Halcyon Nights (Star Sojourner Book 2) (4 page)

“Already have family,” I lied.

“Then have a nice life, superstar.”

“You too, rad. Keep your Geiger charged and don't take any hot creds.”

I sighed and sat back in the cushioned seat. My knees were shaking as I punched a course for Denver. Fair of them though. Still, I waited till they were off my screen and I knew I was off theirs, then I set a course for Boulder, and my apartment. I'd find a street comp and put a clamp on my account.

I thought of that silver creature.
It was a dream,
I told myself and sighed. Just a dream.

Did it have something to do with the crystals? The tel-link was real enough. Halcyon. The entity had spoken of the planet Halcyon. And April's words haunted me: This is no dream. You're on your own, tag!

“Aren't I always?

“Do you wish to go to auto?” the hovair's comp asked after my last course change. ”No. Steady as she goes.” God, I hate these talking electronics. Halcyon… I closed my eyes and held my breath as I opened my mind to tel contact and hoped it didn't come.

It didn't.

“Tickbag?”

In the rear light I saw him there beneath the seat, panting. We'd make friends later. Right now I had other things on my mind. Lisa was staying with her grandparents while Al and Charles what's-his-name were on their honeymoon. I always liked Joe Hatch and his wife Abby. We'd had some fascinating conversations over fresh-baked cookies, and good times together. But that was before five years spent on Syl' Tyrria, alias Tartarus. Now, Al had told me, Joe had no use for me. OK. I could accept that. But neither my tough former father-in- law nor hell or high water was going to stop me from seeing my daughter! I turned the hovair toward Denver.

“Croteshit!” There it was again. A buzz of thoughts invading my mind as I entered ground traffic. An argument, somewhere ahead, I think, between a husband and wife. It was an old wound, and they were both of them weary of the verbal duel. A boy, somewhere close, daydreaming about being the Sunwind champion of all time. An old man with fears of dying.

I sighed when things quieted for a while, then I passed a hospital, a gray hulking building that loomed behind lesser structures. God! A cacophony of misery. I moaned, picked up speed, and pictured a lifetime of soaking up all the terror and agony this world has to offer. “I can't live like this!” I muttered.

Had the silver being given me this gift just to watch me sink into babbling insanity?
Shields!
I told myself as I pulled out of the lanes and braked to a stop on a quiet side street. I squeezed my temples, imagined shields rising around my head, locking together to form an impenetrable barrier. It hadn't worked with the Loranth Sye Kor, but my human brethren were mostly non-tels. I felt the barrier begin to fade and I willed it to strengthen again, to take form, until I almost heard the grate of metal walls closing. I held my breath as the voices slowly faded and the mind chatter disappeared. Carefully I relaxed the image and mentally listened.

Nothing!

“Thank you, Great Mind, Christ, Vishnu, Yahweh, Buddha, Quetzalcoatl, or Whoever.” Apparently I'd succeeded in installing a mental program. To check it, I imaged the shields sinking. A babble of voices flowed over them like waves breaching a storm wall. I lifted the shields, sat back and relished the silence. Hell, that hadn't been too hard.

It was Sunday night and tags were cruising the boulevards. I cruised too, wings retracted, then swerved to avoid a weaving car whose driver's brain was probably scalded on talc, and found myself careening down a narrow street, scaring perhaps two years' growth from a brainstimmed bum lying between garbage chutes. His fear cut into me as though it were my own. “Goddamn,” I muttered. Back to the drawing board and the redesign of shields!

I reported my stolen card at an auto bank, fed in my code number, and thanked the recording for my new card, which still showed a balance of seventy thousand creds. So all of April's troubles had been for naught. “I told you it was showers, April.”

I closed my account, opened a new one and deposited thirty thousand creds in Jack Cole's name and code. He'd let me use his credcard back on Tartarus, I mean Syl' Tyrria, when I was broke, which was most of the time. When Jack checks his account, he's going to think a rich uncle died.

I smiled sadly, remembering all sorts of memories. He'd been loyal to the bitter end, and the end had held much bitterness, compliments of Sye Kor. One of Jack's children, young heather, had died of Kor's plague, and his wife Annie had a miscarriage when she contracted it.

I scanned the night sky for moving lights from the direction of lost Vegas, and breathed a sigh of relief. No way April and her entourage could follow me here.

After stopping at Party Galore to buy presents for Lisa, I went to Speedy Gonzales Fast Food and bought hamburgers for Tickbag and myself. He gobbled them down and I gave him water in a crumble-cup. I threw the empty cup onto a lawn where it would dissolve and nourish grass and flowers. The owner of the house, out watering his lawn, waved to me and I waved back.

I cruised the upper lanes, with their canopy of city lights below, to the exclusive neighborhood of Mile-High Knoll.

