Nearspace Trilogy

by Sherry D. Ramsey

  He stopped when he saw my face, and grinned.

  “I still remember how to do it,” he said proudly. “And now I can do it again.”

  “Hirin, that's wonderful. But we've got company.”

  His eyes narrowed, and he looked like a fierce, grizzled bulldog. “PrimeCorp?”

  I shook my head. “Maja.”

  “What the—Maja's here?”

  “Here on Eri, yes, and on her way to the Tane Ikai. I just spoke to her. She followed us because she didn't want to be away from you when—at the end.”

  Hirin closed his eyes and shook his head slightly. “Maja hates space travel.”

  I crossed the few steps between us and hugged him. “But she loves you.”

  Hirin sighed. “She loves you, too, Luta.”

  “Maybe.” I pulled away. “Anyway, she'll be here soon. You want me to bring her here?”

  He thought a moment, then said, “I don't think so. She isn't finding the same man she said goodbye to on Earth. I'm not an invalid, and I think I'll meet her in the galley. She may not even want to come along once she sees me.”

  “Or it may make her more determined. If she wants to come, I'm not going to stop her.”

  “No, I won't, either,” he said. “But it's not going to make things any easier.”

  “Nothing ever does.” I kissed his cheek and went to meet my daughter.

  She was there ten minutes later.

  “Saluton, Mother,” she said when the rear airlock hatch cycled open and she could see that I was alone.

  “Hi, Maja.” I smiled carefully. “I still can't believe you came all this way.”

  She shrugged. “It just didn't seem right not to. And I didn't have any reason to stay behind.”

  “I'm sorry about Taso.”

  Maja nodded. “I knew you would be. You always liked him.”

  That wasn't what I meant, but I let it go, knowing even as I did it that someday I was going to have to stop just letting things pass with her. I wanted to ask her more about it, offer to listen if she wanted to talk, but we hadn't had that kind of relationship in a long time. We'd been together ten seconds now without a fight and I wanted it to stay that way as long as possible.

  “Well, your Dad's waiting for you in the galley.” I pointed down the corridor. “It's this way.”

  “I know, Mother, I used to live here too, remember?”

  I bit back a retort and followed her silently down the hall. Fifteen seconds and counting.

  Hirin sat at the big table with two mugs of double caff in front of him. He didn't stand when we came to the doorway. I guessed he didn't want Maja to be too shocked all at once. His appearance itself should be a surprise.

  “Hi, honey,” he said in a voice that had regained so much strength and timbre that she stopped halfway across the room. “What's all this about, now?”

  I slid quietly along the wall so I could see both their faces. She was looking at him quizzically. “Dad? You—you sound great.”

  He nodded. “I'm feeling so much better, Maja, you wouldn't believe it.”

  She crossed the rest of the way to where he sat and took the chair beside him, leaning in to give him a quick hug. Then she put a hand on his cheek and said, “And you look great, too.”

  “And watch.” He pushed his chair back easily and stood, straight as a man half his age, walked confidently over to one of the big armchairs and sat. He crossed his legs and held his arms wide, obviously pleased with himself. “What do you think of that?”

  Maja shook her head in obvious amazement at this performance and turned to me. “What did you do?” she asked, her sapphire eyes dark with suspicion.

  “Not me.” I shrugged. “Dr. Ndasa thinks it might be the lower gravity and richer air. Better food. Or something else. We don't really know.”

  “But you should have taken him back home so his doctors could—” she stopped when she saw the look on Hirin's face. Maja sat back in the chair and crossed her arms. “So I suppose you think this will make me change my mind and go on home.”

  Hirin got up and went back to the table. “You're welcome to come along if you like, Maja,” he said. “But if you're here for a funeral, you might be disappointed. Really, honey, if you'd rather go back home I think you can go with an easy mind. I'm not so sure anymore that this is going to be my last run.”

  Maja looked at me and I shrugged.

