A cloth-wrapped bundle on the coffee table caught my eye.
The photo wasn’t the only thing I couldn’t replace. My whelkies. Christine Maloney had offered a lot of credits for the collection. I couldn’t part with them for credits. I couldn’t leave them behind. I really needed to find their owners. Or keep them safe until they found new owners for themselves. I couldn’t believe I’d overlooked them when pulling all the stuff out of my trunks. I picked the bundle up and tucked it under my arm.
I must have made quite a picture standing there in the middle of the night. The lights in my cottage blazing. Me barefoot, wearing a tatty but comfy old shipsuit with a William Tinker patch on the shoulder, staring around at what looked like ground zero in a clothing explosion. The realization of what it might look like if somebody was to call made me laugh. Not just little giggles but real laughter. With nobody around to see, nobody to bother, I didn’t hold it back but let it roll. After a few moments I couldn’t have stopped if I wanted.
That’s when somebody knocked on the door and I heard Pip’s voice. “Ish? You all right in there?”
I stumbled through the clothes, almost tripped on a pair of ship boots, and slipped the latch on the door, laughing all the way.
Pip’s eyes got round when he saw me and the mess I’d made. I laughed harder as he rubbernecked through the door, taking in the whole effect.
As my laughter wound down, I was able to gasp. “Come in. We need to talk.”
He took a step over the threshold. “Love what you’ve done with the place.”
“Thanks. I’m just doing a little pruning.” I leaned out to look across the path. “Party over?”
He nodded, still scanning the room, eyeing a pair of jeans that had gotten thrown over a lamp. “Conference done for another stanyer. We’ll do it again next year. Probably.”
“Good. Good. We need to talk.”
He nodded. “Yeah, we do, but perhaps we should do it when you’re sober and it’s not the middle of the night.”
“I’m perfectly sober.” I didn’t help myself with another little giggle.
He raised one eyebrow at me. “All right. How about when I’m sober and it’s not the middle of the night?”
I glanced at the chrono. It read 0135. “Where does the time go?”
He shrugged and grinned at me. “Time flies when you’re havin’ fun. You gonna hit the floor tomorrow at 0600?”
I used an elbow to clear off a corner of the table and put the package of whelkies and the photo down. “Planning on it.”
“All right. I’ll get some sleep and sober up a little. Knock on my door when you get back and we’ll go find some breakfast.”
“Sounds good.”
He picked his way back across the mine field of discarded clothing toward the door. At the threshold he turned to me with a grin. “This mean you’re gonna be my captain?”
“Yes. No.” I shook my head. “Maybe.”
“I’m not that drunk, Ishmael. You sure you’re not?”
“Positive. I’m not going to be your captain. You can’t win that bid with what you’re planning to spend. The breakers will take it for scrap value now that they know they can get it cheap. Ninety million won’t cut it.”
His grin faded and his brows came together above his nose. “Then what do we need to talk about?”
“I’m not going to be your captain. I’m going to be your partner.”
“What?” He shook his head. “I must be drunker than I thought. Partner?”
“We’ll hash it out tomorrow but you can’t win that auction with your level of resources.”
“And you can?”
I shook my head. “Not by myself. If we pool our funds, we can outbid the breakers and still have enough left over to refurbish the ship and get her crewed up and ready for space.”
His grin came back. “Just like old times!”
“Go sleep. I need to try to get a nap in before Margaret Newmar wrings me out again in a few stans.”
He nodded and only stumbled a little bit getting out the door and closing it behind him. A few moments later I heard his cottage door close in the silence of the early, early morning. I made one last survey of the room and blew out a deep breath before slapping the light switches and shuffling off to my bed.
I had no idea what I’d do with the mess out front, but the mess inside me felt a little less hopeless for the first time in a long, long time. I zipped out of the shipsuit and crawled between the sheets, letting the garment fall to the floor as forgotten as a snake’s shed skin. I’d no sooner closed my eyes when the brassy tones of reveille pulled me back from dreamland.
I didn’t groan when I crawled out and stepped into the shower. It wouldn’t have done any good, and I really wasn’t the kind to groan when there was nobody around to appreciate it.
I felt almost human when I stumbled into the living room to find a pair of shorts and a fresh ship-tee. I felt a little exposed padding naked and damp through the cottage, but managed to find enough clothing to wear for my workout among the piles of “what do I do with this?”
I slipped out of the cottage and struck out for the studio. The fogginess inside my head burned off as I crossed campus. The fresh morning air, cool and damp, pulled the last of the sleep from my muscles. When I got to the studio, I was ready to go and started my warmups immediately. I had to struggle to push the coming discussions with Pip out of the way and focus on the movements and my balance, but within a few ticks I found my pace and relaxed into the discipline.
“Good morning, Ishmael.”
“Good morning, Sifu.”
“Rough night?” she asked.
I ended my warmup cycle and turned toward her. She stood at the edge of the floor, her head turned slightly to one side in a birdlike gaze.
“Short night. I didn’t get to sleep until nearly 0200.”
