by H. E. Trent
“Like this?”
She must have pushed the buttons because a horn on the gate bleated—making Autumn yelp embarrassingly—and then the lock clicked.
“Yep,” Brenna said.
The gate began a slow outward swing.
Cree skipped to the other side of the property line and waved Autumn over.
Autumn started toward her, and then quickly backtracked to the camera. “Um, should I just—”
“Walk toward the rail,” Brenna said. “I’ll send a cart toward you. It’ll get you closer to the main house, but since you’re looking for Luke, you’re going to have to ride around and look. I don’t know if he’s at one of the ships or back in the workshop. They don’t always respond to calls this time of day. Best bet is that he’s in the workshop.”
“And where is that?”
“Push the white button when you get into the cart. They’re all programmed to go to specific stops on the farm. We try to keep things simple for the kids. There should be a map and a manual in the glove compartment if you get mixed up, though.”
“Oh,” Autumn murmured, impressed.
Handy.
She figured she could probably use that sort of ingenious thinking in her company and made a mental note to find out who’d been responsible for the system. “Well, thank you.”
“Sure.” The transmission ended.
The gate began its closing arc, so Autumn put some pep in her step and squeezed through the opening before she had to endure the embarrassment of calling Brenna back.
“I don’t think she knows anything,” Cree said when Autumn caught up. “If Luke had said anything, I think she would have been nastier.”
“Not everyone thinks like you, sweetheart. She may know, and is simply setting me up for disaster.”
“And does believing that make you change your mind about being here?”
“No.” Autumn still had a case to make. He had to help her, and if not him, then maybe someone else. She’d come too far to turn back. She’d sacrificed too much to have to go home and be someone’s corporate puppet.
They walked ten yards to the closest tree—something that looked like a cross between a Terran oak and an oversized jungle vine—where a mechanical box bloomed from the ground on a meter-high post. Autumn peered down at it and found that it had a view screen and a tiny map with lights pegged in. It showed the position of the closest cart on the system.
“Hey, that’s pretty cool,” Cree said. “When I was sitting outside on the lodge porch last night chatting with folks, someone was talking about this rail thing. They said Luke’s brother Marco designed it. He used to work in robotics or something.”
“Marco, hmm?” Autumn etched that fact into her memory, and then straightened up and arched a brow at her little sister. “I don’t recall you going out to the porch last night. When was this?”
Cree scrunched her face and leaned forward to see around the bend of the track. It looked like a cart was approaching, but there was a glare from the sun and Autumn couldn’t be sure.
“I couldn’t sleep, so I went outside at around midnight. Did you know the farm has a legitimate full-fledged bakery?”
“Yes. I’m told that by people coming out of the coffee shop daily.” Autumn didn’t dare to go inside. When she needed a caffeine pick-me-up, she sent Cree.
“Yep. The guy Headron and his uncle make most of the bakery items for the region, and ships some out to stores in Buinet and elsewhere, too. They’ve been so busy that they had to hire an apprentice. They brought someone in from Earth who apparently came in on the same ship as us.”
“Oh?” Autumn took a step back from the little platform. The cart—which didn’t seem quite the right word now that she’d seen the vehicle—was slowing on approach.
The cart was actually spherical in shape, white on the bottom half—she was guessing that was metal—and had a see-through dome atop. It looked like a bubble with braces. It had metal supports holding the top and door in place. The invention resembled an amusement park ride and not the old-fashioned railroad cart she’d been imagining.
The narrow door popped open with a hiss of air.
Autumn let Cree squeeze into the cart first and have a seat on the part of the rounded, cushioned bench that was opposite to the door. She sat right next to it. The controls were mounted on the little table/grip bar in the middle. There were buttons for the hunter’s cottage, certain fields, the main farmhouse, the barn, the bakery, the workshop, the front gate, and the mountain gate. The labels were printed in English, what Autumn guessed was Jekhani, and also had pictographs.
“Probably for the kids,” she murmured, rubbing the pad of her thumb over the cute little picture of the mountain.
“These people are so devoted to their children.” Cree pulled her feet up onto the bench under her bottom. “I noticed that no matter who you have a conversation with around here, the discussion will eventually end up on kids. I think they’re obsessed, but I think that’s okay. It’s cute, actually. Close relationships are the norm here. Gives me the warm-fuzzies.”
“Yes, compared to what we grew up with.” Autumn knew her mother loved her, and she loved her mother back dearly, but her father had always discouraged outward affection and the effects of his domination lingered.
“Where are you finding all these people to talk to?” Autumn asked solemnly as she pushed the button for the workshop, assuming it was the most obvious place to start. If Luke wasn’t there, she’d swallow her pride and try the main house.
“They find me.” Cree shrugged and giggled when the funny little cart started moving. It jerked a bit before the motion smoothed. Marco probably still had some kinks to work out of the system. “I think with circumstances being what they are, people are trying to figure out how old I am and who I belong to.”
Autumn pinched the bridge of her nose and gave her head a slight shake. “Cree.”
“Hey. I’m eighteen now.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“But you were thinking it.”
