by Chloe Garner
“Why don’t you give them money to start with?” Olivia asked.
“We just jumped in the midst of a massive power outage at Minan Gartal,” Cassie said, “and I’m not sure that’s enough to keep Kron and his family from eventually ending up here. If there’s a financial trail that starts at me, they’ll be here even sooner. Need to start cold. There isn’t another option.”
Olivia seemed unhappy with this.
Alk was stoic.
“We will be fine,” she said. “Gana need very little.”
“I am the Goddess of the Gana,” Oma said. “I am in exile, for now, and I see no dishonor in living like it.”
Cassie drew a breath.
“I’m afraid I don’t really know enough else about Xhrak-ni to help you. I’m going to get us out of here, so we leave the smallest path possible.” She nodded to Alk and then Oma. “I don’t think we will come back. But we wish you luck and courage.”
Troy looked around the empty city again.
It was just going to be the two of them for years, maybe decades. Maybe more. Oma was used to it, but he felt for Alk.
“Wait,” Olivia said. “The coins.”
Cassie smiled, though Troy wasn’t sure what Olivia was talking about.
“Very insightful,” she said, reaching into a pocket somewhere and producing a handful of coins. “They aren’t useful as currency here, but they are from home. Good luck.”
Alk and Ohm bowed, and Cassie turned to Troy and Olivia.
“Obviously, I don’t have to tell you that none of this goes home with us.”
Troy nodded, and so did Olivia. Cassie acknowledged this, then took each of them by an arm.
“Let’s get you two back.”
*********
The jolt was unfamiliar, rude, compared to jumping around Gana, but it matched the description Troy had always heard. There was something psychologically satisfying to it, knowing that something had happened, rather than simply being in a new space with nothing changed at all.
The portal room floor was alien to him, despite the thousands of hours he’d spent here, full of humans, full of cargo, full of activity that was so different from Minan Gartal. Such a big, white box. Why had they painted the entire thing white?
“There are going to be people who want to debrief you,” Cassie said, escorting them off the portal room floor carefully. They had to be careful here, he remembered. The lasso of space around any particular piece of cargo about to be sent out could include large swaths of unused space around it, and things were coming in all the time. “Don’t talk to them about anything. Refer them to me. That simple. Okay? You can go home, or you can go back to work, it doesn’t matter to me.”
“I don’t have a job any more,” Troy said. “Other than keeping you in line.”
“You feeling confident about that?” Cassie asked playfully, then winked. “I’ve got some stuff to do. Probably won’t be in touch very much for at least a few days. Talk soon.”
And with that she was off, moving through guards and portal room workers like she wasn’t there at all. Troy swallowed and looked at Olivia. And then his watch.
“You want to go get lunch?”
She covered her face with her hands, pushing her hair off of her forehead, then shook her head.
“Yes, okay. I don’t know.”
“I’m going to take that for a yes,” Troy said. “You have a change of clothes here?”
She nodded.
“Go put on some normal clothes, then let’s go find a place to talk.”
*********
They ended up at one of his favorite Tex-Mex restaurants with two baskets of chips in front of them and sodas in giant red glasses. There was something so comforting about the familiarity of it, and at the same time entirely foreign. Like he didn’t really know if he trusted himself to know how things would taste.
“So,” he said.
“So,” she agreed.
“I get the feeling you don’t want to do that again,” he said. She looked at him, her tongue between her lips, thinking.
“And I get the feeling that you can’t live without doing that again, if you have any option at all.”
He shrugged. She nodded.
“Troy…”
“Look, that doesn’t have to be a bad thing, right? It’s a few days or a few weeks at a time.”
“You think we can keep going,” she said. He frowned.
“Why couldn’t we?”
“Look me in the eye and tell me that there’s nothing between you and Cassie.”
He opened his mouth. Found the words were missing.
“I thought you liked her. She and I are just friends.”
“Tell me there’s nothing between you,” Olivia said.
He was going to. He really was.
And then he remembered.
He’d never told her.
He’d meant to.
Hadn’t he?
It was hard to think about, let alone remember the specific thoughts he’d had. Somehow he’d ended up in Chicago, and it never came up, and then he didn’t think about it again.
Only he had. He thought about it a lot, he just didn’t let himself catch himself thinking about it.
“There is, isn’t there?” Olivia asked. She didn’t sound angry. Just in pain. Quietly.
He wasn’t that kind of a guy, was he? Sure, he wasn’t much for the real relationships, but it didn’t mean that he wasn’t capable of keeping his word.
Did it?
“There was,” he said slowly. It was awful, having this gulf of time in between, but it had to happen. He wasn’t the kind of guy who would lie. “When she first came back. I’d wanted to be with her since I was a teenager, and we slept together.”
“When she first came back,” Olivia said slowly, doing the math.
“The first time was before we were together,” Troy said, feeling like he was slowly sliding a dagger into his own stomach. “The second time was after.”
