“It has been an interesting few weeks,” Juliyana began.
“You got the IDs?”
She nodded. “You’re Maisie Carol. I’m Maariki Junia. They’ll stand up to basic scans. It would have cost three times as much to have DNA records adjusted to match ID, so I didn’t bother with that. It’s not like we have to run on these forever.”
“We can always figure something out later, if we need to. That will do for now.” I could understand her concern about funds. Just a few days of travel as a civilian had reminded me how expensive it was.
“So what comes next?” Juliyana said. “Now you can use the freight lines, where do we go?”
“I was hoping you would have the answer to that from your research while I was gone.”
She nodded. “I’ve spent a lot of time in records lately. The problem is, if Dad was not with the Imperial Rangers when he died, then he was clearly with the Imperial Shield. We can’t just walk up to the Shield and demand answers.”
“Our only line of inquiry now is Noam’s CO at the time. Gabriel Dalton.”
Juliyana winced.
“What is it?”
“Well, I did find out where he is. I mean, where he isn’t. The man’s a deserter, Danny.”
“Deserter? Major Dalton?” I ran that through my mind, turning it over. “As much as I hate to admit it, the man did show some traits of a personality which could consider desertion a viable option,” I admitted. “Did he duck out to avoid charges?” That seemed the most likely.
“I don’t know. There’s nothing in the records to say what happened. One day he was on the job. Next day he was gone. The last entry says he is wanted for desertion, after failing to report for duty three days in a row.”
“Maybe we can track him down. I don’t give a damn if he’s wearing a uniform or not. I just want him to answer some questions. Where was he posted when he rabbited?”
“Annatarr,” Juliyana replied.
“Annatarr?” I repeated, shocked all over again. The moon base on Annatarr had been my last posting. That was where I knew Dalton from. “Dalton was serving there forty years ago. Did he get a posting and come back?”
She shook her head. “That’s where he was posted, forty years ago. That’s when he bolted.”
I drew a breath. “When? Exactly?”
Juliyana said, “A month after Noam died.”
“A month…” I repeated. My heart thudded heavily. The pulse spike had nothing to do with an old woman blowing too much energy, anymore. “The timing is fucking suggestive.”
“It’s more than that,” Juliyana replied. She tapped her pad. “He didn’t just desert. He disappeared. Completely. I searched for traces of him—and I’ve grown good at it. He took a civilian shuttle from the moon across to the station. He bid for passage on a freighter heading for here, as it happens—New Phoenicia. He never got off the freighter. There’s no wrist scan showing his ID. Nothing. For all I know, the freight crew shoved him out an airlock while they were in the hole. Which isn’t possible.”
Exposure to whatever existed inside the wormhole tended to destroy ships. At least, the scientists presumed that was what happened. Every year a few ships jumped into gates and failed to emerge at the other end. As loss of the ship and all passengers and crew was the cost of testing the theory, no one had tried.
This ship had emerged, but without a passenger.
“How many passengers got on, and got off?” I asked.
Juliyana grimaced. “Thirty, at each end.”
“He changed IDs mid-flight,” I breathed. That was the reason for Juliyana’s grimace. Thirty passengers, thirty possibilities. She had spent her time tracing the movements of all thirty passengers, from that journey, through to today, trying to find the anomalies, the odd man out.
No wonder she needed steak.
“It’s our only lead,” I pointed out. “We have to chase down all the possibilities. Starting tomorrow, I’ll help you.” I yawned, suddenly. They had warned me I would spend a lot of time sleeping for a while. I was going through a type of reverse puberty.
Juliyana grinned. “Come on. I’ll take you home.”
“Home?” I asked, startled.
Home, it turned out, was a little house on a narrow street, with daylights and faux clouds overhead, currently blanked out so the real starscape could shine through the translucent areas of the dome. It was late.
Juliyana trudged up the rickety stairs and opened the door to one of the upper rooms. It was a bedroom, with a narrow bed and a dresser and not much else.
I put my sack on the dresser. “It looks perfect,” I declared.
I slept like a teenager.
The next day we settled at the small table in the tiny kitchen with a pot of coffee between us. My screen emitter sat in the center of the table where we would collate our findings. Our pads and coffee mugs were in front of us.
Juliyana threw up a list of the thirty passengers of the Yarrow’s Pride onto the emitted screen.
“Crew, too,” I said. “Desertion is a capital crime.” In fact, it was the only automatic capital crime. “He had nothing left to lose. Killing a crew member and taking his place would be nothing, after that.”
Juliyana grimaced and put the crew list up, too. “Although you’d think the other crew members would have noticed the switch.”
“Not if he did it at the very last minute. They might have found the body after they arrived at the station, but by then, the passengers would be gone. They wouldn’t report it to the Rangers, either. They’re freight grunts.”
Freighter companies and spacers preferred to look after their own, even if murder was involved. They lived an exclusionary life.
“If he switched with the crew, then the passenger manifest would be short,” she pointed out.
“Then we start with passengers, then check the crew. This thing has stayed buried for forty years. The trace won’t be in any of the obvious places.”
