by Scott Rhine
She found Max in the high-value cargo area, shuffling crates with a hand dolly and grav panels. His chest was still bandaged, leading her eyes to how well-defined his abs and arms were without his shirt. He had acquired numerous bruises defending her, as well as the splinted fingers on his right hand. The spear scar in his side caused her to stop in mid stride. Reuben had mentioned that nearly all of Max’s scars were acquired protecting patients in combat zones.
He gritted his teeth as he tugged a stack of crates left-handed. Even with modern tools, mass still took work to move.
She held up the diamond. “I have something for you.”
Distracted, Max halted and turned. The load kept coasting. Catching sight of her swimsuit, he asked, “Pardon?”
“Brakes!”
He cursed as the heavy crate pinned his back against a large cryptid fossil that took up a quarter of the wall. Max cried out in pain.
Roz rushed over. She tugged the floater gently while lowering the power. He had neglected the dead-man-switch safety feature.
Freed, he collapsed onto his side. “Ribs. Back.”
She knew she couldn’t carry him alone. Instead, she signaled for help on her comm immediately and tried to cover him with her wrap to prevent shock. Roz liked his earthy scent of sweat with a subtle undertone of liniment. Her father would rub such ointments into aching muscles.
He pushed the clothing away. “M’okay.”
“What the hell did you think you were doing?”
Max grunted. “Someone has to rearrange this. Kesh shoveled things into the bay in the order they arrived. I’m trying to put the things that leave first up front and the long-term items in back.”
“A man after my own heart,” she joked. She could see the geodes being valuable for art and jewelry, and the price per kilogram was solid. The crates of wine near the garage-style exit door, next to the mailbags, confused her. “Why would the farmers on Prairie care about wine? They make their own.”
“Ah. This is imported from the estate of Eden’s former governor,” said Max, shifting to find a less agonizing position. “Rich ranchers want to give the appearance of style and sophistication. Of course, none of them will know wine the way you do. Maybe you can sell a few of them with your fancy descriptions.”
“Sure.” She licked her lips. “Should we haul you to the sunroom? The heated sand might feel good on your aches.”
“Sand gets everywhere, and I’d have to clean it out of the filters on the bridge. I’ll use a heat pack.”
Reuben dashed into the room, naked and dripping wet. “What hurts most, boss?”
A glimpse of his llama-like split feet and shaggy legs caused Roz to avert her gaze. She handed him her wrap to block other hairy things she did not want to know about.
“My pride, followed by my jaw, and the back injury from Vegas.”
Reuben accepted the covering as he explained, “Max grinds his teeth under stress, and he has an old back injury that never healed right. Took out a Phib gangster—”
“Don’t like the word old,” Max mumbled.
Fragile male ego or guarded against sharing his past? Roz said, “We’ll schedule a dentist appointment for him on Prairie. In the meantime, we’ll make a stretcher out of these boards and drag him to bed.”
****
Once Max was settled and the pain meds had time to kick in, Roz brought a food tray to his bedroom. Minder, the ship’s AI, had never revoked her access, but she wanted to be respectful. She tapped and waited for his response.
“What?” Max snapped.
The door slid open automatically. Inside, he lay flat on his back with a pillow tucked under his knees. The room was immaculate for a bachelor’s. Every time Max left, his pet mimic made the bed and rearranged everything to look the same as the night of its escape from the Saurian hunters.
She put the tray on his nightstand and closed the door. “Do you need me to feed you or bring anything over to the bed?”
“Not hungry. Don’t want chopped fruit.”
She rolled her eyes. He claimed he wanted to try a vegetarian lifestyle, but then he would refuse to eat anything wholesome.
She pulled up a chair and placed the bowl of mixed fruit cubes on her lap. “I didn’t bring the fruit for you. I brought it for Jeeves.” As soon as she said his name, the blue-gray blankets on the top shelf of the shallow stateroom closet rustled. The wrinkled four-legged creature thumped to the floor in its excitement. “Momma has yummies,” she cooed, and the creature scampered over to her lap and buried its stomach-mouth in the bowl.
