by Nancy Kress
But I am gonna also keep my eye on you, fellah. You haven’t proved to anybody that you are wise yet.
Edge Station One wasn’t on Earth.
“Come again?” Jason said. “We’re where?”
“We’re near Neptune’s orbit,” Dr. Cee said.
“Like, Neptune the planet. We’re already out in space,” Jason said.
“That’s correct. Now, don’t get worried, Jason. Yanking you from Earth to Edge Station One was safe, and sending you from here to Jump will be safe, too. It’s―”
“It’s going to be slow,” Jason said. “Isn’t Jump, like, millions of miles away?”
“Seventy-three thousand, six hundred ninety light-years,” da Vinci said helpfully. “Jump is on the far rim of the galaxy.”
“Great,” Jason said sarcastically. “So we make the world’s slowest rim shot.”
Dr. Cee smiled. “Yes, getting there would be slow if you were going by any means other than sally port. But the sally port, like t-porting, is instantaneous. Here, take your s-suit. The boys are changing in there.”
“Oh.” Jason couldn’t think of anything else to say. Sally ports. Neptune. S-suits. What did the “s” stand for, anyway? How was he supposed to lead this mission when he had so little information?
He’d ask Sor. The twenty-fourth-century guy seemed a little wimpy―he’d been genuinely upset watching that tape of the dying Captain Kenara. No point in that; those people were already dead. The thing to do now was get on with helping people still living. Still, Sor looked agile and strong and was probably damn smart. And he was the only source of information about the twenty-fourth century that would not come from a robot. Coach Patterson always said that a good team captain utilized the strengths of his players. And, of course, speaking of robots, da Vinci knew a lot of stuff, too.
It’s a shame what happens to adults in this teleporting deal. That’s why they couldn’t yank forward my future self, the “me” who must’ve become famous. Jason shrugged that off. It was only what he always suspected, and having it confirmed wasn’t anything to gloat over. They had to snatch me up when I was young enough to still do this.
Jason took his s-suit out of its package, stripped, and pulled the suit on. It fit perfectly. Made of some complicated woven material, it clung to his body from ankles to wrists to neck. Better hope Jump wasn’t a hot place; he’d swelter. The package also contained boots and gloves. The gloves fastened onto a sort of hook at his waist. Jason looked at himself in a mirror: lookin’ good. Sor, across the room, looked as natural in his suit as if he’d been wearing it all his life, which he probably had. He had an extra pouch of tools at his waist.
Then Jason saw Robbie.
The runt pulled his suit over a skinny body that nonetheless looked wiry and fast. Over the s-suit, he put his baggy pants and filthy shirt and loose coat from 1810. Jason saw that the inside of the coat was sewn with at least a dozen pockets, some of which bulged with small objects. Next Robbie pulled on the s-suit’s boots, then he transferred from his boots to the new boots a long, thin, wicked-looking knife.
He caught Jason staring and said cheerfully, “Don’t go nowhere without me tools, guv’nor. Not Robbie.”
Jason said carefully, “Robbie, what exactly did you do in 1810?”
“Thief,” Robbie said. “Pickpocket. Forking silver from the gentry. Whatever needs doing, guv’nor, Robbie’s your boy.”
Sor gasped, “You stole things? Things that didn’t belong to you?”
“Belonged to me after I forked ‘em,” Robbie said. “Nobody better. But don’t you worry none, guv’nor. I’m keeping me fambles clean on this trip. After all, you’re all Robbie’s kin an’ children, right?”
Jason felt that as mission leader, it was his job to step in. “Does ‘keeping your fambles clean’ mean you won’t steal anything while you’re on my team? I hope so.”
“You got it, guv’nor. Robbie don’t steal nothing as long as he eats like they fed him here so far. Good food and enough of it.”
“You mean,” Sor said scornfully, “that for you, ethical behavior persists only as long as everything goes well. You can’t be counted on in a crisis.”
“You calling Robbie cow-hearted?” His eyes narrowed. Jason saw him flex his fingers in the direction of his boot knife.
“Nobody’s calling anybody names, not on my team,” Jason said firmly. He moved casually closer to both boys; he was a foot and a half taller than Robbie, six inches taller than Sor. “That understood? Robbie?”
