by Strong, Ray
“Thank you, Eddy,” the teacher said. “Who’s next?”
Amanda, a girl Sandy’s age, came to the front of the class. “My subject is farm animals.”
“Go on, dear,” the teacher said.
“The third year on Haven, our leaders sent away for animal embryos. Embryos are useless by themselves because there were no Earth animals here to develop them. So they also sent away for the replicator data sets that could make artificial…wombs.” Amanda blushed, and the class tittered.
John had told Meriel that when Haven placed those embryo orders, BioLuna knew it had lost its bet, and Haven would not just die off but would survive.
Amanda continued, “They ordered embryos for all kinds of farm animals. They unfroze the cows, goats, and sheep first, and we’ll judge the best of some of them at the fair next week.”
The teacher raised her hand. “How many of you have entered livestock at the Thanksgiving Fair?” she asked, and half of the children raised their hands.
Amanda raised her hand as well. “They haven’t defrosted all the species yet. The scientists are worried that some of the Earth animals may not get along with the indin…indi…indigenous animals. For instance, the pets—”
The class erupted in excitement. “I wanna beagle!” one child said.
“I want a rabbit!” shouted another.
“And that is just what they are worried about,” the teacher said. “As house pets, we love them, but dogs are exceptional hunters in packs. And rabbits can destroy an ecosystem.”
“Just like people, my dad says,” one child offered.
“But people have a choice,” the teacher said, “rabbit’s don’t. Please continue, Amanda.”
A fine mist clouded the schoolroom as Amanda continued her talk, but Meriel fell asleep in the midday heat with her head against the wall. Becky saw her and sat next to her until class was finished for the day and the dust storm ebbed to a misty mud rain.
***
Meriel woke to pattering sounds from the schoolhouse roof and a tugging on her sleeve.
“Wake up, Merry L. Wake up!” Becky said. “Now’s the time.”
Meriel opened her eyes to see Becky’s big grin. “Time for what, hon?”
“Just come,” Becky said and pulled Meriel’s sleeve until she was on her feet. Meriel stopped at the door, but Becky ran outside to join Sandy, and they jumped in puddles and spun in the mud, their hair matted and their clothing soaked. The rain was clear now and washed the mud off the buildings until they shimmered in the late afternoon sun. Some of the indigenous animals played in the water with the children, but Dumpy cowered under the schoolhouse stairs.
Sandy came to Meriel with another big smile. “Papa says it will be like this more often in forty years.” She held out her hand. “Come, Merry,” she said and led Meriel out into the rain.
Meriel just stood in the warm rain, totally unaccustomed to so much water. Like spacers, Haveners conserved and recycled all of their water, and this downpour was almost as strange to them as it was to Meriel.
“Stand like this,” Sandy said and opened her arms wide, threw her head back, and opened her mouth. “It’s like sparklers on your tongue!”
Meriel lifted her face to the rain and felt it tickle her cheeks and forehead. She opened her mouth and tasted the sweet water. The raindrops fell along her body and ran down her arms and legs as if it was alive. Meriel smiled and spun slowly with Becky on one hand and Sandy on the other—like she had never been a child.
***
Dumpy shivered in fear beneath the schoolhouse stairs in the damp chill air after hiding all afternoon from the rain. The children had left hours ago, but he had been afraid to leave his hiding place. His panic had subsided with the rain, but he still feared the occasional raindrops that fell from the eaves and lay in cold puddles in the yard. Steeling himself, he sprinted for John’s farmhouse and waddled up the stairs. He nosed the screen door open and walked through the dark house searching for safety and warmth.
A soft breeze blew through the open windows and carried the scent of the two little ones; the only beings in his entire life he thought did not want to eat him. He waddled down the hall looking for an empty space and nosed open another door with a quiet squeak. The scent of the two big ones crossed his nose, and he saw one of the big ones sit up and point something at him.
