Spin the Sky (30 page)

That was before she had to deal with sixteen Nullball teams bouncing around her orbital when the whole place is held together by duct tape and hope. The testosterone cloud surrounding the player housing area is practically generating its own climate.

Penelope tries to tell herself that the teams are co-ed and the women are just as rowdy, loud and ridiculous as the men, but it seems to be only the men that have a particular genius for getting on her very last nerve.

Last night, for example, some of the players from the Seven Skies team apparently conducted a “panty raid” on the local Sisters of the Sword nunnery and came away with serious injuries for their efforts. Now she has to deal with outraged knife-wielding nuns, players spurting blood everywhere as well as leaders from other colonies screaming to know how this could happen and that it’s Ithaca’s fault their team can’t play today, so she better fix it right now. The whole thing gives her a throbbing headache.

Trevor has been gone for nine days. Nine days.

Penelope feels she’s done a decent job of keeping herself together and working for the good of the colony. They performed a miracle just by getting things functional so quickly. Ithaca was late on a few shipments in the last week, but they fulfilled every promise, even if it meant working around the clock fueled by insane determination and nonstop caffeine.

Not only that, but they are as prepared for the Nullball Tournament as they are ever going to be. So what if she spends the few hours Lupe forces her to rest just staring at her ceiling? So what if the entire point of her existence was suddenly snatched away?

She will soldier on, even if she no longer knows why.

The worst was yesterday when her insane father-in-law, Larry, finally came careening onto the ranch to make his grand appearance. He was magnificently drunk. The old man worked himself into a pathos of tragedy that even the most dedicated Shakespearean actor could only dream of bringing to Hamlet.

“The end of my line!” wailed Larry, while actually rending his garments and tearing his hair.

Penelope was fairly sure that he spent over fifteen minutes developing a line of reasoning that ended with “All is lost and ruined.” But she blocked out the end of it by getting drunk, purely as a defensive mechanism. Her in-laws stressed her out in the best of times and this is most assuredly not the best of times.

It did not help at all that Lupe went for Larry’s feast of tragedy like it was an all-you-can-eat buffet during the early-bird special. She wailed and bawled and matched the old coot shot for shot on that moonshine he made out there in his squalid little shack.

Penelope wasn’t really surprised, but she was disappointed. Lupe has been mostly incoherent since Trevor disappeared. She keeps mumbling about having to confess to Penelope something about the drifter, but then the old woman bursts into tears and rushes out of the room.

Penelope tells herself it is for the best. If she has anyone to lean on right now, she’ll probably collapse like a house of cards.

Even Argos is less than his usual stalwart implacable self. He’s disappeared for most of the last few days and just mumbles about helping Mr. Larry when she asks. Penelope can’t bring herself to lecture Argos right now, so she just ignores his absences and tries to do everything herself. Exhaustion is a sort of escape right now anyway.

At first, she tried to understand Lupe’s behavior, but now Penelope is getting annoyed with her oldest friend. She wonders at what point she started considering Lupe a friend. Somewhere in these long years, the old woman and her Spanish cursing has become necessary to Penelope, just as her son…

She won’t think about that. She’ll think about getting the plumbing fixed in the athletes’ quarters before they start some sort of juvenile water fight or exhibitionist bathing in the street.

Yes.

Penelope has also firmly put that drifter into the part of her memory she tries not to visit. He still manages to intrude on her thoughts more often than she really feels necessary for someone she barely knew and spent so little time with, but it’s better than thinking about… other unpleasant losses.

Later, Penelope trudges back to the house after far too many hours spent dealing with various petty problems and overseeing the final preparations for the tournament. She is heartily sick of Nullball and would like nothing better than to be done with the whole stupid event. At least it keeps people from asking her if she’s heard anything new about Trevor and the other two.

Finomus, Castor and Asner have been by her side so much in the last few days that Penelope is surprised not to find one of them at her elbow when she rolls over at night. Even now, she’s only alone because she lied and told them that she has urgent private business.

