by Sara King
Behind her, Milar growled and strode towards her, dragons bunching across his burly pecs. Tatiana backed away, grinning.
An instant later, the robot said to her, “Authorization failed. Assisted Individual Reproduction is not an authorized mission type. Warning One. You have crossed one leg into the area affected by the Phage Containment Defense Grid. Please return the way you came immediately or your threat of contamination will be removed. As per the Solid State Accords, that was Warning One…
CHAPTER 6: A Final Confession
Independence Day, 17th of May, 3006
Uncharted Jungle
Fortune, Daytona 6 Cluster, Outer Bounds
“That night in the desert,” Jeanne said. “You didn’t use a condom.”
Joel felt his whole world slide to a screeching halt. “Excuse me?”
“Shut up!” Jeanne snarled, and he was stunned by her vehemence. “I told you to listen, you smuggler asshole. I haven’t told anyone about this since it happened, but I’m gonna tell you now.”
Joel listened, though it was hard to hear over the pounding of his heart, which was drowning out all other sounds within his dark palladium tomb.
“You didn’t use a condom and I got pregnant.”
“Oh shit,” Joel whispered. He’d tried and failed so many times with so many women before her that he had just assumed he was sterile. Suddenly the stiff way she was holding her shoulders had new meaning. “Jeanne, I…”
“It was a boy,” she went on. “But I was only nineteen years old. No money. No prospects. My mom and dad died when I was a kid. I was an orphan, Joel. I was on my own. All alone.”
Joel had known as much from the three months of ‘courtship’ he had done to figure out where she’d put her stash. Dread was beginning to slice through the guilt, twisting in his stomach like a knife.
“Fortune doesn’t have an adoption system,” Jeanne said. “I was ten when I stowed away to the Bounds to escape slavery and the brothels on Ne’vanth. When he found me hidden in the engine room, the ship captain put me in cryo and dumped me on Fortune rather than expend the fuel to take me back to Ne’vanth, so I spent two years on the streets of Silver City until David Landborn took pity on me. Put me in some flight classes when I was sixteen. When I was seventeen, he gave me a battered old ship, fueled it up, and told me to go do something with my life. The same day, his wife bought me a set of blankets, cooking utensils, and a backpack and, while she was smiling and handing them to me, she told me to get the hell away from her family and never come back, or I’d end up a corpse rotting in a ditch somewhere. David didn’t even bother to see me off. See, everybody’s got it wrong—everyone thinks they were so generous, so loving to offer me a home when times were tough and no one else would. But I wasn’t their kid, Joel. I was the stray that they brought in long enough to keep it from starving before they patted it on the head and turned it loose again. I was a pity case.”
“Jeanne, I…” Joel whispered. He had a horrible feeling he knew where this was going, and it was already making his guts twist.
“I’m not finished,” Jeanne snapped. When she looked at the camera again, there were tears.
“Okay,” Joel managed. “Sorry, Jeanne. Sorry.”
“So I was only out on my own a couple months before I met you,” Jeanne said. “David Landborn had set me up with this tiny Shrieker mound he’d found in the jungle. Only seven Shriekers in it, but it was all mine. I was supposed to use the money I made from it to start a life, you know?”
“Sorry,” Joel whispered.
“I checked that tiny mound day and night for months,” Jeanne went on, ignoring him. “I babied them, gave them extra rich greenery, all that stuff. When their nodules came ripe, I spent an entire day on my hands and knees in the slime, prying them out. You know what I was thinking, that whole time?”
Joel just shook his head in the darkness of his prison, unable to speak.
“The whole time,” Jeanne said, “I was thinking about this great guy people called Runaway Joel who had swept me completely off my feet. I was going to share my bounty with him, and maybe, over time, convince him I’d make a good partner, maybe get him to show me the faraway lands he talked about, maybe the alien ruins from his mother’s journals. I mean, any guy who had a mom like Daytona Dae had to be amazing, right? The very first kid born on Fortune? He had to have lived an amazing life, right? He had to be someone special.”
