Home: Interstellar: Merchant Princess (33 page)

“Stand like this,” Sandy said and opened her arms wide, threw her head back, and opened her mouth. “It’s like sparklers on your tongue!”

Meriel lifted her face to the rain and felt it tickle her cheeks and forehead. She opened her mouth and tasted the sweet water. The raindrops fell along her body and ran down her arms and legs as if it was alive. Meriel smiled and spun slowly with Becky on one hand and Sandy on the other—like she had never been a child.

***

Dumpy shivered in fear beneath the schoolhouse stairs in the damp chill air after hiding all afternoon from the rain. The children had left hours ago, but he had been afraid to leave his hiding place. His panic had subsided with the rain, but he still feared the occasional raindrops that fell from the eaves and lay in cold puddles in the yard. Steeling himself, he sprinted for John’s farmhouse and waddled up the stairs. He nosed the screen door open and walked through the dark house searching for safety and warmth.

A soft breeze blew through the open windows and carried the scent of the two little ones; the only beings in his entire life he thought did not want to eat him. He waddled down the hall looking for an empty space and nosed open another door with a quiet squeak. The scent of the two big ones crossed his nose, and he saw one of the big ones sit up and point something at him.

***

Meriel heard the squeak and sat up straight in bed, her body covered in sweat and eyes wide with fear. She grabbed the stunner from the nightstand and aimed at the small moving target in the doorway but waited until her eyes focused before firing. Dumpy immediately disappeared down the hall.

She scanned John’s bedroom for danger, saw none, and let the stunner fall to her lap and exhaled slowly. John lay next to her and put his arm on her lap as he turned in his sleep.

The outside door was open
, she thought. She inhaled quickly, jumped from bed, and ran to Becky and Sandy’s bedroom to see them sleeping and heard the purr of Sandy’s snores. A tremor within the pile of clothing strewn on the floor caused Meriel to raise her stunner again. She leaned over and lifted a pair of jeans to see Dumpy watching her and shivering. She dropped the jeans and sat on the edge of Becky’s bed and put the stunner in her lap.

John followed Meriel into his girl’s bedroom and found her with her head in her hands.

“What is it M?”

“They’re coming.”

“Who?”

“Khanag. Biadez. All of them.”

“How do you know?” John asked.

Meriel shook her head. “I just feel it.”

“Not tonight. You’re safe here.”

“I feel exposed. There’s too much land, and no way to see it all. Plenty of places to sneak up on us. Damn, I’m always jumpy.”

“You belong here with us.”

Meriel shook her head. “If BioLuna or Khanag or any of those creeps find me here, you and the girls can get caught in the crossfire. Your farm is a big bull’s-eye, and I’d be better off in space and a moving target.”

“But they can’t get to us here.”

“Maybe not now. I’m safer on the run. And so are the girls if I’m not here.”

“I’m not giving you up, M.”

Meriel smiled. “I know,” she said and kissed him.

“I don’t want you to run.”

“I need to go, John.”

He put his arms around her. “Not tonight,” he said. “After the fair, hon. We’ll talk about it then. Now let’s go to sleep. We need to walk the fence tomorrow, and we’ll need our rest.”

Meriel lay back in Becky’s bed, and John sat in the chair by her side and held her hand.

After Meriel had drifted back to sleep, and John snored lightly, Becky took Meriel’s other hand and held it to her heart.

***

Fritz Leung, admiral of the Arcadian Rangers, stood on the gold tee at the seventeenth hole, which had a breathtaking view of Stillwater Cove. His scorecard showed fifteen over par for the course, and he looked forward to winning a sizable bet from his partners. After adjusting his aim to accommodate the headwinds blowing in from the Pacific Ocean, he swung his club for a respectable hundred-and-sixty yard drive down the holographic fairway.

This would be the admiral’s last mission before retirement after nine successful campaigns in the Wars of Immigration, the latest in the Seiyei expansion. It ran like clockwork now, and golf cut the tedium.

Unlike the fool who lost his forces at Haven a decade ago, Leung joined this battle with an unsullied reputation. A luxurious retirement at the behest of BioLuna awaited him rather than a meager apartment on Europa like the last idiot. Admiral Leung looked forward to a waterfront estate on Tranquility Lake on Luna 2 with excursions to Earth and lots of time to entertain the grandkids.

