Space Unicorn Blues

by T. J. Berry

  Gary recognized the last sentence as a question, asked in the exceedingly roundabout style of a subordinate addressing her captain. The delicate dance of her words amused him. He had become used to orders barked in his ear and screamed across rooms. No one had bothered to consider his feelings in a long time. He’d almost forgotten that his opinion mattered at all.

  “Yes, replant everything,” he replied, continuing to walk. Boges grumbled discontentedly.

  “What is it?” he asked, turning to watch her while they walked.

  “You speak differently now,” said Boges. “Your words sound short and harsh, like theirs.” She waved at Jenny, who had wheeled ahead of them. Gary laughed.

  “My dearest Boges. I offer you my heartfelt apology. Living among the humans for so long has stunted my capacity for compassion and reason.”

  They both smirked at his little jab at the Reason. Perhaps he hadn’t lost his sense of humor after all, it had simply transformed.

  “I may sound like a human, but I am still the same man you knew.” Even as he spoke the sentence out loud, Gary realized it was not true. He was not the same at all. Cooperating with Jenny and Jim would have been unthinkable to the man he was before. He would have gotten them on board, then ripped out their soft throats. Today, he simply wanted a change of clothes and perhaps a nap. “Replanting the halls is a splendid idea. The faster we can get the ship self-sustaining, the faster we can head for openspace and leave the Reason behind.”

  “You realize, Captain, that the living layer on the stone will make the hallways difficult to navigate,” said Boges.

  Gary knew exactly what she meant. He had agreed to allow Jenny to own his ship, but he had not agreed to make the hallways passable for her wheelchair. He was trying to live forgiveness through all of his actions, but occasionally he still felt like screwing with humans as retribution for their treatment of him.

  “Boges, Captain Jenny will simply have to ask Unamip for the blessing of those with limited mobility. A healthy ship requires soil on the floor. I’m sure she will understand. And on your behalf, I will ask his blessing for those with limited resources. I hope that when we exit Reasonspace and I take control of the Jaggery, we’ll have the opportunity to restock all of our supplies.”

  Gary knew that Boges did not like when he prayed for her, but she never asked him to stop. She had her own dwarven demigod that she invoked when the situation warranted it. Other than that, she didn’t speak of matters like prayer. Dwarves were intensely protective of their private lives, inviting very few people into their inner circle. Cheryl Ann had been the only human asked to join their secret ceremonies in the heart of the ship. It was an honor that even he had only been offered a handful of times.

  “I look forward to seeing the blight-resistant foxberries,” said Gary.

  Boges nodded and opened a dwarf door in the wall, tucking herself into one of the many tunnels and rooms carved into the structure of the ship. The service pathways of Halcyon-class stoneships were sized for tiny folk like pixies and dwarves, but dwarves were the best candidates for maintenance jobs. Pixies and their short attention spans were clumsy with mechanical tasks. Not to mention that their bodies were too fragile for lifting heavy engine parts or tolerating the extreme temperatures of space.

  He turned the corner and saw Jenny down the hall, pushing open the cockpit door. She held it open with one hand, scraped her chair through with the other, and let it close behind her. The same hallway also housed the crew quarters, including the room where they had held him prisoner and where Cheryl Ann had died.

  Gary had devoted many sleepless nights in the Quag to imagining how it would feel to come back to this spot on the Jaggery. He expected all that thinking to have prepared him for this moment, but sadness hit him like a punch, stopping him in his tracks and taking his breath away. He paused with his hand on the wall, not daring to get any closer to the scene of the crime.

  Down the hall, the cockpit door opened and Jim came out carrying a tablet with the takeoff checklist. He stopped and called to Gary.

  “Aren’t you going to settle into your bunk?” he asked with a cold smile. Gary felt the blood drain from his face. Of course Jim would force him to sleep in his old room. He wanted Gary to relive the horror of his crime every time he closed his eyes. What Jim didn’t know was that he already relived that night endlessly, no matter where he bedded down. He kept his expression stoic, betraying none of his anger and disgust. He sauntered down the hallway toward Jim as if lying in murder rooms was something that he did every day.

