Greenshift (5 page)

“That’s right.” He took
a sip of scotch. “You would enjoy the mountains. They’re the best part of Sparta,
or any of the other territories on Yurai, in my opinion.”

“Then you should take me
there, so I can decide for myself if it’s paradise.”

He couldn’t tell if her smile was
genuine or mischievous, but his body took her words as innuendo.

I would gladly take you to
paradise.

Maybe his thoughts read on his
face because she pulled her gaze away and changed the subject. “I’m glad
you suggested this place. I’ve never eaten here. Or any place this nice. I like
the name—the Rose of Sharon. Of course, I like most everything that has to do
with flowers and plants,” she said.

David liked most everything that
had to do with Mari, especially hearing her talk, even if he sometimes got
distracted in his own thoughts while she went into an especially long soliloquy.

“Do you know I’ve never seen
a real Rose of Sharon bloom? I mean, on vids, yeah, but you can’t smell a vid,
can’t touch one.” She reached out to the dual blossoms branching out of a
narrow silver vase in the middle of the table and ran light fingertips over the
pink petals. David nearly felt her caress on his skin. That warm, light feeling
in his chest returned, and for once he allowed himself to indulge in it.

So much of life and the world
seemed new and fascinating to Mari. She was a born scientist, contemplating the
little intricacies that David never stopped to think about. He could listen to
the sound of her voice all night. Its rich tone was soft and feminine like her.
Of course, it sounded more like a girl’s voice than a woman’s, especially when
she was excited, but Mari
was
only nineteen. The thought brought a
little weight to his lightness, making him ask,
what am I doing
?

His attraction to Mari unsettled
him, not necessarily just because of their age difference—Armadan men usually
didn’t settle down until after their fleet service and therefore had to seek
out younger amours, though maybe not
forty years
younger—rather, David
feared his captivation with Mari might be a substitute for the
Argo
Protector
, the battleship he’d captained for the past decade. An outsider
would say so because of David’s unplanned retirement, but he remained
unconvinced. He genuinely enjoyed being around Mari and not just because she
dressed so provocatively and had the little body to back it up. The slinky
dress that skimmed the top of her thighs, and had no back to speak of, was a
perfect example.

He’d had his share of women over
the years, mostly battle maidens, a few Socialites like Mari, but he hadn’t
considered really getting to know much about any of them.

Lyra was the closest
.

Then she betrayed him, though
betrayed probably wasn’t harsh enough for a woman who staged a munity on his
ship. The fleet eventually released her of all culpability for reasons David
was never privy to—a double betrayal.

Lyra was the reason he left the
fleet, his duty, and the only life he’d known. Perhaps that was really why
David was drawn to Mari—she was
nothing
like Lyra Simpra. He’d decide
later if that was a good enough reason to become involved with her. Right now
he just wanted the warmth to return. He slid his hand across the table to
encircle Mari’s. The touch stopped her in mid-sentence and brought her eyes to
his.

The server brought another glass
of wine for Mari and a third scotch for David. As he pulled his hand away, Mari
grabbed it again and said, “I like you, David.”

He caught the smile on the
server’s face as the man pretended not to listen. Mari’s sudden proclamation
and unabashed honesty, even in front of a stranger, made those warm feelings flame
a little hotter inside David. They seemed inappropriate for a former fleet
officer, but he had never experienced them before, not even with Lyra, and
discovered he liked the sensation.

He waited for the server to
depart before responding. “I like you, too.”

This small admission felt awkward
and exposing. He squeezed her hand before letting it go for the safety of his
drink.

“You forgot to say ‘Valhalla!’”
She held up her glass.

David hadn’t expected Mari to
know the Armadan funerary toast. “Where did you hear that?”

“I saw it on a vid. What does
it mean?”

“Actually, I’m not sure of
the word’s meaning or origin, only that we normally use it when saying good-bye
to fallen comrades.”

“Oh,” Mari said,
lowering her glass a bit.

