“About time we had some qualified help around here,” Patrick said. “This must be Howard Rohandas? You come highly recommended from a source I trust.” He nodded toward his daughter.
“Pleased to meet you, sir,” Howard said. “Shareen and I worked together in school, but she says I’ll learn much more on Golgen.”
“Shareen might not have gotten passing grades without you, Howard,” Zhett said.
Howard blushed. “We helped each other.”
“My problems were with the instructors, not the science,” Shareen said, then gave Howard a comradely nudge with her elbow. “I needed him more than I thought, and it was good to have a friend to help me out.”
Her brother Toff bounded in, his hair tousled, wearing a justified expression. “See, Mom? You can’t send me to Earth. Academ was hard enough.”
Shareen teased him. “Academ was hard for you because you can’t sit still.”
Toff looked to his father, as if he might be a better ally. “I’m going to be a skymine engineer, so I may as well just stay here and learn.”
“First you’d have to find a skymine that’d take you,” Shareen said.
Her grandfather blustered into the bay, both arms extended. “And there’s my lovely granddaughter!” Del Kellum’s exuberance always embarrassed her. “And who is this fine-looking young man?”
“Shareen’s boyfriend,” Toff said.
Howard’s mouth fell open, and he looked as if he were trying to speak, but no sound came out. Shareen took pity on him. “Don’t overwhelm my friend or he’ll jump off the deck. Let him settle in.”
Though he seemed to be out of his depth in this new environment, Howard finally managed to say, “Really, this is nothing compared to my usual homecomings with seven brothers and sisters.”
“Good,” her mother said. “We intend to put you to work on the next shift.”
After unpacking, Howard wanted to explore, and Shareen led him along the process lines deep in the bowels of the skymine. Roamer workers in jumpsuits moved through the maze of conduits, testing flow temperatures or monitoring pressure levels in the throbbing reactors. Pistons pumped alongside the catalyst chambers.
The skymine plowed through the Golgen sky, gulping and exhausting huge quantities of atmosphere, digesting the hydrogen, and crunching the atoms into the rare allotrope that served as stardrive fuel. Up on the intake deck, Shareen laughed in the roaring wind as fans cleared the air of chemical mists.
When Toff came in, obviously looking for his sister, he had a mischievous expression. Shareen rolled her eyes. He always tried to find ways to pester her. “We’re working here,” she said, hoping he would take the hint.
“Looks like you’re just chatting,” Toff said, then added in a singsong voice, “Or did you want some alone time with your boyfriend?”
Shareen snapped, “Why don’t you dive into the clouds and go hydrogue hunting? Don’t come up until you find some.”
Toff started to give her a rude response, but ducked when he saw Del Kellum enter the deck. “Toff, there you are. I’ve got work for you to do.”
“Sorry, I have homework! I was just asking Shareen some questions.” Toff darted away.
When her brother was gone, Shareen said to her grandfather, “I’m showing Howard the process line. We studied the engineering on paper, but he should see it with his own eyes. If Howard and I put our heads together, we could change the nature of skymining. He’s very practical, and I’ve got lots of big ideas.”
Her grandfather chuckled. “You always did—and sometimes they’re even good ones.” Del Kellum glanced up at the chutes, the big fans, the pumping turbines. “Roamers have been in the business for centuries, and this skymine’s been working for a long time. I have high hopes for you, girl.”
Shareen clipped a stabilizer cable from her belt onto a thin metal rung, and gestured for Howard to do the same. “The view’s better up there. Come on.”
The young man followed her, with Del Kellum huffing to keep up. From the high platform, they could look into the vortex of misty chemicals that were sucked into the main body of the skymine. Shareen swung out, relying on the clip to keep her safe. Howard peered into the dizzying swirl of gases.
Del raised his voice above the loud wind. “You always were a tomboy—just like your mother! But you’re a young woman now, a beautiful girl, even if you don’t know it.” He jabbed a finger in her face. “You could trouble yourself to look nice. Don’t you want this young man to notice you?”
