In Between the Stars

by A. A. Ripley

  *

  Chase’s home sector seemed unimpressive – just a collection of walkways and passages squeezed between cubic structures. There were more Lifted species milling about and there was much more station security, lightly-armoured and with their airborne drones bobbing above the crowd’s heads. The entrance to Chase’s home was small and both Inan and Alan had to stoop to pass through. Inan was not looking forward to the dwelling itself; she had had enough of cramped spaces, but what she saw was certainly not what she expected.

  They entered a chamber two storeys high, illuminated by a reddish-yellow set of lamps spread out at the ceiling. In the middle of the chamber stood a solitary tree, its trunk wide and thick; its foliage deep, almost black, green. At the tips of the branches thick, long clusters of red blossoms hung down, nearly touching the floor below. At the base of the tree furniture was arranged, comfortable seats and modern-looking tables, some entertainment systems and other trappings of everyday living. Inan didn’t look at those for very long, though, because the foliage of the tree started to move and from between the branches several faces began to emerge. The faces turned into people, most of them smaller than Chase and Hijinks but clearly ki-jirai, as they lowered themselves down to the ground.

  ‘Welcome to our garden-house,’ said Chase, as his offspring surrounded them with a loud reception.

  *

  After her adventures and tribulations, the simple life of Chase’s household felt like living in the lap of luxury. Inan enjoyed herself, sightseeing around the station and even tracking down a shop that sold digestion stones. She bought a nice supply, just in case she found an especially tasty-looking vegetable. Sometimes Alan would accompany her. After the initial shock he seemed to be getting used to being around different species. He even helped to choose a comm-pad for the three of them so they could communicate if they got separated. He didn’t even flinch when the ao shopkeeper flapped his spine antennas towards him, and Inan took it as a good sign.

  ‘I think I should move out on my own,’ said Alan.

  They were sitting in a terraced café, overlooking Middlelink’s lake. The surface of the lake was of a shimmering grey – an undecided colour as there was no sky to reflect, only the translucent dome above it. Alan had just introduced Inan and Hijinks to a human snack, a cold dish composed of rapidly-chilled mammalian lactation by-product and a lot of flavouring. At first she wondered if it was a good idea to eat something so cold it solidified. But now Inan enjoyed the strange feeling of numbness as the frozen treat cooled down her mouth and throat and the return of the feeling as her body absorbed back the heat from the environment.

  ‘Is it that you are tired of being a landing pad for Chase’s offspring?’

  Alan laughed.

  ‘I’m alright as long as they mind the face. But really,’ he went on, ’I think I should try and find out something about myself. If not, I should at least try and see how normal people live.’

  ‘Got job?’ asked Hijinks.

  ‘I’ve applied for some. And there is this guy that promised to pay for the calibration of his food-arranging computers in his bar.’

  ‘Are… are you going to be alright?’ said Inan, suddenly feeling uneasy. ‘I can’t imagine how it would be with no one around.’

  ‘I think so. I mean, I should be independent. Chase will be nearby, and Hijinks too, right?’

  ‘Until next ship-job,’ agreed Hijinks.

  ‘Besides, I want to start searching for my past. I have to start somewhere. Middlelink is a busy place, maybe somebody has heard something or maybe there is something in the local databases.’

  Inan thought that would be like hunting for a particular fish in a shoal.

  ‘What are you going to do, Inan?’ said Alan.

  What should she do? She was no longer a castaway with no other choice but to survive, or a captive with a desire to escape. Always guided by the Mothers or the Matriarch, it was a question Inan had never faced before. But before she came up with any answer, Hijinks pointed at a news-feed behind Inan’s chair.

  ‘Inan needs to look at this.’ Inan turned around to face footage of the liner she once travelled on. The feed ran across the footage, announcing that the search for the survivors of the catastrophe was at its end. The persons still missing were going to be declared dead.

