Spin the Sky (17 page)

“Mr. Ulixes is passing through, an old friend of the family, here to see my father-in-law before he passes away, bless him,” Penelope says smoothly.

Gesturing an introduction, she says to Ulixes, “And this is my friend Wilhelm Asner. Mr. Asner’s Engineering Complex is fixing our solar array.”

Ulixes shuffles forward and holds his hand out to Asner, but just then Uri Mach popped back through the door.

“Forgot my jacket,” Uri announces. When he sees them standing there, he laughs, “Ah, there you are, Asner! Walk back to the ships with me, I want to talk to you.”

Turning to Penelope, he asks, “And who is this man? I don’t believe we’ve met. Hello, sir, I’m Uri Mach of Seven Skies Trading.”

Penelope opens her mouth to introduce Ulixes when something happens that Penelope doesn’t quite follow. In the span of a second, a look of recognition flickers across Ulixes’ face. Then the man seems to expand to twice his normal size. He goes from a broken old man to a large, barrel-chested giant who breathes quiet menace at Uri and Asner. Fortunately neither seem to notice.

Ulixes crushes Wilhelm’s hand in a firm shake. “Seven Skies, you say?” he rumbles in a deep gravelly voice. “Wonderful. I trust that keeps you quite busy, sir.”

“It does,” Uri says quickly, wincing slightly as he yanks his hand away. “And you?”

“Oh, I get around,” Ulixes says coldly. “I tinker here and there.”

Uri picks up the man’s frosty tone although he doesn’t seem to understand Ulixes’ sudden dislike any more than Penelope does. Uri shrugs, dismissing the man with, “Well, how nice. But not all of us can drift around the sky like nomads. I really must go.”

Turning to Penelope, his voice changes to a more jovial and gallant tone, “I hope that if you will not reconsider selling me your herd, you will at least reconsider my offer of a trip to the Seven Skies headquarters?”

Penelope smiles, shaking her head.

Uri gives her a charming smile, “Are you sure? I’m prepared to double my last offer. You could buy this whole colony with that and grow all the dillo-bears and minipigs your heart desires.”

“And disappoint all my other customers? Sorry, Uri, not even for you,” she laughs as graciously as she can.

Uri shrugs and turns but she catches a glint of cold anger in his eyes. Penelope blinks, thinking she must be mistaken.

Uri impatiently gestures for Asner to follow him while Ulixes folds his arms, clearly not planning to budge. Penelope laughs loudly, not sure what exactly the subtext is here, but wanting it to end.

Giving Uri a quick hug and guiding Asner gently but firmly out the door, she says, “Perhaps I will come see your colony, even though you know I’ve never wanted to travel. I guess I’m just a homebody. Well, I’d better go see to poor old Argos now, I suppose. I hope I’ll see you next week? Wonderful! Goodnight.”

Before she can shut the door, Asner leans forward and pulls her close to him. “Please do visit. There are things I would very much like to explain to you. Engineering can be more beautiful than you think, my dear.”

Then he hisses into her ear, “Beggars are like wild animals. You can feed them on the streets, but let them into your house and they make a mess.” Asner scowls at Ulixes significantly before trailing after Uri.

Penelope closes the door, thankful to be done with one problem tonight. Turning she sees Ulixes still standing, a mountain of a man in her living room, his eyes blazing as he watches the retreating figures of Wilhelm Asner and Uri Mach through the window.

“So where is Argos? What happened to him?” she asks, tucking a stray hair behind her ear and smoothing her dress.

Ulixes looks away from the window and loses some of that angry energy.

“I’m sorry, I lied,” the man says bluntly. “Argos is sleeping off a bender in his bunk. I thought maybe you needed some help seeing off the last of your guests.” He fidgets slightly with something in a pocket and looks suddenly unsure of himself.

Penelope realizes she is grateful for the help getting Wilhelm out the door tonight. It’s been a long, very confusing day and she knows the best thing now is to go to bed. As tempting as he might be, Penelope knows that she should not take this man with her and do something she might regret.

Penelope says, as gently as she can, “Look, I have been getting guests out the door on my own for years. I appreciate the help, but I think it’s time for both of us to go to bed. Our own beds, I mean. Separately. And sleep.”

