by J. S. Morin
“Nice deal,” Carl said. He looked around. Shoni was on the couch, nose aimed at a datapad. She waved briefly when she caught Carl staring. Carl ran a quick inventory, trying to account for recent crew rotations. “We missing someone?”
“Nah,” Roddy replied. “Esper’s sulking in her quarters. Kid went to see Mort’s old lady. I guess delivering bad news in person didn’t go like the fairy princess imagined.”
Carl cringed. How could it? Even a gifted liar like him wouldn’t have known where to begin chipping away at the hardened heart of a woman run out on by a mass murderer with a son set on the first steps of that same path. Sure, knowing the guys, there were good, reasonable explanations for all the murders, but to someone on the home front, that shit had to come with some serious baggage. No one wants a perky little ray of sunshine stopping by to tell them twenty years of heartache and shame is OK. The last thing Nancy Brown would have wanted to hear is that Mort lived a happy life without her.
There was only one way Esper could have made things worse than merely offering condolences. “She didn’t tell Mort’s wife that he’s alive in her head, did she?”
Roddy ambled over to the couch with a fresh beer. “She was crying. I make it a rule not to get involved with crying humans. But between you and me, I’m betting that if she told one of them bossy-britches Convocation types that she’s collecting brains, she wouldn’t be back here.”
“Amy, would you mind—?”
“Already on it,” Amy said, disentangling from Carl’s arm and heading for the cockpit. That left Carl to carry in their luggage, but the sooner they got off Earth, the safer he’d feel. It was like swimming in shark-infested waters. No matter how much the dive instructor insisted that the sharks had just been fed, they were still sharks. Who was the dive instructor to say whether they’d had their fill? All it would have taken was for Jared Malcolm’s tentative deal for safe passage to fall apart, and they’d be scrambling for their lives.
“So,” Yomin said. “I imagine we head back to pick up Archie and the wizards. But where to from there?”
“Dunno,” Carl said, jamming his fists into the pockets of his battered jacket. How many times had he tried that same gesture yesterday, only to be reminded that his tux didn’t have real pockets? “Let’s just see if Amy gets us out of Earth orbit before making any plans about a future beyond today.”
The Mobius shuddered. Out the overhead dome, they could all see the claw arm clamped down around them, feelers extended to form a custom-sized envelope hugging their ship. As clear blue sky clogged with lines of aerial traffic extended overhead, the ship thrummed as the engines fired up.
Carl’s heart picked up its pace. This was it. They were going to get away with it.
The docking arm released. The Mobius shot forward. Amy angled their nose up and soon the sky gave way to a black void filled with the pinprick light of stars that appeared stationary and a million starship engines that danced to a traffic computer’s fiddle.
They chatted and joked and passed the few minutes in relieved tension as Amy got them locked in on autopilot to the outer public astral gates.
“Well, that’s that,” Amy said. “We’re on a one-way trip back to everywhere else.”
“Yeah,” Roddy said. “But is it just me, or did this trip basically clean us out?”
“Worth it,” Carl said quickly.
“Suuure, family man,” Roddy said. “Nice you got your life plotted on a mapped vector again, but we gotta eat. We need fuel. Upkeep on that asteroid’s nothing like the fucking syndicate fiasco, but it’s still not free.”
Carl scratched the back of his neck. “Speaking of fiascoes, I should probably call Chuck and Becky to make sure they’re—”
“They’re assholes,” Amy said. “Not so much your mom, but they could have at least said they weren’t coming.”
Carl shrugged. “That’s my point. That’s mom. She’d have gone behind Chuck’s back to send me a little ‘Hi, sorry your dad’s being a fuckwad. Have a nice life.’ Makes me wonder if something’s up.”
“Ithaca’s a long ways out there,” Amy pointed out. “Maybe they’re in transit.”
Showing up late—even by days—would have been just like them. Then it would be Carl’s fault for not staying on Earth long enough to wait for them.
“Come on,” Roddy said, patting the couch cushion on the far side of him from Shoni. “Let’s take advantage of the best omni connection in the galaxy while it lasts.”
