by Jean Kilczer
I nodded and finished it. Then I glanced at the small white bag in his lap.
“Here.” He reached into it and pulled out another cannoli. “You can have the last one.”
“OK.” I took it and bit off the end. “Thanks.”
“Prego,” he answered.
“Why the hell don't you propose to him, Paulie?” Zack said from beside him.
“He's a guest,” Paulie answered. “You always feed your guests. You got the friggin' manners of a pig, stratto!”
“Al,” Zack said, “he's calling me a jerk!”
“Enough!” Al shouted from the passenger seat. “You two are getting on my friggin' nerves. Now shaddup, both of ya.”
I ate the cannoli and stared out the window as the driver, a balding man with drawn features and a hooked nose, Vito, I guess, headed out to the main road. He turned south toward Santa Fe and possibly the Galaxy Spaceport located there. If we were space bound, we might well get to Equus before Joe, Chancey and Bat.
Lisa? I sent on a hunch.
Silence.
The ties had broken and I had to consider that I might never see her again, or watch Sophia's broad smile. My daughter and my girlfriend were safe, and that was what really mattered. But I had only myself now and a future that was as bleak and unknowable as this snow-shrouded land.
Chapter Six
I piloted the syndicate's Star Searcher with its Alcubierre drive, within the bubble that harnesses space-time as it contracts space ahead and expands it behind, and set our course for the 51 Pegasi Star System.
“Hey, Julio, how does this mother work?” Paulie asked as the stars surrounding us flashed by.
“I don't know the theory behind it,” I told him, “any more than I know how a hovair can fly, but it has Einsteinium tensor roots and depends on negative mass. I can tell you that we're riding a warp wave inside a bubble. I push the right buttons, set the course, and the drive takes us there. Actually, it brings our destination here.”
“Oh,” Paulie said with his lopsided boyish grin. He tapped my cheek lightly with an open palm. “Good thing you know what the fuck you're doing, because we don't.” He shrugged and sauntered back to his seat, which was where I wanted him in the first place.
We entered the Pegasi system, but I wasn't saying. I set a course for the blue planet Equus and brought it up on the visual screen. There were two great oceans, with islands and five continents. The northern hemisphere was locked in its winter phase. That's where I'd try to home in on Joe's thoughts.
None of my team was a sensitive, though Huff sometimes showed glimmers of response to a tel probe. But my good Vegan friend who resembles a Polar bear and thought of me as his Terran cub, wasn't with us on this one. He was probably back on his homeworld, Kresthaven, playing blue checkers, their national pastime, and hunting dire flappers in the frozen north seas.
The small spacecraft was buffeted as we entered Equus' atmosphere. I lowered her over the mountains and the forests of strange snow-covered trees with looped branches, and cruised the northern hemisphere in a search pattern as I probed for human thought rhythms. This was the proverbial needle in the haystack. C'mon, Joe, I thought. I need a signal!
Had they made it here before me and planted the bristra? I could only hope. Four moons played in the sky as I circled from night to dawn to day.
But no signal.
“Hey, kraut,” Al called against the opera they were blasting.
I turned in the seat. “Are you talking to me?” I shouted back.
“Well, I ain't talking to the walls,” he said. “You want a drink?” The four of them were sipping red wine.
“No thanks,” I called back, “I'm driving. The name's Jules.”
There, on the radar screen, I saw a blip. It had to be Joe and the team making planetfall!
“C'mon, Julio, have one anyway.” Paulie poured wine from a thermos into a plastic cup. “You see a cop around here to pull you over?”
“Even if there was a cop,” Vito grinned with missing teeth, “he'd be in the don's pocket anyway!” He elbowed Zack, who spread his lips in a silent laugh. I felt a chill run up my back. I'd never seen such vacant eyes on a human.
I turned back to the console to track Sojourner to her landing site and picked her up on the visual.
Dammit! I thought as Paulie walked toward me with the cup in his hand. He'd see the ship.
“OK.” I got up and met him, blocking the console with my body. I took the offered cup and raised it. “A toast,” I said, as a reason to remain standing, “to a safe landing and locating your Blackroot.”
