Gradient

by Anders Cahill

  He laughed again. “You’ve got a mind for conspiracies, eh kid?”

  “They’re not real?”

  “The Road is real alright. But not every pilot who carries a sidearm works for some large, shadowy organization.” He patted the disrupter at his waist. “I walk the Road when I have to, but I’m my own man.”

  “Oh. That’s good, I guess.”

  He could see the disappointment in my eyes. “I tell you what, kid. You’ve got a lot to learn… The simple truth is, the galaxy needs people like me out here on the fringes. The plutocrats have more wealth than they know what to do with on the central worlds. But we fend for ourselves out here. If that means I have to bend the rules to get resources to the people who want ’em, so be it. And if I earn some credits along the way, well that’s just ’cause I’m bringing value to the lives of others. If not me, someone else will. And frankly kid, there ain’t no one better than me at this.”

  I leaned even closer. “You could take me with you,” I said in a whisper.

  “Take you with me?” he practically shouted, ignoring my attempt at discretion. “I don’t think so, kid. My work ain’t for amateurs.”

  I sat up straighter. “I earned the highest marks in demia, I have reached the third echelon in chronostones, and I am one of the only people my age working in the refinery.”

  He raised his left eyebrow, and his closed lips frowned at the right corner. “This where I’m supposed to be impressed?” he said.

  “You said I have a lot to learn. Well, I’m the best learner I know.”

  “All the more reason why you should stay away from the game I’m playing, kid. You’ve got a brighter future ahead of you. The galaxy needs brains like yours. No need to tussle down in the underbelly with folks like me.”

  “The thought of spending the rest of my life here on our moon gets worse and worse every year. Our underbelly is nothing but gossip and corrupt local polities. I’d do anything for a taste of something bigger. Please. I won’t get in your way.”

  He sat back in his chair, and looked at me for a long moment. Then he reached across the table and put a comforting hand on my forearm. “Look, kid, I get it. I really do. The world I was born on felt like a dead end when I was your age too. Now that I am older, I know enough to appreciate what I left behind.”

  “But still, here you are, on some distant moon, when you could be home.” I gave him a triumphant look.

  He pursed his lips. “Fair enough. I still visit my long-suffering mother when work takes me in that direction, but my life is out here. Has been for a long time. I’m not sure I could go back, even if I wanted to.”

  He looked away from me, thinking about his mother, maybe, or what it would be like to go home again. I thought about my own mother, how much she had already done to support me.

  “What would your folks say if you left?” he asked.

  “They want me to go on to do something big with my life.”

  “Course they do. Every good parent thinks their kid is meant for greatness. And maybe they’re right about you. But do you think that means they want you signing up with a small time transporter like me?”

  I shook my head gloomily.

  He leaned across and patted me on the forearm again. “Your time will come, Oren.”

  I nodded and shrugged.

  “Hey. Have you seen a starcrosser yet?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  He laughed. “You’ll know when you do. Believe me.”

  “Do you mean an interstellar voyager?” I asked breathlessly. “Have you ever seen one?”

  He nodded. “Been on one. Three, actually, for anyone running tallies. They’re always looking to train up irritating youngsters like you who ask too many questions. A starcrosser ever comes to Verygone, well that might just be your passage outta here, kid.”

  “A starcrosser,” I whispered under my breath. The thought made my mind race with excitement.

  “Hey.” Thaun snapped his fingers in front of my face. “You ever even been offworld at all?”

  I frowned and shook my head.

  “Not even over to Jendovah or Jarcosa?”

  Jendovah was a massive mining asteroid at the edge of our Beallurian solar system, and Jarcosa was the closest inhabited planet, second from the sun.

  “My mother’s great grandparents were born on Jarcosa, but we’ve never been.”

  “One day, maybe, you’ll stand on the shore of Jarcosasand with the mountains at your back, and look out over the endless ocean water. It’s in your blood after all, eh?”

  “I’d like that very much.”

  “How about a ride?”