“Careful. He’s shy and doesn’t like when people—”
Roz ran her hand over the soft pelt, which gradually changed colors to match the tan shorts she had pulled on over her suit. The beady eyes closed in pleasure, and it grunted. “Jeeves is just a toddler. All toddlers like to be held and loved.”
Max just stared in disbelief.
Once the mimic finished the bowl of fruit, it shambled to her shoulder, taking the aspect of a shawl the same navy-blue as her one-piece.
“He’s warmer now,” Roz whispered. “Probably asleep.”
Awkwardly, Max said, “Thanks for the rescue. Sorry I’m not a very good host today. I should be healed up by the time we make port.”
“This is the third time I’ve saved your bacon. You could make it up to me by racing wind wagons with me on my time off.”
“No way.”
“Too strenuous for someone your age?” she teased.
“I’m only a couple years older than you. If I threw my back out in the field, I couldn’t protect you. The mission would be finished.”
The mission. She changed tactics. “Fine. The others will be handling cargo and station bargaining, so it’s up to the two of us to hire my three replacements.”
“Right.”
“I’ve looked over the list of qualified sous chefs and narrowed it down to twenty restaurants from the tourist guidebooks. My mom was a cook for our camp, so I know the basics of food processing. All the women in our family were good cooks, a baby in one hand and a stirring spoon in the other.” That was the last time she had felt close to her mother, as they had so little in common. “You could help me screen them. We could visit two restaurants a day while we searched for the mechanic and copilot.” Romantic dinners for ten days. Not a bad compromise.
“Sure,” Max said. “Why not head chefs?”
“Because they’re tied down running their own restaurants. The sous does all the work for no glory. We could find someone with useful secondary skills willing to work for passage to a corporate world where chefs are in demand.”
He nodded. “If we like the guy—”
She held up a finger. “Or gal.”
“Right. We sweeten the deal a little so they stay.”
“We could offer to bankroll a new restaurant for them when we return from Bat and Magi space.”
“That could take years,” Max said.
Roz shrugged. “Still a more promising career path than a small pond like Prairie.”
“We’ll pose as wine sellers and take a few suitcases of the good stuff to pedal to people who frequent high-end restaurants. To those interested, we’ll hand out invitations to Kesh’s exclusive auction.” When she seemed puzzled, he explained, “You need a cover story so you can ask people questions without raising suspicions. No one will tell you the truth about a worker if they know you’re out to steal them.”
“Sure, and we’ll bring Eden table-wine samples for the lower-end restaurants.” Roz stood, lifting the sleeping mimic. She walked the meter to the closet opposite the bathroom door. Stretching on her tiptoes, she placed Jeeves gently on top of its normal blanket roost, and it snuggled back in. When she turned her head, she caught Max staring at her legs and behind, which flustered her. He must be groggy from the drugs. “I should go,” she whispered.
“No. You made me realize something. We’re both barred from duty, but there’s no reason we can’t spend the time t
ogether, working on a personal goal—one we could both enjoy.”
The room felt too warm. His voice hypnotized her. She couldn’t run. She could barely breathe. “Hmm?”
“It would help Jeeves, too.”
She blinked, totally lost.
Max reached under his mattress and pulled out something thick. “I think it’s time to share this with you and let you take some of the weight off me.”
Roz frowned. “That’s a file folder.”
“It’s everything on Jeeves’s race from the information the Turtles gave me. I’ve added my observations, plus printouts of all recent papers on protosentience. If you need any help with the xenobiological buzzwords, I’ll be right here.”
Stunned, she took a moment to process. “You want me to help with the intelligence testing?”
“I want you to help raise Jeeves. You’re a natural. I read three zookeeper books on the care and feeding of primates, and you know more than I do already.”
