by Ginger Booth
“We’ll contact her, baby,” Cope promised. “I’m sure she misses you.”
Sock clearly missed her. “It’s grandfather Nathan’s turn again.” He slipped off the chair.
“Wait, Sock!” Cope cried. “Nathan, give him a hug for me, and kiss his forehead. Sock, kiss your grandfather.”
Child and grandfather drew apart in furrowed-brow consternation, Sock’s trepidation sincere, Nathan faking it. Nathan poked him first, then Sock poked back. After a few more feints, Sock threw his arms around Nathan’s waist.
“You can sleep with me tonight if you want,” Nathan soothed him. “Now go to Nico. And don’t poke Frazzie’s chest anymore. Her squeals are hard on my ears.”
Sock wasn’t leaving to another room, Ben noted sadly. All four of them were piled into his dad’s little efficiency apartment, though likely Nico would escape to his rented room across town.
“Dad, I –” Ben began.
“Don’t,” Nathan held up a hand. “We’re fine. I spoke to Jules Greer. We’re moving back in with her.”
“Dad –” Cope attempted.
Nathan cut him off. “Did I ask your opinion? Your lawyer called. It’s up to me. And I say, back to the Thrive mansion. I’ll negotiate with the Greers. Just so you know. And I’m proud of you. I love these children. I do look forward to that money, Ben, if you can. If you can’t, we’ll scrape by. Good night.”
“Dad –” Ben’s father had already cut the video feed. Teke promptly escaped, as Cope collapsed forward onto his arms onto the desk.
Ben hauled him up and steered him to his cabin.
71
Kassidy sat at the galley table, stabbing at a head of cauliflower to eat raw, and washing it down with the reassuring burn of whiskey. Eli slipped in and claimed a chair, plus a handful of white florets to munch.
“How’s your show going?”
“It’s over,” she confessed. “Got a few good interviews at the end, with the urb security on site. They’re taking care of the cryo sick cases, getting an auto-doc set up. Carmack ordered them to stop, but urbs don’t take orders from that yutz. But then the last network dropped me. I’ve lost my touch.”
“Have you?” Eli asked. “Kassidy, you used to live for the camera, for your fans. It stands to reason you’re rusty at it. You left show biz a decade ago. You grew up and got important. Cole Carmack’s followers detest anyone smarter or more successful than they are.”
“Which is anyone who’s trying,” Kassidy sneered.
“That’s not true.” Eli reached for the whiskey bottle and took a swig. “I’m glad the urbs are taking care of our paddies. That’s the important thing. I quite enjoyed my little turn at playing hero again. You know, the short, sharp hours that really count. Compared to forty years of the drudgery of following through.”
“I didn’t deliver on hero status,” Kassidy mourned. “Sorry. You deserved it.”
“You’re wrong. I didn’t do it for your cameras. Not at Denali Prime, either. What anyone else thought of me, I don’t give a damn.”
Kassidy’s eyes flew wide at his vehemence. “What?”
“You can be a hero in the privacy of your own home. Today I worked for the paddies, and for my own good opinion of myself. Not for fame. I don’t need credit for it. I’m a terraforming botanist. I omit my bouts of social activism from my grant proposals. In fact, the Director calls them a pain in the ass and begs me to concentrate on my science.”
Kassidy frowned. “Are you trying to tell me something, Eli?”
He shrugged. “Call it a question. You’ve been running Yang & Yang for a dozen years. Why are you mad that no one praises you as a carefree young daredevil anymore? Kassidy, your fandom wore out before we left for Denali. You outgrew it. Sure, you have the skills. They’re useful sometimes. You made damned sure security treated the paddies right, because the world was watching. Mission accomplished. What more do you want?”
She pursed her lips, struggling to process this critique. The whiskey wasn’t helping. “I want to be liked. Everyone does.”
“Do they? I don’t. I mean, it’s uncomfortable to be disliked, and I try to avoid that. But I don’t get up in the morning saying, How can I win adulation today? I focus on plants mostly.” He reached to tug on a citrus branch, one of the few trees remaining in the kitchen. “They don’t care.”
“They who?”
