Eternity or Bust: Mission 16 (Black Ocean)

by J. S. Morin

  But unlike every other guest in attendance, Esper had a little wet blanket dripping all over the inside of her mind, trying to ruin the whole evening.

  “Look at him,” Mort said, voice echoing insistently in her mind during the ceremony. “Like a puppy chasing its tail. Doesn’t realize it’s out of reach. Can’t conceive of it. Just thinks if he keeps trying, one day he’ll catch that tail, then the world will all be beer and chips. But, if by miracle, Carl were to ever catch that tail, he’d bite down so hard he’d yelp and lose it again.”

  Then, when the music had started for the reception, “When was the last time anything good came of Carl’s music? That fuzz-strumming garble-tongued nonsense will rot your brain. Get us out of here post haste!”

  When Esper started accepting dance offers. “Remember, most of these are Carl’s friends. Military sorts. All they’re thinking is invasion plans for that dress of yours. Personally, I’d be much obliged if you dusted off the words of that old vow of celibacy you keep in the attic.”

  Finally, after the third mid-dance snarky comment from the wizard within her head, Esper had to excuse herself to the washroom.

  “What?” she demanded. “What is your problem?”

  “It’s like watching a tram derailment, except you’re the only one not happy to be aboard,” Mort groused. “Doe-eyes and drunk-livered, drumming up euphoria that they’ll never be able to live up to. Nancy and I burned slow. Dated for years before making things official. Made damn sure she was the one for me and I was the one for her. The only one. I wasn’t the blindfolded birthday kid, swinging away at the piñata like Carl, hoping candy rains down in the next swing and smashing myself in the face with the recoil.”

  “This isn’t about Carl…” Esper mused aloud.

  The door opened behind her, and Esper froze. She pretended to be preening in the mirror, then disappeared into one of the stalls.

  “Dear lord,” Mort grumbled. “Not this again.”

  But Esper was merely there to use the privacy. Safe for a moment to leave her body asleep, she climbed inside her own head.

  “What is your issue?” Esper snapped. They were in the grassy fields of Esperville. She was still wearing the dress from the wedding reception—though clean of a small champagne stain she’d acquired in the physical world and had resisted cleaning magically at great mental strain. “Are you jealous?”

  “Jealous?” Mort replied with a scoff. “Me? Of that pig-headed buffoon? Please.”

  “You are!”

  “Damn right I am!”

  Mort was ever one to play his cards close to his chest. He was a blowhard of the highest order, the consummate magical paragon, and a grizzled old rapscallion. But he was also a long way from life. It had been months now. He’d experienced them as years. Esper had known the peg-legged gait of walking in two time lines, real and internal. How would she have viewed those same months if she weren’t regularly grounded in the real world? What would a wedding reception be like that lasted three solid days instead of an evening?

  A notion cooked in Esper’s head, still too raw to serve. She dared not think it too explicitly with Mort standing right in front of her lest she give it away. “Look. I’ve got an idea about something. You promise to let me enjoy Amy and Carl’s big day, and I’ll make it worth your while.”

  The Esperville apparition of Mort crossed his arms and jutted his jaw. “Fine. But it better be good.”

  Esper sighed. She perked up in the washroom at the sound of a flush from an adjacent stall. Oh, she had something in mind for Mort. And it was a treat she could only get him on Earth.

  # # #

  Carl was grateful that the door to the honeymoon suite was thumbprint locked and didn’t require inserting a keycard or punching in a code. Mashing his thumb against a scanner pad was within his current skill set. The others, maybe not.

  Amy giggled as he stooped to pick her up and carry her across the threshold. She batted away his grabbing hands. “Yeah. No. I don’t think so.”

  Carl let out a beer-scented breath. “You know what? Probably a good idea.” He chased her through the door instead, catching buttons on the back of her dress with fumbling fingers, managing to unhook two before the door slid closed behind them.

  Amy was stone sober. Her high was all natural, all adrenaline, and beginning to wear off. She slumped onto the sofa with a sigh and turned to let Carl unbutton her wedding dress at leisure. She stared at the ring on her finger as Carl worked. “Married…”

  “That was the plan,” Carl replied without missing a beat.

