In Between the Stars

by A. A. Ripley

  ‘How’s search, Alan?’ said Hijinks, perching herself on the edge of Alan’s bed.

  ‘Not so good,’ he said. ‘I don’t really have much to go on. I… I don’t remember where I come from. I don’t remember my parents or the place where I was born. I don’t even remember if it was a planet, a space station or a ship. The first memory I can bring out is Maud. She was dragging me down the corridor; I can still remember the smell of the smoke and blood clinging to her clothes. My ears were ringing from the sound of explosions and I could not hear what she was saying. The only thing I remember clearly is her face – sneering.’

  He paused. Inan tried to make a sound, feeling like a thief among those painful memories.

  ‘Need help, Alan,’ said Hijinks, stating a simple fact.

  ‘You have something in mind, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’ In few words, Hijinks introduced Alan to their plan to pursue the origins of the black disc and the way they were going to search for information about it.

  Alan listened quietly, clearly pondering something at the same time.

  ‘And you think that person, that information broker of yours, could help me too?’

  ‘I think that you might at least try. They specialise in finding information based on very little,’ said Inan, happy with the change of the subject. Suddenly she remembered something that the human, Devan, had said.

  ‘Do… do you know your name?’ she said.

  Alan smiled, as though she reminded him of something valuable and comforting.

  ‘That is the thing I remember,’ he said. ‘Sharman. I am Alan Sharman.’

  *

  The information broker was taking his time. Days passed and there was no answer, no rejection or otherwise. One night, when Inan slept among the roots of the tree, rolled into a ball and covered in blankets, Hijinks climbed down to her.

  ‘Look, Inan.’

  The comm-pad nestling in her palm radiated cold light in the darkness of the sleeping garden-home. A message was displayed on it:

  ‘Xenon Sea Multiclub, Topside Zone, evening two days from now.

  Yarg the Morganite Footfall.’

  ‘Is that him?’ said Inan, still rubbing her eyes against the invasive glow of the screen.

  ‘Yes,’ said Hijinks, a conspiratorial smile hidden in her voice. They had made contact at last.

  *

  As they entered the Xenon Sea, a wave of sound hit them with a gale force. It was artificial twilight in there, broken only by the flare of spotlights and electric glow of the furniture edged with fluorescent accents. The huge chamber was filled with people, its dance floors swimming with stroboscopic light and moving shoals of dancers. Among the flux of the patrons, the long shapes of bars stood like islands, serving wave after wave of thirsty patrons. The centre of the club occupied a large, illuminated pool. Its surface shimmered with hundreds of colourful reflections. From time to time a holographic fish would jump out of it, rise up and explode in a storm of rainbow spots. Above the ebb and flow of the patrons, the terraced lounge looked down on the club. Inan could see the breezy shimmering of the noise-damping field.

  Hijinks lead them through the tides of people towards the gravi-free escalators. Soon they looked down from the heights of the lounge level, the pounding of the music reduced to bearable levels by the damping field. They moved among the crowd and the private booths that dominated the lounge. Inan was wondering how they were going to find the broker with all those people around. Was there something they should be on the lookout for?

  ‘Ow!’ said Inan, bumping into some large equipment that somebody had left here by mistake. The force of the collision landed Inan on her tail. Hold on, what kind of equipment is warm and scratchy? The mass growled. Inan looked up and realised instantly she had bumped into a load of trouble. A giant denizen of Rutgo looked down on her with a savage sneer. His twin tusks curved upwards like warped stalagmites, his tiny eyes looked straight at her. He was wider than any alien she had seen so far, closer in girth to a freight-loading exo-suit than to a sentient being. He would be towering over the crowd if his back were not bent under the bulk of his muscular arms. Hijinks moved in and spoke to him, but the heavyworlder moved her aside with one scoop of his arm, just like an excavator moves a heap of soil. His massive body blocked access to Inan. The huge mouth opened and a deep rumbling growl escaped from the depths of his chest. This is it. I escaped a spaceship explosion and pirates just to be killed on a civilised spacestation, thought Inan.

