Read Finity's End - a Union-Alliance Novel Online
Authors: C J Cherryh
Finity's End - a Union-Alliance Novel (16 page)
He couldn't take being squashed in his bunk for three hours with nothing to do, nothing to view, nothing to think about but leaving Pell. Or the ship hitting something and everybody dying. "So what do you
do
when you're stuck like this?"
"You can do tape. Or read. Or music. Want some music?"
"Yeah."
Jeremy cut some on, from what source he wasn't sure. It was loud, it was raucous, it was tolerable. At least he could sink his mind into it and lose himself in the driving rhythm. Inexorable. Like the ship. Like the whole situation.
It occurred to him finally to wonder where they were going. He'd never asked, and neither Quen nor his lawyers had told him. Just—from Quen—the news he'd be gone a year.
He asked when the music ran out. And the answer came from the unseen kid effectively double-bunked above his head:
"Tripoint to Mariner to Mariner-Voyager, Voyager, Voyager-Esperance, Esperance, and back again the way we came. There's supposed to be real good stuff on Mariner. Fancier than Pell."
Partly he felt sick at his stomach with the long, long recital of destinations. And he supposed he had to be glad their route was inside civilized space and not off to Earth or somewhere entirely off the map.
But he felt his heart race, and had to ask himself why he'd felt this little… lift of spirits when the kid said Mariner—which
was
supposed to be a sight to see. As if he was
glad
to be going to places he'd only heard about and had absolutely no interest in seeing.
But they were places Pell depended on. It wasn't the Great Black Nothing anymore. He knew what places were out there. And Mariner was civilized.
"How you doing?" Jeremy asked in his prolonged silence,
"Fine." The compulsory answer. The polite answer. But he got a feeling Jeremy at least considered him part of his legitimate business. And for a scruffy, skinny twelve-year-old, Jeremy was level-headed and sensible. There were probably worse people to get stuck with.
For a twelve-year-old. The obvious suddenly dawned on him. He knew that spacers didn't age as fast as stationers. Sometimes they'd be ten, fifteen years off from what you thought—little that the difference from stationers' ages had ever mattered to him, and little he'd dealt with spacers except his mother. But—on a kid—even a fraction of ten or fifteen years—was a major matter.
He was moderately, grudgingly curious. "Mind me asking?—How old are you?"
"Seventeen," was Jeremy's answer.
Good God
, was his thought. Then he thought maybe the kid knew
he
was seventeen and was ragging him.
"Same age as you," Jeremy's voice said from the bunk above his head. "We'd have been agemates. Except your mama left."
"You're kidding. Right?"
"Matter of fact, no. I'm actually couple of months older than you. I was already born when your mama left to have
you
on Pell, and there was question about leaving me, but they didn't. So you're kind of like my brother.—We'd have
been
close together, anyway."
He didn't know what he felt, except upset. He'd been through the
this is your brother
routine four times with foster-families. He'd tried to pound one kid through the floor. But this was not only an honest-to-God relative, this was the kid he really would have grown up with, and been with, and done kid things with, if his mother hadn't timed out on him and left him in one hell of a mess.
This was the path he really, truly hadn't taken.
"I wish you'd been born aboard," Jeremy said, "There weren't any kids after us two, I guess you know. They couldn't have 'em during the War. They will, now. But our years were already pretty thin. And then we lost a lot of people"
Fletcher found a queasiness in his stomach that was partly anger, partly—he didn't know. He could see what he might have grown into by now, a scrawny twelve-year-old body that was so strange he couldn't
imagine
what Jeremy's mind was like, seventeen and stuck at physical twelve.
It wasn't natural.
It wasn't natural, either, their being separated. He didn't know. He didn't know, from where he was lying, what kind of a life he'd missed. He only knew the life he was leaving, with all it did mean.
Besides, all the sibs people had tried to present him had ended up hating him, the way he hated them… except only Tony Wilson, who was in his thirties and his last foster sib. Tony'd been distant. Pleasant. The Wilsons had recognized he was a semi-adult, and just signed his paperwork, had him home from school dorms for special holidays, provided a legal fiction of a family for him to fill in school blanks with. Tony hadn't ever remotely thought he was a rival. He supposed he'd liked Tony best of all the brothers he had, just for leaving him the hell alone most of the time and being pleasant on holidays.
Their not showing up when he was shipped out… that hurt. That fairly well hurt.
So who the hell was Jeremy Neihart and why should he care one more time?
"So," Jeremy said in another long silence, "did you
like
it on the station?"
The question went right to the sore spot."Yeah," he said "Yeah, it was fine."
"You have a lot of friends there?"
"Sure," he said Everything was pleasant. Everything was fine. Never answer How are you? with anything but, and you never got further questions.
"So—what'd you do for entertainment?"
There hadn't been any entertainment, hadn't been any letup. Just study. Just—all that, to get where he'd been, where they ripped him out of all he'd accomplished
There wasn't an,
Oh, fine
… for that one.
