Wandering Star

by Steven Anderson

  “I’m so sorry,” Alice continued, “I know what this would have meant to you, to end the pain you are in.”

  Hannah didn’t say anything, but she had a look of determination in her eyes. She picked the napkin off of her lap and carefully placed it beside her plate. She stood and said, “Star, where is Angela?”

  “Ms. Dawkins is in her office in the main science lab.”

  I looked at Alice. She closed her eyes and I saw the tears star to run down her cheeks as she bowed her head. I turned and ran after Hannah, catching up with her in the passageway.

  “Hannah, you don’t want to do this. You haven’t slept, you’re not thinking it through.”

  “I’m pretty sure this is exactly what I want to do. I’ve been in constant agony for twelve days, every hour of every day. It has filled me till there is nothing else inside. It’s time to share.”

  I took her arm and led her toward the outer ring corridor. “Walk with me first. Star, Sonoran desert, night, twenty-two degrees C.”

  We entered the ring and were surrounded by a quite desert night, the sound of crickets and a sky full of stars.

  “This is where you grew up?”

  “Close by.”

  “It’s pretty.”

  We walked in silence for a minute and then Hannah stopped.

  “This doesn’t help me.” She looked around. “This is just one more beautiful thing that I can see, but not touch.” She waved her hand through one of the Cholla plants beside the trail. “It’s not even real.”

  “I’m real.” I put my arm around her waist and she put hers around mine.

  “Mr. Holloman, Ms. Weldon, I am concerned by your conversation and close proximity. Please step away from each other.”

  “Star, Hannah has injured her foot and I am helping her walk back to her quarters.” There was a pause of almost a second before Star replied.

  “So noted.”

  “She took too long,” I said quietly to Hannah. “She did something.”

  “You lie so easily now, Ted. I suppose that’s my doing. Your reward for loving me.”

  And then Hannah started to cry, softly at first and then sobbing so hard she could no longer walk. I picked her up and left the trail, carrying her back along the passageways to her cabin. She kept her face buried in my shoulder, her body convulsing as she wept. We passed other members of the team on the way and I kept my eyes straight ahead, not looking at them as they stepped out of my way, ignoring their whispering behind me.

  I laid Hannah on her bed and kissed her for a long moment, trying to brush the tears from her cheeks, tasting their salt.

  “Mr. Holloman, Angela would like you to come to her office immediately.”

  Hannah put her hand on my cheek and tried a brave smile. “Go now. You’ll be OK.”

  I entered Angela’s office and sat down, feeling angry and defiant, but knowing that I had no ground on which to stand.

  “You’re aware of this?” she turned her screen around so I could see the petition, the dozen signatures at the bottom. “You requested it?”

  “No.”

  “Hannah requested it?”

  “No.”

  “Then that just shows how deeply you have disrupted this team. Peter and Charlotte are on their twelfth hop together, did you know that? Now because of you they are acting like foolish children, jeopardizing their careers. And look at you and Jake. You haven’t spoken in almost two weeks. Is that how a team is supposed to function? The rules of your contract are written in blood, Theodore, the blood of those that came before us. Every one of the rules was created to prevent a recurrence of something bad that happened in the early days of the Reunification Commission. This one, that you have violated and now want to ignore completely, is there because a love affair went out of control and three people died. You and Hannah, you act like you’re the first people to ever be in love. Believe me, you are not.”

  I opened my mouth to answer but she held up her hand to stop me.

  “Don’t, just don’t. Omar Gizbar was in my office this afternoon. The Grand Old Man of the Reunification Commission spent an hour in here quoting Shakespeare at me like the two of you are some tragic heroes. Damn it, Theodore, Shakespeare! I wish I had left you and Hannah on Dulcinea. There was enough evidence to terminate both of you right then and there but I need a geologist for Cleavus and there wasn’t time to replace you.”

  She sighed. “Here’s what’s going to happen next. I know I’m going to regret it, no, I already regret it. Giz convinced me to keep this incident out of the official record so this is a verbal warning. Any hint of a recurrence, though, and you’re done. You and Hannah are both confined to quarters for the next seventy-two hours. No sending messages to anyone, no coming out for meals, they will be printed in your quarters.”

  “And if we refuse?”

  “Damn, I knew I’d regret this. Then you are done right now. You will forfeit your pay, and you will have to reimburse RuComm for all expenses, and you will be confined to quarters forcibly until we arrive at the next inhabited planet, in this case, God help you, Bodens Gate.”

  I sat there holding her gaze until she looked back at her screen. “Your seventy-two hours starts right now, Mr. Holloman.”

  When I got back out into the main corridor Hannah was coming the other direction, having been summoned by Angela. Her eyes were downcast but I could see how red they were and her hair was still disheveled from when I had carried her.

  “Hannah, are you OK?”

  She shook her head ‘no’ but said nothing. She never looked up as she passed me and never looked back as I stood there watching her walk away.

  I reached my quarters and the door sealed behind me. The first thing I noticed was that my largest picture panel was now blank, the image of the team with Hannah in the corner gone.