  ‘Can’t. Speak?’ he growled. ‘Puny. Lizard?’

  Think, Inan, think! she urged herself. You’ve read about them, just try to remember…

  It was useless. She would be a splatter on the wall before club security could get to her. If only she wasn’t such a wimp, she would… she would…

  Inan rose slowly from the ground. She looked up deep into his eyes, trying to match his gaze. When Inan opened her mouth, she knew exactly what to say.

  ‘Back off, you borehole plugger!’ she shouted, as loudly as her lungs would let her. ‘Your chief had no coccyx and your son is a broken phalanx!’

  She kept up that word barrage for a couple of seconds, hoping to everything that is good in the universe that she was not mistaken and that she was not writing her own demise-chant with it. At the end she added a few swear words she had picked up from Hijinks. There was utter silence when she finally stopped speaking. Even the crowd was now looking at them with quiet expectation. Somewhere, a million miles away, the club music played on.

  This unnerving stillness was broken very suddenly by a strange sound. For a moment, Inan was unsure what it was or where it was coming from. It was a gurgle that slowly turned into laugh. The heavyworlder laughed!

  ‘You. Funny. Lizard,’ he said, his large tusks still quivering with amusement.

  ‘What’s a coccyx?’ asked Alan, crawling from under the giant’s arm.

  ‘A tail bone,’ said Inan. ‘You should know, you’re the tailless primate around here, aren’t you?’

  The gathered crowd started to disperse slowly, seeing that there wouldn’t be a brawl after all.

  ‘What would be the meaning of all this disorder?’ a melodic voice enquired.

  Inan turned her head to see a cani noble looking up at them, his long and soft tail curled upward like a soft cloud. Behind him, as blonde as himself, a bipedal servitor stood with his hands modestly folded in front of his chest.

  ‘Well?’ the noble turned towards the Rutgorian.

  ‘Lizard. Says. Jokes,’ explained the heavyworlder, while shifting his bulk from one foot to the other.

  ‘I pay you to keep trouble away, not to socialise with strangers,’ said the cani looking up at the massive Rutgorian, but somehow it seemed as though he was looking down on him.

  ‘Yes. Yarg-boss,’ he said and shuffled away.

  ‘Now, you are probably the guests I was expecting.’ The noble turned to them. ‘A ki-jirai, an izara and… a human?’

  ‘He’s with us,’ said Hijinks.

  Yarg swished its tail in what Inan took as a gesture of indifference.

  ‘Follow me, valued guests,’ he said.

  He moved with all the grace his four legs allowed as the crowds parted before him and his servitor, who followed a step behind. He led them into one of the private booths with a view of the pool; the jumping holographic fish seemed to be just at the reach of hand.

  Yarg looked at his servitor and some unspoken command passed between them, as the subordinate cani bent down and lifted the noble onto the seat and laid a simple comm-rig in front of his master. Inan wondered how the cani was going to operate it, as his front “paws” lacked the necessary motor skills, but then the rig flickered to life under the cani gaze, and Inan understood that it was sensitive to the movements of his eyes.

  I guess when you are rich there is no longer an
y need for an opposable thumb, thought Inan. You can buy yourself a pair to do work for you. She looked at the cani servitor. He barely looked the same species as his employer; no fur save for his head, no tail, his face was flatter and his ears smaller.

  ‘There,’ said Yarg, when the displays were all powered up and shining in front of his face. ‘How this one can be of assistance to you, valued guests?’

  Inan hesitated. Should she just show him the disc in what really was a public place? She glanced around – the walls of the private booth curved about them in a reassuring embrace. She took the disc out and showed it to Yarg. The disc lay in her palm, dark and mysterious as always. Yarg looked at it without moving a muscle on his long face, but his ears stood up on his head in an involuntary sign of attention.

  ‘An artefact of unknown origin and make,’ he said finally, and nodded to himself. ‘Possibly old, too. I congratulate you for having me intrigued. Might I enquire about the place you procured it?’

  ‘We prefer not,’ Inan said quickly. ‘It’s a matter of confidentiality.’

