the fireworks. Scrambling to react, Flask can't decide whether to activate ray shields, in case of flames, or bombard, in case of flying wreckage, and ultimately activates neither.

  It is a pretty spectacular explosion. A picturesque orange fireball mushrooms out, pieces of Courtesan spewing forth in every direction and narrowly missing the Lover where she idles. Some small part of Flask's heart is grieved at the destruction of something so pristine as that glossy spaceship. Considering the dangerous look on the Captain's face, he elects not to complain.

  He wonders who was aboard, whether they just nuked the very thing they'd worked so hard to steal, when Flask catches sight of figures, running frantically to the Junction's bay windows. They're nothing more than tiny black silhouettes from here but, even from here, Flask can still
see their panic at the sight of their destroyed ship. He knows they aren't stranded permanently, that someone like Garrock Brondi can summon a dozen spacecraft to retrieve him, but he can almost sense the smuggling kingpin's thwarted rage even from this distance.

  Once the smoke dissipates, there's nothing but the shorn remnants of the Courtesan's airlock, drifting harmlessly away from its mooring. His hands back on the yoke, Nemo steers the Lover away, angling her to pass through the Gate and dialing up the necessary warp coordinates. All the while, he wears a big, broad smile on his face, every trace of his foul mood faded away.

  CHAPTER 29

  Odisseus swims in his sleep.

  The open ocean is there with him again, immeasurably deep and broad. There is no promise of play this day, however. Full of youthful exuberance, Odisseus could pull a dozen aquatic acrobatics – flips, spins, dives and rolls – but he does not. This day, when he and his fellow Ortoks departed the lodge, they came with a purpose greater than food or sport.

  They embarked today in a great pod, some dozens in number. Odisseus is an anonymous Ortok among a cloud of his peers. Only a year weaned from his litterbearer, he's a new swimmer in the seas, having exhausted the lakes and rivers and capes he's known all his short life.

  On the fringes of this loose cloud swim the Ortoki adults. They're far fewer in number but each such accomplished hunters that they command instant respect and obeisance from the pod's pups. They steer them like shepherds, exactly as they herd a school of fleeing fish. Whenever a young swimmer becomes too daring or motors too far from the center of the pod, a waving paw or the lash of a tail is enough to encourage them back into formation.

  Today, however, they're headed somewhere different. Something tells the young Odisseus, ignorant to the higher mysteries of his homeworld, that it’s somewhere momentous, something the adults in his life only spoke of passingly.

  These are dark and cold waters they swim, waters farther to the north than Odisseus has ever been. The sea floor beneath falls away to a bottomless abyss, impenetrable by what little sunlight reaches them through the ice. That ice, in a crust thick enough to blot out the sky above, envelops the surface of the frigid northern sea. Only through sporadic holes, like stars poked clean through the fabric of the firmament, is any light shed down below.

  Odisseus is gazing up through one of these airholes, attempting to imagine the world atop that ice. That's when something, with a contained splash, drops down through the hole.

  At the noise and the motion, the whole pod reels in surprise, forming a wide halo around the hole and the falling object. Odisseus notes the adults, keeping their distance as the young pups squirm and swim small anxious circles at the sight of whatever fell through the ice above.

  It's surprisingly small, that figure sinking slowly towards the abyss, even smaller than any of the young Ortoks. It struggles uselessly, its pudgy limbs neither fins nor flippers and unable to gain any purchase against the water. Utterly unprepared for these arctic seas, the creature's only fur coats its head, waving black locks that seem completely pointless.

  The helpless little humanoid sinks and sinks. All the young Ortoks stare, in bafflement and confusion, as the tendrils of dark sea seem to reach up to ensnare the unfortunate child.

  There's another flash of motion as one of the Ortoks darts suddenly downward and arcs toward the drowning child, her tail pumping furiously. That much faster than the humanoid's rate of descent, the speeding Ortok has intercepted him within moments and, clutching her prize in webbed fingers, starts to ferry the terrified child back toward the surface.

  Numb and confused, Odisseus hovers there in the water, paws paddling idly, as his fellow Ortok carries the child toward the airhole above. There starts to come more splashes, Odisseus knows, from somewhere above. A storm of new and conflicting emotions has overtaken him, however, freezing him in place.

  As he watches, the water is punctured by more boys and girls, plummeting through holes in the ice amid streams of bubbles. They sink less and less now before more Ortoks, embolded by the example of the first rescuer, swoop towards the helpless children. With paws around their limbs and midsections, the agile aquatic hunters take hold of the gawky, gangly humanoids and deliver them from the watery grave that whomever, far above, would send them to.

  All but Odisseus, too frightened and overwhelmed to move, unsure what madness compelled his companions or those dropping the children from above.