  “Your decision, Maja. There's an open cabin waiting if you want it, but I agree with your father. It's probably not going to be the trip you thought you were taking. I know you don't like this kind of travel.”

  I knew the look on her face before she said a word. “I don't understand this,” she said slowly, “and I don't trust it. You could get worse again, Dad. I still want to go along. I can pay my way, at whatever you usually charge.”

  “Honey, cost isn't an issue. Family always travels for free on the Tane Ikai.” Surprisingly, she didn't seem to take offence.

  “Okej,” she said, nodding.

  “Right this way, then. We were just getting ready to leave when I got your message.” I led her through the door at the back of the galley, leading to the starwise passenger cabins. These had been Maja and Karro's rooms when they were children. I wished the ones on the other side were open, so that Maja couldn't accuse me of trying to make her feel like a child, but I forced the thought away. These were available, and Maja was here unannounced. I'd let her choose, though.

  “These are the only two open, but you can take your pick,” I said.

  To my relief, she didn't make any remarks, and chose her own old room. She opened the door, and I followed her inside. Yuskeya had been efficient, as usual, and the room looked as clean and inviting as it was possible for a far trader cabin to look.

  “I'll get Baden to bring in your things.”

  “Home sweet home. I assume I should just call you 'Captain,'” she said, looking around the cabin and not at me. “You and Dad are still carrying on with your little charade?”

  “Everyone knows you're Hirin's daughter, but only Rei knows where I fit into the family portrait,” I said evenly. “So your father and I would appreciate it if you went along.”

  She met my eyes then, and hers were as cold as the vacuum that would soon surround us. “Seems like this family is always trying to keep secrets. I guess 'family always travels for free' comes with conditions.”

  “I'd rather say that family comes with some expectations.” I chose my words carefully. “Your father and I have agreed that this is the best way for us. I'm asking you to respect that.”

  “The way you've always respected what I think?”

  “I respect what you think, I just don't always agree.” I took a deep breath. “Look, Maja, I don't want to fight with you. I know we clash sometimes, but it's not that I think you're wrong about everything.” I blew out a long sigh and leaned back against the door. “Do we really have to do this now?”

  Maja sighed and sat down on the bed. It looked like she was blinking back tears, but I couldn't be sure. “No, I suppose we don't. I just don't like any of this,” she said. “I thought I was prepared for Dad to die. I came out here to face it, even though it was hard. Now things have changed again, but who knows if they'll stay this way?”

  “I certainly don't. Right now, I'm taking one day at a time. For your father's sake, I'd like us to try and get along.”

  She didn't exactly smile, but her face softened and she nodded. “We can try,” she said, although she didn't sound too certain.

  “You unpack, and we'll talk again later,” I said, and left with at least a tentative peace in place.

  Rei threw me a sympathetic glance when I popped my head in at the bridge to ask Baden about Maja's gear, so I knew she'd found out who our new passenger was. I smiled and shrugged. For now, I was just trying to roll with the punches.

  To give Maja credit, she made every effort to fit in unobtrusively with the rest of us. She graciously accepted Baden's offer of a tour of t
he ship (since she couldn't very well explain that it had been her childhood home), showed up on time for every meal, and stayed away from the bridge. Hirin told me that she tried to coddle him for the first couple of days but finally seemed convinced that he could look after himself again. She played quozit with Yuskeya in the galley, talked politics with Viss, and laughed at Baden's jokes.

  She didn't say much to me, but that was just her way of trying to get along, and she did nothing that would hint at our relationship.

  Hirin was worried about her, though. “She seems distracted to me, Luta,” he said to me when we were a couple of days out of Eri, and alone in the galley fixing lunch. “She's worried about something.”

  “She's worried about you,” I reminded him. I added some re-hydrated tomatoes to our salads and handed him one. “That's why she's here.”

  “No, I think it's something else. She's still trying to 'look after' me a little, but overall I think she's accepted that I'm feeling better. Did she say anything to you about Taso?”

