Spin the Sky (15 page)

“Don’t hurt yourself,” Cesar snorted in disbelief, but Calypso laughed. She pulled a meat pie out of her pocket and silently offered it to Cesar. He shook his head so she took a bite herself.

“I love it here,” she sighed, leaning against a vine two feet thick and heavy with purple fruit. “It’s hard for me to imagine wanting to be somewhere else. This was meant to be my home. I’m glad I finally found it. But that’s your problem, isn’t it? Your home is somewhere else.”

She leaned over and studied him searchingly. “Where is it you want to be, mystery man? Where’s home?”

Cesar shrugged again and found a reason to turn his back on her. What was the point of talking about it? He was never getting off this wad of spider spit and, even if he did, the universe would never allow him to actually get home.

“What if I could get you home?”

Cesar scowled and snapped, “You think you can turn ‘what if’ into… what? A pony for me to ride home on a rainbow? You’re a splicer, not God.”

Calypso grinned.

“I may not be a god, but I can do a little better than a pony. It depends on how badly you want to get home.”

“Don’t mess me around.”

“I’m not.”

It was Cesar’s turn to lean forward and search her face. “Could you? Why would you? What do you want from me?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Calypso shrugged. It was the light, casual gesture of a happy person who wanted the whole world to be as happy as she was. “I’m bored and bioengineering a spaceship would be an interesting problem. Plus, watching you sulk around the colony every day is totally bumming me out.”

Cesar gave a short laugh before he could stop himself.

Calypso looked delighted. “Oh look, you
can
laugh. That’s nice. Plus, to be honest, if I actually got you home alive or even mostly alive, I’d have
mad
street cred with the other splicers.”

Cesar wanted badly to believe in her, to believe in something again, but he was determined not to get his hopes up. He shook his head and walked away. She followed.

“I have this idea,” she said as they walked back to the living area. “But the thing is, there’s about eight different ways it could kill you.”

Cesar chuckled. “I’ve been killed before.”

Calypso grinned, “I promise you this will be something you’ve never done before.”

Three months later, they stood on a platform in the core as Calypso helped him into a giant bioengineered goldfish that swam through null gravity like it was koi pond. She bragged for a good fifteen minutes about the thrust capacity of the biomechanical creature’s expandable solar sail fins. Cesar would never tell her so, but he thought the shiny synthetic space-hardened scales covering the half-machine, half-fish creature were really quite pretty.

“So, just let the amoeba cover your face and try to breathe normally,” she said.

“Easy for you to say.”

Cesar watched the jellyfish-looking amoeba thing wrap itself around his legs and start working its way up his body. He dimly recalled an old Ether drama about something very similar that digested whole cities on Earth called
The Blob
. He was trying hard not to be embarrassed about being totally naked in front of this woman.

“Don’t be a baby,” Calypso scolded, slapping his hand away from some sort of slimy tentacle that was poking his belly button.

“Now, the exoskeleton is actually a vacuum-hardened goldfish mod. I turned off its pain centers so it won’t hurt to have you crawling around in its stomach, but for chrissakes stop throwing your elbows around!”

He stopped struggling and returned her glare with interest, but it didn’t stop her talking. It hadn’t occurred to Cesar to worry about the fish’s feelings. He thought it was funny that she did.

She didn’t even register his discomfort. “This part here that looks like gills are the air and water filters. Ever since Shelly showed up in her hard-vac butterfly last year, I’ve been dying to try this. My fin design is far superior to those butterfly wings. I was going to do a dragonfly, but then Shelly would say I copycatted her and you know where she can shove that, am I right? Isn’t it lucky I discovered you and your wicked death wish before someone else got you?”

Calypso frequently said things like this. It did not inspire confidence in Cesar, but once again he felt that old burning itch to fling himself into some insane idea and this girl sure had plenty of insane ideas. She yanked at something on his back and prodded a spot near his foot.

