Spin the Sky (4 page)

Whatever he finds, Cesar resolves to be satisfied in the knowing of it and move on. Cesar is not a man given to deep thinking or conflicting philosophies so he comes spoiling for a fight, half dead on his feet.

The ship gives a final shudder as it locks into place against the floating little world and then a voice over the intercoms announces they just docked with Ithaca.

“Named
Ithaca
by my lunatic father,” Cesar mutters.

He hears the final set of grinding clicks that indicate everything was locked into place. Space colonies, regardless of their design, always spin. Ships always dock on the part that doesn’t spin, so that part never has much gravity. Which is why Cesar’s hair seems even wilder, floating around his face.

Cesar steps toward the airlock, wobbling just slightly as his vision blurs. Fortunately, his grav boots hold him tightly to the floor. Cesar is extremely sick and he knows it. Weeks of battling some sort of bug have him fevered and weak. On the trip here, he did everything he could to appear healthy. Many orbitals refuse to allow a sick man entry. Others might quarantine him for weeks.

In some of the rougher colonies, quarantine means getting pushed out the nearest airlock since a bug-infested corpse can’t be used even as fodder for the manuvats.

Cesar figures he is dying and he wants to do that at home, if he can. Fortunately, Ithaca is a medium-sized colony off the main shipping lanes but far from the well-populated Lagrange points. It doesn’t have the most rigorous of security checks. Or at least it didn’t when he left. If they’ve been having the kind of trouble he’s heard about, that may have changed.

The airlock door finally swings open and he strides forward, trying not to look like he is hurrying. Cesar imagines that he can already smell his old home before he steps through the door, but he knows the pressure differentials keep that from happening.

The lone man at the gate is a frontier world’s haphazard attempt at a doorkeeper. Cesar recognizes the oldster as one of his father’s old drinking buddies, Mathis. Cesar smiles to himself and straightens up to begin the process of coming home.

Grizzled, cranky and suspicious of outsiders, Mathis lets returning locals pass through with a nod and pushes the leaving strangers out as fast as they will go. Mathis stops Cesar, squinting at him as though Cesar is some mangy dog trying to sneak past.

“What’s your business here?” Mathis snaps, snatching Cesar’s ident card but not really reading it.

On Earth, he’d have been DNA-printed and body-scanned and no one would care what his business was.

“I’m visiting some old friends,” Cesar grins, waiting for Mathis to recognize him. It didn’t happen.

“Old friends? Where?” Mathis gives him the kind of look you give a man when you are trying to decide if he matches any of the pictures from this week’s
“Universe’s Most Wanted”
posts.

“Vaquero Ranch. I’m an old friend of the family.” Cesar tries to nudge the man towards recognition, but it is not to be.

“Vaquero? Listen, mister, those are good people out there and they don’t need anyone else pestering them. You give them no trouble, you hear?” Mathis waves him on dismissively, grumbling about unwashed outworlders.

Cesar makes his way toward the elevators. He wanted to ask old Mathis about the rumors he’s heard, about Ithaca in danger and under attack, but he can’t risk old Mathis discovering how sick he is and detaining him.

Cesar is a little stunned that the old man completely failed to recognize him. How many times had he fetched his father home from Mathis’ house after a few too many beers on a Saturday night? Has he really changed that much?

Cesar stormed off fifteen years ago to the Spacer War as a strapping young man with short red hair and an unmarked face. He knows he bears little resemblance to that young man now. Cesar feels his current long white beard and mane is rather dashing when his hair isn’t matted and his beard isn’t so long he might keep mice in it. He smiles at his own vanity. At least the beard covers some of the scars.

“And Lord knows, I’ve got little enough to be vain about these days,” Cesar muses.

His days fighting in the Spacer War gave him a mild but definite limp. One of his later adventures earned him the jagged scar running down his right cheek. A narrow escape from a fire left him with a scarred and twisted left ear that his long hair helps to cover. For all the wear he’s seen, he moves with vitality and the odd sort of grace that a man used to trusting himself in space carries.

Down the elevators, Cesar steps off and sucks down a deep breath. He bends down and flips the small switch in each of his boots to turn off the electromagnet. Most Spacers have grav boots with strong electromagnets in the heels needed in low gravity to keep them from floating away. Earthers who want to pretend buy the cheaper biosteel boots, but they aren’t strong attractors like the pure stuff.

