by Ginger Booth
His eyes widened. “Wow. Not what I intended.”
“Cool. What did you intend?” she demanded.
“I don’t know what to do with myself, Sass,” he complained. “That’s all. I’ve never been retired before. For 10 months locked up on your ship – what do I do with myself?”
In pure exasperation, she asked, “What the hell are you going to do with yourself here? Take up gardening? Read a book? Analyze, oh, a bazillion petabytes of historical data from two colonies plus their orbital stations? Oh, hey, you can do those things on my ship. And support my retirement project. The one I thought we shared. Fixing this rego moon. And co-owning a spaceship.”
“Right,” he allowed reluctantly.
“Kitchen, 18:00 hours. Don’t be late.” She pecked a kiss onto his nose and left.
Her nanites were very annoyed with her.
But at least she got her court paperwork done. She successfully completed her parole. She was a free woman with all benefits and perquisites of a settler citizen. None of the extra city privileges Clay enjoyed, but hey, she wasn’t planning to live here for the next couple years, anyway.
4
Abel tapped his wine goblet with a fork and rose. The hubbub around the dining table gradually mumbled to a halt. Jules had outdone herself on the beautiful feast arrayed for them. Everyone – yes, including Clay, holding the foot of the table, opposite Sass – eagerly awaited clearance to dig in.
“To my beautiful bride,” Abel saluted gallantly. “And the mother of my children. Happy conception day, Jules!” His grin looked gob-smacked.
“You dog!” Copeland cried, and pounded the first mate on the back. True testament to Abel’s joy, he didn’t seem to mind. Ben and Eli reached over to shake his hand as well. Kassidy squealed delight and flung her arms around Jules for a hug.
Sass and Clay exchanged amused glances down the length of the table. In this at least they were in complete accord. To the Earth-born, a public announcement of conception day still sounded funny. Here on Mahina, the accomplishment involved a ream of paperwork and a few lab procedures. Nothing sexual about it. Well, Abel probably had to produce some sperm on demand, but Jules’ eggs were harvested and carefully interred for safekeeping soon after birth.
Sass waited for the guardswoman Cortez to take her turn squeezing the prospective young mother first. Then Sass gave the gawky 15-year-old a light hug and a kiss on the forehead.
“I’m so happy for you,” Sass assured the teen.
Sass was nothing of the kind. She found the idea of a girl that young commissioning a baby utterly appalling. But life expectancy was low on Mahina. While she was imprisoned on the farm, the social norm had evolved to favor the decade-wide age difference her partner and his teen bride had chosen. The guy reached mature earning age – Abel at a whopping 25 – while the girl was hopefully young enough to survive and guide the offspring into the adolescent years.
Sass was the one out of step with the realities of Mahina, not Abel and Jules. As the sexes swapped sides of the dining table, she was the first of the female contingent to hug and congratulate Abel.
As everyone finished the hug-a-thon and sank back to their seats, Sass inquired, “Were you selected for the gene mod? Like Ben and Copeland?” She beamed at them. “Oh, and Nico!” Copeland’s visiting toddler, already fed and wiped down, amused himself in a playpen for the moment.
Jules shook her head. “They offered. But that’s not our kind of smart.”
Abel looked like he might harbor regrets on that score. The newly approved gene mods they’d gone to Sagamore to investigate conferred a form of genius to the university student Ben and their gifted engineer Copeland and his baby. Their gift bestowed an extraordinary ability to focus intently on the task at hand, a giant boon to intellectual mastery. Even baby Nico, about a year and half old, was utterly engrossed in building something out of snap-together blocks. After 80 years, Sass could barely remember her own son at that age. But she was pretty sure he was never that smart. As a baby, he just wanted attention all the time.
Abel sipped his wine, then smiled at his bride. “Our kind of smart is good enough for us.”
From which Sass deduced that Abel lost the argument. “So? Girl or boy?”
“Both!” Jules said. “No reason to wait, now the creche will raise them for us until they’re teenagers. Not that I think we should wait that long to take them.”