  I sat at the table and he pulled out the chair beside me. I shook my head. “Only the bare fact of the breakup. We aren't prone to mother-daughter confidences, in case you haven't noticed.”

  “She didn't give me any details, either. Do you think I should talk to her?”

  I smiled at him and sighed. “No, I think I should try to talk to her. I'm her mother. I guess I've been putting it off. I don't know if she'll talk to me about Taso or not. More likely just get angry.”

  Hirin put a hand over mine. “Maybe not. Maybe she needs to tell someone about it. She might appreciate your asking.”

  I pulled my hand out and patted his instead. “I thought you weren't going senile anymore.”

  “Very funny. People change, you know.”

  “Well, it's worth a try. And if it doesn't go well, I promise not to say 'I told you so.'”

  I let another day pass before I went looking for her. She was in her cabin, reading.

  “Mind if I come in for a few minutes?” I asked when she opened the door.

  She shrugged and turned away, going back to sit on the bed. “I guess not. Is Dad all right?”

  “He's fine.” I closed the door behind me and sat in the desk chair. “Maja, I wanted to talk to you about Taso. Are you okay?”

  “I'm doing fine. I suppose you think it was my fault.”

  “No, and I'm not trying to pry. These things happen, but they're never easy. I just wanted to know how you're dealing with it.” I smiled. “It's a mother thing.”

  She hesitated, looking down at her datapad. “We just grew apart, I think. And then he found someone else.”

  I didn't know how she'd take it if I tried to hug her, so I stayed where I was and just said, “Honey, I'm really sorry.”

  “She's quite a bit younger,” Maja said. “Old story, I guess.” She clamped her lips together and I wondered what else she had been about to say.

  I nodded. “Is everything settled, then? What about the house?”

  “He didn't want it, so we split things so that I could keep it,” she said. “The money wasn't a problem. I took a leave from the school for this term, because I didn't want anything personal to affect how I taught the kids.”

  I smiled. “You seem to have everything under control, as usual.”

  She sighed. “Except for the things I'd like to control. Is that all? I'm fine, really, but . . . thanks for asking.”

  “Well, that's what mothers do, worry about their kids.” I didn't know if she meant it or was just saying it to get rid of me, but either way I wasn't going to argue. It was the first non-confrontational conversation we'd had in a long time and I wasn't about to push it. “I'm glad you're doing okay. If you do want to talk, well, you know where to find me. See you at supper.”

  Outside her door, I took a deep breath. That hadn't gone too badly at all, and she appeared to be dealing with the breakup in her usual businesslike way. Maybe this trip together would turn out to be a positive thing for us. If Maja and I could have a few more conversations like this, we might actually start to get along.

  I wasn't going to get my hopes up just yet, though, and it didn't explain what was worrying her—if anything was. Hirin might have just been picking up on her ongoing concern for him. I'd tell him about our conversation, I decided, and let him take what he wanted from it. If he still thought she had something else on her mind, he'd have to try his own luck at finding out what it was. I didn't feel like pushing mine any further.

  PART TWO

  NEARSPACE

  Chapter Nine

  Bodies, Minds, and

  Other Well-Kept Secrets

  Maja stayed in her cabin when we made the wormhole jump from MI 2 Eridani to the uninhabited GI 892 system, sulking, I think, because she and Hirin had fought about his being on the bridge for the skip. She thought it was too dangerous, and he'd laughed and told her he felt well enough to pilot the ship himself. Aside from that, by the time another three days had passed we'd all settled into a comfortable routine. Mid-afternoon of that day we arrived at the Split.

  Viss and Rei spent some time running every conceivable check on the ship's systems; stabilizers, hull integrity, skip drive, plasma drive, field generators, steering thrusters and half a dozen more. Meanwhile, Yuskeya ran reams of data calculations on everything that was known about the Split and fed all the analyses into the nav computer.