“Ah yes. That’s it. That smells like home. I can die happy now,” Cesar mutters to himself as people walk past him, looking askance.

Time to see the ranch.

The population of Ithaca is small, so they have plenty of room. Thus the space between habitations is large enough for privacy. Although the crops and livestock are on the level below, the habitation level is made to look as much like a small Earther city as possible. Gardens and small plots of well-tended grass separate the houses. The Vaquero Ranch is set far away from the shops, factories, moving sidewalks and the public elevators. Cesar plods along slowly, hoping he doesn’t die before he reaches his goal.

After what seems like hours, Cesar spots a ranch in the distance. His breath catches and he shakes his head desperately to clear his vision. Then his heart sinks. This can’t be his home. Cesar remembered well his simple one-story ranch with the wide porch. This house is twice as big.

It has two stories with biostone and other expensive trimmings. A lush garden surrounds the sides where there had only been dust and dirt. There is even a pen of mini-pigs. They must be fantastically rich to afford the water that supports all this.

When he left, Cesar’s family was the most prosperous in this orbital. “These people must be ten times as wealthy as we ever were,” he thinks to himself. With all the insanity after the War, many things changed and people moved on. His family must have gone.

“Probably did. Only to be expected. Well, maybe these folks will know where my people went,” Cesar grunts, telling himself that this will be enough.

The sickness he kept a secret suddenly overwhelms him. Cesar staggers, flushed and weak, but he continues plodding forward, sure in the knowledge that when he stops, it will be for good. Cesar bends his head to keep from looking at the painful sight of this ranch and also to make sure his feet find steady ground.

The unmistakable sound of a shotgun cocking startles him from his private dreams and jerks his feet to a halt. Somehow he has managed to get within a stone’s throw of the front door. Cesar’s eyebrows shoot up with surprise.

The empty porch of the ranch in front of him now holds a person. He sees a shadowy figure in grubby pants and mud-caked boots, wearing a hat pulled too low to make out a face.

Must be some kid home while his folks are out,
Cesar decides.

However, the kid is handling the gun with an ease born of much practice. Cesar raises both hands up in the air and hopes the youth isn’t trigger-happy. He waits cautiously, but the figure seems content to stand motionless and silent.

“Son, I’m unarmed and feeling poorly. You got no cause to be worried about me. I’m just passing through,” Cesar rasps in what he hopes is a friendly voice.

An abrupt wave of dizziness causes him to lurch forward suddenly. The shotgun roars in response, kicking up puffs of dirt not two feet in front of him.

“Come on, now!” he cries, stumbling back. “Don’t kill an old fool when he’s this close to death. I’m just looking for directions to the Vaquero ranch!”

He bends over, wheezing light-headedly with his hands on his knees.

“
Gringo
, you a friend of Vaquero?” the figure asks, not taking the gun off him for a second.

The voice has a soft Spanish burr and is unmistakably female. Cesar jerks his head up in surprise. She is still shadowed by the doorway, but now that he knows what to look for, he can make out the suggestion of gentle curves beneath the bulky clothes.

“Yes! You know Vaquero?” Cesar replies, his heart leaping as he fights to keep his balance. “You might say I am an old family friend.”

She makes a very unladylike snort of derision.

“Mister, an old family friend would know he’s standing in the front yard of the Vaquero ranch,” she snaps, taking a step forward into the sunlight so he can finally see her face. Suddenly, the world seems to tilt on its side and slip away from him. His heart stops and his breath sticks in his chest.

Cesar knows her.

He knows the proud curve of that chin and that shining black hair, caught back in a thick braid. He’s spent a hundred nights admiring her smooth Spanish skin. He knows those laughing black eyes, sparkling now with suspicion.

Even after fifteen years, a man knows his own wife.

Cesar falls to his knees there in the dirt. His strength is well and truly played out. He feels himself lurch and topple over with fever, overwhelmed. He hears his wife, Penelope Vaquero, run from the porch to stand over him.

“Hey, mister, you alright?” She shakes him roughly, but he is sliding from consciousness. Cesar fights to open his eyes as the landscape spins like a child’s toy.