“How about ‘to something new’?”
He tapped his tumbler against her wine glass. It could have meant Mari’s first
time at the Rose of Sharon, but maybe she suspected he toasted to the next step
of their relationship. He wanted more than friendship from her, and she was
pretty obvious about her intentions toward him, which made her the brave one.

“Boston Maribu?” A man edged
up next to her. His fine features, small frame, and saccharin genteel manner
marked him a Socialite. As did the overactive scentbots which smelled like a
mixture of musk and smoldering wood. It reminded David of a campfire gone
wrong.

Who told him that would be a
good combination?
David never did understand the vanity behind scentbots,
but admitted he couldn’t imagine Mari without her being awash in citrusy notes.

“I don’t mean to
interrupt.” The look he gave David said he absolutely did mean to
interrupt. “But, I can’t believe my luck.”

“Chairman Zapona, how are
you?” Mari sat straighter when she spoke to the man.

“
Dale.
Please, after
all the time we’ve spent together.”

“Then you should know to
call me Mari,” she said.

“Of course.”

Dale took the opportunity to kiss
her on the cheek, a gesture much less formal than a peck to the forehead, as
was customary in this circumstance, at least as far as David was concerned. He
already didn’t like Dale. He liked him even less when the man caressed Mari’s
bare shoulder while he spoke.

“I’m in the market for a
hydroponics system. Just purchased another freighter for my mining company. The
greenshift has been good for business.” He looked at David from the corner
of his eye and gave a little pause.

“Congratulations?”
David dripped a fair amount of sarcasm into his response. He knew very little
about the greenshift movement, only that the Embassy decided inter-planetary
commerce would benefit from hydroponics upgrades. If a ship didn’t have to stop
for supplies so often, like the
Bard
did, it could be more efficient.

Dale sniffed. “I don’t
believe we’ve had the pleasure.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Dale, this
is David Anlow, our ship’s new navigational leader. David, this is Dale
Zapona.”

David gave the chairman a
half-nod and received half that in return.

“It’s good to hear about
your new freighter,” Mari said. “Your company is really
growing.”

“More than I could have ever
imagined, dear.”

Now he was calling her dear?

David missed the next part of the
conversation as he contemplated all the things he wanted to call Dale,
chairman
not making the list. It was only when Dale asked Mari, “Are you still
available?” and glanced in David’s direction did their exchange suddenly
become more interesting.

“Yes.” The enthusiastic
response brought about an emotion David hadn’t dealt with in years. When she
looked at him like he would be pleased by the offer, too, he knew Mari had
missed Dale’s innuendo.

“That’s good news,”
Dale said. “Should we meet tomorrow at my home in Wright’s Landing and
discuss details?”

“Sure,” Mari said.
“Unless we can’t keep the berth. Do you think there will be a problem
rescheduling departure?” she asked David.

He wanted to say that it was a
big problem, that they were already pushing their luck with the dockmaster,
plus they’d now be two days later for Geir’s pick up, but David knew he’d
already shot down all of these reasons to leave when Sean presented them
earlier. It was like his own argument was coming back to bite him.

“Not a problem at all,”
he said.

“Then see you tomorrow, my
dear.” Dale gave Mari another kiss, this one so close to her lips that
David’s hand squeezed his glass, ready to smash it into Dale’s artificially perfect
nose.

“Yeah, see you
tomorrow,” David said.

Dale’s smile dissolved as he
left.

Once he was out of earshot, Mari
said, “I can’t believe it.” She tapped her blue-tipped fingernails on
the table in an excited cadence. “Just when I needed a new client, an old
client shows up with a big project. This work could last me the entire year.
What an awesome night, don’t you think?”

“Great night,” he agreed.
Or had been
.

He threw back his scotch, letting
its odd mix of vanilla and leather burn away the image of Dale standing so
close to Mari.

David remained distracted through
dessert. It wasn’t only that he didn’t care for sweets or that Mari talked at
length about calibrating hydroponics systems in multiple gravity
environments—the technical aspects of which zipped right over David’s head—what
bothered David was how a mining company chairman whom Mari hadn’t seen in a
year’s time seemed more at ease around her than David did.