  “To Jarcosa?” I asked with disbelief.

  He held up his hands. “No no no. Sorry, kid. That’s not what I meant. I am leaving with the sun at my back tomorrow, stopping at Jendovah, and then out of the system, so I can’t take you to Jarcosa. But I was born with the same hunger to wander that I think maybe you’ve got too, don’t you?

  “Every voyage has its beginning. That’s what my old pausha Lictor used to say. First I ever served under. He was a bastard, but he was a romantic bastard, and he took a shine to his young crew members. I wouldn’t be living the life I am now if not for him… not sure whether to thank him or curse him for that. But if it hadn’t been him, I’m sure I would have found another ship. The least I can do is pay it forward. How about I take you for an orbital hop here on Verygone? Just a taste of the life to come, eh?”

  As someone who had lived my whole life on an entire moon devoted to fueling spacecraft, I knew how precious that offer was. “You’d use up fuel just for that?”

  “Well,” he said, thumping me on the bicep, “turns out I know a young fellow who works at the refinery on this here moon. I am thinking maybe he can make sure I leave with my reactor fully charged, and full containment too.”

  I rubbed the spot where he punched me, smiling sheepishly at him.

  “So, what do you say, kid? Fair deal?”

  “Fair deal.”

  * * *

  My eyes were watering and my organs compressed as I was squeezed back into my seat. Thaun let out a wild yelp of joy. Then we were weightless.

  “Hey, kid. You can open your eyes now.”

  I squinted. He was leaning towards me, a huge smile on his face.

  “Not bad, eh?” he said.

  I gave him a queasy nod.

  “Don’t worry. The first time is always a gut churner. You get used to it. But if you throw up now, we’re both going to regret it. Focus on a fixed point out. It’ll help.”

  The cockpit window was filled with stars. The same stars I had stared up at every winter since I was a child. But just being in the cabin of Thaun’s ship Tradewinds made me see them differently. Not just as points of light in the night, but as places I might actually one day visit.

  “How many worlds have you been to, Thaun?”

  “More than I can count, I’d say. But compared to some folks, I’m just a small-time provincial. Most of my trips are here in our galactic backyard.”

  “You’ve never been to the central worlds?”

  He sighed. “Once. You ever hear of Tau Set?”

  “The twin stars! Of course. You were there? What was it like?”

  “Truth told, I couldn’t wait to get back on my ship and hit open space. The politics. The mind games. The endless social rules and formal etiquette. If that’s civilization, they can keep it.” He wiped his hands together as if cleaning off something filthy and unpleasant.

  “What about the palace? Did you at least see the Dawnfall?”

  He gave me a mischievous smile. “See it? I was in it!”

  “No!”

  “That was why I was there. Invitation from the thermatarch herself.”

  I looked at him, stunned.

  He shook his head and chuckled. “Sorry, kid, I couldn’t resist. That old queen wouldn’t know me from a meteorite. A… ah… a colleague of mine worked down in the loading docks. Got
me in for a special tour, if you catch my meaning.”

  “I’m not sure I do.”

  “Sheesh, kid. I got to spell everything out for you? I love my old lady Tradewinds,” he ran his hand lovingly across the dashboard in front of us, “but even a spacefarer like me gets lonely, experienced as I am with the long stretches of solitude. There’re some things only the comfort of a woman’s arms can solve.”

  “What was it like?” I held up my hands quick, before he got the wrong idea that I was looking for salacious details from his love life. “Dawnfall palace, I mean.”

  “Well, me and my colleague, we were, ah, kind of busy, kid, so I didn’t see all that much. But what I did see sure was magnficent.” He grinned wide at his own cleverness.

  “Is that all you ever think about?”

  He laughed.

  “Do you have a shipheart?” I asked, changing the subject. “Can we talk to it?”

  “No shipheart here on this old trader. Just my wits, my wisdom, and her guts and bones to keep us flying. She ain’t much to look at, I know, but she was built well, and she’s traveled further than most in these parts.”

  “Can I take a look around?”

