Sundowner

by Claremont, Chris

  The special effects took Nicole’s breath away, she didn’t mind admitting that in the slightest—albeit only to herself—as Hobby’s amplified voice once more filled the room.

  “I bid you welcome,” he announced formally but with a smile, tone and manner intended to ease the residual tension among the crowd. He wore a terrific costume, the shape of his body defined exclusively by the same fiery salamander streamers that had romped earlier across the sky. They never let the audience get a decent, definitive picture of the man; instead, they cast him in a succession of highlights, all keyed to make him look as impressively godlike as possible.

  Worked, too.

  He wore a crown and staff as well, an ebony Zeus presenting himself to his mortal congregation.

  He wasn’t alone, either. Another figure had materialized from the background shadows to stand a step behind him and to the side, an appearance that prompted a collective gasp from the gathering.

  “Ch’ghan,” Nicole heard Hana breathe, and she nodded acknowledgment. She’d never seen the Hal in full formal regalia, only the attire they’d adapted for use on Earth. She hadn’t realized he stood so high in Shavrin’s Household. He wore many of the same insignia as Kymri and carried a baton, she noted, topped with a rubylike gem that seemed to carry a miniature star within its depths.

  Not quite the real thing, she thought, fingers going to the stud in her right ear to lightly touch the silver chased shard of crystal hung there. It was a fireheart, a jewel as prized by the Hal as it was rare, in no small measure because of its unique properties of luminescence. A virgin crystal would imprint itself on a simpatico wearer, that person’s natural electrical field setting up a resonance within the gem that in turn sparked a unique radiant glow. The bond, once forged, could be broken only by death and never be transferred.

  For Ch’ghan to carry a facsimile on his baton meant he had a true crystal at home, a mark of singular status that moved him up a few notches more in Nicole’s estimation.

  “Since time immemorial,” Hobby was saying, “it has been the special province of Ship’s Masters to mark the passage of their vessels. On the sea, those signal moments were the crossing of the Terrestrial equator and of the one hundred eightieth meridian, what’s referred to as the International Date Line. The details evolve, the tradition remains. Aboard this new, proud spacecraft, we sail an ocean of wild energy. And the boundaries we cross are those between the stars.

  “Our gathering tonight is to celebrate that moment, and invest those among us who are making their maiden voyage into the not terribly ancient but nonetheless sacred Order of the Phoenix.”

  “This,” grumbled Amy, “is ridiculous.”

  Nicole gave her a look, and the young woman responded with an exaggerated face of resigned tolerance. Her act said she wasn’t about to put up with such foolishness, but she quieted down and stayed put. She’d gotten Nicole’s message.

  “Let the Lesser Host come forth,” Hobby boomed on, like something out of a biblical epic, “that they may bring before Us those who crave admittance to this most august assemblage.”

  On which cue, matters began to turn decidedly, gloriously silly.

  Before the echo of the Captain’s voice had faded, the audience discovered what had happened to the kids, as hidden doors burst wide to admit a shrieking, howling, deliriously madcap horde. Picture “Never-Never Land” gone coed, everyone done up in rags and war paint, romping through a crowd of grown-ups who still weren’t sure how to react. The kids were carrying sparkler sticks and every so often somebody would point theirs at the ceiling and pull the trigger. There was a pop and an initial modest spray of sparks. But a moment later came a vastly more impressive sequence of secondary explosions overhead that went on and on, one triggering another seemingly spontaneously, in a cascading fireworks display of breathtaking color and variety. The audio system added to the splendid artifice, conveying the force of the multiple reports as well as the raw noise. Nicole knew it was all a projection but found herself swept up in the illusion regardless; moreover, she found she didn’t care. Even Amy, beside her, found it impossible to hold on to her usual air of jaded ennui. The girl let fly with some whoops of her own and a couple of cheers besides after a particularly stellar sequence.

  As Hobby proceeded to call the roll of those to be inducted—that is, those making their first journey out of the Solar System—the Lesser Host scampered to collect each and every one and usher them, none too decorously, up to the dais.