  ‘I understand,’ he said. Inan thought there was a shadow of regret in his pleasant-sounding voice.

  Yarg’s eyes moved quickly now, the comm-rig display was dancing with many open processes. Inan could not even begin to imagine what was transpiring in the network of his contacts and the engines of his database searches. What she knew was that the information that was still dangling at the end of the network enquiry would not be cheap. She also knew better than to mention the price to Yarg. If you ask a cani noble for the price, it means you can’t afford it anyway. She just hoped that the money they had would suffice.

  ‘I cannot help you, unfortunately,’ he said after a few seconds. ‘However, I can direct you to a person that can aid you in your quest. There.’

  He brought one of the processes to the front of the display.

  ‘Ure Ambrus,’ he read aloud, his tongue barely able to twist around the unfamiliar phonemes. ‘He is a xenoarcheologist, known to work for many private endeavours. Quite famous in his field or, should I say, infamous.’

  ‘Infamous?’ picked up Hijinks.

  ‘Yes, on account of his, shall we say – questionable ethics. The coordinates are ready for you. I cannot guarantee you shall meet him, of course. My sources are giving his status as arrested, so contact lies within depths of your own ingenuity.’

  ‘There is another matter which requires your expertise,’ said Inan, and looked at Alan.

  ‘I put my ears forward for your convenience,’ said Yarg.

  For a brief second Alan was silent, as though he was taking a deep breath before plunging into unknown waters.

  ‘I want information about somebody,’ he said finally. ‘A human, like me. His name is Alan Sharman. I want to know everything about that person, where he was born, who his parents were, anything you can dig out.’

  Inan tried to keep her face as still as the features of stone temple guardians and hoped that Yarg was not proficient in reading izara expressions. It might surprise her that Alan chose not to reveal himself to the information broker, but she respected that strange choice.

  ‘Alan Sharman,’ said Yarg slowly, as though he was weighing the sounds against a neutron star. ‘It is little to go on, but I am far from backing away from a challenge.’

  His eves moved again and the comm-rig powered down.

  ‘I hope I was of assistance to you,’ said Yarg, jumping off the seat.

  ‘My manual will take care of the details for you,’ he nodded towards his bipedal servitor. He said his farewells and, with a sway of his tail, disappeared into the crowd.

  *

  The day they marked for themselves to leave came sooner than Inan anticipated.

  She regretted that she couldn’t say goodbye to Alan. She was unable to contact him on the public link; she left a message on his comm-pad, wishing him luck in his quest. It was not an adequate goodbye to a person who had given her her freedom back but she wouldn’t dare to visit the human quarter again.

  At Middlelink spaceport it was business as usual. They made their way through the concourse and alongside the gallery that led to the berthing section.

  ‘Inan, look.’ Hijinks’ voice called her back to attention as they passed a window to a large commercial berth. Inan looked out. Nestled in its berth there was a spike-shaped izara spaceship, resting like a seabird after a long voyage. Its light-brown plating was flaking a bit, but it was unscarred. Inan couldn’t recognise the colour or the insignia of the House; perhaps they were from the colonies rather than the homeworld. Still, they were her people. Even if they were not headed for homeworld, they could still take her to an izara colony and then a transport home would be just a question of a few short transactions.

  She wondered what the time was on board now? She came back to those few days she had spent on her brother’s ship. In the “evenings” the crew would gather in the mess hall, to play Magni Towers, to joke and gossip to their hearts’ content. She could almost see them now, bent over the stacks of magnetised discs on a wedged-board, contemplating their next move. In the “morning” her brother, the captain, would call a roll call of those coming off shift as well as the crew going on shift. She remembered how he carried his compact copy of the Codex to quote from, so they could all benefit from its wisdom. He would read quickly and impatiently, sometimes slipping a joke at the expense of the Sages in between the lines. Was the ship before her just like that?

  ‘You can go home now, Inan,’ said Hijinks.

  ‘No,’ she said finally, shaking familiar things off her mind. ‘Not now.’

  But it took her a moment before she moved away from the window.

  There was somebody at the Yi-yik-ke’s berth entrance.

