“Okay, Mom, thanks.”
“Now, Star, let me pour you out a little refreshment. This batch of hootchinoo’s not half bad.” She bustled back to her kitchen and lifted the lid from a fifty-liter drum and stirred the contents with a broom handle. I thought about going over and taking a closer look but my courage failed me. I sat where I was, watching wisps of fog float up from the dry ice packed around the drum.
“Hey, Pop.” Another miner came in from the warehouse with a small bulging bag. “Take a look at this.”
Pop opened the bag and pulled out a fistful of loose ore. He ambled to the back of the room and pulled out a jeweler’s loupe. The miner came up behind him. “So, whaddya think? Is it worth the effort?”
Pop pulled off the loupe and dropped the rocks back in the bag. He handed the bag to the miner and said, “Come on, Jim, give me a little credit.”
“That’s just what I was going to ask you for.”
“Funny, very funny. That’s nickel from Jolly Jack Tarr’s claim on 9872Fortymile; it was played out months ago. Now get outta here, and don’t come back until you’ve got something worth trading.”
The miner stood where he was, twisting the top of the bag in his hands. Pop shook his head and swore disgustedly. “All right, take a year’s supplies out of store. Leave your marker.”
“Thanks, Pop. I owe you big time.”
“Bet your ass you do. See you, Jim.”
“So long, Pop.”
Mom gave the barrel a last vigorous stir and produced a ladle, with which she filled four large mugs. She put drinking spouts on the mugs, the mugs on a tray, and the tray into the oven. She nuked them for sixty seconds, and handed the ominously smoking mugs around.
I held mine out at arm’s length, my elbow locked. “Gee, thanks, Mom. You shouldn’t have.”
“Damn straight I shouldn’t have, a liter of Mom’s hootchinoo retails for an ounce of fifty-grade U-235. Drink up, girl, drink up, it’ll do for what ails you.”
Or for what didn’t. “I’m sure glad I’m still a child,” Leif muttered to Caleb. My eyes met my husband’s and I knew we were both remembering the recycler in the back of that bar in Piazzi City, but Mom was looking at us so expectantly that I couldn’t bring myself to refuse. I took a deep breath and held it, closed my eyes, and drank.
Now I know what the old Roman emperor felt like when somebody poured molten gold down his throat. My teeth dissolved. My nose hairs melted. My toenails peeled back. I coughed and choked and wheezed and tears rolled down my cheeks and sweat broke out all over my body. When I could I gasped, “Jesus, Mom, what’s in this stuff?”
“Well now, that would be telling, wouldn’t it?” she said, winking at Caleb, whose dark skin had turned a deep winey red. Pop must have been used to it because he drank his down like it was only wood-grain alcohol and went back for a refill. “Molasses to start, sugar and dried fruit when I can get them, a little sourdough starter for fermenting. But you’re not drinking, Star.”
I closed my eyes and took another gulp, which now that I was braced for it was better than the first but not by much. Mom sipped and rolled the stuff around in her mouth like the sommelier for Ma Maison. She frowned. “Little light-handed with the garlic this time, wasn’t I, Pop?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Mom,” Pop said, starting on his second mug. “Tastes just fine to me.”
The miners on Black Rock were glad to see us but they were up to their ears in a new vein of molybdenum so we only stayed one night. We felt like tourists, and with Archy offlink it was like a vacation. Our seventh day out Jupiter was so close we could practically warm our hands by the Great Red Spot. The afternoon of our arrival on 7871No Return we suited up and went outside to watch the jet streams and cloud forms roil around in the red giant’s atmosphere, a billion stars providing a spangled backdrop. The beauty of it hurt me so I could hardly breathe.
The twins were less impressed. “Orange ball, Mommy.”
“Yes, sweetheart.”
“Big ball. Want to play with it. Want out.”
“We’ll go inside soon, Paddy,” Leif said. “You can get out then.”
“Leif play with me.”
“Okay.”
“Leif play with me, too!”
“Okay, Sean, I’ll play with both of you.”
“How did you know which was which?” Caleb said to Leif. “I can’t tell them apart in person, let alone over a commlink.”