Zack swirled his cup and peered at Al, who was obviously their leader.
Al raised his cup. So did I and the others. “Salute,” Al said with an Italian inflection.
“Cento di questi giorni,” Paulie added.
Whatever, I thought as we drank.
I returned to the pilot's seat and watched Sojourner land in a forest clearing. A signal from it began to flash. I flashed back our own signal. I would pretend to continue searching for awhile to give my team time to plant the root away from their ship, and then return to it.
“With all respect, capo,” Vito said to Al. He brushed back his remaining dark hair and nodded at me. “I think this faccia di stronzo is stringing us along.”
“Why would he do that?” Zack asked. “You want me to shake something out of him, Al?”
Uh oh. “Maybe if you'd all be quiet,” I said, “and lower the tunes, I could concentrate my tel probes to find your root! You think this is easy?”
Al sipped his wine. “We'll give him another hour. Now shaddup, all of you. Vito! The music.”
Vito shut it off.
Actually, I like opera, but I had to keep up this farce.
The next fifty minutes passed in utter silence except for the drone of the ship's engines as I pretended to tel-probe.
“I'm getting something,” I finally said when my hour was about up, and hoped the team had finished their work. “There's a patch of Blackroot somewhere under the trees on that snow-covered western slope.” I pointed to the visual screen.
The smell of wine was thick as the four men crowded around the console.
“I'm just looking for a suitable place to land.” I banked the ship away from Joe's landing site.
There ahead was a clearing between thick trees. I brought Searcher to rest on flat snow-covered ground. We were about five miles away from the roots, which would give my team even more time to leave the area.
I zippered my jacket, wrapped my scarf, pulled on my ski hat, and shrugged into my backpack. Then I sprang the hatch and leaped outside into a foot of snow and drifts that had been lifted by our landing. The four men jumped down after me, all with backpacks.
Zack landed on his knees in the snow. “Porco Dio!” he exclaimed, got up and brushed off his pants.
“Hey, Al,” Vito said, “you ever see friggin' trees like these?”
Al just peered ahead “Which way?” he asked me.
I pointed northeast, where they must've planted the bristra by now. “A few miles, that way.”
Soft white cumuli clouds scudded across an Earth-blue sky as we walked. The snow-shrouded trees were hoary growths, black-barked, with curled branches that bore red pods and broad pine needles. Game trails crisscrossed the snow. Some of the footprints were broad, with deep holes around the curved front that indicated long claws. I wondered about predators and felt naked without my stingler.
“Hey, Zack!” Paulie called.
“Whatta ya want?” Zack asked.
Paulie made a snowball, threw it at him and hit him in the face.
“Oh, shit!” Paulie laughed and ran along a game trail.
“You stupid frocio!” Zack shouted and balled his hands into fists like hams.
I stepped back, out of Zack's path as he plowed after Paulie like a bison in snow.
“Who you calling a queer?” Paulie threw another snowball at Zack.
“Get over
here,” Al yelled, “you two friggin' morons. C'mon!” He trudged in the direction I'd pointed. “You!” he said to me. “You lead the way.”
I chose a game trail that meandered northeast and walked ahead. Besides an occasional chirp, the only sound was the crunch of snow under our boots. The thin air held a faintly bitter smell. I knew that after a while, I would no longer notice it. But the gravity was slightly heavier than Earth's one g. I would have to get accustomed to that, too. A throaty growl told me we were not alone in this ancient forest.
I reached out with a tel probe and encountered Joe's thoughts. There's a small cave, I heard him say within my mind. I saw it as we landed. About a mile away. We'll wait there for Jules to bring them to the bristra. Chancey?
Yo?
Is Sojourner ready for liftoff?
Whenever we're ready, boss.
Let's avoid a firefight if we can.
Will y'all look at that.
What is it, Bat? That was Joe.
The bristra, Joe. It's already sending out feelers an' sniffing in our direction.
Precocious little fuckers. That was Chancey.
Let's get to the cave, Joe said. C'mon. If it follows us, we can burn it at the entrance. I think it's trying to surround us here. Jules can locate us with his tel.
