ARC: Under Nameless Stars (4 page)

“Thank you. For doing that,” Zenn said, watching the steward make his way out of the bar. “I must have forgotten my boarding pass. In my cabin.”

The dolphin looked at her for a moment. “You are welcome, Miss…”

“Bodine. Zora Bodine.”

“Zora Bodine. And your father is, then, Mister Bodine, I will assume.”

“Yes. Bodine. Um, you don’t remember him?” she said, clinging to the desperate hope that she could feel her way to something like solid conversational footing.

“No, I’m afraid I don’t,” the dolphin said brightly. He must know by now she was lying, but he seemed unconcerned. “I associated with only a few humans on Earth. None were named Bodine. Or are in any way likely to be your father.”

“No, of course not. My mistake.” She felt her face flushing hot beneath the scarf and moved toward the doorway.

“And I am wondering, Zora Bodine, if you would like me to call the steward back… perhaps he could help you return to your cabin and locate your pass?”

“No,” Zenn said quickly. “I can find my way. It’s not a problem. I’m sorry I bothered you.”

“But there is some problem, isn’t there, somewhere?” The dolphin crossed his mech-arms in front of him. “I hazard to guess that you are in a form of trouble.”

“No. I just came in here to…” It was no use. She knew it. And this dolphin knew it as well.

“I will tell you what I see as the facts,” he said, hydraulic legs whirring into action as he stepped closer, bright obsidian eyes fixing on her. “You wished to be seen as someone who knew me through your father. A father I have never met. You also show reluctance to interact with the ship’s authorities to display your boarding pass or to go to your own cabin. My surmise is that your trouble is awaiting you at your cabin. Possibly, you have no ticket. Yes. Or no cabin, even! Furthermore–” he clapped his mech-hands together in growing excitement “–I will wager you that you are… a stowaway.” He again held up his credit relay. “Shall we say ten units?”

“You… want to make a bet?”

“I would win it, would I not? You
are
a stowaway. I am correct?”

Zenn nodded miserably. With enough misery, she hoped, to evoke sympathy. If she could just convince him to keep her secret, she might still be able to remain aboard somehow.

“Yes, correct.” He seemed deflated at the thought. “It would not be a fair bet now that I know the truth of the situation. I withdraw the wager.” He lowered his relay and looked at her for a moment. “So, a stowaway,” he said, with what to Zenn sounded almost like admiration. “But this is thrilling. Are you running from unjust persecution? Is that it? And you could not buy passage on this ship… because you have no funds? You are impoverished, a poor wretch living only on your wits? Have you had your rightful inheritance stolen by low scoundrels, perhaps? And you are now seeking your remedy in an escapade formulated to right this wrong? I have read of similar events. In the printed-on-paper novels of several ancient Earth writers. It is the stuff of imagination and adventure. Is it like that with you?”

“No, not exactly,” she said, wondering at his enthusiasm but recalling that dolphins could be prone to impulsive behavior and fixations on certain elements of human society. While he appeared harmless enough, she simply didn’t know how much she should divulge. “I’m looking for my… for someone. That’s why I stowed away. I followed somebody aboard who might know where this person is.”

The dolphin bobbed his head at her. “Truly? By coincidence, I am looking, too. For someone. But that is another story. An adventure of its own, I can say, with drama and twists, and like yours, not yet finished.” He stood before her, hydraulics humming softly. “And you are alone here? What of the remainder of your family? You are young, and they would be missing you, would they not? I’m sorry, but you see how my need to satisfy my curiosity requires my asking.”

Zenn did see. It was perfectly understandable.

“But I am rude to impose my questions without offering hospitality,” he said. “Please, accompany me to my own cabin and we will discuss the mystery of your situation further.” He gestured to the door, but Zenn hesitated. The dolphin’s fixed smile and inexpressive eyes made it impossible to read him. “There is no need for anxious concern.” He raised both mech-hands in the air. “I am eminently worthy of trust, I assure you. It is a large and spacious cabin where we will be most comfortable as we speak. And we have established your own options at the moment are limited. What is there to lose? Nothing at all. This way.”

Without waiting for her to answer, he strode out of the room, mech-legs hissing and clicking, his tail flukes held aloft behind him as he walked. He was absolutely right, of course. There really were no other choices for Zenn to consider. Suddenly, she felt the full weight of where she was, the hopeless task she’d set herself. And then, despite everything she’d been telling herself since leaving Mars, she desperately, and irrationally, longed for the reassurance of Liam Tucker’s self-centered, annoying, towner-boy presence. OK, a little less annoying since he’d tried to come to her rescue back on Mars. So, where was he now? Had he found a place to hide? Or had he, like her, been confronted by a steward’s demand to see the boarding pass he didn’t have? If nothing else, Liam was a solid connection to home, to safety, to all she was leaving behind. She could try to find him. But where would she even begin to look? Besides, she couldn’t risk being distracted from her primary aim: find a place she wouldn’t be noticed. Then locate her father.