***
Meriel heard the squeak and sat up straight in bed, her body covered in sweat and eyes wide with fear. She grabbed the stunner from the nightstand and aimed at the small moving target in the doorway but waited until her eyes focused before firing. Dumpy immediately disappeared down the hall.
She scanned John’s bedroom for danger, saw none, and let the stunner fall to her lap and exhaled slowly. John lay next to her and put his arm on her lap as he turned in his sleep.
The outside door was open, she thought. She inhaled quickly, jumped from bed, and ran to Becky and Sandy’s bedroom to see them sleeping and heard the purr of Sandy’s snores. A tremor within the pile of clothing strewn on the floor caused Meriel to raise her stunner again. She leaned over and lifted a pair of jeans to see Dumpy watching her and shivering. She dropped the jeans and sat on the edge of Becky’s bed and put the stunner in her lap.
John followed Meriel into his girl’s bedroom and found her with her head in her hands.
“What is it M?”
“They’re coming.”
“Who?”
“Khanag. Biadez. All of them.”
“How do you know?” John asked.
Meriel shook her head. “I just feel it.”
“Not tonight. You’re safe here.”
“I feel exposed. There’s too much land, and no way to see it all. Plenty of places to sneak up on us. Damn, I’m always jumpy.”
“You belong here with us.”
Meriel shook her head. “If BioLuna or Khanag or any of those creeps find me here, you and the girls can get caught in the crossfire. Your farm is a big bull’s-eye, and I’d be better off in space and a moving target.”
“But they can’t get to us here.”
“Maybe not now. I’m safer on the run. And so are the girls if I’m not here.”
“I’m not giving you up, M.”
Meriel smiled. “I know,” she said and kissed him.
“I don’t want you to run.”
“I need to go, John.”
He put his arms around her. “Not tonight,” he said. “After the fair, hon. We’ll talk about it then. Now let’s go to sleep. We need to walk the fence tomorrow, and we’ll need our rest.”
Meriel lay back in Becky’s bed, and John sat in the chair by her side and held her hand.
After Meriel had drifted back to sleep, and John snored lightly, Becky took Meriel’s other hand and held it to her heart.
***
Fritz Leung, admiral of the Arcadian Rangers, stood on the gold tee at the seventeenth hole, which had a breathtaking view of Stillwater Cove. His scorecard showed fifteen over par for the course, and he looked forward to winning a sizable bet from his partners. After adjusting his aim to accommodate the headwinds blowing in from the Pacific Ocean, he swung his club for a respectable hundred-and-sixty yard drive down the holographic fairway.
This would be the admiral’s last mission before retirement after nine successful campaigns in the Wars of Immigration, the latest in the Seiyei expansion. It ran like clockwork now, and golf cut the tedium.
Unlike the fool who lost his forces at Haven a decade ago, Leung joined this battle with an unsullied reputation. A luxurious retirement at the behest of BioLuna awaited him rather than a meager apartment on Europa like the last idiot. Admiral Leung looked forward to a waterfront estate on Tranquility Lake on Luna 2 with excursions to Earth and lots of time to entertain the grandkids.
Admiral Leung had twenty-six ships at his disposal, along with numerous space-to-ground weapons, eight thousand mercenaries with atmospheric injection capsules, and innumerable mechs and drones—a
ll under the command of a corps of seasoned officers. And their first step would be to take control of communications using the Global Communications Executive, the Blackout-Box, just like at Seiyei Station.
A light flashed in the holo. Incoming, he thought. That thug, Khanag.
“What is it, General?” Admiral Leung asked.
“His holiness the archtrope sends his regards and will meet you at the capitol building in Stewardville when we are victorious.”
What an ass, the admiral thought. Counting your chickens. Bad luck. “Regards to the archtrope and your…followers,” the admiral said, not saying what he really thought of Khanag’s savages. “Remember—we lead. My ships need clear space when they jump in.” Just like fanatics to jump early and get in the way when we come out of jump.
“Of course,” Khanag said. “But please do not interfere when we arrive.”