  “You are very thorough, Star.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Holloman.”

  “Not a compliment this time.”

  “You should rest. I have been authorized to offer you something to help you sleep if you desire.”

  “No. I want to spend the next seventy-two hours learning everything I can about Bodens Gate. I’ll need your help since I can’t talk to Sipa.”

  “Very well.”

  What I found was worse than the rumors I had heard. Bodens Gate was established as a logistics depot for traffic traveling between Earth and the outer worlds to refit and refuel. It seemed like every ship that passed through had had at least a few crewmen that wanted to jump ship and try their hand and colonizing a new world. For those with money and skills that worked pretty well. There was a functioning Central Government in the larger cities with enforceable laws and courts. But the majority were non-citizens as far as the Central Government was concerned. Their only hope of survival were the clans that lived in the Warrens, an ungoverned area in the shadow if Bodens Gate’s capital. There were clans based on language and ethnicity, geographic location, religion, corporate allegiance, ideology, family ties, and who knew what else. Most had only a few hundred adherents, but there were thousands of them and they fought for control and dominance, more than willing to use extortion, kidnap, rape and murder to expand their reach. The Central Government ignored all this as long as none of their citizens were impacted. If they were, retribution was swift and brutal. Two years ago, one clan that was targeting citizens for kidnap and ransom simply disappeared. Somewhere between three and four hundred people vanished overnight and no trace of them was ever found. After that it was said that a citizen could walk through the worst parts of the city and remain unmolested. My dream of living there with Hannah while we tried to save for passage to Dulcinea vanished. We’d never survive without sponsorship to become citizens, and even if Sipa helped us find a sponsor, that would commit us to staying there for at least five years.

  When I managed to sleep during t
hose three days, my dreams were haunted by concern for Hannah and what I would find on the other side of my door when our confinement ended.

  On the fourth day Star woke me up to tell me that my door was unsealed. I showered and dressed and went to the mess hall. Hannah was there eating breakfast and talking to Sipa. Her hair was tied back and she looked rested and alert, better than I had seen her since leaving Dulcinea. She was gesturing with her fork as she and Sipa talked and I sat down across from her. Sipa nodded to me and smiled, took a last drink of his coffee and excused himself.

  “You look good,” I told her.

  “I’ve been sleeping. You should try it. Star gave me something and I slept for like fourteen hours. I almost feel like me again.” She looked up but at the wall behind me, over at other people, anywhere but at me.

  “What else did she give you?”

  “Something for anxiety, something to help me concentrate, maybe a couple of other things. It’s weird. I can still feel like an aching here,” she put her hand on her chest, “but it doesn’t quite reach here.” She tapped her head. “The pain is gone and I can work again. I feel like I’m back in control.”

  She took a bite of her food and pointed her fork at me. “You should try this stuff. You won’t hurt anymore. Star mixed it in with my pancakes. I can’t even taste it.”

  “I think I prefer the pain.”

  She smiled her old aggressive smile, tipping her head slightly. “Really? I wish I had known that about you back when we were on Dulcinea. We could have—” She cut herself off looking confused, took a couple of deep breaths and swallowed hard.

  “I think I’m going to have to not see you for a few more days. The way you look, the way you smell, it’s too much for me right now.”

  “You smell me?”

  “Yes, damn it, I smell you, OK? Now go away until I can sit by you and not need to touch you.”

  Alice had entered the mess hall while we were talking. She touched my shoulder in greeting as she walked by us.

  “And please don’t spend time with Alice. Please. I’m begging you, not right now. You should go sit with Jake, he’s the one that needs you. He told me when I got here that Erin has stopped replying to his messages. He needs his friend back, and you need him.”

  CHAPTER 8

  CLEAVUS

  JAKE LOOKED UP AT ME when I sat down across from him.

  “Ted,” he looked back at his plate, “about you and Hannah—”

  I cut him off. “Please, I don’t want to hear ‘I told you so’ about Hannah from you right now.”

  “OK, but let me say one thing please. Remember the night we left Dulcinea?”

  “The night I wanted to hit you?”

  He smiled. “Yeah, that night. I was wrong about you and Hannah. She does love you. It was different. And I’m sorry.”

  I looked back at her. She was working on her display pad and finishing her pancakes.

  “She did love me. I don’t know now.”

  “She still does, I was watching her while you talked to her. The meds they gave her are suppressing it pretty well, but that spark she gets in her eyes is still there.”

  Sipa sat down next to me, a fresh cup of coffee in his hand. I nodded a greeting and turned back to Jake. “Do you know what they’re giving her?”

  “No, but I can guess. The stuff to help her sleep is pretty benign, it wouldn’t hurt you to try it. The rest of it is suppressing all of her emotions. She’ll just feel sort of a pleasant glow but nothing else will reach her, no joy, no anger, and no love. It will give her a feeling of well-being and control but not much else.”

