One's Aspect to the Sun (23 page)

Hirin chuckled. “Don't they have a saying in the Protectorate—'Worry never won a battle'?”

“Something like that.” All I knew was, I wished I had some of Lanar's confidence.

We arrived at the wormhole into Mu Cassiopeia around midnight by the
Tane Ikai's
clock, eleven days after the transfusion. I hadn't bothered going to bed, since I knew we were this close, but apart from Viss, taking his nighttime shift on the bridge, the ship was silent; I thought everyone else had retired. I'd spent the evening alone in my cabin, curled up in the big armchair, reading. It wasn't easy to keep my mind on the book, but I knew nothing else had any chance at all of distracting me. The swiftly approaching wormhole presented a host of potential problems that I'd already been thinking about for a week and a half.

While I was encouraged by Hirin's progress, I was still worried. If this wormhole skip caused another heart attack he might not survive it, and if he did, there was no way I was going to undertake a further skip with him on board. That meant that the
Tane Ikai
and I would have to remain in the Mu Cassiopeia system indefinitely. There were two inhabited planets in the system, Kiando and Cengare, and while either one of them made a nice place to visit, I wasn't sure I wanted to be stuck on them. I also didn't think any of my crew would want that, which would mean letting them go, and that would be heart-wrenching. After a lot of trial and error, I'd put together a crew that really worked well together, and losing them would hurt.

Furthermore, while I could probably find a few jobs running goods between the two planets, a far trader would be expensive to use for in-system runs, and a waste of resources to boot. Even with just me and Hirin to run her, though we had done it before, I might have to trade her in for something smaller, and I would truly hate to do that.

If my mother wasn't on Kiando, I wouldn't be able to follow her trail any further, even if she'd left one. PrimeCorp would eventually track me down and I'd have nowhere to run.

I had managed to forget all of that temporarily in the pages of my book, and I looked up, startled, when Viss's voice came to me over the ship's comm.

“Captain, we're here,” he said in a quiet voice. I think everyone on board was worried about the skip, and it touched me how much they cared about Hirin for his own sake and for mine.

“Do you want to tackle it now, or wait till morning?” he continued. “It won't cost us much time to wait.”

It was tempting to put it off a little longer, but as I was considering it, a knock sounded on my door. Hirin's knock, I thought, and sure enough he poked his head in without waiting for my answer.

“Are we there yet?” he said with a grin.

“We're there. Do you want to wait till morning before we run the skip?”

He shrugged. “I doubt anyone's actually asleep, although I think Rei could pilot a skip even in that state if she had to. Why don't we just get it over with?”

He looked so confident, so like the old Hirin, that I felt marginally better. “
Okej
, Viss, we'll go now. I'm on my way. I guess you should let the others know.”

Viss chuckled over the ship's comm. “Actually, Captain, they're all here already. Except Dr. Ndasa. I'll tell him.”

“
Dio!
Am I that predictable?” I smiled despite the worry.

The bridge hummed with quiet efficiency when Hirin and I got there. Maja sat in a skimchair close to Baden's at the comm station. Their heads, his dark and hers fair, almost touched as he explained something to her and I was struck by the sudden realization that I'd seen them together frequently in the past few days. I'd just been too preoccupied to wonder about it. Now I did. My motherly instincts jumped into the red zone when I considered Baden's womanizing ways, but I fought them down. Maja was certainly old enough to look out for herself. I'd keep an eye on the situation, though. Those instincts don't die easy.

I tugged my attention firmly away from my daughter and to the viewscreen, searching for the telltale dark blotch of the wormhole. From this vantage point, it hung in an area of space with fewer faraway stars in the background, so the spot where no stars shone was not as pronounced, and it took me a moment to find it. We all took our assigned spots—almost the same ones we'd occupied when we entered the Split, but Maja didn't leave her seat beside Baden although she turned to watch her father. Hirin gave me a thumbs-up signal and I told Rei to take us in.