Another damn cave! Chancey said. No matter what planet we land on, we always end up in some fucking cave. I hope there ain't no flying roaches in this one!
I smiled as I felt Bat's chuckle. Ya'll never know, Chance. Could be flying poisonous snakes this time, hibernating for the winter.
You'd like that, wouldn't you, rebel? Chancey said. Remind you of home in the swamplands?
Let's go! Joe told them and they fell silent, except for subliminal thoughts.
I broke the link. Some thoughts are private.
It was dusk when we reached the planted bristra.
My Lab specimens had already spread into an area the size of a small field. An amazing creature. It had avoided trees, as usual, and instinctively put out yellow flowers to attract insects. I saw no dead animals. It must have its own reserves of energy to spread so far. The field was quite beautiful. The flowers exuded a sweet aroma there in the frigid winter air, inviting, I'd guess, to herbivores scrounging for sparse, dried grass. A deadly web of promises.
Zack carried a small metal box strapped to his backpack for bristra cuttings. I wondered if the thin metal would hold those voracious escape artists, or if they could burn through it, but I didn't say. The Lab's glass tank had held them and Spirit was not about to let the bristra or the gangsters leave Equus.
Zack and Vito burned off some root tendrils and pushed them into the box with tree branches. The truncated thicker branches convulsed and lifted, showing those rows of pink legs and the round mouths along their bellies.
“Mia madre,” Vito exclaimed and backed away. “Ma che cosa e questi diavolo?”
Zack shrugged.
“What devils?” I was able to interpret.
Zack slammed down the lid, breaking off a tendril that was already attempting to escape, and locked the box.
“Wait a minute,” Al said as Zack slung the box over his shoulder. “It's too late and too cold to find our way back to the ship. It's getting dark. I don't want these friggin' diavoli crawling up our asses at night. We'll camp here, with a wall of fire around us. Tomorrow we'll take off.” He shrugged out of his backpack. “We've got what we came for.”
We unrolled NorthSlope sleeping bags, our thermoses, and food packets.
“Hey, Al,” Paulie said as he rolled out his sleeping bag on his hands and knees, “I feel like a friggin' boy scout.”
“You look like un frocio waiting to take it up the ass,” Zack told him and chuckled.
“You motherless piece of shit!” Paulie jumped up. “I don't take it up the ass from nobody.” He started toward Zack, who lifted a hand and wiggled fingers, motioning him to come ahead,
“Enough!” Al shouted. “Vito.” He nodded toward Paulie.
Vito got up and stood between Zack and Paulie. “C'mon, Paulie,” he said softly and took his arm, “he just likes to tease, you know?” He patted Paulie's cheek. “It's OK, paisan. C'mon, I'll help you unpack.”
“Naw, I can do it!” Paulie kicked at snow.
I exhaled a breath and looked at Al. He was already opening his food packets. Vito combed back his thinning hair with his hands and returned to his sleeping bag.
I pulled the tab on a heavy food packet. The filaments heated up and the food inside bubbled. The tab turned green. I unpeeled the top and opened it. Whatever it was, it smelled like an Italian restaurant. I dug in with the dangling fork and stabbed a sausage that dripped red sauce. I chewed the hot, spicy end and wiped my mouth on the napkin provided with the packet. Then I ate the rest of it, fished around for more, and speared another sausage. “Is this mock?” I asked Vito.
He nodded and chewed a meatball. “Best we could do on short notice.”
I was relieved. Mock meat is cloned from the cells of living animals to grow different cuts of meat. No animal is slaughtered for the meat. As an astrobiologist who studied lifeforms and didn't usually kill them, I only ate mock meat when it was available. I thought of Sophia, my beautiful lady. The worst argument we ever had was when she served me deer meat without telling me it was from a real deer she'd hunted and killed. I stabbed a meatball and nibbled it. Where was she now? With Abby, Joe's wife? Was she worried about me? Sure she was.
Paulie strolled over with his bags of food. “Mind if I join you, Julio?”