  Hana elbowed Nicole—none too gently—in the ribs and pointed towards the walls, where more of the crew had made their entrance, in costumes of their own. Nicole crowed her own delight and the two of them began comparing notes, giddy as the schoolchildren, in an attempt to catalogue all the various creatures who were gathering around them. It was like attending a cast reunion of every space opera that had ever been filmed; the most cursory glance tagged Imperial Storm Troopers, a Cylon, Klingons and Metalunans, somebody Nicole tried to place but couldn’t looking altogether bemused in pajamas and a bathrobe with a towel draped over his head, plus a score of wildly baroque creations that had to come from Japanese animation. Hana amazed even herself at how easily she named the lot. A couple of robotic types that most resembled upside-down trash cans with a gun barrel sticking out their domed lids roamed through the crowd, electronic voder voices ominously intoning, “Exterminate, exterminate,” but no one appeared to take the threat seriously.

  In hardly any time at all, Nicole was laughing so hard she ached, and her eyes were blurry with tears.

  “Do you believe this?” she cried to her companions, voice hoarse from projecting over the background hubbub.

  “Outstanding!” was the reply.

  “You guys are so easy,” muttered Amy, who defiantly refused to be swept up in any more fun, after her initial lapse during the fireworks.

  “A cross we’re glad to bear, Ms. Cobri,” responded Jenny.

  “I’ve worn a blue suit nearly ten years,” Nicole said, “I never heard a whisper about anything like this. Not at the Academy, not at Da Vinci, not at Edwards, not anywhere, from anyone! How the hell could they keep this a secret?”

  “Some secrets are worth keeping, I guess. Check it out at your ten o’clock, Ace, looks like Ramsey Sheridan’s number’s up.”

  A child grabbed each of the Colonel’s arms, while a third gave him a hearty shove in the backside to get him moving—Sheridan stumbled, off-guard and off-balance, and only some fancy footwork kept him from sprawling full length on the floor. Nicole heard a snort of amusement from Amy, which figured, and hoped wickedly to see what happened to the girl when it was her turn.

  The kids danced around Sheridan as he was ushered to the dais, wrapping him in strands of glittery rope before prostrating him at Hobby’s feet.

  “How is this supplicant named?” the Captain asked, and Nicole struggled to keep her face appropriately straight.

  “Ramsey Sheridan,” piped one of his escort.

  “Why hast thou come before us, base creature? Dost crave admittance to this most sacred and august company?”

  She couldn’t hear his reply, since he wasn’t amplified, but assumed he said yes.

  “Hast thou the courage to slip free of the bonds of Earth and cast flesh and heart and soul before the cosmic winds. To blaze new trails and brave new worlds with an open mind and open hand?”

  And after presumably another affirmative response: “Wilt pledge to keep to thyself all that thou hast seen and heard this night, as one of the Fellowship of the Phoenix?”

  She saw him nod.

  “Then arise, and stand before us.”

  There was a scattering of applause, led by those who knew Sheridan best. Nicole offered a cheery whistle, a bad attempt at what her father did so well whenever he needed to hail a taxi. She took a big gulp of air afterward, to mostly catch her breath, and caught a strong gust of tangy cinnamon in the process. Almost immediately, there was a protesting yelp from Amy as Raqella spun
her from the safety of the crowd, dancing her towards the dais while a couple of youngsters scampered under his arms to wrap the rope around her body.

  Nicole shook her head. Raqella had been working hard, just like the kids, sheer exertion and the excitement of the moment had made his scent especially pungent.

  Another salvo of fireworks, no brighter than before yet suddenly Nicole found the light so intense it hurt. Closing her eyes was no help, the awful radiance seemed to burn through the skin of her eyelids. Imagination took her out of herself, cast her back through memory to the Wanderer gunship. Paolo DaCuhna was sitting left seat, as pilot; Cat Garcia sat beside him, with Chagay Shomron behind. They’d just detonated an antimatter warhead, sacrificing their own lives in a desperately improvised attempt to save Wanderer. It all happened so fast, but in space even the minimal distances were so vast there was a perceptible passage of time between act and consequence. They saw their success, and knew what it meant, watching death come to claim them.