Olivia went stiff.
“When?”
“Does it matter?” he asked. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I didn’t tell you, when it first happened. I wanted to.”
“When?” she asked again.
“The week before we went to Chicago,” he said. She shook her head.
“I’ve thought a lot of things about you, Troy. But I didn’t think you’d cheat. Not even that. Not even you.”
“I didn’t either,” he said. “I don’t know how it happened.”
“Uh huh,” she said, an edge in her voice. “And would you have ever told me, if I hadn’t asked?”
He didn’t know.
“I never intended to lie to you.”
“No, you just invited her to go to Chicago with us, like nothing ever happened.”
In point of fact, Olivia had been the one to invite Cassie to Chicago, but pointing that out was worse than futile.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Nothing since then. She didn’t even know we were together, yet.”
Olivia narrowed her mouth.
“So I don’t need to hate her. Just you.”
He felt helpless.
She shook her head.
“I should have known,” she said. “It’s just what you are. You don’t have any respect for women at all, and I knew it. Everything about you screams it, and I took the risk anyway.” She shook her head harder. “We’re over. Don’t ever try to talk to me about any of this again.”
She stood and he sat, cold, alone, watching her leave.
*********
Jesse was waiting for her. That much didn’t surprise her. That he looked concerned did surprise her.
“You thought I was in danger?” she asked. “That’s charming.”
“What have you done?” he asked.
She raised an eyebrow.
“Have you been off-planet?” she asked.
“The ripples you made are going to hit everything, everywhere,” he said.
“Don’t b
e dramatic,” she said.
“You unplugged the battery from one of the gemstone cities of the universe. They’re in chaos. What did you think was going to happen?”
“They’d learn how to stand on their own feet. Burn some fossil fuels like the rest of us.”
“You had no right,” he said.
“I did what I had to do,” she said. “You couldn’t possibly know.”
“About the Goddess?” he asked. “You think you found her in two days, and in the twenty years I lived there, I managed to miss her?”
This riled Cassie some, but she didn’t let it show.
“Her name is Oma, now,” she said. “And I find it difficult to believe that you would know that she was there and just leave her.”
“Oma,” he said with disbelief. “Of course we know. The Gana didn’t know we knew, but I used to spend my afternoons sitting and talking to her. Her perspective on the universe was unique.”
“Right,” Cassie said. “I should have guessed that you would have just looked at her as a science experiment.”
Jesse stared at her.
“You really think so little of me?”
“You left her there.”
“She knew what she was agreeing to, every day of her life,” he said. “She understood.”
“Do you?” Cassie asked. “You know that Kron’s successor is the brother who impregnates her with the next gifted one?”
Jesse looked away.
“That hadn’t started, yet, when we were there.”
“That makes it so much better,” Cassie said. “Three aspirational young Gana men in a sperm competition. Dirty, quick, and in secret. And you left her to that. She’s been pregnant for a substantial fraction of her adult life, because of that. Always churning out the next member of next generation’s servant class.”
“You’re only looking at it from one side,” Jesse said.
“There is only one side,” Cassie said darkly.
“She supplied power to a city of millions,” Jesse said. “This has been their tradition going back thousands of years. People are going to die because of what you did.”
“Two of her sisters helped me,” Cassie said. She watched that hit home. Traditions weren’t anywhere near as good a smokescreen when the people who believed in them most didn’t think they were worth the sacrifice. She nodded slowly.
“You still indirectly caused a huge number of deaths, and it’s going to continue to grow,” he told her.
“Because they hooked up a small Gana child to a table and stuck power cords in her chest. Told her it was her duty. You’re a monster.”
“Did you think about what would happen to all of the people in Minan Gartal?” he asked. She shook her head. It was simple truth. She didn’t care.
“So human,” he said. She raised an eyebrow and he shook his head at her.
“You may have a Palta brain and a Palta body, but you’ve got human all through you.”
“If that means I’m able to do something that someone should have done millennia ago, I’ll take it as a compliment.”
He sighed.
“What are you going to do now?”
“Out on another jump,” she said. “I’m not staying here any longer than I need to.”
She saw the word ‘need’ trigger him, creating questions he wouldn’t ask. He knew better. She wouldn’t answer them.
“Where did you take her?” he asked finally. She shook her head.
“Someplace where no one will ever find her.”
“Poor girl,” he said.
“Free girl,” Cassie answered, then brushed past him into her apartment.
*********
He went home, feeling numb. He’d paid for the drinks and the food and excused himself, feeling ashamed when the waiter didn’t know what to do with their lunch order. He’d never had a woman walk out on him like that, not angry or upset like Olivia had been. He’d always believed he was a good guy.
Apparently that wasn’t really true, he told himself.
Driving felt weird. Riding the elevator up to his apartment felt weirder.