She is sure Finomus is just a nice little man, anxious to help and excited that his team made it into the tournament. It’s the first year they’ve managed to qualify. Penelope also knows Castor is looking to recommend himself as the best buyer for her farm, but he does so with charming sincerity.

Asner she isn’t sure about.

He spends far too much time hanging around, getting in her personal space. Asner also spends quite a bit of time telling her she should sell the ranch to Uri Mach at Seven Skies, but she can’t understand why. Perhaps he thinks to ingratiate himself into her life by telling her how to run it? It isn’t working.

“God, could I be grouchier?” Penelope asks herself with almost a laugh. Probably not. At least, not until she sees who is sitting on her front porch.

Penelope notes a shadowed figure sitting on her porch and observes it without much interest as she trudges home. She was hoping for an empty house and a hot bath. Whoever this is, it isn’t her son and is therefore unwelcome. After a minute, her curiosity wakes up.

Who can it be? It isn’t Lupe’s round shape or Larry’s hunched profile. She left Asner, Finomus, and Castor back in town sampling the local beer and barbeque. Maybe Argos? Why would Argos wait for her on the porch? More bad news, probably.

Then the figure stands and steps into the sunlight. Penelope’s breath leaps in her chest.

Him!

She is half running, half staggering with shock. How can it be him? Ulixes has a joyous smile spread across his face as he limps towards her.

He catches her up in his arms and she luxuriates in his warm safe embrace for exactly half a second before twisting around to look for her son.

“What happened? How did you get here? Where’s Trevor? Is he hurt? Where’s my son? Where have you been?” The questions tumble out of her mouth too fast to make sense. She isn’t even sure the words are in the right order as she rushes to get them out.

Fortunately, Ulixes answers the most important question first. “He’s safe,” the man whispers in her ear, tightening his arms around her.

Penelope forces herself to breathe through her nose, slowly and calmly, the way her mother taught her to do when she needed to calm herself. She desperately wants to believe this man, but she can’t relax until she sees her son with her own two eyes.

Pulling away from him, she inhales his distinctive smell. Something about the way the man smells makes her want to tear his clothes off every time she gets near him.

Shaking her head to clear it, she asks suspiciously, “Where’s my son?”

He laughs. It is a slow comfortable chuckle.

“Trust me, he’s safe. He’s a little banged up. We had ourselves quite a little adventure, but Trevor is fine,” Ulixes says.

“Where is he?” Penelope persists. “Why isn’t he here telling me this himself?”

Ulixes sighs, pulling away from her and sticking his hands in his pockets. “Well, to make a long story short, there are dangerous men who will try to kill him if they know they didn’t succeed the first time. So we thought it would be better to hide him for a while.”

Penelope eyes him critically. “You have some explaining to do.”

“I think so too,” he agrees. “Let’s go into the house. I could use a cup of coffee.”

An hour later, Penelope is staring at the man in front of her as he talks. He says Uri Mach and Asner and possibly even Finomus are in a plot to steal her herd and boil them down for glue or something, all so they can complete some sort of secret project on the Moon that involves lasers that can fry Earth cities.

He tells her these men she has known for years are launching a secret weapon so they can take over everything. That they tried to kidnap and kill her son, but this man in front of her rescued him in the nick of time.

Ulixes informs her that he snatched Trevor from the jaws of death and now has him hidden away somewhere, safe as can be. This man in front of her also says he is going rescue her from the villainous forces trying to destroy her and Trevor.

Penelope isn’t buying it. This man is obviously deranged and talking a whole lot of crap.

He also tells her that poor little Julia died in the most senseless way possible. She asks him about it several times because she can’t believe the girl is gone. Penelope always expected the knife-loving, man-hating Julia to eventually join the Sisters of the Sword nunnery. Penelope cries for the girl, feeling guilty that she has little energy for grief. She is too busy worrying about her son.

“Darling, I thought about you and Trevor every day,” Ulixes says tenderly. “I’m so sorry. But I’m here now and I will do everything I can to keep you and Trevor safe.”