“I had two younger brothers and a pet ocelot,” she said. “Jeeves is sort of a mix.”
Max smiled and handed her the folder. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
She sat back in the chair beside him and flipped through the file.
What she read there outraged her. A century ago, the Phib race had been entrusted with evaluating the gentle mimics, but the war had stripped Phibs of all rights and interrupted any such experiments. Worse, no race had been appointed to assume those responsibilities, leaving the mimics open to exploitation. “Saurians are exporting the children to eat!”
Max nodded, sadly. “Since mimics are known for their cleverness and camouflage abilities, hunting them provides a unique challenge. Saurians won’t want to hear the truth if it means giving that up.”
“But the Union is responsible for protecting any developing life. It’s one of our most sacred duties.”
“That only happens once intelligence is demonstrated unequivocally at a Union Convocation,” Max said. “Until then, the protospecies receives no special status, like any aboriginal tribe that wasn’t Christian on Earth. Phibs often use the evaluation period to rob candidates blind, even steering them toward self-destruction—all to get the mineral rights.”
She put a hand to her chest, wrinkling the papers in the process. “Surely the Turtles will speed up the process.”
He shook his head. “Turtles use the galactic year in their planning calendar. That’s 225 million Earth years. The Milky Way was born fifty-four galactic years ago. We’ll collide with Andromeda in another twenty-two, which worries the Turtle planners. The older space-traveling races have the long view. A galactic second is about seven years.”
“What about the Humans and Bankers?”
“They’ll actively resist any claims because admitting sentience would mean reserving a large number of worlds around Jeeves’s home planet for that species to expand. Everyone loses habitable planets.”
She smoothed the crumpled papers. “Then why try?”
“Because we’re on the side of the angels here, and the truth always wins out. Even if it doesn’t, we both love Jeeves.”
She smiled and wanted to hug him for that. “Why did you tell me this horrible news if we can’t do anything about it for years?”
He placed a hand on her arm. “So you’ll believe me when I tell you how dangerous this project is. Don’t tell anyone his secret, or both you and Jeeves could be at risk.”
Roz nodded. “Thank you for trusting me.”
“Hey, I didn’t adopt you. Jeeves did.”
“Maybe we should move you into a room upstairs, so we can keep him secret from the new crew members.”
“I don’t know. He’s used to this room, and Jeeves doesn’t like change.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Tomorrow, we can tuck him into a duffle bag and take him for a little field trip.”
“Maybe.”
Perhaps Jeeves isn’t the one uncomfortable with change.
Roz read everything Max had to offer that evening. She asked several questions just to hear him speak. When she glanced at his wrist computer, she noticed that she had talked an hour past her normal bedtime. She excused herself and strolled wistfully back to the officers’ quarters.
Chapter 3 – Paranoia
Roz didn’t bump into Ivy until the next night in their room. As Roz crept in through the adjoining door between bedrooms, Ivy pointed to the time and cleared her throat. “Out past curfew, young lady.”
“Oh. I was … um … helping Max settle in next door.”
“Uh-huh.”
Her time with Max had been pleasant but innocent. Roz had scanned the ship’s data from the last jump and decided several of the sphere’s drives were badly misaligned. Only the fact that the Magi allotted twice the necessary drives had prevented disaster. She had spent the evening drafting a schedule of ship repairs to be performed at Prairie station. Inspecting the calibration results would tell her which repairman to hire long term. “The doctor cleared me to return to duty tomorrow.”
Ivy smirked. “He must have required a very thorough exam.”
“Stop it,” Roz said, smacking her on the shoulder. “I wanted Max to be close in case his little guy ever gets lonely and needs some attention.”
Her friend couldn’t hold in her belly laugh.
“I meant Jeeves,” Roz explained. “Max doesn’t even know how I feel about him. Not everyone hops in the sack as fast as you.”
