I paused. I had never thought of it that way. ‘Guess that makes sense.’
‘So,’ he said. ‘I agree with your mother that you should apply to the Academy of Virtuous Knowledge. It would help you understand the broader aspects of life and provide perspective beyond mining that would help you throughout your career. In a few years, you could have a meaningful role in the business.’
Though I was young, and he was brief, I understood what he was saying. It was a tough pill to swallow. He meant well, and I respected him. But I wanted to do more and to be more, and I didn’t want to wait five or ten years to have a role in the business.
I left my father’s office and took the magnatube back to the suburbs. I wanted to read up on business and history—to understand human behaviour and social systems—but the institute would require me to study some detailed space physics that I would never need in real life.
I didn’t know what to do. The more I thought about what Father had said—that I could have a meaningful role in the business—the more it sounded like a polite ‘no’ to my ambitions of steering the firm. I had put in the effort, but he had dismissed my ideas.
Usher was ahead of me, and instead of catching up, I drifted further. Perhaps it was time to me to face the facts: if I were to make a success of myself, I had to do it outside the family firm. The thought intrigued me, and I wanted so much to show them.
But I had no idea how.
Later that night, the lights were down low at our ranch. It was just my mother and me. She was tending to her community on a hand terminal while I wondered about my life plans.
A sudden visit from a surprise guest interrupted the quiet evening.
‘Braah!’ he shouted as he saw me.
If I was the analytical one, and Usher the driven one, Sander was the expressive one. He wore a striking black leather outfit with red highlights, as if he had dropped in straight from a visual rock video. He stood in the shape of an ‘X’, from fingers to toes.
I grinned and rose from the couch.
‘I missed you guys,’ he said. ‘Come here.’
My mother hugged him. ‘It’s been so long. You even missed the solstice fair. Is everything OK?’
Mother was always worrying about Sander. He was the wild one, hanging out with people she never wanted to hear about, going off-planet, never answering calls or replying to messages. She worried that sometime, he would go too far. Me and Usher, we were always close to her. And even if she pretended otherwise, I knew she hated him dropping by unannounced.
‘Better than ever. I’ve just gotten myself a new ship.’
My jaw dropped to the floor. ‘You have a ship?’
He nodded with a smug smile. ‘It’s true. An Excelsior 7.’
‘What—?’ I said, and my jaw dropped; I just couldn’t help it. Excelsior 7, as far as I knew, was an interstellar spaceship. It was the latest model from Petals, a sleek dream come true.
‘Yeah, bro. It’s the P3 model, with a capacity to pinch three times.’
‘Wow… Could I perhaps—’
Mother looked at me with a tight stare and then shook her head at Sander.
He laughed. ‘You can come and look at it. It’s parked nearby. Wanna try the controls?’
I bobbed my head up and down like a madman.
‘It’s quite an expensive thing…’ my mother said, as if trying to catch Sander lying.
‘Don’t worry about it, Mom,’ Sander said with a smug smile. ‘I’m all set with the Sweeps.’
‘You’re set with what?’
‘It’s the group I work with.’
Her face remained in a frown.
He put a hand on her shoulder and said, ‘I mean it. It’s all right, Mom.’
She frowned, and said, ‘Don’t go chasing stars…’
In a moment I was out with him, looking at the black ship he had landed at the local spaceport. It had an elegant two-tone design in shiny black and dark matte grey, and now before me, it was even more beautiful than in the pictures I had seen.
With Sander’s command, the ship’s platform came down, and he led me in. The inside was just as glamorous as the outside. The cockpit had tan leather trimming all over, and the displays were large, crisp, clean, and organised. He let me sit in the pilot’s seat while he sat shotgun.
He leaned back and rested one leg over the other. ‘I’ve named it Reacher. Like it?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I love it.’
We exchanged chuckles over the old joke.
‘This must have cost millions. How could you ever afford one?’
‘Five million teradollars, to be honest. But it’s no biggie. I’m moving in the big circles now. The money we make digging into the ground here is asteroid dust compared to what the Sweeps make in interstellar services.’
I just sat there marvelling at the shiny controls, running my fingers over the leather trim, and looking through the windscreen to the sandy reaches beyond the spaceport. I knew father had money, but he’d never spend it on something like this. The ship was the most impressive piece of machinery I had ever seen. ‘Is it easy to fly?’
‘Yeah,’ he said with a smile. ‘But the problem is that if you fly this, all the other ships will feel like mining trolleys.’ He laughed, and I joined in.
We sat there chuckling for a while. It was those moments with Sander we rarely had anymore. Then I sighed.
‘It’ll be ages before I ever get something like this.’
‘Hey bro, you can always borrow this if you need it, you know, to impress the ladies.’ He chuckled again. ‘But more than that, you, too, could make money like this, if you were to join us.’
‘Join who?’ I asked.
‘The Sweeps.’
I had never heard of them. ‘What exactly is it you do?’
‘It’s a flexible organisation. We do all kinds of cool stuff, like running casinos, nightclubs, entertainment—’
‘What kind of entertainment?’