Focus, Zenn. Focus.

Realizing she still clutched Jules Vancouver’s gambling discs in her hands, she stuffed them into her jumpsuit pockets and hurried to follow the dolphin out into the passageway.

FIVE

Zenn wasn’t sure what she had expected a starship passenger cabin to look like, but the dolphin’s accommodations still left her looking about in wonder. Unlike the shabby corridors open to the general public, this large suite of rooms was well maintained and sumptuous. The walls were ornamented with richly embroidered tapestries and antique oil-on-canvas paintings of rural landscapes and portraits of people dressed in old-fashioned clothing. In the central room stood furniture with plush cushions. On a long table by the wall was a ceramic bowl filled with apples, bananas, kipfruit and what looked like an assortment of dried fish morsels wrapped in clear plastic. One wall held a large viewscreen that currently displayed a changing display of the ship’s various passenger decks, recreation venues, retail shops and other areas. Off to one side of the main room were three doorways leading to what Zenn assumed were the bath and sleeping quarters.

“As you can see, a plentitude of space,” Jules Vancouver said, gesturing at the room. Zenn just stood, looking around herself. She felt herself beginning to relax. Was this Jules someone she could trust? She was beginning to think he was. “Please, you must unburden yourself. Sit, do.” He watched her as she slipped off her backpack, set it down on one chair and sank into the cushions of another.

“So, Zora Bodine,” he said, pouring them both glasses of an orangish-pink liquid from a cut-glass decanter on the central table. “You must tell me of your adventure. How you secreted yourself aboard this ship. And why. Perwynk cider? It’s freshly crushed.”

“Thank you,” she said. She unwound the scarf from her head and took the offered glass.

“Your hair. It is quite red,” Jules said, leaning in for a closer look. “Is this a true color? Or have you altered the hue artificially?”

“No,” she said, smiling at him. “This is its natural color.”

“I am sorry. Do I presume upon you too much with my personal questions? I am intrigued, you see, by your situation. I am eager in fact, to hear your tale if you would tell it. Would you? Tell it to me? Or do I insert my nose in where it is unwelcome?”

“No, of course you don’t,” Zenn said. “You kept me from being thrown off the ship. You have every right to know what I’m doing here.” In fact, she thought, without this obliging cetacean, her so-called “plan” to save her father would have been over before it started. There was only one course to take: she settled back in her chair and started talking.

She told him everything. How she was in her novice year of exovet training at the Ciscan Cloister training school that her uncle Otha ran on Mars. How she’d recently found herself sharing thoughts with some of the alien animals being treated at the clinic, and how these “links” became so intense her uncle thought she might be having a mental breakdown. She told him about Vic LeClerc’s attempt to have the clinic closed so she could steal the Cloister’s land for growing crops to feed the struggling colonists in the Arsia valley. She explained how the woman forced her nephew Liam to help her, and how Liam had finally changed his mind and exposed the plot, causing Vic to be arrested along with her thuggish foreman, Graad Dokes. Then she told him as much as she could recall about how the Skirni had paralyzed her with some sort of toxin and then kidnapped her, how she’d woken up afterward imprisoned at the Pavonis launch port, and how Liam had found her there. Finally, how she, Katie and Liam had smuggled themselves aboard the
Helen of Troy
in the sandhog’s shipping crate.

“Kidnapped. This is simply amazing. But why?” Jules asked, pouring himself another glass of juice. “Why come onto this starship at all? Why did you not escape back to your home place?”

“Because when the Skirni was in my room at the cloister, I linked with his mind and… saw his memories. I know how that sounds.” She held up her hands to stop his incredulous objection. None came. “I saw my father, on Enchara, being taken. I saw him held in some kind of room, a room with medical equipment. Unusual equipment. Later, I overheard the Skirni say he was going to the
Helen of Troy
. I had to follow him.”

“You believe you saw this Skirni’s memory… of your father… kidnapped? Truly?” the dolphin exclaimed. Zenn was certain he was about to tell her the story she was spinning was simply too far-fetched and impossible to waste any more of his time on. Instead he said, “But this is most marvelous and deeply fascinating.” He rubbed his big mech-hands together excitedly. “And what transpired then?”

“You… believe me?”