  Jim seemed stymied by Gary’s lack of reaction. The wrinkles around his eyes deepened into dark crevices. Even though he knew that humans aged relatively quickly, Jim looked worse than most human men would have in his sixties. The stress of Cheryl Ann’s absence had worn him down like water over a rock, carving deep lines into his face. That man had seen some hard living while Gary was gone.

  “You’ll burn in hell, you vile creature,” said Jim, quietly so that the dwarves in the walls would not hear. Even Jim knew it was folly to get on their bad side. He lifted his tablet. Gary thought he was showing him the takeoff checklist. Instead, he slapped Gary across the face with it. Then again, maybe Jim didn’t know anything at all about getting along.

  Years ago, Gary would have returned the slap with a jab hard enough to put the man on the ground. He would have kicked and bitten until Jim begged for mercy. But today he was tired. Even if Jim made him sleep in a room marked with death and pain, he wouldn’t ever go back to the Quag.

  “You do what you need to do, Jim. I’ll be finishing this delivery,” he said. The stinging in his cheek was already gone.

  Ricky barreled out of a nearby room, still dragging her suitcases behind her.

  “I don’t like this room. Aren’t there any crew quarters with windows? Maybe a bathtub?” she asked.

  “End of the hall, there’s one with a view,” said Jim. “No bathtubs though. You know we’re going into space, right? The big open place without gravity. Hey, I heard some bottles in that bag of yours,” he added, following her down the hall.

  “You buying?” she asked over her shoulder. “Because this isn’t a not-for-profit suitcase.”

  “I’m buying,” said Jim.

  “Gary, you come too. I have a gift for you.”

  Gary couldn’t imagine what Ricky Tang could possibly have for him. He was understandably wary after that morning in the bar. It was likely a trick. She saw his hesitation.

  “Oh come on, Gary. You can’t hold the Blossom against me. I have a business to run.”

  “Had a business to run,” said Jim.

  “You’re a kind fellow, aren’t you?” Ricky’s words dripped sarcasm.

  “I lived one way my whole life, I’m not going to change now,” said Jim.

  “I have just the drink for you,” she said, with a sly smile.

  She opened the door to the last cabin in the row and ushered both of them in after her. It smelled like old sweat. The previous occupant had only cleared out about half of their personal items. Soiled clothing was strewn on the furniture, as if someone had packed in a hurry. A few dishes piled on a table had a powdery residue, which might have been food when the ship first went into storage. At this point, it was nearly a living civilization. Ricky wrinkled her nose.

  “What a mess.”

  “They didn’t let the dwarves clean the cabins. Evidence of a crime,” said Jim with a glance at Gary.

  Ricky set her suitcases on the bed and unzipped one. She flicked a dirty sock off the night stand and set down a bottle of dark purple liquid and a small glass.

  “Cash or trade?” she asked.

  “Trade.”

  “I’m curious to see what a man like you brings to the table,” said Ricky, waiting for the offer.

  “Be right back,” said Jim, heading toward his quarters.

  Ricky opened another suitcase and pulled out piles of clothing. There were more glittering, pointy shoes than Gar
y had ever seen in his life, and his mother had quite a collection herself. They didn’t look comfortable in the least. But there were also two pairs of spaceworthy boots and a few sets of soft booties that Reasoners preferred in zero G environments.

  “You’re hovering, Gary,” said Ricky, shaking the wrinkles out of a silvery cocktail dress. If a formal dinner broke out unexpectedly, Ricky was prepared to attend. She set it aside and unfolded a crimson flight suit that looked like it had never been worn.

  “Is that–” started Gary.

  “Never you mind,” said Ricky, tucking the jumpsuit away and pulling out the plain khaki overalls of a non-Reason spacer. She had an outfit for every occasion. Whether they found themselves on a spacewalk or at a state dinner, Ricky Tang would be prepared.

