Spin the Sky (6 page)

“In a way,” the second voice replies ponderously. “But they have been going on for over six years, these ‘courting’ parties. Every week. There are even more people here since the sabotage attempts. Have you heard about that? Yes? Well, even with that, the widow seems in no great hurry to choose. Some say she still waits for her ‘war hero’ husband to return, though he must be long dead.”

This second voice sounds older and has a trace of an accent Cesar can’t place. He smells cigarette smoke. Smoking is very uncommon in the orbitals. It was impractical and dangerous in the first tiny colonies with their unreliable air scrubbers. Even now, on a large colony like Ithaca, too many respected the importance of clean air or at least respected that fact that most of their neighbors found smoking extremely offensive. Which is probably why these two snuck out of the party to indulge.

The first voice comments, “She is a beauty, but beauty alone cannot account for so many men here. Most of them are not from this colony, either. What other charms does she possess to inspire so many to make the voyage here?”

“The most charming thing of all—money.” The older man laughs. “That little woman in there is one of the richest Spacers you will ever meet. Definitely one of the most powerful.”

The younger man objects, “But I keep up with Orbie politics. She is not part of them. She is hardly mentioned.”

The young voice must be an Earther. Cesar is surprised. Few Earthers came up, even ten years after the War ended. He must have arrived on the same transport ship Cesar did, though he didn’t look familiar. Not surprising as Cesar was surly and sick for the trip so he kept to himself.

“You need to remember that Spacers don’t like being called Orbies any more than you like being called a dirt-humping bastard, son,” the older man says sharply.

Then more gently, “No, the lady does not actively play politics, but you can bet all the politicians jump when she sends an Ether wave. She’s a separatist, one of the powerful ones. Many on Ithaca are interested in getting hooked back into the world Ether, but she fights it every time it is proposed. They only get short wave from the Spacer Ether here. Daily news downloads, if you can imagine anything so provincial. But she has large quantities of the one thing every orbital needs eventually and since we refuse to get it from Earth, she gets to do want she wants, even live on this absurd ranch.”

“Really? But she doesn’t even own this colony.”

The second man laughs, “She doesn’t have to. She owns the only herd of cows in space. Even for Earth, her herd would be large. This colony is the only one really designed or equipped to handle a large herd. So we all seek to either buy her out or marry her. So far, she’s choosing neither.”

Cesar can hear the older man carefully grinding his cigarette out.

The younger man says, “Well, we had the steaks for dinner. They do taste fantastic, but I had no idea you Spacers were such carnivores.”

The he moves towards the house enough for Cesar to see him. He is tall and thin, dressed in the height of Earther fashion with a complicated scarf wrapped around his throat and long flowing locks.

The older man puts a hand on the younger man’s shoulder to stop him. With his other hand, he pulls a flask out of a pocket and offers it to the younger man who enthusiastically agrees.

Wincing from the bite of the liquor, the older man rasps, “Son, it’s not just the meat. It’s the milk and cheese. Practically half of this colony is devoted to making cheese. Fully a quarter of Ithaca’s core is devoted to curing leather. She can ask any price she wants for a hamburger or a block of cheese and we all line up to pay. That bowl of cheese dip on the kitchen table in there would cost a year’s salary in some of the outer colonies.”

The younger man laughs, “Of course. He who controls the tasty tidbits controls the world. It’s a concept that kept my family alive through the Worlder Wars. People might cry for their lost art, but they’ll fling themselves on a live grenade for the man who can make chocolate so divine it makes you believe in God again.”

The Worlder Wars, that time when it seemed the Earthers would kill themselves off trying to kill their neighbors, came just before the Spacer War.

Now the older man moves into view. Cesar takes in the leather boots and the hint of a belly that the man’s well-cut jacket almost hides. The man must be from some prosperous colony to flaunt his wealth this way. After the Spacer War, there were enough rumors of cannibalism on the more desperate colonies to keep most people from looking like they had fat to spare.

The older man shakes his head. “That may be true, but her true power is manure. Not to put to fine a point on it, but most colonies are so poor, they have to import shit.”

“Oh, please,” protests the younger man, looking mildly offended at the topic.

