“Jules, I’m so sorry.”
Zenn had met only one or two others who’d lost anyone on a hijacked Indra-drive ship. The ships had been disappearing periodically for two decades, leaving no trace or any indication of the cause. Lately, the frequency of these events had increased alarmingly. It was getting bad enough to start threatening communications and trade with some of the outlying planets of the Accord.
“Yes, the vanishing of Indra-type spaceships in our Local Accord is a serious and growing dilemma. And yet, all investigations have produced to date no hope of a resolution.”
“I know. But people are trying,” Zenn said. “My mother, Mai, was actually working on the Indra problem when she… when she was lost. She specialized in treating Indra.”
“I am saddened to hear of her passing. When was this terrible event?”
“Four Mars years ago. Almost eight Earth years. I was only nine. I don’t remember all of it. No.” She stopped herself. “I do remember. I just don’t want to.”
“Then we will not speak of it.”
“So,” she said then, more than willing to change the subject. “By First Promised, you mean promised as in marriage, to have a family, that kind of ‘promised’?”
“A family? No, I think not. But as in marriage and lifemate, yes. Inga was scheduled to be my first wife, you see.” He stepped over to the bowl of fruit and began unwrapping bits of dried fish. He popped several into his mouth, swallowing them whole. “The first is the most important of the wives that will follow. It makes the most sense.”
“I’m sure it does,” Zenn told him, determined not to be judgmental about cetacean mating customs.
“So you see it concerns me intensely that I find her.”
“Of course. But, Jules, do you have any information to go on? The missing ships – they just disappear. No real leads have been found about the cause. Do you have some reason to think you’ll learn where she is when you get to Mu Arae?”
“No. No good reason, actually.” Another morsel of fish. “It is the one clue I possess, however. There seems to be no other place that makes the most sense to go looking. Where would you look?”
He appeared genuinely interested in her opinion on the matter, which made Zenn feel even sorrier for him.
“No, I’m sure you’re doing the right thing. It just seems… It must be very difficult for you.”
“It is difficult. She is an outstanding mate prospect, and we became very good friends before she went on her voyage. She overlooks my wearing of the walksuit and going about on land, which others of my kind criticize me for. But I belabor my own problems, which is rude behavior, isn’t it? I will speak of something else.” He looked around the room, as if he might spot something that would suggest another topic of conversation. The last piece of fish disappeared into his smiling face with a clack of his jaws.
“This Skirni, the one you followed here,” he said. “You saw in your dream-sight that he was with your father? And you believe your father could also be aboard this ship?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. At first, Dad was in his office, I think, on Enchara, in the… dream-sight. And then he was in some room with medical equipment.”
“But what of this Liam Tucker person? He is helping to locate your father?”
“Not really. Liam has his own reasons for wanting to get off Mars. It’s kind of a long story.”
“Are you thinking of finding this Liam? Could he help in your searching?”
“Well, yes, I’d like to find him. I mean, yes, he has tried to help me before. And I can use all the help I can get if I’m going to track down my dad.”
“I have a concept to aid in your searching,” Jules said. “I will put a tail on the Skirni.”
“A tail?”
“It is an expression of craft in certain of the antique printed-on-paper-novels involving criminals and those who detect clues in order to apprehend them. I will follow the Skirni surreptitiously to gather information about his activities. I will then make my report to you. Yes! It will be our case together.”
“Our case…” Zenn was a little dubious about the cetacean’s childlike enthusiasm for what, to her, was very serious business.
“Why not? Tailing and reporting the accumulated clues form the basis for almost all successful mysterious adventures of this variety. It seems the best way until we come upon some better solution. Now…” He lifted a bunch of bananas from the fruit bowl, looked underneath, but found no more fish. “I am exceptionally hungry.” His attention had shifted abruptly once more – a trait Zenn thought she should probably get used to. “The food on this ship is quite adequate. And in main dining areas they do not ration the amount one consumes. Are you hungry as well?”