  “You said you had something for me,” said Gary.

  “Oh. Right.” She dug into one of the bags and pulled out a small box with a crank on top. “I know I only have to pay Jenny for the ride, but it feels like bad karma to keep an item that belonged to your mother and not give it to you.”

  Gary took the box, unsure of what it was and what to do with it. He pulled open the drawer at the bottom and the aroma of his mother’s masala dosa wafted up at him.

  “What is this?” he asked, unable to conceal the amazement in his voice.

  “It’s an old spice grinder. It belonged to your mother during her time on the Cristobal. It’s possible it came from her mother before her. Sure smells like it.”

  “And how did you come into its possession?” Gary asked, ready to hear a story about shady backroom deals and poker games gone wrong.

  “Just a simple estate sale that I handled through my antiquities business. I ended up with a lot of relics from the Cristobal after they renovated the pioneer museum on Chhatrapati Shivaji Station. They wanted big symbols of human space exploration, not trinkets from home. Your mother’s job as an ambassador of Earth meant that she had a lot of antiques in her cabin. Incredible stuff.”

  “What else do you have?” Gary had so few items from his past. Most of them were buried in the wreckage of Copernica Citadel. Ricky could give him access to an entire museum’s worth of family history.

  “Alas, big guy, I had to leave most of it back at the Blossom when we bugged out. If any of my servers are kept on staff, they’ll probably preserve anything that the Reason doesn’t use or destroy. Maybe they’ll send it along to wherever I end up.”

  Jim came back into the room with a stack of worn currency. Ricky counted through it with practiced fingers and stuffed half the paper back into Jim’s breast pocket.

  “This’ll do. I’m so grateful for the ride that I’m not even inflating prices that much.” She poured out two fingers of a purple drink and handed it to Jim. He moved to take a sip and she put her hand over the rim of the glass.

  “Oh no. Not here. Take that to your cabin. Drink it while sitting down. And bring back the glass.”

  “What is it?”

  “Let’s just say, prepare to meet your maker.” Jim seemed think it was a euphemism. He lifted the glass in a salute and left her quarters.

  “I wonder what god Jim is going to see,” Ricky mused.

  “And I am curious what they will say to him,” finished Gary.

  Ricky sat back on her bed.

  “You know how lucky you were to get out of the Blossom, right?” she asked.

  “I don’t believe in luck,” said Gary.

  “Fair enough. But having Jenny there in time to grab you before the Reason swooped in, that was brilliant.”

  “Wasn’t my idea.”

  Ricky’s brow furrowed.

  “Huh. Jenny fucking Perata. Considering the situation, it probably went as well as it could have.”

  “She destroyed your bar.”

  “That bar wasn’t going to be mine after today anyway. I knew that law was coming down from Fort J soon. Why do you think I had my funds liquid and these suitcases packed? I was leaving on the Jaggery today no matter who was at the helm.”

  The intercom system crackled to life.

  “Gary, get up here,” said Jenny.

  “The captain calls.” Ricky started pulling old books out of her bag and stacking them on the bedside table.

  “Don’t let Jenny see those,” said Gary as he turned to leave. “She thinks books are a fire hazard.”

  In the cockpit, Boges had already removed the captain’s chair to make room for Jenny’s wheelchair. It slid neatly between the co-pilot’s spot and the wall. As Gary walked in, she was trying to lock the wheels into place with a set of clamps anchored to the floor. Her fingertips barely grazed the top of the clasp. Jim was nowhere to be seen.

  “Would you like me do it?” Gary asked.

  Jenny sat back in her chair.

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  He knelt down and snapped the clamps around her wheels.

  “You smell terrible,” she said. “You need to change before we meet the Sisters. I think all of your old clothes are still in your room.”

  She tapped the screen of the tablet that had been jury-rigged to interface with the ship’s Bala systems. It was as crude as sewing a ballgown with a chopstick, his mother would have said, but it worked well enough to get the ship airborne and pointed in the right direction.

