Stellaris- People of the Stars

by Robert E. Hampson

  At Mace and Sandy’s shocked looks, their father let out a sob, and their mother reached over to lay a hand on his shoulder. After a few moments, he collected himself and continued. “So, I decided to turn my life around. I spent a couple of months in rehab and started counseling—your mother, too. In the last year we started in at the Grace and Unlimited Potential Foundation down in San Antonio. It’s just a few stops down the tube line into the city. We met Brother Eric there not long after we started, and he has taken over the counseling. He was so excited to hear that our family was coming for the holiday and that we would have this chance for forgiveness.”

  Something in the story seemed a bit…off…to Sandy, but he couldn’t put a finger (or tinger) on it, so he made no comment. Still, the name of the church, or club, or whatever it was, seemed familiar. After more confession and contrition on the part of both parents, and signs of a little bit of thawing on the part of Mace, Sandy mumbled his own acceptance and that he really needed to get back to food preparation.

  As if that was their cue, the couple from the “fellowship” said their goodbyes, saying that they wanted the newly reunited family to have time to catch up. They accepted an invitation to dinner the next day. Sandy could hit the local grocery in the morning for just a few items to stretch the meal to feed two more. It’s not that he overbought in the first place—that was a bad habit in space—it’s that he planned on packaging the excess and taking several meals back to his colleagues. He also knew efficient and nutritious ways to stretch rations; so, there was always a backup plan for getting the highest yield from his ingredients.

  * * *

  The evening ended quietly. Sandy went back to cooking and their parents said that they needed to perform their evening devotional study. That left Mace to either wander about alone or retreat to her old room and try to sleep. She stepped out into the backyard and looked at the tree she used to climb in her younger days. It seemed so much bigger back then. Even though the ancient ash tree clearly increased in girth over the years, it was no match to her memory of it. In her early teens, she’d built a small ladder to help reach the lowest branch, climbed up the sturdy trunk to the upper part, then laid back and looked at the stars. These days, she could just jump the entire height if she wished—balancing on her left leg and taking advantage of the superhuman strength built into the prosthetic. It was more fun to climb it, though, so she did.

  The branches might have been thicker, but she still heard some ominous creaking as she climbed. Well, she was bigger, and her body was denser, thanks to her prosthetics. The tree was old when her father grew up in this house, so that made it…wow! Well over sixty years old. Maybe she shouldn’t climb all the way to the top. At least the leaves were down already. She settled for a sturdy branch about halfway up and leaned back to look at the sky. It was still the same broad expanse of Texas sky that thrilled her as a child, perhaps a bit brighter since the surrounding cities became smarter about lighting.

  * * *

  Sandy woke up early and walked to the grocery store about a mile from the house. His father offered the use of the family car, but Sandy demurred. It wasn’t that far to walk, and he needed to enjoy the sun and fresh air while he could. Besides, he learned last night that his parents had volunteered to serve the Thanksgiving meal at the G.U.P.F. mission house down in San Antonio. Oh, he or Mace could have driven them to the Loop station, but they both agreed that this new contrition on Mom and Dad’s part was just a bit unsettling. Being in the same car would be too awkward right now.

  Mace was still sleeping when he left the house—she’d stayed in that tree until well after midnight. His parents would likely be gone by the time he came home from the store, so he would have plenty of time to cook and work through the conflicting thoughts that disturbed his own sleep. This new situation was just too unexpected. The person who answered to “Dad” bore little resemblance to the person he knew when he left home. There was a time when Dad was different—smart, funny, less angry—teaching science in the local high school. Mace was too young, but Sandy remembered riding on his father’s shoulders as they toured the Alamo and went to museums in San Antonio, Houston, and Dallas. That was before the school district realignment that sent Sidney Wolfe into inner-city Austin and started the downward spiral of depression, alcohol, and anger that drove their mother to spend more time away from home than with her son and daughter. Sandy grew up with a dysfunctional family for many more years than a happy one, and Mace never really knew the good times.

