Wandering Star

by Steven Anderson

  I kissed Alice’s belly. “She’s going to be stubborn and willful and hard to control, just like her mother.”

  “She’s going to have you doing whatever she wants the moment she takes her first breath.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I wasn’t sure at first. After that I was afraid that you would leave me when we were rescued. In my mind I kept seeing Hannah standing on the shuttle ramp waiting for you with that look in her eyes she gets when you’re around. Mostly there just never seemed to be the right time to say to you ‘I’m pregnant’. I was afraid, afraid you’d be mad at me, afraid you’d think it was just one more way I was trying to manipulate you.”

  I stood up. “So what am I feeling?”

  She smiled up at me, looking pale and sleepy in the dim light coming in through the window. “Happy. I made you happy.”

  “You can go back to sleep, it’s still very early. I’ll clean this up for you and then I need to go help fix breakfast before Father Ryczek starts pounding on our door.” I kissed her nose. “See you there later?”

  She nodded and curled back up on the bed.

  There were four of us in the kitchen. They showed me how to prepare the potatoes and load them into the machine that diced them. I added seasonings and made enough hash browns to feed a couple of hundred people. The crew sang as they worked, simple songs that were easy to learn and offered opportunity for improvised lyrics. When Father Ryczek came to check our progress at 0530 I was feeling pretty good about the day.

  “How’s our new recruit?” he asked the head cook.

  “Well, he’s slow and he’s clumsy. I don’t think he’s very bright, but he’s stronger than he looks and he has a decent voice so I suppose he’ll do.”

  “High praise, indeed.” Father Ryczek looked at me and I smiled back. He came over and leaned against the counter next to me. “You seem happy this morning, Ted. Alice finally told you her secret?”

  “Not exactly. She almost threw up on me. She only told me after I was going to force her to see the medic this morning.”

  He shook his head. “Alice tries so hard to be brave, but she needs help sometimes. Did she tell you that she applied to come here over fifty times? I read every one of the applications. She kept rewording them, adding a new rationale or different justification. I rejected them of course. A Dulcinean on Bodens Gate, especially one like her? I was certain our gravity would crush the life out of her. But she was the one who wore me down.”

  “She doesn’t like to take no for an answer. I suspect she tries to manipulate God the same way she does the rest of us.”

  “She’ll need all that strength to carry a child to term here.” He looked into my eyes like he was trying to see into my soul. I was glad he didn’t know that Mac could help him do just that. “Are you still sure you want to go looking for your ‘friend’?”

  “Yes, sir. Even this doesn’t change that. Do you know of any way I can contact the Bovita clan safely?”

  “Come to my office when you finish cleaning up after breakfast. I may know a man who can at least keep you alive while you try.”

  The man Father Ryczek introduced me to was called Cuza, no last name. His body seemed as adapted to Bodens Gate as Alice’s was to Dulcinea, fifteen centimeters shorter than me and at least that much wider. He was bald with the tattoo of a dragon on top of his head. The wings wrapped down his cheeks and across his mouth, making it look like the wings had talons when he smiled.

  “Brother Cuza may be able to help you, Ted, if you can convince him that you’re serious and won’t get him killed.”

  Cuza’s hands were huge but his grip was gentle when he shook my hand. “Tell me why you want to contact the Bovita, Teddy. Don’t leave nothing out.”

  “My friend, Hannah Weldon was brought here by the Bovita about three and a half months ago. RuComm ransomed her but she went missing again a few days later. The CG says she was killed but I think she was taken again by the Bovita.”

  “Was she a looker?”

  “Yes. Twenty-six, no twenty-seven now, and pretty.”

  “There’s plenty of clans that would pick her up in a heartbeat. What makes you think the Bovita snatched her?”

  I glanced at Father Ryczek and Cuza said, “Come on, spill it all if you want my help.”

  “I think she went with them willingly. I think she was the one who made it possible for them to steal my ship, the Wandering Star, by subverting and crippling the AI. The damage that was done is consistent with a tool Hannah developed to keep the ship from seeing things she didn’t want seen. I think she’s still working with them. The strategy the Bovita are using to expand feels like something she would plan. She must be providing leadership to the clan in some way.”

  “So our little Alice isn’t the only one carrying secrets.” Father Ryczek looked at me, surprised.

  “You gonna kill her? I hear you lost two shipmates when that happened.”

  “No. This is a rescue. RuComm had drugged her heavily during the days before it happened. It suppressed her emotions. While she was coming off of them she could only feel anger, almost uncontrollable. I’m sure it was the drugs. It must have been. It has to have been.”

  “Why’d they do that to her?”

  I sighed. The conversation wasn’t going where I wanted it to go but there was no stopping now. “Hannah and I were lovers. RuComm doesn’t allow that on board ship. We tried to hide it, control it ourselves but…”

  Cuza was nodding his head and looking at me, disgusted. “Rescue. That’s what you’re gonna call it? You already have a woman, Teddy, and one is all any man needs, Father Ryczek taught me that. So let’s get a few things straight. First, no clans has ever let women take leadership roles. Women are for making babies, keeping the house clean and sometimes trading or selling to seal deals. Second, if you’re right she don’t want rescuing. Third, if she’s the one behind what the Bovita are doing then I don’t want you to stop her either. If they pull this off the Warrens will be a better place and we can tell the CG to go fuc—” He cut himself off. “Sorry Father.” Father Ryczek smiled at him.

