by Ginger Booth
His order placed, he turned to the gaudy kids with a grin. “Trying to look Denali, are you? You need a bald cap. Or shave your head. And with those hunter colors, you should paint your eye sockets black, and around the mouth and ears.”
“What do you know about it?” one boy retorted.
“Been there,” Ben replied. “I know Zan, the only real Denali hunter on Mahina.”
He approved whole-heartedly in principle of including Denali here in the open-air bazaar. But in fact there were only a handful available so far from their own planet. He’d served as third officer on the ship that brought them here, the Thrive. The Denali didn’t wear bakkra on Mahina, though. Back home, their skin paint came from microbe colonies cultivated on their skin, not clothing. The kids’ loincloth markings looked like fairly authentic fakes, though.
The captain pointed to one. “That skin comes from an otter. Vicious creatures. They all are, on Denali.”
The kid scrunched his face. “You look familiar.”
Ben grinned. “Might have been on the news a time or two.”
The boy’s companion elbowed him. “That’s Ben Acosta, fool, captain of the Prosper. Thrive Spaceways, right, sir?”
The waist-high paddy grandma reached up on tip-toes and sloshed Ben’s ramen onto the counter on delivery. She followed through with rude imprecations, more signs to ward off evil, and, “Ramen, ten credit!”
“Ramen, four credit,” the officer countered. “Plus a one credit tip for the kind and beautiful lady.” He placed a hand over his heart, as though pledging devotion.
“Who, her?” the boy countered, wrinkling his nose.
The little paddy woman peered up at Ben, gap-toothed mouth gaping in astonishment amid her wrinkles. Abruptly, she snapped her jaw shut and clacked her fingers for his credit card.
“I’m not giving you my card, gorgeous.” The captain reached over the counter to collect the chunky payment device for himself to key in the transaction. The thing was too heavy for her to heft onto the counter herself. He loved how everything was makeshift and ramshackle in Saggytown. Once payment cleared, he held the display for her to see.
“Big tip for lovely lady. Merci beaucoup.” That was upper-class Saggy for ‘many thanks.’ So far as he knew, the rice-farm tunneling paddies didn’t say ‘thank you,’ a sentiment at odds with their doleful worldview. He returned the machine where he found it.
Finally, he dug into his ramen with gusto. Aside from incorporating yam noodles, the three-world dish tasted nothing like Denali’s tropical fiery cuisine. That was fine by him. The fried Schuyler meatballs of mystery meat – probably printed soy – were perfection, swimming in a slightly sweetened soy-and-onion base. The pink pinwheel disks of Sagamore fish paste didn’t taste like much, but added a fun rubbery texture. The fresh Mahina eggs and cabbage were a welcome reprieve from space provisions. “Maman, you’re a wonderful cook!”
The paddy clucked her tongue and shook her head at him. She sank below onto a short stool to brood with her inner demons.
“What’s your name, kid?” Ben asked the Denali-costumed companion who knew him by sight.
“Denzel. Your ship here now, the Prosper?”
Ben grinned. “Just in today. Offloaded in Mahina Actual this morning. And now I’m home. I love this ramen.”
“You can’t eat ramen in a starship?”
“Spaceship,” Ben corrected on automatic. “No warp lens. No stars.”
The boy nodded confidently. “I knew that. Sass Collier took the Thrive into space with the only warp lens, ten years ago. Won’t be back for another decade, if ever. The starship Thrive, not the Thrive Company.”
“That’s right. You follow space! Say, you go to Schuyler High? My son Nico’s there.”
Denzel wrinkled his nose in disapproval again. “You’re that old?”
“He’s my ex-husband’s kid. Nico Copeland.” Ben’s top-of-the-line nanites kept him looking 25 rather than his 34 years true age. But he wasn’t quite old enough to have a 15-year-old kid, unless an older woman picked him to breed with. The creche specified that guys should be 21 before conception, with a proven work track record. They granted exceptions for religious minorities. But Ben certainly hadn’t looked to breed as a teenager.
Denzel’s eyes boggled. “Copeland’s a frill?”
Ben mock-backhanded him. “I dare you to call Cope a ‘frill’ to his face. Just try it sometime.”
