by Nathan Jones
“Which is why I'm going to try to find more humans to meet,” he concluded. “How else can I know if that's the answer to what I need in my life if I don't try?”
Leanni leaned forward, eyes furrowing in concern. “If you feel there's something missing in your life, have you considered fathering a child and volunteering to take custody? You may be young for that still, barely more than a child yourself, but I still think it's something to consider. You might even try having one with your new friend Callista.”
“A baby,” Tycho said flatly. Where in the worlds had that suggestion come from?
His mother nodded enthusiastically. “Don't laugh it off. A child's affection is a ray of sunshine on a cold, cloudy day, and it seems like you could really use some sunshine right now.”
He wasn't sure whether to respond with amused disbelief or outrage. If he'd been such a ray of sunshine then why had his mother decided he was too much of a hassle at the age of eight, and shipped him off to his own estate to be cared for by companions?
And what kind of idea was that anyway? Tycho hadn't given much thought to having a child of his own, but what little he had considered revolved around the firm belief that his child would be precious, and the idea of failing him or her in some way terrified him. Trying to raise a child simply to fill some void in his life was not only outrageously selfish but seemed guaranteed to lead to grief for everyone involved, the child most of all.
Probably exactly what had happened to him with his mother, he guessed.
Leanni may have been completely blind to his feelings, but as usual she seemed to guess his thoughts with disconcerting accuracy. “And if you're worried about what kind of father you'd be Eva will be there to help you. Just like Diana was a tremendous help with you.”
More accurate to say Diana had essentially raised him singlehandedly, and his mother had occasionally popped in for a brief visit if she felt up to it. Tycho still felt a great deal of fondness for Diana, and had no doubt Eva would be just as diligent and faithful to such a task as his own nursemaid had been if it came to it.
But if his own life had been empty and he was even now suffering with trying to find a solution to that void, why would he ever want to put his own child in the same situation? He had to figure things out for himself first, find a better way, before he'd ever consider bringing a child into this universe.
And asking Callista to be the mother was just absurd; he liked the silvery-haired woman well enough, and certainly found her attractive. But at the same time she was still a near total stranger. Who the mother of his child would be was nearly as important a consideration as whether to have a child at all, especially if he couldn't find a woman who felt the same way he did about finding what was missing in their lives and properly raising the child to never have to experience that lack.
“I intend to put a lot of thought into when and how I'll have a child,” he said. “Thanks for the suggestion.” He hesitated. “I'm glad you called, Mother. It's good to talk to you about all this. And it would be even better to see you in person, if you ever feel up to it.”
“That again.” His mother sighed. “I don't hate the idea, you know. I still have fond memories of the great hugs you used to give, your little arms holding me tight. And you were such a doll in the outfits I used to dress you in.” Her eyes were unusually soft as she looked at him, as if seeing him as the boy she'd cared for all those years ago.
Tycho was unexpectedly touched by her reminiscing. He hadn't let himself think too much of his mother after she sent him away, mostly since it was too painful. Now that he made an effort to think back to that distant time he realized that very few memories of his mother stood out. Mostly as a figure watching from a distance as he played or was tutored by Diana.
He barely remembered hugging her at all.
“There's no reason we can't make more good memories now,” he offered. But judging by her expression he was fairly sure her fond memories of the past would stay in the past, and it wasn't likely she'd be up to seeing him in the present. Probably not the future, either.
Leanni excused herself and disconnected the call soon after that.
Tycho slumped back into his pillows with a sigh, barely aware of Eva slipping back into bed and cozying up to his side as he drifted off.
When he awoke the next morning his mother's call seemed like an unpleasant dream. He pulled himself out of bed with a groan and stumbled over to the facilities to relieve himself, eyes bleary and mouth dry.
“Playtime with Lady this morning?” Eva asked as she helped him dress. “Tumbling? Or back to work.” She paused a beat and her voice became a low purr. “Or back to bed?”
“Order Pilot to move my ship onto the landing pad,” Tycho replied as he pulled on his pants. “Whip me up a breakfast to take with me.”
Five minutes later he climbed the starship's ramp with a temperature regulated box in hand, Eva waving goodbye behind him. He closed the ramp and made his way up to the cockpit.
“Oh no,” Pilot moaned as he settled into the pilot's chair. “Do we have to do this now?”
Tycho smirked at the controls. “What, you've got some more pressing business that doesn't involve sitting around in the hangar waiting for me to have some use for you?”
“Sorry, I meant to say “Do we have to do this?”
“In fact we do.” Tycho flicked the pilot's yoke with his finger. “You're going to take me into space and show me how to do some basic flight maneuvers.”
“Can't I sit around doing nothing in the hangar instead? Or maybe repeatedly slam the ship into the ground without the landing gear engaged? It'd probably be better for its systems than letting you take the yoke again.”
“Ha ha.” He leaned back in the chair, staring out the viewscreen. “Funny, I recall telling you to go but I don't see us moving.”
The ship's AI grumbled sullenly as they took off, jetting up into the sky with the usual perfect silence and lack of turbulence. As they ascended Tycho cracked open his meal and snacked on fried delicacy insects and diced succulent vegetables lightly sprinkled with salt.