  That's when another child, a squirming little boy, drops immediately past Odisseus. His shock of inky black hair, dancing on his head, is dark enough to stand out even against the stygian darkness of those shrouded seas. When they momentarily make eye contact, boy and Ortok, those silver eyes are widened as far as they go, terror etched on his youthful features.

  With feeble hands, the boy grasps for Odisseus but he's out of reach, pudgy fingers less than a foot from the Ortok's pelt. Simple as that, the boy's gone, swallowed by the all-consuming blackness below them both.

  A future then flicks past the Ortok's understanding in space of a heartbeat. He's fishing and roving the oceans and rearing pups and teaching the riddles and rhymes to a new generation of Ortok. He imagines the life he's certain to lead on his homeworld, away from the hustle and bustle of the preoccupied universe, where predators and prey and paternity will be the greatest demands on his primordial life.

  That isn't the future he chooses.

  Instead, he dives down like a streamlined torpedo, spreads his webbing to brake at speed and lays paws on the boy's sinking shoulders. Instead, he's thrashing his tail with desperation, mind filling with fear that his hesitation has already cost the stupid, hairless thing its life. Instead, these instinctive actions are branding onto his brain, forever and ever, the biological imperative that will come to define him – protect this idiot.

  Arms wrapped around that idiot's spasming chest, Odisseus makes for the airhole with all the speed his young body can lend him. The nearer and nearer he comes to that point of light above, the brighter and brighter it glows. Soon, it has wholly subsumed him and Odisseus can see nothing through his third eyelid but more blinding light, the untarnished sunlight of his homeworld.

  That's when the spike of nausea flips his stomach. The dream disintegrates and the Ortok's true eyelids open. Tangled in the sheets of his bunk, Odisseus comes back to his body as he stares at the feeble, flickering light above his quarters. Back aboard The Unconstant Lover, back in his aged body, he's decades and zottibles away from that fateful moment of decision, the one that sentenced him to a life of wandering the spacelanes.

  The flickering lights and the rumbling beneath the deckplates tell Odisseus everything he needs to know. The Unconstant Lover's running through her warp exiting procedures and, in mere moments, she'll drop into orbit above the next planet on their idler's course. Following Nemo's very necessary destruction of Garrock Brondi's ship, they'd made quick and chaotic tracks across the sector, hoping to confuse the bounty hunters he'd inevitably sent after them.

  With a few frustrated kicks, Odisseus frees his feet from the blankets and brushes away the scattered pieces of the recirculator loop he was tinkering with before he dozed off. The dust of his dream still lingering in his eyes, it's a groggy, grumpy and therefore extremely dangerous Odisseus that stalks from his suddenly spacious quarters, empty of all Thirdseed's apparatus.

  Instinct steers him down the corridor and into the helm, even though that's precisely where he'll meet the one person he doesn't really wish to meet right now.

  It's a mildly surprising scene the Ortok chances upon inside the Lover's helm. He discovers not only pilot and co-pilot, installed at their seats, but even the ship's first mate, her elbows propped against the back of the navigator's chair. All three gaze out the viewport at the rapidly approaching planet.

  Smallish on the planetary scale, the world that grows in the Lover's viewport is crusted completely with storm clouds. From orbit, they're peaceful enough white fluff but Odisseus knows th
ey contain a year's supply of rain for the planet's miserable inhabitants. This is Rhav, Odisseus remembers, the first Offchart world on their upcoming tour of that sparsely-visited region, an unimportant backwater among unimportant backwaters.

  “It's not the scramble codifier I don't trust,” Moira is arguing, a little more companionably than Odisseus can remember her being. “There's no reason to check the idents of every tramp freighter what touches down here.”

  “Your point being?” dangles Nemo.

  “You're what I don't trust,” asserts Moira casually. “It's not gonna be the inbred mouthbreather in the control tower that makes us. It's gonna be you, shooting your mouth off in the first watering hole within pissing distance of the docking bay.”

  “That assertion,” huffs Nemo, puffing up his chest a little, “is entirely unfair and entirely accurate.”

  “We're touching down?” wonders Odisseus from the doorway, officially announcing his presence to the room. “We're staying?”

  “For a minute,” Nemo confirms, a little reluctantly.

  “Gotta circle the wagons,” Moira explains, turning to glance backward at the Ortok. “Sketch out some next steps.”

  “Next steps?” Odisseus wonders and, to this, Moira only offers a commiserating shrug and a matching roll of the eyes.

  “You?” Nemo poses towards Flask, splaying ray shields across the Lover's bow, in preparation for her entry into Rhav's atmosphere. “You stepping off too?”

  The Captain's cousin scowls to be addressed. “Hadn't planned to,” he ventures skeptically.

  “Could you?” Moira volunteers for him. “Need somebody to go to ground, see if we can't rustle up some halfways believeable scramble codifiers. This place's a boondock but still – oughta be able to scrounge up something, I expect.”