“Our nav is better than yours, General.”
“We’ll see, won’t we?”
“And on the ground, stay out of our fight,” the admiral said. “We don’t want any friendly fire, now do we?”
“Of course, Admiral,” Khanag said. “But are we friendly now?”
“For the moment. Out,” the admiral said and cut the connection. He turned to his aide. “Bring the technician to me.”
When Admiral Leung finished the eighteenth hole, the technician, Warren Matsushita stood there.
“Ah, Mr. Matsushita,” the admiral said. “I hope your stay has been comfortable. The tools and parts you requested are in the shuttle waiting for you.”
Matsushita nodded. “You will keep your promise?”
“I’m an honorable man, Mr. Matsushita, and nothing like our…associates. You can speak to your family before you leave.”
Matsushita fell to his knees and began to cry.
“There now, when your mission is over, you can leave together. Are you ready?”
Matsushita nodded, but his back shuddered.
“We only need a few moments to…prepare the planet for your arrival. Go now and speak with your family before we send them home,” the admiral said and waved for his aide to remove the technician.
He turned to his golf partner. “When will you deploy?”
“After the first wave and ordnance arrive, I’ll clean up the mess our associates left behind,” said Benedict, the nondescript man.
***
Meriel and Sandy lay on their backs under the stars watching Thor set on the Western horizon while Becky slept in Meriel’s lap. Like John and the rest of the work crew, they were tired from a long three-day hike to survey the groundwater and repair the electric fence that kept the bigger critters away from John’s farm. Meriel had spent much of the trek in a tiny wagon pulled by a donkey so as to not slow the crew down. Tomorrow morning, they would be home for the start of the Harvest Fair, and she would need to make a decision to leave or to stay, a decision she did not want to make.
“See, sweetie, that star is Aldebaran, and the fuzzy patch there is the Orion nebula,” Meriel said, but Sandy kept her eyes on Meriel.
“Do you miss them?” Sandy asked.
“Who?” Meriel said.
“I’ve watched you look at the stars, Merry,” Sandy said. “Are you going to leave?”
Meriel did not know what to say. Perceptive girl, she thought and said, “I’m not sure, hon. I’m a spacer.”
Sandy looked away and bit her lip.
“I talked to your dad. It might not be safe for you to be around me,” Meriel said.
“Uh-huh. You’re just saying that ’cause you want to leave.”
“I don’t think I would be a good mom.”
“I don’t need a mom, Merry,” Sandy said. “She’s been gone a long time now, and no one could replace her anyway. I know Becky does, but that’s only because she doesn’t remember her much.”
Maybe she does, and I won’t match up, Meriel thought. “I won’t go away forever, hon. My family is coming here, and you are part of that. I’ll always return.”
“For them?”
“For you.” Meriel took Sandy’s little hand. “You’re like me when I was a kid. Strong. Full of ideas. And you love your little sister.”
Sandy looked up at Meriel with a big smile. “Yeah.”
They were silent for a while and watched a meteor arc across the sky.
“Merry, is space your home?” Sandy asked. “Your song?”
“What do you mean, hon?”
“Like your home is not a place but a journey.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Our teacher told us about a place on Earth called Australia that’s kinda like Haven—arid and has animals and people that don’t live anywhere else. She said the native people really don’t have any place to settle down ’cause the land is poor and can’t sustain them. But they have trails that they walk over the course of a year or more.” Sandy drew an irregular shape in the dry soil that returned to its starting point. “That was their route. And many tribes would walk the same land but have different routes.” Sandy drew other closed shapes that wandered back and forth and crossed each other, but each returned to its own separate starting point. “And as they walked, they sang of the places they passed, the hills and the plants, their ancestors and the spirits. They called them songlines.”
Meriel imagined tribes of people following Sandy’s little fingers as she traced their trails in the dirt.
“You know them all, don’t you?” Sandy asked. “All the stars.”