The older man seems unfazed as he takes another swig. “Manure is the best way to replenish the soil’s nutrients and keep the biosphere running smooth. If you are too broke to sustain herbivores, you got to get manure from somewhere and this right here is it. The widow Vaquero is the finest purveyor of crap in the spheres.”

The older man stomps the dirt for emphasis.

The younger man looks shocked. He runs a hand through his hair and shrugs. “Well, I can see it. The whole Orbie nation is crap, so why shouldn’t Madam Vaquero be the Queen of Crap? You would think she’d change her name, though. After what her husband did.”

Cesar winces. He wondered that himself. Truth be told, he allowed a tiny flame of hope to flicker in his heart when he heard they still used his name. If she didn’t reject his name, maybe some day she’d forgive him? Probably not, but it still gave him hope.

The old man laughs as he stows his flask in a jacket pocket. “Ah, you don’t know her. That woman would find more ways to fling her husband’s atrocities in your face if she could, just to see you squirm. She’s a hard one, God love her.”

Cesar remembers his pet name for Penelope when they first married. He’d called her “kitten.” How could his kitten be the woman these men knew?

“Perhaps I myself can charm her in to hurrying her decision,” the younger voice laughs as they return to the house.

“I wouldn’t wish that fate on you, but don’t let that stop your trying,” returns the older man.

“Maybe with all the trouble this colony has had lately, she’ll actually think about selling out.”

Cesar catches no more of their conversation.

She’s not married.

He is ridiculously pleased by that fact.

“But there’s no way she stays single pining for my sorry self,” Cesar tells himself, trying to shake the optimistic little daydream of reconciliation out of his head.

He remembers their parting and the angry words she’d said. Perhaps after marrying a worthless specimen like himself, she decided that getting another man in her life just wasn’t worth the hassle? He can certainly understand that.

Cesar quietly returns to his room in the bunkhouse to try sleeping. He tells himself that he will leave this place as soon as he is better. Obviously, Penelope and Trevor are doing just fine without him. Telling the boy that his father has been alive all this time will only cause them pain.

On the other hand, there is something not quite right about that party, something a little ominous. And what was all this about sabotage attempts and trouble in the colony?

Perhaps he better stick around a little while to make sure Penelope and Trevor are all right? Cesar knows that what he really wants to do is stay right here and watch his wife and son greedily, like a housewife obsessed with her favorite Ether reality show. He is glad for any excuse to indulge that desire.

Much later in the night, Cesar hears doors shutting and the bustle of people going to bed after the party. He hears whispering voices, mostly women but a few men. He works so hard to keep himself from wondering if some man is spending the night with Penelope that he doesn’t sleep a wink.

CHAPTER FIVE

F
or the next two days, Cesar does nothing but sleep fitfully and drink the never-ending stream of soup Lupe pours into him. Although Lupe practically raised him from infancy, she shows no sign of recognizing him. This depresses him even more. Cesar feels like a ghost, haunting his old life.

Finally, his fever breaks. On the third morning, he watches the reflected glow of the sun light up this little world. He finally feels human again, or at least human enough to desperately want to get out of bed and get clean. He hears footsteps approaching.

“No more nonsense. Today we put him in the medibox, Lupe,” he hears Penelope say resolutely as she approaches. He can hear her determined stride, matched by the rushing steps of Lupe.

“Ach,
mija
. Those mediboxes are just coffins. You can’t trust them. Lasers and scans and computers poking you. They are no match for rest and good food.” Lupe is vehement in her dislike of the orbital solution to the lack of medical personnel and equipment.

Mediboxes were so reliable that every Spacer and Earther who could afford one had them, even if they were a bit claustrophobic. Although most of the time, a Spacer medibox would recommend diet and exercise modifications in keeping with Spacer’s rabid dislike of “unnatural” remedies.

“Besides, my soup will cure him. My soup can cure anything,” Lupe declares righteously. “If he doesn’t die first.”

The door opens and both women peer in at him. Cesar has never seen Lupe in anything but the colorful skirts and ornately embroidered blouses she loved. Today is no different.