“Anything you want, guv’nor.” Robbie looked sunny again, except for his eyes.
“Sor?”
“Certainly.”
“Good man. Robbie, give me the knife.”
Robbie didn’t hesitate. He pulled it from his boot and gave it to Jason, who laid it on a shelf projecting from the wall.
“Robbie, you understand where we’re going?”
“Out past Neptune and onto Jump.”
“Yes,” Jason said. “But you understand that they’re different worlds? That we’re already not anywhere on Earth?”
“Must be in heaven, then,” Robbie said cheerfully.
Jason squinted at him. “No, we’re... Do you understand that we’re going out where the stars are? Off the Earth completely?”
Robbie said, “Can’t be done, guv’nor. My advice is, just let the gentry say whatever they like. You and me and Sor and the females, we’ll find this cube thing, and eat good while we’re doing it.”
Robbie didn’t believe in space travel, Jason realized. In fact, Robbie probably didn’t even understand that such things as other planets existed. Maybe Jofrid, who came from even further back in the past, didn’t believe in outer space, either. What else didn’t they know?
“Robbie, have you ever been to school?”
Robbie laughed. “Me? Never did, guv’nor. Learned on the street, Robbie did.”
Sor said suddenly, “Why did you agree to go on this mission, Robbie? To eat regularly, yes. I’ve read the history of your time. But there is no reward for this mission, you know. Nothing you can bring back to your own time.”
“Fine for all of me,” Robbie said.
Jason said quickly, “Then let’s go.” They moved out of the changing room.
Jason was thinking furiously. Sor, from peaceful 2336, might be baffled by what Robbie stood to gain from the mission. But Jason knew better. There were a lot of guys in 2019 New York, some of them in Jason’s own high school, who wouldn’t mind disappearing to some new place for a few weeks. Either Robbie was hiding from someone who was after him in 1810, or else he didn’t believe that he couldn’t bring back loot from 2336 to his own time. Or both. Thief, outlaw, and what else? What kind of team was he supposed to lead on this mission?
And why did they choose Robbie? What do they know about him that I can’t see? The question tickled briefly, but Jason had too much on his mind.
Jason braced himself to see what had been going down with the girls.
They both looked quiet. Jofrid wore her green dress over her s-suit. Well, if the future-types didn’t object to that, Jason didn’t. Sharon looked better in her suit than in her dorky 2019 dress, but she was carrying that damn baby, murmuring good-byes to it. Jason sighed. What a team.
“This way to the t-port chamber,” da Vinci said, and they all followed.
The t-port chamber turned out to be a bare room with a booth in one corner. The booth had glass sides and looked a little like an old-fashioned telephone booth, the kind Superman used to change his costume in real old movies. Dr. Cee and Dr. Orgel waited nervously beside a desk covered with monitors, displays, keyboards, and strange-looking cubes.
To Jason’s relief, the first thing Dr. Cee did was take the baby away from Sharon. “Are all of you ready?” Dr. Cee said. “Please remember, you can all still change your mind.”
‘We’re good to go,” Jason said. No wonder these people needed help from kids from the past. They kept all the time talking abo
ut backing out instead of getting on with things.
“Then just a few more items of information,” Dr. Orgel said. “The t-port on Jump was established by the Panurish, not by us, and in some ways, it’s not typical of t-ports. Da Vinci will explain how after you arrive. The planet Jump is fairly Earthlike, but there are some differences. Both da Vinci and Sor have that data, and they will give you a fuller briefing and hand out more equipment once you arrive.
“Weapons,” Jofrid said.
Orgel winced, then nodded. “Yes. If need be. But now the window is open. We are grateful that you all proved so willing to push the timetable to take this opening, instead of waiting a day. A calculated risk that…”
“That we’d better take right now,” Jason nodded at the chronometer on the wall.
“Now, da Vinci will t-port first, to demonstrate what happens. Next, Sor, since he’s t-ported before. Then―”
“Then me,” Jason said. Didn’t these doctors know that he was the leader? “Followed by the girls. Robbie, you defend the rear. Da Vinci, go.”
