ASIM_issue_54 (13 page)

All right, I think. Calm down. What happens if I just take off?

First, the in-system rockets burn. Then the stardrive kicks in, pulling power from the generator. The generator room floods with radiation, which leaks into the hold and reacts with my cargo. Boom. Again. At full burn, depending on what reacts first, it could blow the back of my ship off.

I could get home if I dump my cargo and fly bare-assed back to Siberia station, spraying high-energy particle exhaust the whole way. I stare out into the void. Like hell, I think. I’m not going to let them win.

I slide into my chair. Something moves outside the viewscreen. I jump, my heart pounding.

* * *

I stormed back to the
The Cat
in a blind rage. I hoped someone would get in my way so I could rip his head off. Metaphorically. Maybe.

The airlock cycle took too long. I fretted at it, praying I could get inside my ship before anything else happened.

“Hey, Mira!” Arens’s singsong rang down the corridor.

I stared at the door. Maybe if I ignored him, he’d take the hint and go away.

“Hey! Mira!” he said. I heard his footsteps on the ramp behind me.

“Yes?” I said, just as the door cycled open. Arens put his hand across the sensor so it would stay open.

“Heading out?”

“Yes,” I said, crossing my arms.

“I heard you’d found another contract.”

“No.”

“You’re sure? ’Cause I heard …”

I rolled my eyes. “No,” I said.

“Meow. No reason to be so touchy about it.”

I stepped into the airlock and hit the override. Arens jerked his hand out of the way of the door as it rolled shut.

“Bitch,” he said.

* * *

A black butterfly drifts above the airless craters, its carbon-black wings rimed with silver fire. The sky outside is ablaze with stars hanging in white filigree, as though a great hand has shattered the void itself. The butterfly flutters beneath that sky, impossible.

An alarm sounds and the screen beneath my fingers lights up. I have been holding my breath. The biosensor alarm shuts off when I thump it. “Where were you when I blacked out?” I growl. When I look up, the butterfly is gone.

I check the progress of the robots working in the hold. The sensors say that the damage here is superficial, but I tell the robots to double-check it anyway. My capable little automata can smell out the finest cracks in the hull, or handle the nastiest and most valuable starstuff glittering in the void outside my ship.

And … they might be able to help with the bigger problem. I summon one of the little machines to the control room. The robot arrives silently and hangs in the air before me. Slightly larger than a human head, the face it presents to me stamped with the OmNihon logo: a lotus within a stylized footprint. I query for its high-energy particle handling protocols. This new task will take some careful reprogramming. I throw myself into the job, and only realize partway through that I’m grinning.

* * *

If any of the modifications I’ve made to
The Glass Cat
fail, I won’t get another chance. The patched containment pad is holding my cargo steady in the hold. My robots are waiting in the engine room. I settle back in my chair. The biosensors have some suggestions regarding the meals I’ve missed. I shut them off and pull up the launch controls. I let out the breath I’m holding and whisper a little prayer.

I tell the computer to go.
The Cat
’s engines fire. Acceleration pins me to my chair. My ship shakes itself like an angry behemoth and heaves into the void.

In the engine room, a cluster of robots stand around the Hawking generator’s shell, grabbing particles as they erupt and directing them into the open exhaust port, like a high-energy bucket brigade.

Seconds pass, and I’m a little surprised to be alive. Checking the instruments as calmly as I can, I happen to look out the viewscreen. The planetoid that sheltered me spins away in the distance. It was smaller than I’d thought.

For a moment I can see a great canyon gaping on its gray surface, and a million black butterflies pouring out into space. Their wings leave silver tracks in the darkness.

Then the attitude vents fire,
The Cat
swings around, and I am bound for clear space.

I wonder about the butterflies. Some hitherto-undescribed deep space phenomenon? I could ask around, but … I think of the other miners at Siberia Station, and anger creeps back into my gut. Space butterflies. Hilarious. Somewhere on that station there is a man responsible for nearly killing me. My fingers dig into the chair’s armrests. He’d better watch his back. I’ll make sure …

I stop. What will I do, lure him into some quiet corner and pound his face in? Sabotage his ship, because that worked so well for him? Sure, that’ll prove my worth as a spacer. It’ll prove I’m just as good as the pustule who watched me leave in a broken ship.

I feel the stardrive humming as my ship comes unstuck from spacetime. I think of butterflies dancing in the void. I’ve beaten the Ketzal. I’m going home.

* * *

“Control, this is
The Glass Cat
requesting berth assignment.”

The noise that comes over the speaker is like nothing I’ve heard from stationcom before. A hissing, dribbling burst of static, like someone just spit his drink into his mic. I smile. I’m home. My cargo is intact. Better than that, I’m on time.

“Uh,
Glass Cat
. Control. You’re cleared to dock. Berth one by three.”

Whoever’s on the com in Control has his head back together. Good. As
The
Cat
’s computer manages the docking sequence, I query stationcom for my buyers. It tells me that they’ve gotten one of the premium berths, and that they’ve been here less than a day.

I lean back in my chair, already imagining how I’m going to spend my profits. Aside from the repairs, I’ll need a new lock for the main hatch … I consider asking for an official inquiry, but decide against it. The deck is stacked against me. I knew that when I signed up for this life.

An inquiry would just keep me tied up in dock, anyway. I can already feel the void calling to me. Whoever did it will just have to sit quiet and watch me fly. I hit the comm one more time.

“Control, this is
The Glass Cat
. Have a nice day.”

…Sue Bursztynski

“Yvonne! Come and help me with this necklace, will you?” My cousin Eglantine is giggling with her friends. It’s a slightly nervous giggle: this is her wedding day, after all. Her new lord is attractive, kind and wealthy—what else could a bride want? (Well, maybe a young lover closer to her own age, but that’s unlikely now. After what happened that midwinter night, she will want security over romance—but I suspect she has blanked that incident out of her memory, deliberately.)