Joel lowered the datapad to his lap and stared at the darkness beyond it, unable to look at her any more.
“So when he wanted to meet in the Red Desert the day after I’d harvested the nodules, I welcomed the opportunity to show him how I felt. I was gonna tell him everything. Where the Shriekers were, where I’d stashed the nodules, what I dreamed for the two of us. I was even going to give him my virginity. I was courting him as much as he was courting me, you see.”
Joel froze, feeling sick. “You can stop,” he whispered.
“I was going to tell him things like how badly I needed the money, how I couldn’t afford to feed myself, how my ship was on its last core and I couldn’t even fly back to town. I even planned to ask him for a little food, when he arrived in the Red, but I thought about how healthy he was, how smooth and full of energy, and I was afraid. I held back, because I wanted him to see someone successful, someone who would make a good smuggler. A good partner. So I lied. I pulled what little food I had to the front of the shelves and padded it with empty boxes, making it look like I was completely stocked. I took empty tubs and filled them with water to make them look full of leftovers. I filled empty grain sacks with sand and threw them in my hold so he had to walk by them in order to get to the bridge.”
Joel leaned back in his prison, head against the wall, and stared at the total darkness of the ceiling. He remembered the grain sacks, how prosperous the young woman had seemed at a job that always had him living hand-to-mouth, and he had thought to knock a chip out of her confidence, bring her down a peg or two before the big, bad world chewed her up and spat her out.
“The night went pretty much as I’d planned,” Jeanne said. “I told him where I stored my Yolk and I gave him the coordinates to the Shriekers I’d trapped. I told him how much I wanted to work with him. He asked me if I was protected and I lied. I was afraid he’d lose interest if I told him I couldn’t afford it.” She sniffled and swiped at her face with her arms.
“So this Runaway guy, he gives me the wildest, most wonderful night of my life. I remember thinking that this was it, I’d met the guy I wanted to spend the rest of my days with. I felt so lucky, you know? Excited for the future. Happy.” Jeanne paused, frowning at the camera. “You listening to me, Joel?” she demanded.
“I’m listening,” Joel replied hoarsely.
“I decided to tell him everything,” Jeanne went on. “I was gonna tell him about my bills, how I couldn’t even fly back to a port because it had taken everything I had to get to the Red Desert to meet him at his favorite oasis. I was gonna tell him how his wine was making me giddy because I hadn’t eaten in two days.”
Joel simply stared down at his lap in the darkness, unable to find anything to say.
“But before I could, I started to pass out. Too much wine, I thought. Too strong for me, too long on an empty stomach. I told him I wasn’t feeling good and he offered to let me snuggle up beside him, that he’d take care of everything for me. And strangest of things, I believed him. I fell asleep feeling secure for the first time in my life, Joel.”
Joel wretchedly brought his gaze back to the datapad and his view of Jeanne in the cockpit.
Jeanne looked up at him, her emerald gaze hard. “Then I woke up and found you gone.”
Joel hung his head again, knowing what came next.
“You left a note saying you were sorry,” Jeanne said. “How the world was a tough place and I’d have to take a few lumps before I could really understand what it meant to succeed as a criminal, but you needed the money more than me and I could al
ways get more.”
Joel flushed with guilt, remembering his words.
“You followed that up with you were gonna be generous and leave me a few nodules at my stash to ‘tide me over’ until next year, when I’d be smarter and stronger and wouldn’t allow myself to be swindled by a two-bit smuggler who ‘wasn’t even trying really hard.’”
Joel felt the shame all the way to his core.
“I figured out the power supply problem,” Jeanne said, “after a couple days.”
“Jeanne,” Joel whispered.
“I was starving before I even got the ship out of the desert,” Jeanne said. “The core went out halfway to Silver City, and I went down in the jungle, totally without power. I had to trek out. I hunted starlopes and jaguars, but I was a street rat, not a survivalist. I was still starving four months later, when I stumbled out of the jungle into a farmer’s field outside Windy Hills. By then, I was pretty sure I was pregnant. I mean, I didn’t have any fat on me, but I was still showing. The old-timer there heard my story, insisted he go hunt you down himself. All I wanted, at that point, was to find you, to get some help. See, I was still under the delusion that you hadn’t really betrayed me, Joel. I had convinced myself it was my fault because I’d essentially lied to you.”
