Hearts and Stones (Celta HeartMate)

by Robin D. Owens

  What would be worse. She’d find a way to get on that ship with Pizi. During this passage through the waterway gulches and the stone sewers, she’d shut a stone door on her past life; the scraping by in the mountains, the danger of living in the city, hiding from the gov, on the outskirts of the persecuted psi community. Her existence always at risk. No. Never again. She’d get a better life for herself and Pizi.

  Her future and Pizi’s included the starship.

  She didn’t say so, instead she voiced another fear. “You think they’ll make it off-planet?”

  He looked at her sourly, sucked tea through a missing tooth. “Our ship, or the others?” He shrugged. “They’ll try, but no. If you, or they, think the UStates gov will let them get away clean, you got many more thinks a-coming.”

  “Yeah,” Levona said.

  Sighing, Bartek stared into his coffee. “But we — they — might get lucky. The UStates oligarchy has to consult with the other WorldStates oligarchies, so that might delay any action against the ships.”

  “Huh,” said Levona.

  “Our leadership has been smart. They moved soon after the latest purging of the generals and military. Even in the mountains, you must have heard of that, about three weeks ago?”

  “Yes. Why was it done?”

  “The oligarch spouted that the generals ‘overstepped their authority.’ Where and when we weren’t told, just the regular nonsense, so who really knows? It’s shark eat shark at the top of the govs. We should be glad this dictator is more stupid than usual.”

  “True.”

  “I’m sure our mutant resistance leadership believes we can move faster than the new generals who are still scrambling to secure their positions. Those guys are probably risk-averse.” A sardonic smile whipped on and off his mouth. “I’m sure our strategists, or one of our oracles, has calculated the timing of leaving down to the nanosecond.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.” Levona paused. “No one who joined up is having second thoughts?” If she had after being told, others must.

  Bartek drummed his fingers on the table, stared into Levona’s eyes and she became aware how sunken his own were, surrounded by dark shadows. Pity twinged through her, but she kept it from showing. Plenty of times she’d seen pity on people’s faces, especially after her parents died in the psi-killing bomb set off over the city two years and two months ago … and when her neighbors stolidly watched the UStates gov confiscate her family home and all its contents. She’d observed from a hiding place across the street that night.

  Some of her neighbors had sensed her, but everyone kept their mouths shut. After all, they hadn’t been too far away from the psi ghetto, and no one who’d survived wanted to be labeled a mutant-freak.

  “Perhaps some people did have second thoughts,” Bartek said. “Not sure who has checked in. Everyone in the whole barrio showed up to gawk at the ship and mill around. Me, too. Since it didn’t concern me, I didn’t watch who might have reported as crew. Only the leaders are on the ship now, working. Provisioning will happen the next couple of days, and crew assignments after that. But I know there is a waiting list. Not sure how long the list is, but truth to tell, if you get on the ship and regret it, too damn bad. They’re spacing from here. Perhaps they have some kind of sorting process, counseling, don’t know.”

  He drank his coffee, then continued, “I hear that Nuada’s Sword, the ship in NJNY, is larger than our Lugh’s Spear, and they’re taking on crew who aren’t psi since the ghettos in the East have been decimated by fighting. There’s a chance you and the kit could get on there, if you could make it to NJNY.”

  Levona tensed. “When’s the takeoff date of the ship — ships?”

  Another shrug. “Nobody’s saying. The leaders told the govs a lift-off date, but I doubt anybody believes it. Sooner rather than later, though, for sure, within two weeks, perhaps a week.”

  She worried her bottom lip. “You know of a cheap way to get to NJNY?”

  “Not a solid one. Sex with Geek Class pilots sometimes works, sometimes not. And, sweetness, what would you say when they ask why you want to go there and right now? You don’t lie worth shit and would be outed as a mutant-freak.”

  Just the thought of it made her stomach clench, would set up trembles if she didn’t squash her imagination. She sucked in air and nearly choked on burnt coffee, sex, and sweat. “Can you get to NJNY?”