  “And lastly,” he continued, grinning so the dragon had talons, “I know for a fact that the Bovita have not one, but two women on their leadership council.”

  “Do you know who they are, what they look like?”

  “Buna, second wife of the old Hetman is one of them. The other is named Ysabeau Romee. No one knows nothing about her other than that she’s not Bovita. Not many have even seen her.”

  I took my display pad out of my pocket and expanded the screen. “Hannah is a linguist. She loves words and names and the history behind them.” I typed in the name and nodded. “Ysabeau Romee was Joan of Arc’s mother.”

  Cuza was still confused but Father Ryczek chuckled. “I think you may have found her.”

  I turned to Cuza, pleading with him. “I need to talk to her. Face to face. Can you help me?”

  He looked at the ceiling. I think he was praying, probably for me to go away. After several minutes he looked back at me. “How much money you got?”

  “Some. I have my RuComm pay for the full year. I may be able to get a little more.”

  “Will you give me all of it to meet with her?”

  “Yes. I can do that right now if you want.”

  He grinned at me. “I don’t need your money. I might ask you to pay me back for a couple of bribes but it won’t be much. Mostly this is gonna take time. It needs to be done gentle like or the Bovita will spook and we start over. Or they kill me. I wouldn’t like that.”

  “Thank you. How long do you think?”

  He shrugged. “Six weeks if it’s smooth. Maybe double that or more if it’s not. Father Ryczek has other things for me to do too. And I’ll have to find my way through parts of the Warrens where I don’t normally go. It’s easy and dangerous t
o get lost.”

  “I should be able to get you high resolution imagery if that will help.”

  “Recent stuff?”

  “Real time for optical. Delayed by an hour or less for infrared and radar.”

  He smiled at me again. Looking at that dragon was disturbing. “You know the CG don’t allow that, right?”

  “I have friends in high places. Friends that want Hannah to have the chance to come home.”

  Cuza looked at Father Ryczek. “I can do this. I’d like to meet her myself, see if she has any job openings. I’ll bet she pays more than you do.”

  “What would you do with more money, Cuza?”

  He stood and gripped my hand while he answered. “Just waste it, same as I do with what you give me now.”

  Father Ryczek was frowning at me after Cuza left. “So this is who you want to rescue? She betrayed you and that betrayal resulted in the murder of your team leader and a boy Alice tells me was your best friend. Cuza’s question is a good one. Do you plan to kill her? That I could understand. Not condone, but at least understand.”

  I shook my head slowly, my eyes closed.

  “No, I suppose not,” he continued. “I see the look in your eyes when you talk about her. If Hannah has become who you think she is then she is the most dangerous person in the Warrens. I need to pray about it before I let Cuza begin. If he gets himself killed his blood will be on my hands as much as yours. And you and Alice need to sit down and talk. Three months all alone and you both have secrets like this? What did you do the whole time?” I opened my mouth to answer and he held up his hand to stop me. “No, don’t tell me. Alice is carrying the evidence of what you were doing.”

  I left his office thankful that he didn’t ask me what other secrets we might be hiding from him or from each other.

  When I told Alice what I had told Father Ryczek she didn’t seem surprised, just disappointed.

  “You’re getting really good at hiding the truth, Ted. When I first met you I could read the truth on your face. Now I suspect you could lie to me about anything having to do with Hannah and I’d never doubt you. You know she was probably the one pulling the trigger when Angela was killed, pulling it over and over until there was almost not enough left to bury? I wondered what kind of monster could do that and now I know. She killed Wandering Star too, and maybe Jake. She killed everyone she could reach who had caused her pain and she left you and me to die slowly and alone. If Cuza is successful, what do you think Hannah’s going to do when she sees you? I had thought that what I saw in your mind was love for her and that scared me enough. But your obsession is worse than that. I think you want to see her again so badly that you don’t care if she kills you. I think you want to die.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Do you remember Marcus asking you if you would ever not run toward the point of greatest danger? Please don’t prove him right.”

  “OK, I won’t.”

  “Huh. At least I can still sometimes tell when you’re lying.” I smiled at her and she put her hands on my face. “The only lie I want you to tell me is saying how pretty I am. Tell it to me every day no matter how fat your baby makes me or how much I waddle when I walk.”

  “I don’t have to lie about that. You are the prettiest girl God ever created.”

  She kissed me. “That was good. It sounded like you believed it.”

  The next month passed quickly. I cooked and cleaned and fixed as many things in the old Mission as I could. The front gate opened smoothly now despite the colder temperatures but the light panel in our room still flickered. Alice was teaching the abandoned children that lived at the Mission basic math and how to read. She also taught them music and art, often coming home to our small room covered in paint or glitter. She was tired all the time but happier than I’d ever seen her. The new curve between her hips was starting to show.