"I've got a lot of tapes," Jeremy said when he didn't answer. "We kind of trade 'em around. I got some from Sol. We can pick up some more at Mariner, trade off the skuz ones. I spent most of my money on tapes."
"I don't have any" he answered sullenly. Which wasn't the truth, but as far as what a twelve-year-old would appreciate, it was the truth.
"You can borrow mine," Jeremy said
"Thanks"he said. He was too rattled and battered about any longer to provoke a deliberate fight with the kid. The
kid
.
His might-have-been brother. Cousin. Whatever they might have been to each other if not for the War and his addict mother.
On a practical level, Jeremy's offer of tapes was something he knew he'd be glad of before they got to Mariner. He needed something to occupy his mind if they had to lay about for hours like this, or he'd be stark, staring crazy before they cleared the solar system. Tapes to listen to also meant he didn't have to listen to Jeremy, or talk about might-have-beens, or deal with any of them. Plug in, tune out. He didn't care what Jeremy's taste in music turned out to be, it had to be better than dealing with where he was.
He was going to see the universe. Flat on his back and feeling increasingly scared, increasingly sick at his stomach.
He did know some things about ships. You couldn't breathe the air on Pell Station without taking in something about ships and routes and cargo. Besides knowing vaguely how they'd travel out about five days and jump and travel and jump, he knew they'd load and unload cargo and the captains would play the market while the crew drank and screwed their way around the docks. Just one long parry, which was why he had absolutely no idea who his father was. His mother had just screwed around on dockside because, sure, no spacer gave a damn who his father was. Mama was everything.
As he guessed Jeremy had a mother aboard, but he didn't know why Jeremy wasn't living with her, or for that matter, what he was supposed to be to his roommate's mother. Everybody aboard was related. It was all the J's. Jeremy, James, Jamie and Johnny, Jane, Janette, Judy, Jill and Janice. Who the hell cared?
What was it like for a mother to have a seventeen-year-old kid Jeremy's size?
What was it to have your mind growing older and your body staying younger than it was?
Or
was
Jeremy more than twelve mentally? The voice didn't sound like it, Jeremy wouldn't have lived those seventeen years, he guessed, but he'd have watched seventeen years of events flow past him, in the news and on the ship. He'd—
Force just—quit. The bunks swung, and he grabbed the edges of the mattress with the feeling he was falling.
"
Takehold has ended,"
came from the speakers. "
Posted crew, second shift, you lucky people. All systems optimal
."
Jeremy was unbelting and sitting up. He figured he dared. His head was still feeling adrift in space.
"You play cards?" Jeremy asked.
"I can." He didn't want to. But he didn't want to do anything else, either. "Can we go in the halls?"
"Corridors. Stations have halls. We have corridors. Just so you know. Vince'll snigger, else. And we're off-shift right now. Best stay in quarters if you don't want to work. You wander around, some senior'll put you to work. Poker?"
"How long do we have to stay lying around like this?"
"Oh," Jeremy said, "about another couple of hours. Till we clear the active lanes."
"I thought that was what we were doing."
"Just gathering
V
. We'll run awhile at this
V
. Then step up again. Four or five times before we get up to speed. We could do it all at once. But that's real uncomfortable."
"Deal," he said glumly, and Jeremy bounced up, got into his bunk storage and rummaged out a plastic real deck.
Twelve-year-old body, he thought, watching the unconscious energy with which Jeremy moved. There were advantages to being twelve that even at seventeen you'd lost.
"Favor points or money?" Jeremy asked.
He knew about favor points. If you lost you ended up doing somebody's work for him. He had no money. He didn't know where he'd get any. He'd rather play for no points at all, because Jeremy handled those cards with dexterity a dockside dealer could envy.
"Points," he said.
"You haven't got an assignment yet."
"Yes, I do. Laundry."
"Oh, we all do that." The cards cascaded between Jeremy's hands. Fletcher bet he could do it under accel, too. "Future points. How's that?"
"Fine," he said.
He lost an hour to Jeremy. And was trying to win it back when a buzzer went off and scared him.
"Dinner," Jeremy said, scrambling to his feet to get the door.
Somebody, another kid, whose name Fletcher didn't bother to listen to, had a sack, and out of that sack the junior handed them two box suppers, little reusable kits containing—Fletcher's hopes crashed as he looked—cold synth cheese sandwiches.
"Is this all we get?" Fletcher asked.
"Galley's shut down," Jeremy said "It'll be up next watch."
"How's the food then?"
"Real good," Jeremy said "We got
real good
cooks. Or we space 'em."
Tired joke, but reassuring. Fletcher ate his synth cheese sandwich and drank the half-thawed fruit juice, trying to calm down. Very basic things had started mattering to him. He'd just about lost his composure, finding out food this evening was a sandwich. Shaky adjustment. Real shaky.