When he was little, Lupe told him that her skirts reminded her of who she was and where she came from. That was something he could stand to remember now and then, she would inevitably add.

Penelope is wearing a pair of the multi-pocketed pants much favored by Spacer women. The legs are cut to fall in folds like a skirt. They have drawstrings to gather them tight to the ankle for the lower gravities where a skirt is an unfortunate fashion choice.

Lupe flatly refuses to wear them. But then, she has not left Ithaca in decades. She even refuses to visit the storage level. Weightlessness is her worst nightmare. Cesar could never understand what convinced her to leave the Earth in the first place.

“You look pretty bright-eyed today,
gringo
,” Penelope comments as she inspects him.

Cesar gives her a wan smile.

“You see? My soup,” Lupe pronounces triumphantly, poking Cesar like a steak of questionable tenderness.

She beams at him approvingly until she sees he has not finished the cup of soup she left him the night before. Her face takes on a look of steely disapproval. He drinks it cold.

“I am definitely on the mend, ma’am,” Cesar agrees quietly, glancing quickly at Penelope. “I would surely love to get cleaned up. I know I must smell like death on a cracker. My last stop before I came here was the Satsuma Silk Colony and two billion tons of silkworms leave a stench that takes days to get out.”

“Well, good. We have a medibox if you’d like to get checked out, just to be sure?” Penelope offers.

“If it’s all the same to you, I’ll skip it unless I’m still feeling poorly in a day or two,” Cesar answers as he gets up and stretches. Cesar will die before getting in a medibox again, but he doesn’t see the need to mention that right now.

Penelope shrugs. “Fine by me. I will be gone most of the day, but Lupe will point you towards clean clothes and a shower.” And with that Penelope leaves without a backwards glance. Cesar frankly admires her retreating figure.

When he left all those years ago, she was his fluffy little kitten. He knew the only reason he’d ever gotten her aboard the ship from Earth was by appealing to that insatiable dream of travel. A dream that apparently died on the shuttle up.

Argos stopped by earlier to chat with Cesar and see if the new stranger would live or die. Argos had not recognized Cesar at all, but he did say that Penelope had not left Ithaca once since setting foot inside the orbital all those years ago.

Cesar could not get over the difference in her. His little kitten may have hissed and shown her claws on occasion, but that Penelope was too gentle and sweet to ever cause harm. The woman he saw now was a panther—sleek, strong and ready to devour those that got in her way.

What a woman
, Cesar thinks appreciatively.

He smiles to think that if she’d been this confident and unassailable when they’d met, he’d probably have run in fear. He is deeply uncomfortable with the man he used to be, a man who had all this and walked away without a second thought.

Lupe helps him up, calling on various saints for strength.

“A shower is not going to cut it. I am filling up the water trough. You get a bath, mister.”

Cesar thinks this is a grand idea, but he protests the decadence of it. You don’t get a lot of baths in space. Water is at a premium. Most orbitals are designed with enough plants and culture vats to make air an easy commodity. They tend to err on the side of too much oxygen, building photosynthesis panels into the roofs of every building. Food is usually not a problem as the bacterial vats can supply enough to live on, even if bac-food tends to be mostly unappetizing. Yeast cakes smell like yeast cakes no matter how you culture them.

Which is why the majority of colonies devote the largest amount of room for raising food. But water was a real issue until they perfected large-scale asteroid mining.

Even now, nearly all orbitals try to clean their populace with the barest minimum of water. A bath is the ultimate luxury, even if it is in the trough used to water the mules. It was the greatest testament to how well Ithaca and this ranch were doing, that Lupe would offer a bath to a stranger. He thanks her profusely.

“Well, a bath will at least take a few layers of the funk off of you. The trough needed cleaning anyway,” she says, brushing aside his thanks. “And don’t think I won’t make you scrub a mess of laundry while you’re in there.”

He follows her slowly, still unsteady and weak.

Lupe gives Cesar a cake of coarse homemade soap that he scours himself with. He washes his hair at least three times and then sits in the tub combing it. It is longer and more matted than he realized. Lupe brings out some scissors and does the best she can to hack his hair and beard into a more presentable shape.