Like suddenly he’s totally in love with her and wants to be a father to her son after a few weeks of hanging around helping out? Oh, yeah. He’s nuts.

She tries to be open-minded and take his story seriously. After all, the last time she saw Ulixes, they were fighting off pirates in the middle of a space stampede. That would sound pretty unbelievable if you weren’t there. And with Trevor’s obsession about stories about his father, she’s heard more than her fair share of unlikely tales over the last couple of years.

While she assumed most of those stories are just fairy tales or the dreams of oxygen-deprived tinkers, that doesn’t mean that really bizarre, improbable things can’t happen to people or that the stories don’t have a grain of truth to them. What this man is saying did sound like a big pile of lies though. It’s just too much. Penelope hopes this is just hysteria inflating the actual rescue of her son who really is safe somewhere right now.

She nods mechanically while studying Ulixes as he goes on and on and on. How on earth did she sleep with this man and not realize he’s totally insane? It’s really depressing to know that she is still so utterly incapable of figuring people out. This right here is what they mean by the exception that proves the rule. Penelope understands that now.

She decided long ago that sex is not worth the risk and the first time she breaks her own rule, what happens? She goes and sleeps with a mentally unstable drifter suffering from hallucinations. The only thing she isn’t sure about now is how to get this maniac out of her house without a fuss.

He reaches for her hand and Penelope snatches it away and gets up from the kitchen table.

“I need to think,” she stammers, pacing around.

Penelope realizes that she is in her own kitchen and there is a bottle of tequila on the top shelf. She decides she can think better with a drink and pours a shot of tequila straight down her throat. The fire in her stomach clears her head remarkably.

“I understand,” he says, watching her pace anxiously. “It’s a lot to throw at you all at once.”

Now that she studies him, Penelope realizes that Ulixes actually looks a bit like Cesar. If her long dead husband had a much older, wiser schizophrenic cousin who had been thrown in an industrial-grade meat grinder once or twice, he might look like this man in front of her. Perhaps that’s why she was attracted to Ulixes in the first place? The thought makes her feel sick.

Penelope takes a deep breath and reminds herself to think clearly. Even if he is insane, the last time she saw him was with Trevor.

“Where is Trevor now?” she asks carefully.

“Lazar Colony,” he replies promptly.

Penelope closes her eyes and takes another slow calming breath. “Why would my son be on the Synthlep colony? How did he get there?” she asks patiently. She tries to be patient, but Penelope can hear the anger and total disbelief in her voice even if he can’t.

The man starts talking, but it is more insane gabble about a war buddy on a junker ship and saving some Synthlep sufferers from imminent death and other nonsense.

“Can we call him? Can I talk to Trevor?” she asks eagerly, trying to remain calm. She has to know if her son is still alive. If there is any possibility of that, she’ll listen to a million crazy stories from the poor man. He’s obviously broken with reality long ago.

“Sure,” replies Ulixes anxiously.

She hands him the comm and he dials through the Ether. She watches him tap away for a minute, surprised at how effective insane people could be. The man has no problems getting through the Ether. He nods once or twice, typing diligently before he winces.

Taking off the comm set, he looks at her mournfully and shakes his head. “We can’t talk to Trevor right now. Apparently, Lazar House is in the middle of a Sectarian riot right now and Trevor is caught up in it.”

“Great,” Penelope sighs.

More loony stories. The guy is totally bonkers.

BETWEEN SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS

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

Ever since the word got out on the Spacer Ether that I’ve been collecting stories about my dad, I’ve gotten some seriously crazy crap sent to me. I would have just dismissed this next story as the ramblings of another nutter out in the void, except it is from the infamous Aeneas, the
ronin
captain of the Ex-World Fleet, a wandering army clinging to their precious honor, despised by those who hire them to die in their stead. The Worlders sent their fleet to kill us and afterwards the Ex-World Fleet couldn’t go back to Earth. Since they hang out in the L5 Greek Camp, they are just a myth to those of us who live in orbitals from the L4 Trojan Camp. I figure that Aeneas wouldn’t bother making up lies to send to a boy he doesn’t know.