The Ripple in Space-Time: Free City Book 1 (The Free City Series) (8 page)

15. Keira Norton after hours
She was finally back in her
minuscule Free City apartment.

Keira wearily stripped off her
soiled eveningwear and slumped in despair onto her unmade sofa bed. She was
alone in her dim apartment, which certainly wasn
’
t how she had
imagined the date with Lev would end.

She sighed in frustration. The
tantalizing spark of attraction that they had shared together in the dark
School of Physics workroom had been largely extinguished in her mind by the
disastrous outing.

Keira crawled under the rumpled
covers and began to methodically review the star-crossed date.

She
’
d met Lev hours
earlier at a period-themed nightspot called the
Waimea Surf Society and Bar
.
The establishment was well known for its collection of ancient and obscure
dance music. To her dismay, most of the other women at the club were attired in
glitzy and revealing swimwear while she had come sensibly clad in a subdued
woolen frock entirely appropriate for the drizzly evening weather.

Even though Lev was outfitted in
colorful beach shorts and a flashy Polynesian shirt, he assured her that she
would fit in with the high-spirited crowd.

More than a few other revelers had
scoffed disapprovingly in her direction during the evening.

An hour into the rendezvous, after
consuming far too much alcohol in a back booth with Lev, she
’
d been cajoled into venturing out onto the dance floor.

It was the lone pleasurable
interlude of the evening, Keira realized.

She
’
d clung
drunkenly to him during a seductive and swirlingly slow instrumental. Her hands
crept up his muscled back and glided through his soft black curls. Even now,
hours later, Keira could recall his inviting scent.

But eventually the song and the
intimate erotic fantasy ended.

Keira had held him close for far
too long when the sedate instrumental was replaced by a snappy song. Lev
twirled apart from her with an embarrassed grin. While the others around her
bounced and spun to the catchy tune, Keira stood alone in jilted disbelief.

The ditzy lyrics were still stuck
in her head,
“
and she
’
ll have fun, fun, fun till her
daddy takes the T
’
bird away.
”

Lev coaxed her into dancing again
but it wasn
’
t the same. As she tried to keep up with the energetic
crowd, the lyrics seemed to mock her many missteps and blunders,
“
You look like ace now, you look like an ace....
”

The jostling and gyrating had
caused the excess of alcohol in her stomach to make itself painfully known.
When it had threatened to spew out, Keira sprinted away to the lavatory in
panic.

As she huddled over the commode
vomiting, she could hear the revelers on the dance floor stomping and cheering
at the end of the ancient surf song.

She cleaned herself up and crept
back to their booth.

To her horror, she watched from
the distant vantage point as Lev merrily danced with a plump blonde woman who
popped repeatedly out of her too-tight bikini bra.

Why had he abandoned her for some
trollop at the first signs of trouble?

When the tune ended, Lev beckoned
to her to join them but Keira shook her head in dread. She certainly didn’t
want to risk being cast by the catty regulars as the dowdy chick that retched
all over the dance floor.

Perhaps she had imagined the
little glint of understanding in Lev
’
s eyes as he stood there. After
several seconds of staring at her from across the dance floor, he trotted back
to her.

“
This is Desiree!
”
He had tugged the sparsely clad
woman to the booth with him,
“
Des was my first housemate and I
haven
’
t seen her in months!
”

Lev slid into the booth and
gestured for Desiree to join them. The heavyset beach babe complied.

“
Des this is Keira. Keira this is Desiree.
”

The chubby interloper smiled,
“
Hi Keira! I hear that you two are working together on that awful mess at
the Moon base.
”
Desiree stroked Lev
’
s shoulder fondly,
“
Are you a grad student too?
”

“
No, I have a real job with the Free City Fiefdom Liaison
Office,” she’d replied curtly.

“Oh,” Desiree shook her head
disdainfully,
“
that doesn
’
t sound like much fun.
”

“
Des is an amazing artist. She painted fantastic murals all
over the walls at my house.
”

As she laughed at his flattery,
her jiggling breasts threatened to break free of the insufficient fabric that
restrained them.
“
Hey, you two; I
’
ve got some really excellent
katchah
.
Do you want some?
”

“
Sure,
”
Lev chirped,
“
I
’
ll take a bit.
”

Keira had frowned disapprovingly,
“
None for me.
”

Katchah
was one of dozens of illegal and mildly hallucinogenic
herbs that filtered into the counter culture of Free City from the lawless
domains of the Warlords. Years ago, Keira
’
s own antiestablishment parents
had been nabbed when they imported several kilos of the banned substance. They
had paid a substantial fine for the transgression and nearly lost their coveted
Importer
’
s License.

Keira winced; even now her parents
continued to sneak the profitable contraband across the border despite her
repeated admonishments.

Desiree produced a thin and
elaborately decorated pouch from her bikini bottom. Her stubby fingers
retrieved a sticky hunk of shredded brown leaves and she held it temptingly in
front of Lev.

He eagerly snapped up the offering
and kissed Desiree
’
s cheek in thanks. She pressed a small lump into her own
mouth.