Joel looked away from the screen.
“But later, after I got ‘smarter’ and ‘stronger’, I began to wonder if you would’ve stranded me there anyway, knowing I’d never make it back to town.” She looked directly at the camera and Joel felt another sickly wash of shame. “After all,” Jeanne went on, “I had almost ten mil on the line.”
Two bags. He’d sold her out for two bags of Yolk…
“Jeanne…” Joel began.
“So this guy, this really great guy called Runaway Joel, he was known pretty much everywhere I went. I told people what had happened. Most laughed. Some shook their heads. Most told me to get rid of the kid, or use it against you later. Like I said, I tried for five whole months to contact you, Joel. Nobody would help. I wrote letters, I called, I sent you messages, I dropped what little money I had to pay the right people to say the right things. You never replied.”
“Sorry,” Joel whispered.
“And so,” Jeanne said, “when my time came, I was alone again—couldn’t afford a clinic, had been thrown out of Silver City for panhandling. I found a quiet spot in the jungle just outside town. You could look up and see the ships to Silver City flying overhead. It was a hard birth. Took too long. Umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck. He was dead when I finally managed to get him out. I almost died myself. Passed out from crying when I realized he hadn’t made it. Umbilical cord was still lying between my legs when I woke up. Tadflies all over it. They’d laid eggs in his eyes.”
“Jeanne,” Joel whispered.
“And so you were going to tell me,” Jeanne said, “how sorry you were, Joel.”
Joel brought his legs up to his chest and just sat there, staring into the darkness of his prison, feeling, for the first time, the total depth of his own sullied honor.
“You listening?” Jeanne whispered.
“Yeah,” Joel rasped. “I’m listening.”
“So I guess you got what you wanted, Joel,” Jeanne said. “I got harder. I lost my youth. I lost that starry-eyed hope that had formed the first time you talked to me in that bar. Which, by the way, now that I’m ‘smarter’ and ‘stronger’, was a setup, wasn’t it, Joel? That ‘chance happening?’ Us running into each other? You starting to schmooze the girl who had gained the favor of the Landborn kingpin? The one who got her own ship when she was seventeen? You figured there was money there, some fresh, starry-eyed, pampered girl from Fortune’s most famous family. You figured she had to have the line on some Yolk, or if nothing else, you could always just steal her fancy new ship and sell it to the Orbital scrapyard and let the pampered princess find another one.”
Joel thought about how that very thought had run through his mind, and suddenly wanted to die.
“And so here I am, Joel,” Jeanne said. “Going out with you on a second date because I had planned to kill you and leave your corpse right beside that of your son, right after I gave you a few hours to think about that ‘best night of my life’ in the desert that you love to remind me about, again and again these last couple days, like great sex was somehow a life-changing experience for me. Which, I guess now that I think about it, it was.”
Joel just hung his head.
“So back to what started this conversation,” Jeanne went on. “You were going to explain to me what went through your mind in the nine months after you knocked me up and left me to die with your baby in my womb. I just explained to you what went through mine.”
“Aanaho,” Joel whispered, glancing at the ceiling in the total blackness of his prison. “I…” He thought of the casinos, the gambling, the frivolous expenditures, the limos, the high-roller restaurants, the nights of debauchery. He thought of the dozens of faces that had been in his bed, thought about the times he’d eaten and drunk until he had puked, then gone back for more. He thought of paying whores to dance for him, sticking credit chips in their bikinis as he got head under the table.
Not once had he thought of Jeanne Ivory, the sweet little sucker that had given him the wealthiest three months of his life before he blew his load and had to go back to working for Geo.
“So?” Jeanne asked raggedly. She wasn’t even watching where she was flying, looking into the camera, instead, and Joel could feel the ship picking up speed. She had stopped bothering to wipe away tears a long time ago. “What were you thinking, Joel? I’ve been wanting to ask you for thirteen years and seven months, ever since Courage died on the jungle floor because I was too weak and inexperienced to get the umbilical cord from around his neck before it strangled him.”