  “Since when do our plans ever work out?”

  A dedicated drinker, Carl wasn’t nearly as clumsy as he’d let on. With a stationary target, buttons popped loose one by one. “Since we planned something wholesome and legal.”

  Amy twisted to look back at him. “We’re planning on wholesome?”

  Carl shrugged. “We can hardly do anything unwholesome anymore. Married couples operate in a shifted moral paradigm from those single saps out there.”

  Buttons down the back all loose, the fabric fell away, spilling over Amy’s belly while her hands clutched the dress to it. “This… is this part a good idea? I mean, I know medically it’s fine but…”

  Carl stopped. He wrapped his arms around her. “Hey, it’s not like we haven’t studied up for the exam. The whole wedding night tradition is half celebration, half getting on the heir-creation. It all dates back to the dark ages and stuck around because it’s fun.”

  Still clutching the wedding dress to her front, Amy slid off the couch and faced Carl. One-handed, she began undoing his tuxedo pants. Carl caught her gently by the wrist.

  “No reason you can’t enjoy this,” she replied, letting the dress fall as she used the other hand to continue pulling down Carl’s pants. “If I look weird and bloated, just close your eyes and picture what I looked like before.”

  “Whoa,” Carl said, catching Amy by the other wrist and standing, making sure she stood along with him. “First off, this is a two-way street or none at all. Second, you’re more beautiful than ever. Third, if you’re not feeling like some rowdy wedding sex, how about we just slip into the hot tub and find something romantic on the holo.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  Whatever Amy’s objection might have been, it was lost in a kiss.

  Carl had done the wedding night circus sex extravaganza before. Drunken newlyweds had a way to find energy even after a night of carousing that was simply unfathomable under other circumstances. But in the end, it hadn’t done a thing to make the marriage last.

  This time, Carl wanted it to last. He was willing to try the right thing instead of what felt best at the time. This time, he was more concerned with Amy than himself.

  They both fell asleep in the hot tub in the early morning hours.

  # # #

  The next morning Esper picked a dress that was the conservative middle ground between her everyday sweatshirt and the maid-of-honor’s dress she wore the night before. Packing up a day bag, she set out for the tram station, leaving the Mobius behind in its honeycomb berth.

  “Hey!” Yomin called after her, clutching her head in a sure sign of a hangover. “We’re off world the minute Carl and Amy get back. No time for side trips today.”

  “They’ll sleep in,” Esper assured her. “I’ll be back in plenty of time.”

  If there was one night feature of Earth that Esper had discovered, it was the overweening affection the citizenry seemed to have for wizards. Flash a Convocation crest and some kindly store clerk or restaurant manager shifted her cheque or bill to the esteemed organization’s impeccable credit. That little illusory symbol bought her a crepe breakfast and an EnerJuice to counteract the prior night’s festivities. Then it gained her a personal transport instead of taking public transit.

  The cab driver took one look at the symbol, heard a hint of Esper’s faint Martian accent, and said, “Lemme guess…?”

  “Yup,” Esper replied
. “Boston, please.”

  Inside her head, Mort perked up as if an alarm had sounded. “Wait! No! Not that!”

  He protested the whole way there, but with the extended flight time of nearly an hour, Esper was free to crawl into her own thoughts and shoo Mort away. Peace and quiet reigned until they arrived at their destination.

  When they arrived in Boston, the cabbie wanted to know where to let her off. “Back Bay. Plot 27. I don’t plan to be long. I’ll cover the waiting rate for a ride back.”

  “Hey, it’s your money,” the cabbie said sarcastically since it plainly wasn’t.

  Esper got out at a neatly manicured lawn, the first privately owned greenery she’d seen since setting foot on Earth. Two young ash trees flanked the flagstone path like palace guards. It smelled like springtime. Earth didn’t deal in seasons anymore; wizards of a terraforming bent were even less likely to tolerate such nonsense at home.

  As she took the stone steps to the doorway of a Victorian home, a church bell sounded. Well, at first she had assumed so. As it turned out, the bell was an old-fashioned door alarm triggered by magic.