“I don’t know, Caleb. They sound different to me.”
Caleb grunted.
“Look,” I said. “See that? Ahead of the Red Spot. Which one is that?”
“Europa,” Leif said.
“Io,” Caleb said.
“Oh,” I said. “I thought maybe Ganymede.” Jupiter has too many moons. We watched the red giant in silence for a few moments. I said dreamily, “You remember Sam Holbrook telling us that if you mix methane with ammonia and pass a spark through it, you can form organic matter?”
“So?” Leif said.
“So Jupiter’s got methane and ammonia up the wazoo,” Caleb told him. “Your mother figures if she studies on it long enough, she can grow clover for cow feed on the Great Red Spot.”
“Oh.” Leif paused, evidently thinking it over. “Isn’t Jupiter’s interior temperature something like ten thousand degrees absolute plus?”
“Uh-huh.”
“That’d kill anything organic.”
“A shame,” Caleb said solemnly.
“Unfortunate,” Leif said.
“It probably won’t stop her.”
“I doubt it.”
“Maybe we should yank her air hoses now, save the human race from a fate worse than death.”
“It might be the only merciful thing to do.”
“Thank you, gentlemen, for your support and encouragement,” I said. “Shall we go inside?”
The No Return miners were a rollicking bunch with an overwhelming sense of hospitality. They were led by one Hatsuko Matsumoro who, she explained engagingly, had woken up one morning in San Francisco and had been unable to face even one more day of her mother-in-law telling her how to cook rice. “I couldn’t get it right,” she told us, “it was always too sticky or not sticky enough.” That particular morning, instead of washing out the rice cooker for another try, Hatsuko stuffed some clothes into a briefcase and lit out for Onizuka Spaceport on Hawaii. There, she signed on a TAVliner as a purser’s assistant. By way of LEO Base and Copernicus on Luna, she worked her way to the Belt and to 7871No Return where, from what we could see, she was building up a sizable little nest egg from an obligingly productive streak of silver. “Every year or so I get a message from Hiroshi and the kids saying all is forgiven and to come on home,” she confided. “The day he tells me that bitch has croaked, I’ll do it, and not before.”
At our appearance she and her four partners downed tools, broke out the homemade sake, and did everything up to and including handstands to entertain the twins. Leif, with his shy grin and his willingness to sit still for any tall tale no matter how outrageous, was an instant hit. We added to the festivities by spreading around some of the luxury items we were carrying in the Cub’s freight compartment. I was afraid for a moment Hatsuko was going to have an orgasm when she spotted the coffee. It was four days before we were allowed to go on our way, and at that only if we promised to stop off again on our way back.
The Conestoga was less than six hours travel time from No Return. Up close it looked pretty much as I remembered seeing it at Copernicus Base, a smooth, slender ship a third the size of an Express, with a closed bow and a spheroidal pressure plate that made it look like the bulb of a lily. It toiled not, neither did it spin, it simply floated dead in space, next to a rock about three kilometers in diameter. I didn’t see the Tallship anywhere.
Inside the Conestoga was the standard Space Service Industries ship’s interior design, functional and utilitarian with the bare minimum of creature comforts. On a cylindrical ship the decks are usually divi
ded into pie-shaped compartments around a central circular passageway; the Conestoga was no exception. Oddly, there was no color separation of floor and ceiling to give the Terran-bred zerogee traveler a sense of orientation. Everything was white, not eggshell or cream but a glaring, flat white, top, bottom, and sides. Each room was lit indirectly with a monotonous white glow. It felt like the inside of a jar of mayonnaise.
The second odd thing was the smell. There wasn’t one.
Belt communities were distinguished by location, by size of rock, by amount and quality of population, by kind and quality of ore mined, but most of all by smell. It was said you could sit down solarwind of 7310Achorn and see the smell of burning hair headed your way. 9203Heaven smelled like sour milk, 9204Hell like old, unrefrigerated green olives, and not the gin-soaked kind, either. You forgot your own smell in time, which made visits to other communities a real strain on the olfactory nerves, until you got used to their odor. Then you returned to your own rock and had to become accustomed to your own aroma all over again. Outpost, with required daily showers (Section III, Paragraph 1, Expedition Articles) and an air purification system second to none this side of Terranova, smelled better than the inside of a pressure suit. Further than that I was not prepared to go.