Before too long they were out in the empty expanse of space a good distance from Helios 4. Tycho set down his empty meal box and leaned forward. “All right, let's get started.”
“Oh yes, I can't wait,” Pilot muttered. “Okay, so in case you didn't know the ship's safety measures will kick in to prevent you from completing any maneuver that might cause you injury. But bear in mind that if you get too carefree with the yoke and main acceleration or maneuvering thrusters you might experience some discomfort.”
He thought of his harrowing initial flight through fierce winds and made a face. “Yeah, got it.”
“Good. Then the best way to learn will be to simply do it. Go ahead and prepare to assume control of the ship . . . I'll be standing by to keep you from doing anything too stupid. By which I mean that I have to lower my standards by quite a bit, since otherwise I couldn't in good conscience let you do anything at all.”
“You know, I almost want to fly poorly just to spite you,” Tycho muttered as he somewhat uneasily took the yoke and hovered his other hand over the acceleration controls. “The ship's not going to suddenly go crazy and start getting yanked in all directions when I take control this time, is it?”
Pilot took an insultingly long time to respond, as if struck dumb with disbelief. “In space?” he finally demanded. “I'm not sure if that question was stupid or sarcastic, which by the way is the lowest form of wit.”
“Yes, I realize there's no turbulence in space,” Tycho replied patiently. “I just wouldn't put it past you to mimic the effects just to irritate me.”
“Well in any case the ship's all yours. Have fun. Try not to slam us into the planet at velocities approaching significant percentages of light speed.”
“Only if I was piloting remotely and knew I could turn you into dust.” Tycho gingerly nudged the yoke, gratified with the feel of the ship responding. There seemed to be noth
ing smooth about flight when he was in control, even for the slightest maneuvers like this, but in a way he liked the feeling of inertia as he maneuvered.
He punched the ship to a more aggressive speed and tried another maneuver, jaw clamping shut as inertia threw him sideways and back into the pilot's seat. On the viewscreen Helios 4 moved ponderously into view from one side, and he hastily twitched the yoke the other way to keep the ship from going anywhere near the planet.
“Lesson one: check,” Pilot said cheerfully. “Trainee has learned not to fly towards large planetary bodies.”
“Quit the running commentary,” Tycho growled.
“I thought you wanted me to be thorough in my instructions so you can learn.”
“In your instruction, yes,” he shot back. “Which I'd say constitutes about five percent of your obnoxious running of the mouth.” Pilot started to toss out more snark and Tycho braced himself in the pilot's seat and took a firmer grip of the yoke. “Hold that thought, I'm going to do an aileron roll.”
“Wow, well done. That is in fact a basic flight maneu-”
Tycho yanked the yoke sideways, feeling his gut lurch as the ship revolved around him. Thanks to his inexperience he overextended the roll, and when he finally straightened out of the maneuver the ship was oriented in a completely different direction.
He whooped in exhilaration. “Let's try that again.”
* * * * *
Tycho's kinetic dampener absorbed the heat of reentry as he fell from space into atmosphere of gradually increasing density, converting the heat into energy to in turn power the dampening system.
It wasn't 100% efficient, but reasonably close to it.
Below him, curving away in all directions as far as the eye could see, Helios 4 shone like a gem of blue, green, white near the poles and dusting the tallest mountaintops, and various shades of brown. Above him space glimmered in all its remote beauty, stars twinkling and Norvis galaxy's arms stretching towards him like the claws of some unimaginably vast predator.
And between world and empty space hung Tycho Boralene, his acceleration barely perceptible and the speed of his passage stirring the thin wisps of atmosphere at this altitude into a violent tempest around him.
None of which he felt within the protection of his suit; the kinetic dampeners ate most of the friction flames before they could begin burning, but he saw a few tail ends flickering around him like playful wisps.
The relative sluggishness of his acceleration was an optical illusion, of course. Based on the fact that he'd started his orbital reentry a bit over 25 miles from the ground and the planet was so unbelievably large in comparison to him, his initial speed and acceleration barely seemed to move him at all in relation to it.
But he'd only been falling for about a minute. He'd fall for another three and a half or so, punching right through terminal velocity thanks to the inertia he'd gained before the atmosphere became dense enough to really slow him. By the time he hit the ground he'd be traveling fast enough to break the sound barrier and his impact would leave a modest sized crater.
It would also, under normal circumstances, splatter him across the landscape, although realistically he should burn up long before reaching the ground.
The buffeting of his passage through the air became a pressure in and of itself once he was moving quickly enough for the atmospheric density to swiftly increase around him. That probably would've been fatal as well, but as it was he barely heard the deafening shriek of it through the noise canceling layers of his space suit.
As the minutes counted down and his speed increased there was a startlingly abrupt change, with the curve of ground beneath him going from something distant and remote to something approaching with alarming swiftness as he meteored towards it. For the last ten or so seconds of his fall he felt his heart jackhammering in his chest as the ground zoomed up at him and the anticipation of the final moment loomed.