  Just look at her; enjoying herself and chatting away with aliens when Matriarch Salrran probably thinks she’s dead!

  ‘I need to call home!’ Inan answered the question that was half-forgotten by now.

  *

  It took some time for her request for a hyperlink out of the system to be approved. Most of the bandwidth was dedicated to commercial or government use, so the waiting line was a few days long.

  The receiving chamber of the out-system communication was small and functional, with a settee before a decently-sized self-adjusting screen. Inan took a seat and made herself comfortable while waiting for the hyper-channel to be established. In the meantime, the screen was showing feed from the external sensors of the station, giving an unspoiled view of the stars like gleaming jewels on the dark, soft material. Somewhere there a faster-than-light signal travelled from here to the homeworld, jumping from buoy to buoy, from info-hub to info-hub, carrying a moniker with her name and location. Inan kept looking at the stars and a sudden thought entered her mind. She thought that she was going to miss the sight of endless night beyond her window. She would get a position helping to manage the House, maybe not as prestigious as had been planned for her but still something proper. No more cramped spaces, no more weird aliens, no more adventures and no more… no more Hijinks and Alan. And what of Gloria’s strange gift? Inan reached into the pocket that was holding the disc. The strange object was still safely resting inside it, as mysterious as ever.

  He promised to get it back. Was it even safe to go home or would she bring danger to the Skoss household?

  A chime announced the hyper-channel to be open. Inan expected to see Matriarch Salrran on the other side of the link, sitting in her room just as Inan had left her when they spoke last. But the Matriarch wasn’t alone. The room was packed. The screen was like a window into a pond of faces, horns and tails. Most of the Skoss Mothers were present, as well as their husbands and as many siblings and cousins as the Matriarch’s quarters could fit. They crowded round the Matriarch, who could barely prevent them from obstructing her view. The pond let out a collective hiss of decompressing tension and then exploded into a thousand questions being asked simultaneously, a thousand questions that asked only one thing: ‘Are you unharmed?’ After many assurances that she was unharmed and safe the Matriarch finally put a stop to the deluge of questions and commanded everyone out, with a stern order that no one – male or female, House member or servitor – was to disturb them under any circumstances. Inan recognised Matriarch’s tone that announced the beginning of the serious conversation.

  ‘How are the Aldass?’ Inan blurted nervously and immediately clasped her fingers over her mouth and nose. Trust Inan to speak out of turn! Hastily, she signalled apology with her free hand.

  ‘The contract had to be modified. Severely,’ said the Matriarch, ostentatiously ignoring Inan’s infraction. ‘Your cousin Kanst had to be sent as replacement and we had to bear severe penalties for the delays. However, I acknowledge this was no fault of yours.’

  Inan let the air out of her lungs very slowly, so the microphone wouldn’t register her sigh. So Kanst had got what she wanted. Hopefully she would be able to take care of Ifonly, but Inan didn’t dare to ask about him.

  ‘This is hardly the time or place to discuss your future in detail, my kin. I see no need for you to worry about that just now. I’m sure that a proper opportunity will present itself for you to bring prosperity and profit to Skoss.’

  Prosperity, opportunity, profit; the words that follow every izara, no matter if they are housed or houseless. The wa
rm feeling nestled inside Inan’s soul, brought by the sight of familiar faces and the sound of familiar voices, grew colder like a suddenly-depleted heat-orb. Her hand went to the storage compartment in her clothes housing the black disc. Inan could feel its smooth, hard surface under her talon. Suddenly, she became hyperaware of her surroundings – the tiny communication room, the building and the people inside it, and those outside, walking under the great dome, over the terraces and walkways. She could feel the traffic of the starships undocking from the spaceport and plunging into FTL, with a single flash, chasing the grey void towards the distant stars, distant worlds…

  ‘Inan? Are you going to answer me this year-cycle?’ A grain of impatience found its way into the Matriarch’s voice.

  ‘Forgive me, Mother of my Mothers.’ Inan blinked herself back to reality.