After three days of it, though, I began to wonder if the trace would be found at all. “Damn, Dalton really did just up and vanish, didn’t he?” I breathed, scrubbing at my hair. I felt thick locks and waves. Wheat-colored wisps flicked in the corners of my vision, drawing my attention because they were not silver.
I stretched and felt the tightness of unused muscles.
“What are you doing right now?” I asked Juliyana as she frowned at her pad.
“Trying an idea.” Her tone was remote. “Dalton couldn’t have flipped IDs with another passenger, because thirty passengers arrived and thirty passengers left. Therefore, he picked up a completely new ID from somewhere. Right?”
“It’s entirely possible he had the ID when he left, and only activated after he left the base,” I pointed out. “That’s how I’d do it. The moment the ship emerged from the gate and links were live.”
She noted. “So my theory is that he anticipated that someone would try what we are doing—checking everyone. It makes sense that as soon as possible, he would dump the new ID and get a second one.”
“New IDs that pass all the scans are not cheap. You found out for yourself.”
She looked at me. “He was a Ranger, and he only had to acquire one ID. So maybe he bought a second one, the same as I did.”
“Fair point.” I got up from the chair, twitchy from lack of movement. “And you’re testing that, how?”
She shrugged. “I’m looking up all thirty passengers’ statuses for today, here and now. If he dumped the arriving ID, then it would make sense that there is no trace of it, forty years later. It would have stopped leaving traces, a day, a month, a week or more after he left the ship.”
“It’s a good test. Have you found anything?”
“I’m up to passenger number twelve. So far, they’re all leading perfectly ordinary spacer lives. Three of them migrated to planetary status. Two are dead but led busy lives right up until they died.”
“No sign that those busy lives were faked?”
“T
here are photos of the guests at their wakes. Full family trees of mourners.”
“That seems somewhat elaborate for an ID he might’ve used for only a few days. Okay, then.” I picked up my jacket from the back of the chair.
“Where are you going?”
I grimaced. “Just going for a walk.”
“Right now?” Juliyana’s voice was flat with disbelief.
“It’s nearly midnight. I thought I’d look at the stars through the dome.”
She just stared at me.
“Okay, I’m going for a drink.” And I wasn’t thinking of the little wine bar at the end of the street, either.
Juliyana’s eyes narrowed. Then her expression cleared and she sat back. “There’s a joint across the way from landing bay ten that is a likely place for spacers. It will still be open, too.”
“That is the place I had in mind,” I admitted. I did not finish my thought aloud. The little spacer–favored bar had a doxy den tacked to the rear, with a discrete sign at the back of the bar, between the whiskey bottles, displaying an up-to-date certification and warranty.
Juliyana lost interest. She turned back to her pad, and I went to get my…drink.
In the three days since I had left the therapy complex, I had slept very little, except for that first night, when I digested far too many grams of organically grown steak.
Since that night, we had been hunched over pads and staring at 3D data arrays turning over the table, while we tried to sort out exactly where Gabriel Dalton was hiding. Being able to go for hours without sleep was a function of the young. I was enjoying those benefits once more.
Once I had cooled off my gonads with some very sweaty fucking with a pleasant and well-endowed professional, I came back to the little house and dropped back into bed, now willing to pay my sleep debt.
I had forgotten about the dreams.
I think, in the farther recesses of my mind, I assumed they were a symptom of my advanced age. Andrain’s geriatric research indicated that older people tended to linger inside their heads, revisiting old times and rejecting the far-too-modern times of their current days.
I figured that the dreams were my version of escaping a too-fast, too energetic reality.
This dream was different, right out of the gate. No beach. No anything, actually. The one thing that was the same was that no one was there.
In the empty box of nothingness, Noam stood with his shoulder to me, as usual.
“I wish you would fucking look at me, at least once,” I said/thought.
Norm turned to me and raised a brow, the way I had seen him do a thousand of times before. “Will looking at you make you feel any better? Will you listen, then?”
It didn’t bother me right then that he was talking to me. After all, it was a dream. Even though I didn’t process that it was a dream right then. I have never had lucid dreams, and this certainly was not one of them.
“What am I supposed to be listening to?”
“Well, to me, at least. Spare some of your energy to consider a few things.” He seemed amused.
It didn’t occur to me that he was dead. Not in my dream. Yet there was a sense of wistfulness whispering through me as I stared at him. “Okay, shoot. What am I supposed to be listening to?”
“There is so much to tell you…”
“No shit,” I said. “You left a fucking mess behind.”
Clearly, this dream brain of mine had grasped that he was dead. Only the knowledge did not touch me.
Noam shifted his shoulder. An indifferent shrug. “Creativity is supposed to be messy.”
“You were supposed to be a Ranger, following orders. What’s messy about that?”
He swiveled, looking over his shoulder, as if someone was approaching. But there was nothing there. Nevertheless, he backed away from me. “Later,” he said softly.
“Hey! You can’t stay for five fucking minutes?”