“Ah,” she said and nodded. “What were you doing up so late? Or should I not ask?”
I smiled. “Pruning.”
She beamed. “That’s what it is. I knew you looked different this morning. I should have realized.”
“Different?” I almost laughed. “How can you tell?”
She shook her head, that same quirky smile on her lips. “Something about your stance. It’s looser, more balanced maybe. Your posture has changed. You’ll find the chi flows better today, I think.”
Her answer surprised me. “Really?” I looked down at my hands and arms. “I haven’t noticed it with my warmups yet.”
“It’s either that or the fact that you’re wearing one blue and one green sock,” she said.
I looked down to find my feet clad in different colored socks inside my tai chi slippers. “Yes, I might not have actually finished pruning last night before I was interrupted.”
She nodded, her lips pursed. “That would make sense. Mr. Carstairs called, no doubt.”
“Actually, he did.” I shrugged. “He came to find out if I was all right. I’m not a night owl as a rule, but I started late in the evening and just got carried away.”
She nodded again. “I can see how that would happen. Well, we should get to it.” She bowed to the floor and we began the morning’s lesson.
For some reason I kept messing up Four Corners. We’d worked on it for days and I had thought I’d gotten the movements down. That morning, dealing with the complexity of the forward and backward movements and the shifts to each of the four directions seemed beyond my ability to grasp. After I missed it twice in a row, she called a halt.
“Tea,” she said. “Your socks have you thinking about your feet and not focusing on your balance.”
I looked down, dubious that such a minor thing could be causing my problem, but it seemed as likely as anything. I had no better explanation so simply started my cooldown.
“Not today. You’re not overheated. Come sit while I brew.”
Surprised, I took my place at the table and watched her graceful, practiced movements filling the kettle, measur
ing the tea, and setting it to steep when the water boiled. “You know the water boils at one hundred and two degrees here?” she asked.
“Really?” I shook my head. “I thought it always boiled at one hundred Celsius at sea level.”
She shook her head. “Earth standard measure that’s been adopted as a standard. Same as the standard hour.” She lifted the kettle off the burner and rested it on the warming stone.
“I knew about the hour. Sixty standard minutes each of sixty standard seconds, each measured by so many vibrations of a subatomic particle in some kind of matrix that I knew once to pass the test but have never had to deal with again.”
She smiled. “Newmar’s atmosphere is just enough denser that it raises the boiling point two degrees. It’s one of those things that we take as it’s presented and don’t think about. The difference is small, barely noticeable unless you measure.” She poured the water over the tea, one of her blacks with a strong herbal component. “That’s why I let the water cool, just slightly, on the stone before pouring.”
“That helps the infusion process by keeping the temperature low enough to infuse the water without sublimating the volatiles?”
She smiled at me. “You paid attention in chemistry class.”
“I like good coffee. Water temperature matters there, too.”
While the tea steeped, she glided to the cup rack. “Which cup would you choose for yourself today, Ishmael?”
“The simple white one you gave me the first day.”
She pulled it out of the rack. “This one?”
“Yes, please.”
She selected another one for herself, a plain china mug that I might have found on the mess deck on almost any freighter in the fleet. Flat on the bottom and nearly cylindrical in shape.
She placed them on the table and poured the tea.
“How did you remember which cup?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I always look to see what cup you pick for your students and visitors. You never seem to pick the same cup twice, which always made me think you remembered which cup they’d had before.”
“You found that remarkable even though you remembered well enough to believe that I knowingly picked a different cup each time.”
“I guess I never thought of it that way.”
“You’re an excellent observer, Ishmael. You pay attention to details.”
“Thank you, Sifu.”
“Yet sometimes you overlook the most obvious. That doesn’t always work in your favor.”
I looked down at my cup. I thought of Greta and how I’d been blinded by my own biases, my own dogma. “True.”
She sipped her tea and placed the cup back on the wood with a hollow thump.
I glanced up and saw her regarding me with as serious an expression as I’ve ever seen on her face. She almost always had a smile or a near smile.
“What would have happened if you had not met Alys Giggone?” she asked.
“I’d have been deported, probably.”
“Then what?”
I shook my head. “I have no idea. I never thought about it.”
“Yet at the time, the notion that you might be cast adrift in a sea of unknown with no skills, no credits, and no support terrified you enough to launch yourself into the Deep Dark.”
“Yes.”
“In all that time, have you never considered what must happen to the people who are not fortunate enough to find their Alys Giggone in the nick of time?”
The question caught me by the nose and tweaked it. “I—no. I was so focused on what was in front of me, I never thought about anything else.”
Her smile came back, just teasing the left corner of her lips. “Just as you were so focused this morning that you didn’t notice you wore two different colored socks.”
I grinned. “Apparently.”
“Or a pair of workout pants with the seat ripped out.”
I felt the heat flash across my skin. “What? Really?” I stuck a hand back to feel for confirmation that I’d been working with her all morning with my boxers hanging out the back.