The crew, minus Esper, settled in around the holo-projector. Carl perched on the side of the couch with an arm around his wife. Shoni relaxed and lay across Roddy’s lap. Yomin said nothing but dragged over a chair from the kitchen table, looking possibly a tad wistful.
Carl resisted the urge to try to pair her off with Esper to complete the picture of couples’ bliss.
# # #
Halfway across the galaxy, Enzio sat watching the holo-projector in the newly refurbished Rucker Syndicate common hall. The science-fabbed everything had been given a homey touch by some blue-skinned body-mod freak shipped in as a design consultant. Still, trendy Martian decor was better than looking at bare science walls with nails and rivets and what-have-you poking out like undergarments.
He was in the middle of season five of Because the Wind Says when Tanny barged in. Now, technically speaking, the barging was entirely copacetic. This was, at some level, all her personal property. Enzio was merely a feudal vassal, leeching off his lord’s larder. But at a more technical level, this moon belonged to Mordecai The Brown, same as this chiseled body.
But, as with the body, Mort had to maintain appearances.
“Hi,” he said in the face of her blatant ire, barely glancing away from the action in the holo-field.
“Is that all you have to say? ‘Hi’?” She had her arms crossed, same way she used to dress down Carl. Mort wondered if that move had ever worked in her life.
Maybe on the original Enzio.
“If you’re looking for something more along the lines of a conversation, I’ll need a bit of guidance. Halfway through watching the battle of—”
“Holo, off,” Tanny commanded, and the dratted traitor of a holo-projector went blank mid-viewing.
“Fine way to greet someone,” he said with a bit of warning gravel in the voice. Unfortunately, Enzio’s throat wasn’t designed for grit and growl. He was a smooth talker all the way down to his tonsils. Every word Mort said came out buttery slick.
“Greet? What happened to the days when you greeted me by pulling my shirt over my head? What happened to coming home from a long day of getting bullshit from everyone and you making me forget all about it? What happened to falling asleep covered in your sweat with every last damn thing on my mind drained away? What happened to you? I’m done with the sad wizard routine. Moping around, drinking, and watching holovids while ignoring me is getting tired.”
Enzio stood and faced his boss without flinching in the face of her tirade. “All right. You’ve got my attention.”
“Attention? That’s it? Let’s have it out, right here, right now. We had a fight. Your feelings got hurt. Fine. Whatever the hell I did, I’m sorry. Now will you quit sulking around and make up already? I’ve been traipsing around this godforsaken jungle in my top-drawer lingerie for weeks now on the off chance you decided to break out of your doldrums and act like my lover again.”
“Your whore, you mean,” Mort replied. It was always unsavory getting peeks into someone else’s sex life. Esper’s had taken on an odd roller coaster of tongue-clucking chastity and leaping over the guardrails to swim with the alligators. He’d seen more than he cared to of that. He’d left as much as he possibly could of those memories with the shard who’d stayed behind. But Enzio and Tanny had a tawdry dynamic that made Esper look like the priestess she used to be. “Drop my lips, tongue, and manhood in a purse and you could take all that you needed from me on vacation with a single ticket.”
“Is that what this is about?�
� Tanny asked, eyes wide and jaw dropping loose. “You think I’m using you for your body?” Then something must have dawned on her. Mort could watch the realization of the truth behind his words creep across her face like the sunrise shadows across a field. “All right. So what if I am? You climbed out of my father’s pocket riding my ass. There was something in it for both of us. We had a good thing going. We still can. But right now, I’ve had a shit day, I’m tired, and I want my lights blown out before I crash. I want you to stick whatever you need wherever I need it to get that done. Consider it part of your job around here.”
Well, when she put it that way, how could a fine upstanding wizard resist? To be fair to Tanny, Mort gave the proposition its due consideration. He could take a sweating, grime-coated, foul-mouthed, entitled marine grunt to her bedroom. In her current state, he wagered she’d let him do anything he liked to her. There was something raw, starved, and feral about her blunt order. But it held all the appeal of a gourmet meal prepared from spoiled ingredients.
“Pass,” Mort said. He turned to search for the holo-projector remote.
