The Bonds of Orion

by Owen R. O’Neill

  She brought it, but Kris spared no more than a glance before saying, “Wrap it up, please.”

  “Certainly.” The girl retrieved a small jeweler’s box, expertly wrapped the necklace in gilded rice paper and sealed it inside, then tied it up with a scarlet silk ribbon. Offering the package to Kris, along with an invoice and grateful smile the sale would make the owners happy, as slow as this season had been she said, “Would you mind waiting for a moment, ma’am? There’s something I should get from the back.”

  “Not at all. No worries,” Kris said as she paid the invoice without looking at the total.

  The girl whisked into the back room and returned with a flat box, a shimmery color between jet black and deep phthalo blue. Setting it on the counter, she said, “Since you appreciate Mireille Samhaldonich’s work so much, I thought you might like these.” She removed the lid, revealing a necklace of Venusian opals and Neptune sapphires with matching teardrop earrings.

  “Um . . .” Kris hesitated, and her eyes begged Mariwen for help.

  “Please accept it as a gift,” the girl said. “For your kindness.”

  There was something so earnest in the girl’s smile, along with a touch of awkwardness that made it absurdly touching, and Kris slid her wallet back into her pocket. “That’s . . . very nice of you. Thanks.”

  “Thank you.” The girl gave them both something almost like a curtsy.

  The box was closed, resealed and handed over, with expressions of gratitude repeated on both sides before Kris and Mariwen walked out together into the streaming sunlight. The unseasonable chill was keeping most people indoors, and they had the street with its comfortable old buildings to themselves.

  “Here,” Kris said, holding out the jet box. “I think this is yours.”

  “I think you’d look stunning in them.”

  “Not compared to you.”

  “We’re going to have to work on this shy-girl aspect of yours.”

  “Yeah, right.” Kris cleared her throat. “Anyway, I . . . ah wanted you to have something.” Offering the smaller box.

  Mariwen shook her head, eyes twinkling, as she took it. “And you never told me you were such a romantic.”

  “Well . . . it’s for Brandee. Y’know . . . Horses.”

  “Shall I put it on for you?”

  “I’d like that.”

  Mariwen carefully untied the ribbon, unwrapped the paper and, lifting her long hair out the way, fastened the thin chain behind her neck. Opening the collar of her dress, she settled the gold medallion against her skin, where it gleamed warmly in the valley between her breasts. “Do you like it?”

  “Ah . . . yeah.”

  “Romantic.” She laced her arms around Kris’ neck and pulled her close. “What am I going to do with you?”

  “I’m sure you’ll figure something out,” Kris sighed when their lips parted half a minute later. “But about that girl. You didn’t really think I was suggesting we take her home, did you?”

  “We have laws against self-incrimination here, you know.”

  “Cuz if you’d like me to.” Her eyes flicked in the direction of the door. “She is really sweet.”

  “And you’re incorrigible.”

  * * *

  “Y’know, that was fun,” Kris said, her voice husky between deep slow breaths that lifted her bare sweat-sheened breasts with Mariwen’s radiant face between them. Through the fine expanse of windows beyond, an ultramarine sky shading to Prussian blue near the zenith was hung with a half-moon beginning to show a slight expectant bulge.

  Mariwen eased to one side and put her chin against the heel of her palm with an arch look. “Just fun? I would have said spectacular.”

  “I meant shopping.” Kris reached over to lift the gold medallion on its slim chain that was the totality of Mariwen’s attire.

  “Ooooh! A breakthrough!” Mariwen’s agile fingers executed a naughty tap-dance across insides of Kris’ thighs that made her laugh. Then she leaned over to kiss the edges of Kris’ widespread smile. “Maybe next time, we’ll actually get you to try things on.”

  “I did try things on.”

  “You did,” Mariwen allowed, nuzzling a vulnerable earlobe. “I was so proud. But one pair of jeans doth not a wardrobe make, my dear.”

  “Okay. I’ll try on a top next time.”

  “Goodness, such progress we’re making!” Mariwen narrowed her eyes. “Colors?”

  “Maybe not that far.”

  Chapter 8

  Northern California Territory

  Western Federal District, Terra, Sol

  Antoine held Ishmael aloft over the long table, his short legs going at speed well before his feet touched, and when they did, he rocketed down the table’s length toward the far end. Kris stiffened with instinctive alarm, but Antoine took three quick steps and seized the little boy at the brink, swinging him laughing into the air. The performance was repeated twice more, but the final time Antoine, a trifle slow, missed his catch. The flying little form plunged off the end of the table, and Kris braced herself for the thump, the shock, the cries and tears.