“Come on,
gringo
, wake up!” she insists as he closes his eyes again. He feels her small, cool palm sting sharply as she slaps him hard across the face.

“Yep,” he thinks, “That’s my wife.”

He has one final reflection before the darkness swallows him. “If she knew I was her husband, she’d shoot me for sure.”

CHAPTER TWO

E
ven after all these years away from the Earth, Penelope Vaquero still prays in Spanish. Muttering a rapid prayer for patience under her breath, she calls for Lupe and Argos to come help her.

“
Madre de Dios
, do I not have enough to do today?”

Penelope looks with disgust at the man collapsed in the dirt of her front yard. He is smelly and obviously sick. He looks like an old wild cat, still sharp in tooth and claw.

“This old man is probably going to die right here and make me bury him,” she says ruefully to Lupe and Argos as they approach.

She feels a strong temptation to spit or curse, but decides to hang on to the tattered remains of her ladylike upbringing. Penelope sighs and mentally adds this stranger to her long list of tasks for the day.

Argos helps Penelope run the ranch that he grew up on, just as his father before him helped old Larry Vaquero. He’s the lead ranch hand, gray but spry. Argos walks up in his perennially unhurried way. His dusty jeans and carefully mended cowboy shirt are the uniform of all well-fed ranch hands.

His leathery skin speaks of years in Ithaca’s strong light and his laughing blue eyes say he’s ready for plenty more. Standing beside her, looking down at the man in the dirt, Argos whistles as Lupe hurries behind.

Lupe, on the other hand, always looks rushed. Her short, round Mexican body speeds from one activity to the next even though her thick gray braid says she must have been getting close to seventy. Spacers rarely had the money for the expensive treatments from Earth that keep a body young and pretty, but Lupe wouldn’t have bothered anyway. She’s been on Ithaca for over forty years, keeping house for the Vaqueros. She smells of spices and she keeps sweets and dishtowels hidden in the pockets of her voluminous skirts.

“
Híjole!
What did you do to this one,
mija
?” Lupe looks at Penelope accusingly, panting for breath. “Did you shoot him? Why are you always shooting people?”

“Nothing! I didn’t do anything!” Penelope mumbles defensively, nudging the old man with the toe of her boot. He didn’t react at all.

Penelope exhales noisily and says, “This old bugger just showed up to die on our front porch. Said he was an old family friend and then asked me directions to where he already was and passed out. I think he’s crazy.”

Lupe grunts and crosses herself. “Of course he is. Only crazy people come here. He probably took one look at you in those man clothes you are wearing and died of shock.”

Penelope knows Lupe’s favorite lecture is about to follow. The woman was obsessed with skirts. Sure enough, Lupe says, “Your
pobre madre,
rest her soul,
would die all over again to see you in those pants. You are practically the queen of this place and you dress like the worst trash. Go inside and change before you scare the whole neighborhood.”

“The nearest neighbor is kilometers away, Lupe. Would you rather I train mules in my skirts or tend sick cows in a party dress,
abuela
?” Penelope smiles sweetly at the older woman who immediately swats her in exasperation.

Pushing Penelope towards the house, Lupe hisses, “And you with a son practically a man! Training mules! Get one of your so-called cowhands to do it! Now out of my way, I’m busy.”

The short woman bustles past Penelope and bends over to grab the unconscious man on the ground.

Shrugging, Penelope turns towards the house. Lupe struggles to drag the man by one arm towards the bunkhouse, the communal cabin for cowhands, muttering,
“Me estás tomando el pelo.
”

Argos says nothing, but he smiles in good-natured exasperation as he takes the man away from Lupe and slings the limp stranger over one shoulder. Dependable to a fault, Argos isn’t one of the world’s deep thinkers. He is best pleased with someone telling him exactly what he needs to do.

The unconscious man drools and smiles vaguely, but doesn’t wake. Lupe herds Argos and his passenger like a terrier nipping at the heels of a lumbering bull towards the bunkhouse, a long, low structure away from the main house. There is a small room in the back for sick ranch hands and that’s where they take Cesar. Lupe lives in the main house with Penelope and her son, while Argos has his own snug cabin as far from everyone else as he can possibly get.