by Mary E. Lowd
"Why are we here?" Clarity asked, following Wisper into a clearing.
Wisper answered, "Mazillion lives here." She raised her arms into the air, and the artificial sunlight glinted across the silver steel. The almost imperceptible humming her body emitted rose in tone to a clearly audible buzz.
"No one lives in the arboretum," Clarity muttered to herself, too quiet to interrupt whatever strange ceremony Wisper was performing.
Clarity kicked at the grasses and leaned against the trunk of one of the trees at the edge of the clearing, feeling its rough bark press against her back through her thin shirt. She waited, watching what seemed to be a robot taking a moment to commune with nature.
Wisper lowered her arms, and the buzzing stopped.
Then, the buzzing started again, but it wasn't coming from Wisper's mechanical body anymore. Clarity pushed herself away from the tree trunk and turned in a slow circle, trying to identify the source of the buzzing.
It was all around.
Clarity looked up at the sky and saw a swarm of tiny dark spots, drifting, flocking, flying in formation. The dark spots formed complicated patterns, swirling together like a tornado, more and more of them rising from the trees, coming from every side of the arboretum, even flying through the point of zero gee in the exact center of the arboretum's sphere.
The swarm pulled together into a dark, buzzing cloud and descended toward Wisper, pulsing outward and inward as the group flew into tighter and looser formations. The buzzing cloud tightened and elongated, stretching itself into a vaguely bipedal shape—arms, legs, torso, and head, all loosely approximated by a swarm of tiny insects. They pulled in tighter, forming a shape like a scarecrow covered in bees.
The display was like an optical illusion. One moment, she saw only a cloud of buzzing insects; the next moment, her eyes focused differently, and suddenly the masses of zipping, flitting bodies pulled together into a single shape—a humanoid alien standing in front of her, its body made up of hundreds of thousands of tiny insects.
The buzzing body lifted one arm, as if offering a hand for Wisper to shake. Wisper held out her metal hand and let it be engulfed by the buzzing cloud. The handshake only lasted a heartbeat, but Clarity's skin crawled all over. She couldn't repress a visible shudder. When the buzzing hand reached toward her, she stepped back, waved, and said nervously, "You must be Mazillion."
The buzzing grew louder, modulated, and Clarity realized she could make out words in it: "We are Mazillion. Show us to the space vessel." The entire swarming body pulsed slightly as it spoke.
Clarity asked, "Is there anything..." She looked around the orchard, trying to figure out if this swarm of insects had any belongings. "...you need to bring with you?"
"No," Mazillion buzzed. Simple. Emphatic.
Wisper turned and walked back through the shade of the orchard toward the elevator's entrance. The light and shadows of the dappled sunlight played over her body and reflected in the silver of her skull. Mazillion followed, mimicking the motion of bipedal walking at first, but then dissolving into the swirls of an amorphous cloud.
When Clarity reached the elevator, she hesitated. The chamber was already filled with buzzing insects. She was reluctant to follow them inside, effectively stepping into the middle of Mazillion's swarming body. Wisper had done so and seemed unfazed, but Wisper wasn't covered in soft, fleshy skin.
After a moment, Mazillion pulled together, settling into a weird, tapered, beard-shaped hive clinging to one of the elevator's walls.
Cautiously, Clarity stepped into the elevator, staying close to the far wall. She shouldn't be afraid of Mazillion—if they were dangerous, they wouldn't have been allowed to live in the arboretum. Apparently, they also had some ability to connect to the station's computer system, since Wisper had managed to contact them. However, Mazillion's roiling mass of buzzing bodies tapped into something deep and primal in Clarity's nervous system, frightening her in a way aliens like Am-lei—giant Kafkaesque insects—never had.
The air in the elevator cycled back to the dry, chill air of the rest of the station, and the doors slid open. On the other side, Roscoe was chatting amiably with Jeko and Am-lei, surrounded by their luggage.
"So, this is everyone?" Clarity asked Wisper, leading the way out of the elevator.