“My plants. Plants don’t like people, or dislike them.”
“Oh. No.” She considered this. “Being liked was important in my role at Yang & Yang. I kept the investors happy, refereed with key employees. My old starlet act informed our marketing.”
“You had a product that sold itself,” Eli pointed out. “Your marketing was dead on. Life and health at a reasonable price. I liked your ad campaigns. They had class.”
“Yeah,” she breathed. “We made miracles happen. And now it’s gone.”
“Wrong conclusion,” Eli suggested. “Some idiot overturned your wheelbarrow. OK, a lot of idiots. How do you make it tip-proof?”
“I –” Kassidy suddenly saw what he was getting at, and hammered her own forehead with the ball of her hand. “That’s what Cope is doing! Right here. In space!”
“Bingo.”
“Eli, I could hug you!” She flung her arms around his neck and kissed him rapid-fire on cheek, mouth, and other cheek, leaving a trail of purple lipstick behind.
Carmack had no authority in the rings. She could rebuild Yang & Yang at the orbital. Hell, the asteroid miners were among her best customers! And her MA clients would soon demand service on-moon, with offices in the city dome. The urbs had already run out of patience with the new government. Their core mission was terraforming and scientists, usually the butt of Carmack’s incessant scapegoating and excuses.
She laughed at herself sadly. “I can be a cog instead of a star. Get those wheels turning while I help Cope and Ben scrape their empire back together.”
“There you go,” Eli encouraged. “Be part of something bigger than yourself. To accomplish the truly big things.” He looked thoughtful, and took another swig of his whiskey. “Maybe I’m bored with forestry. Forty years, after all.”
Used to Eli muttering irrelevancies, and slightly drunk, Kassidy ignored this. “Eli, why didn’t you and me ever get together, huh?”
Ben closed the door as Cope sat heavily on his bed, and kicked his boots off. He sunk arms on knees again. Paralyzed by misery, in Ben’s estimation. Cope loved all his kids fiercely. Nico was the one devoted to him in return. But after Ben divorced him, he clung to his baby Socrates like a teddy bear, convinced that no one else in the world loved them, and it was Cope’s own fault.
Time to change that, Ben decided.
He knelt next to his ex on the bed for the height advantage. He took Cope’s face in his hands and held it a moment. The engineer froze. And very slowly and tenderly, he kissed him. Then he whispered in his ear. “Sock is OK, Cope. They all are.”
For a breathless moment, Ben thought he got away with this. Cope met his eyes searchingly, and he dove in for another kiss. He loved Cope’s lips, so full and soft for a guy. His first real lover, Ben hadn’t appreciated at first how –
Cope pulled his hands away. “Off!”
Ben hunkered back on his heel, then slid his leg around to slouch forward, posture matching his ex. “I’m tempted to say no. Cope, you’re about to explode. Make love to me. Or beat the crap out of Wilder. Something. You need to defuse.”
“No sex.”
“Fine. Lie down, I’ll give you a massage.”
“Ben, just go.” A sob snuck out in the middle of that short sentence, and it clearly infuriated him.
Ben rose to push him over, then hauled his legs straight for a back rub. “Everything the hard way with you. I will now shut up.” That last was in Cope’s ear.
Cope struggled onto his arms just enough to inch up the bed to fit on the mattress instead of dangling his feet off the end. But then he slumped to lie obedient
ly enough. Ben started on his neck first. “This would be easier if you stripped.”
“Clothes on.”
“Right. Shut up and relax.” Ben pounded and chopped, kneaded and smoothed, as his ex-husband’s body gradually unclenched beneath his hands. The T-shirt and bright blue Spaceways coveralls did indeed get in the way. But Cope craved such armor to feel safe against him, so be it.
“Enough,” Cope muttered, and added a grudging, “Thanks, I needed that.”
“You did,” Ben agreed. He shoved his ex over and lay on his side along the edge. “I love Sock too,” he whispered. “He’s hard to know. I thought I was getting out of Teke’s way. That’s all.”
“You said,” Cope allowed. He turned his face to meet Ben’s, less than 10 cm away. “OK, I believe you. That doesn’t change anything now.”