Admiral Leung had twenty-six ships at his disposal, along with numerous space-to-ground weapons, eight thousand mercenaries with atmospheric injection capsules, and innumerable mechs and drones—all under the command of a corps of seasoned officers. And their first step would be to take control of communications using the Global Communications Executive, the Blackout-Box, just like at Seiyei Station.

A light flashed in the holo.
Incoming,
he thought.
That thug, Khanag
.

“What is it, General?” Admiral Leung asked.

“His holiness the archtrope sends his regards and will meet you at the capitol building in Stewardville when we are victorious.”

What an ass
, the admiral thought.
Counting your chickens. Bad luck
. “Regards to the archtrope and your…followers,” the admiral said, not saying what he really thought of Khanag’s savages. “Remember—we lead. My ships need clear space when they jump in.”
Just like fanatics to jump early and get in the way when we come out of jump
.

“Of course,” Khanag said. “But please do not interfere when we arrive.”

“Our nav is better than yours, General.”

“We’ll see, won’t we?”

“And on the ground, stay out of our fight,” the admiral said. “We don’t want any friendly fire, now do we?”

“Of course, Admiral,” Khanag said. “But are we friendly now?”

“For the moment. Out,” the admiral said and cut the connection. He turned to his aide. “Bring the technician to me.”

When Admiral Leung finished the eighteenth hole, the technician, Warren Matsushita stood there.

“Ah, Mr. Matsushita,” the admiral said. “I hope your stay has been comfortable. The tools and parts you requested are in the shuttle waiting for you.”

Matsushita nodded. “You will keep your promise?”

“I’m an honorable man, Mr. Matsushita, and nothing like our…associates. You can speak to your family before you leave.”

Matsushita fell to his knees and began to cry.

“There now, when your mission is over, you can leave together. Are you ready?”

Matsushita nodded, but his back shuddered.

“We only need a few moments to…prepare the planet for your arrival. Go now and speak with your family before we send them home,” the admiral said and waved for his aide to remove the technician.

He turned to his golf partner. “When will you deploy?”

“After the first wave and ordnance arrive, I’ll clean up the mess our associates left behind,” said Benedict, the nondescript man.

***

Meriel and Sandy lay on their backs under the stars watching Thor set on the Western horizon while Becky slept in Meriel’s lap. Like John and the rest of the work crew, they were tired from a long three-day hike to survey the groundwater and repair the electric fence that kept the bigger critters away from John’s farm. Meriel had spent much of the trek in a tiny wagon pulled by a donkey so as to not slow the crew down. Tomorrow morning, they would be home for the start of the Harvest Fair, and she would need to make a decision to leave or to stay, a decision she did not want to make.

“See, sweetie, that star is Aldebaran, and the fuzzy patch there is the Orion nebula,” Meriel said, but Sandy kept her eyes on Meriel.

“Do you miss them?” Sandy asked.

“Who?” Meriel said.

“I’ve watched you look at the stars, Merry,” Sandy said. “Are you going to leave?”

Meriel did not know what to say.
Perceptive girl
, she thought and said, “I’m not sure, hon. I’m a spacer.”

Sandy looked away and bit her lip.

“I talked to your dad. It might not be safe for you to be around me,” Meriel said.

“Uh-huh. You’re just saying that ’cause you want to leave.”

“I don’t think I would be a good mom.”

“I don’t need a mom, Merry,” Sandy said. “She’s been gone a long time now, and no one could replace her anyway. I know Becky does, but that’s only because she doesn’t remember her much.”

Maybe she does, and I won’t match up
, Meriel thought. “I won’t go away forever, hon. My family is coming here, and you are part of that. I’ll always return.”

“For them?”

“For you.” Meriel took Sandy’s little hand. “You’re like me when I was a kid. Strong. Full of ideas. And you love your little sister.”

Sandy looked up at Meriel with a big smile. “Yeah.”

They were silent for a while and watched a meteor arc across the sky.

“Merry, is space your home?” Sandy asked. “Your song?”

“What do you mean, hon?”