There was no smell aboard the Conestoga. None.
We were met at the lock by one man alone, a courteous gentleman with chocolate skin, a mane of white hair, and a calm demeanor that reminded me of Mother. “Ms. Svensdotter, of course,” he murmured as I was about to introduce myself.
“Have we met, sir?”
He smiled a gentle smile. “No, but you are not unknown in the Belt. And is this your daughter?”
“No—”
“Yes,” Caleb said. “Yes, Star. I’ve got Sean today. Star has Paddy, sir.”
“I knew that,” I said.
“And this is?” He smiled at Leif.
“My name is Leif, sir,” the boy said.
“How do you do, Leif.” The man looked from Leif’s face to mine without comment.
We clambered out of our pressure suits. In the Conestoga’s zero gravity the twins would have floated away, but after all the off station journeying we had done with them we were prepared with tow ropes and tethered a toddler each to our belts.
The gentleman chucked them under the chin and exchanged greetings. “Natural conception, of course.”
Caleb and I exchanged a questioning glance. “Er, yes.”
He shook his head. “Amazing.”
Leif opened his mouth. Caleb caught his eye and gave a slight warning shake of his head. Leif closed his mouth. Caleb said, “And whom do we have the pleasure of addressing?”
“Oh, pardon me, I am Dr. Orlando Lavoliere. And you are?”
“This is Caleb O’Hara, sir,” I said, “my security chief. Where are the rest of your shipmates, Doctor?”
He gestured vaguely. “About ship on their duties. May I offer you some refreshment?”
I said that would be lovely. Lavoliere led the way to a room off the lock, sparsely furnished with couches and tables bolted to the bulkheads, and sent down for coffee. When it came it was brought by a little girl perhaps ten years old, with olive skin, fair hair, and big brown eyes, towing a covered tray behind her. She seemed taller than her age would warrant but that might only be the effect zero gravity has on one’s perception of size and shape. “This is my daughter Elaine,” the doctor said.
Elaine clipped the tray to the table. She saw the twins and exclaimed with pleasure. She saw Leif and blushed. The four of them pulled themselves over to a corner.
“Sugar? Creamer?”
“Thank you.”
Another little girl, the twin of the first except that she looked even longer and thinner, pulled herself into the room. “Father?”
“Yes, Eleanor?”
“Mother Eve says perhaps the visitors would care for some fresh-baked cookies?”
He gave a slight smile and a nod, and she swarmed into the room with a covered plate, regarding us with such a wide-eyed, unwavering stare that she missed the table clip entirely. The edge of the plate hit the edge of the table, the lid popped off and pale, round sugar cookies floated everywhere. The little girl’s olive skin blushed a fiery red and I said quickly, “What fun—look at the twins snagging them out of the air!”
The little girl gave me a grateful glance and then turned to her father with a fearful one. He stared at her for a moment, his lips tight, and then waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. She went into the corner to play with the four other children. Leif was telling a story about Orion and Artemis.
“Either I’m seeing double or you have twins yourself, Doctor,” Caleb said.
“Um, yes,” Lavoliere said. “What’s this I hear about the Terranova Expedition going into the world building business?”
I looked at Caleb. “I’m constantly amazed at how quickly news travels downarm.”
“When you consider most of it is disseminated over nothing larger than pressure suit transmitters,” Lavoliere agreed, smiling.
We chatted for a while about the homemades, and then the conversation shifted toward new arrivals at Ceres, which gave me an opening. “We didn’t see the Tallship as we came up, Doctor.”
Out of the corner of one eye I saw Eleanor and Elaine freeze with their hands stretched out flat. The twins, unabashed, beat on their palms with enthusiasm. Leif wasn’t looking our way but he was very still. “The Tallship?” Lavoliere said blankly.