And here he was again. Been here before. Everything was new. Everything was the same as it had ever been. Worse than it had ever been. Spent half his seventeen years climbing out of the mess mama had left him in and here he was, back at the starting point.
The real one this time.
The lump in his throat went away. Sugar and protein helped. He figured he'd get good at poker on this cruise, if nothing else. Jeremy
wasn't
so bad, for mental twelve-—or a little more than that. Probably others weren't.
When they ripped you out of one home and put you someplace else you tried never again to think of where you'd been, or miss anything about it. You just built as solid a wall as you could, So there was just a wall. Just a blank behind him. At least until the pain stopped.
…
Two hours into maindark and the Old Man finally asked. "How's Fletcher?"
And JR, on the when-you're-free summons to the Old Man's topside office, gave the answer he'd predetermined to give: "Autopilot. He's functioning. He's not happy with this."
"One wouldn't think so," James Robert said. James Robert wasn't at his desk, but in the soft chair from which he did a great deal of his business. Cargo listings on the wall display screens had given way to system status reports and navigational data. "Has Jeremy complained?"
Jeremy had a beeper. With instructions to use it. "No, sir. He hasn't." Jeremy had seemed the best choice, over the junior-juniors there were. Vince was a heller from the cradle, always had been, and Linda, female and thirteenish, wasn't an option.
A lot of empty cabins. There'd easily been a place to put Fletcher alone, as Jeremy had been alone, as Vince and Linda were alone. But he didn't rate it safe for an uninformed, inexperienced passenger. Jeremy would warn him. Jeremy would take care of him.
"You had an encounter with him," the Old Man said.
Not surprising that that news had made it topside. "I'm zeroing it out. Waiting to see. Can't blame the guy for being on edge"
The Old Man just nodded, whether approving his attitude, or whether sunk in some other thought. The Old Man brought up other business, then, the general schedule, the maintenance windows, the expectations of other crew chiefs when the junior command would have to supply hands and bodies. The jump would come on main shift. Sometimes it did, sometimes it came during alterday. He'd expected alterday this time, but no, apparently not.
There wasn't a mention of Fletcher's life-and-death problems in facing jump for the first time, no special caution to be sure Fletcher got through it sane and in one piece, JR accepted it, then, as all on his watch, literally, as all things were that the sitting captains didn't specifically cover in other assignments. The juniors were all mainday schedule. There weren't enough of them for two commands, and they'd be working right up to the pre-jump. JR wondered whether that schedule were just possibly tailored around the new cousin.
And some things, like non-spacers, weren't within his experience or his observation.
"On the Fletcher question," JR said, in the Old Man's silence, "does he get tape, or not, during jump? Should
I
take him into my quarters and see him through it? "
All of them had experienced hyperspace in the womb. Experienced it until their lives were strung out in it.
Fletcher was definitely a question mark.
"Leave tape study off," the Old Man said "I'd say, not this trip, for him or for Jeremy. I'd say—you stay off tape, too. I want you able to respond."
"Yessir," he said
"Where he rides it out," the Old Man said, "is your discretion. You're closer to the situation than I am. Tell him—"
Rare that the Old Man failed to have exactly what he wanted to say, exactly as he wanted it
But the last few days of "Fletcher's lost" and "Fletcher's found" and "Fletcher will be another day late" had worn on everyone, and based on past events, he began to suspect the Old Man knew the uneasy feeling in the junior crew, and saw deeper into his personal misgivings than he liked.
The Old Man's chain of consequences, on the other hand, went right back into the decision to join
Norway
and leave Francesca.
The hero, the old warrior, said they had a peace to fight now, and they'd taken on non-military cargo as well as an outsider, both for the first time in nearly two decades.
But Mallory's War wasn't over, Mallory and the Old Man had had words of some kind when last they'd met, out in the remote fringes of Earth's space. And whatever they'd said, it was solemn and sobering in its effect on the Old Man, who'd come back solemn and sad, and not one word had filtered down to his level.
Tell him—the Old Man had begun, and found no words for what to tell Francesca's heir, either.
So there was no information for him, just an urging to make the situation work… somehow… within the junior crew, where the Old Man didn't, on long-standing principle, interfere. It was the future relationships of the members of that crew to each other that they were hammering out in their conduct of a set of duties and responsibilities all their own, the way
Finity
crew had done for more than a century. In a certain measure the Old Man
couldn't
reach into that arrangement to settle and protect one special case without skewing every relationship, every reliance, every concept of personal honor and chain of command the junior crew maintained
Fletcher had to make a Fletcher-shaped place in the crew. There couldn't be less. Or more. And it wasn't the Old Man's job to do it. He got that from the silence, when he knew that the Old Man had thought a very great deal about Fletcher
before
he came aboard.
"I'll take care of him," JR said, and received back only a sidelong look from the Old Man. When JR looked back in leaving, the Old Man was busy at his work again, clearly with no intention of asking or saying further in the matter.