‘Well…’ he said, and flicked around some screens in the controls, showing a diagnostic 3-D image of the entire ship. ‘Neat, right? Yeah, it’s perhaps a bit early for you, you should grow a few years before you join.’
‘Really, you think I could?’
‘For sure.’
Later that night, I had trouble going to sleep. Sander had shown me a glimpse of something I had never dreamed of—but it was also something out of my reach, as was my father’s business.
Father always said that a good life required sacrifices. Sander, it seemed, had found another way, and it intrigued me. Perhaps I could combine these things and create something unique, something great, and show everyone.
Chapter Three
I needed some time to think. Sander’s fast rise to success had made me jealous. But joining the Sweeps, while it might be useful in the short term, might never be as good as having my own intergalactic company. I knew I had what it would take. I was the smartest of us three. Father didn’t seem to care too much about me working for Runore; he was just interested in running the business as it was and training Usher to be his main man to take over. But Father always knew what to do. Maybe he was right, and I just didn’t see it.
No doubt I could make a fantastic career with Runore, and in time get more responsibility from Usher, but it would be a long road and I’d always remain in my brother’s shadow. Also, digging up stuff and selling it wasn’t the most exciting opportunity the universe had on offer. Sander had opened my eyes to the possibilities among the stars. It excited me, but I knew all too well that with the Sweeps, I’d have to start from scratch. But if Sander had made it, so could I.
I couldn’t decide. I wanted to work with my father, to become a distinguished man like him, but I also wanted something new. I wanted to make a new light in the universe, and my name to stand in the history of time. But what exactly it would be, or how I would do it, I did not know.
After school, which ended early that day, I took the magnarail to the pool to hang o
ut with Tiana. I was proud to say she was my girlfriend; we had kissed a few times and agreed to see each other exclusively. I adored her beauty and wit, but sometimes I wondered why somebody like that was dating someone like me.
The pool lay on the roof of a large shopping centre called the Lighthouse. It had big flexible shades that could move as the sun moved. The screens were useful, as it was almost forty degrees in the shade, and Reuna shone brightly in the clear sky. They had set up one side of the pool to resemble a beach, with sand and all, which was funny, as sand was plentiful everywhere for thousands of kilometres in whichever direction you went. Luzasand was far from the seas that remained on the poles of Runcor. They said those waters would dry up in the next few hundred years, too.
I walked through the crowd—a surprise on an average Tuesday afternoon—and realised this was a holiday season for the Jindalar because small folks with big round heads and huge eyes filled the poolside. The pool, on the other hand, was full of mostly tall blue-skinned and white-haired Baar folks. Humans lounged around in between, and there were only a few odd Dresneans and Androns.
I arrived early, so I grabbed two lounge chairs by the water and lay down to wait for her. Hearing the sounds of the water and the people around me made some primitive part of my brain feel calm. The pool was a place where I could relax in the crowd. As Reuna scorched down on me, I let my mind wander.
The warm rays of the star made me think of the vastness of the universe and how far people had gone after the invention of the pinch drive so long ago. The Sweeps were an organisation in the stars, which I found intriguing, and I wondered whether I should follow Sander’s footsteps with them, or continue grinding down in the sandpit, moving up in Runore.
Father thought I needed to have experience before I could do things. I respected him but saw other paths too: Nikola Rudd, for example, had already become a multi-millionaire when he was fifteen, by manufacturing beauty products. Since it wasn’t even anything new, it was insane that such a commodity had made him millions and put his name on everyone’s lips.
As my thoughts spiralled around the answer but missing the mark, a sudden shade interrupted me.
I opened my eyes: Tiana.
She stood in front of me in a yellow bikini, contrasting with her brown skin that glistened with droplets of water even though her hair was dry. She said, ‘Hey there, deep in thought, why so serious?’
Her neutral expression, with those full lips, was a smile to me, and it was infectious. ‘Hey,’ I said and grinned. ‘Just thinking about the future.’
She sat on the chair beside me. She had her knees together and leaned on her elbows as she gazed over the pool. I loved her profile, a noble face framed by curly black hair. ‘I’ve been doing some thinking, too.’
‘What are you going to do after school’s over?’
She lay down on the sun chair. ‘I’m going to the Luzasand Academy of Virtuous Knowledge… I’m applying, that is.’
‘I might do that, too.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know… or I do, but—’ I said, the words escaping me. ‘I have plans for our family firm, but without proper education, I would have no say. My parents want me in the Academy; my father went there himself. The thing is, Usher is the number one, and Father’s grooming him to lead the company—’
‘You’d be much better.’
I chuckled. ‘Thanks, I guess. But just yesterday, Sander came by and offered a chance to join the group he works with, the Sweeps, and boy, does his life look good.’
She frowned at the sound of my brother’s name. ‘What do they do, then?’
‘All kinds of things: entertainment, casinos… It sounded cool, and he gets to hang around with celebs from all around the galaxy. He just told me he had met Han Swengar.’