  “No, too damn important here, like I said, what they told me.” Raising his cup to his mouth, he sipped, then said, “One of our local scientists gathered genetic material from every willing person in the ghetto. Our folk have my DNA in special storage for the new world.” His lips twisted. “So I might have far-far-descendants someday. Our scientist even procured physical samples from … other neighborhoods.” He stared at her. From where she’d grown up, he meant. “If you left any DNA with anyone, or your parents did, both the gov and our folk have yours.”

  Her heart jumped in her chest. She didn’t recall, but maybe when she’d been a baby her parents had trusted a doctor to do tests. She’d liked her childhood doctor, before the gov came for him. She wouldn’t be surprised if her genetic sample was stored on the ship.

  “We gathered DNA not only from this region, either. One of the more important rebels came from the East, with all of NJNY’s sample. And, I think, with duplicate genetic material of the third starship’s people, from EurAstates, Arianrhod’s Wheel.”

  “My God,” she breathed. Good for the colonists if they’d collected a lot of genetic code to take with take with them, saving all the different kinds of psi power, at least. Maybe a whole host of other kinds of talents and skills now suppressed by the govs, too.

  If they’d done that with humans, they might have gotten DNA from animals, too, maybe all the extinct species, too, that couldn’t survive on Earth as it was.

  Distracting thought. Levona didn’t want her genes to head to the new world, she wanted to go on this trip, this adventure that would save her life. Live without persecution, and take her cat with her. No one would have gotten Pizi’s genetic sample, and that cat needed to be saved.

  “It’s not ‘my God,’” Bartek chided. “We’re not the True Religionists who follow one stern god and their beloved dictator. It’s Lady and Lord, or Lord and Lady. Divine Couple.”

  “Huh?”

  “Gotta build a community, our leaders have got that right, and from the minute they all step onto the ship, they’ll have a new society. Maybe it’ll stick down here, too, among the rest of us. Celtic-pagan culture.”

  “Oh.” Levona didn’t know what “Celtic” meant, and not much of “pagan” either, except that the True Religionists mob flung that insult-swear at mutants and freaks. Now the psi folk leaders had adopted it? Weird.

  “Thanks for all the data.” She stood and put her last big bill down on the table. Too much for his information, but she’d be able to survive one way or another without money and he … couldn’t.

  “Good-bye, sweetness. Good luck.” His hand swiped over the table and her seventy-five spot disappeared and he stared off into the room’s dimness. “It’s a wonder,” he murmured. “The starship. Like I said, the buyers are calling our ship Lugh’s Spear.”

  “Why?”

  “All the names of our ships tie in with the new Celtic mythology.” He shrugged off the explanation and focused on an inner vision. “It’s a full kilometer and a half long. Beautiful, like a white plane, cylindrical body and angled wings.”

  Levona had seen that for herself when it had flown overhead, but she lingered, ears pricked for all the information she could get, and Pizi hadn’t finished her rounds of sniffing the floor and everyone in the coffee shop. Levona hadn’t grasped the size of the starship, except “huge.”

  “A wonder,” he muttered, then, finally. “Someday one of my genetic descendants might walk on a new planet.”

  She bent and kissed him on the cheek, and he jerked, then patted her hand, but didn’t meet her gaze again. />
  And she walked away.

  Such a sickness could happen to her if she stayed, or worse, some nastiness could eat Pizi, starting with her eyelids.

  Levona did a quick security zip-zap spell to kill any spy bugs and slipped out of The Frigid Rush, slinking along with Pizi in the darkest night shadows. Not many streetlights here, and like always, the murky atmosphere covered the moon. She’d loved watching the moon in the mountains.

  Did the new planet have a moon? She didn’t know and shivered in the cool spring night. She’d been focused too much on herself and now regretted that. She’d left the city no more than a month after her parents’ death. If she’d stayed she’d have connected more with the psi-mutant resistance and be on the ship for sure.