My heart was knocking harder than my knuckles as I rapped on Joe and Abby Hatch's door. Joe has a mind tough enough to burn through doors, or keep them closed to you. But I was determined to see my daughter.

The security monitor scanned me through humming floor sensors. I hummed myself to relax and smelled Joe's pipe through an open window before he opened the door.

Light and the aroma of baking cookies flooded out from around his solid form as he squinted at me over reading glasses. Yeah, glasses. Joe refused to have his eyeballs massaged into 20-20 shape. His expression didn't change when he recognized me.

“Hello, Mister Hatch.” I smiled.

There'd been a time I'd called him Dad. I glanced at the presents under my arms. “I'm here to see Lisa.”

He removed the pipe. “Sort of figured that.” His tone was low, controlled as ever. “Thought you and Al had an agreement you wouldn't see her until after the honeymoon.” Fingernails scraped bristly stubs as he scratched his short-cropped gray beard.

“That was Al's agreement, Joe, not mine. I'd like to see my daughter.”

He just stared at me.

“Who is it, Joseph?” Abby called from the kitchen in her airy southern drawl.

“An acquaintance, Ab.” The crease between his brows deepened as he studied me. “We'll be on the porch,” he told her, took my arm and tried to guide me there.

I tightened my grip on the presents and stood my ground. “I want to see her, Joe. I have a right to.”

“You forfeited your rights years ago.” He replaced the pipe. His broad jaw hardened to bristly cement as he clamped down on the stem. He used pressure above my elbow to guide me to the porch. I put the presents down on a chair outside and remained standing when he sat. Joe had been a captain with the United Counter-Terrorist Force of W-CIA, mostly offworld, until he retired. I wondered what he thought of Charles, that pasty-faced smear on the church steps. I pictured the mental shields, lowered them a bit. There's a thin line between probing and just receiving. I'd learned that in Kor's den. The silver tag had given me the power to receive from a non-tel. Could I develop it into an ability to probe? I tried it on Joe.

Nothing.

Perhaps he'd been trained to block, though he showed no reaction. I knew he'd dealt with telepaths in his work, both alien and human. I lifted the mental shields and pictured bolts quietly sliding into place.

He sat back. “There were times I was glad for my daughter's sake that you didn't show up.” He chewed the pipe stem. “I'm not sure what I would have done to you on those days.”

I nodded.

“Was it worth the search for mammals?”

“It was more than that, Joe.” I had always wanted to explain this to him, to redeem myself, I guess, and I said it almost compulsively. “I was, uh, out to prove that mammals evolve naturally from more primitive forms on other planets as well as on Earth. You see it would prove that certain evolutionary laws hold throughout the galaxy, maybe even our entire universe. Maybe other universes, too.” I licked my lips. “I found the animal, Joe. I
did
prove it. I think the patterns exist before life itself.” I took a breath. “But, well, the animal got away.”

He looked skeptical.

I fingered the bow on a present. “We can talk about it sometime, if you're interested.”

“You managed to walk away from five lost years as a hero. The savior of the Terran race. I find that fairly remarkable.”

“Yeah.” I shrugged. “I was lucky.”

He squinted up through smoke. “So is my daughter. She finally divorced you and found a man who knows the meaning of responsibility.”

I bit my lower lip. “I just want to see Lisa. That's all.”

He gazed at the sky and frowned, looking inward, I think. “I spent the better part of my life on missions offworld.”

“I know.”

“Some of them took years to wrap up.”

I nodded.

He met my eyes. “I never left my family behind. They always came with me.”

I sat down. “I wanted Al and Lisa to come to Syl' Tyrria. I begged her. She said she was sick of that life.” I lowered my eyes and struggled with a twist of guilt. “I could've done research on Earth, but it wouldn't have been in my field, astrobiology.”

“What're your plans for the future?” he asked gruffly and drew in smoke.

“My job with the lab is still secure.”

“So you'll continue your work offworld?”

“That's usually where astrobiology is done.”

He smiled for the first time. He wanted me out of Al and Lisa's lives once and for all. I felt a sting of anger. He wanted me out of my daughter's life for good!

Abby stood silhouetted behind the living room curtains, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. She turned and walked toward the kitchen. I thought of the silver being, of his proposed rendezvous for reasons only he knew. I scooped up the presents. “I'm going in to see my daughter.” I went to the door.

“What's your problem this time, Jules? I can see that you've got one.” His voice came quietly through the darkness. He exhaled smoke. “I've still got connections.” Joe had always been an astute student of human nature, with a specialty in nuances. It was probably a prerequisite for his job. He was reading me like an open book. I kept my hand on the doorknob and felt my throat tighten. It was easier when he was angry. “You can't help me, Joe. Not unless you can rout out an alien who hooks your mind and reels you in as easily as a fish.”

Light glinted off his glasses as he turned to look at me. “One of Sye Kor's relatives?”