“Why shouldn’t I? What reason would you have to relate lies to such a stranger as me? No reason I can discern. Besides, let us be honest: if you wished to deceive me in some way, you would have constructed a more plausible and convincing narrative, of which your tale is neither. Please, enlighten me about your life at this healing cloister. How does one so young become entrusted with the care of such colossal and imposing life forms?”

Jules listened with rapt attention as Zenn went on with her story, interrupting occasionally to ask for clarification.

“And you have flourished among these immense alien animals since your earliest moments? So, you are well familiar with non-Earthly creatures. And your very own mother was also such an exoveterinarian expert. But as you lived at this Ciscan Cloister home by yourself, your entire life, you had no friends to visit and interact with you?”

She considered his question. She loved her uncle Otha and Hild, of course, and Hamish and she had been friendly… but were they actually friends? Wasn’t a friend someone you talked to as an equal, someone you could share experiences with, share secrets with, feel… friendly with?

“There was one person,” she said, almost reluctant to bring it up, but feeling it was something she needed to talk through, if only to clarify in her own mind. “Liam Tucker. The human boy I came aboard with.”

“Yes, he was your close and tightly bonded friend then?”

“We were friends,”she said slowly. “And then things got complicated.”

“Complications. I have read all about such things.” The dolphin emphatically set down his glass and began to pace the room with excitement. “Yes. Yes. It begins with two characters of opposite gender meeting by accident. This initial interaction reveals you are utterly incompatible, and so this is followed by a lengthy period of sparring back and forth, tit for tat, you say one thing, he then says its opposite, culminating in a crisis point of some argumentative variety. But this was a misdirection. Upon encountering some new and even higher crisis, both of you are struck as by lightning that you do not hate each other, but instead – and quickly, magically it would seem – find you are both looking with the other’s eyes and, with a shock of knowing-all-at-once, realize you are in fact soulmates. Seeing that you are destined one for the other, you now commence to share your long, long, happy lives as one. The end.”

He took a deep breath and stood, mech-hands on mech-hips, nodding his head up and down, watching her expectantly.”I am correct, am I not?”

“Not quite,” she said slowly, reluctant to dim his enthusiasm.

“No? This is puzzling. I have encountered this behavior repeatedly in all manner of the old adventures and romantically inclined mysteries-on-paper. I assumed it was standard.”

“Well, it was complicated, like I said. Vic’s foreman, Graad Dokes, forced Liam to do the bad things he did, so in a way it wasn’t his fault. But when I said I had to tell my uncle Otha what was going on, Liam asked me to wait until he could get proof to clear himself. And then he kissed me. And then he ran off and didn’t show up again, so I thought he’d been lying to me. I thought his kissing me just–”

“I knew it.” Jules slapped his hands together. “It is the budding of the romantical element.”

“No, it’s really not. It wasn’t.”

“It was not? But the moment of kissing is always the budding moment. Oh, I see… he took you by force. He imposed his pulsing will upon you and this then became the moment of passion, uncontrollable, you felt swept away on the rising tide of–”

“No.” Zenn stopped him. “It was nothing like that. This kiss was more of a ‘thanks for not turning me in to the authorities’ kind of kiss.”

“Interesting,” Jules said, his voice calm again. “So. What then did you feel?”

“Baffled, mostly. Not that it was… bad. It was OK. I can appreciate the fact that Liam is my age, he’s not terrible-looking, he’s kind of… intriguing, in some ways. But he can also be really exasperating.”

“And yet, unless I am mistaken, you do wish to be reunited with this person,” Jules said. “So, perhaps he has demonstrated that he worthy of your friendship. Is he? Worthy?”

Zenn hadn’t considered the situation in quite this way. The truth was, she’d hardly had time to consider the situation at all.

“Well, Liam did admit he was wrong about helping Vic and Graad. And he came to warn us that Graad had tampered with the sunkiller’s restraints in the infirmary.”

“Ah, so he is not an entirely vile and disreputable person, then?”

“No, he isn’t, not at all. And then after the Skirni took me from the cloister, Liam followed him to the warehouse and tried to rescue me.”

“A rescue attempt,” Jules said approvingly. “This is surely the sign of his affection and care for you. Maybe this Liam is in fact worthy of your trust.”

“Well, you might have a point,” Zenn conceded.

“You are smiling at this thought,” Jules said, regarding her. “It makes you feel better?”

Zenn had to laugh at this. “Well, I suppose it does. But let’s not read too much into it, OK?”

“Yes. This is wise, especially since you deny there was any romantical element.”

“I think it’s safe to say my upbringing might not have equipped me for the romantical element. Does that make sense?”

“Ah, your faulty and cruel upbringing has crippled your development into a social being. I have read of this tragic issue as well.”