Joel couldn’t speak. There was nothing he could say, no smooth words, no easy smiles, no charismatic winks, nothing he could do to make up for this.
“I almost fell for you all over again the last time we went out,” Jeanne said, into the silence. “You were suave and sweet and made me giggle. Made me feel like a girl again. I spent the entire night afterwards lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, remembering how you’d made me blush, made me laugh, made me smile. You made my heart pound, Joel. You made a little part of me hope. Made me overflow with happiness when I wasn’t paying attention. Just like last time. And it was right then, thinking about how you made me forget, how that one night fourteen years ago didn’t seem so bad anymore, that I knew I had to stop you.”
“Drop me in the jungle,” Joel said softly. “I don’t care where. You won’t ever hear from me again.”
“I’ve shot hundreds of people since that day,” Jeanne said. “I took my first power core by gunpoint, and killed the guy when he followed me to get it back. Or at least, I thought he was trying to take it back. Turns out, he was bringing me food. Found a note on his ship he’d sent to his wife about ‘helping out some down-on-her-luck orphan’ and he hoped she didn’t mind if he gave away the last of her potatoes. I almost put the gun to my mouth and pulled the trigger when I read it. You know what stopped me?”
Joel had no idea. Given the option, right then, he knew he probably would have been pulling a trigger of his own.
“It wasn’t anger or rage or indignant fury or revenge or anything stupid like that,” Jeanne said. “It was just some deep inner part of me looking at everything that had happened, taking a really good look at the dead guy on my ship, and refusing to fold under the pressure. I refused to let Life beat me, you know? From that day on, I basically threw my arm around Danger, walked him outside, and laughed in his face. ’Cause screw it. What did I have to lose?”
Again, Joel found himself with nothing to say.
“To be honest,” Jeanne said, “I’m struggling between leaving you here to die, surrounded by several thousand times more Yolk than you stole from me—Yolk that cost you your baby’s life—or dragging you out here to look you in the eyes
before I shoot you myself. Which would you prefer?”
Joel just stared at Jeanne’s picture, unseeing. “You said his name was Courage?”
Jeanne gave an unhappy laugh. “That’s what you get when you give a child a baby and expect her to name it.”
“It was fitting,” Joel said. “Like mother, like son.”
“I told you your crap doesn’t work on me anymore, Joel. That train has long since passed.” She sounded weary, tired. All around Joel, the ship shuddered with speed.
“What if I told you,” Joel said, “that I’ve come to loathe the man I was, and I’m already trying to change? That that’s what the Ferryman Joel stuff was about? I’m trying to change my image.”
“Your image.” Jeanne snorted in a sound of total exhaustion. “I’d say you were a couple decades too late. I waited thirteen years and seven months to tell you that. Not sure why. Just needed to be said, I guess. Now it’s out, I feel kinda…free. One of those things you get out on your deathbed, you know? I guess I just want people to know I never liked the damn necklace, and I hated the scalps. I just… I dunno, Joel. After you, I didn’t want anyone to get close. Once was enough.” Wordlessly, she pulled her gun from its holster and put the barrel into her mouth.
Joel’s eyes widened when he realized what she’d said and done. “Jeanne, no!”
A moment later, Jeanne Ivory blew her own brains across the console of her ship.
CHAPTER 7: Alone in Silver City
Independence Day, 17th of May, 3006
Silver City
Fortune, Daytona 6 Cluster, Outer Bounds
“Twenty Nephyrs!” Wideman Joe shouted into Patrick’s ear.
Patrick, who had fallen asleep on the couch babysitting Wideman in the hideout apartment in Silver City because Joel had scored another date with Jeanne and his brother was off having cyborg sex, sat bolt upright. The motion spilled his tepid sweetpod tea over his lap—tea because the smell of coffee made Wideman randomly break out into screaming fits and try to carve holes in people and not vegetables.