  Now, though, it seemed as if their parents were polite strangers answering to the same names, but not someone Sandy really knew. Could their new “fellowship” have brainwashed them or be controlling them somehow? No. That just wasn’t possible. He and Mace were both trained to spot abnormal and artificial behaviors—it was just too dangerous to ignore those signs in a space crew—and there was nothing artificial in Mom and Dad’s words last night.

  Brother Eric and Sister Elizabeth, though—they were a different matter. Something about them disturbed him and touched right on the edge of those behavioral alarms in his subconscious. The name of their “fellowship”…that seems familiar somehow.

  * * *

  Mace awoke to a quiet house. 0800 wasn’t all that late by local time, although if she were on Gilster, she would have missed half of her shift by now. Sitting in the tree last night helped her adjust her schedule, and sunlight was a powerful influence on circadian rhythm even though she had artificial means to adjust her body’s internal schedule.

  Her parents mentioned going into San Antonio for “mission work” this morning and Sandy was headed to the store for enough food to expand the menu from four to six people. He would be back soon, but for now she was alone in the house. Somehow it still felt cramped. She flew shuttles and lived in a twenty-five-cubic-meter cabin, yet this house felt small. She called up a calculation function from her cyber interface, the Telencephalic Heuristic Neural Grid-Enhanced, THNG-E, or the “thingy in the brainy” as Doc Anson called it. Two-hundred-square-meter house, so about five hundred cubic meters—the house was twenty times larger than her customary quarters on-ship. It didn’t make sense, but perhaps it was simply being groundside. She certainly felt more comfortable sitting in the tree and was thinking about heading back up into the branches when she heard the front door. Sandy was home, and it was time for them to talk.

  * * *

  “I don’t trust him. I really don’t trust her! If she were in my crew, I’d be asking Command to reassign her. Is there any way to convince Mom and Dad to disinvite those two?” Mace was doing one-handed pull-ups on the bar that Sandy had positioned in the kitchen doorway when he was thirteen. Their mother used it to hang clothes, but it was still in place and able to hold her now pretty much the same as it held Sandy in high school.

  Sandy sautéed onions and mixed stuffing in silence for a moment before answering. “I don’t think so. Disinviting someone once you’ve invited them is not the right way to handle this. It doesn’t matter what we think of them. Dad was talking this morning and said that he credits ‘Brother Eric’ with giving him a ‘new life.’ Mom agrees. What gets me is that the timing doesn’t fit. They met Eric and Elizabeth six months ago, but Dad started his rehab two years ago. Mom said last night that they started couples counseling at least a year ago.”

  “Six months ago? Really?”

  “Yes. Something about being introduced at the Fellowship Memorial Day picnic.”

  “You realize The List was published May fifteenth? About two weeks prior?” Mace thought back to the day the crew roster for Centauri Dreams was published. She heard from Sandy for the first time in years, and her brother’s correspondence with their mother led to this visit. It still didn’t feel right. Something was wrong.

  “Yeah, something is fishy, but today we have turkey!” Sandy stirred the last of the spices into the stuffing and put it in the oven to bake. “Now we just have to wait for everyone to get here.”

  The ho
use smelled of turkey, side dishes, and pie when their parents and the couple from the Fellowship returned around 1300. Sandy planned to serve his Thanksgiving feast at 1400, so they would have to hurry to get the table set, drinks poured (fruit juice in deference to Dad) and serving dishes in place in time to receive the food as it came out of the various cooking appliances.

  Finally, everything was ready and they sat to eat. Brother Eric was asked to say a blessing. It was rather bland albeit sprinkled with continued references to “purity of body” and “sacred creation.” Talk throughout most of dinner was light. Mace and Sandy described their mission training, Sidney talked about his new job at the aerospace plant in Kerrville, and Melanie described the upcoming program for the symphony. Brother Eric didn’t initiate any conversation topics, but he listened with interest, and asked questions throughout. Sister Elizabeth sat quietly through the meal despite Mace and her mother’s attempts to draw her out.