“Not cruel,” she said. “My mom and dad were great. But faulty? You might have a point. The truth is, I really never made friends when I was very young,” she admitted. “I played with kids from town, from Arsia City, like when we went in to barter crops for supplies. But I don’t even remember their names. And later… I didn’t want to go into Arsia, anyway. Because of how the towners acted. They didn’t like that we had off-world patients – that we treated alien animals at the clinic. There’s a lot of prejudice against off-worlders of any kind on Mars right now.”

“Yes, the influence of the Temporary Executive Authority government on Earth.” Jules sounded thoughtful. “Their campaign to ban all non-Earthly creatures made for unpleasant times for many beings. It is certain the situation would have been more dire had the New Law faction prevailed. The New Law would have seen aliens of all sorts on Earth simply exterminated, if the rumors were credible.”

“But the New Law faction never had any real power, right? My uncle says they’re just a small group of Earther fanatics, too crazy for even the Authority to listen to.”

“Honestly, I do not know the pertinent details,” Jules said. “Politics was never one of my interests. I simply recall there was considerable fear among the off-world beings during the time of the purge. And after the embargo of the Rift was imposed, no Asents or their alien animals at all remained on Earth. It seemed an empty world then. Emptier, at least.”

They were both quiet for a moment.

“But we were discussing your sad and failed socialization on Mars,” Jules said. “So, you are not in love with this Liam?”

“No, I’m pretty sure I’m not,” Zenn said. “Liam and I were just… friends.”

“Yes. The ‘just friends’ phrase. But your expression communicates the situation still contains the complexity mentioned earlier.”

Zenn sighed. “You could say that.”

“I also see that you tire of this subject,” he said. Quite perceptively, Zenn thought, feeling addled and vaguely embarrassed by the topic. “Tell me this, then: how did you adjust to it – growing into your upper years in the absence of peer-group interaction?”

“I had my uncle and the Sister. And Hamish, our sexton. He’s a coleopt – basically an eight-foot tall beetle. He was someone I could talk to, at least. But I was busy, too. With my chores and with school. And I had the animals, of course. They gave me more than enough interaction. Too much, sometimes.”

“I can understand,” he said. After a brief pause, he went on. “Now, there is the fact of these interludes during which you and some of your animal patients shared thoughts together. And the memory-thoughts of the Skirni. Do I understand correctly? Shared thoughts?”

How absolutely ludicrous it sounded to her, spoken aloud. Still, she found it easier to discuss the subject with this amiable dolphin than with Otha. Her uncle was a scientist through and through, and espousing a belief in anything remotely like ESP was simply not something one did around him. And Zenn had always been the same way. She was raised to base her convictions on sound evidence, to assemble the facts, weigh them carefully and draw conclusions from what the real world told her. But the links she’d experienced with the animals were infuriatingly beyond the logic she’d always depended on. No matter how she approached the issue, there was no denying the fact that she’d “felt” the emotions of these creatures. It was impossible. But it had happened. Science, for the first time in her life, seemed to offer no answer. And this was as deeply distressing to Zenn as anything else that had taken place over the past few unnerving weeks.

Jules sipped his juice, then lowered his head to stare directly into her eyes, as if looking for something. “So, you are an insane person, perhaps?” he asked her matter-of-factly. “Deranged in some way, out of your mind, a raving lunatic, hearing voices?”

“No,” she said, a little too insistently. “Of course not.”

“Yes, but a deluded person would respond as you just did, I believe. They generally fail to see their own mental disintegrations, do they not?”

“Well, yes, I suppose that’s true, but–”

“No,” he interrupted, waving one mech hand in the air. “I am of the opinion you are not a deranged and gibbering psychotic. There is something unusual affecting you, however; that we can say with assurance. You are convinced you share thoughts with these animals? That is a fair descriptor: to share?”

“Yes. It’s sort of like sharing,” she said. “But not thoughts, really. More like sharing what they’re sensing at the moment, but definitely more than just me being sensitive. There’s a connection happening. A real mind-to-mind connection. It doesn’t make any sense, I know.”

“Or possibly the sense it makes is not comprehended by us at present,” the dolphin replied, with perfectly sound logic. “Are there any common features among the times you experienced these events?”

“Common features?”

“Such as environmental factors. The weather? The location? Your mental state? Anything to bind together the events when they occur?”

Zenn tried to think, but her mind was too unsettled. “No, I can’t… There’s nothing that seems similar. I just get this weird sensation, like being dizzy or confused, and then I’m in touch with the animal on some different level. It’s hard to describe. And there was pain in my eye, with the whalehound, and on my face when the Skirni was in my room. Katie attacked him, and she scratched him. And I felt the pain that he felt, here.” Her hand lifted to the skin on her cheek.