In Ashes Born (A Seeker's Tale From The Golden Age Of The Solar Clipper Book 1) (19 page)

Gains waited me out. I finally said, “I don’t know.”

His smile—thin as it was—felt genuine. “At least you’re paying attention to the right horror, now. We’ve accomplished that much.” He consulted his tablet. “Tell me about this pile of castoffs. Why does it have you so bothered?”

“I just keep looking at it feeling like I’m leaving something important behind.” I shook my head. “I’ve checked and checked. I’ve got my uniforms and the few things that are important to me all packed and ready to go, but I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve left something important behind.”

“What are the important things you packed?”

“Uniforms, license, my captain’s stars. A couple sets of civvies and the artwork that was the inspiration for our logo.”

“That’s all?”

“Oh, I have a photo of my father as a young man. It was my only connection to him growing up. I met him on Diurnia, but that photo is still how I see him in my head.”

“Is he very different in person?”

“Not really. Less hair. More wrinkles. The same smile. Same eyes.”

“But it’s a memento from your life on Neris,” he said.

I took a breath and considered that. “I suppose.”

“Do you have anything else from then?”

I shook my head. “That’s the last physical thing that’s survived all this time.”

“You have your memories.”

“And some digitals that I keep. Pictures of the campus there. Images of my mother. Some of them I took. Some that I recovered from her effects after she died.”

“What else is important to you?”

“I have a collection of whelkies from St. Cloud. Those are going with me.”

“The spirit carvings?”

“Yes. I purchased some for trade when I was on the
Lois
. I was never able to sell them. I just keep giving them away.”

“From what I understand they’re very collectable.”

“I’ve had offers to buy them. It doesn’t seem right.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out the seabird. “This is mine. I had a dolphin for stanyers. It was a gift from a friend. I got that the same time I bought the collection. When I lost Greta, we found this in her effects and I kept it.”

“What happened to your dolphin?”

“Christine Maloney has it now.”

“You gave it to her?”

“I like to think that it found its new owner.”

“Anything else that’s important?”

I shook my head. “That’s all I’ve packed.”

“And you’ve left your old clothes to be recycled.”

“Yes.”

“Like a snake shedding its skin.”

I laughed at the image. “Yeah. I suppose.”

“Do you think the snake misses its old skin?”

“I’m not sure I’d anthropomorphize a snake to that degree.”

“All right then. Do you think you’re just missing your old skin? That’s why you keep thinking you’re leaving something behind?”

Something in his question caught in the corner of my mind and I couldn’t quite reach it.

“Don’t think about it. Tell me,” he said.

“I can’t quite get it. It’s not the clothes. They’re just clothes. Some of them don’t fit. Some of them have lost buttons or broken zippers. Boxers with broken elastic. All of them are excess baggage.”

“Stay with it. What else are they?”

I closed my eyes and tried to see what lurked in the back of my mind. “They’re old. They’re stained. They’re mine.”

“Yes,” Gains said.

I opened my eyes and looked at him. “Yes?”

“Yes,” he said and nodded.

“They’re mine?”

He grinned.

“What does that matter?”

“Our time is almost up so I’ll leave you to ponder that in your travels. Consider it a long term research assignment from me.”

“How will I know if I get it?”

“I don’t think you’ll have any doubt.” He paused. “You may need to work the question around a little. It’ll be a good exercise for you.”

“So you think I should take them?”

He shrugged. “I think that’s up to you, but you’ve already determined that they’re excess baggage. That you have sufficient resources for your immediate future and the wherewithal to obtain anything you might need but haven’t anticipated. Right?”

“Yes.”

“No doubts there.”

“No.”

He shrugged again. “Seems like you have a good handle on it and I want to talk about one other thing. That artist in town?”

“Erik James.”

“Yes. While we were getting settled you said you overpaid him for the work he did.”

“Did I?” I tried to think back.

“I don’t remember the words but something about paid him more than he asked.”

“Yeah. We did.”

“Why? He would have been happy to have you pay what he asked.”

“It wouldn’t have felt right to me.”

“Why?”

“I know what that kind of work costs. He provided us a valuable service, even if he didn’t know how much that service was worth. Pip and I both did. We probably would have had to pay twice what we actually paid him if we’d bought it from a design and marketing firm in Dree. And it wouldn’t have been as good.”

“But he undervalued his work and you felt you should—what? Teach him a lesson?”

“No,” I said and then had to pause. “Well, maybe. I don’t know. He kinda reminded me of me.”

“Now we’re getting there. What about him?”

“I don’t know. When I joined the
Lois
I had one skill that mattered. I could make good coffee. Before then I knew I could make good coffee but I didn’t know anybody would value it. The first thing Cookie asked me to do was to taste the coffee and tell him what I thought of it. It was horrible.”

“Did you tell him that?”

“Yes. In hindsight, my own arrogance staggers me.”

“What happened?”

“He asked me to do better.”

“Did you?”

“Yes. It was the bane of my existence for nearly a stanyer. I was always making coffee. I couldn’t keep the urns full.”

“So, how do you see that applying to Erik James?”

“Cookie taught me something with his little test about the coffee. He could have made better coffee himself, probably. He didn’t. The crew wasn’t complaining. The coffee was the coffee. When he asked me to make better coffee, he didn’t tell me how to do it. He gave me the opportunity to exercise a little initiative. I think he wanted to see what kind of kid I was. If I had the skills to back up my claims.”

“And James?”

“James impressed us right out of the box, but instead of giving him his due and letting him guide us, we told him what we wanted.”

“You felt guilty for stepping on him so you overpaid him?”