Zenn realized that she was, in fact, famished. Deciding it was best she remain in the cabin, Jules hurried out into the corridor and Zenn found herself alone with the sleeping Katie.
She went into her bedroom amid the sudden silence, which was then broken by a faint chiming tone that sounded from a hidden speaker somewhere in the cabin, followed by a bland female voice.
“Greetings to our recently arrived guests, and welcome aboard the LSA LumiLiner Helen of Troy,” the voice intoned. “The ship is commencing orbital exit maneuvers. We will soon be departing Mars and Sol Sys space for Sigmund’s Parch, Luveern Transfer Hub, Enchara and Fomalhaut, with connecting services to Mu Arae, the Moons of Altair and the Outer Reaches. Our estimated transit time to the Sol space tunneling coordinates is two standard days, seven hours. Thank you for traveling with LumiLiner, and please have a pleasant voyage.” The message then began to repeat, first in the hissing, sibilant sounds of Alcyoni, then in the low, melodic tones Zenn recognized as the language of the Zeta Reticulans.
So, this was it. She was really leaving. For the first time, she was now truly on her own, beyond the reach or assistance of anyone back on Mars.
She sat on the bunk to think. There was still the problem of letting Otha know where she was. What would he say? What would he do? And Liam. Was he looking for her? Was he even still aboard? A sinking hollowness opened deep inside her. But at the thought of her father, helpless, imprisoned, maybe hurt, she stood up again, her entire body electric with fury and resolve. Yes, she was on her own. And whatever happened from now on was up to her and her alone.
She went to the cabin door, hesitated just long enough to wrap her scarf around her head and lower face, took a deep breath, and stepped up to the door. Looking back to see that Katie was still asleep, she quietly asked the door to open, leaned out into the passageway and checked both directions. No one. When she had followed Jules to his cabin earlier, they’d passed a viewport just down the corridor. Deciding that one last look at Mars didn’t necessarily mean she was already homesick, she hurried down the passage.
The perfect disc of Mars hung suspended in the circular, floor-to-ceiling viewing window, a majestic expanse of browns and rusty reds rotating slowly far below. Gauzy white clouds trailed from the higher volcanoes like ragged pennants. Here and there, thin lines of green zigzagged through the barren wastes – pressurized valleys where the colonists maintained their fragile toehold on the planet. Zenn scanned the surface, trying to get her bearings and locate her home valley and Arsia City.
Something moved into view from one edge of the scene outside – a ferry, dropping away from the starship. Zenn assumed it was the one that had brought her, Katie, Liam and the sandhog up from the surface. Glinting in the stark sunlight, the little craft emitted a silent burst from its thrusters and fell toward the planet. Zenn watched the ferry grow smaller and smaller before it disappeared into the atmospheric haze.
A moment later, another bell-like chime sounded three times. Far off in the depths of the ship, she heard the rumble of machinery – that would be the sound of the ship’s immense solar sails deploying, folding out like a vast, glittering gold umbrella with the ship like a handle in its center. Propelled by the solar wind, the huge sails would take the ship to the vo
id between the asteroid belt and Jupiter, where the Indra and its groom would have the room required to commence tunneling.
The panorama framed by the window slowly shifted as the starship veered out of Mars’s gravitational pull and began the slow ballet of orbital exit. She wrapped her arms tightly around herself and watched her world sliding away. She recalled the scent of fresh-cut switchgrass, of Otha waving at her as he drove his beloved old pickup truck into the cloister’s dusty courtyard, Hild’s weathered face glancing up from her workbench after firing up a near-dead diagnostic computer; Hamish in the brew house, holding four mugs of ale aloft in his four upper insectoid arms, saying he’d named this batch “Sexton’s Very Best Bitter”. She saw her mother and father laughing together, joking with each other the way they did, before… She thought of her father after Mai Scarlett’s death, the permanent cloud that seemed to veil his moods, even when he tried to make her think he’d found the trick of being happy again. More than anything in the world, she’d wanted him to find that trick, to have her father back, the father she’d known when he still had her mother to be so deeply, amazingly in love with.