I help disentangle the necklace that has caught in her long, golden hair. One of her friends could do it, or her highly-efficient waiting-woman Alys, who has looked after her since soon after that terrible winter. Alys is closer in age to the groom than to us, though, and I think Eglantine just wants to have me by her for comfort.

I undo the snarls with gentle fingers and Alys finishes brushing down her hair, which will hang loose for today, her last as an unmarried girl. From tomorrow, she will braid and cover it.

Or maybe she won’t. Eglantine has grown up spoiled, the first child of parents who had waited long for a child. She has learned nothing of how to run a household; her mother and servants did most of it, and Alys did the rest—and then she went to court, which she can’t forget and constantly tries to keep up her court life, here on a country estate.

Who but doting parents would call a child a soppy name like Eglantine, “Briar-rose”? Not, perhaps, a name of good omen, either. For there is the old tale of the princess of that name who went to sleep for a hundred years—or maybe went to the Hollow Hills for that time—when her parents offended one of the Good Neighbours. She, too, was the only child of doting parents.

What, I wonder, did my cousin’s parents do to offend?

And how good are the omens for this marriage? Will Eglantine, with her love of fashion and gossip, be content to travel over the mountains to a keep in wild country?

Perhaps for a time. She will, after all, be the lady of her new home. Her groom’s parents, who arranged this marriage, both died while travelling not long ago, attacked by bandits. He is lord of a huge holding and receives homage from other men of rank. Not a prince, but high, and much esteemed by his king. Young for his lordship, but a lord nonetheless. That should please her.

“He is so handsome!” she whispers to me. “And kind. Not a brute like my friend Melisande had to marry last year. Younger too, but not a boy. I don’t want a boy!” She shivers a little, squeezing my hand and Alys’s. “I’m so glad you’re coming with us, Alys. I’ll have to find you a new husband in Armorique.”

Alys was widowed young. “Never mind me, Eglantine,” she says gently. “This is your day—and it’s time to go. Come now.”

We go towards the procession awaiting us. We could have had the wedding in the keep’s chapel, but there are too many visitors from the capital and the groom’s retinue. It will be held at the village’s Temple of Yeshu.

As we walk, I think of what was—and what might have been.

* * *

It was midwinter and the snow was thick. Not as bad as it might have been—in fact, the company was going hunting boar. Most of the men were, anyway. Eglantine and I were trying on our new gowns for the Midwinter feast. The keep was overflowing, with quarters being re-shuffled to make way for guests and the hall filled with warriors from three households. The steward was tearing his hair out thinking how to clear the hall for the feast. I was being fostered there, but my family members were visiting, as was a neighbouring family. There had been talk for some time of a betrothal between Eglantine and their son Philippe. Joining the lands would give both families power, and the fact that the two of them were attracted didn’t hurt.

Today, with so many people out, there was a welcome peace. Eglantine was talking non-stop as we smoothed each other’s dresses. Mine was a sober dark green with a red trim, in honour of the season, while hers was a bright red, of the most expensive cloth allowed to a girl of her station. She preened in it.

“Do you think Philippe will like it, Yvonne?” Without waiting for an answer, she chattered on. I nodded and made the occasional sound of agreement without really listening.

The other women were gathered in the family solar, keeping warm as best they might. The few men still here were with them or tending their beasts in the stables.

Philippe was somewhere by himself. He had remained behind, saying he was unwell—and I believed it. Philippe was the best hunter among the boys and better than most of the men. He seemed to know, always, where the hunted beast was, and was usually first at the kill. His family never lacked for meat. If he wasn’t hunting, he must be
very
ill. He’d refused any potion from the stillroom, though, saying medicine wouldn’t help.

“… So I’m going to Parz
before
I even
think
of getting married,” Eglantine was saying, brushing out her hair and adjusting her headband.

As if she would have a choice. Or maybe she would. (Have I mentioned Eglantine was spoiled?)

“Let’s go and find Philippe!” she cried. “I want him to see me in this.” She gathered her skirts and began to turn for the door.

“Wait!” If the poor boy
was
sick, he wouldn’t want company.

Eglantine stopped, but only in surprise.

“Keep it for Midwinter Night,” I suggested. “Then he can see you in it properly.”

She liked that. We changed back into our everyday wear and I folded the gowns into the clothes chest before we headed towards the warmth of the family quarters and the company of others.

And that might have been all, except for something that happened along the way.

From around the corner came a sharp bark. I knew that bark; it was Philippe’s favourite hound, Cafal, an unusual beast with a white coat and red ears—not a breed I recognised—and a bark that was unusually high for such a large dog.

“Cafal?” I wondered. “What’s happened to Philippe? He never leaves that dog alone, it sleeps by his bed and walks by his side the rest of the time …”

“Maybe it’s not alone?” Eglantine suggested reasonably, though I knew, somehow, she was wrong. She brightened. “Let’s go and see if he’s there!”

When we rounded the corner, there was no Philippe, only a pile of clothes at which the dog was sniffing.

“What a mess!” huffed Eglantine. “I expect the laundress dropped it from her basket on the way down. Come, Yvonne, he’s not here. Let’s go to the warm.”

But I’d seen shoes in the pile—why would the laundress be taking those with her?

“You go,” I told her. “I’ll take these back to his quarters. His man will be there if he isn’t.”

She sniffed. I sometimes thought she considered me more of a serving-woman than a foster-sister and assumed I’d follow her everywhere. It never even occurred to her that I might be interested in Philippe myself. She was cold; she went to the fire and the warm.