"This is my team," Wisper said, holding her metal hands out to encompass the group. The hum in her voice sounded almost proud or self-satisfied. "Deliver us to Eridani 7, and you'll have completed your part of the contract."
And she would receive enough credits to secure her ship for years to come. Wisper left that part unsaid, but Clarity heard it loud and clear. She nodded curtly and said, "Follow me."
Clarity and Wisper picked up the suitcases of Am-lei and Jeko's that they'd left waiting in the hall while they were in the arboretum. They left the twisting maze of hallways that made up the Residential Quarter and took one of the large elevators through a spoke to the docks. The girl with green hair led a skeletal robot, a giant ebony insect, a hulking gray elephant pulling a bio-matter cargo crate, a hopping bunny with a walking stick, and a swarming, buzzing cloud through the docks. They didn't look at all out of place. Not even unusual. Because it was Crossroads Station. That was why Clarity loved it there.
Clarity led them all to the berth where The Serendipity was docked, her little piece of home in this wild, crazy universe.
Irohann had left the airlock open, a welcoming gesture. He met them right inside, ears perked and tail swishing slightly. He looked like a herding dog, watching and counting his sheep as they came in from the pasture, making sure each and every one of them was where they should be. But once he'd counted the sheep—seen all the passengers they'd be ferrying—he lost interest.
"Welcome to The Serendipity," Irohann said. "I'll be in the cockpit." He punched the button to close the airlock between their cargo hold and Crossroads Station. Then he headed toward the mid-ship level where both of their rooms and the extra room was. The cockpit was one level higher, in the nose of the ship. As he climbed the short ladder up from their cargo hold to the mid-ship level, his tail swished jauntily behind him.
Before the white tip of his tail entirely disappeared through the hatch up to the next deck, Clarity called, "Hey Irohann, grab this for me." She hoisted the suitcase she'd been carrying under her arm up through the hatch.
Irohann caught it, poked his long nose back down, and asked, "Anything else?"
Clarity passed up the backpack she'd been carrying too. Jeko stepped forward and began peeling suitcases off her back and shoulders. She passed each one up to Irohann using her long nose, including the suitcases Wisper had been carrying. Finally, they came to the large, cylindrical, hovering bio-matter crate.
"Why don't we leave that one down here?" Clarity suggested. "I can secure it to the floor, and it will be perfectly safe."
"No!" Jeko trumpeted. Then she touched the prehensile tip of her nose to the curved side of the cargo crate and gently caressed it. "Where I go, this goes."
"The rooms are quite small," Clarity said. "And there are only three of them, so we will all be sharing."
Am-lei didn't say anything, but she stepped closer to the cylinder and laid two left claws on it possessively. Her disco ball eyes were inscrutable.
"I can sleep down here," Jeko said, still stroking the cargo crate with her nose.
"The environmental controls don't work as well down here. You'll get quite cold during the flight." Clarity watched the elephant and insect woman closely while she spoke, but they both looked unswayed. "I suppose I could go pick up an extra space heater and blankets from the Merchant Quarter..."
"There isn't time," Wisper said.
Clarity wondered what could be in the crate. Unless Jeko and Am-lei opened it during the next six days, she'd probably never know. She just had to make it through six days of passengers with their persnickety requirements, and she and Irohann could get back to their carefree, hassle-free gallivanting across the galaxy.
The crate wasn't heavy, since the anti-grav unit was still running. Clarity had no idea what it might weigh without the anti-grav boost. As it was, the cylinder floated easily upward. Jeko guided it with her nose, and Clarity with her hands, carefully maneuvering the cylinder so it didn't bump and scrape against the edges of the hatch. Whatever was inside the crate, Jeko and Am-lei clearly valued it highly.
Once all of the luggage had been passed up, Clarity double-checked the seal on the airlock. Then she climbed up the ladder to the mid-ship level herself. The passengers followed her, one after another, into The Serendipity's suddenly very crowded tiny kitchen.
All of the luggage they'd passed up to Irohann was haphazardly stashed in piles on the floor of the kitchen—except for the bio-matter cylinder which Irohann had carefully wedged between the small breakfast bar, in the middle of the room that served as their table, and the food synthesizer on the far wall, blocking all of its controls. It couldn't stay there.
