Outward Bound

by Juanita Coulson

  "Tell her that, why don't you?" Morgan suggested archly as they emerged into the rotunda. "And now you're going to pay for this ribbing session, my friends."

  The instant they came into view, people flocked around them, forming reception lines. The cordon of enforcement troops and security guards kept the gypsy newshunters away from the party. But there were a lot of petty officials and minor guests who were eager to meet the famous young couple. Morgan put himself on the inside of the human sandwich, forcing Brenna and Derek to shake the outstretched hands and reply to the effusive welcomes. He moved at a sadistic snail's pace, working his way across the enormous room.

  "Captain Whitcomb! We met at the Polar Territorial Ratification dinner last year. Surely you remember..."

  "So delightful to see you, Brenna, my dear. What a wonderful jumper! It must be straight from Earth's best designer...!"

  "Vice Premier On Thuong De wanted me to give you his regards..."

  "Do speak to your father, won't you? I have this business proposition for Saunder Enterprises to consider..."

  Brenna shook hands until her fingers started to cramp. Her face froze in an inane smile. Morgan called this stroking-the-sycophants, a duty Saunders were expected to endure. The only family member who enjoyed these sessions was Aunt Carissa— not a model Brenna wanted to emulate, even to get free publicity for Breakthrough Unlimited!

  Phrases and etiquette and rituals developed on another planet, centuries earlier. Words spoken at the courts of kings and prime ministers and presidents of Earth. Those words had probably held as little sincerity as most of these did. None of the earlier rituals could have taken place in a more splendid setting, though. Pavonis City's capital rotunda perched on a saddle ridge in the Tharsis Mountains. The dome crowned the hemispheric and diplomatic center of Mars. From this lofty vantage point, sightseers could peer down at the outlying domed farms and the mining communities on the lower slopes. To the east, the Valles Marineris rift was faintly visible behind a late afternoon dust cloud. On either side of the rotunda two volcanic peaks loomed, Pavonis Mons to the south and Ascraeus to the north. In the northwest, the rim of Nix Olympus filled the dark sky. That incredible crater was larger in area than many of Earth's nations and five times taller than Earth'^ highest mountain. It was a far more appropriate home for mythological gods than its puny Terran namesake had ever been. Instead, Nix Olympus was dotted with scientific observation posts and exploratory mining digs.

  The last time Brenna had been in this rotunda, the Legislature was in session. Now the voting desks and computers had been removed to make way for dozens of entertainment islands containing comfortable seats, refreshment bars, and mini-arenas reserved for dancing and theatricals. Service robots roamed about, dispensing food and liquids. Music and color played over the scene. Audio balance systems sorted out hundreds of conversations, dampening the confusion. Thin Martian sunlight streamed in the life-support dome. The light reflected off expensive clothes, gilt-powdered hair, sequin-accented faces, and fortunes in synthetic gems. These people, who normally wore plain jumpers or pants and tunics and who worked hard to turn a barren world into a habitable one, had dressed in their gaudiest for the occasion.

  Morgan finally took pity and led Brenna and Derek toward the President's entertainment island. Several quiet men and women followed them at a discreet distance, as they had ever since Brenna and Derek had entered the rotunda. The shadows, Saunder Enterprises' private police—trying to blend in with the crowd. SE Security was always around wherever a Saunder or a McKelvey went, unless the family member made a special effort to ditch them, as Brenna had this past week. Now that she was back in Pavonis City, the SE guards resumed their duties. Brenna was their charge, whether she wanted to be or not. So was Morgan.

  The President's entertainment island was in the center of the rotunda. A light curtain, as well as a detachment of Martian civil enforcement troops, marked off that island from the others. The transparent, glowing blue barricade was an audio baffle, shutting out excess noises. But it also acted as an effective wall to keep out lesser society. When Brenna and the two men passed through the light curtain, those hangers-on stayed outside, gazing wistfully at the high rankers beyond the line. The Saunder Enterprises guards took up positions with the enforcement troopers, helping maintain the President's elite sanctuary.

  Brenna had expected to see her parents or President Grieske first, but someone else was waiting to greet her. Stuart Saunder and his retinue of toadies stood directly in Brenna's path. He had obviously seen her and Morgan and Derek approaching the island. Brenna's older cousin lifted his glass. "Ah! There you are. I've been waiting to see your shining faces for days."