“You might change your mind,” Copeland muttered, glancing over his shoulder to check in on Nico. The baby was currently sucking on a block, intent on either deciding what to build next or fouling his diaper.
Abel said wistfully, “We’ll be back from Denali before we could take them from the creche anyway.”
Sass counted it up in her head. Obviously, the 9 months gestation from today took place in the lab. But after the newborn was decanted, the city creche tended settler babies for 12 more months at a minimum. They expected to return only 18 months from now.
“They allow visits now,” Jules offered. “Even before the one-year birthday when they used to deliver the baby. We could have seen the babies being born. But that’s too long to wait to start our children.”
“My sister offered to record the birthday on video for us,” Abel added. “So we’ll get to see it, even if we can’t be there. But it’s not like our parents were there when we were born,” he consoled his wife.
Jules nodded thoughtfully. “This is all new. Just since we joined the Thrive.”
“Well, I am thrilled for you both,” Sass crooned. “And I’m sure you’ll be wonderful parents. To a very lucky little boy and girl!” Everyone drank to that.
The occasion progressed to asking the others around the table about their own progress toward parenthood, or lack thereof. Sass tried clearing her throat as a hint, but this custom was ingrained among settlers at a conception celebration. Abel and Jules, Ben and Copeland simply never considered that the others might not be in alignment with their norms.
Ben was easy. At 20, he expected to have a few more years to establish a career before parenting, and he didn’t have a wife yet. Copeland claimed to be done with marriage and not looking for another partner any time soon.
Both glossed over the fact that Copeland had his ‘domestic partner’ Ben. The cabin-mates claimed this was purely a legal dodge, to grant Ben and his father equal rights and authority over Nico. Sass remained dead curious how that relationship would evolve during the long trip – all of their relationships, really. But she wasn’t convinced that Ben’s motives toward Cope were that simple.
Fortunately, the inquisition moved to Kassidy next. “I expect I’ll start thinking about children in my thirties,” she confessed. “I mean, like maybe find a guy to team up with. Maybe the first baby at forty or so.”
Easy for an urb to say. Settler life expectancy was forty or so.
“Oh!” Jules said, taken aback. “But –”
Sass, sitting next to her, patted her hand to interrupt. “Jules, let it go. Urbs are different.” Please don’t ask Wilder and Cortez, she begged mentally. The two guards they’d picked up at the orbital were exiled from the moon, only tolerated here under ship-arrest. Sass didn’t imagine they’d have much luck petitioning the city for reproduction services. “Best not to ask unless someone volunteers.”
“But what about you, captain?” Jules asked. “Aren’t you going to have another baby someday?”
Conversation suddenly died around the table at the teen’s faux pas. “Jules, I’m a hundred years old,” Sass reminded her. Don’t take it out on this child, she begged herself.
Clay sidled up behind Sass and placed his hands on her shoulders in solidarity.
“But you’re still perfectly young,” Jules argued. “Why haven’t you had children since you’ve been on Mahina?”
“I can’t,” Sass bit out. She sighed deeply and breathed out. “Jules, the city has your eggs. My eggs were harvested on Earth, after my son was born. They stayed behind.” There. Wit
h luck, no one at the table –
Clay’s hands spasmed on her shoulders. She glanced at him. His brows rose high in astonishment. “I was eighteen,” she added, for his benefit alone.
“I didn’t think they did that back on Earth,” Kassidy interjected. “In vitro gestation of babies. I thought it was all, you know, baby grows inside and comes out the painful way.”
Jules cringed. “Ew! Ouch. And the periods!” Mahina women skipped the periods.
Sass growled, “He did come out the painful way. And conception was…natural enough.”
Clay interrupted smoothly, “I think Sass really doesn’t want to talk about this. Jules, Kassidy, it was illegal to bear a baby on Earth at Sass’s age. Let’s drop the subject, please. This is hurtful.”
Jules looked more puzzled than enlightened. She opened her mouth to try one more question. Sass was seated close enough to hear Abel kick Jules’ foot under the table. The teenager revised her comment to, “I’m sorry, captain sar. I didn’t mean to be hurtful. It’s that a baby is a happy prospect, is all.”