The robot stepped into the booth. Dr. Orgel did something to the controls on his desk. For ten full seconds―Jason counted―nothing happened. Then da Vinci disappeared.
“He’s already on Jump,” Dr. Cee said.
Jason asked, “Can you get him back?”
“Only if he walks back through the port on that end, and this particular t-port is only open ten minutes a day at sunset. Da Vinci will explain. Oh, I wish we had time to give you the usual training, but in this case, we just can’t. Does anyone wish to back out?”
Give it a rest, lady, Jason thought. Sor walked to the booth, smiling and relaxed. He stepped inside, waited ten seconds, and vanished.
The booth was barely tall enough for Jason. He ducked his head a little and waited, suddenly nervous. Did these people really have the ability to send him to a distant planet where alien kids waited to fight him? Man, this was too weird, and if something went wrong... No, don’t think like that. Stay focused.
Jason’s last thought before he t-ported was, I wish I’d double-checked that Robbie’s knife really stayed behind.
Jason vanished from the t-port booth.
He didn’t see Jofrid’s t-port, or Sharon’s. Jofrid turned pale, set her lips together tightly, and left murmuring prayers. Sharon stood quietly, watching Dr. Orgel touch his controls. The second he finished, she darted out of the booth, grabbed Tara out of Dr. Cee’s arms, and ran back. “Sharon!” Dr. Cee cried. Robbie sprang forward and tried to snatch the baby back, but it was too late. The ten seconds were up.
Sharon and Tara t-ported through the sally port to the planet Jump.
Chapter Six
Sharon arrived on the first―and probably the only―alien planet of her entire life to the sound of screaming. From Jason. At her.
“That baby! You brought that damn baby! What’s wrong with you? How could you―”
He sounded just like her mother! Sharon, shaken and scared, hadn’t really meant to bring Tara with her. It was just that in the minutes before the t-port, she’d sort of lost it. Sharon had looked at Tara in a stranger’s arms and had suddenly realized that she, Sharon, was going to go billions of miles away, leaving the defenseless baby with people Tara didn’t even know. Sharon’s mother had done that to her all the time when Sharon was little. She’d go to sleep in her mother’s car and she’d wake up in some other car, or on some stranger’s sofa, while her mother went out “partying” with new friends. Sharon would lie there too scared to cry, not knowing if the people would be mean or nice, not knowing when her mother would come back...or even if her mother would come back. It had been horrible. Looking at Tara in Dr. Cee’s arms, all those scared feelings had come rushing back inside Sharon, and she’d acted without even really thinking. Nobody was going to make Tara feel that way. Nobody! So Sharon had dashed forward and snatched Tara and t-ported with her, and here was Jason yelling at her just the way her mother always screamed at her when Mom was drunk.
“How could you bring a baby on a dangerous mission like this, you stupid―”
Then Sharon really lost it. From fear, from old anger, from sudden sick guilt that maybe she had endangered her precious little niece’s life. She did something she’d never done before in her entire life: she screamed back at someone who was screaming at her.
“Don’t yell at me! Don’t you ever yell at me! You don’t care what happens to Tara; you said you don’t even like babies. You only care about what happens to your stupid mission because you’re so stuck up about being the leader! Well, it’s my mission too, and Tara is here so I can take care of her. If you don’t like it, Jason Ramsay, you can just stick it up your…up your…”
But she couldn’t say it. She had never used language like that in her life, and she couldn’t use it now. It turned out she didn’t need to. Jason was standing there looking stunned, as if she―quiet little Rose-of-Sharon Myers, whom everybody told to speak up all the time― had hit him between the eyes with a two-by-four.
Jason said, “Well, uh, uh...well...” Sharon felt someone put an arm around her. Jofrid. The Icelandic girl was really nice, and Sharon found she needed the arm, because all of a sudden, Tara was so heavy, and all of a sudden, Sharon felt like she might cry.
Jason pulled himself together. His face smoothed out, and Sharon could see him make a huge effort to speak in a different tone.