“What?” Tanny shrieked. “What the fucking hell has come over you?”
There were times when Mort exercised the patience of a saint—and not George or Joan or any of the other military saints. The effort to refrain from crunching Tanny into a disrespectful, bloviating ball of meat the size of a pumpkin was more than most wizards could muster. He thanked the wider universe on her behalf that he had the strength to play along and spare her.
“Come over me?” Mort asked. He spread Enzio’s arms. “Let me tell you something. On the Clapton, I saw real wizards. Those two that Ramsey brought with him had a depth to them that humbled a paltry soul like mine. They stood there, still as statues, holding a clamp on the room’s magic unlike anything I’d ever felt before.”
“Please,” Tanny said, her ire still up, but the preposterousness of that assertion had lured her into conversation. “Esper’s barely a wizard. She was Mort’s lapdog and occasional sex toy. Come to think of it, she was his you.”
Enzio raised an eyebrow. He wanted to protest that he hadn’t laid a hand on Esper in either the real world or his imagined fortress kingdom. But that would have broken character. He needed to be Enzio right then. “Says the woman with no magic whatsoever. If she’s your idea of a lapdog, that Mort of yours must have been a right terror to behold. The pirate bitch brought along her backup wizard, too, but that woman was my equal. Had the two of us combined our powers and attempted to alter the course of that poker game, the laws of the universe wouldn’t have budged one iota. That was real power. That is what I could have been if I’d stuck to the straight and narrow instead of running after easy money working for your father. I prostituted my magic to the syndicate. Whatever they needed, I did. The money made up for the hit to my ego. But seeing them, I realized I’d not only given up my magical training but my literal body to you. Inside and out—all of Enzio, all yours. It made me sick to realize. You don’t love me. What we had was never about love. Ecstasy was just one more little magic to work for your money.”
Tanny was trembling in rage. Her face was flushed cranberry red. The only thing stopping her from lashing out in physical violence was probably the fact that Enzio was bigger than her and his magic would have more than made up for any skill Tanny possessed in hand-to-hand combat.
“Get. Out,” she said through gritted teeth. “I want you gone. You’re fired. If you weren’t a wizard, I’d have your head delivered in a bucket to your next of kin.”
“They wouldn’t appreciate that,” Mort observed dryly.
Tanny pressed on, not taking the bait Mort dangled. “By morning, I want your stuff out of here. I don’t want to see you again. Ever. If I catch word of you spreading rumors or badmouthing me, my father, or the syndicate, you’ll find out how far my resources reach. There are wizards out there who take contracts for other wizards.”
“I’m aware,” Mort said with a smirk. “Give me one of your worker bees to help with the tech end, and that’ll be it. I’ll be off Ithaca first transport that comes.”
# # #
Carl was on watch. The novelty of sitting in the pilot’s seat of his own starship never wore off. It was a former crew that had banned him from flying, headed by the woman who’d alternately been the light of his stars and the crushing gravity of a black hole. Nowadays, Roddy was the only holdover, and the laaku had never cared enough to put up a stink about his flying. Not for real, at least.
Plus, one of the perks of the night watch in a barren stretch of astral space was that Carl had the ship to himself. If he kept the volume down, he could watch anything he liked on the holo. He could drink and eat without snide commentary or snarky jabs about sharing.
He could use the comm and no one would know any different.
Amy hadn’t wanted Carl to contact Chuck and Becky. It was fine to keep a “fuck you” attitude toward someone else’s parents—even if they were now in-laws. But Carl still had to check in to find out whether the two cantankerous old retroverts were OK.
“Now… where did we bury those comm IDs?” Carl muttered as he browsed the recesses of the Mobius computers. Getting boarded and inspected was routine on Earth. This time it had been a simple safety inspection, but if someone besides Captain Malcolm had come sniffing around to see what other classified intel Carl might be hiding, it was best to keep certain data out of sight.
Carl hadn’t been the one to do the hiding. It was a matter of finding everything again without waking Yomin or Roddy—it was a coin flip’s chance which of them had scrambled the sensitive files.