  "And been drinking the whole time, too, no doubt," Brenna replied sweetly. She started to move by him, but Stuart caught her arm, his fingers digging in. Usually, she ignored his boorish behavior. This time she stiffened and wrenched free in one swift motion, her hand coming up for a chopping blow of retaliation. It wasn't a bluff, and Stuart knew it. His bony, pasty-white face sagged with astonishment. He backed away from Brenna hastily. His toadies were at a loss. They were hired to keep Stuart out of fracases or placate the law if he insisted on causing trouble. Their orders didn't cover this situation—Stuart menaced by another Saunder.

  He drained the glass he was clutching. Liquor helped him regain his composure. "Really! How crude, Brenna, my dear."

  "Be grateful it wasn't me you tried to push," Morgan said, very amused. "Brenna's too gentle."

  Stuart darted a wary glance at his muscular cousin, and his unhealthy pallor turned still whiter. He then concentrated his irritation on Derek, seeking revenge. "I'm surprised, Derek. I thought you were one of those he-man, back-to-nature lunatics —scratching out civilization on a godforsaken rock. Why didn't you leap to defend her wounded honor, if I'm such an offense to good manners?"

  "Oh, you are," Derek said blandly. "But she hardly needs my help to deal with someone of your caliber." His handsome face set with icy contempt, and Morgan threw him a thumbs-up in appreciation of the retort.

  Stuart Saunder was six years older than Brenna and Morgan, but dissipated living, especially illicit chemical stimulants, had aged him severely. He appeared at least twenty years their senior. His once-likable features were roughening and turning ugly. Not all of that was due to drugs and exotic sex practices. Much was caused by a rotten personal attitude, mirrored in Stuart's haunted eyes. "What a brave bunch you are. Favorites of the media, aren't you?" He raised his empty glass in a mocking toast. "We who are about to watch you kill yourselves or freeze yourselves salute you, and wish you bon voyage—to wherever it is you think you're going."

  For a split second, all Brenna's dread rose to the surface of her mind once more. No, she wasn't going to let Stuart know he had hurt her and stirred up fresh anguish! She laughed at him, and Stuart rocked back on his heels unsteadily, surprised by her response. "Go sober up," Brenna said in a condescending tone. "You're pitiful. Can't your keepers manage you at least for Colony Days?"

  "At least I know enough to—" Stuart broke off abruptly, seeing Brenna's mother coming toward them.

  "Didn't I tell you to dry up and cool off?" Dian Foix Saunder scolded her nephew from Earth. She might have been addressing a ten-year-old, one she was putting up with solely for the sake of family harmony. Stuart subsided into a pout, demanding a refill from one of his toadies' bottles. He contented himself with sour mutterings as Dian turned to her daughter and Derek. " 'Bout time you got here. You're not as late as I figured you'd be. Huh! It's okay, Derek. I know this hiding-out nonsense wasn't your idea. Tryin' to get hold of you was impossible!"

  "Now, now, Aunt Di," Morgan said soothingly. "I told you, it was a lovers' secret." Derek jabbed an elbow in his ribs, and Morgan grunted hammily. Then he straightened up. "Uh-oh! Get your salutes ready, kids. Here comes Fred."

  Mars' President Fred Grieske honored the new arrivals by greeting them personally. "So happy you could come, children..." Brenn
a dutifully pecked his cheek, and Derek shook the portly man's hand. "We'd hoped you could join us for Colony Days. This is the big ceremony, too! We see so little of you these times. Always rushing off somewhere! This younger generation! Come along and say hello to everyone."

  To Brenna's relief, Stuart didn't include himself in that invitation. One of the guests, an ambitious actress, had attached herself to Stuart, distracting him from the rest of the party. He stayed with her while Grieske escorted the others toward the chairs and tiers of couches near the holo-mode theater. Meeting these guests was pleasantly low-key, not the favor-seeking reception line Brenna had suffered through in the outer rotunda. She was on a first-name basis with many of those in 'the President's group, had known a lot of them since she was a little girl. Brenna moved easily among them, asking about matters that concerned them, touching hands, smiling, beginning to relax.

  Todd Saunder was in a political discussion with Protectors of Earth Chairman Hong Ling-Kuang and Terran Worlds Councilman Ames. Those power competitors were doing some subtle jabbing and one-upping, with Brenna's father trying to act as the peacemaker. When Dian caught his eye, he hurriedly excused himself and rushed to embrace Brenna. "You look great, kitten! Doing okay? Derek, it's good to see you, son. To tell you the truth, I was beginning to worry you wouldn't make it here. Seems like forever since we last got together." Brenna was surprised to see that her father's eyes were misty with sentiment.