“Well, uh, yeah. I’m sorry I yelled, Sharon. But I just see that baby here, and I’m, like, hello? It was wrong of you to make a decision like that without talking it over with us! You know what I mean, don’t you?”
And the weird thing was that Sharon did know. She could see how Jason could lose it. After all, hadn’t she, Sharon, just lost it herself: She’d actually yelled at this tall, enormous boy! Her!
“But the thing is,” Jason said reasonably, “Tara can’t stay. It could be too dangerous for her here. She can just go back through the t-port gizmo, and since you got to take care of her, you go back, too. Now, before it closes for the day. Remember that Dr. Cee said it’s only open at sunset, and she also said that all you got to do is turn around and go back through the port right there? See?”
Sharon looked where Jason pointed. Rising up from the ground was a faint rectangular shimmer, like a ghostly door. Beside it stood Robbie, who must have t-ported in while Jason and Sharon screamed at each other.
And behind and around and under the shimmery t-port door was an actual alien planet.
Sharon caught her breath. She’d been so busy yelling and trembling that she hadn’t ever looked at Jump. She looked now.
It was early evening, and a yellow sun hung low on the horizon, casting long shadows. That much was like home. But nothing else was.
The hilly ground was covered with a purple vine instead of with grass: a purple vine with millions of tiny little leaves, each no bigger than Sharon’s thumbnail. It made the ground seem fuzzy, like the whole planet had purple fur. There were no big trees, but clumps of bushes dotted the hills, greenish-purple bushes with yellow flowers and clumps of shiny fruit. Somewhere a bird―or something!―sang a low, melodious almost-song. The air smelled fresh and tingling, sort of like lemons mixed with pine needles. And in the darkening sky hung one, two, three...six moons. Six.
It was the most beautiful and strange place Sharon had ever seen.
Jason was still talking in his reasonable, mission-leader voice. “...and so it’s best for everybody if you just turn around with Tama and t-port back.”
“Tara,” Sharon said. “Her name is Tara.”
“Whatever. You just do a one-eighty, Sharon, and hang with Dr. Cee and the other docs until we finish here and―”
“No,” Sharon said quietly.
“No?”
“No. I’m staying. And so is Tara.”
Jason kept smiling, although his eyes darkened. “Now, Sharon, babe, that isn’t a good idea. Not a good idea at all. A baby here―”
“Tara isn’t in
any danger. Look at this place! It’s calm as...as…”
A piece of the Keats poem from English class came into her mind: Thou foster-child of silence and slow time… That was how she felt here, like Jump had adopted her, made her a foster-child of this peaceful quiet alien countryside away from her awful mother, away from everything that was wrong with her life in 2019. Jump felt safe, which might be weird, but it was true. Safe for her, safe for Tara.
Jason was waiting for her to finish her sentence. “As calm as what, Sharon?”
“As a ‘foster-child of silence and slow time.’”
“Come again?”
“Never mind. Tara and I are staying here. Both of us.”
Then Jason lost it again. “No, you aren’t! You think I want a baby on my team, crying and messing its pants and smelling awful and causing everybody all kinds of trouble? You’re going back, girl! Now!”
“Let me go!” Sharon cried because Jason had put one hand on her arm and started pushing her gently toward the shimmery t-port door.
Everything happened at once.
Jofrid sprang forward like an angry tiger and started bawling Jason out. “Let her make up her own mind! Who do you think you are, the master of the Allthing? A woman may choose for herself just as much as a man, no matter what the skalds sing us, and you remember that!”
Sor put a strong hand on Jason’s arm. “We do not indulge in violence, Jason. Civilized people can settle differences without violence.”
Robbie sidled up with a long, thin knife that had appeared from nowhere and said, “Let go the female, guv’nor, if you knows what’s good for you.”
For a long moment, everybody froze, looking at Robbie. Sharon had never seen anybody’s eyes look that scary. But then Robbie smiled, although he still held the knife. “Now, you know Robbie don’t want to hurt nobody. You just let go of the young gentry mort, guv’nor.”
Jason let go of Sharon.
The tall black boy looked bleakly at Robbie, then Sharon, then Sor, and finally Jofrid. “Okay, folks. This is it. Look, the t-port’s gone.”