“Because I think you’re too young to be giving serious thought to entering into any sort of arrangement with anyone. You haven’t even had a serious boyfriend.”
“Well, that’s what courtship is for, right?”
“You shouldn’t be thinking about courtship. You should be thinking about finishing high school, and about not having your mother running all the way across the galaxy in search of you.”
“Oh, she wouldn’t do that.” Cree sounded certain, but her slight grimace hinted at her insecurity.
“Cree…”
Cree gave her sister a dismissive wave. “Everything’ll be fine.”
“Will you feel the same way when your funds get cut off?”
“I—” Cree looked over her shoulder at the field of pretty purple stalks they were gliding through, chewing on the inside of her cheek. “I…want to say yes.”
Autumn didn’t push her. There was no point in haranguing Cree about what might happen. As idealistic as Cree was, money was a powerful motivator. Money made her life easier. Running away from home was made infinitely more comfortable by having a cushion of cash with which to pay one’s way.
“I’ll figure something out,” Cree whispered.
“Cree, was it really that bad?”
Cree didn’t respond.
Her silence said everything Autumn needed to know.
If Autumn had been braver as a teen, perhaps she would have run, too. Cree likely saw her actions as the only way she could protest the life that was being scripted for her.
She didn’t want to be like her sisters, and that didn’t offend Autumn. After all, she’d gone along with the program for far too many years.
After about ten minutes, the bubble approached an industrial-looking two-story building that looked to be half residence and half airplane hangar.
The blinking map in the bubble said it was the workshop. The two-meter-high piles of scraps outside the open wo
rk area doors hinted at the utilitarian function of the place.
There were a few elderly Jekhan men in coveralls sorting through the junk.
They returned Cree’s wave of greeting and resumed their work.
Autumn gripped her tote against her belly and scooted to the edge of the bench when the door popped open. “Are you coming?”
“Nah! Not yet. I wanna push all of these buttons. It’s like riding the Monorail’s entire loop at Disney. It’s something you have to do at least once. I’ll be back when I’m done, I guess.” She scrunched her nose. “Unless I get distracted. I could see myself getting distracted.”
“Oh boy.” Autumn looked to the workshop door and rubbed her stiff neck. She’d slept like hell, worrying about what she needed to do—what she needed to say to Luke. All of the arguments she could have made at the lake that day had flooded into her brain far too late. She’d needed weeks to get her side of the debate together because the consequences of losing were unacceptable to her.
She couldn’t go back to Earth and face her father and explain where she’d been and what she’d been trying to do. She couldn’t tell him, “You’re a disgrace and so I had to get far away from you to be myself.” She couldn’t do that until she was permanently gone. Then she could really be free.
She was about to undertake the most important negotiation of her life, and she was doing it on three hours of sleep and less than four hundred consumed calories. At some point during the trip, Cree had become Autumn’s security blanket. She was buffering her from the opinions of the locals and being her emissary.
Autumn was on her own. She let out a strained laugh and set one foot on the ground. “Well, don’t forget I’m here.”
“I won’t. But if I do, you can ping me.” Cree held up her wrist and brandished her brand-new hot pink wrist COM. The guy at the electronics store in Little Gitano had sold it to her at a bargain because she told him that his little girl was “Super smart and very cute.” Those had been the magic words needed to unlock a discount, apparently.
Autumn waved at her as the bubble puttered down the tracks toward the next stop. Taking a deep breath, she squared her shoulders. She smiled at the workers by the scrap piles and took a few hesitant steps toward them. “Hello. I’m sorry to interrupt your work, but have any of you gentlemen seen Luke? Is he here, or should I go chase my sister and that cart?” Autumn would have to do the chasing in the absolute wrong kind of shoes. She was so foolish for wearing heels. She shouldn’t even have packed heels. No one on Jekh wore them.
The closest man tossed a handful of bolts into a bucket and wiped his hands clean on his apron. “Luke is still here, I believe. He came to see Marco. I stepped away to have lunch a while ago, but I don’t think he left during that time.”
“Thank you very much, sir.”
She went to the door of the residence first and rapped gently on the glass.
“The door is open!” came a feminine shout from within.
“Oh.” Autumn stepped inside the bright, airy open space and immediately had her stockinged legs molested by a pair of small orange cats.
“Goodness.” A Jekhan woman hurried from a closed-off room at the left—probably a bedroom—and scooped the kittens up from Autumn’s feet. “My apologies. We’ve had them less than a month. The first litter born to our neighbors. We had to fight to get these two.”
“No worries. I like cats.” In theory, anyway. Autumn had never been allowed to have a pet when growing up and, as an adult, was far too busy to care for so much as a houseplant. She’d always envied friends who had people and pets to go home and share a sofa with. Loneliness was a hell of a beast. Grimacing, she wrung her hands.
“Can I help you?” the woman asked sweetly.
“Oh. Well, yes. I’m…Autumn Ray. I was looking for Luke.”
“Yes…Autumn,” she murmured, voice suddenly taking on a decidedly less sweet tone. “Of course you are.”
Autumn took a deep breath and let it out, gathering her calmness. “What do you mean by that?”
The woman turned her hands over in a noncommittal gesture. “You look exactly like your pictures.”