  Cries there were cries of laughter as the little boy danced into sight, waving his small fists in the air and crowing. Kris looked over at Mariwen, who was grinning, as much at Kris’ dumbfounded expression as at Ishmael’s ecstatic gyrations. “It means he won,” she explained. “He beat Daddy. It’s what they call Big Fun.”

  “Oh,” Kris said, wondering what the future held for a child who liked to fling himself into the void with such abandon. But her contemplations were interrupted by Ishmael churning over on his plump little legs, calling out: “Auntie! Auntie! I beat! I beat! See! See!” over and over again.

  Mariwen caught him as he neared, swung him up and assured him he was quite the hero: very like Ajax or Achilles or Patroclus or other names equally unfamiliar to Kris, but she caught the drift well enough. Watching Mariwen and the little boy cooing and laughing, caught up in a swirl of delighted energy, Kris found herself having to rethink some of her ideas of children, whom she’d previously been accustomed to consider as a necessary inconvenience: loud, fractious, trying . . . frequently moist.

  Set back on his feet, Ishmael tore off in a random direction, bent on finding some new way to imperil his soul. Mariwen smiled across at Kris with a glow rarely seen.

  “Does he always go flying off things like that?” Kris asked.

  “Not so much anymore,” Mariwen answered with a laugh. “He’s a good boy. And Chris is an empiricist.”

  Kris shook her head, seeing how much gratification her bemusement was giving Mariwen. “Well, okay, then.”

  “It’s ready! Line forms on the left!” called out Antoine’s wife, Jo, from her station at the smoking grill. Jo’s father, a renowned chef from Manila, had handed down his jealously guarded barbecue recipes to his daughter, and Kris had been promised she’d never had anything like it; a promise that, based on her sense of smell alone, she was willing to believe. One would not guess it by looking at her, but food played a shockingly great role in Mariwen’s life; shocking, that is, to Kris, who’d spent the vast majority of her life eating ration packs or ship’s provisions (much the same thing), and whose introduction to the finer aspects of cuisine, the broad sense, had been through Huron. But not even Huron, Kris thought, had such a devout relationship with epicurean delights as Mariwen did, and on getting to know her family, Kris also had gotten an inking where that came from.

  “You first.” Mariwen urged Kris up to the grill as Antoine, responding to the call, walked over with Ishmael in tow.

  “Back of the line, sir.” Jo winked at her husband, and then to Kris: “What’s your fancy? Ribs? Brisket? Or the steak?”

  “Brisket. Thanks” following Mariwen’s recommendation from when the subject first came up.

  “Good choice.” Jo forked a generous slab of steaming brisket onto Kris’ plate with an approving smile. “There are mashed potatoes under that cover. Don’t skimp” indicating a dish on a
side stand with a nod. “Bon appétit.” And as Kris followed those instructions, to the spirit, as well as the letter, she heard Jo addressing Mariwen. “Ribs for you, sister dear?”

  “Yes, please!”

  “There you are” sliding half a rack onto Mariwen’s plate. “Tuck in!”

  Mariwen accepted the ribs cheerfully and sat down next to Kris, in the act of taking her first bite.

  “Melts in your mouth, doesn’t it?”

  Astonishingly enough, that was no exaggeration. The meat did melt in her mouth. “It does. I’ve never had anything like it.”

  “What did I tell you?” Mariwen grinned, immensely gratified. A xel rang out, and Antoine, who’d settled down with his steak, Ishmael plunked beside him with two small ribs of his very own and an almost certain promise of a third, checked the display and nodded. “Impeccable timing. As always.”

  “I’ll get her, dear,” said Jo, having just filled her own plate. “You eat.”

  “No, you’ve been cooking. I’ll go. You eat.” Standing up, he glanced at Kris and Mariwen and tipped his head toward the house. “Mahalath wakes.” Mahalath, their fourteen-month-old daughter, had, until this moment, been napping peacefully in Mariwen’s breakfast nook. “I shall return.”

  With a dutiful parting smile, he jogged the ten meters to the house while Jo took his place. Not a minute later, Ishmael, his round face now liberally decorated with grease, put up an equally greasy hand and tugged on his mother’s sleeve. As she bent low, he cupped a hand alongside his mouth and whispered earnestly.