  “Hold tight. We haven’t even done the best bit yet!” With a few quick flicks of his hands, the ship made a sharp turn. My stomach rose in my gullet, and I squeezed my eyes shut again.

  “Here we are.”

  I opened my eyes, and drew in a sharp breath. My nausea disappeared.

  Verygone was below us, its metal rich soil a vibrant red from this altitude. I spotted the glimmer of lights from our settlement, and then my eyes found the open quarry to the north. The gaping maw of the pit revealed dozens of layers of sedimentary rock, the moon’s history played out in different hues of sand and rust down towards the core of the planet. There was a rover crossing above-ground from the settlement to the pit. It looked like a crawling insect.

  Beallus glowed fiery bright, high above the Senes mountains. I realized we were moving, drifting slowly to my left, level with the plane of the horizon. In a few minutes, Beallus was out of sight, and Cordellar came into view. It seemed even larger now, like it might swallow Verygone at any moment. Soon, it filled almost the whole of our vision.

  “Verygone. It’s so… so tiny,” I said.

  Thaun smiled. “Every world looks that way when you get up high enough. But that’s your whole life down there, kid. Every minute you’ve ever lived took place on that moon.”

  I looked over at him. I felt a fierceness in me I’d never felt before. “That may be true. But I’ve only just begun.”

  * * *

  Near the end of my second winter, something truly remarkable arrived. There were five of us, on our lunch break, eating in silence in the canteen. We were tired, and in a place like Verygone, conversation topics are exhausted in short order. I had offered to play chronostones to pass the time, but on that particular day, the boredom of losing to me again was apparently worse than the boredom of another quiet lunch.

  I finished my gulyas, cleared my place, and walked over to the viewing window, staring out into the deep night. A flash lit up the sky. I blinked.

  “What is it, Oren?” someone asked behind me.

  I had no idea, but before I could answer, my mother ran in. “Come to the upper deck!” She was smiling. Everyone got up fast.

  Beneath the transparent dome of the upper deck, the view was unrestricted from horizon to horizon. Cordelar was behind us, almost invisible, a looming wall of darkness. A wide river of stars funneled out from its shadow, stretching across the emptiness above. The closer stars were so solid and sharp that I often dreamed of stepping out into the lethal cold and gathering them close for warmth.

  For a moment, I was lost in this sweeping vision. Then, as my eyes followed the cosmic river, I saw it, closer than any star, and even more beautiful. A starcrosser. One of the monolithic voyager ships designed for deep space exploration.

  My mother grabbed my arm and whispered, “That is Transcendence. I wonder if it is going home?”

  My jaw hung open. The massive ship hovered in high orbit, shining like a long dagger moon, bands of light spiraling across its surface. I knew what my mother meant with her question. Going back to Forsara.

  Refueling a voyager can take several days. Transcendence was too large to land on Verygone, but it had its own refinery vessel, The Gourmand, which served as the primary go-between. Much of the crew of Transcendence stayed in orbit, but the crew of The Gourmand were excited to feel solid ground on their feet, to meet likeminded peers on our moon, and to find some respite from the endless work onboard. Others came with them. Officers. Scholars. Crew members suffering from the agitations of prolonged confinement.

  When the commanding staff toured our refinery facilities, I made sure to get chosen for refueling duty. The terranium extracts were bonded in ultra-density atom smashers, and even though we had run these sequences through a hundred thousand cycles, the process required attention and precision to ensure atomic purity.

  The dala of The Gourmand was a large man, even taller than my father. He was shirtless, which I came to learn is a fashion among men from the sunbright world of Forsara, but he had the hardy build of a settler, thick hair covering his chest, bred for long years at the edge of the system. Like me.

  The pausha of Transcendence was a tall woman by galactic standards, but small and lithe compared to the women of Verygone. She had short, curly black hair and mahogany skin. A simple blue sash ran across her sleeveless cream cloak, pinned to her chest with two interlocking rings of trimantium, an unbreakable chain link, the sigil of the Fellowship. The sash marked her status as pausha, first among equals on the ship she captained.