“No. But I seem to have an attraction for alien tels with mega problems.” I met Joe's gaze. “I don't know when I'll get to see Lisa again. Maybe…

“I cleared my throat and shrugged.
Maybe never!
I thought.

“You have five minutes to sit down and talk?” he asked.

I hesitated.

“Before you see Lisa.”

I sat down, fumbled presents and dropped one. I picked it up and absently rubbed a thumb across shiny blue paper.

Joe tapped his pipe on an ashtray. “It's illegal to enter a person's mind without his permission, you know. We put that one on the books a long time ago. So who's this crote who's been probing you?”

“I don't think this alien's read the book.”

”We could throw it at him.”

“We'd have to locate him first. He wants me to come to planet Halcyon.”

“Then he's a pretty damn strong telepath to have reached you here!”

“Oh yeah.” I stared at the presents and wondered if the IQ machinery, with its crystals, had anything to do with the silver being's ability to reach me telepathically. Would be nice if he were helpless to contact me without it. It seemed strange to talk of alien threats here on Joe's front porch, overlooking the pure blaze of Denver's lights. Lights that hid the squalor of the crumbling city. But then, most Earth cities were crumbling.

“But he's not stronger than the Worlds Court,” Joe said.

“If the Worlds Court can locate him. He'll know they're coming before the ship makes the jump. Now do you mind if I go in and see Lisa?”

“I read about your press conference.” He removed the pipe. “I agree with you on one point. NASA should be more cautious with its colonization program. There are dangers out there we never anticipated, and we should've.” He studied me. “I offered to go to Tartarus and drag you back by your ears but she wouldn't have it. What does this alien want?”

“I wish I knew. Whatever it is…” I watched the shimmering pool of city lights and realized how tired I was, weary as a spent day. “I doubt I'm telepathically strong enough to fight it…him. But I intend to try. I'm not keen on meeting this crote, or a trip to Halcyon, especially if it's one way.”

Joe got up and shook his head. He opened the door and gestured for me to follow him down the hallway. I knew he wouldn't ask for more information but would wait for me to offer it.

Not on his life. If this silver being could reach a non-tel on Earth, and I gave Joe specifics, it could mean Joe's life.

“Lisa's in the den,” he told me as I followed him. “Kid looks at more vis than the real world.”

We went past Abby's office with its shelves of program cubes. The lit monitor displayed a human pancreas organic. I wondered what modified cells she was designing into it.

Lisa sat cross-legged on the rug before the vid's small holo stage, her back to us as we entered the den, which was paneled in real wood. She held a stuffed Cleocean doll with mock white downy fur. Its six violet eyes blinked at me from over her shoulder and its twin tails protruded from beneath her arm. I wondered if Cleocean children went to bed with stuffed humans tucked under a flipper. A fire blazed in the stone hearth. The log was fake, I knew, but it crackled, sparked, and emitted a smell of burning wood.

A Siamese cat curled on the woven rug watched me with jade-green eyes. My heart was thumping as I gazed at Lisa's blonde curls, her small, fragile body. She needed a good father, I admitted to myself. Someone who loved and protected her. I lowered my head, afraid to face my daughter.

“Lisa?” Joe said. “There's someone – “

“I'll go to bed after Space Bears!” She hunched forward as though to plant herself. “I promise, Grandpa.”

“Your father's here to see you,” Joe said softly.

She turned. Her eyes widened and she hugged the doll, then buried her face in it. Joe went to her and picked her up with a grunt, doll and all. “It's all right, sweetheart,” he said gently. “Say hello to your Daddy.”

She peeked out from behind the doll's flipper and hugged Joe's neck. “Hello. Mommy showed me holos of Daddy,” she told Joe.

I remembered the presents. “Uh, I bought you some presents, Lisa.”

She stared at the bright boxes. “Did you bring them back from pig Tartas?” she mumbled into the doll's cloth body.

Joe grimaced. “Everything's pig this week,” he told me.

I smiled. “Well. One's from Tartarus.” I told Lisa and extended a wrapped sea shell. “Do you want to open it?”

She pressed her head against Joe's neck. “Can I, Grandpa?”

”Sure you can. Suppose you and your father open them together?”

She stared at the presents and nodded. He put her down on the carpet. “Grandma's in the kitchen and I'll be in my study.” He bent stiffly, hands on knees. “Is that all right with you, honey?”

She looked from me to the presents and nodded again.

“Good.” Joe patted her head. “I'll call a few friends,” he told me casually and left the room.

I knew just how serious Joe would turn when he got on the link with his friends. People from the Pentagon, W-CIA, the Worlds Court. Probably Interstel itself on planet Alpha, the seat of the Worlds' government. What could they do about a being they couldn't locate? But Joe never did give up in the face of a small thing like futility.