The drug seemed to cause her table
partners to fixate on each other. As the evening wore on, they spoke less and
less to her and more and more to each other in progressively more
incomprehensible and slurred sentences.

Finally when her queasiness had
subsided, Keira left them chortling gleefully at their own terrible jokes.

She
’
d whimpered
gloomily in the nearly empty transport back to her apartment building.

Why had she been attracted to Lev
in the first place?

He was self-indulgent and often
maddeningly unfocused, not unlike her parents, Keira realized with a start. He
seemed far more interested in immediate gratification than long-term
fulfillment. Perhaps that was why he had apparently selected Desiree
’
s offer of quick thrills to her own possibilities of eventual stability
and perhaps even love.

In the dark and quiet apartment
bed, Keira pressed her eyes tightly closed; he was completely wrong for her and
she should just get on with other more promising matters.

But still, she sighed heavily,
there was just something special about Lev.

16. A lamentable lack of mirth
Jana floated aimlessly in her dark
and miserable cell.

She drew her attention back to the
matter at hand,
“
Or, if there were a sympathy in choice, War, death, or
sickness did lay siege to it, Making it momentany as a sound.
”

This was the sixth recital of
A
Midsummer Night's Dream
that she
’
d forced herself to endure since
she
’
d been taken hostage. Three and a half decades earlier it
had been her favorite work of Shakespeare, now she would have done almost
anything to enjoy
Much Ado About Nothing
or
Macbeth
instead.

Where was she?

Jana chortled at the irony of the
question; she was lost in the Solar System and lost in
A Midsummer Night's
Dream.

A midsummer night in the Solar
System....

Jana stiffened in dread; she was
losing her mind.

OK, keep going.

She took a deep breath,
“
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream, Brief as the lightning in the
collied night.
”

Jana cackled hoarsely; she
remembered a naive girl in the back row of her Ancient English Lit class asking
the Professor if a
‘
collied night
’
had something to do with
sheepdogs shepherding in the evening.

Regrettably her tenuous focus was
waning; she would have to come back to Shakespeare later.

She tapped her fingertips to her
thumb and tallied up weeks. It was late June or perhaps early July. Far off on
the hospitable blue Earth, someone was surely enjoying a genuine midsummer
’
s night.

Hopefully Lev had adjusted to her
disappearance. She dearly missed the long distance daily chit-chat that they
had shared; she describing the intricacies and intrigue of her classified
research and he chronicling his gregarious social interactions and his newfound
pursuit of fun.

Jana
’
s shoulders
slumped in despair; she had lost everything and everyone with no prospect of
regaining either.

He had been gifted from the
beginning, she reminisced. As a two-year-old, Lev would toddle around their
townhouse in Free City and methodically describe everything that he saw in
startling detail,
‘
Mommy, this is the parlor. The walls are white. Under the
gray sofa is a yellow ball with light blue stripes and big red stars. Out of
the window, I can see the transports on Breton Street.
’

A keen sense of the physical world
had come easily to him, social skills had not.

In those aspects they had been the
same, Jana winced. She had quite willingly forgone the long and uncertain path
of romance for the solitude of a predictable and secure life as a Physicist.

When the task of completing her
education had been achieved, she methodically set about producing a child.

Jana had eschewed all of the
ordinary complex social interactions with men and instead chose to be
clinically inseminated with the genetic material of an anonymous and randomly
selected academic from the University.

Brainy parents had begat a
brilliant son, she wryly noted.

When he was young she had
dutifully carted him off to peewee football and preteen art classes. They had
both struggled mightily to interact with their peers at the sports venues and
art studios; neither had much luck.

Just as she had done in Buenos
Aires many years earlier, Lev excelled in school. While he spent progressively
more time studying the complexities of Literature, Mathematics and especially
the Sciences, she had been drawn further into her own pursuit of Ultra Energy
Physics. He had earned a High School diploma with highest honors just as she
had been awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics.

Lev had of course attended Free
City University.

In his second year he
’
d sat through the final class that she
’
d taught as a
Senior Professor before accepting a staff researcher
’
s position at the small High Energy Lab in the Physics Department
basement. Not surprisingly he had easily earned the highest marks in the huge
lecture hall of over three hundred students.

When he started his graduate
studies, Jana was promoted to the Chief Researcher
’
s position at the Lunar Ultra Energy Lab.

After she
’
d left Earth, he
’
d wandered off course.

People told her that she should be
dismayed by his supposed failings, but she knew better. After more than twenty
years of excelling at academics he was finally delving into the much more
difficult to fathom subtleties of human interactions.

Lev’s long string of girlfriends
and casual lovers had much more to do with systematically comparing different
female personas than promiscuity.

Eventually he would settle on one
that he liked, she chuckled.

Jana wriggled around and floated
to the porthole. The view was exactly the same as it had been for days:
hundreds of gray asteroids slowly tumbled together through cold dark space.

Wait!

She pressed her cheek against the
frigid window and strained to resolve the tiny anomaly.

There was color!

A minuscule red speck flashed on
and off at the extreme limit of what Jana could see through the porthole. It
was a ship of some kind, she finally decided.