  Cat had flown starships, Paolo never got the chance.

  “Yo, Ace,” Hana said quietly in Nicole’s ear.

  Nicole blinked, a veil of confusion shading her features as she sought visibly to reorient herself and make proper sense of the world about her. She blinked again, a couple of more times, each one marking the restoration of a little more of herself to her expression. She tried to say something, but couldn’t manage. Her skull was crammed to bursting with words; it was simply that she couldn’t manage to shape them in coherent sounds.

  She let her breath out in a deliberately heavy sigh. She knew she was awake, but she felt as though she’d just been roused from a fitful slumber, where her body was roaming about almost completely disengaged from her conscious mind. Her head felt logy, synapses firing through cushions of cotton wool that disrupted some circuits and slowed down them all.

  “The skipper just called your name, Nicole,” Hana continued, as though nothing whatsoever was wrong. “Time to get humiliated like the rest of us. It’s no big deal,” she continued, seeing Nicole’s hesitation, “whatever he asks, you answer enthusiastically in the affirmative. Just watch out for the kids with the cream pies.”

  “Terriffic.”

  “You’ll love it. Go!”

  The children had found them by then, a quartet descending on Nicole with their ropes to drag her before Captain Hobby and Ch’ghan. Their eyes met—hers and the elder Hal’s—for the briefest of moments before the Lesser Host sent her sprawling (in a pratfall that looked far more serious than it actually was) at the foot of the dais.

  His expression shook her. Partly because it seemed so much at odds with the celebratory nature of the evening. But mostly, she realized, even while she responded appropriately to Hobby’s inquisition and took the initiation itself in great good humor, because it was directed right at her. At first, she’d thought it was sadness, though she couldn’t imagine why. But as she considered further, as his scent mixed with the residue of Raqella’s, the combination somehow opening doorways in her brain to resonances and associations that were as strange as they were comfortable, the more certain she became that it was far more.

  Not simply sadness, but sorrow.

  As though for the dead.

  “Why are you doing this to me?” Nicole asked of Hana a little later, stepping from the shower and wishing for a robe, shivering slightly with a chill that had nothing to do with being cold.

  Hana stood with her back to Nicole, buttoning a high-collared blouse of peacock silk, whose rich cobalt matched the blue of her eyes.

  “I would have come a lot sooner,” she said, “if the damn job hadn’t kept me so much on the road.” She pulled on a pair of pleated trousers, black wool, an elegant complement to her shirt. “To be honest, I’d have chucked the job—considered it more than once, y’know—if I thought it would have made a difference.” Now, she looked up at Nicole, from where she sat on the end of the bed. Nicole had her back to the wall by the bathroom, towel clutched about her like a coat of chain mail.

  “That’s a nice outfit,” Nicole said finally.

  “It’s what everyone sees as your style. That’s why I figured I’d find you something else.”

  Nicole fingered the dress laid out on the bed.

  “This?” she asked.

  “What’s the matter? You worried about what folks’ll think, or is it that you don’t want to break the mold, even a little?”

  “Get off my case, Hana.”

  Nicole grabbed at the clothes but found, once she had them, that she couldn’t seem to decide what to do next, and ended up folding helplessly to a seat on the bed, around the corner—at right angles, back to back—from her friend. There was a meter between them. It might as well have been a mile.

  “A starship came for me,” Hana said finally when the silence became intolerable.

  “What?”

  “You heard. Dropped down off the plane of the ecliptic from half a light out, to a perfect rendezvous. No mean feat, I’ll tell you, with us on final approach to Saturn. They matched trajectory and orbit, exchanged a replacement mission specialist for me, then bounced through another point-to-point trip back to the Moon. I wasn’t even given time to visit our flat before I was sent on my way to Sutherland.” She chuckled with the memory. “It was a longer flight by shuttle down the well from the Moon to Sutherland than from Saturn to the Moon. And when I walked through the door of that briefing room, I was wearing literally everything I had with me. Fortunately”—and she waved a hand to indicate both what she wore and what Nicole was uncomfortably holding—“the Constitution here has a more than respectable rental outlet; they were able to supply what I needed.”