  “Excuse us.” Jo applied a napkin to her son’s cheeks and chin and small pink fingers before standing and taking him by the hand. “Nature calls.”

  “A parent’s work . . .” said Kris, once they were alone.

  “Is always fun,” interjected Mariwen.

  Kris replied with a knowing smirk. “I’ll have to take your word for that.”

  Lacking any room to maneuver, Kris couldn’t dodge the giggle-enhanced swat Mariwen aimed at her, but the warble of a xel her own this time saved her from further chastisement. Plucking it out and snapping the display open, Kris skimmed the message there with increasing perplexity.

  Mariwen, still too polite to read over Kris’ shoulder, leaned back half an arm’s length and schooled a look of muted concern off her features. But as Kris’ eyebrows drew closer together and indentation at the corner of her lips deepened, she overcame her reserve to ask, “What is it?”

  “Not sure.” A distressing pause. Then: “You know Baz’s sister?”

  Now Mariwen’s brow furrowed. “I do?”

  “I guess she thinks so,” Kris answered in a bemused voice, speaking low. “See?” She underlined the sender’s name for Mariwen with a fingertip.

  “Kazia Fiore is Baz’s sister?”

  “Yeah.” Glancing over, Kris blinked twice at the tone. “So you do know her.”

  “I did. She and her husband owned a gallery in . . .” Mariwen’s teeth pinched her lip as she closed her eyes for moment. “Kyoto? Very high end. Very bleeding edge.”

  “Well . . . they’re in Singapore now. I’ve never met her. Baz used to visit her a lot when we were at the Academy.” Kris returned to reading the message. “What’s a bachelorette party?”

  “A bachelorette party?”

  “Uh huh” reading more. “Kenzie’s . . . editor? . . . is throwing one for her. Kazia’s hosting it.” Kenzie Kensington Lennox, the author was Baz’s fiancé. Their eagerly awaited, long-delayed wedding was scheduled for the middle of next month. It was to be a full regimental wedding, held in Singapore’s oldest cathedral, with all the pomp and splendor appropriate to that occasion, or rather more so for Baz, was extremely popular. He’d only been able to return to work as an instructor at CEF Academy very recently, and though he would never fly again, the unit had insisted on keeping him on the flight roster and LSS Trafalgar’s deck crews paid him the exceptional compliment of maintaining his restored fighter in a state of constant readiness.

  Asked to serve as Baz’s Best Man, Kris had been honored to accept, despite being a trifle unclear on what that might require (she’d been to exactly one military wedding and hadn’t attended to the details being assured there was “nothing to it” did not appreciably ease her qualms). Huron, as his former CO, accepted the role of captain of the unit’s honor guard (a position analogous to the head usher at a civilian wedding). He certainly knew what he was doing, and Kris intended to corner him at the next opportunity to learn what the deal really was.

  Now, however, her attention was taken up with this new development. She scanned further down the message. “Who’s Adam?”

  “Adam?” Now Mariwen’s tone was verging on patent incredulity.

  “Yeah.” Kris held the message out where Mariwen could read it. “She’s wondering if I might be able to use my connections I think she means you to see if it would be possible to book Adam” tapping the name “for this party.”

  “She wants to book Adam for Kenzie’s bachelorette party? Adam. The singer.”

  “Sounds like.” Kris recalled him now. Went by Adam, no surname; something about being the First or The One or some such nonsense. Reigning music god among the younger set here in the Homeworlds these past few years. Especially girls under twenty. But by no means only them. “I guess Kenzie’s a big fan. It’s supposed to be a surprise.”

  “It would definitely be a surprise.”

  Kris caught the delighted twinkle in Mariwen’s eyes. “So you think you could do it?”

  The twinkle sparked brighter. “I’m definitely going to try.” Eyes narrowing in concentration, Mariwen nibbled the tip of a forefinger. “We might have to get Rafe in on this.”

  “What’s this we?” Kris mock-chided as she furled her xel. “I’m just supposed to use my connections here to see if it’s possible. Mission accomplished. You’re on your own now.”

  “Ohhh . . .” The exhalation barely above a whisper and the slow spreading smile told Kris how deep Mariwen was delving into her incipient scheme. “This is going to be fun.” Then her eyes switched back to near normal. “Did Kazia say what the theme was? I missed that part.”