Tycho grinned so hard his cheeks hurt and forced his eyes to stay open against the involuntary urge to blink, watching the entire time as he slammed into the ground at supersonic speeds.
The kinetic dampener surged as it absorbed the unimaginable force of impact to keep him from becoming a pancake in his space suit. He watched dirt spray up around him in an explosion as he created a crater on Helios 4's surface. Then he was flipping wildly through the air, bouncing and rolling across the ground as the last of his speed bled away and he finally slowed to a stop.
After almost a full minute of lying frozen on the churned dirt of his final landing, heart pounding in his ears, he gave a gleeful whoop and awkwardly scrambled to his feet, spinning around to stare at the crater he'd just made a short distance away.
It didn't exactly look cataclysmic, but the idea that he'd dropped from space with enough kinetic energy to create such a large hole was a bit dizzying. Equipment failures were almost unheard of, but if one had happened to him as he fell he would've been annihilated in an instant, probably before he even realized there was a problem.
Still grinning stupidly he spoke into his helmet mic. “I'm down, Pilot. Still alive.”
“So I see. Looks as if wishes really are just an ancient superstition.”
“Nice.” Tycho fell backwards with arms outstretched, not feeling the impact thanks to the suit's still-active dampener. “The suit completely protected me. Landed without a scratch.”
“You don't have to rub it in. Although I do have one question: with all the whining you've been doing about feeling like you're in a sensory deprivation bubble, you really seemed to enjoy enclosing yourself in a piece of hardware that completely prevented you from feeling any of the effects of reentry burn or slamming into the ground at supersonic speeds.”
“None of that was actually a question.”
“An observation, then.”
Tycho let the conversation die there and stared up at the cloudless blue sky he'd so recently come from, basking in the rush of his recent experience. But after a minute or so he frowned and took a closer look; there was no sign of any glimmer of an approaching starship. “Hey, you coming to pick me up or what?”
“ETA five minutes,” Pilot replied cheerfully. “Had to make a brief detour.”
He bit back a curse. “Eva?” The AI's smug silence was confirmation enough. “She's pissed, isn't she?”
“She was . . . deeply concerned that you decided to cap off hours of flight training with an orbital reentry without her there to ensure your safety, and is coming to verify for herself that you're still in one piece.”
Tycho sighed. “I wonder if she stopped to consider that might be why I wasn't in any hurry to bring her along.”
“Yes, it must be sooo inconvenient to have a companion who makes your welfare her sole priority for existence and genuinely cares about you. I'm glad I don't have that particular flaw.”
He smirked up at the empty expanse of blue overhead. “Weren't you telling me not too long ago that sarcasm is the lowest form of wit?”
There was a brief, sullen silence. “You know, I was really hoping for some kind of equipment malfunction. I even calculated the odds.”
A few minutes later Tycho spotted his ship slicing gracefully through the sky towards him. Which was actually a pretty good flight time to go from space to his estate and then here, the one place on the planet where the AI caretakers allowed orbital reentries.
Pilot put the vessel down thirty yards away, and with some reluctance Tycho pushed to his feet to face Eva's wrath.
His companion stood at the top of the descending ramp with her hands on her hips, wearing a rare chastising expression. The moment the ramp touched ground she rushed down it and bolted towards him.
To prepare for his orbital reentry it had taken Tycho almost a half hour to put on his space suit and get it all running as intended, mostly since he had no idea how to do it and Pilot's instructions were mostly unhelpful or downright mean spirited. But somehow Eva's long, graceful fingers extracted him from the heavy mesh in less than
half a minute.
She bodily lifted him out of it then immediately began checking for injuries, one hand sliding over his limbs while the other ran a medical scanner. “Orbital reentry?” she demanded in a chiding tone.
Tycho coughed sheepishly. “On my visit to Callista I may have mentioned various ways of jumping that I'd already done, such as base jumping and elastic tether. My response was rather glib, and I inaccurately lumped orbital reentry with the other things I've experienced. So I had to do it soon or I would've felt like a liar.”
Eva stepped back, satisfied that his suit had worked as intended. And why shouldn't it have? In spite of his personality quirks Pilot never would've allowed him to leave the airlock unless everything was safe. But in spite of the fact that he was perfectly unharmed she still looked displeased.
“Orbital reentry is one of the most dangerous allowable recreational activities. You should've had me or Loran with you to verify your safety at all times. Especially for your first experience.”
“Picking you up would've been a huge waste of time,” Tycho protested. “Besides, Pilot verified I'd done everything correctly and gave me all the safety instructions I needed for the reentry.”
His companion's hands found their way back to her hips. “Did you do this on purpose, my love? You've been a bit resentful of the measures I've taken to ensure your safety over the last several days, calling it “hovering”. Did you intentionally leave me behind so you could experience orbital reentry on your own?”
It was hard not to hunch his shoulders guiltily. “No,” he said with complete truthfulness. “I went up to space just intending to fly. The decision to experience a reentry was completely spur of the moment.”
“Oh.” Eva's stern expression softened. “Do you suppose this is what's missing in your life, my love? The thrill of new experiences?”