Wandering Soul

by Steven Anderson

  I touched my watch, thinking about the lock of her hair that was nestled under it. “I’m going to tie my stick to yours so I don’t get lost.”

  She squeezed my hand. “That’s a good idea. I’ll do the same.”

  I stood and pulled her to her feet. “Run with me.”

  “I’m not dressed for…”

  I didn’t hear the rest of it, because I was running. She caught up, of course. Winn has always been faster than me. We spent most of the afternoon running, talking, laughing, and getting blisters on our feet. Or at least I got blisters. Winona had the sense to take off her shoes and run barefoot. We were worn out by the time Hannah called me and asked us to come to the biology lab. We found the nearest cross passageway and opened the hatch.

  There was an engineering team installing something in the plenum just outside, and they looked down at us in surprise when the hatch opened.

  “Where did you two come from?”

  “Sand bar,” I told them. “We got stuck there together after the last storm.”

  That made Winona giggle, a sound I hadn’t heard enough of lately. I laughed at their confusion and we took off running before they could ask us any more questions.

  We stumbled through the door to the lab together and Sam was staring at me.

  Winona whispered, “You’re tousled again. Look at his face. Just don’t let him get close enough to smell you.”

  I nodded, trying to be serious, but started giggling again.

  Hannah sighed. “I don’t know which is worse, the way you were or the way you are. Sit down and I’ll show you what we’ve accomplished; those of us who’ve been working while you were goofing off.”

  I sat down at one of the desks and Sam sat down close to me.

  “You’re not going to believe this, MD.” He looked at me, his eyes kind of scrunched up. “Have you been running?”

  “Yeah, sorry. Didn’t have time for a shower.”

  He took my hand and whispered, “That’s OK. It’s worth it to be close to you. I’m just sorry I wasn’t there to help you get sweaty.”

  I smirked at him, thinking he hadn’t realized what he had said. He held my eyes in a steady gaze until I blushed and looked away.

  Hannah and Dad were standing at the front of the room and I tried to concentrate on what she was saying.

  “This is the blood sample that you collected. Mala Dusa, you should recognize these markers from your eighth grade science project.” The screen was showing the results of the mass spectrometry analysis.

  “I do! That’s almost a perfect match for lacerti hyacinthi! Tarakana are Dulcinean?”

  “Maybe.” She pushed her hair back up out of her face. “I’m worried that finding the blood samples was too easy. Part of that is because the new Vista-class AI system is really the old Star-class AI with a fancy wrapper around it. The RuComm acquisitions group got taken if they thought they were buying something new. Bottom line is the analysis might be bogus.”

  Dad was smiling. “I do love the Tarakana.”

  “How will we know if it’s real?” I asked.

  “We won’t. We can’t. Maybe we have a clue. Maybe it’s misdirection.”

  “It’s a perfect Tarakana thing to do, isn’t it?” Dad added. “But let me show you something a little bit more concrete.”

  He cleared the screen. “Vista, can you detect the Deep Space Holes that are closest to you?”

  “Yes I can, Mr. Holloman.” They appeared on the screen.

  “What about the first one between here and Ratatoskr?”

  “That DSH is not in the prescribed location.”

  “How are you searching?”

  “I’m feeling for the gravitational field that should be at that location. It’s not there.”

  “Please check optically for distortion at that location?”

  “There is distortion there.”

  “Is it consistent with the gravitational lens effect produced by a DSH?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “So, the DSH is still there?”

  “No, I’m certain that it’s missing.”

  He smiled at us and spread his hands.

  “Ms. Weldon, I now fully understand your feelings toward the Tarakana.” Winona had her arms crossed.

  “Two years of this crap,” Hannah replied.

  “But now people are dying.”

  “Yes, they are. And the Warrens are next.”

  “How do we stop them?” I had my arms crossed too.

  “We? ‘We’ don’t stop them. I’m looking at two young girls that need to be back in school in a few weeks, and a young man with a ship to catch.”

  I hadn’t noticed before that she had her new sword lying on the table next to her. Her eyes kept drifting over to it.

  “Mom, what are you going to do?”

  Dad was waiting for her to answer, his arms crossed now too. I think they had already had this fight and Hannah had lost. “We’re going home tomorrow,” she answered, locking eyes with him. “We’re going to let the people die.”

  “What is the commission doing?” Winona asked. “Have you been in contact with them?”

  “They’re not allowed to talk to me. Janus Boden has bribed or threatened them into silence. Right now it looks like their strategy is to wait for the Warrens to be beaten into submission and then try to pick up the pieces.”

  I was feeling sick. All I could see were the faces of the children that had let me play with them in the market. How long before they were all lying dead in the street, just like in the pictures we had seen on the display pad? There had been stray dogs slinking around in the shadows by the ruined buildings in those images. I wondered how many of them were really dogs.

  I got up and walked toward the door. Hannah sighed. “There she goes again. Winona, please make sure she’s at dinner on time.”