Ivy grew serious. “Honey, on Anodyne, citizens live a hundred twenty years. The descendants of Llewellyn can survive even longer, contributing to society up until the end. As a passive informant, corporate security would have left me on Eden until I turned sixty. On active status like I am now, I retire after seven years of service. Then they ship me back to Laurelin for a life of breeding and boredom.”
“It’s a beautiful name. I heard the founder named the planet after his wife.”
“No. That’s what we tell the bankers. It’s really Elvish for the tree of the golden song.”
“That’s bizarre.”
“Not really.” Ivy lowered her voice to a shameful whisper. “When I die, they’ll bury me in a special grove of trees, and I’ll become part of the world memory. Psis for centuries onward will be able to access my experiences and run screaming from the tedium.”
Roz wanted to ask about the unusual secret but worried more about her friend turning suicidal. “Your life can’t be that bad.”
“Laurelin command selected me to be raised in high-g. They filled every moment of my childhood with instruction on three things: loyalty to the family, survival in any environment, and tricking people into giving me useful information. My sisters live on opposite sides of Laurelin so that any time, day or night, one of them can take my report or give me new instructions. Posy studied nursing, while Daisy does hacking and demolitions. If they don’t know a skill, we have a network of other psis available to assist. None of us chose to do what we were bred for. We serve until we die, and then we serve some more.”
“You have a tremendous gift. It’s probably the only way Anodyne survived the Phibs and the Lunar Oligarchs. The Union is enormous. Maybe in a billion parsecs of space you can find some way to both serve and be happy.”
“Either way I aim to make the most out of every minute of freedom I have left. Anybody who reads my log is going to have their body tingle. My sisters begged me to stop the first night with Reuben because they needed sleep. At least in subspace, I can’t hear them complaining. The quiet is nice.”
Roz narrowed her eyes. “So everything you’ve ever seen or heard is going to be available for everyone on your planet to share?”
“Just my relatives in the secret service.”
“Is there anything else I should know about my best friend, the person I’ve told my deepest secrets … who’s seen me naked?”
Ivy gazed at the floor. “I went back into the quantum tubes with Reuben to see if we could duplicate the experiment from our first exposu
re.”
Roz closed her eyes. “Tell me you didn’t have sex where I need to work.”
“Honey, we’ve done it in the pilot’s chair, but not in the radiation zone. We’re horny, not stupid.”
“Eew.”
“Spoken from someone who’s never tried out the utter flexibility of that chair.”
Roz shuddered. “Ugh. He sheds. That bristly Goat hair gets everywhere.”
“My point is that all I saw this time was a bright white light.” Ivy paused. “I don’t know what that means, but I’m guessing I’m going to get sent home early.”
Roz frowned. “You’re not expecting to reach seven years of active duty?”
“Max charges in against impossible odds. You and Reuben support him. I protect the two of you.”
“I’m not asking you to—”
“You’re my best friend. It isn’t a choice, honey. But if I die while we’re tilting at galactic windmills, can I count on you to take my body back home to Laurelin?”
Even though Roz was still pissed at the deception, she hugged her friend. “Yes.”
After a few moments, Ivy separated. “It’s time for you to learn a few more secrets.”
Roz sat down on her bed. “Crap. I don’t think I’m ready for more.”
“Ready or not, you need to be warned.” Ivy put a hand on her shoulder. “Bankers will do anything to make money, and they have spies everywhere. They’d view my talents as a threat to their monopoly on FTL communications. All of Laurelin would be at risk.”
“Nobody could kill an entire planet and get away with it.”
“The Bankers could transmit a series of ansible messages about a plague, and no one would be the wiser. Do you seriously believe everything you hear over the aether? By controlling information, Nivaar controls the economy of the Union. Bankers decide where new colonies are formed, what businesses succeed, and even what’s popular in entertainment. Research hospitals give priority to curing Banker diseases and problems. Those who support them get profitable tips before anyone else. Dissenters experience garbled transmissions or unexplained delays.”