  "Three months; long enough," Dian said. She winked at Brenna. "That was a long inspection tour your dad and I took. Maybe because we were inspectin' the wrong things." Todd's blush told his wife to save that for later. He reminded Brenna of herself, warning Derek to cut out the lewd and lascivious remarks.

  Friends and acquaintances crowded around them, chatting, exchanging news. There was a reasonable mix of older and younger generations, but this was the be-nice-to-one's-elders stage of the gala. Junior diplomatic aides and promising new legislators and government personnel—most of them Brenna's age—listened politely to President Grieske, Todd and Dian Saunder, Councilman Ames, and the other older attendees. Brenna had expected a heavy dose of remember-when, and she got it. This was one of the reasons she had begged off going to the whole ten days' worth of Colony Days celebrations. The Breakthrough Unlimited team had agreed wholeheartedly, setting up a schedule so that no one had to put up with more than twenty-four hours of this type of socializing.

  Surreptitiously, while the conversations buzzed around her, Brenna studied her parents. She wasn't sure what she was looking for. Three months wasn't forever, true, but that had indeed been a long inspection tour Todd and Dian had undertaken, and they weren't kids anymore. Brenna searched anxiously for signs of strain or friction, finding none. Her parents had never been estranged. Yet there had been times, through the years, when their individual careers took them off on very different tracks, separating them for long periods. Dr. Dian Foix was an eminent scholar, sought after by the diplomats concerned about Earth's interstellar relations with the Vahnaj planets. Brenna's mother was also deeply involved with a medical foundation, which took up a lot of her leisure. Todd Saunder's ComLink network would run itself, but he was afraid of going stale and kept poking his nose into the business he had built from nothing. Judging by Dian's crack, though, that torn: of the network's satellites had been more of a second honeymoon than a business trip. Well, they certainly deserved it.

  Unlike Brenna's cousin Stuart, Todd and Dian appeared to be tinning the clock back. Brenna's parents looked the way people in their mid-forties used to look, at the turn of the Twenty-first Century. That was typical, though, these days, for people who were in their sixties. Humanity was learning to take its greatly lengthened life span for granted.

  A few laugh lines were in evidence around Dian's dark eyes. But her velvety brown skin was almost as firm as Brenna's lighter colored one. There was no gray yet in her short-cropped Negroid hair. Her expression was as pert as always; her figure was still terrific, too. Brenna hoped she would weather the years half as well.

  Todd was putting on a little weight, looking the stereotype of the successful corporation executive, which he was. Recent cosmetic surgery had pared his jowls, the only thing he had been vain about. He had also quit dyeing those dramatic white streaks in his brown hair. That hadn't been vanity, however. He had been trying to cover up a telltale genetic trait he had inherited from his mother, Jael Hartman Saunder.

  Jael. The family skeleton who wouldn't stay in the closet. Some people cursed her name, even in these modern times. Others were rehashing her deeds and defending her, saying history had judged her too harshly. A generation ago Jael Saunder had nearly destroyed Earth. Her son Todd had made the first contact with an intelligent extraterrestrial species—the Vahnaj. And Jael's xenophobia had combined with political ambition for her older son and triggered a civil war between Earth and Goddard Colony. In addition, she had killed thousands of people entrusted to Saunder Enterprises' cryogenic facility at Earth's South Pole. It had taken a long time for the surviving family members to live down that scandal. Todd Saunder had emerged from the debacle as a hero. His brother, Patrick, had martyred himself, stopping Jael's treachery, and that had helped his widow and posthumous son regain the trust of the populace. Yet there had been strong movements against the Saunder family's quasi-nation, cries that the huge financial empire had to be broken up. Only Jael's daughter, Mariette Saunder, who had been a major supporter of the Goddard space station, had come out of the mess fairly whole. It was ancient history to Brenna, but not to her parents and Stuart's mother. When Brenna had been a child, her father refused to speak about Jael Hartman Saunder. She had heard about his dead brother and about the other victims of her grandmother's ambition and lust for power, but very little about her infamous, legendary ancestor. Now, after thirty-four years, Todd Saunder was finally letting those white streaks show in his hair. That striking effect had been Jael Saunder's visual trademark, as Brenna had seen in numerous three-dimensional images. The trademark had been missing from the family since Jael's death, but her son was reinstating it. Perhaps time had enhanced memories of Jael Saunder's better qualities and buried the tragedies caused by her enormous pride.