  Winona followed me back to our cabin. By the time she caught up, I was already sitting on the floor of the shower fully dressed, letting the warm water pound on my head while I cried. I could see her sitting on the floor, waiting for me.

  After a few minutes, she asked, “Do you need help washing your hair?”

  “No.”

  “Because it’s going to be hard to wash much else while you’re still wearing your clothes.”

  “Shut up, Winn.”

  “What do you think we can do down there?”

  “We can fight!”

  “We would all die. Are you ready to watch your mom and dad die? How about Sam and me?”

  “We can at least try. We have to at least try.”

  “Sometimes doing nothing and waiting for the right time takes more courage–”

  “– than doing the wrong thing right away,” I finished for her. “I don’t deserve you as a friend.”

  “You don’t, but you’re stuck with me. Hand me your wet clothes and get cleaned up. I want to take a shower before dinner too.”

  I dug through my box of clothes while Winona showered. My blue gauze dress was the obvious choice for our last dinner together, but I wanted something else, something Sam would remember. The dress I chose was white, with a row of twenty buttons holding it closed from its relatively modest V-neck to the hem just above my knees. I left the top two buttons undone.

  Winona looked at me when she got out, head tipped and water still dripping from her. “Interesting.”

  “I thought I’d surprise him by not wearing the dress he made for me.”

  “That ought to do it.”

  “You think he’ll like it?”

  “How does it make you feel, wearing it?”

  I looked down at myself and giggled.

  “I can assure you that it’ll produce the desired effect. Do you know what you’re doing?”

  “No, but I want to do it anyway.”


  “Your mom’s going to order me to stay by your side all night again after she sees you.”

  “Will you?”

  “I should.”

  “But will you?”

  “I haven’t decided yet. It depends on how stupid I think you want to be.”

  “Just a little bit stupid?”

  She hugged me and whispered, “I’m jealous. I’m trying not to be, but I am.”

  I squeezed her tightly. “We’ll find you a freak of your own. I promise. Please let me have this last night with him. I promise I won’t be too stupid. And you’re the one who found him for me, remember?”

  After a moment, she whispered, “Princess.”

  She pulled away from me and closed my top buttons.

  “Do you think that will keep Mom happy?” I asked.

  “Maybe. And it’ll give Sam something more to do later.”

  “Winona!”

  “It’s why you’re wearing it, isn’t it?”

  I was chewing on my lower lip. “Maybe. I don’t know.” Winn was still looking at me. “OK, yes, the thought crossed my mind.”

  She nodded. “Help me pick out something to wear. I think I’ll go talk to one of the engineers tonight. The younger one that was working outside the ring corridor this afternoon was kind of cute.”

  Sam was wearing buttons too. A dark blue shirt and standard issue RuComm khaki pants. The shirt looked soft and it made me want to touch it. Did he know that when he picked it to wear? By an unspoken agreement we didn’t so much as hold hands during dinner. I was worried about the questions it would raise with the Captain, and I knew it would be painful for Tobias and Sandy to know that Sam and I could do what had been forbidden to them.

  I also had a dim hope that it would convince my parents that we planned to keep our hands off of each other. With normal parents, that might have worked, but the two of them spent dinner bumping around in my head trying to gauge my feelings. That convinced me that I needed to find the most remote part of the ship I could as soon as possible after dinner.

  I couldn’t finish dessert, and when Dad settled in with a cup of coffee and a long story to tell, I excused myself and asked Winona and Sam to join me for a walk on one of the trails. My heart rate was already up. When Sam stood next to me the back of his hand touched mine and I could feel my cheeks flush.

  “Ms. Killdeer…” Hannah’s expression was more amused than I would have expected.

  “Yes, ma’am, I know.”

  “I would like to review a couple of things with you in regard to the situation on Bodens Gate. Could you please stay here with us?”

  Winn’s eyes went huge and she kept looking back and forth between us. “I don’t think… What if she…” Winona sighed. “Certainly, Ms. Weldon.”

  I gave Hannah a quick hug. “Thanks, Mom.”

  “For what?” she whispered.

  “For trusting me.”

  “Huh,” She chuckled and I could see her looking over my shoulder. “It’s Sam I trust. Have a good walk, Little Soul. And go carefully, OK?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  When I turned to leave I heard Dad ask her, “Are you sure about this?”

  “Not even a little bit. But… she needs to say goodbye. You know what it’s like not to have that closure.”

  I didn’t stick around to listen to the rest.

  Sam took my hand as soon as we were out of the mess hall. “Where would you like to walk?”

  “You pick.”

  “I wish we had your dad’s mods for the Sonoran desert.”

  “You think you’ll need a thunderstorm to cool you down later?” I teased.

  We entered the ring corridor and Sam seemed unsure of himself. “Let’s try this one. Vista, Carlsbad Caverns, eighteen degrees C, and diffuse lighting effects, please.”

  We were underground and I could hardly see Sam next to me until my eyes adjusted. There was the sound of water dripping somewhere in the distance, making hollow echoing sounds. I squeezed his arm.