Sass squeezed her hand. “I’m sure you didn’t mean to upset me. But let’s stop asking about other people’s baby plans, alright?”
Jules eyed the remaining targets appraisingly – Wilder, Cortez, Eli and Clay. “Yes sar, ma’am. I didn’t mean to hurt no one’s feelings. I’m just excited is all.”
“No harm done,” Clay assured her, kneading Sass’s shoulders. “Just let people volunteer, instead of asking. For instance, I don’t mind. You’ve met my son Hunter. I had a couple other children before him. They’ve passed away now.”
“Oh.”
Sass could practically see the gears turning in the girl’s head, as things she knew in theory recombined in new ways. If Clay was 105 years old, and he came here nearly 70 years ago, it stood to reason that some of his kids already died of old age or mischance. Not many made it past age 40 of the first Mahina-born settlers. And Jules knew that Wilder and Cortez were outlaws here, and the botanist Eli was in self-imposed exile from Mahina Actual. She just hadn’t put those facts together before.
“There’s a time for these things, Jules,” Sass murmured. “Now is your time, not ours.” She raised her glass of wine. “To your time for embarking on parenthood, Abel and Jules!” They all drank to that.
Clay stuck close to Sass for the rest of the party. When they found themselves relatively alone for a moment, he murmured, “I’m sorry, Sass. I didn’t know.”
She pursed her lips. Conception day parties were easier to take without anyone understanding that it was different for her.
“Maybe someday we’ll find a technology that doesn’t need an egg,” he continued. “All the DNA is there in stem cells. Would you want another?”
Sass hesitated. “I don’t know. Doesn’t matter.”
He nodded, and squeezed her waist a little. “I think I’m done. And I’m glad I came tonight. You were right. I belong here. Come to my cabin later? All this talk of conception…”
Sass grinned. “Deal. Thank you, Clay.”
For all the couple’s annoying differences, conception and babies really brought home that they were starkly different from the rest of the crew, and indeed all of Mahina. They were literally from another world.
“Any time,” he assured her. “Oh, how did your court date go? Are you still on parole?”
“Nope. I’m a free woman.”
Clay appeared to ready himself to make an announcement to the group. She stopped him. “Don’t. This is Abel and Jules’ night. Besides, some of them… It would drive a wedge instead of pull us together.”
He nodded. “Maybe Cortez, Wilder, and Copeland. Invite them to dinner in the city. Or no – maybe just Copeland.” Cortez and Wilder couldn’t leave the ship, let alone enter the city. “You’re not the only ex-con on this ship, Sass. Or the only rebel. I just didn’t get caught.”
She beamed at him, and purred, “That was good. Almost enough to get you out of the doghouse for comparing me to Kendra.”
Clay laughed.
Drama and trauma abounded over the following 12 days. Copeland and Sass navigated last minute nail-biters on the container frame and late delivery of their orders. Abel forked out more money than his mind could comfortably imagine.
Sass was half afraid Copeland would bail at the last minute, kissing his son Nico goodbye. He placed the child in the capable loving arms of Ben’s dad for return to the creche, not to be seen again until nearly his third birthday. Beside him, Clay exchanged a last embrace with his son Hunter, and Ben traded a final round of laughing insults with his father. Then Clay and Ben flanked Copeland to draw him inside the Thrive. From the top of the ramp, they all waved good-bye to the news reporters Kassidy kept engaged and at bay for them.
And they were off to Denali. Five months there. Five months back. And seven months in between waiting for the planets to align again for a minimum-time transit.
5
“Safe?” Abel inquired from the pilot’s chair. He wiped sweat off his palms. Funny how he’d gotten used to letting the Thrive’s AI manage the hell-ride dodging rocks through the rings by itself. Having to pilot again, with Ben shooting beside him, and Sass swapping in to give them a breather, was exhausting.
“I’m not shooting,” Ben agreed. “Not ready to give up the gunner’s seat, either. Sass, why did we exit the rings an hour away from the Gossamer?”