  Derek had been paying his respects to the Vahnaj Ambassador when several of Hiber-Ship Corporation's political allies closed in on the pilot. They were courteous about it, but they soon commandeered Derek and led him off to meet some of their friends. The group put their heads together, discussing business.

  Dian watched this and glowered. "You'd better not try that, girl."

  Brenna winced. "Dian, I'm not a child. And of course I wouldn't do that. Morgan and I don't conduct business during a gala. But Derek has to jump. The military mind. He never got over the regulations they drilled into him when he was in Space Fleet."

  "Rude," Dian muttered, still fuming over Derek's cronies. "Your co-pilots Yuri and Hector Obregon and Tumaini Beno are all ex-Space Fleet, just like Derek. But they didn't huddle in corners and rehash battle maneuvers."

  Brenna gave up. "Probably not. But we're Breakthrough Unlimited and Derek's part of Hiber-Ship Corporation. Listen, Dian, I'm going over and say hello to Quol-Bez and Sao."

  The alien Ambassador and his human liaison-translator, Chin Jui-Sao, had been talking softly in Vahnaj when Brenna neared them. They politely stopped and turned to face her. Quol-Bez extended a three-lingered hand, swirling his silvery floor-length tunic and loose vest as he did so. Brenna took his hand and peered up into his gray face. She had to crane her neck to look at him, even though she was of greater than average height. Quol-Bez was ten centimeters taller than Morgan, who was a big man. Chin Jui-Sao wasn't right at the Ambassador's elbow, as she often was during his discussions with other diplomats. After all, Brenna was a Saunder. Since Todd Saunder and Dian had first established communications with the Vahnaj planets, the alien species regarded the name "Saunder" as a talisman—their main link with Homo sapiens. Gradually, other humans had entered that networ
k through the years. But the Vahnaj continued to honor Todd Saunder, as did humanity. When the Vahnaj had finally sent a representative to serve as Ambassador in that backwater Solar System where Todd Saunder lived, Quol-Bez had arrived with a preprogrammed attitude that he was a "kin-friend" to everyone in Todd's family.

  "I give you hello, Brenna. I hope you are in good health." Quol-Bez went through the polite forms, since this was a state occasion. His voice was raspy and high-pitched, incongruous, issuing from that gangling, Lutrinoid body. The Vahnaj had evolved from an otterlike species, as Homo sapiens had evolved from the primates.

  "Yes, thank you, Quol-Bez. I am well," Brenna said, abiding by the same courteous formula. "I return your hello, with good wishes. Ni haoma, Chin Jui-Sao?" In the six months Sao had been assigned as Quol-Bez's translator, Brenna hadn't come to know her intimately. But she traded a few Pinyin phrases when they met, and they were cordial with each other.

  "Most well, Brenna Foix Saunder. It is gracious of you to inquire. We, the Ambassador and I, had been speaking of you and Morgan Saunder McKelvey just moments ago," Sao said breathlessly. She sounded as if she had rehearsed that statement. "Many of the guests had noted your absence from the gala. They were concerned for you."

  Brenna was puzzled. "I'm sorry to hear that. Why on Earth ... why would they be concerned? And what about Morgan? He's been here most of the week."

  Quol-Bez's broad head waggled atop his snaky neck. That made his sideburns flutter. Six years hadn't lessened his fascination for Earthmen. Most styles came and departed, but "Quol-Bez fashion" lingered. A lot of Terran males affected long tunics and had grown sideburns in imitation of the Vahnaj Ambassador. Human facial hair, though, lacked the silky allure of Quol-Bez's adornment. For one thing, few humans could make their sideburns fluff up and flatten to suit their mood. Right now, Quol-Bez's earlocks were flattened, indicating tension. "Brenna, Chin Jui-Sao speaks ac-cu-rate-ly. Your fellow beings are worried." His labored pronunciation was more evidence of his underlying edginess. Quol-Bez spoke many Terran languages well. Chin Jui-Sao's function was as an interpreter of customs and idiomatic expressions, not as a full-time translator. When the Vahnaj lapsed into these slow speech patterns, it wasn't because he didn't know his hosts' tongue. According to Brenna's father, Quol-Bez sometimes used the tactic as a stalling method during diplomatic sessions. But that didn't seem to be the case at present. "You must ap-pre-ci-ate. You and Morgan are risk takers. The method of tra-vel you pro-pose is very new. There are many who consider this ... urr ... ne-sanle..."