  “I didn’t know she could do this.”

  “I thought we might go for a walk, so I asked her for a full list. This one sounded… special.”

  I kissed him, then I pressed up closer and kissed him again, letting my lips linger on his.

  “Let’s walk a bit, do some exploring.”

  “OK.” I really didn’t feel like walking, but his arm went around my waist and the feel of his hand there made up for it.

  We walked a few hundred meters, past deep pools and masses of flowstone, until we rounded a corner and found a small tent pitched square in the middle of the trail. I almost walked straight through it, thinking it was part of the simulation.

  Sam pulled me back. “Careful there, MD. The tent is real. I, uh, put it there. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I thought that maybe…”

  I got on all fours and crawled in through the door. Soft blankets covered the floor, making it feel snug and secluded. I turned around and looked up at him. “Are you coming inside or not?”

  Sam crawled toward me, his head nuzzled up against mine and he pushed his shoulder against me until I was lying on my back with him smiling down at me.

  “What if someone else comes to the ring corridor?” I asked him.

  “I asked Vista to warn us if that happens.”

  My hand was on his shirt. It was as soft as it looked. “You’ve thought of everything, then.”

  He was still staring at me, his hand caressing my hair, down my cheek, fingers rubbing gently on my collarbone.

  “I don’t know what gives you that idea. This is all kind of new to me.”

  I giggled, my hand on his chest, feeling it under the softness of his shirt. “Really? It’s new to me too. Everything in my head is from things I’ve read or scenes I’ve watched without my parents knowing about it. My heart and the rest of my body seems to know more about what it wants than my head does. Parts of me seem positively confident, but most of me is scared to death.”

  “Scared of what?”

  I watched my fingers undo the top button on his shirt. I didn’t remember telling them to do that. “Scared I’ll disappoint you because I’ll do something stupid.”

  He wasn’t looking at my eyes anymore. After a moment he leaned forward and kissed the hollow of my throat, very softly, then lower down my chest, following the buttons that were coming undone.

  I could feel his breath warm against my skin after the first five or six, and he said, “I’m just as scared. Will you promise to tell me when I do something stupid tonight? Because I have no idea what I’m doing and I don’t want to disappoint you either.”

  We spent a lot of time kissing after that, talking a little bit, exploring and trying to understand that slow and gentle was better than most of the lies we had been told. It was a long time later, I don’t know how long, that Sam paused and looked at me. Most of the buttons were undone by then and his shirt was lost somewhere in the tangle of blankets. He was leaning on one elbow, his hand on my belly, his fingers moving gently back and forth.

  “Mala Dusa, I love you.”

  “Really? I had no idea.”

  He grinned, his eyes watching his fingers. “I have to stop.”

  “Why?”

  “If I don’t stop now, I won’t be able to stop at all. Do you understand? I don’t want to stop, but we should.”

  I took his hand, kissed the palm, and put it between my breasts. “Because I’m too young.”

  “Yes, that’s part of it.” He moved his hand to the side, dragging the backs of his fingernails in slow circles. “It would still be wrong, even if you were older.”

  “I know,” I whispered, closing my eyes as shivers ran through me and my body pushed against him. I took his hand again and held it against mine, palm to palm. “Can we go just a little further? I need
to go just a bit further.” I put his hand where I wanted it to be. “Please.”

  He was looking at his hand, moving it gently over me. He shifted then, moving his hands underneath my legs and he kissed me. “Yes, ma’am.”

  I put my fingers in his hair and moaned.

  My Samuel is wonderful. We went just far enough that night, touching, kissing, and finding ecstasy in each other arms, without going too far. I slept with my head on his shoulder for a few hours afterward, and didn’t think about the Tarakana or the shadow of war in the Warrens or anything at all other than the man who loved me and who I loved.

  I woke to a kiss on my forehead. “You’re beautiful when you’re asleep.”

  “Just when I’m asleep? Maybe that’s why I’ve never seen it.”

  He kissed me again. “You believe too many lies about yourself.”

  “Thank you for being blind.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “What time is it?” I was feeling too comfortable to look at my watch.

  “Almost 0300.”

  I sighed. “I should get back to my cabin. Winn is going to be worried about you.”

  “About me?”

  “Yeah. She thinks I’m a bad influence on you.”

  “Probably true.”

  I snuggled closer to him. “What’s going to happen?”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “Tell me everything’s going to be OK.” His hand was caressing my bare shoulder. It felt so good and natural that we were together like that, like I was right where I was supposed to be.

  “Of course everything’s going to be OK. The ship that’s going to take you home is already in dock and you’ll be on your way later today. Mesa Vista will be here in five days. When I get back to Earth in a few months, after having incredible, exciting adventures, I’m going to come dance with you. After that, you’ll go to the Academy with your best friend, Winona, and become the most brilliant ship designer in history. They’ll build a statue of you on the Academy grounds, and all the pigeons–”