“Now, I’ve pretty much reached the limits of integrity on the goldfish, so I can’t get it too much bigger. That means you’ll have a very limited range before it, you know, dies on you. You should be able to get to one of the nearby orbitals, though. When you get to one, I think you ought to be able to sneak in through an airlock. They probably won’t let you just swim the thing into the docking bay because they are a bunch of paranoid jerks. But nobody keeps tabs on airlocks. Not really. If you get in and disappear into the colony quickly, they’ll think the airlock was malfunctioning, right?”

Cesar agreed with that logic. “So, I’ll fly a goldfish through space?”

“Yep,” she said. “We’ll practice today with this smaller fish suit in the core where you won’t die if something goes wrong.”

Cesar had a sudden image of himself swimming through space before getting smashed against the hull of a transport ship like a bug in the grill of an Earther automobile. But it was too cool not to try.

The first suit broke apart after three minutes.

The second almost suffocated him to death.

The fourth flopped to the left at odd intervals and cracked two of Cesar’s ribs. Suits five and six tried to eat each other and had to be put down.

The seventh suit seemed to work well, but the amoeba kept trying to crawl down his throat.

“I think this is it,” Calypso said on that final day. It was the eleventh suit and they were outside in true hard-vac.

Cesar nodded. She had explained that the final suit would be too big to test in the core. The only way to test it was out in the void and if it failed, well, that was that. But the smaller version, suit number ten, had worked, so why not?

“I’ll never find someone else crazy enough to try this, so please don’t die,” she begged him as they stood on the docking platform.

Cesar felt the amoeba swarm over him. The oxygen-rich slimy amoeba covered his face as the giant goldfish gathered him up and tucked him into its translucent, diamond-hard carapace. Calypso scampered into Spider House’s viewing booth and opened the docking bay doors. Cesar flew through space in a giant goldfish.

It was amazing.

If Cesar didn’t have an amoeba covering his mouth, he would have laughed with joy. He did two graceful swooping loops around Spider House before stopping in front of the docking bay where he could see Calypso doing a skipping little dance and punching her fists in the air.

“I am a frickin’ genius!” she sang into the comm bud in his ear. She’d wanted him to install a comm implant because “What are you a Luddite? Everyone has them.”

But Cesar refused and Calypso grudgingly set up the old earbud-style comm system that she repeatedly referred to as “caveman tech” for him.

“Thanks for everything. I’ll let you know if I make it!” subvocalized Cesar into the comm, turning the huge fish gracefully through the sky.

Calypso screeched, “Wait! You can’t go yet! This was just the test run.”

Cesar replied, “Why not? It works. I’m ready. And if it doesn’t, my last ride will be a hell of a thing.”

Through the comm, Calypso sounded sad for the first time he’d ever seen. She put a hand on the viewing plate, reaching out to him. “But I’ll miss you, mystery man.”

Cesar knew she couldn’t see him, so he flapped the huge fins slowly and said, “I’ll miss you too, crazy girl.”

He could see the docking bay fill with people; their mouths open with awe. A small child waved and clapped with delight and the others followed. Calypso waved and cried and smiled proudly.

It was a good ending.

The flight of the space goldfish was like a dream, a sticky, oozy, mostly uncomfortable dream. Cesar didn’t quite believe it was happening until it was over.

He popped an airlock, dropped into a strange orbital and snuck into the first sonic shower he could find. He watched the amoeba slime on his skin and clothes turn to dust. Then he stepped under the fan and felt them all blow away like a dream.

He accessed the Ether, hoping there was still enough money in his credit account for a meal on this orbital and a shuttle ticket to Ithaca. He was pleasantly surprised to find a large number of credits deposited in his account with a note from Calypso:

“What’s the point of having money if you can’t spend it on your friends? No need to tell me where you are going, mystery man. If you access this credit, I’ll know you made it. My bragging shall fill the void. Go home. Find what you are looking for.”

Cesar might have invested in nicer clothes and some gifts for his family, but already the fever was burning through his body. He guessed the amoeba slime in the goldfish suit hadn’t been as benign as Calypso hoped.

He could have asked for medical care, but that would inevitably lead to questions about where he came from, how he got sick and what he was doing in this colony in the first place. Most people didn’t have a sense of humor about stowaways and who would believe he flew here in a space goldfish?