“I already notice her, sir,” Howard said, making Shareen feel warm inside.
She responded with a mock huff. “I want a boy who sees me for who I am.”
Del reached out to wipe a grease smudge from her cheek. “Sometimes it’s hard to see who you are.” Then he playfully tugged on one of her pigtails. “I want to show you something.” He unfolded a flexible screen from one of his jumpsuit pockets, spread it on a flat surface, and activated the power film. “You’re not done with your schooling, just because you didn’t like Earth. It’s time for some Roamer education.”
“That’s why we came here. Hands-on work at the Golgen skymine.”
Del took Howard by the sleeve and pulled him closer to the film-screen as well. “Not good enough. You’re a genius, and geniuses have to go the extra parsec.”
On the screen Shareen saw a beautiful maelstrom of nebula gas, a cluster of stars at its core, and a flotilla of domed habitats, skeletal frameworks, flitting ships, stretched sheets of polymer fabric like butterfly wings, and a partially completed arc that, when finished, would become a giant metal ring.
“Kotto Okiah has the biggest ideas of any Roamer,” Del said. “I’m going to make some contacts. I have a lot of clout as former Speaker of the clans, by damn.”
Shareen wasn’t impressed. “My dad used his connections to get me into the best Earth academy—and look how well that turned out.”
“My clout is different from your father’s, and I know different people. Wouldn’t you like to study with Kotto Okiah?”
Even Howard seemed impressed. “He’s a legend.”
Del tapped the images on the screen. “This is Fireheart Station, where you belong. Once you’ve studied with Kotto, the Spiral Arm will be your oyster.”
Shareen frowned. “I don’t like oysters. You made me eat one when we visited you on Rhejak.”
Del laughed. “Don’t much like them either—salty and squishy, and if you don’t swallow one whole, it’s like a glob of phlegm stuck in your mouth.” He rolled up the flexible screen and stuffed it into his pocket. “Anyway, that’s just an expression. Sure, spend a few months here if you want, but you’ll have all your life to run this skymine. I want you to dream big, girl. Dream big.”
FOURTY-TWO
XANDER BRINDLE
Xander’s anticipation built as the Verne headed toward the dense shock front at the nebula’s edge. He had been to Fireheart Station when he was just a child on one of his parents’ runs, but he didn’t remember much about it.
Early on, his father started keeping a scrapbook of every star system, planet, Roamer colony, or industrial installation they visited, so the boy would have a list of where he had been in his life. Xander didn’t count a place, however, if he didn’t remember it. This time, he would remember.
“Approach trajectory locked in,” Terry said from the copilot seat. “Should be a standard flight, nothing scary.”
“I double-checked the navigation calculations and found no errors,” said their compy OK. “Errors are statistically unlikely, but they do occur.”
“Just keep us safe, OK,” said Xander.
Only twice in their years of voyaging together had the diligent compy discovered errors. OK’s attention to detail was one of the reasons why Xander’s parents had given him the compy to serve as navigator.
The Verne began to jostle and bump as they entered the heavier dust concentrations at the edge of the Fireheart nebula. From this approach, the thick front mask
ed the spectacular view, but deep inside the vast cosmic sea, five intense newborn stars blasted enough radiation to ionize the swirling gases and light up the nebula. The stellar winds also pushed the dust outward, carving out an ever-expanding bubble.
Now the Verne tunneled through the shock front. Static filled the cockpit screens, but OK calmly chose the route of least density. Xander followed the compy’s guidance without flinching. After two minutes of tense turbulence, they were through the compressed dust and into the colorful maelstrom of the nebula itself.
Terry said, “Hands off the controls and let OK fly for the next few minutes.”
Xander sniffed. “I’m perfectly capable.”
“OK isn’t going to stare out the window like a tourist, and you are.”
“Good point.” The compy took over the flying duties, so Xander and Terry could just drink in the scenery, side by side.