  We going to Our ship now? Starship, starship, starsh—

  The ship’s called LUGH’S SPEAR, Levona informed Pizi telepathically, pronouncing it in her head the way Bartek did. It occurred to her that he’d changed his name-sigil on the message wall because of the — their — new culture. She hoped the Lady and Lord granted him peace, and found her lips mouthing that sentiment, a new prayer to a new god — Divine Couple — and how cool was that! And a new life for her and Pizi.

  Levona was determined to get on that ship and get away.

  The more she thought about the situation in the next hour and a half of gullies, stone sewer passages and hidden byways on the way to a secret entrance to the barrio, the more Levona believed the three starships might make it off planet.

  The govs pretended to want the psi-mutants quarantined, and gone. The propaganda news stories preached that mutants caused a lot of unrevealed bad things to happen.

  But the govs used the mutants to distract and scare the majority of the people from what else was going on. The UStates, particularly, not-so-secretly exhorted mobs, mostly the True Religionists, to attack the ghettos.

  So the leaders of the resistance had publicly taken the govs at their word. They’d bought three starships and away they’d go. Levona figured the top elected mutant execs had been planning something like this a long time, and caught the govs by surprise.

  Finally she and Pizi stopped at the hidden underground entrance to the barrio. She murmured the spellwords Bartek had told her at the barrier and it thinned enough for them to pass through without harm. Pushing through felt like walking through thick enveloping syrup. Naturally the above-ground fences set around the ghetto by the UStates gov didn’t stop psis.

  The minute they stepped across the boundary from city to restricted psi-mutant-freak-living-area a buzz filled her, along with more energy.

  Pizi gasped. I feels GOOD.

  Yeah. Levona had forgotten the power boost she got in the ghetto..

  Fifteen minutes later they moved from underground to the surface exactly outside the expanse where Lugh’s Spear stood. Only a few people of the barrio lingered to stare at the ship, Levona sensed everyone that had flown in on the vehicle remained inside.

  Look at that! Pizi gasped and sniffed and rotated her ears. FEEL that! It is WONDERFUL! Our new home!

  Obviously Pizi had no doubts that they’d be able to be taken on as crew, while uncertainty flooded Levona.

  The beauty and the style of the ship impressed. Long, low landing runners had deployed from the underside of the standard plane shape to prop it up. In the middle of one side a ramp angled down with a closed door at the top, with civilian-type mutant guards stationed at the bottom.

  The cylinder with wings angled back appeared more like a vehicle than a home, though it rose a good nineteen stories high and stretched a kilometer and a half long.

  A generational ship — a spacecraft that people could live and pass their lives on and die. All pure white.

  Just looking at Lugh’s Spear made hope unfurl in her again. Hope that mutants would crew the vehicle, they’d get in and the ship would sail away into space to their new planet. A freak psi society would be founded.

  That could happen. The resistance leaders were accustomed to strategizing, out-witting the gov and the mobs the gov agitated and sent against them. Used to fighting for every single thing they wanted.

  And with the adversity of the last several decades, people’s magic, their psychic mental powers, had increased, expanded.

  So maybe they’d fly away, clean.

  Time to break the bad news to Pizi. We don’t have a place in the ship.

  The little cat gasped, stopped and sat on Levona’s feet and stared up at her with big eyes. What!

  Levona paused, trying to find words.

  Pizi stood, then hopped around. What? What? What?

  I waited too long. All the living space filled up months ago.

  You HAD to wait. For Me. If You came down here times ago, You wouldn’t have found Me and We wouldn’t be heart friends, she said with irrefutable logic that made the ends of Levona’s mouth curve.

  I don’t think the people who own the ship will accept that excuse, she said, though with the prodigy that was Pizi, they should.

  Pizi stopped her hopping and sniffed. Then We will have to sneak in, like We’ve sneaked in many other spots.

  I guess so.

  They are NOT leaving without US.

  All right. We may get in trouble when we’re caught, and we WILL be caught.

  True?

  Yes, the space trip will take a long time, we can’t hide forever in the ship.