“Aha!” Carl cheered quietly, still mindful of waking the crew.
One album stood out in the earliest reaches of the Early Data Era rock catalog. The entry for “Rockin’ at the Hops” had been mislabeled and attributed to Chuck Becky instead of Chuck Berry. Carl was just about to play the file when the comm panel flashed with an incoming message.
Enzio Stiles.
Mort.
Carl practically dove for the button. “Hey, pal. How’s life in Ruckerland?” he asked noncommittally, aware that Mort probably had someone on hand to help him make the comm. There was even the possibility that Mort had moved on from that particular guise and this really was that slimy weasel Enzio calling.
“Need transport off,” Enzio replied. “Had a falling out with the little lady, and it appears I’m no longer welcome.”
“Sing me a tune I haven’t heard before,” Carl said with a grin. It amazed him that Mort had held out this long—and he was now clearly certain that this was indeed Mort. The odds that Enzio would turn to him for transportation after pissing off Tanny were nanoparticles.
“How about: what the bloody hell were scientists thinking making comms so fucking complicated?” Enzio snapped. “I could have built a pyramid sooner than untangle that nest of beepy-boopy nonsense on my own. Chased the poor bugger out as it was meandering toward you. Ought to get him something nice for his troubles; maybe like not being planetside when the shit gets shoveled into the thrusters.”
Carl chuckled, enjoying the bluster as an art form and ignoring the thrust of the wizard’s complaints. Even with the phony, borrowed voice, it was good to hear those old Mort tirades. “You’ve sung that one enough I could play it,” Carl said. “But you’re going to—wait. You’re still planetside?”
“That’s why I’m comming you,” Enzio explained condescendingly. “I’m stuck here. I’ve worn out my welcome and need a ride.”
Somehow, in all the planning and preparation, the wedding had blotted all the machinations regarding Ithaca from his mind. The wedding snubs hadn’t been mere social gaffes (or intentional slights), but failed evacuations.
“You’ve got to get out of there,” Carl said urgently.
Enzio’s growl almost sounded like the old wizard himself. “How many times have I got to tell you: that’s what I’m asking. Come. Get. Me.”
“Earth Navy is coming
,” Carl said. “I don’t know how long or what they’ll bring, but I traded that moon’s location for two days free and clear on Earth.”
“You what, now?” Enzio asked. There was a banging sound that made Carl cringe and block his ears momentarily. “I could have sworn you just said you sold us out for a bag of magic beans.”
“I did,” Carl said. “I figured anyone who cared would be at the wedding. Transit time. Logistics. It all should have worked out.”
“And yet…” Enzio said.
“Yeah. No kidding,” Carl said. “Listen. Is Tanny still on Ithaca too?”
“If she weren’t, I might have considered staying.”
“Mriy? Kubu?”
“Indeed.”
“Fuck.”
“Indeed,” Enzio repeated somberly.
“All right. Here’s what you do. Get to Chuck and Becky. Let them know what’s what. Mriy and Kubu probably won’t ditch Tanny. You arrange transport off world with my folks—take anyone you can convince—and give Tanny a last-minute heads up before you break orbit.”
“Bah,” Enzio replied. “Let them get herded into prison ships. This lot deserves it. And if Chuck and your mom didn’t even bother coming to your wedding, maybe they need a little cooling off in a cold, dry cell—anything’s better than this blasted moon.”
“You’d be stuck there too,” Carl pointed out.
“Goldarnit!” Enzio snapped. “Can’t a man be spiteful without resorting to a Pyrrhic victory? Wake up little miss tickle-skirt, and tell her to go as deep in the astral as she can. Get your ass here and get me off this rock.”
“Someday I’m going to want a better accounting of what you saw riding around in that girl’s head. You just hang tight. I’ll get us there as soon as I can.”
The comm ended. Chuck’s comm ID on Ithaca blinked at him from the music archive.
Carl hit close.
# # #
Esper hated being awakened. Noisy crewmates, alarms of both the mechanical and digital persuasions, gentle nudges followed by affectionately wandering hands—you name it. If it woke her up, it earned her ire.