Mars continued to drift sideways in the portal, then vanished from view as the starship pointed its bow toward open space. The viewport filled with stars burning in the blackness, the nothingness shot through with unblinking, pinprick light-holes.
She leaned against the corridor wall, and the ship’s mechanical systems thrummed against her back, beneath her feet. She had just two days before the starship would pass through the asteroid belt. Then, in the empty space that lay beyond, the Indra would work its uncanny sorcery. The immense “stonehorse” would awaken and uncoil its body into the cavernous Indra chamber. The groom would perform the arcane rituals of astronavigation, and the Indra would open the wormhole-like tunnel, dissolving the fabric of time and space. Once the interdimensional pathway materialized, the Indra would cross the threshold and, in an eyeblink, take the Helen of Troy across the unimaginable distance to Sigmund’s Parch and, in its next tunneling, onward to Enchara.
So, she had two days before they would leave Sol Sys space. What if she hadn’t found her father by then? She couldn’t imagine where she would finally end up if she failed, what she would do, how she would ever get back home. And, she realized with cold, clear logic, if she didn’t find her father, none of the rest mattered.
SEVEN
Zenn was back inside the cabin a short time later when Jules returned, carrying a large tray draped with a linen cloth. Beneath the cloth was an array of plates and dishes containing pasta with a tomato sauce, various vegetables, half a loaf of bread and several other varieties of food Zenn couldn’t identify. Jules explained he had eaten while in the dining hall, and he now watched her intently as she ate, neither of them speaking. She devoured almost all of the food she could recognize, and some she couldn’t, until she was unable to eat any more. She put a small dish on the floor for Katie, which the rikkaset sniffed skeptically.
Zenn waved at Katie to get her attention, then spoke aloud to her, talking slowly and exaggerating each word.
“Katie? This is good food for Katie.”
The rikkaset watched Zenn intently, then signed back at her.
“Certain good? Good for Katie?”
“Yes. Katie will like.”
“She can hear you, this Katie?” Jules said. “I thought she had no hearing?”
“We’ve been working on lip-reading,” Zenn said. “We’ve only just started, but she’s picking it up really fast.”
“She has a smart brain in her, then.” Jules peered down at the rikkaset. “Well done to you, Katie.”
Katie ignored him and took a tentative bite of the food before her. Deciding it would do, she ate eagerly.
Jules pointed to another covered dish on the tray – a treat for Zenn. He held the dish out for her approval. On it was what looked like a small, leathery-skinned fruit with a delicate orange-and-aquamarine coloring.
“Can you guess what this is?” he said. Zenn peered more closely at the dish and its contents. “I will wager you cannot guess,” he said, taking out his relay and brandishing it at her. “Shall we say one unit? As a wager between friends?”
Zenn laughed and took out her own relay.
“Only one unit?” she said. “How about two… between friends?”
Jules bobbed his head in agreement.
“So, how many guesses do I get?” Yes, eating had definitely left her feeling much more like herself.
“Only one guess, of course. It is a wager.”
“Just one guess?” she said. “Gee… let’s see… could it be… a Lyran Rooloo?”
Jules’s beaked jaw fell open for a second, then snapped shut.
“You knew its identity the full time.”
“Yup. But the betting was your idea,” she said, smiling as she watched Jules’s relay blink on and off again, transferring the winnings to her account.
“Yes, true enough and well done,” he exclaimed. So, dolphins were good sports, at least.
“Answer me this: have you ever coaxed out a Rooloo?” She shook her head no. “It’s an experience to be had.” He crossed his mech-arms in front of him and watched her. She gave the tiny sphere a tentative poke with her finger.
“Hold it in the palm of your hand,” Jules instructed. She obeyed. It was dry and cool to the touch. “Now breathe on it.”
She gave him a puzzled look.
“Like you were breathing on a mirror to clean the surface.”