  The door opened of its own accord as Esper reached the doormat. A woman recognizable from her Mortanian doppelganger answered. “Yes? I don’t know you, but you’re a wizard.”

  Nancy Brown was older than her conjured counterpart, face softened and cheeks drooping slightly, hair shot through with streaks of gray, and less imposing in bearing. But there was something authentic in the real version.

  Esper refrained from clearing her throat. She felt as if the mere slight of being unprepared to speak would have brought retribution. Suddenly, Esper connected the impression with Mother Superior at the Bentus VIII monastery. Mort hadn’t guessed correctly in keeping up with how Nancy would have really looked. She was eternally youthful in his memories. But the genuine article was a One Church school marm at heart.

  “Mrs. Brown,” Esper said, plunging into the conversation before she stood there gaping like an imbecile. “I wanted to let you know that I’ve seen your son recently.”

  Nancy’s forehead crinkled. “How’s that now? You know my Ceddie?” She looked both ways as if there might have been observers keeping watch on her front door. “Come inside.”

  Esper followed Mort’s wife into the house, feeling the luxury of wood flooring and trim settle in around her. This was casual wealth, the sort that offworlders complained about on Earth. This wasn’t merely expensive imported wood from arboreal colonies, this was architecture preserved from an era before lumbering on Earth had been banned. This was like decorating a child’s bedroom with the Mona Lisa or hosting grade-school soccer games at the Colosseum. She tried to walk without touching the floor, with limited success.

  As soon as Nancy Brown noticed the inkling of magic, she whirled with a scowl, and Esper’s full weight sank onto the floor. “What’s this about seeing my Cedric? He’s in a good lot of trouble if the reports are true.”

  Esper couldn’t get a read on Nancy. Based on a century of knowing her in Mortania, she had internalized Mort’s memory of her. What Esper hadn’t been prepared for was twenty plus years of divergence between the mother of two small children and the widow of a murderous fugitive and now mother to another accused killer. It was impossible to say whether Nancy was hoping to hear that Cedric was alive and well or that he’d been killed by gangs out in disputed space.

  “He’s out there, ma’am. Last I saw him was on a distant world he’d terraformed for himself. He… knows he’s made mistakes.”

  “Mistakes?” Nancy scoffed. “Mistakes don’t burn a man to ash when your job is welcoming fresh air into a newborn world. Mistakes aren’t running from the investigators and the rest of the Gaia team. If you’re in contact with him, tell him to turn himself in.”

  “I’m—”

  “Don’t do it!” Mort shouted in Esper’s head.

  “I’m not,” Esper said. “But if I were to find a way to get him a message, wouldn’t you maybe want something more… personal?”

  Nancy narrowed her eyes, and Esper fought against the urge to take a step backward. She worried about backing into some priceless heirloom that belonged in a museum rather than a residence.

  “I see where this is going,” Nancy said, taking a step closer. She was nearly Mort’s height. Esper’s eyes came to her mouth, and she avoided looking up into the elder wizard’s eyes. “You’re some lesser wizard sniffing around my Cedric now that he’s damaged his reputation sufficiently. Disgusting. If you’re looking for my approval, you may not have it.”

  “I… uh…”

  “You’ll only antagonize her,” Mort warned. “I could have told you this was a bad idea if you’d been willing to listen. She’s not some flopsy trollop to be slobber-talked into some weeping wreck of gratitude at hearing her son is safe.”

  A flash of inspiration struck. Esper could raise her eyes and take on this middling wizard, widow of her teacher. Mort had ever implied that Nancy had been a capable wizard but nothing on par with his mastery. Esper was the elder of the two in the only manner that counted: years of the mind. Her experience was vast. Her command of the adjunct powers hidden in the pages of the Tome of Bleeding Thoughts would be enough.

  She could force Nancy into her mind to meet Mordecai The Brown for the first time since her husband had run off as a fugitive.

  But as soon as that flash passed, she knew it was a mistake.

  “Please don’t,” Mort moaned. “Let her remember me. Don’t show her what I’ve become.”