  The food was excellent, and the company was surprisingly relaxed. There were a few odd notes, though. One was that Sister Elizabeth would not take any dish passed to her by Sandy or Mace. She had no problem passing dishes to and from Eric or the elder Wolfes; however, she demurred on any plate passed by the siblings, suggesting that they place it down on the table and she would “get to it in a moment.” It wasn’t offensive, just odd, although a couple of times Mace thought she caught a fleeting expression of distaste. The other odd note was Brother Eric’s reluctance to talk about the Grace and Universal Peace Fellowship. Mace had tried to find out if it was organized as a church, and if so, what denomination it followed. Brother Eric dodged most questions and all Mace could glean was that the organization considered itself a social and service club, an extension of counseling support groups that were most members’ introduction to the fellowship.

  It wasn’t until after dessert that the truth finally came out.

  Sandy worried about serving food for company in the mismatched dinnerware—largely unused—belonging to his parents. Enough table settings for six people would have been a problem if Melanie Wolfe hadn’t suggested they use the “Christmas China.” It had been a wedding gift from her father who designed it for a pottery boutique. As a “family heirloom” it had seldom been used when Sandy and Mace were young, and it was a measure of how much their parents changed that it was even offered for this occasion. One of the most notable pieces of the collection were the “snowman” salt and pepper shakers. Short and round, they were all too easy to tip over and roll away—one of the reasons the set was not used with young children around.

  Dinner and dessert were over and everyone rose from the table to make their way to more comfortable seating in the living room. As Sandy and Mace were picking up the dirty dishes to take them to the kitchen, the salt-shaker snowman was knocked over and rolled off the table. Mace was on the opposite side of the table and couldn’t reach it, and Sandy’s hands were full. Fortunately, Sandy was not dependent on just his hands. He lifted his left leg and neatly caught the knickknack with the tingers of his left foot.

  Mel Wolfe gasped. Sidney actually laughed, while Brother Eric just sat with his mouth agape. It was Sister Elizabeth’s reaction that broke the mood.

  “Abomination!”

  Everyone froze, but for Mace, suddenly it all clicked. “Grace and Unlimited Potential Foundation? Really? You’re calling yourself that, now? Not ‘Guardians of Unaltered Purity’?”

  Sister Elizabeth’s long silence finally broke, and she began to rant about abominations, gene-altered monsters, and killer cyborgs. Sidney and Mel just stood staring, but Brother Eric’s own pretense slipped and he looked back at Mace with intense fury.

  “Do you deny it? You can’t, can you!” Mace glared back at him. “You damned GUPpies firebombed the clinic where two of my flight-school classmates were being treated after a shuttle crash. The investigation team determined that the crash was no accident. Then the damned GUP set the fire that finished the job!”

  Brother Eric spat at her rather than answer. Sidney was asking for an explanation, but the representative of the rather infamous anti-human-augmentation group ignored him.

  “Yeah, I get it now.” Sandy returned from the kitchen with a dishtowel in his hands, still drying something. “It makes sense. The leader called himself ‘Erebus’ after the Greek personification of darkness.”

  Brother Eric turned toward Sandy in a menacing manner, but Sandy dropped one end of the dishtowel, revealing the foot-long carving knife they’d used to cut the turkey.

  Brother Eric stopped. Mace was crowding Sister Elizabeth, trying to push her toward the door instead of the living room. The woman took a swing at Mace, but the latter simply held up her hand—her left hand—and blocked the punch. A soft “pop” sound suggested dislocation at least, if not a fracture of one or more small bones in Sister Elizabeth’s hand.

  Sidney surprised everyone by turning to the GUP couple and quietly but firmly saying: “I think you should go now.”

  The couple hurriedly left, Sister Elizabeth cradling her hand and alternating between grimaces of pain and expressions of anger. On his way out, Brother Eric swore he would file a criminal complaint against Mace for “aggravated assault.”

  Sandy washed the dishes and Mace dried them, carefully placing the Christmas China back into the cupboard. Sidney and Mel Wolfe sat quietly in the living room. Surprisingly, he was still drinking iced tea, while Mel poured just the slightest amount of brandy to settle her nerves.