Denzel snickered. “Nah, old man Cope is docks and locks, righteous. Even if he is a frill.”
“Well, thank you. I think.” Ben chuckled. Unlike his ex, he wasn’t from gritty Schuyler. The blue-collar dialect often sailed right past him. “So you know Nico?”
“Sure. We ain’t in high school, though. Docks and a job for me.” The city of Schuyler was Mahina’s goods distribution hub. The dry loading docks remained its core defining industry, even while the city diversified and grew like a mushroom.
Ben curled one corner of his lip in a half-smile. “Won’t make space that way.”
Denzel shrugged. “Won’t make rent without it. Say hi to Nico for me.”
“Will do.” Ben watched the kids lope away, on some rebellious gravity setting intermediate between Earth-normal and Mahina-native. The new nanites kept their skeletons from growing attenuated by that bad habit, provided they could afford the treatment. For himself, Ben kept strong and compact the hard way, living strictly at artificial 1-g from babyhood, 1.2g for workouts. He found it fascinating, the way a new generation adapted to the health tech Thrive worked so hard to make available for them.
His comm buzzed him. “Hey, Cope, I’m home!”
“Yeah, you got in hours ago. Where are you?” his ex demanded.
Ben raised an eyebrow. Not quite the cheerful welcome he expected. In truth, he was stealing a couple more hours of freedom before being enveloped by his family reunion. He felt a tad guilty about that. But he intended to celebrate sunset with Cope in a couple hours, and commence the monumental task of catching up with their kids. “Saggytown. Figured you’d be at work –”
“Well, I’m not. Get home now. It’s eviction day.”
“It’s what?”
“Now,” Cope growled, and clicked off.
Ben abandoned his ramen and headed home, jogging through the shopping crowd.
46
Ben’s footfalls slowed to a walk as the mansion came into view. His family and the Greers bought the place together with the profits from their 18-month odyssey to Denali a dozen years ago. Trees installed as saplings now topped the roof patio, scrubbing the dusty air fresh and casting welcome shade when the sun was high.
He loved this place. Outside the creche, it was the only home his kids remembered. For that matter, this was the only home Ben had since leaving his father’s, except on a spaceship. And now a truck stood in front of it on its high studded balloon tires. A couple workmen seemed to be ferrying out their worldly belongings.
Abel Greer stood at the pompous front portico, arms crossed, facing off against Cope stalking likewise by the truck. Both men wore exquisite business suits, their best ‘fund-me’ outfits, and glared at each other. Not exactly moving-day attire.
What the rego hell?
Ben forced a smile and waved. “Hey, Abel. Happy sunset!” He mastered this strategy from his old captain Sass Collier. When the going gets rough, smile hard and start off friendly.
Abel, the onetime first mate of the Thrive, dropped his face onto a hand in disgust. Cope turned and shot Ben a furious middle finger.
“Get the flyer,” Cope barked at him. “I’m driving the truck.”
Ben continued strolling to reach him, caught his shoulder, and dropped a quick peck on his cheek. “What did I miss?”
“Not now,” Cope growled.
“Oh, I think now would be a great time for that sunset drink,” Ben differed. “You could fill me in. I could say hi to the Greers.”
“We’re leaving.”
Ben peered into the tr
uck. Was that Cope’s office furniture and tools in the back? Not just the junkyard-reclaim home office stuff, but his extravagant president’s desktop. “Really eager to hear what’s going on, buddy.” He drank in the rage on Cope’s face.
Abel retreated into the house. He left the door hanging open.
“That is what’s going on,” Cope replied, back to glaring at the house. “We’re out of here. Complete asset separation. Thrive Inc. has divested of Thrive Spaceways. And we’re out of a house.”
Ben’s eyes narrowed. “Are these two things necessarily entwined? I mean, not that I think you’d just walk out because you’re mad at Abel over business.”
That was exactly what he suspected, but he didn’t want to anger Cope much further. He estimated the Schuyler tough was about a centimeter from taking a swing at someone. Ben preferred not to volunteer.
Cope met his eye, lips pressed together, whitened with fury. His fists started to pump.