Pretty much, Meriel thought and nodded. “It’s one of the first things that spacers do when they get somewhere new. They orient themselves to the stars and constellations.”
“Tell me,” Sandy asked.
Meriel nodded. “Well, my first spacewalk was near Wolf 359. That’s over there,” she said and pointed to a star near the horizon. “That was the happiest day of my life, well, before I met you and your sister.” She hugged Sandy. “My mom and dad were lost near Procyon. The Princess is docked near there at Enterprise Station. Over there is Lalande 21185 near where I met your dad. That’s behind Thor now, and you can’t see it.” Meriel took the fringe of Sandy’s shirt between her fingers. “The Crab nebula glows a teal color like your sleeves.”
“You make the stars real for me, Merry,” Sandy said. “That’s your song. You just don’t have a melody for it yet.”
“My route could be my home?”
Sandy nodded and snuggled into Meriel’s arms. “Just make part of it here with us.”
Meriel hugged her. The two of them lay back to watch the last slice of Thor set while Meriel told stories of the stars to Sandy until they fell asleep.
Chapter 14 Reunion
The Fair
“Psst, Psst.” Meriel heard and blinked. They were in the stuffy little country church, and Meriel had nodded off, tired from the prior long day and fitful sleep. She had spent the early morning primping the girls for church and the harvest fair, all that time confused about dress styles more elaborate and colorful than she had ever seen.
“Psst, Psst.” Little Becky stood next to her and tugged on her sleeve signaling her to stand like her sister and the other parishioners. Meriel complied and watched the pastor as he led a prayer for forgiveness, and she gritted her teeth. Becky brushed her arm for attention again and blinked to tell Meriel to close her eyes—it was closing her eyes to pray that caused her to nap to begin with. Meriel barely heard the remainder of the pastor’s benediction, and in a moment, the service was over.
Sandy and Becky took Meriel’s arms and rushed her to the front of the line to greet Pastor Lee. This was the strategy the girls had developed to be first to the desserts on the lunch table that the women set for the churchgoers. When the girls finished their lunches, Meriel watched them play with the neighbor kids.
“Hello, Ms. Hope,” Meriel heard and turned to see Pastor Lee approach. He offered his hand to her, palm up. “May I get you something from the buffet?”
“No, thank you
,” Meriel said, not knowing how to respond. She laid her hand on his for a moment and shook it.
“Was this your first time in church?” he asked with a smile and sat next to her.
Meriel nodded. “I heard your sermon,” she said.
“You did?” the pastor said with a big smile. “I heard you snore.” The smile did not leave his face, which let Meriel know it was a tease not a complaint, and she smiled in return. “I hope my message will be more enlivening next week.”
“I don’t think I’m much good in church.”
“You wear the cross.”
Meriel touched the medallion on her necklace. “It was my mom’s. It’s all I have left of her,” she said. That and a junk of a ship that I may never see again. “I really don’t know the rules in there.”
The pastor laughed with a deep, honest laugh. “It’s not about the rules, Ms. Hope. It’s about this.” He waved his arm to survey the church and families having lunch and the kids at play. “It’s about living. People kind of lost that after thousands of years worshipping abstract things. It’s really about the spirit, Ms. Hope, about what drives you, what keeps you going.”
Meriel thought for a moment. “I thought it was about our immortal soul,” she said.
“Uh-huh. What does that mean to you, Ms. Hope?”
“I don’t really know.”
“That’s the problem. It’s become just another abstract idea,” he said. “The soul and spirit came from an old Greek idea: anima, same as animal. It meant the breath of life. Love drives it all: love for life, love of self, and love for others. And love is what JCS is all about.”
Meriel looked down. “That’s what my mom told me,” Meriel said and looked away.
“What’s troubling you?”
“I have a problem loving others. Doesn’t God say to forgive your enemies?
“So you were listening. Yes, but it’s not so simple.”
“Well, I can’t forgive,” she said while balling her fists in her lap.