“It changes everything for me,” Ben differed. “But we have a protein printer to build tonight, oh chief of mine. Real pillow talk would have been better. But work will do.”
“No, it won’t. We can’t build a protein printer. Have to buy one or do without. You can’t print just any device that pops to mind, Ben.”
“The microprocessors?” Ben asked, guessing. He did have an engineering degree, seldom as he drew on it. But today he had, and quite enjoyed himself.
“That and about twenty other parts. I’m out here to build Teke’s experiments, not kitchen appliances. Let a factory do that.”
“OK. But we can’t buy a protein printer at Hell’s Bells,” Ben pointed out. “So we head back to MO.”
“Or skip it,” Cope argued. “No one’s starving. I need to buy parts and get to building the real rigs.”
“What do you need from the hellbellies that you can’t get from MO?”
Cope paused in thought. “Guess I don’t know what all Pollan’s factories can do these days. That elevator ride was an eye-opener. I had no idea.”
“But I do. I visit MO all the time. So what do you need?” Ben reiterated.
“That black stuff on the tool. I want to know what that is.”
“And you’re in luck, because that expert is on MO. What else?”
“I need a metallurgist, Ben. Hell’s Bells has the best.”
“The best is Pointreau, and she’s here on loan to Pollan. Prosper gave her a ride here. Had a drink together maybe three months ago. I can check.” He sat up and sent Pollan a quick message, then lay back in the same intimate position. “She likes it here. Told me she meant to stay.”
“Lover?” Cope asked.
“Once or twice. Didn’t mean anything. She’s about your age. You’d like her. Now will you tell me about the last lover you had?”
“Ben.”
“Turnabout is fair play.”
“My last lover. Was you.”
Ben blew out and stroked his face. “Damn, Cope.”
Cope caught his hand and kissed it, but then set it on the bed, a mixed message. “I’ll get that shopping list together. But if she’s that good, she can tell me what’s possible at MO.”
Ben nodded, no longer meeting his first lover’s eye. “Tomorrow. If we need an all-nighter to get things straight between us –”
“We don’t.”
“– There’s that inertial dampener. It would really truly utterly suck to have that fail on us. And it’s dodgy, chief. It’s failed before.”
“You’re lucky to be alive.”
“I am.” Ben’s brow furrowed as he realized wonderingly how much he meant that. Even now, real pillow talk, though the preceding playtime was less than satisfying. “I really lived today. Not all sunshine, but I feel great about helping those people. Margaux was awesome. You sure know how to show a guy a good time.” He breathed a laugh.
“I had no idea it was loaded, Ben.”
“I believe you.” Ben sighed. “But I did. They tried to order me to fire on a paddy wagon before, Cope. I should have mentioned.”
“Did you? Fire on them?”
“Hell no. Told MA Control to shove it. And another couple hundred paddies came to live in Saggytown and curse the sky. They’ll be much happier in KM-2. Open air terrifies them.”
“I love you, you know,” Cope surprised him by saying. As though not to be caught in that admission, he immediately swung up onto hands and knees, and clambered across Ben to freedom outside the bed. “Always will.” That line was delivered with his back turned.
“Same,” Ben agreed. “You know that. Hey, Cope, this is your stateroom. I’ll leave if you want me to.”
Cope retrieved his boots with a deft swipe, and headed out the door. “Meet you at the dampeners. For that all-nighter. Not that we can fix a century of metal fatigue.” That last he muttered as the door closed behind him.
Ben rolled onto his back, granting his ex the emotional head start. He wanted his husband back, more than ever. He rubbed fingers to palms, remembering the familiar resilient lines of that rangy frame, his lean back and built-up shoulders, the narrow bony feet, the smell of his hair and the stubble of his cheek. Strange how the engineer still felt like home.
I want him back. But I might not get him. He sighed. Willow first. He couldn’t park his mutiny problem with Wilder forever.
72
A few days later, Ben observed while Kassidy scanned his ex-first mate in the med bay. He’d read some platitude once about how people seek problems because they need their gifts. If that was so, Willow Arbuckle served as his own personal Christmas.