  “Canfield,” Nicole said flatly. “She brought you back.”

  “Nobody said. But she certainly has the juice. And, foolishly, I suspect, she cares about you.”

  Nicole twisted to face Hana. “I didn’t ask for that.”

  “Nope. Defiantly solo, if it kills you. No matter that such an attitude goes against everything we stand for out here, everything you—as a blue suit—are supposed to believe.”

  Nicole wanted to answer, but nothing came save another awkward silence.

  She plucked at the skirt she held and said, “I can’t wear this.”

  Hana, putting on her makeup, was clearly out of patience and didn’t bother hiding it. “Fine,” she said with some asperity, “go naked. Wear your damn flight suit, if that’s what makes you happy, I don’t care. Just get off your ass.”

  “What the hell’s the matter with you?”

  “Wrong question. What the hell is the matter with you? You like playing the hermit, be my guest. But it takes two to be friends, and I’m tired of doing all the work.”

  “I never meant... ”

  “Nicole, I don’t want to hear it. I want to go dancing. I want you to come with me. I think you’ll have fun. I know that’s a scary and alien concept, but give it a shot. Who knows, you could surprise yourself.”

  “You’ve made your point, Hana.”

  “Hey, don’t do me any favors.”

  “I’ve never worn anything like this in my life.”

  “You’re an astronaut, you’re supposed to be open to new experiences.”

  Slix went on first. They were a little more than tights, a little less than pants, that fit as snugly as a second skin, creating the illusion of bare skin while remaining thankfully opaque—ideal fashion wear for zero gravity. Nicole was thankful the material was heavy enough that she didn’t have to worry about tearing holes in it.

  “Here,” Hana said, as Nicole smoothed the Slix along her legs and over her backside, “I’ll give you a hand. The top’s pretty tight, I don’t think you can manage on your own.” As she started hooking the bustier into place—ignoring the occasional odd noise from Nicole—she said, “So what’d you wear when you were growing up? Jeans, I’ll bet, and khakis, and mostly polo shirts.”

  “They had the virtue of being comfortable, what can I say?”


  “Probably spent all your time sailing or flying, right?”

  Nicole looked back over her bare shoulder. “Yeah, right,” she replied. “And how about you, cramming like a bandit since you were old enough to read to pass the entrance exams into the right junior high, and the right high school, and the right college.”

  “That’s how I started, but I broke the profile. Got myself accepted to CalTech. You’ve no idea how liberating that bunch of loonies can be.”

  “I’ve met my share, I can imagine.”

  “The first semester, I wore my Japanese school uniform, same as I would’ve at home. Nobody made fun, they accepted it as my own individual fashion aesthetic. Mind you, they took every chance they could to offer alternatives. To look and life-style. By sophomore year, I began to let myself blossom.”

  “Me, I joined the Air Force.”

  “I know. You like being told what to wear, and when, and how.”

  Nicole zipped up the tiny skirt and settled it into place around her waist.

  “Pink is not my color,” she said sourly, but that wasn’t the line Hana was looking for. “It wasn’t something that I thought much about. It didn’t mean a whole lot.”

  “Dressing up? Looking good?”

  “I wanted to be judged on my abilities, Hana, not my tits.”

  “Are the two mutually exclusive?”

  “Gimme a break! How many guys you figure we’ll see tonight wearing illuminated codpieces?”

  “In this crowd...?”

  “Okay,” Nicole conceded, “special case. Maybe a few. I guess you could say it’s an area of expertise, of”—a hesitancy now more than a real pause, as though Nicole was just considering the thought and all its implications—“competition, where I don’t feel altogether comfortable.”

  “You the best pilot in the world?”

  “No.”

  “The worst?”

  “No!”

  “But you’re good.”

  “I’m very good.”