I woke to the full glare from the daylights in the street outside blasting through my window, turning my narrow bed into a sweat box. I was gasping as I drew myself up against the headboard and clutched the damn sheet against my chest.
Noam had spoken to me! It was a coherent conversation. It even had some of the hallmarks of conversations we’d had in the past, where he irritated me and I sniped back. Our mother-son relationship had always run deep underground.
I shuddered. Only now that I was awake did I grasp the significance of the dream, the clarity with which I have been able to see him. Dreams weren’t supposed to be like that. They were fragmentary, fleeting impressions. Sub-conscious detritus, as incomplete and stained as a midden. Only Noam had been as clear as any hologram.
I used the corner of the sheet to dry my face, then cast it to the floor, stalked into to the tiny bathroom and took a long shower.
By the time I emerged from the shower, I was starving hungry once more. It seemed like I was always hungry these days. I remembered the phenomenon from previous rejuvenations. I also knew that eventually, the hunger would slow down.
My newly revised metabolism could handle it, so I was not stinting myself. Not yet.
Even though it was still very early, and Juliyana was still deeply asleep, I stood at the basic printer, and had it produce a breakfast a king would not be embarrassed about. I pushed aside the pads and the screen emitter on the table and dug in.
I was only halfway through the meal, my stomach still rumbling, when I discovered I should have stayed in bed. My pad dinged for my attention. It was a real-live phone call.
From Farhan.
I hovered my hand over the pad for nearly twenty seconds before I connected. After all, he was family.
Farhan’s brows shot up as the image assembled. “I honestly didn’t think you would take the call.”
“If you’re going to spend money on an interstellar phone call, it seems only polite to answer it.”
He was staring at me, taking in the details of my renewed appearance. I sat still, letting him look. After all, he had stared for years as my complexion faded.
“This is why you took the dividends?” he asked. “If I had known this was why you wanted the money, we could have come to an arrangement. You know the family has a scheme—”
“Which would tie me to the family barge for twenty-five years plus,” I shot back. “I’m sorry, but right now I need to be able to move freely.”
“I thought you had no interest in rejuvenating,” Farhan said. He was still staring at me, his gaze moving over different points of my face.
“I don’t suppose it will help if I tell you I will return the money later. Right now, though, I need to hang onto it. There something I must do.”
“You mean, whatever you and Juliyana are up to.”
“Yes.”
“I was really hoping you would be reasonable about this.” His voice was strained. “You know I have to drop the load on you for this. I’m accountable to directors and shareholders…”
I really hadn’t been expecting anything else. “You aren’t going to explain to me yet again about the family reputation and how I’m destroying it?”
“As you seem to have a complete lack of regard in that respect, I will not bother myself with a repetition,” Farhan said. “Although I will state that I am disappointed, Danny. I thought I knew you well. Apparently, I don’t.”
He glanced at the corner of his screen. “Ten seconds left. I will save myself the energy and the money, as you have absconded with the family spare—”
The call cut off. An alert flashed to say the channel had been closed.
I pushed the pad away. By rights, I should have lost all my appetite and pushed the breakfast away, too. Instead, I pulled the plate back toward me and finished everything.
By the time Juliyana came downstairs, possibly woken by the smell of crisp bacon and maple syrup, all the plates were empty. The coffeepot was half-empty. She poured herself a mug from what remained and drank deeply.
She studied my face and the tools o
f our search pushed carelessly aside. “What’s happened?”
“We’ll have to move on, today.”
She considered that, sipping coffee. “Okay, then.”
I looked up at the ceiling. “Did you take a long lease on this place?”
“Day by day, payable once a week. I paid six days ago, so we can leave without alerting anyone. I’m guessing from your expression that it’s time to use the new IDs.”
“You pack.” I stood. “For both of us. I’ll head for the spacer bars and see what passage I can pick up for us.”
“Where do you plan to head next?”
“Wherever the first reasonable offer is heading to.”
Juliyana upended her mug, draining the coffee. She tossed the mug at the recycle maw and straightened.
I grabbed my jacket once more and headed out into the street. I walked swiftly through the still, quiet suburb to the main station concourse.
It was my intention to hit all the bars and restaurants, brothels and storefronts where spacers liked to hang out when they were on-station. The owners of these places earned the gratitude and loyalty of spacers, because they acted as clearinghouses for information which could not be included in any data network.
The freight of the Empire was left in the hands of civilian cargo lines. They were supposed to hold carry cargo, for their ships were fast and regularly subjected the crews to high-gee conditions. For that reason, spacers, like the Imperial military, were required to keep up their crush shots.
It wasn’t long before enterprising ship captains realized they could sell empty space in their crew’s cabins to any passengers who also happened to be up to date on their crush shots.
And thus was born an open, but still illegal, form of transport around the Empire. The Rangers turned a blind eye to the practice. Clearly, the demand was there, for anyone with crush status was usually in the freight game themselves, or they were military. There were times military personnel were happy to use the freight lines to transport unofficially, too.
Spacers in general had no patience for the ambling gait of the commercial crawlers, not after experiencing the freedom and speed of freight passage.
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