Granted, he and Mari had only met
a little more than three weeks ago, but they had spent
a lot
of time
together on the
Bard
. Every meal, long talks in the elegant common rooms
of the former pleasure cruiser, the piloting lessons on the bridge….

“Are you going to eat
that?” Mari jabbed a fork into the chocolate strawberry layer cake on
David’s plate.

“It’s all yours,” he
said, still amazed at how much Socialites enjoyed sugar. It was like a drug to
them. Much like how alcohol was to most Armadans. He raised a finger to their
server across the room for another double shot while Mari finished his cake.
He’d been sharing dessert with her since their first dinner together, which was
also his first day on the
Bard
. She had been aghast that he could let
half a slice of buttermilk pie go to waste so made it her mission to take it
off his hands. Ever since, he saved all his sweets for her.

David liked this small part of
their history together—what he didn’t like was that she had a history with Dale
Zapona.

“What was it like working
with Dale?” David asked, trying to keep his tone nonchalant.

“Okay. I guess. It was a
small project, my first project for hire when I still lived on Deleine.”

David enjoyed hearing Mari relive
this accomplishment. He listened intently to her as he absent-mindedly paid the
server and guided Mari onto the boardwalk with a hand on her lower back.

“Dale offered me a position
back then, on one of his freighters, to engineer another hydroponics system.
This was before the greenshift movement even. But my family talked me out of
it. Said I was too young. I had just turned eighteen so it’s not like I was
that
young.”

David looked out over the bay so
she couldn’t see the grin forming at the corner of his mouth. He observed this
attitude in new fleet recruits all the time—they felt that eighteen, or
sixteen, were magic numbers into adulthood. At fifty-nine David still didn’t
feel quite like an adult yet. Maybe that attitude was biased, though,
considering Mari was out here living life on her own. He’d gotten a ready-made
family and career upon entering the fleet in his teens. Mari was doing it all
by herself.

“Anyway, I told Dale I had to
pass, cried for a couple of days…” She gave David a quick, embarrassed
look as though she hadn’t meant to reveal that part. “Then I took some
medical classes, hoping that would make me more employable than my botany
specialty.”

“Did it?” David didn’t
know she was a trained medic. For her to have studied everything that she had
must have taken all of her childhood. Then again, her mind was incredible.
David had always considered himself smart, or at least clever and strategic,
but Mari’s knowledge of every subject they discussed amazed him.

“Not really, but the local
mines hired me for a few months as a combination hydroponics specialist-medic.”

“You don’t find that job
description very often,” David mused.

“On Deleine lots of people
do double duty. Maybe because there are more jobs than people willing to move
there,” she said, matter-of-factly rather than with resentment. “The
mining companies are always trying to keep the work force healthy enough to
keep digging. Recently they’ve been investing in ways to grow food underground
so the miners can stay down longer and longer. That was actually what prompted
the greenshift since the same research could be adapted for spaceships.”

She paused and looked into the
distance for a moment, and David thought he saw a sadness flash across her
features. “I don’t know who would want to stay down in those dark and
filthy mines for too long, even if it’s just to oversee the equipment.”

He had heard growing up on
Deleine, Upper Caste or not, was tough. No matter where you went on the planet,
except maybe the industrialized cities, the economy centered around colossal
mining endeavors, and most citizens there derived their income from the mines
in one way or another.

Just when he wanted to ask if she
was okay, applause erupted up ahead as three acrobats formed a human tower on
top of each other’s shoulders. In perfect Mari style, she shrugged off her
solemnness and joined in the cheering. After the trio tumbled back into
separate spots, Mari went right onto her next thought.

“That’s how I got my suite
on the
Bard
. I saved my money for a deposit, bought lab equipment piece
by piece, and decided I could be a work-for-hire scientist while seeing the
system. And I was still
eighteen
at the time, so that’s how much my
family knew.” Her eyes opened wider and her entire face nearly glowed with
pride in the pronouncement.