“The flyer,” Ben acknowledged, scratching his nose. “Um, would I be flying it to the spaceport? Or…?” He gathered the corporate offices near the spaceport were off the menu. “Honey, we could use that sunset drink. I feel…uninformed.”
Cope scrubbed his forehead. “I don’t know. I need to pick up Nico from school. So he doesn’t…”
So he doesn’t come home to this, Ben completed the thought for himself. “Should I go in and talk to Abel and Jules?” Could this still be salvaged?
Cope turned decisively and shut one side of the truck’s cargo doors.
The workmen scurried faster. “Uh, sir? We’ve still got like a dozen boxes in the garage, the lady said.”
Cope snorted. “She’s no lady.” But he yanked the truck door open again, and banged his forehead on it.
Ben pulled him into a hug. When all else failed with Cope, he found it best to go nonverbal. If he said anything, his ex would react to it. Simply holding him, Cope had to accept the implied I care about you without a fight, at a visceral level.
Judging by his expression, one of the workmen copped another Schuyler attitude at two ‘frills’ engaged in a public display of affection. Ben stared him down until the hauler shifted his eyes to his own feet. He and Cope weren’t ‘frills.’ Guys got upset, same as anybody else, and needed a hug.
Once the last cartons were loaded, Ben was the one to pay off the loaders and thank them for their hard work. He pulled a few flattened cartons out of the truck and closed it. Meanwhile Cope stood, arms crossed, looking the other way. A wealthy and privileged neighbor peeked out of her own mansion. His glare served as gossip repellent.
When the dockers were out of earshot, Ben told him softly, “I need to go in and look around. Make sure nothing of ours got overlooked.”
“I should do that,” Cope murmured, near tears in Ben’s estimation, or close to hammering his fist into the rental truck. Cope could go either way like that.
Ben clapped him on the shoulder. “Just go pick up Nico. I’ll meet you at the Spaceways hangar.”
“I’m sorry. That I screwed up –”
“Stop. Not now, Cope. Get Nico. Try not to scare him.”
Cope blew out explosively and rubbed his face. Apparently he hadn’t considered that, whether he was in the right frame of mind to explain this to his son. “Maybe you should…”
“Maybe I should explain to him?” Ben needled Cope just a little. “Explain this thing I know nothing about? Just tell Nico you’re having a bad day. He’s known you 15 years, after all.” Ben confidently predicted that Nico would clam up instantly. Like father, like son.
Cope snuffed amusement. With a decisive nod, he clambered into the truck.
Ben waved to him from the curb before turning into the ‘Thrive mansion.’
This goodbye was going to suck.
“Coming in!” he called cheerfully from the front door that was no longer his. “Just doing a final sweep. Make sure we got everything.”
As the entry hall met the great room, he could see into the kitchen, where Abel and Jules stood huddled, as he expected. He paused to nod to them.
They nodded back warily.
“I have no idea what’s going on,” Ben admitted to them. “Cope’s still too upset to talk. So if one of you wants to offer an explanation, that’d be cool. Or I’ll just make sure our children’s lives and ours are all packed away. Plus our stuff out of the kitchen. Did the movers visit the kitchen? I guess you won custody of the playscape out back that we built for the kids. And all the trees.”
Ben cut himself off, pursing his mouth. He hadn’t meant to get angry too. Silly of him. He gave up saying anything further and sighed, heading straight to their wing.
The movers skipped the bathrooms entirely, which filled one of his boxes. His own guest bedroom held nothing of value, his real life aboard the Prosper.
The workmen missed the concealed safe in Cope’s bedroom, by design. He collected that unopened. And if he wasn’t mistaken…yes, all three kids had hidey-holes as well, though two of them lived in the creche. He balled up the contents of each stash in a separate towel and tried not to intrude on their private treasures. Though with Nico’s porn collection, he couldn’t resist a peek just to inquire which orientation the boy was leaning toward these days, an unanswered question the parents were reluctant to ask. Based on his spying, he still didn’t know. Presumably neither did 15-year-old Nico. Ben could relate.