  ‘As I was saying, I will arrange a passage for you. I am compiling your itinerary as we speak.’

  ‘It won’t be necessary,’ said Inan, arranging words in her head like a complicated pattern, nearly impossible to remember.

  ‘Oh?’ said Salrran, turning her head to the side of her good eye, as she always did when she wanted to examine something closely. Inan could feel the weight of that gaze even through the light years separating them. ‘I take it it is already arranged, then?’

  ‘Yes, no, what I am saying is…’ Inan would rather be speaking to an enraged heavyworlder than trying to explain herself to the Matriarch. ‘I am not coming back.’

  The silence of the elderly female seemed to Inan as long as a galactic year. After the millennia, the Matriarch finally spoke.

  ‘Don’t think I don’t understand, Inan,’ she said touching her scarred face. ‘I know only too well the unquiet spirit you have been born with. I was hoping that by now you had grown tired of your hatchling-like fancies and realised where your place is. The House is everything and you owe everything to it. What are you without it?’

  ‘I… don’t know,’ said Inan.

  Inan thought she saw the Matriarch relaxing a little bit.

  ‘I can see you becoming an influential female in the future, maybe even a Matriarch if you work hard. Just leave the menial and the dangerous to the males, my kin, and come home.’

  Inan imagined herself years from now, editing the business contracts in the small hours of the night, or managing the accounts, or revising the policies of the House’s subsidiaries. Too busy and too important to even take a holiday off-planet and risk an accident. A powerful female confined to the complex for the rest of her days.

  ‘I can’t,’ said Inan.

  ‘What,’ said the Matriarch slowly, ‘is it that you can’t, Inan?’

  ‘I can’t go home until I know what I am without it,’ said Inan, the complicated pattern of the words finally disentangled. She realised that if she waited for the Matriarch’s response, they would be here forever. Before Salrran could speak again, Inan stood up and raised her hands in apology.

  ‘Please forgive me, Matriarch,’ she said. Feeling like a traitor she reached for the link-breaker.

  ‘Inan, wait! What am I going to say to—’ Salrran managed to say before the screen went dark and the stars returned to their place on the display.

  *

  Inan found Hijinks in the home-garden. She was lying stretched on a branch, hands behind her head and a cigarette in her mouth.

  ‘Back, Inan?’ said Hijinks.

  ‘Yes,’ said Inan, wondering what to say next. How should she explain her decision, a decision that was still half-mystery even to herself? How about ‘I have chosen to keep gallivanting through space until I find what this little weird black thingy is?’ Inan almost laughed at herself, but Hijinks spoke before she offered any explanation.

  ‘You spoke with your Matriarch,’ said the marsupial. ‘But you’re not going home.’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Inan is izara,’ said Hijinks, giving Inan one of her furry smiles, ‘but much like a ki-jirai youngling.’

  Inan almost asked in what way she resembled the fuzzy, branch-swinging creatures with I-stick-my-nose-into-anything attitude, but then decided against it. There were more important matters to attend to.

  Meanwhile, Hijinks climbed down from her branch and sat down on a mat between the roots.

  ‘We need to discuss this,’ said Inan, pulling the black disc out and placing it in the palm of her hand. Hijinks reached out for it and, holding it between her talonless fingers, held it above her head as if trying to make it catch the light from the lamps above.

  ‘Cochrane wants it. Important then,’ Hijinks said after contemplating the disc for a moment. ‘Not in the databases though.’

  ‘So nobody knows what it is?’ said Inan.

  ‘Somebody knows,’ said Hijinks. ‘Or knows somebody who knows. Might be expensive to know.’

  ‘You mean an information broker? Like in a spy drama?’ Inan giggled at the thought of her life turning into a string of intrigues and high-speed chases.

  ‘Like or unlike,’ scoffed Hijinks. ‘You want to know, you buy information.’

  ‘How does one even meet an information broker?’ said Inan, still half-amused.