  Sipa looked at me sympathetically. “I don’t know Hannah as well as you do, but watching her fall apart over the past two weeks was distressing. I think this is worse.”

  “Maybe they can get her off of them quickly.”

  “Not with you around, my friend,” Sipa said. “I was watching the two of you just now. Without the meds she would have wrapped herself around you the moment you walked in.”

  “Yeah, I know that feeling.”

  “We’re only two days away from Cleavus.” Jake commented. “You’ll be on the surface for two months doing geology. There’s not much work for a linguist on an uninhabited planet. She should be able to wean herself off while you’re gone.”

  “I hope so,” Sipa added. “I’ve seen this before. You don’t want to stay on that stuff too long, or you’re never coming back.”

  Hannah approached our table, looked at Jake then at Sipa.

  “Are you ready to get some work done?” she asked.

  Sipa stood, resting his hand on my shoulder. “Most certainly.”

  I turned back to Jake after watching her leave. “When are we having our planning meeting for Cleavus?”

  “Um, we had that last night. Angela assigned you all of your tasks.”

  “Great.”

  “It should be OK, there’s a standard deck for uninhabited planets being visited for the first time. We’ll do an on-orbit survey and then select a couple of areas for surface exploration.”

  “No one bothered to mention the simulation I built last week?”

  “Alice did but Angela dismissed it. She didn’t see any reason to deviate.”

  “There should be massive cave complexes covering large areas of the surface. The standard on-orbit survey will miss most of them.” I sighed. “I suppose I need to go talk to Angela.”

  “Want me to go with you? Hold your hand?”

  “Shut up, Jake.” I smiled at him.

  “You never could stay mad at me. Admit it.”

  “I suppose.” I examined the bottom of my empty coffee cup. “So, how’s your friend, Erin?”

  “You had to go there?” he sighed. “Just one more victim of our service to the Reunification Commission. I haven’t heard from her in a couple of days.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You go talk to Angela. I’ll stay here drinking coffee and being miserable.”

  I stood and patted him on the back. “Thanks, you do that.”

  Angela didn’t look happy to see me. “What can I do for you, Mr. Holloman?”

  “I’d like to talk to you about my tasking for Cleavus, specifically about the on-orbit survey and selection of surface sites.”

  “Have you reviewed your tasking?”

  “No, not completely.”

  “Perhaps you should before you come in here to complain.” She looked back at her screen, dismissing me.

  “Are you planning to do a Synthetic Aperture Radar search?”

  She looked back up, irritated that I was still there. “No. It would require a lower orbit and take additional time. In the long-range images Cleavus looks the way Mars used to; a mostly waterless red ball. I don’t want to waste the resources.”

  “You should do it anyway. Getting a radar signal to bounce around inside the cave openings my simulation shows are there is the only way you will ever find all of them. If you want this survey to be definitive, we need to do it.”

  She tapped her fingers on her desk. “I’ll consider it. Anything else?”

  “Not at this time. I’ll review the rest of my tasks first and let you know.”

  She gave me a very slight touch of a smile. “Thank you, Theodore.”

  Jake was waiting for me when I left her office.

  “That was quick. Are you going back to your quarters now for the next three days?”

  “Real funny. I’m going to go review the rest of my tasks and work on my geosim model the rest of the day.”

  We entered the main lab. Hannah was there working at one of the cubes. I realized I had stopped walking when Jake ran into me.

  “You’ve got to stop doing that,” he whispered. “You have to let her go.”

  “I don’t see that happening, Jake. I
don’t see any way to make it happen.”

  “Meds like hers would do it. But I know you. You’d rather be miserable for the next six months than admit you’re in pain. I remember the summer you broke your foot and still finished a twenty kilometer trek before you told anyone.”

  I stopped at the door into the sim lab and looked back at her. “Yeah, that’s just what it feels like.”

  Jake left, and I went in to work on my simulation. Alice was there with my sim already running. “Does everyone have access to my stuff? I keep locking it down and I keep finding it open.”

  Alice looked up, hurt. “I’m sorry, you left it running when you went to dinner four days ago. I suppose you had planned to come right back. I saved what you had before I made all my modifications.”

  “No, I’m sorry, Alice. Unlike others on board, my emotions are a little raw right now, but I’ve no cause to yell at you.”

  She nodded. “It’s OK. I’d rather have you like this than to be like what they did to her. Please, let me help.”

  I looked at the red landscape shimmering in the display tank. “Show me what you’ve done.”

  Jake and I met for dinner that evening without Alice. I felt guilty about spending the day with her working on the sim after Hannah had asked me not to, and now guilty again for asking Alice not to join us for dinner.

  “Hannah needs to heal before either of you can move on.” She had smiled a patient smile when I asked her. She left to sit with Giz and Sipa Patel.

  “Jake,” I said sitting down with my tray, “I think we can expect there to be water in the caves, I just don’t know how far down. There could be something for a biologist to do after all.”

  “You don’t even know for sure that there are caves, now you’re postulating water and life?”

  “More than postulating. Angela is adding tasking for you right now.”