“I see why Kotto Okiah wanted to set up shop here. It’s beautiful,” Terry said.
Xander thought of the eccentric Roamer scientist. “I doubt Kotto factored the scenery into his decision at all. A place like this . . . plenty of potential.”
By the time he turned fourteen, Xander knew every ship system, and when he turned eighteen two years ago, Rlinda Kett had presented him with a ship of his own, the Verne. Though it still technically belonged to Kett Shipping, Xander was the lease owner. His parents gave him the scrapbook of all the planets and settlements he had visited in his life, as well as a book—a real book, made from thin Ildiran crystal sheets—that listed the documented planets and settlements. All of them. Now he had a goal, and he and OK had set out to check planets off the list.
In a spaceport bar at Ulio, he had met Terry Handon, a mechanic and service engineer. Though Terry didn’t belong to any Roamer clan, Xander thought he had Roamer sensibilities. From years of working in the Ulio repair yards, Terry had acquired an encyclopedic knowledge of spaceships, and he knew the Ildiran stardrive backward and forward. He had watched ships come and go in the Ulio complex, but he never went anywhere; the weightless shipyards were perfectly suited to a man who couldn’t use his legs.
When Xander met him, Terry had been collecting images of places he wanted to see. Although he would wistfully look at highlights, natural wonders, astronomical phenomena, he was content to live vicariously. Terry enjoyed hanging out in the spacer bar to listen to travelers telling stories about far-off places. He made a habit of checking the origins of various ships that came to Ulio, though he rarely got up the nerve to talk with the visitors. He was only two years older than Xander.
Xander had just come from the Plumas water mines, which were run by his clan Tamblyn cousins. He showed Terry images of the Plumas ice sheets, the pumping stations under the crust, the wellheads that poked above the surface.
The next time he came through Ulio, he sought Terry out to show him images of other places he had visited in the meantime. The third time, he showed Terry his scrapbook, as well as the extensive list of planets still waiting to be checked off. Terry had seen none of them, which surprised Xander. “You live at the heart of a spaceport and haven’t gone anywhere?”
“Never had the opportunity,” Terry said.
“Never took the opportunity.”
Later, after Xander asked Rlinda Kett’s permission to engage a copilot other than OK, Terry was shocked when Xander made him the offer. “Now you can’t say you never had the opportunity. Are you going to take it?”
Together in the Verne, Xander and Terry made a point of traveling many routes. They were the first to put in for isolated or exotic deliveries because Xander wanted to check another place off his big list. Terry did not possess the same completist mentality. Every spot they visited was new to him, and he was glad to go along.
Now, as the Verne penetrated deeper into the nebula, the starlight and reflected radiation were so bright he couldn’t see the full extent of the Roamer facilities. When they approached the illuminating stars of Fireheart Station, they could make out shielded Roamer harvesters that flew between stations. Cylindrical collectors covered with reflective sheeting were isotope farms. Giant molecule-thin sheets of absorbent polymer metals soaked up the powerful star radiation, and processing stations gathered the energized films and folded them into dense packages, which were then sold as ubiquitous power blocks.
Prominent near the heart of the nebula, the arc of Kotto’s Big Ring was far from complete; not even Roamer scientists could understand exactly what Kotto intended to accomplish with it, other than that he said it “might” become a black-hole factory. The genius inventor had made so many useful discoveries over his career that the clans had stopped asking questions and indulged him.
Xander said, “With so much going on here, it’s too bad we’re just doing a mundane supply run.”
“They’ll be happy to see us. They need to eat, and we can get rid of that Primordial Ooze from Del Kellum’s distillery.” He knew the green priests at Fireheart would also be anxious for the seeds and botanical supplies the Verne carried, crate after crate of crop seeds, bulbs, and modified strains of grain designed to grow under the constant, colorful starshine of the Fireheart nebula.
“Would you like me to recite the manifest?” OK asked.
“No, thanks.” Xander continued looking out the windowport. The Verne headed directly for a terrarium station that glinted in the extravagant starlight. “Nice place for a garden.”