In addition to the hatch in the kitchen's floor leading down to the cargo hold, the kitchen had another hatch in the ceiling, leading up to the cockpit, and three doors leading to the three rooms on the mid-ship level. Irohann had left the doors open to both Clarity's room and the extra room. She noticed he'd left his own door closed, a not-so-subtle clue that he expected Clarity to lodge their passengers in her room and not his.
Irohann had already disappeared up the ladder to the cockpit, which was for the best anyway, as there was barely room to move in the kitchen.
Clarity managed to step past Jeko and Am-lei, narrowly avoided tripping over Roscoe, and made it to the open door on the left. The one to her room. She said, "This is usually my room, so I'm going to just grab a few things quickly. Irohann and I will share his room for the next six days—that's the one on the right, behind the shut door. The rest of you"—she looked over the group, still worrying about how they were all going to fit in here without killing each other during an almost week-long trip. "Well, you're welcome to divide up the remaining two rooms—this one and the middle one—in any way you like. The bathroom's downstairs in the cargo hold."
Clarity ducked into her room, punched the controls for the door to slide shut behind her, then drew a deep breath of relief, savoring the moment of isolation. It might be the last taste of privacy she got for a week, unless she felt like hiding out in the chilly cargo hold.
She might spend some time doing that.
To that end, Clarity pulled a sweater out of one of the drawers built into the space under her bed. She stuffed enough clothes to last for a few days into a duffle bag, and grabbed a couple of her favorite toys and dolls and packed them into the duffle too. The rest of them—all the little knick-knacks staring at her with friendly glass eyes—she swept off their shelves and out of their little nooks, gathering them up in her arms. She stuffed them into the drawers under her bed. It didn't seem right to leave them out, staring at guests. She could carefully arrange them back in their places once the trip to Eridani 7 was over.
When Clarity emerged from her room, she said, "All yours," and gestured as graciously as she could manage at the one place in the universe that truly felt like it was entirely her own, offering it up to whichever of these strangers had decided to claim it.
Jeko waddled forward and placed her nose on the door frame. She peered into Clarity's room, judging it, and said, "This one has a bed."
"I do not need a bed," Wisper intoned. "I can power down while standing, and I won't need to power down."
"And I've got my sleeping bag!" Roscoe offered cheerfully. He turned to look up at the much taller robot. "I guess that makes you and me roomies!" He hopped into the unfurnished middle room and promptly began setting up a little nest of his things on the floor in one corner.
Wisper didn't follow him. Instead, the robot climbed up the ladder to the cockpit, her metal hands clanging against the metal rungs.
Jeko and Am-lei worked together to move all of their baggage—starting with the precious bio-matter cylinder—into Clarity's room.
"That just leaves—" Clarity looked around the tiny kitchen, realizing she didn't know what had happened to Mazillion. She could no longer hear their buzzing, so they must have settled somewhere. She'd noticed their buzzing was louder when they were flying.
"Oh, there you are," Clarity said, mostly to herself, as she finally spotted the beard-shaped clump of roiling insect bodies clinging in a corner of the kitchen. "That's not at all creepy," she added under her breath, too quiet for any of her passengers to hear.
Clarity dumped her duffle of hastily packed belongings on Irohann's bed. His room was much more austere than hers—he wouldn't have had to sweep toys and dolls into drawers to make the space suitable for guests.
She ascended to the cockpit as well, to join Irohann in preparing The Serendipity for flight.
7 Getting Going
Wisper had taken Clarity's co-pilot seat, and Irohann was busy arguing over the radio with Crossroads Station flight control about how soon they could debark from the station. Clarity couldn't hear the station's side of the conversation, since Irohann had an earpiece in, but the way he kept smoothing his paws over the thick ruff of orange and white fur overflowing his v-necked shirt was not a good sign.
Finally, he yanked the earpiece out and slammed it down on the control dash. He frowned, his long muzzle quirking into an unhappy grimace, and said, "It'll be a few hours. We weren't scheduled to debark today, and there's a backlog of ships wanting to leave the system. Something about flight paths being overcrowded from some circus display in the local asteroid belt."