Abel scowled at him for asking Sass instead of him, but let it go. Ben and Sass simply clicked with each other.
“To take one thing at a time,” Sass replied. “Copeland? How’s the luggage rack?”
His consultants had focused primarily on metallurgy – selecting more resilient alloys. They also vetoed his reinforcing bolts into the hull, preferring plates that distributed the strain. But once the boxes were locked in, the cargo frame looked much the same to her eyes as it did during the first test.
“Looks good from here, cap,” the engineer replied. “But I want to get outside and inspect it.”
“And go out twice?” Abel prompted.
Sass touched his shoulder and nodded. “Cope, the concern is that you’ll need to go EVA to take on cargo from Lavelle’s ship. You want to go out twice? Once to inspect, and again for loading?”
Abel had one last cargo lined up, from the Sagamore pirates arriving from Hell’s Bells, their asteroid mining platform. Or rather hopefully the Sagamores were ex-pirates. They were arriving now to establish a new settlement on Mahina as a trading post and a place to settle wives and families. Establishing regular trade between the moons and orbital mines was a big deal economically. Abel regretted missing the commercial excitement, leaving the same day as the Saggies arrived.
More to the point, Lavelle and his crew were the only ones in Pono orbit who’d ever been to Denali, as far as they knew. The first mate wiped sweaty palms on his pants again and blew out. The first time Thrive met Gossamer, the outlaws from Mahina’s sister moon of Sagamore stole their ship. And Abel was the one who’d proposed the plan to rendezvous here in orbit rather than on Mahina where they had backup in case the deal went sour.
Sass patted his shoulder reassuringly. Unlike him, Sass trusted the swine Lavelle. Or trusted him enough to carry his cargo, at least.
“Twice is good,” Copeland replied. “I want to inspect before we load more cargo. The crap from Hell’s Bells is massive, isn’t it? Half a container.”
Abel nodded confirmation.
“OK,” Sass told Copeland. “Take Kassidy and Clay with you for backup. I need Abel to deal with the pirates.”
“Please don’t call them pirates,” Abel muttered. The gunner Ben laughed at him silently. He swatted the kid.
“Will do, cap,” Copeland acknowledged.
“Abel, you’re up,” Sass prompted him.
Abel twisted his neck to look at her. “You mean Lavelle? He’ll want to talk to you, Sass.”
“And I’m eager to socialize. After you. It’s your business deal.”
“Ben is on guns,” Sass returned. “I can take the pilot chair.”
Abel nodded in sudden decision and vacated the seat for her. “Let’s do this.” He took a deep breath and flicked his channel. “Gossamer, this is Thrive, over.”
“Thrive, Gossamer, bonjour! Captain Pierre Lavelle speaking. This is who?”
“Abel Greer, Captain Lavelle,” he replied. “Good to talk to you in the clear for a change.”
“Yes, text through the rocks is garbage,” Lavelle agreed. “We have a gift! A hosting present for Mahina. You have this custom? When you visit a home, you bring a gift?”
“Yes. What is the gift?”
“A communications satellite!” Lavelle announced gleefully. “Voila! This should make it easier for you to call home on your travels. And us as well. Channel shift.” He rattled off the new satellite’s coordinates.
Sass located it and dialed in its signal. “New channel 10. On screen.”
The handsome pirate grinned from the display mounted behind Ben’s seat. “There! Much better! But you are not in the camera, I think?”
Abel hastily shifted and aimed the camera at himself. “Hi. Wow.” He’d negotiated this whole damned deal via garbled text messages sent in triplicate. The ice rubble rings were magnificent reflectors, lousy for communications. Now Pierre’s face was crystal clear and alarmingly large, with the first mate only inches from the display in the cramped cabin. Abel could count the Sagamore captain’s nose hairs.
He rapidly regained his composure, and smiled. “Sorry about that. We need some time before rendezvous. Any last-minute changes to the plans? Or are we still expecting to take on a half container of trade goods? I have a list.”