  Not even in the walls?

  Not even in the walls.

  I hears. We will go and find a sneak place in, now.

  Despite the four patrolling guards armed with long blasters and two standing at the main entrance mid-ship at the bottom of the ramp to the doors, Pizi headed for the vehicle. No one seemed to notice her, a brownish cat slinking in the night, and she managed to reach the ship. Levona saw her put a paw on the landing runner.

  Levona couldn’t go into the starship, but if she walked around the vehicle, she’d get a good idea of the space and the structure, and how that space divided into rooms for sleeping and driving the ship or whatever. She didn’t think she’d be stopped and questioned by the guards. She ran a little psi through her id bracelet so it glowed and they would know she fit the designation of mutant psi freak as well as they did. Besides, anyone would be interested in viewing the ship.

  So she nodded to the sentries at the main doors, and circled the vehicle, noting its symmetry and figuring that it would reflect that symmetry on the inside. Tentative maps began forming in her head.

  Three quarters around she heard a squeal from Pizi. Here, here, here! the cat shouted mentally along their private channel. We can sneak in here, I think!

  Levona backtracked toward the tail end, and movement caught her eye, Pizi cavorting. Levona angled to see beyond the landing runner and under the ship. Yes, there appeared to be a small breach in the ship, a slight and jagged tear on the underside of the ship where the runner attached to the barrel. Hard to make out the exact dimensions in the shadows. Perhaps made when Lugh’s Spear landed yesterday, and not yet fixed. Extending her senses, Levona didn’t feel any special watch being kept on that particular section, nor any outside ship cameras.

  With slow steps, she walked closer to the beautiful starship, as if she wanted to see the wings, or get a better sense of the size.

  From the corner of her eye, she watched a woman descend the ramp who turned to stare at her. The willowy blond appeared about her own age of twenty-two. The guards saluted this one, so Levona knew she was important.

  Levona stopped her progress when the woman strode toward her, halted within a meter. They stared at each other, and their psi powers expanded, brushed, and Levona felt her own psi strength met and matched.

  “Hi,” Levona said, trying her best to look innocent.

  The woman cocked her head. “You’re a psi mutant, but I don’t know you. I was born here in the ghetto, lived here all my life and served our community. I know everyone who lives in the barrio and most the local psi folk, particularly all w
ho contribute to mutant society.”

  “Levona Martinez,” she said, her voice serene but raising with a question about the woman’s own identity.

  Narrowing her eyes, the blond said, “There are two family groups with the surname ‘Martinez,’ but I know all their members.”

  “My father was Douglas Martinez, my mother Asaka Martinez.”

  The woman’s frown deepened, then she glanced away, toward the shining ship. “I recognize those names as people who lived as normals but died when the gov exploded a sneak psi bomb over the city to ...” She stopped.

  “To kill mutant freak rats hiding as good citizens,” Levona ended tonelessly. “I was out partying with friends that night in old downtown Denver. The bomb missed me.”

  “A tragedy.”

  “The gov called it a triumphant cleansing of 636 people.” Levona blinked back tears, not only of grief, but of injustice and fury.

  “You didn’t come here, to live in the barrio, after that demonstration of the gov’s power,” the blond said. “You didn’t join our community.”

  “I went up into the mountains to grieve and heal. I came back because I wanted to see the ship,” Levona replied, simply and sincerely. She turned to gaze at Lugh’s Spear, wondering how much her sad history might touch this woman in authority. “It’s a great piece of machinery.”

  “Fabulous piece of art,” the other commented.

  Levona flicked a hand toward the west. “I saw it fly overhead and wanted to take a peek.”

  The woman gave her a skeptical glance. “Just take a peek. Uh-huh.”

  Best to confirm as much info as possible, and maybe try and spin a bond between them by asking questions. “I heard there are three starships?”

  “Who told you?”

  “Bartek Coval at The Frigid Rush tonight.”

  Her expression formed into pity. “Ah. Poor Bartek.”