  Finally, Sidney spoke. “I guess I’ve failed you two again. I should have known that something was wrong by all the questions he asked about you two. I don’t think they were even part of the local Fellowship before the news came out that you two were on the colony ship.” There were tears in his eyes. “So now you’ll probably hate me even more for this than for the mess I made of your childhood.”

  Mace moved over to where he sat, perched herself on the left arm of the chair, and leaned over to hug him with her right, biological, arm. “I’ll admit that it’s hard to forgive,” she sniffed. “But I can’t hate you for this. You were used.”

  Mel sobbed. “We didn’t want it to be like this. We wanted you to have one good memory to take with you before you left forever!”

  Sandy moved over to hug her, much as his sister hugged their father. He gave a short laugh. “Well, we have a memory, alright!”

  * * *

  The rest of the evening was punctuated with tears, laughter, and perhaps a small amount of healing. It was late when everyone went to sleep…except for Mace. She didn’t need as much sleep since receiving her cybernetic implants. Pilots spent long hours jacked into the controls of their ships and shuttles, so one of her implants filtered fatigue toxins and metabolites to give her longer endurance. She went back to her retreat in the tree and stared at the stars. She still wanted to go. More than anything, she wanted the stars, but for the first time she was thinking of those left behind.

  Forgive? Forget? Love? Hate? Those were abstract thoughts and all but meaningless outside relationships. Sure, Sandy was going, too, but instead of a three-year age difference, he would age an additional twenty years while she slept all the way to PCb. Her parents would be long gone by the time she woke up, and for once she found that it mattered to her.

  It was well past midnight, and she was contemplating going inside when she noticed the shadow moving next to the house. There had been occasional movements inside the house, but those could easily be late-night bathroom calls. Outside the house was a difference matter. She dialed up the night vision in her cybernetic left eye and could see the figure clearly. Male, long stringy brown hair, straggly beard, bent over the gas meter. There was a faint reflection from his right hand, and Mace could see the type of handle used to turn the main gas supply valve. Sandy mentioned a problem with the gas supply, but this was not good.

  Stealth was not one of her strong points, especially not from halfway up a tree. Still, she climbed down as quietly as possible. It must have s
ufficed, since the stranger continued to work at the gas meter and valve until she was nearly at ground level. He stood up, and she froze in position, ready to leap the last couple of feet to the ground and run at him, but he apparently finished the job since he put the valve handle away in a pocket and went to the back door.

  He held a gun-shaped device next to the lock. It was an automatic lockpick. Well, that settled the question of whether he was simply an after-hours utility repairman making a late-night holiday house call. Mace smiled to herself. She could have saved him the trouble, though; the door was unlocked ever since she came outside…two…three hours ago?

  Curious as to his intent, Mace decided not to follow him through the door, but decided instead to use the “other entrance” Sandy told her about years ago. Sandy had moved in to the utility room above the garage when he started high school. It was far enough from the other bedrooms that he could sneak out a window at night. He wouldn’t be doing that climb anymore in Earth gravity, but Mace could certainly use it to sneak in. She might even do it without waking Sandy.

  Jumping risked making a noise, especially if she hit a weak point in the wall or window frame. Instead, she just pulled herself up with her left arm, pulled out the loose security grille and belly-flopped through the open window.

  “It’s not nice to invite yourself in without announcing,” came a voice from the direction of the bed. Her night vision was still active, and she saw her brother sitting on the side of the bed, putting on his gravity braces.

  “Shhhh. Someone’s in the house!”

  “I know, sis. You’re not the only one with night sight and hearing,” he replied. He was in shorts and a T-shirt, the thin metal brace bare against strangely thin legs. “Let me go first, Optimus Prime. I’m quieter.” Sandy was indeed quieter and was down the narrow steps to the laundry room before Mace finished testing the top step to make sure it wouldn’t squeak under the weight of her cybernetic implants. In fact, he was so quiet he was able to sneak up unnoticed behind the intruder as the latter was working at the stove.