She edges around the room, not trusting herself within five feet of this mysterious stranger. He nods and moves towards the back door before halting.

“Is that man close to you? A trusted friend?” he asks, pointing to the window.

What is he asking exactly? Penelope says slowly, “Wilhelm Asner has been a good friend and guest in my house for the past five years, but that’s as far as it goes between us.”

Ulixes nods, his face still turned to the window.

“And the other one?” he asks in the same hard voice.

Penelope almost forgot Uri. She says, “The same goes for Uri, I guess. A friend and a guest. He’s fun at the parties and, thankfully, he never pushes for more. Except he always jokes that he wants to buy the whole herd and boil them down for glue. Sometimes he has a gross sense of humor.”

Ulixes still frowns. “Hmmm,” he rumbles, deep in thought. “And your father-in-law? Is he really bad off?”

Penelope rubs her temples as she replies tiredly, “He is. Larry had a stroke. He stays in his shack at the far end of the property and refuses most company.”

Ulixes’ frown deepens. Scratching his beard, he says slowly, “With your permission, I’d like to go visit him tomorrow. Your, uh, husband sent me with a private message for the old man if I ever got this way before he did.”

Penelope laughs shortly, “Did he really? How interesting. Of course you can go see the old man. Or at least you can try. He’s not much on visitors and near lethal with that cane of his.”

Ulixes grins, delight making his face look younger. “Is he? Really? That sounds like the father that, uh, your husband described to me. I guess his health hasn’t changed him too much then?”

Penelope laughs, “It would take more than a stroke, a blockage in his guts and a bum knee to change Larry Vaquero.”

They watch each other warily for a minute before Penelope looks away from the lust in his eyes. The smile fades from her lips. She asks softly, “So Cesar sent a message for his dad, but nothing for me, right?”

Ulixes suddenly looks lost and he starts stammering incoherently.

Penelope says heavily as she moved towards her rooms, “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. Really. I need to get some sleep now.”

“Sure,” Ulixes says quickly, suddenly just as anxious as she is to leave the room, it seems. In the doorway, he pauses to catch her eye over his shoulder. “I won’t take advantage of you further,” he says, winking and flashing her a wicked grin.

Penelope knows a massive blush is staining her cheeks. She flees to her room, but she does it with a private grin.

VOICES IN THE DARK

Excerpt from Trevor Vaquero’s “Tales of my Father” Archive

This is the story I finally got out of Jonas Ulixes, a man who worked with my father after the War. Sometimes, it’s hard to convince people to let me record them. I find that breakfast is a good time to get folks to sit long enough to finish a tale.

—Trevor Vaquero

W
hat’s the recorder for? You want a story?

Holy guacamole, kid. It’s much too bright and much too early for you to be so wide-awake and full of questions. Let me drink my coffee first before you start asking me about parties and tales of your dad. Yes, I did enjoy the party last night.

It was quite… stimulating.

No thank you, Miss Penelope, I am not too warm in this kitchen so I don’t need to go sit on the porch to finish my breakfast. This kitchen is quite cool compared to other parts of this house. That laundry room for example, gets right toasty.

So, Trevor! You want another story about your dad, do you?

Well I just so happen to have one in mind, so pay attention. About six years ago, your dad and I were cruising around on a trading run in his tinker ship. We knew your dad as Captain.

You know about tinker ships? Smart boy.

Then you know what kind of danger there is out there for a tinker ship crew? No? The short answer is every kind imaginable, including the ship itself.

A tinker ship’s fortunes come and go and ours usually seemed to be going, but at the time I am telling you about, we were pretty fat and happy, pulling regular runs between the Hathor Mining Colony and the Poppy Ship by way of a few of the tamer ports of call. Your dad gave up making black market runs down to the planet the third time he got shot with a pulse rifle. He felt it had a poor return on investment once you factored in the doctor bills.

Now, I should tell you a quick thing about the Hathor Miners. They like their privacy. Really like it. They keep to themselves and they are very picky about who they let into their orbitals and ships. And being that they are the oldest, richest and strongest colony out here, they get what they want.