  “Retro slumber party,” Kris recalled after a moment’s pause. As Kris understood it, the choice made sense: Kenzie’s most popular novels were set in the early 21st Century, by the old reckoning; an increasingly popular historical milieu.

  “Excellent.” Mariwen grinned wider. “Perfect.”

  Whatever the nature of that perfection might be, it was utterly lost on Kris. “But what sorta party is this?”

  The look Mariwen gave her made Kris feel like a salmon caught in a fisherman’s net.

  “You’ll see.”

  Chapter 9

  Gallery Akrotiri

  Singapore, Terra, Sol

  “I thought you said this was an art gallery,” Kris whispered, her hand on Mariwen’s elbow.

  “It is an art gallery,” Mariwen returned the whisper. “This is one of Bayli Natalegawa’s installations.”

  What Kris was gazing at, curving walls and arches and vaults that resembled the interior of a gothic cathedral, if the cathedral walls and ceiling had been made of glass, and behind that glass were innumerable luminescent jellyfish, swimming in languid pirouettes, some trailing tentacles several meters long that glimmered with every color from a deep lustrous crimson to a bright electric blue and showed trails of golden sparks at random intervals. The soft slow pulse of the bells, propelling the jellyfish in their unhurried dance, had a hypnotic effect and seemed to naturally forbid sound, so Kris had whispered without fully realizing it.

  Noting this, Mariwen’s answer held more than a touch of pleasure, at the display certainly, but even more at its effect on Kris, whose face had softened remarkably, losing the look of predatory intensity that so often resided there, revealing, not an innocence exactly, but perhaps its echo, hinting at the girl Kris might have been, had her life taken a less brutal turn.

  But the pl
easure was mixed with the sting of wetness behind her eyelids, and blinking, Mariwen looked away, so both she and Kris missed the tall, slender woman in a flowing bronze-tone kaftan coming up the wide, shallow steps from the main chamber to the atrium, where they were waiting.

  “Mariwen! I’m so happy to see you,” the woman called, her voice mixing the accent of her native Phaedra with the sing-song intonations of her adopted home. Greeting Mariwen with a brief hug, she then held out her hand to Kris. “And you must be Loralynn. I’m Kazia, Ferhat’s sister.”

  There could be no question about that, she being the very image of Baz transposed into a feminine key: the same graceful good looks, the same coppery-gold hair and dark skin; the same pale amethyst eyes, glinting with amusement. And probably no one else would use his given name, which Kris could not remember, having heard above two or three times before.

  Meeting Kazia’s warm grip, Kris gave her an equally warm smile. “You can call me Kris.”

  “As you wish” giving Kris’ hand a firm squeeze. “Thank you so much for coming. And for everything. Truly, we could not have done it without you.”

  “Don’t thank me,” Kris temporized. “It was all Mariwen. I only passed along the message.”

  “She’s shy about compliments,” Mariwen interjected, causing Kazia to laugh; a delightful sound.

  “Then I won’t impose. The others have just arrived, and Kenzie will be down in a moment.” Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial murmur. “She has no idea. I’ve only told her it’s a retro slumber party.”

  Mariwen indulged an equally conspiratorial wink. “Was she told what to expect, in general?”

  “She knows to expect a large amount of champagne and lots of food and all the decorum appropriate to these occasions.”

  “Excellent.”

  Kris hadn’t been read in on all the specifics either, only the broad outlines of the plan, and her ears pricked up at the intonation of Mariwen’s excellent.

  “We’re through there.” Kazia gestured to the violet dimness behind her. “I’ll introduce you.”

  With smiles intact, Kris and Mariwen followed Kazia down the steps and through the interior of the gallery. The only light was from the jellyfish, and whether it was that shifting, fickle and almost playful illumination or some other ingenious effect, the glass walls appeared to move slightly, a slow undulation, as if the structure were gently breathing. Combined with the firm but yielding floor what Kris had first taken for patterned stone was in reality a dark, fancifully grained hardwood, warm beneath her bare feet (they having left their shoes by the entrance) it lent an air of unreality to the trip, almost as if it was not them moving. but the ground sliding by as they floated just above, slightly out of contact, dream-like, and whether by locomotion or translation, they came to an octagonal room, its curved glass walls radiant with the self-lit creatures, casting a soft, lunar, shadowless light through the interior and over the five women within, all comfortably dressed and all smiling with expectation as Kazia made introductions.