  I had never seen a native Forsaran before. She looked strange and beautiful to me. When she caught me staring, she smiled and nodded. She gestured to the dala, and he leaned down to her as she whispered something in his ear. The big man laughed, and I heard him say, “He is a bit like me, isn’t he?”

  * * *

  One week later, I sat with my parents around the dining table in our living quarters. A small holocube rested on the flat of the table between us. It put to my mind the odds-setting dice used at the start of a round of chronostones to set opening positions. The roll of those dice could determine the fate of the whole game.

  “Aren’t you going to turn it on, Oren?” my mother asked, nudging the cube towards me.

  “I already did.”

  “You did?” she said excitedly. “Well, don’t keep us in suspense! What did they say?”

  I wasn’t sure what to tell her. All my life, I’d dreamed of leaving Verygone, and now, the inivitation sat quiet on our dining table. I’d eaten almost every meal of my life sitting in that same spot. I looked from her to my father, and I realized I’d never truly know how much they’d sacrificed to keep me safe and give me a good life. The thought of leaving them made me sad and afraid.

  “Son,” my father said, reaching across the table and resting his large, calloused hand over my own. “What did they say?”

  I took a deep breath. “It’s a message from Forn, the dala of the Gourmand,” I said. “He’s offered me a place as an ensign on his ship.” I tapped the activation surface of the cube as I spoke, and the image of Forn materialized in the space between us. He was smiling as he spoke again the words I’d listened to more than a dozen times now.

  “So you have to leave tonight?” my mom said when the message was finished, her voice quiet.

  I nodded.

  “How long have you known?”

  “Three days.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us sooner?”

  “I’m sorry, moma. I… I didn’t know how to tell you. I’m not even sure I really want to go.”

  “No!” she said with surprising ferocity. Then her voice dropped to a whisper. “You must go.”

  I leaned back in my chair, surprised.

  “Son,” my father said, “Your mother’s right. I know this de
cision isn’t easy, and it’s natural to have doubts, but this is your chance to become something more than you could ever be here on Verygone.”

  “But… but what’s wrong with here? You and moma are here, and you’re two of the greatest people anywhere in the galaxy. People look up to you.”

  He sighed. “You never met your elder forebears,” he said, “but you’re part of a long line of ancestors stretching back across the millennia. They left their homes once too, called by the promise of a new life. We wouldn’t be here if not for them. That was their gift to us. It’s our duty to pay that gift forward. And one day, you will do the same in turn.”

  “I… I don’t know if I’m ready,” I whispered.

  “No one’s ever really ready, son. You stand at the edge of the unknown, and all you can do is take the next step with faith that you’ll land on your feet.”

  My mother stood and walked around the table to stand at my side. “Take this step, Oren,” she said, running her gentle hands through the mane of hair on my head. “For all of us.”

  * * *

  Later that night, I embraced my parents, and then hurried to board The Gourmand before the ship lifted off into space. “Son.” My father gripped my shoulders. His eyes were watering. “I love you, and I am so proud of you.”

  I turned to my mother. She put her head against my chest, giving me a fierce hug around my waist, squeezing the air from my lungs. She pulled back and looked up at me. “I love you, Oren. We’ve known since the moment you were born that you have something special. We’re going to miss you so much, but this is a chance of a lifetime. Go with our blessing, and become the person we know you can be.”

  As I neared the top of the boarding ramp, I turned back to look at them. They both waved to me. “I love you!” I shouted.

  It was the last time I ever saw them.

  4 The Gourmand

  I was shown to my quarters onboard the Gourmand by a striking young woman. She was nearly half my height, with smooth brown skin, large blue eyes, and flowing gold hair streaked with silver. Her features were angular and delicate, a distinct contrast to the muscular, solid women of Verygone. I tried my best not to stare, but I kept glancing sidelong at her as we walked through the ship, our heels clacking on the polished metal floors.