I don’t think orbital colonies would have even been possible if Hathor didn’t start their deep space mining expeditions out to find all those rare Earth elements that the Earth ran out of decades ago for the computers, mediboxes, and all that other technology nobody wants to live without these days. Indium? Antimony? Gallium? Unobtainium? I never can remember what they are called, but those miners can tell you the price to the microgram. The Hathors are the last of the cowboys, strapping themselves to rockets to drag asteroids back here so we can keep making stuff. They get paid well for it, too.

Anyway, we’d been trading with them for over a year before they let us farther than the launch pad. Also, Hathor miners are mostly men and very into being big hairy manly men. You know the types I’m talking about? Always trying to get to get an inter-orbital football league going or wrestling or something? But no one ever wants to grapple with these guys.

Now, after the War, they were having a heck of a time with their air supply system on account of all the dust. A byproduct of mining is dust and the Hathor mining operation made a special kind of dust that ate through lungs and air filters like it was ice cream on a hot day.

Miners are fantastic engineers, but not every problem has an engineering solution and it took them a while to figure out that this was one of those kinds of problems. They tried everything they could think of, but nothing worked. So finally they put a call out for a gene splicer to see if there wasn’t an organic solution.

Eventually one showed up.

A
lady
splicer.

The Hathors didn’t think a girl could fix a problem that had them stumped and this lady was the bookish kind. You know the type? Like someone’s wound her up a little too tight? She also looked like a good sneeze would knock her over.

Well, you know how rare splicers are so you know that you don’t get picky. You pay whatever they want and thank your lucky stars when they deliver. This one was one of the best and she didn’t much care for their macho attitude.

So… now this is a big secret I’m telling you Trevor, so you have to swear to keep it private. Can you swear? Good.

So, this lady splicer whips them up a plant that will filter their air and make it pure and sweet no matter how much dust they kick up. But the kicker was, it was roses.

Roses!

Vines of fat roses curling all through the miner ships! Pink and red and white and did it smell wonderful in there? Yes it did.

Like a flower shop. That’s one of the reasons the miners don’t let anybody in. They think it isn’t macho and, believe me, it isn’t!

Eventually, they trusted us enough to see them and that’s got to be one of the great wonders of man, right there. Roses climbing hundreds of feet through great crushing wheels and pistons and the like.

That isn’t my story, though. That was just a side note.

So, anyways, we’re cruising along in our tinker ship, minding our own business, when we get a distress call. Tinkers are big believers in karmic debt and any chance to get ahead and have the universe owe you a favor instead of the other way around is a chance we wanted to take.

The distress call said it was from a Hathor Mining Ship bringing home their women’s choir. Now, I don’t know why this should be, but as hairy and sweaty as Hathor men are, the few women they have are drop dead gorgeous. The ones talking to us on the comm were the cream of the crop: blond, blue-eyed, large, lovely bouncy… Well, you get the idea.

Not as beautiful as Ithacan ladies, of course, but some men go in for that sort of thing. Why thank you, Miss Penelope! I would like some more coffee.

So, we hail them.

Their captain starts telling us all about a cracked turbine that’s left them sitting ducks in the shipping lane when your dad gets on the comm and shouts, “Hey there, Hathors, how does your garden grow?” to show them he knows about the roses and thus he’s a trusted friend of Hathor people everywhere.

See?

For a minute, the captain of this
supposed
Hathor doesn’t respond at all. Even with our crappy, low-res comm we can see the looks on his face and the faces of the girls behind him. They don’t know what your dad is talking about. They don’t have a clue.

Finally, their captain makes a quick gesture and the most buxom blond of the lot leans over the comm so we can get an eyeful of all her, uh, assets and she coos, “Why don’t you come over and bring your stamen to my flower, big guy?”

No, I won’t explain what that means. Ask your mother.

Your dad doesn’t miss a beat. He says something back, cheerful and flirtatious-like. Then we say that we’ll be happy to come help them out and we’re on our way.

That was bluffing, though.

Your dad knew there was something fishy so we flew towards their ship as slow as snails, blasting them with every scanner and sensor we have on board. Now, most tinker ships don’t bother with too much in the way of detectors, but your dad had been blindsided by too much space junk of both the human and the metal kind, so he had every gadget available crammed into our tiny pilot room.