Opening the door and finding Jesse eating ice cream out of the tub was somehow devastatingly familiar.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. “Shouldn’t you be at work?”
“I could ask you the same question,” Jesse said around a mouthful of ice cream.
“I was at work,” Troy said. “Now I’m done for the day.”
“Your boss sounds like a pussy cat,” Jesse said.
“What do you want, Jesse?” Troy asked, feeling tired.
“I want to know what happened,” he said. Troy shrugged.
“Ask Cassie.”
“I’m asking you.”
“And she told me not to talk to anyone.”
Jesse went and threw himself onto the couch.
“You think she meant me?”
“Don’t really care right now,” Troy said. “I’m a little worn out.”
Jesse sat forward.
“Oh. Ah. I’m sorry to hear that.”
Troy didn’t want to ask, but he had to, just to move past it.
“Hear what?”
“That you and Olivia are done,” Jesse said. “You were happy while you were with her.”
“And now I’m not,” Troy said, getting a bottle of whiskey out of the cabinet. It just felt calming to have it in his hand. “Are we done?”
Jesse blinked at him for a moment.
“Conrad was surprised when he showed up for work and you weren’t here,” he finally said.
“Dammit,” Troy said. He’d forgotten about the recruit. Why was life so damned complicated?
“They’re giving him a hard time, pushing him from both sides like they are,” Jesse said. “He needs an ally.”
“I know that,” Troy growled. “What do you expect me to do about it?”
It wasn’t the right question, but it was the only one he had right now.
“I expect you to do what you’re trained to do and what you’re personally conditioned to do,” Jesse said. “I know jumps are big and political and complicated, but don’t lose sight of what’s going on here. You may not be running a lab any more, but you still have a stake in what happens on base and to the rest of the world.”
“What’s the rest of the world got to do with it?” Troy asked. Jesse shrugged, and Troy frowned at him. “What do you know, Palta?”
“We’ve had this conversation,” Jesse said. “You need to work it through with Conrad. If I’m involved, I’m compromised.”
“Makes no sense,” Troy muttered, taking a swig out of the bottle. Okay, so maybe he hadn’t intended to drink any of it, but he already had it out, and if there was a time for it, this had to be it.
“You can do this, Troy. You can handle this. I don’t know many humans who could, but you can. You’ve just got to keep it together.”
“I suppose any Palta off the street would be on top of it,” Troy muttered into his whiskey.
“You’d think so, but it doesn’t look like it,” Jesse said. Troy frowned at him and Jesse shrugged. “You aren’t the only one with girl problems, mate.”
“You’ve got a girlfriend?” Troy asked. It was a dumb question, coming out of his mouth, but he was too numb and too cold and too tired to stop it before the words came. Jesse grinned.
“Not even close. Do what you’ve gotta do today, but don’t let the time get away from you too bad. Important stuff going on. Right?”
“Right,” Troy said. It seemed to do the trick. Jesse stood and left, leaving Troy to sit on the couch by himself with his bottle and feel sorry for himself.
There was a stab of anger when he realized that Jesse had walked out with the entire carton of ice cream.
“Bastard,” he muttered. Someone knocked on the door.
“Better bring it back,” he said, getting up. He opened the door, ready to give Jesse a piece of his mind about being in Troy’s apartment uninvited and eating al
l of the ice cream, but Conrad was there instead. The young man ducked his head.
“Sorry. I should have called, but I didn’t really know I was coming here until I got into the car and started driving.”
Suddenly Troy was cold sober and not feeling sorry for himself anymore.
He had work to do.
“Come in,” he said. “I’d offer you some, but you’re on the clock, and it’s bad form, anyway. Let me put this away and we’ll talk.”
“I know you just got back,” Conrad said as he went to sit on the couch. “No one will tell me how you ended up getting clearance to do jumps.”
“Long story,” Troy said. “I’ll tell you, if we have time. When do you need to get back?”
“Pretty soon,” Conrad said. “I’ve got a meeting at three. Your phone broke last time, didn’t it…?”
“Oh, I got it fixed,” Troy said, taking his phone out of his pocket and putting it on the counter. “It isn’t bothering me anymore.”
Conrad nodded, taking out his own phone and attaching the blocking device to it.
Troy nodded, going to sit in the armchair.
“I’m sorry I lost track of you,” he said. “I’d give you the list of excuses, but none of them matter to you. It seems like there couldn’t possibly be anything more important going on, and I get that.”
“No, man, you got an opportunity to see the other side,” Conrad said. “I’m not going to hold that against anybody.”
“No, that’s not okay,” Troy said. “You are taking a huge risk, professionally and possibly personally, and I just left without telling you anything. You don’t owe me any understanding at all. I’ll do better.”
Conrad grinned.
“You’re a good guy. Don’t worry about it so much. I’ve just been going through my first few weeks of getting situated. No one expects me to be able to find the bathroom right now, much less access important secrets.”