Cope’s third child, Socrates, he also snooped on. Sock was Cope’s by their Denali friend Teke instead of Ben. Nosiness earned him nothing – child number three remained a cipher. Frazz – short for Sassafras, his own biological child in the brood – collected glass marbles, and glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling. Unwilling to hunt for a ladder, Ben simply flipped his gravity and walked the ceiling to collect her decorations.
His dusty boots left footprints on the white paint. It didn’t matter. Jules would renovate the entire wing before using it, he imagined.
“We’ll sell,” Jules corrected his suspicion from the doorway. “You’ll get 49%, like we agreed at the start.”
“I hope that’s soon,” he acknowledged. Jules wouldn’t get to keep the big house either. That made him feel better. Except Ben didn’t like feeling spite.
“You and I don’t have a problem with each other,” Jules attempted.
Ben flipped gravity and landed with well-practiced ease. “We do now.”
“I mean, about the kids,” she countered.
Ben nodded dubiously. “Let’s give each other space for a while.”
“You, need more space?” Jules scoffed, then amended her tone. “Sorry. Let’s not be that way. I love your kids. You love mine.”
“Yeah, but I don’t undercut a kid’s parents,” Ben returned. “And I think that’ll be difficult now. Don’t you? So stay away from our kids. We’ll stay away from yours. I have stuff in the kitchen. I’m not sure what belongs to Cope. Help me pack in there.”
Jules threw up her hands in surrender and led the way.
Ben claimed the deep fryer without asking – no one deep-fried like a Schuyler man. Fortunately, the appliance was clean and empty. No doubt Cope had been working around the clock trying to prevent whatever this was, too busy to cook. Ben continued systematically through every cupboard and drawer, grabbing whatever he knew was theirs. Jules followed and added a few more things.
She’d really gone whole hog into entertaining in recent years. Jules aspired to reigning social queen of Schuyler. Fancy cutlery stayed. Cleverly repaired coffee mugs and favorite nicked knives went into the box. Most of the kitchen tool drawer got dumped in too, the essentials that his mechanic ex needed at hand rather than fetch from his workshop in the garage.
“It’s the taxes,” Jules offered. Her husband Abel hid in their wing, the coward. “They want more and more to make all the schools and creches free, and nanite treatments for everybody. But nothing is free. This morning the stockholders solved their tax problem with a fire sale on Thrive subsidiaries. Abel had a
buyer lined up for Spaceways, for all of them. But Cope insisted on keeping his company. He blew all his assets to buy out the investors. Abel wasn’t expecting that. Cope needed to liquidate the house to keep Spaceways at all.”
Ben nodded vague thanks for the explanation. But no matter how big the house, half of it didn’t amount to much compared to a spaceship. Wrong order of magnitude. And he sure as hell wouldn’t apologize for the Greers losing the mansion, certain that whatever crisis this was, Abel was its author.
“We’ll be friends again some day,” was the most neutral he could manage.
He plucked an ice wand from a chunky porcelain vase that held the everyday cooking implements. Likely Jules crafted this one. She made most of the wands on the way to the hothouse planet Denali, where they sold like solid platinum. But it was Cope’s idea to bring the coolant and make the wands for popular consumer sales. Jules assembled and decorated them, but Cope manufactured the parts for her.
How many sunset drinks did Ben watch him stir with this wand? How many beers did he frost alone after work? Ben was around for his ex-husband all too few of those times. But Cope was proud of the wands. Rightfully, so was Jules.
“Take it,” she whispered. “I want him to have it.”
Ben lay the keepsake in the carton, suddenly extremely done with this drama. “Thank you. The garage… I can’t do this now.”
Jules nodded, probably not trusting herself to speak.
“I have birthday presents for the twins, on the ship. I’ll send them. Nothing you’d object to.”
“This hurts, Ben. Just go. I’m sorry, not sorry, I dunno. I want us to be friends again. But profit matters. Money matters.” She shook her head. “Can you imagine if Sass came back right now? What she’d think of us?”
Ben huffed. “I don’t think Sass would judge, really. She’d tell us to work it out. Hopefully we will before she gets back.”
Jules rolled her eyes. The earliest Sass could return was still a decade away. If she ever intended to return. Ben had his doubts.