Her smile blossomed across her lips but it didn’t reach her eyes. “No,” she said. “But you weren’t sure for a moment. Your reality shifted just enough for you to question what you thought you knew.”
I nodded, more concerned with her eyes than her lips.
“Your time here is nearly done. As you sail back out into the Deep Dark, consider that question. What happens to the people who fall through the cracks? The person you might have been had you not found Alys Giggone in time.”
I nodded. “Thank you, Sifu. I will.”
“While you ponder that, look around. Really look. Look beyond what you think you know. Look beyond what you’ve been told. Look beyond the hundred degrees and find the reality where it lives.”
I knew she was trying to tell me something, but couldn’t quite wrap my head around it, not even enough to ask her for clarification.
She tipped her mug up and drained the tea from it. “I’ve got business this morning, so we’ll have to end our session here for today.”
I nodded and lifted my cup to finish my tea as well.
“Stay. Take your time. Turn out the lights when you leave.” She stood and rinsed her cup, leaving it in the drain as always.
I watched her cross the studio and stop at the door.
She turned once more. “While you are considering, consider this. How does an assassin get paid?” With a final wave, she slipped out the door, closing it behind her with a quiet snick.
I sat there for a very long time, considering.
When I finally drank my tea, it was cold.
Chapter Ten
Port Newmar:
2374, June 5
I had to knock twice before a rumpled Pip answered the door, blinking at the morning light. “Morning already?”
“Up and at ’em,” I said.
He backed away from the doorway and I followed him into the cottage. The living room was surprisingly neat, given the party I’d heard. Pip shuffled into the kitchen and I followed. He pulled two mugs from the cupboard, slopped some coffee from a thermal carafe into each, and handed me one.
I took a sip and sat at the table, hunched over the mug cradled in my hands.
He sat across from me and raked a hand through his hair. “You look like hell,” he said. “I’m the one who’s hung over.”
“Long morning,” I said, shaking myself to try to release the spell that Margaret Newmar had cast. “We need to talk.”
He nodded. “Yeah. If I remember, you said that last night. Partners?”
I shrugged. “Seems the right answer.”
He yawned, winced, and took a pull from his mug. “What’re you thinking? Joint partnership?”
“Incorporation. Limited Liability as a minimum, but filing for incorporation isn’t that hard and leaves us some options for financing in the future.”
Pip blinked and offered a half smile. “My goodness, how quickly they grow up!”
“We’ll need a lawyer and some board members,” I said.
“And an engineer.”
“And a ship,” I said. “But if we lose the bid on the Chernyakova we can lease one short-term.”
Pip raised his eyebrows as if stretching out his face and blinked a few more times. “You have thought about this.”
“Yeah. A bit.”
“Why don’t you look happy?”
I shook my head. “Margaret Newmar asked a few questions this morning that I hadn’t thought about. I’m not pleased with myself that I’ve never thought about them.”
He leaned forward, bracing his elbows on the table. “Such as?”
“What if I hadn’t found Alys Giggone back on Neris? What would have happened to me?”
He snorted and lifted his mug to his mouth, speaking into it. “Knowing you? You’d have been a land baron by the time you turned thirty.” He took a sip and set the cup down. “Why’s that so important now?”
<
br /> “I don’t know. Something’s out of whack and I’ve just never questioned it before.” I chewed my lip rather than say anything else.
“They’re not your problem.”
“Who’s not?” I asked.
He sighed. “The people who fall through the cracks. The ones who don’t find an Alys Giggone. This is your conversation. Try to keep up.”
“Yes, but where are they?” I asked.
“You ever visit planet-side?”
I shook my head. “Neris and Port Newmar.”
“Company town and college town. Not exactly typical, but how much time did you spend actually in town when you were here?”
“I wandered around a bit.”
“I’m not talking about drinking at the Flying Mermaid.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “You ever visit South Side?”
I shrugged. “Not that I remember.”
“You’d remember.”
“Wait, wasn’t that the part of town they warned cadets about?”
“Yeah. They promised captain’s masts for cadets caught there. You ever wonder why?”
I shook my head, feeling very dumb.
“Most cadets caught there have trouble finishing their training. That’s a big investment to flush away for a night on the wild side.” He took a slurp from his mug. “How desperate were you back on Neris?”
“I don’t even remember. Pretty desperate. I signed up for a job I knew nothing about on a ship that would take me away from the only life I’d ever known.”
He nodded. “And you had a full belly, warm clothes, and a safe place to sleep.”
I felt a cold draft slide down my back.
Pip spun his mug between his fingers and looked across the table from under bushy, snow-white brows. “You were in Diurnia. You ever run across a place called Odin’s Outpost?”
“Yes. In deep space equidistant from Dree, Breakall, Welliver, and Jett.”
“Ever visit it?”
“No. Just flew by. It was close to the shortest course from Dree to Jett and Breakall to Welliver. We pulled a double jump into the dark and then back out to port.”
“What do you know about it?”
In Ashes Born (A Seeker's Tale From The Golden Age Of The Solar Clipper Book 1) Page 7