  “I’m sorry to have wasted your time,” Esper blurted before turning to beat a hasty retreat from the Brown house. The door opened in advance of her approach.

  “And you leave my boy alone,” Nancy shouted after her. Only being on Earth made Esper feel even the slightest bit safe from the wrath of an angry, bitter mother and wife of murderous dark wizards.

  Tears wet Esper’s face as the truth struck her. That wasn’t just Nancy’s erroneous impression of Mort and Cedric; that was how the galaxy at large saw them. They weren’t flawed, dangerous men who’d performed regrettable acts in pursuit of life on their own terms. They were murderers, outlaws, and traitors to their profession.

  Esper opened the cab door as it floated on the curbside waiting for her. The thud of it closing behind her offered a raw form of closure.

  “Didn’t go well?” the cabbie asked. Idle curiosity outweighed sympathy in his voice.

  “Just fly. Back to Vegas Prime.”

  “We just call it Vegas around here, Missy.”

  “I don’t care what you call it,” Esper said, slamming her head back against the seat cushion. “Just get me out of here.”

  It was supposed to have been a time for Mort to reminisce. Instead, she had picked away the scab from an old wound that would never heal. Buried inside her mind, Mort was despondent. She’d made things worse than ever.

  The entire trip back, Esper spent consoling him in Esperville.

  # # #

  Carl helped Amy out of the cab. Both were back in civilian clothes with their fancy duds returned and resold respectively. Carl had offered Amy to keep her wedding dress, but in her words, “It’ll fit for a couple weeks each pregnancy. Not like we can play dress-up and have fun with it in between.” Carl had been willing to have it around as a keepsake since they had a whole asteroid now, but he understood the sentiment.

  The Mobius looked so out of place among the sleek new neighbors in every direction parked at the honeycomb garage. Sure, there were some older models mixed in. Carl saw a Ganlan J-20 and a Preston that looked to be either a 2645 or 2646 model. However, none were as old or hard-flown as the Mobius.

  For a fraction of a second, Carl wondered if their next job would be finding a new ship to work with. Logic said that someday Roddy’s patch jobs would add up to less than a full, working vessel. You couldn’t keep a ship going forever without eventually replacing every bit and piece of it. At that point, where was the sentiment? If it wasn’t t
he same ship anymore, what was the point of hanging onto an old, awkward bucket that, frankly, had garnered something of a reputation all its own.

  But then the next second ticked by digitally, and the slower, more thoughtful part of Carl’s brain answered his own question: because it was home.

  Pleasant Valley was a rest stop, half attic, half vacation house. Nice to have a spot with free parking—which the honeycomb reminded him was also a precious commodity—but ultimately not where Carl planned to live out his days.

  “Wanna take another crack at that threshold carry?” Carl asked with a playful grin as he and Amy approached the lowered cargo ramp.

  “My back’s a little sore from yesterday’s dancing,” Amy replied. “I can’t imagine you’re too much better off. We’re not kids anymore. How about you just take my arm.”

  There was no arguing with that logic. He was fairly confident he could lift her, but Amy wasn’t so much smaller than him. Thinner? Sure, most of the time. But the navy liked their pilots to fall comfortably into the mean range of build for Typhoon ergonomics, and carrying a developing child evened the score with Carl’s growing beer gut. Safer to just let her walk.

  He hit the button to raise the cargo ramp behind them.

  The Mobius closed them in, and a tension he had barely realized seeped away.

  They’d done it.

  No. Too soon. Let them get out of Sol space entirely before he dared call this trip to the cradle of totalitarian authority a success. All the humans on board had been born in this star system, but Sol wasn’t home anymore. They were pirates and smugglers of the Black Ocean, meant to keep shallow roots anywhere they set down.

  “Welcome back,” Yomin said with a grin as they entered the common room, still arm in arm. “Hope you kids had some fun, because I’m itching to get off this old blue marble.”

  “Ship’s ready to go,” Roddy reported. “I think they fueled us on solid gold, based on what those wallet vampires charged us. But we had a Department of Starship Operation inspection team come by for a routine inspection. Get this: we passed.”