  ‘I can make contact,’ said Hijinks. ‘Then we wait.’

  *

  Since Alan had moved out of Chase’s garden-home, Inan had no one to go exploring with, as he was too busy with work and research into his past. Hijinks preferred to relax or watch the station entertainment programmes. Perhaps the station held little interest for a being that had spent her life working spaceships and visiting the farthest reaches of the universe. But Inan wanted to see it all and soon discovered it is much more fun with somebody to share the strange sights, smells and sounds. She realised that she had got used to having the young human around and missed their forays into the Topside Zone. After a while, Inan managed to convince Hijinks to visit Alan in his new home. Despite initial resistance, the marsupial agreed that they could at least see how he was managing in the new environment.

  They had to take two transports to reach the Human Section located on the “underside” of the station, in one of the spiky protrusions on the other side of the dome.

  If Hijinks’ family quarters were in a simple, utilitarian part of the station, then the Human Section was more like a hastily-renovated maze of derelict warehouses. The air smelled of inefficient filters in need of maintenance. The crowds were almost exclusively human, looking with suspicion at their passage.

  ‘Must be here,’ Hijinks said, comparing the address on the directions with the info-point of a large prefabricated structure.

  ‘What do you want?’ A human male appeared in a doorway, blocking their entrance to the building. He was tall and his head-fur was hanging down to his shoulders like black cables.

  ‘Excuse us,’ said Inan, bowing without taking her eyes off him. She noticed that he was armed, a makeshift plasma cutter dangling at his waist. ‘We are looking for Alan.’

  ‘Alan who?’ he said, folding his arms on his chest.

  Inan stared at him, trying to understand the meaning of that question.

  ‘Alan who?’ he repeated. ‘You do understand we have second names, don’t you? Nah, aliens like you just wouldn’t care.’

  Inan was taken aback. It would stand to reason that humans had something similar to a House name, but it was another thing that Inan had never asked or thought about. How I am supposed to keep up with everything? she thought with panic.

  ‘Want no trouble,’ said Hijinks, her attempt to placate the angry human backfiring like a punctured fuel tank.

  ‘You want no trouble? You’re asking for it, furball! We need no aliens snooping around here.’

  Inan looked around; the stream of passers-by began to grow stagnant. The suspicious looks began to linger longer on the faces with each word the human uttered.

  ‘I
t’s OK, Devan,’ said somebody behind the human’s back. Devan turned slightly, but without letting Inan and Hijinks out of his sight. Alan appeared in the passage.

  ‘You know those two?’ said Devan, chewing words like a bitter plant.

  ‘Yeah, sure. Don’t worry about them.’

  ‘It’s not them I am worried about,’ said Devan, eyeing Alan, but then he turned away and disappeared inside the building.

  Alan watched him go and then turned to Inan and Hijinks.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Awkward neighbours, you know.’

  They moved inside into the bare corridor of the building, up two flights of stairs and into Alan’s quarters through a thin metal door. The quarters were no more than a cubicle, with only a small bed, wall-mounted folding table and a backless chair. The only striking feature of the room was a window that took up the whole wall opposite the door. Inan approached it and peered outside. Down below, in the middle of a courtyard, a food-dispensing facility was set up with mixed prefabricated materials – drab and uninviting. Humans were sitting down on long benches, each bowed over a bowl of synthetic nutrients.

  ‘How are you getting along?’ said Inan, unsure of the proper choice of words.

  ‘I’m managing, I guess,’ Alan shrugged.

  Inan looked around gloomily. She had this uneasy feeling that Cochrane might have been right. If this was how humans lived on multi-species places like Middlelink… Was this old war still so relevant? Even the Lifted seemed to have it better.

  ‘Hey, at least I can come and go as I please,’ said Alan, strangely in tune with the trail of Inan’s thoughts. ‘And the neighbours might be harsh, but they keep the rough sorts away.’