"Oh, I heard about that," Clarity said. "It's a traveling show with trained starwhals. They do tricks." She'd actually been planning to convince Irohann that they should suit up in their spacesuits, catch an intra-system ferry, and jetpack around the asteroid belt for a day—followed by catching the show. She wanted to see starwhals do tricks. Hell, she wanted to see starwhals at all.
But that wouldn't be happening... unless she kicked all of these passengers out of her home and gave up on the 480,000 credits.
Clarity sighed. "I guess we'll just have to hunker down and wait our turn."
"How many hours is a few?" Wisper asked.
Irohann shifted uncomfortably and smoothed his ruff down again. Eventually, he said, "Fourteen." The metal irises over Wisper's eyes constricted slightly, and Irohann quailed. "Maybe only twelve."
"Let me try," Wisper said. "I need a hook-up to your computer."
Clarity wasn't sure she wanted a rogue AI who had already stolen a robot body today set loose in The Serendipity's computer system. However, Irohann had already pulled out a cord and handed it over to her. Wisper plugged her skull directly into the ship's control dash.
The metal irises spiraled shut over Wisper's eyes. Clarity supposed that meant she was concentrating, communing with The Serendipity's algorithmic pathways, and reaching out to whichever corners of the Crossroads Station's computer systems she thought would be sympathetic to her cause, swayed by her sense of urgency.
Clarity didn't think it would work. Flight paths were calculated by extremely complicated algorithms and were already very precisely tuned. A spaceship wanting to leave the station and begin accelerating to inter-system travel speeds had to account for all of the other ships present or else the space-warping effects of its elasti-drive could cause huge damage.
If Crossroads Station told them it wasn't safe to leave yet, then it wasn't safe.
Wisper opened her eyes. "I've secured an earlier departure time for us."
"How much earlier?" Clarity asked, skeptical.
"Fifteen minutes." Wisper unplugged her skull from The Serendipity's control dash and tilted her head in a way suggesting she was trying to shake off the after-effects of whatever it felt like to commune with a ship's computer.
Clarity had to stop he
rself from laughing. "Was it really worth hooking your brain up to our ship's computer just to save fifteen minutes?"
"Not fifteen minutes shorter than our original wait," Wisper said, rising out of Clarity's co-pilot seat. "Fifteen minutes total. I'll make sure my team is ready for the acceleration."
Either the flight controllers had lied to Clarity about how difficult it was to adjust departure times when she'd complained in the past, or Wisper had just done something incredibly shady with her mysterious AI powers. Clarity wasn't sure she wanted to know which was true. She hoped her ignorance wouldn't lead to her and Irohann never being welcome at Crossroads Station again.
She took her co-pilot seat, and as soon as Wisper descended the ladder to the mid-ship level, said to Irohann, "You need to double-check our authorizations. I don't want to get black-listed from coming back here."
Irohann waved at the screens on the control dash with a white-furred paw and said, "It's fine. Look."
"No, I mean, get back on the radio and talk to an actual person—not a computer."
Irohann harrumphed, but he stuffed the ear-piece back in the base of his triangular ear and spoke into the microphone. "This is the docked vessel The Serendipity." After a brief pause, he continued, "I wanted to double-check our departure time." After a longer pause, while his frown deepened, Irohann said, "No, no, of course we're ready. I understand it's only thirteen minutes away. I just wanted to double-check. Thank you." He pulled the ear-piece out and dropped it dramatically back on the dash. "Flight controllers have no sense of humor."
"That's probably a good thing..." Clarity suggested.
Irohann's muzzle split in a wolfish grin. He leaned over, bumping his shaggy shoulder against hers, which she hadn't noticed had gotten quite so tense. "Don't worry," Irohann said. "Even if the sketchy robot mutinies and steals our ship, what can she do to us? Drag us on an adventure? That's where we always want to go anyway."
Clarity felt a lopsided smile warm the mask of tension that had frozen over her face.