  Merrimac refused to leave us. The kids loved him but Alice never seemed to forget he wasn’t a dog. To me it felt as though he was waiting for something but I couldn’t quite see what it was, even when I buried my face in his fur. Alice refused to touch him.

  Captain von Muller had been delighted when I contacted him and we spent several hours a week talking about his effort to restore Wandering Star. He was more than happy to provide targeted imagery of the Warrens. “Anything you need,” he’d told me, “if it will help find the hero who risked her own life to save my XO.” I told him nothing about what I suspected Hannah was doing now or what she had done to his ship.

  Cuza told me not to ask him for updates. He came to me when he needed information or imagery and he seemed to be making progress but it was hard to tell. I’m sure he thought I was an idiot for trying to find her when Alice was already mine. He was probably right. But Cuza was looking for her for his own reasons. When the Bovita released their Articles of Confederation I saw him studying it closely with Father Ryczek. “It’s not just clan against clan anymore,” he’d told me. “This is about ideas bigger than the clans, it’s about rights and freedom.” Although he had first said it as a joke, I think he really was planning on asking Hannah for a job.

  The season’s first snow fell when Alice was well into her fifth month. I was in Father Ryczek’s office giving him a report on the condition of the Mission’s heating units when it started, small white flakes falling fast that darkened the dirt in the courtyard where the ground was still too warm for it to stick.

  “Do what you can, Ted. I don’t see us being able to afford anything new this season and probably not the next.” I sighed looking back at my list of problems. “You’ve performed miracles for us the past three months. Just do what you can.”

  “Yes, sir.” I nodded and started to turn away.

  “Ted, I talked to Cuza this morning.”

  I turned back toward him and took two halting steps closer to his desk feeling my chest tighten. Cuza’s progress had been very slow as the Bovita and the new Confederation became increasingly careful. Father Ryczek sighed, looking at me.

  “Never play poker, Ted. And never let Alice see what I see in your eyes.”

  I blinked and looked away. “She’s seen it. I can’t help what I feel for Hannah, but I can control what I do about it.”

  “Brave words. I pray that you can live up to them because Cuza is close to being able to set up a meeting.”

  “How soon? Has he confirmed that Ysabeau Romee is Hannah?”

  “Another week or two. He hasn’t confirmed anything yet, but you and I both know that she is. The carrot he’s dangling in front of her is an alliance with this Mission.”

  “Is that a ruse or are you serious?”

  “Oh, I’m serious. The Confederation is nearing a tipping point. They represent almost twenty percent of the population of the Warrens now. None of the unaffiliated clans control even one percent and the leaders of those clans are going to join soon voluntarily or be overthrown by their own people.

  “Ted, this Mission exists to preach the kingdom of God in the Warrens. I can’t do that effectively while ignoring the political reality around us. The Central Government is finally starting to get worried, worried that the Warrens will declare independence and start a civil war. The church has asked me to mediate a settlement that will prevent bloodshed. I’m hoping that having you in the room with me will help reduce the tension.”

  “Just tell me when and where.”

  He frowned, not pleased with my enthusiasm. “Alice is back in your apartment and you should go to her now. She had to leave classes early today because the baby is starting to cause her problems in this gravity. The next four months will be hard for her.”

  I thanked him and went to find Alice. She was reading while she sat in the rocking chair by the window. I could see the snow coming down harder now, starting to accumulate.

  “I heard you were playing hooky this afternoon.”

&nbs
p; She put her pad down on the table, glanced at me, then out the window. “I can’t seem to catch my breath, my back hurts and I have to go to the bathroom every thirty minutes. Do I look as bad as I feel?”

  I took the bait. “You look like the prettiest girl God ever created.”

  She smiled weakly and struggled to her feet. She held her arms straight out and slowly turned in a full circle. “Look at me. I’m huge.” She was wearing a very oversized sweatshirt that hid any evidence of her growing belly.

  I knelt in front of her and lifted the shirt up enough that I could kiss her stomach.

  “Whoa, your nose is cold,” she complained.

  I pulled the sweatshirt down over my head. “There’s a lot of room in here. You can get much bigger, no problem.”

  I could feel Alice’s hands through the fabric pressing my head against her. “How is the little one today?”

  I closed my eyes and could feel the little girl soul floating so close to me. “Happy and comfortable, unlike her mother.”

  I pulled my head from under her shirt and looked up at her. “Captain von Muller was worried about you when I talked to him this morning. If we need to, we can get you up onto Wandering Star and keep you at reduced gravity for the rest of your pregnancy.”

  “I can’t imagine RuComm would approve of that, so I assume this is because he has a soft spot for you and what you’re doing to rescue Hannah.”

  “Probably. But it’s an option if you need it.”

  “After all this, you’d walk away from meeting her?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “I see. You want me to go to the ship and you’d stay here. I don’t think so.”

  “It’s not how you’re making it sound.” I looked at Mac sleeping on the bed. “My heart is yours, Alice. If you can’t feel it when you touch me, we can—”

  “No, I’m not using the Tarakana to see inside your mind.”