  ‘Uh, hi!’ said Alan, awkwardly moving his body weight from one foot to the other. ‘I’m glad that I’ve caught you.’

  ‘Have you come to say goodbye?’ said Inan, pleasantly surprised. She wasn’t expecting to see him again.

  ‘No, I wanted to go with you,’ he said quickly, like a rehearsed line from an entertainment programme. ‘If you’ll take me, that is.’

  ‘What?’ said Inan, thinking that her ear-slits must be clogged and she hadn’t heard properly. She noticed a small bag he carried with him, indicating that she had heard him right and he was serious in his request.

  ‘What about your homeworld?’ she said. ‘Aren’t you going to look anymore, or at least wait for Yarg to come up with something?’

  ‘I did what I could on my own, at least around here,’ he said and added quickly, ‘Yarg can send whatever he finds through a relay.’

  Inan looked at Hijinks.

  ‘Well, Inan,’ said Hijinks. ‘What do you say?’

  ‘Me? Aren’t you going to say something, Hijinks?’ Inan suddenly felt as though she was standing in hot shifting sand. But Hijinks just stood there, pretending there was something quite absorbing in the fur on her wrist.

  ‘I can’t even understand what you are trying to do. I thought you wanted to live on Middlelink?’ Inan wondered if she could understand what was going on in Alan’s head. For all the time they had spent together, his thoughts were as impenetrable as the moment they met.

  ‘I wanted to live on Middlelink,’ he said. ‘But how long do you think it took people to ask me where I’m from? And how long do you think I can keep pretending I’m from some backward colony? Then I get the colour of the grass wrong or mispronounce the name of the third moon and I am suddenly a suspicious guy.’

  ‘Couldn’t you just tell the truth?’ said Inan, and immediately realised that was the wrong thing to say.

  ‘The truth is that I have been raised by pirates,’ he said, lowering his voice. ‘Just a step down from a criminal confession.’

  ‘But it wasn’t your fault!’ she cried.

  ‘Go and try to explain that t
o a guy like Devan,’ he said morosely.

  Inan found that she had nothing that would be remotely appropriate as a response to that. She could still see Devan in her memories and feel the pressure the human projected with his suspicious and angry gaze.

  ‘Maybe I’ll learn something by travelling,’ said Alan, after a brief pause. ‘Or maybe Yarg will come up with something. With you two… I just don’t have to pretend.’

  Somehow, the last sentence felt like a compliment. Inan knew there should be something that she could say now; something simple, something that Hijinks would say. She looked at the marsupial. Hijinks stopped the ostentatious examination of her purple fur and now looked at Inan, waiting to hear her speak.

  ‘Welcome back, Alan,’ Inan said at last.

  *

  Amalonde was a small planet populated mainly by vamess. It was spotted with the dark, succulent green of its oceans. Large continental landmasses were dappled in sepia and celadon, covered by a thin veil of clouds, with shorelines visible like a trace of pencil on a hand-drawn picture. A wide band of a planetary ring stretched itself around the planet like a fantastic road. Its pale pink shade was a testament to a small celestial body, rich in iron oxide, which had passed through here a million years ago. It was captured by the gravity of Amalonde and powdered into a bangle that would forever accompany the planet. Inan watched the sun setting on the other side of the planetary disc, the last rays trickling through the pastel blue of the atmosphere and through the cracks in the ring. The chain of lights flickered on, one by one, as the darkness moved forward on the landmasses. The terminus progressed like a planet-sized eyelid. Down below – the night had fallen.

  ‘Anything, Alan?’ said Hijinks, while Inan was still admiring the night illumination.

  ‘Nothing just yet.’ Alan was sitting bent over a computer, trying to access the local communication network via the string of stationary satellites. It had been a couple of hours already, but they were no closer to pinpointing the location of Ure Ambrus than when they first entered the Amalonde system. It would be really funny if we just landed in a random spaceport and then learned that he is on a different continent, thought Inan. Then again, in her mind’s eye, she pictured an epic voyage across the deep green seas and a trek while pale, jade-coloured forests swayed all around her.