She looked away, unimpressed. ‘To me, just the name sounds like a criminal organisation. Casinos, for real? They’re all run by shady folks…’
Now that she mentioned it, the operation sounded a lot like an underground organisation. The money and the ship Sander owned had struck me as almost too good to be true, reminding me of what Father had taught us: If a deal feels like it’s too good to be true, it most likely is. I took a deep breath, and said, ‘But I’m just daydreaming, because for at least two years, I can’t join them either.’
‘I’d hate to see you take off to some lonely planet while I was here.’
She had a point. If left the planet for the Sweeps, I could lose her, and what would I be without her? One day we would marry. But she would never marry a lost boy like me; first I had to become the man I needed to be.
‘Guess it’s the Academy then,’ I said. ‘I’m just worried that it’s two years of the same stuff we had in the PLI.’
‘Perhaps it’s more about understanding human nature and learning to think well. It’s something you can’t learn without spending the time, by living many years or speeding up the process by immersing yourself in humanities, which still takes time. You love history, don’t you?’
That was why I loved her; not only was she beautiful, she understood life on a deeper level. Again, I wondered what she was doing with a stump like me when there were more successful and handsome fellows around, even right there by the pool.
A sudden noise of thunder caught my attention, especially when the building beneath us rumbled with it. I rose to sit and found people looking worried. But the rumble stopped as suddenly as it had started. I glanced at Tiana, who seemed as if she was about to say something—
A voice from the loudspeakers cut in: An explosion at a construction site three kilometres from here caused the recent shake. There is no need to worry; this building is safe.
There was smoke rising in the distance.
‘Wonder what happened?’ Tiana said.
‘Construction sites,’ I said. ‘Happens all the time when they blast through the bedrock.’
‘So, speaking of immersion,’ she said, and pulled a fan from her bag, ‘did you know they’ve set up an intensive option for a bright student wishing to progress faster?’
I sprang up. If there was a way to do the Academy of Virtuous Knowledge faster, I was up for it. ‘No. Tell me.’
She fanned her glistening face. ‘You do everything in a year—’
‘Everything?’ I said. She had my attention. ‘The whole degree?’
‘Yep,’ she said. ‘But it’s difficult. It requires a lot from the participant: time, effort, and mental capacity.’
‘No problem,’ I said, convinced I had it in me. ‘How do I enrol?’
She laughed. ‘Check them out in the network. I believe they call it Ten-to-One.’
‘Ten-to-One…’ I repeated, noting the words in my mind and wondering how they had created such a name for it.
Without my asking, she said, ‘They promise you ten years’ worth of Academy of Virtuous Knowledge in one year. But it’s intensive, and they often have you hooked up to mind-connection systems, including while you sleep.’
While it sounded hard, I liked the idea of condensing my education. ‘What about you, then, will you apply for it?’
She watched the pool and pursed her lips. The expression looked cute, and I loved that face, even if it portrayed uncertainty. She said, ‘I don’t think it’s the right thing for me.’
‘Why not?’ I asked. It would be perfect for her; she was so much smarter than me.
‘I don’t know… even if I could somehow get in—which I doubt—I’m not sure if I could handle it. They hook you up to machines and—’
‘They do that in the standard Academy as well, and besides, we could be together!’
She sighed. ‘What if you get in, and I don’t? Will I ever see you again?’
‘Of course, you will,’ I said to comfort her, but had the same thought on my mind. I didn’t want to lose her. ‘We will find a way, whatever happens. Wouldn’t it be just great to do it together?’
‘I guess so,’ she said, still not convinced. ‘I just
— I don’t know what I want to do. You have so many options, like your family business, and if you didn’t, you’d soon create one yourself. You have this drive… but I don’t know if I have anything to give, at least anything that anybody needs.’
‘Hey there, baby,’ I said, and touched her arm, which was hot from the sun, and sticky with droplets of sweat, but smoother than the most elegant fabric. ‘I need you.’
She touched the back of my hand and smiled. I looked deep into her dark brown eyes. Holding hands, we turned to lie on our backs, letting the sun warm our youthful bodies.
My mind started building a picture of the future. In a year, I would finish the Academy of Virtuous Knowledge on the fast track. I would join the Sweeps and learn the things beyond Runore, and use them to create and grow my business that one day would merge with Father’s. He would see that it was me who could best run the business. As a successful businessman, Tiana would truly love me. I would marry her, and as the king of my realm, I would make her the queen. I would provide her with everything, including an extensive family, to build upon our success for generations to come.
Reuna shone brightly. Tiana was by my side, and the future was mine.
Chapter Four
A rejuvenating energy pumped through my veins on my way home. It was because of Tiana—she always lifted my spirits—but also because now I knew what I wanted. Also, a few laps in the pool had made my body feel fresh, like a newborn.
I skipped along the path to the door of our ranch, whistling a merry song. Entering the foyer, I found the house dark, except for just a faint glow of light from the living room.
My mother sat on the couch by a foot-lamp, the only source of light.
She was sobbing.
I sat down beside her. ‘What’s wrong?’
She cried, tears falling from her eyes, and avoided looking at me.
I raised my hand to her shoulder. ‘Mother! What’s wrong?’ My first thought was that something must have happened to Sander.
‘Don is dead.’
I gasped—my father.
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