I nodded at the bedroll. “Mi casa es su casa.”
He grinned, sat down, and twirled spaghetti inside a bag.
I dug around in my last bag and pulled out a fat, ripe peach, fiery red in the light of flames; a little gem in this frozen wasteland. I was about to bite into it when Paulie shook his head and chuckled.
“What's so funny?” I asked.
“Here, gimme that.” He took the peach from my hand. “Don't you know nothing, kraut?”
I watched him slice off a piece with the small knife dangling from his bag. “See,” he said, “you hold it between your thumb and the knife.” He popped the piece into his mouth. “That's how we do it in my neighborhood.”
I swiped the peach from his hand and glanced around. “You've got some neighborhood.” I sliced off a piece and chewed. “You part of the family, or just a hired gun?”
“Al and Vito are my older brothers. We're nephews to the godfather.”
“And Zack?”
“Zack's hired muscle.” He waved his small knife at me and chewed. "Don't ever cross him. Capisco?"
I shook my head.
“When Zack gets mad, not even Al can stop him.”
“Is Al the boss?”
“Al's the capo! We take orders from him.”
I sliced off another piece. “And if he orders you to kill me after we're back in the trade lanes?” I chewed. “I guess you're obligated to do it.” I was down to the pit.
Paulie's features turned hard in the stark flame light. “I said we take orders from him.” Then he sat back and smirked. “Why would he order your execution?”
“To leave no witnesses.”
He laughed and leaned forward. “You think the family is concerned about witnesses? You heard Vito. The police and the local politicians are in Don Rastelli's pocket! The only witness protection program is a slab of cement under the West Side Highway.” He pulled dessert from his last bag. It was a layered pastry shell that resembled a large clam.
“Is that a different kind of cannoli?” I asked.
“Naw.” He broke it open and a rich, white cheese oozed out. “This is a sfoliatelle. In your language, anglo, it means many-layered. Here!” He shoved half of it at me.
“Gracie,” I said.
He grinned his lopsided grin. “Prego.”
The pastry was creamy and crunchy and like nothing I'd ever tasted before.
“Better than the peach, huh?”
Paulie said.
I nodded and chewed. “Better than a lot of things.”
I turned the peach pit between my fingers. Given the right conditions, the seed within could blossom into a mature peach tree. But not here in this unforgiving world. I slipped it into an inner pocket. If I made it back to Earth, Lisa and I would plant it in Joe's backyard. Someday, when she became a woman, the tree might bear fruit.
“Don't look so worried,” Paulie said. “Your neck is safe.”
I fished around in my dessert bag, took out a sfoliatelle, and broke it in half. “Do I have your word on that?” I handed him half.
“On the souls of my children.” He took it. “Gracie.”
“Prego.” I extended a light probe, calculated not to be noticed. And touched a dark place where conscience did not override violent acts. I withdrew and shivered.
“Paulie!” Al called.
“Gotta go.” He got up quickly. “Coming.” He strode to Al's bedroll and sat down.
Al gestured toward me. He poked Paulie in the chest and said something that made Paulie hang his head and nod. Don't collaborate with the enemy, I thought, or something like that.
I rubbed a hand over my eyes and felt lonelier than ever. Spirit? Are you out there?
I am here. What do you wish this time, master?
I felt the sarcasm in his send. So far, so good, Spirit. Our plan is working. When they're all asleep, I'll sneak away and into the cave with Joe and my team. Then we'll leave Equus. Do you have to kill these tags?
They will not be allowed to leave with bristra. Had I known that you took samples from Halcyon, I would have stopped you!
I rue the day, Spirit. Isn't there some way you can spare their lives?
Not that I can conceive of.
Your call, Spirit. I wish it could be otherwise. My team and I will be off-planet just as soon as we make it back to Star Sojourner.
If you can.
Why? What's stopping me? I sent and froze. Zack was approaching. I stood up quickly.
“You right-handed, or left-handed, kraut?” he asked.
I took a step back. “Right. Why?”
He pulled out handcuffs on a long chain from inside his overcoat, grabbed my left wrist and snapped one on.