“What pictures?” Knowing Autumn’s luck, Luke had distributed bulletins far and wide warning people away from her. She hadn’t seen any in Little Gitano, but people there probably knew how to keep secrets when they wanted to.
“Oh. Of course, you wouldn’t know.” The woman chuckled and set the kittens on a nearby sofa cushion. They both rolled to the crease, lifted their heads curiously as if surprised, and then decided to put their heads down and nap right there. She swatted the cat hair off her hands and onto her dress and held out her right hand to shake. “I am Sera.”
“Ah. Yes, Sera.” The name clicked in Autumn’s memory. She clutched Sera’s hand and gave it a brisk shake. “You emailed me about Luke several months ago.”
“Yes, I did some of the earliest work on the single’s site, and still pitch in every now and then.”
“I see.” That had to have meant the woman knew almost as much about Autumn as Luke. Given the circumstances, she didn’t know if that was a good thing.
“I would have thought you would have left by now,” Sera said in a neutral-sounding murmur.
But neutral didn’t always mean kind. Autumn’s businesslike grin snapped inward.
The lady didn’t couch her words and she offered no apologies for having said them. Sera slid her hands into her dress pockets and gave Autumn a stare that would have made even the most bullish Wall Street businessman take a step back.
“I feel I should take some responsibility for the way things turned out,” she said levelly. “I encouraged him to enter the system. I set up his profile.”
“So, I guess there are no secrets here.”
“Some things are more secret than others. If you’re asking if everyone on the farm knows what transpired between you and Luke—no.”
Autumn scoffed. “Cold comfort.”
Sera shrugged. Her right shoulder jerked up much higher than the left. It didn’t seem to be purposeful, but before Autumn could give the quirk much thought, a tiny brunette skipped from out of the inner sanctum, shouting, “Uncle Luke says he’s leaving now.”
She stopped right in front of Autumn as if she hadn’t noticed she was there, and said, “Hi.”
“Well, hello.” Autumn smiled at the charming tot. Her coloring was Terran, for the most part, though the flush of her cheeks was extra red and her eye color was an unusual, dark grayish muddle. Looking at her mother, Autumn could guess why. Sera’s eyes were a cool violet. The child’s father must have had brown eyes.
Sera pulled the child close and smoothed her hair back from her face. “Elken, this is Ms. Ray. She’s leaving soon.”
“Why?”
“Because she has places she’d rather be.”
“But why? Papa’s gonna test the new hover engine. We can watch.”
“I would love to watch,” Autumn said, smiling.
“Would you?” Sera ground her teeth for a few beats and fiddled with the end of Elken’s braid.
One of the very first lessons Autumn had learned on-the-job was to never let a gatekeeper get in her way, and that’s what Sera was. Autumn needed to go straight to the decision-maker and speak with him face-to-face, and if she had to use a cute kid as a distraction to get what she wanted, she would, and would try not to lose too much sleep over it later.
Sera bent down to Elken’s level and looked the child in the eyes. “You may go watch Marco start the engine. Make sure you stay out of his and Owen’s way. Make sure they see where you are.”
“Okay.” The child skipped merrily away toward a side door.
Sera straightened up and cleared her throat.
“If you think I’m leaving without a fight, you’re mistaken,” Autumn said quietly.
“If a fight is what you want, you’ll get one.”
“Luke doesn’t need you to fight his battles. He’s a grown man. If he has
issues with me, he can take them up with me directly.”
“I’m fairly certain he did that when he told you he’d get you a seat on the next ship out of Buinet.”
“Circumstances change, and I—” Whatever Autumn had been about to say didn’t matter because there went a tall, Luke-shaped figure past the rear window. Autumn got her feet moving toward him. She ignored Sera chiding at her heels and got to the back door before Sera could stop her.
Autumn pulled the door handle, stepped outside, and quickly pivoted right without looking ahead.
Then everything seemed to be moving in slow motion except for her, and she couldn’t stop moving in time.
She saw Luke put his hands on the sides of Alex Hauge’s face.
She saw Alex leaning toward him in a way that was more than collegial. Men who were just friends tended to aim for cheeks, not lips.
She saw Alex looking up at her a moment too late, and him releasing Luke’s shirt from his grip a moment too slowly.
“I—” Sera said with a gasp. “Luke. Alex, I…”
“Fuck.” Alex pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes and ground them.
Luke rolled his gaze to the sky and took several deep, growling breaths as his hands balled into fists at his sides.
“I see.” Autumn let out a strained laugh and stepped between him and Alex.
Apparently, there was something between the two men.
Apparently, as smart as she was, she hadn’t been able to put two and two together. He’d probably been looking for any reason to get rid of her.
Apparently, she’d gotten played.
I should be used to that.
But it still hurt.
She was tired of hurting.
She wanted to be the first thing Luke looked at when he put his head down. She needed control of the situation, and fast. Her past business interactions had taught her to always get at the center of a disaster so she could control the fix. “Well, this certainly complicates things, or are you going to tell me it isn’t what it looks like?”
“I’d say it’s exactly what it looks like,” Sera said, “and further, that it’s none of your business.”