They’d never let him go. After lying in a cheap rented room for two days in a clammy sweaty heap, Cesar knew he had to get home before he died, so that’s what he did.

Here he is.

•

Cesar opens his eyes to the pretty pomp and frivolous circumstance of Penelope’s party on the lawn of his childhood home.

Ithaca.

He still can’t believe he is here. He watches the cowgirls giggle while the men flirting with them sip margaritas. It is enchanting, the way they don’t seem to realize that death never sleeps, never stops thirsting for flesh.

As more visitors arrive, Cesar watches Penelope graciously show them inside with a smile until another tall, handsome man appears. Cesar watches Penelope let this man link his arm in hers and guide her inside.

Cesar goes into his dark bunkhouse sick room and shuts the door. He will learn to be happy with what he has. He knows he used up all his luck years ago.

CHAPTER TEN

P
enelope thinks the party is going rather well until the icemaker dies loudly. She’s been through this sort of thing before. The icemaker is quite temperamental. She sends one of the girls off to find Argos.

Argos usually makes himself scarce during parties. Large crowds confuse him.

Meanwhile, Mr. Finomus arrives with his platypig, made docile by copious amounts of lettuce and a nice mud pit to wallow in. Everyone inspects it as the jolly little gene splicer tells them all about how he conjured up the great beast to solve the feral carp problem they were having on his swampy little orbital.

“It also digests chokeweed like you wouldn’t believe,” he says excitedly as he pushes back his thinning hair.

His hair has a tendency to shoot up from his head like a white halo when he gets excited. Penelope bends forward to get a better look at the beast’s billsnout. She doesn’t realize until too late that this caused the front of her dress to drop forward and give Mr. Finomus a clear view of her ample bosom. The poor man is bright red and breathing like a buffalo by the time she straightens up.

Penelope takes him inside and makes him sit down to drink a mint julep. Five minutes later, he is still red as a beet and she is worried that the man’s heart might not bear the strain. Finomus makes the most of her attention. He clasps her hand and tells her for the fourth time about how his sweet platypig suddenly took a ferocious turn earlier and tried to bite her son.

Penelope doesn’t mind.

She thinks Finomus really is a very nice man. He reminds her of Piglet in
Winnie-the-Pooh
a little too much to take seriously. Besides, as far as she can tell, most of the flirting men do at these parties has more to do with their desire to win some sort of competitive flirting game against each other. It is not about her, but about beating the others.

Penelope doesn’t take it personally.

She just assumes men are like that and gently reclaims her hand from Finomus’ sweaty and enthusiastic grip. She does like him and his courtly ways. Also, Finomus is one of the more mentally stable and productive gene splicers currently in space. He owns the largest orbital factory for making bio-fuel cells and Ithaca could really use a bigger back-up generator. So she looks as attentive as she can while he tells her about his platypig.

“Of course, Piggy’s never really dangerous, especially in his swamp. He’s not used to the heat and the humidity on your world. I’m sure once he got to know your charming son, Piggy would love him,” the little man says anxiously. “I will take this opportunity to once again invite you over to visit my little colony. I flatter myself to think you would quite enjoy the coolness of the swamps.”

“I thank you for your generosity, but alas, you know how busy I am here with this ranch and raising my son,” Penelope laughs. “And I’m not a very good traveler anyway. I much prefer to stay here on my little homestead than fling myself through the sky.”

Penelope moves away to join a group discussing the latest gossip about sending a Spacer representative to the United Nations. The nape of her neck tingles slightly at the approach of someone tall behind her. She turns to see who it is and finds Ulixes striding towards her like she’s the only person in the room. He has a look on his face that makes her catch her breath again.

“We couldn’t find Argos,” Ulixes says, explaining his presence without apology. “Just point me to the icemaker and I’ll have it fixed up as quick as I can.” His voice sends a light shiver scampering down her spine.

Oh, it is so stupid! All this gasping and girlish foolishness! Penelope frowns sternly at the man, but he looks deep into her eyes and his gaze never wavers.