She opened her mouth wide, held the fruit up to her face and huffed on it. The Rooloo vibrated softly against her palm and, with a soft “whump” of rind and juices, it exploded. Zenn jerked back in her chair, her face covered with a sticky wetness like popped bubblegum, except the gum was moving – it was alive! In alarm, Katie leaped up on the table and uttered a fierce little growl at the offending Rooloo.
Zenn peeled the clinging thing from her cheek and held it at arm’s length. It looked like a sort of turquoise starfish, and it quivered and wobbled as it tried to get a grip on her hand and crawl up her arm. With some effort, she scraped it off into her empty water glass. She put a plate on top to keep it from getting out. Katie eyed it closely until she was certain it couldn’t escape. Then she hopped off the table and returned to her dish of food.
Zenn realized that the chirping sound in her ears was Jules’s staccato laughter. Across the table, he was shaking his large head rapidly up and down, obviously relishing his little surprise.
“You did that on purpose,” Zenn said. She mopped at herself with a napkin. Jules had stopped laughing, but he couldn’t keep his head from bobbing with pleasure.
“You should have seen your countenance and its expression. This was an excellent example of humor based on the unexpected. Do admit it.”
“I don’t admit anything of the kind.” But Zenn’s outrage was now totally manufactured, and she struggled to keep herself from laughing. The stories she had heard about the dolphin sense of humor were apparently true. “You might have warned me.”
“But that would entirely undo the purpose of humor premised on the element of surprise.”
“Oh, right, silly me. So, what do we do with this little guy?” She pointed to the Rooloo crawling up the inside of her water glass. Jules bent down to watch it, leaning forward slightly. “Oh, no, you don’t,” Zenn told him earnestly. She snatched up the glass. “You’re not eating him. He’s way too cute. I know it’s just walking fruit, but it’s still too cute to eat.”
“Did I say I intended to ingest it?” Jules protested, a little too strongly. “I have seen that the galley kitchen here keeps a Rooloo breeding colony. We’ll purchase its freedom and put it out to pasture. There is rind-juice on your chin…” Jules picked up his napkin and handed it across the table to her. “My First Promised enjoyed Rooloo. It was a favorite of hers, even though it was not fish-based. We were to serve it at the bonding ceremony.”
Zenn took the napkin from him
and dabbed at her face. “If you don’t mind my asking, Jules, how old are you?”
“I am eighteen years on the moonrise of the coming migration season,” he told her. “But as I grew up at the institute facilities away from my birth pod, I won’t undergo the usual initiation.”
“The institute?”
“Yes, the Claussen Institute. It is a research unit of the TerrAqua Corporation. TerrAqua is the company that designed and built this walksuit. The business was owned by Per Claussen. He was kind to me, much like a father, in fact. But he died.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“During my growing-up period at the Institute, I assisted in refining the workings of the newer suit models.” He raised both mech-arms. “Upon Per’s passing, he arranged to leave me this newest model. As well as a good deal of his money.” The dolphin lowered his head slightly, his gaze growing distant. “In any case, it is his gift of funds I now use to pay for this starship ride and this comfortable cabin. It was his final kindness to me.”
“But you were taken away from your family when you were young? And you didn’t mind? You didn’t miss your family group, your dolphin pod’s initiation and all?”
He leaned closer to her and dropped his voice. “Don’t tell it far abroad, but the pod initiation is a ritual I am pleased to avoid. There is no small amount of biting and slapping with tail-flukes involved. And, as you have seen, with my years of practice, I am most expert in the operation of my walksuit. This mobility upon land was a… great side-benefit… to…”
The dolphin’s voice trailed off and he slowly closed one eye as his beaked chin dropped. A sound like a softly deflating tire emanated from the blowhole on the top of his head. It sounded like… snoring.
“Yes, I’m sure it was a benefit,” she said. “And so, were there other dolphins at the Institute?” Jules didn’t respond, but continued his soft, rhythmic breathing.
ARC: Under Nameless Stars Page 6