Here they were, approaching MO. He wanted to dump her on MO. She wanted to be dumped on MO. They agreed.
Until he studied her comm tab. Teke used the galley’s vast display screen to scribble on his white board only once after Willow was aboard. Cope lit into him, hollering loud enough to hear from the bridge to crew berthing. The physicist never accessed that file again outside his cabin. His work cabin, that is. His bed was so crammed with their hush-hush projects that he slept in the aft bunks with Zan.
His equations appeared on the screen in public for less than half an hour on that occasion. Yet Willow snapped six pictures of his Spaceways proprietary math on her phone. Ben wasted hours to convince himself that she hadn’t bypassed his comms lockout and sent their secrets off-ship.
Cope argued for tossing her out in vacuum. Hunter concurred. Mercifully, that was no longer an option, because now they rested inside MO’s asteroid interdiction. And though Willow had damning evidence of industrial espionage in addition to her attempted skyship theft, she still didn’t know what any of it meant. She didn’t have a photographic memory. As for physics, the captain doubted she recalled the simple machines, or algebra. Teke’s equations remained safely Greek to her.
“She didn’t eat anything electronic,” Kassidy confirmed, having studied the spy’s digestive system minutely. “No metals or memory wafers in her gut.”
Ben narrowed his eyes at Willow, who blinked back innocently. Was that the trace of a smirk? “Scan her head. To her feet.” Willow scowled.
Kassidy obligingly pressed Willow’s head into the auto-doc pillow and strapped it down. Then she slid the scanner over and – “You little vixen. She has Yang-Yangs, right?”
“She does,” Ben confirmed.
“Well, you’ll heal in a jiffy, then, won’t you?” Kassidy crooned.
“Wait, what are you – AHHH!” Willow screamed.
She did that a lot the past few days, Ben reflected, though they barely touched her. Granted, Kassidy’s pliers in her ear canal probably hurt. The onetime star dropped a bloody comm tab memory chip in a tray. Ben had to look away as she proceeded to attack Willow’s sinuses next. Another gory chip clinked into the vessel. Willow sobbed from the pain now, licking blood from her lips.
Kassidy scanned her head again dolefully. The spacer had a fair bit of metal in her teeth. That needed to be checked visually. A dentist’s son, Ben did the honors, pressing hard with the tongue depressor as Willow tried to resist.
“Clear on the teeth,” he reported. “Continue, head to
toe and everything in between.”
Kassidy had to pause to verify the bra hardware. Ben felt downright silly continuing the body inspection. They’d already found three copies of Willow’s ill-gotten espionage including the phone.
But no. Damn, she slipped yet another copy into a callous on her heel.
“She’s thorough, I’ll give her that,” Kassidy commented. She sliced deftly around the callous with a scalpel and peeled off the toughened skin like a band-aid. Willow shrieked some more. A third chip landed in the tray.
“You didn’t need to cut my whole heel off!” the mate screeched. “I just slipped it in a crack!”
Ben mopped her assaulted ear with a wet rag. “Your ear already stopped bleeding. Quit whining.”
“I could turn on the auto-doc,” Kassidy allowed.
“Don’t,” Ben countered. “She tried to steal my ship, and abandon us to security. Let her hurt for a few minutes. Willow, what the hell did I ever do to you?”
“You –!”
Ben clamped a hand over her mouth. “Rhetorical question. No need to answer. You’d lie anyway.” He let go before she could bite him again.
Kassidy sat back on her stool, shaking her head. “You can’t trust her, Ben. She shoved a microchip up her nose. Plus two more. Who does that? That isn’t a brief lapse in judgment. What Hunter said – she’s like some kind of intelligence kleptomaniac. She made good money as an informer, by hording secrets until she found an opportunity to sell.”
Willow whimpered. “I love to buy nice things! Is that so wrong?”
“Stealing trade secrets from the company is wrong,” Ben reminded her. “Mutiny, also frowned on. Abandoning your crew? Stealing a skyship? I wish Teke blew your brains out.”
“I wouldn’t want to clean the bridge console afterward,” Kassidy differed, eyes laughing.