For hours Jana studied the
approaching vessel until the strain in her neck and the immense craft’s slow
trajectory past the
Butin Belle
made further viewing impossible.

• • •

“
I saw something!
”
she blurted out to Bosco as he
dragged her backwards through the dim passageway.

“
Yes you did, you old hag.
”
He tugged her
past a thick bulkhead door.

Her hands were tightly bound
behind her back but Jana managed to twist around to see him. At this point,
even the crude and volatile thug was preferable to the slow numbing madness of
prolonged solitude.
“
Can I call you Bosco?
”

“
Boz,
”
a twitchy half smile darted
across his scruffy face.

“
It was a ship, wasn
’
t it Boz.
”

He stopped at a closed hatchway
and spun her around to face him,
“
It’s the
Lightning
.
”

Jana watched him slide his
fingertips over the door
’
s security interface. If she
ever escaped from her cell, this was as far as she
’
d get without being detected.

“
It was supposed to be here weeks ago,
”
Bosco yanked open the door,
“
but the lugheads that hijacked
it couldn
’
t figure out how to board a robotic ship.
”
He rolled his eyes contemptuously,
“
Shipjacks, my
ass!
”

Jana
’
s senses were
slowly returning,
“
Why are we and the
Lightning
out here in the middle
of nowhere, Boz?
”

He stared unnervingly at her for
several seconds,
“
You talk too much.
”

Jana forced a smile; if she was
ever going to manipulate the pirates they would have to view her as benign and
friendly.
“
Sorry, I
’
m just really happy to chat with
someone.
”

“
We
’
re gonna get you back together
with your friends later today,
”
Boz pulled her gruffly into the
control room,
“
you can talk all you want with them.
”

“
Ah, Doctor Fesai,” Captain Gristle said, “it’s good to see
you again.”

Bosco secured her binding straps
to the side of a stout control panel before propelling himself out of the
pilothouse.

As Jana watched the Captain tend
to the controls, she resolved to trick him into revealing more information to
her.
“
When are we docking with the
Lightning
?
”

He looked up at her with some
annoyance.

She smiled innocently at the man.

“
In about an hour if everything goes right,
”
the Captain studied a small display,
“
then we
’
ll move you and the others on to the
Xenon Lightning
and put you
to work.
”

Jana suppressed the tightening
sense of dread that threatened to overwhelm her.
“
What do you want
us to do, Mr. Gristle?
”
she asked cheerily.

“
Our employer would like you fabricate some devices using
those matter/antimatter pairings that we brought along from the Moon lab.
”

“
OH,
”
she nodded, “I’m sure we could
do that for you guys.
”

Jana
’
s heart was
racing; the pirates would almost certainly want her to produce some sort of
small and very destructive weapons with the dangerous and finicky materials. If
she could win their confidence to the point that they became lax about
overseeing her, she might be able to thwart their efforts.

Far down the passageway, Jana
could hear Boz jostling about with one of the bulkhead doors.

• • •

Bosco shoved the two young
deckhands out of the way as he blustered into the large compartment,
“
I told you morons to stay away from this friggin
’
thing!
”
He studied the robust basketball-sized sphere clamped into
the launching fixture of the deployment bay.

“
It
’
s worth more than both of you
lowlifes put together.
”

His hands slid over the warm
smooth surface of the object, it had an odd magnetic-like quality that clamped
his palms firmly to it. Boz couldn
’
t fathom why the contents of the
orb behaved in this way, but he savored the strange sensation nevertheless.

The deckhands watched with some
amusement as the burly second in command struggled to jerk his hands away from
the device.

Boz floated to the storage rack
and studied the profusion of messenger tugs that were kept there. An unforeseen
benefit of hijacking a ship that was outfitted as a delivery vessel was the
large supply of the tiny expendable vehicles onboard that were used to nudge
packages from the passing ship to customers waiting below on the surface of a
planet or moon.

He selected the smallest
long-distance/dense atmosphere tug on the rack. Boz pried open the hatch of the
grapefruit-sized robot and entered the destination coordinates. He sealed the
device and pressed it against the larger object sitting in the launch fixture.
The two machines clung together.

Bosco smiled briefly at the
interlocked spheres before gesturing towards the door.

The crewman followed him
obediently out of the deployment bay.

• • •

Jana pressed the
‘
send
’
button in panic.

She stared at the open hatchway as
Olin Gristle propelled himself back into the control room. He had been gone for
perhaps a minute, but she had managed to squirm awkwardly around and hastily
tap out a message on the communication console. Hopefully it was on its way to
the intended recipient right now.

Jana smiled innocently to the
Captain as he returned, but fortunately he was preoccupied with the handheld
display that he carried.

After several seconds of holding
her breath in fear, she finally relaxed; apparently she’d gotten away with the
little misdeed.

A worn-out old crewman peered into
the control room.

“
Excuse me, Sir,
”
the scarred and grizzled pirate
beckoned,
“
we have the men prisoners.
”

Captain Gristle waved them into
the cramped room.

The elderly crewman led the
downcast chain gang consisting of four of her colleagues from the Lab into the
pilothouse. The first was an unlucky janitor who happened to be in the
Containment Facility when the kidnappers had forced their entry.