  Hirin was on the bridge with them. He'd earned a place there as the only one aboard who'd piloted the Split before, even if it had been over thirty years ago. Skip drives and Ford-Roman field generators apparently hadn't changed much in that time, because he was discussing technical fine points with Rei and Viss and seemed completely at ease. From my chair at the command station, I admired him covertly. The changes in his health were still all positive, and he looked about as close to dying as anyone else aboard.

  Maja was in her cabin, feigning disinterest, but I expected she and Dr. Ndasa would appear on the bridge by the time the skip drive kicked in.

  I tried not to fidget, and I knew Baden was feeling the same way by the sympathetic look he shot me. The two of us really had nothing to do while we waited, and the suspense was killing us. I wasn't surprised when Dr. Ndasa appeared in the archway that led to the bridge.

  “May I come up there with the rest of you?” he asked sheepishly, twisting the end of his long braid around one finger. “It's slightly—unnerving, waiting back there and not knowing what's happening.”

  “Completely understandable.” I turned in my seat to smile a welcome. “I was planning to call you before we went in to ask if you'd like to come to the bridge. We're still running checks, but you can have a seat at one of the empty stations and make yourself comfortable.”

  As I said, I'd been through the Split once before. However, since I was busy at the time trying to subdue an alien—a Lobor pirate who was attempting to strangle me—and listening to Hirin swear because he couldn't leave the controls to help me with the alien in question, I can't tell you what it looks like inside. All I know is what I've heard, that it's not like a normal wormhole. Apparently that's all Hirin noticed about it at the time, since he was dividing his attention between piloting the ship and watching his wife fight off an alien pirate. I was looking forward to this time, when I hoped I could let others do all the work and just watch the show.

  Rei sat back in her chair and fetched a deep breath. “I think we're ready,” she said. She turned and grinned at me. “This is going to be interesting.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Not too interesting, I hope. Just get us safely out the other side and that will be plenty interesting for me, thanks.”

  “No problem, Captain,” she said, and snapped off a completely irreverent salute.

  “Viss?” I asked.

  He nodded. “She's as ready as she's going to be—the ship, I mean. She's in good shape as far as I can tell. I'm going to monitor everything from the engineering console here.” He grinned. “I don't want to be s
tuck down on the other deck and miss any of the fun.”

  “Yuskeya?”

  “All ready. All the data we have has been compiled and downloaded into the nav computers and the skip drive compensators.”

  Hirin snorted. “The time I piloted the Split,” he said in true cranky-old-man mode, “we arrived in this sector at top speed and fired up the skip field generators on the fly. We had no wormhole data to speak of, mostly rumours, and I had to do everything myself as the rest of the crew was engaged with—another emergency. Rei's a perfekta pilot and the ship is in good shape. Let's get going, already!”

  “Not much I can say after that.” I smiled. “I hope you're still as lucky as you were back then, old man. Go ahead, Rei. Take us in.”

  Rei and Viss busied themselves at their stations and the ship hummed to life. The buzzing whir of the skip drive matter generator soon drowned out the usual comforting throb of the main drive. Once it got going it faded into white noise, but for the first few minutes after it started up it sounded like a hive full of angry giant bees had invaded the ship. You definitely knew that something out-of-the-ordinary was going to happen. It was at this point that passengers usually arrived on the bridge.

  Right on cue, Maja appeared and, when Hirin crooked a finger at her, took a skimchair from an empty console and wordlessly slid it over beside him.

  We began to move toward the wormhole, the black spot where no stars shone growing even darker as we approached. To outward appearance it looked like any other wormhole.

  The difference was obvious as soon as we entered the mouth, however. The tunnel that stretched and curved ahead of us swirled with the usual spangle of colours down one side, but the opposite side was a barely discernible gauzy grey, opaque yet seemingly insubstantial. My head spun with a vertigo that was completely unlike the sometimes-dizzying beauty of other wormholes. This was more like standing on the edge of a steep, crumbling precipice.