This hole was a “normal” one, not like the truncated Split, and the swirl of colours was as spectacular as in any other wormhole I'd ever traversed. This time, though, they brought back the memory of my painful dream and I kept one anxious eye on Hirin. He seemed perfectly fine, and everyone relaxed visibly the further we travelled through the tunnel. Perhaps fifteen skips later we sped out the other end and into the star-spangled darkness again. Rei laughed with relief and the men cheered. Maja gave Baden a quick hug and my intuition nudged me again. Even Dr. Ndasa heaved a sigh as if a great weight had lifted from him.

Only Yuskeya kept her eyes on her screen. She frowned as her fingers danced over the holo controls.

“Anything wrong, Yuskeya?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I don't know—I don't think so.” She turned around to look at me and shot a significant glance at Dr. Ndasa. “Just a reading that looked off, but it seems fine now.”

Hirin was grinning widely. “I'm not sure if you're happy I made it through in one piece or if you're just looking forward to the pleasures of Kiandon
jarlees
wine. Either way, what do you say I treat you all to a drink when we get planetside, and you can use it to toast my health?”

There was hearty agreement all around as the others headed for their cabins, but I hung back to talk to Yuskeya. When only she, Viss, and I remained, she said, “The sensors caught a ship signature somewhere behind us when we entered the wormhole, but then it just—stopped. The wormhole might have cut it off, but it also could have been deliberately damped.”

“Could you get anything on it?” Viss asked.

She pursed her lips. “It
might
have been a PrimeCorp sig, but I can't say. I thought I should mention it, though.”

“They're a long way behind if the signature was just coming into range,” Viss mused. “But I'll keep the in-system scanners on maximum, just in case.”

“Thanks, you two. I appreciate everyone staying on the alert.”

I left them then, my mind already leaping past PrimeCorp and Maja and
jarlees
wine to the answers I hoped I might find on the next planet. Now I just had to come up with an innocent way to get Dr. Ndasa to take me with him when he went to find the researcher he'd travelled so far to meet. And to decide what I'd say to her if it turned out to be the woman I'd been chasing for fifty years.

Getting an invite to the Chairman's palace proved an easy task. I offered to help Dr. Ndasa get his massive pile of luggage and equipment unloaded and safely transported to its new home, and he accepted gladly.

“I didn't like to trouble the Chairman for assistance, when I had just arrived,” he confided in me. “He's already invited me to attend an informal gathering he's holding tonight, and pressed me to bring any acquaintances I liked. I think he's rather keen to have a wide variety of visitors at these salons whenever he can. They're a regular event, or so I've heard. Do you think the others would like to go?”

I told him I could virtually guarantee it, but I could tell there was something else on his mind.

“It's only, well . . . he calls them informal, but I believe the Chairman likes his guests to—er—dress for the occasion, if you know what I mean.” He blushed, the pink undertones of his amber skin deepening into a human-like flush.

I smiled. “Doctor, you needn't worry. Just because we favour plain biosuits, or in my case, jeans and t-shirts, while we're working, doesn't mean the crew of the
Tane Ikai
can't rise to the occasion. I know that Rei, for one, will be absolutely thrilled at the prospect of dressing up for a change. Don't worry. We won't embarrass you.”

“Oh, now, I didn't mean—”

“Not another word about it. What time shall we be ready? We'll pile all your goods into the groundcar from Cargo Pod Two and arrive in style.”

I went the rounds of the crew and told them about our invitation. When I stopped off in Engineering, I asked Viss, “How soon will Cargo Pod One be cleared out? I don't want those crates in there a minute longer than they have to be.”

He grinned. “Already scheduled, Captain. They'll be gone within an hour. Do you want to know the details?”

I stopped him with a wave of my hand. “No, thanks. Just let me know when it's gone and I'll be happy.”

“Aye, aye,” he said with a mock salute, and I continued my mission.

Everyone else was delighted by the idea of a party, but I hit a snag when I told Maja about the evening's plans.