I shook my head. “Maybe, but mostly it was to encourage him to continue to exercise his initiative. To value his work enough to stand up for it. We didn’t ask him for a sample of the shoulder flash. Just a design that would work on it. He’d never even seen a company logo on a hull before Pip showed him the image of one. He took what we asked for, added his own expertise, and then did something we probably should have done—might have done if we’d thought of it—and looked at what other companies do. I wanted to reward him for that effort.

“Maybe I was paying it forward for the lessons that I learned from Cookie and Alys Giggone about doing the best job you know how, even if it’s more than is being asked for.”

He grinned. “That might be the most you’ve ever said in one go since we’ve been working together.” He stood and held out his hand. “Our time is done for now and you’re on your way out. Keep working on this. Keep thinking. I don’t think you’re a danger to yourself or others, but I think you’ve still got a bit of inner dissonance about who you think you are and who you think you should be.”

I shook the hand and felt myself grinning. “Thanks for all you’ve done. I have a sneaking suspicion that some of this work will be coming back around to me as we head out.”

His grin broadened into a full smile. “That’s the plan. So go do your part.”

I felt lighter as I left. He was probably right and I still had stuff I needed to work on, but the universe kept unfolding—and in its broad sweeps, I found I needed to work a bit harder to keep up.

Chapter Nineteen
Port Newmar:
2374, June 9

When I met Pip on the path, he eyed my second grav-trunk. “I thought you were going to leave that.”

I shrugged. “I discovered I needed it for a few extra things I purchased while here.”

We fell into step, heading for the terminal. The system primary was already well on its way to setting, and the shuttle wouldn’t wait for us if we weren’t there.

He started to say something else but I asked, “Heard from your father yet?”

“No, and I’m really getting worried.”

“How long has it been?”

“I sent it on the sixth.” He counted on his fingers. “Sixth, seventh, eighth, today’s the ninth.”

“So. Four standard days and it has to go all the way around the loop to Dunsany Roads and back?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Seems like a lot longer.”

“We’ve been busy.”

“True. Did you wrap things up with your therapist?”

“Yeah. I’ve still got to deal with some internal dissonance and think about whether or not a snake misses its old skin.”

He looked at me like I’d grown a third head. “Snakes miss their old skin?”

“There’s a class of reptile with no real appendages. They’re called snakes. They have various modes of locomotion—”

Pip punched me on the arm.

“Hey! You’re assaulting a senior officer.”

“I did no such thing. I slugged a wise guy. Qualitative difference.”

“I don’t think a captain’s mast would find it significant.” I grinned at him. “You know what a snake is, spaceboy?”

“Don’t make me hurt you,” he said with a grin. “What about missing its skin?”

“Nothing. We were talking about leaving the old clothes behind, and he asked if a snake missed its old skin.”

“Sounds like a therapist. Did he ask how you felt about it?”

I tried to replay the conversation in my head. “I don’t think so.”

He shrugged. “Go figure.”

The trip up to the orbital went without a hitch. The only thing out of the ordinary was when the cadet cargo master came out and shifted my second grav-trunk from the port luggage bay to starboard. He winked at me as he headed back to the cockpit.

“What have you got in there?” Pip asked. “Rocks?”

“Mostly water,” I said.

“You’re taking water into orbit.”

“Don’t judge me.”

He laughed and settled down in his seat. “Wake me when we get there.”

I thought he was kidding, but in a few moments I realized he’d actually fallen asleep.

It was odd. After all the times I’ve flown into and out of orbitals, I could count the number of times I’d landed as a passenger in a shuttle on the fingers of one hand. I’d never gone planet-side after joining the crew of the
Lois McKendrick
until I went to the academy.

I remembered the trips for orbital orientation courses. I supposed they counted but it only added the digits on my other hand, and perhaps a foot. We’d been flown up by a cadet, worked for a few weeks, and been flown back by a cadet. Somehow it wasn’t the same as this; I couldn’t really say why.

I had spent my entire adult life since then in space. The feel of the wind on my skin, of the warmth and light on my face? I’d spent two weeks on-planet but still longed for the familiar astringent scent of hydraulics and oil, the machine-scented air that flew with us from place to place. It was a pleasant change, but I felt more at home on the shuttle than I had in the rose-covered cottage.

And, unlike Pip, I couldn’t even sleep there.

I leaned down to peer out of the port and saw the orbital appear to fly toward us as we matched orbits. Perhaps it did. One of my problems with shuttle piloting was never being sure if I was supposed to speed up or slow down to approach the dock. I wondered if I would be better at it now that I’d spent nearly two decades speeding up and slowing down, depending on how you looked at it.

We paused just off the traffic horizon while tugs pulled a tanker out of its dock and gave it the first push on its long voyage to somewhere else. We slipped into the shuttle dock and the skids locked down with a thump. I nudged Pip with my elbow.

“Here already?” he asked.

“Finally,” I said.

He scrubbed his face with both hands and stretched. “It’ll feel good to sleep in my own bunk again.” The docking collar snaked out of the shuttle bay’s bulkhead and latched on with a soft snap. As the shuttle switched to station power, the lighting failed for a moment and then cut back in. “Looks like we’re here,” Pip said and waved to me. “Captains first.”

The cargo master came back, released the door, and began sliding my grav-trunks out of their slots. “Safe voyage, Captain,” he said. He looked barely old enough to shave.

“Thanks. Safe voyage.” I took the control handle and tugged my trunks off the ship. Pip shouldered his bag and followed me off.

“When did they start letting kids attend the academy?” I asked as we maneuvered ourselves and our luggage out into the arrival bay.

He shrugged. “Musta been last year.” He grinned at me. “That’s when you musta turned into an old fart.”

I snorted and we soon found our way around to the commercial docks. Pip led the way to the
Prodigal Son
. A long time had passed since I’d followed him from the shuttle bay to the
Lois
, but it felt like maybe it had happened earlier in the week—or perhaps a lifetime past.