  “Where are we meeting the Sisters?” he asked.

  “Out in the Little Sandy Desert,” Jenny replied.

  “Not a lot out there.”

  “Exactly.”

  They were just outside of Broome City. An unbroken line of reddish dunes rolled by on the cockpit viewscreen. Most of the vegetation on this part of Earth had died off when average temperatures climbed past fifty degrees, and that was before the generation ships had departed. Humans stopped measuring after that. It was so hot out there that equipment malfunctioned and melted in the sun, especially machines designed for the deep freeze of space. It was unlikely they’d encounter any Reason patrols in this area.

  “I thought the Sisters had a good working relationship with the Reason?” asked Gary.

  “Not so much these days. They were accused of helping a faction of anti-Reason activists a few years back. The Reason nearly executed one of the Sisters for the crime. It’s been tense since then,” said Jenny.

  “Are they part of a resistance movement?”

  Jenny bobbed her head back and forth indecisively.

  “It’s hard to tell. The Sisters are playing a long game, but for the amount they’re paying to keep this delivery off regular Reason shuttle routes, it’s safe to say they’re moving something critically important to the Century Summit.”

  “Hm.”

  Even in the Quag, the Century Summit was all anyone could talk about. Lifers who had no chance of ever getting there talked endlessly about what it would be like to be at Fort J when creatures from all over the galaxy gathered for the big event. The humans saw it as their chance to prove how much progress they had made in the last hundred years. According to their measure of success, they’d expanded to six new planets in the century since they’d abandoned Earth. It didn’t matter to them that those planets were already occupied.

  The Bala were equally excited for the Summit. They planned to plead their case to the godlike Pymmie who had brokered the alliance between humans and their kind. Gary heard furtive whisperings that the Pymmie were sure to be angry that the humans had gone back on their part of the deal, colonizing instead of cooperating. The Bala were prepared to demand justice.

  For the most part, humans were treating the Summit like a massive celebration. Corrections officers had saved up leave for years in order to head to Jaisalmer for the largest party in the known universe. While walking the yard, the COs had made gleeful bets over which one of them would end up in the hospital first. Gary had intended to stay far away from the Summit and its human revelers. Now, he seemed to be headed right for the center of the storm.

  “See what you can figure out from the Bala controls,” said Jenny, waving him toward th
e rear of the cockpit. “The ship feels stiff, but I can’t tell why.”

  The room had been reconfigured for human use, with chairs and a touchscreen connected with wires. When unicorns were in charge, they steered the ship using a series of vials and tubes that had been fused with the wall. Gary tapped a glass tube full of liquid that had the consistency of vomit. It should have been crystal clear. The ship was in bad shape.

  “I’m cutting you in on the proceeds of the delivery, a third each to you, me, and Jim. And when we get out of Reasonspace you can have the Jaggery back,” said Jenny. “After we load the cargo, we’ll head into orbit and make a stop at Beywey for some trisicles. If the live animal dealer Bào Zhú doesn’t have any we’ll have to go all the way out to Soliloquy Station, which will take days. And we don’t have days.”

  She was right. The Summit was scheduled to begin in twenty-five hours. He understood why she’d planned this mission down to the minute.

  “You haven’t left much extra time in case something goes wrong,” he said. Jenny groaned.

  “Don’t say things like that. You’ll jinx us.” She knocked on the side of the carved wooden club she always carried with her.

  “I’m simply saying that you can’t count on everything going according to plan,” he said.

  “Then we’ll make a new plan.”

  Gary could see where the interface with the tablet was irritating the ship like an open sore. It appeared as a plume of hot gas streaming past a glass lens in the stone. All of the human modifications needed to be torn out for the ship to operate at one hundred per cent efficiency again, but he doubted that Jenny would agree to that. Before long, however, he’d be able to get the Jaggery back to what it once was. Jenny tapped on her tablet and Gary saw the order come through his instruments to increase speed.