She shook her head. “I don't think I'll go.”

“Why not? It might do us all some good to actually have some fun for an evening.”

She turned to look out the viewport above the dresser. “I don't have anything to wear.”

I knew that wasn't it. “I'm sure you could borrow something from Rei or Yuskeya.” I tried to joke with her. “I'd loan you something myself, but my closet's not exactly overflowing with dresses.”

She smiled briefly and shrugged. “Maybe I just don't feel like a party.”

My gut reaction was to let the issue drop, as usual, but this time I didn't. I'd seen a glimpse of a Maja I didn't know when she'd jumped down onto the catwalk beside me, and I wanted to see more of that person. I was never going to do that by walking away from her.

I leaned my back against the door for support and said, “You don't have to come, Maja, but I'd like it if you did.”

“Is that an order, Captain?” she asked, but there wasn't any bite in the words. I felt like they were an automatic response, the way mine had almost been.

“No, it's just a request. Honestly, I don't know what or who we're going to find there. If it's your grandmother, I'd like you there with me. And if it's anything else—like a PrimeCorp trap—I'd be happy to have another Warrior Chi graduate watching my back.” I chanced another smile.

She looked at me thoughtfully. “You're not quite the way I remember you, Mother,” she said. “Sometimes I don't know . . .” her voice trailed off and she shrugged. “I don't know what to expect.”

I nodded. “I'm finding the same thing. You're surprising me.” I grinned. “I like it.”

“I guess I have a couple of things that might be suitable for tonight,” she said finally.

I smiled. I felt like I was dealing with a skittish animal, this new Maja, and I didn't want to scare her off. Happiness welled up in my chest, but I kept my tone light. “Great.” I opened the door. “Thanks, Maja.”

She smiled. “No problem.”

With a lighter heart than I'd expected, I went off to face the daunting depths of my own closet.

The crew was as good as my word. When we gathered in the cargo pod I had to blink at how absolutely stunning we all looked. Rei was resplendent in a dress of artfully arranged amber and gold scarves that seemed dangerously close to falling down around her ankles whenever she moved, and a gold chain that looked like something from ancient Egypt.

When I asked her about it and she said, “Oh, it's a souvenir from one time on Xaqual . . . there was this exec from IndioCorp—”

I held up a hand. “Never mind. You can tell me sometime over a bottle of
jarlees
wine.”

“It's a good story,” she said, grinning evilly. “It might even take two bottles.”

Baden wore a pale grey biosuit interwoven with nano-optic fibres that subtly illuminated the planes of his body. Yuskeya looked quite regal in a swirling, multicoloured robe that molded itself to her curves and swept upward to meet the dark fall of her hair, and even Viss had traded his blue shipsuit for a dark synthsilk sherwani jacket and pants. I hadn't even known he owned such a thing.

Maja was radiant in a layered cornflower-blue and silver tunic and nodded to me with the hint of a twinkle in her eyes. I wondered whether her good mood had more to do with our tentative peace or the effusive compliments Baden paid her. She seemed anxious below the surface, however, shooting covert looks at me when she thought I wasn't looking. Was it something to do with Baden? Or Hirin? Our conversation? Or the prospect of meeting her grandmother? There was no opportunity to ask her, though.

I had been worried about what Hirin would wear—I knew he hadn't brought much on board with him and nothing, I was sure, that could be considered formal. He'd told me not to concern myself over it, however, and appeared now in a jacket that took my breath away. I knew it—from the crimson silk embroidered with two rampant ebony dragons, to the elegant wide, white cuffs, to the small yin/yang symbol placed just above his heart—he'd worn it when we were married. My eyes filled with tears and I turned so that Dr. Ndasa wouldn't see.

Viss had offered to drive, and I went to the furthest back seat in the groundcar. As I'd hoped, Hirin clambered back to sit with me, and Dr. Ndasa sat up with Viss. Hirin leaned over and whispered to me.