I exchanged a glance with Caleb. “Yes. You left Copernicus together in 2007, didn’t you?”
“Er, yes, of course we did.” He hesitated, and then smiled his sudden, charming smile. His smile reminded me of someone, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember who. “We—well, the fact of the matter is we came to a parting of the ways once we achieved Belt orbit. We haven’t kept in touch. Yes, Eugenia?” This time there was a definite edge to his voice. “Another daughter,” he explained to us apologetically. “I’m afraid you’re the—er—star attraction today, if you’ll forgive the expression. The E Series always has been a little forward,” he added, and then looked as if he wished he hadn’t.
“Truly, Father,” the little girl, a carbon copy of her sisters— triplets? I thought—said earnestly, “I did not mean to be rude. Mother Juliet asks if the visitors will be staying the night.”
Lavoliere hesitated for a moment with an odd look in his eyes, and I must say I was a bit miffed. We’d come hundreds of thousands of kilometers to pay a social call. I wasn’t exactly expecting a parade, but anywhere else on the Belt the red carpet would have been rolled out and most likely the captain of the ship or the principal miner of the rock would have surrendered their beds to the visitors. Lavoliere stirred and said with forced heartiness, “Certainly they will be staying, daughter. Instruct Mother Juliet.”
“We appreciate your hospitality, Doctor,” Caleb interjected smoothly, “but we are already late in returning to Outpost, and the people on No Return are expecting us back this evening.”
I stared at him, my mouth half open. I never play poker, either. His eyes as they met mine were totally expressionless, but the nape of my neck prickled. Caleb’s instincts were never at fault. “Uh, yes, certainly. Caleb is entirely right, Dr. Lavoliere. We don’t want my people sending up flares.”
“No, we most certainly do not.” I turned my head and caught a genuine but fleeting flash of alarm in Lavoliere’s eyes. Now that we had said firmly that we could not stay he was eager to convince us to do just that, and in the resulting protestations of undying hospitality found ourselves invited to stay for lunch at least. We could see he regretted it as soon as the words were out but in the Belt you don’t give the boot to people who have traveled twenty-three degrees and fourteen minutes specifically to make your acquaintance. And we had his daughters on our side. Leif was turning into some kind of Casanova, even if he wouldn’t give the time of day to a female who couldn’t handle a laser torch in vacuum. Caleb sign
ified his assent with a tiny nod, and I accepted for the five of us.
“Eleanor, tell Mother Juliet there will be guests for lunch. Say, in a half hour?”
“Yes, Father,” the little girl said. She smiled shyly at us and pulled herself up the companionway.
We all sipped new cups of scalding coffee substitute through straws with varying degrees of relief. I was dying to take Caleb aside but until we were safely out of range of possible Conestoga pickups private conversation would have to wait. I set my cup down in its clip. “What brought you to the Belt, Doctor? What is your special interest?”
“The usual. The choice to live life as we choose, and not as it is chosen for us.” He smiled. He smiled almost as much as Maile, but it wasn’t her he reminded me of. “I’m sure the originator of Ellfive independence can comprehend a desire for freedom.”
I grimaced. “So you’ve heard that story, too, have you?”
“We’ve been reading what issues of the Outposter come our way,” he said.
“Allow me to send you a complimentary subscription via optishot, sir.”
“Why, thank you, my dear. I admit that it is pleasant to receive news of Terra occasionally.” We chatted about the One-Day Revolution and the new Terranovan government and the Librarians, and agreed pessimistically on the possibility of Terra coalescing behind a single world government. Then it was time for lunch. “Perhaps the children would care to eat in the nursery?” Lavoliere suggested.
I hesitated. “May we take them there?”
There was an almost imperceptible pause and then he inclined his head. We followed him downship to a large airy room that seemed to be overflowing with babies, all taking full advantage of the zerogee. They all seemed to be too thin, and they were each tethered to a section of bulkhead that included a fastened-down sleepsack. None of the babies were sleeping. The din was tremendous. “David,” Lavoliere said, and had to raise his voice. “David!”
A Handful of Stars (Star Svensdotter #2) Page 16