OK recited, “The terrarium station was founded by green priests Celli and Solimar. Over the years it has provided supplemental fresh crops for the workers at Fireheart Station.”
After the Verne was welcomed into the terrarium station’s landing dock, OK secured the ship, checked the engines, and assessed the cargo. Xander bounded down the ramp. The gravity was low enough that Terry needed only a slight assist from the antigrav harness strapped to his waist.
The green priest couple met them. Completely hairless with skin the color of fresh leaves, each wore only a traditional Theron loincloth. Celli, Queen Estarra’s sister, was thin and wiry, with small breasts. Solimar’s chest was broad and muscular.
“You’re a long way from Theroc,” Terry said. “This must be different for a green priest.”
“We have our trees,” said Solimar. “We can communicate with the worldforest network whenever we like, and Fireheart Station depends on us.”
Celli added, “We can’t leave.”
“Can’t, or won’t?” Xander asked.
The green priests answered in unison, “Can’t.”
Xander and Terry followed them into the main dome of the terrarium, a large structure with a curved crystalline ceiling. The air was moist and lush with plant smells, spicy leaves, warm grasses. Through the crystalline panes, the incandescent pools of gases made an ever-changing panorama.
“Our orchards and gardens grow more than three hundred different varieties of edible plants,” Solimar said.
Xander stopped in awe as he saw the giant worldtrees that rose up and arched outward to fill much of the terrarium. Even the immense dome seemed too small for the great trees.
“Those were . . . your treelings?” Xander asked.
“We carried them in pots when we came here,” Celli said. “They’ve grown.”
“We agreed to stay at Fireheart Station for a while to provide communication. Under the constant sunlight, the treelings grew more rapidly than we expected. Now they’ve got no place to go.”
The worldtrees had reached the top of the dome, and curved over. The fronds swept down so low they touched the deck and mingled with the rows of crops.
Celli ran her green hand along the golden bark scales. “They can’t leave, and they keep growing.”
Xander followed the trunks and branches, saw the bent boughs, and felt a brooding sense of claustrophobia. “What’s going to happen to them?”
“The trees are trapped here,” Celli said. “That’s why we have to stay.”
Solimar squeezed her hand. “We know
it’s only a matter of time.”
FOURTY-THREE
PRINCE REYN
After arriving on Earth to numerous receptions, after watching parades and meeting with dozens of business leaders, ambassadors, industrialists, and military representatives, Reyn was exhausted. He worked hard to remember all the important people he had met, and when he was simply overwhelmed, he remained polite and gracious, which seemed to be good enough.
He couldn’t wait to finish his diplomatic duties and find time to rest. He felt drained. His arms were weak and trembled at the most inopportune times.
For centuries, Earth had been the center of the Hansa, with its Whisper Palace where the Great Kings had ruled, where his own father had been groomed to be no more than a figurehead. Now, under the Confederation, a mechanism existed so that the diverse threads of humanity could be pulled together in the event of a massive outside threat, but under normal situations, local governments were adaptable enough to rule their own worlds.
Even two decades after the dissolution of the Hansa, Eldred Cain retained his title as transitional Deputy. He took Reyn under his wing and sympathized with the frenzy of the Prince’s protocol schedule. Deputy Cain was a quiet man, hairless and pale-skinned, with a slight build. He was competent, businesslike, and soft-spoken. After they left a diplomatic reception Cain leaned close to him and said, “I’ll make sure you get time alone.”
Reyn sadly shook his head. “I’ve seen the schedule—I have another meeting in twenty minutes, something about a union of rubble workers combing through the debris of the Moon.”
Cain gave him a soft smile. “I took care of what needs to be done, but I left it in your schedule as a placeholder. No one else knows. You have an hour off.”
“Thank you! I don’t know that I could have acted interested for another hour—not until I recharge my brain.” Then he flushed. “I mean, I am interested. There’s just so much . . .”
The Dark Between the Stars Page 23