“Like your home is not a place but a journey.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Our teacher told us about a place on Earth called Australia that’s kinda like Haven—arid and has animals and people that don’t live anywhere else. She said the native people really don’t have any place to settle down ’cause the land is poor and can’t sustain them. But they have trails that they walk over the course of a year or more.” Sandy drew an irregular shape in the dry soil that returned to its starting point. “That was their route. And many tribes would walk the same land but have different routes.” Sandy drew other closed shapes that wandered back and forth and crossed each other, but each returned to its own separate starting point. “And as they walked, they sang of the places they passed, the hills and the plants, their ancestors and the spirits. They called them songlines.”

Meriel imagined tribes of people following Sandy’s little fingers as she traced their trails in the dirt.

“You know them all, don’t you?” Sandy asked. “All the stars.”

Pretty much,
Meriel thought and nodded. “It’s one of the first things that spacers do when they get somewhere new. They orient themselves to the stars and constellations.”

“Tell me,” Sandy asked.

Meriel nodded. “Well, my first spacewalk was near Wolf 359. That’s over there,” she said and pointed to a star near the horizon. “That was the happiest day of my life, well, before I met you and your sister.” She hugged Sandy. “My mom and dad were lost near Procyon. The
Princess
is docked near there at Enterprise Station. Over there is Lalande 21185 near where I met your dad. That’s behind Thor now, and you can’t see it.” Meriel took the fringe of Sandy’s shirt between her fingers. “The Crab nebula glows a teal color like your sleeves.”

“You make the stars real for me, Merry,” Sandy said. “That’s your song. You just don’t have a melody for it yet.”

“My route could be my home?”

Sandy nodded and snuggled into Meriel’s arms. “Just make part of it here with us.”

Meriel hugged her. The two of them lay back to watch the last slice of Thor set while Meriel told stories of the stars to Sandy until they fell asleep.

“Psst, Psst.” Meriel heard and blinked. They were in the stuffy little country church, and Meriel had nodded off, tired from the prior long day and fitful sleep. She had spent the early morning primping the girls for church and the harvest fair, all that time confused about dress styles more elaborate and colorful than she had ever seen.

“Psst, Psst.” Little Becky stood next to her and tugged on her sleeve signaling her to stand like her sister and the other parishioners. Meriel complied and watched the pastor as he led a prayer for forgiveness, and she gritted her teeth. Becky brushed her arm for attention again and blinked to tell Meriel to close her eyes—it was closing her eyes to pray that caused her to nap to begin with. Meriel barely heard the remainder of the pastor’s benediction, and in a moment, the service was over.

Sandy and Becky took Meriel’s arms and rushed her to the front of the line to greet Pastor Lee. This was the strategy the girls had developed to be first to the desserts on the lunch table that the women set for the churchgoers. When the girls finished their lunches, Meriel watched them play with the neighbor kids.

“Hello, Ms. Hope,” Meriel heard and turned to see Pastor Lee approach. He offered his hand to her, palm up. “May I get you something from the buffet?”

“No, thank you,” Meriel said, not knowing how to respond. She laid her hand on his for a moment and shook it.

“Was this your first time in church?” he asked with a smile and sat next to her.

Meriel nodded. “I heard your sermon,” she said.

“You did?” the pastor said with a big smile. “I heard you snore.” The smile did not leave his face, which let Meriel know it was a tease not a complaint, and she smiled in return. “I hope my message will be more enlivening next week.”

“I don’t think I’m much good in church.”

“You wear the cross.”

Meriel touched the medallion on her necklace. “It was my mom’s. It’s all I have left of her,” she said.
That and a junk of a ship that I may never see again
. “I really don’t know the rules in there.”

The pastor laughed with a deep, honest laugh. “It’s not about the rules, Ms. Hope. It’s about this.” He waved his arm to survey the church and families having lunch and the kids at play. “It’s about living. People kind of lost that after thousands of years worshipping abstract things. It’s really about the spirit, Ms. Hope, about what drives you, what keeps you going.”

Meriel thought for a moment. “I thought it was about our immortal soul,” she said.

“Uh-huh. What does that mean to you, Ms. Hope?”

“I don’t really know.”

“That’s the problem. It’s become just another abstract idea,” he said. “The soul and spirit came from an old Greek idea: anima, same as animal. It meant the breath of life. Love drives it all: love for life, love of self, and love for others. And love is what JCS is all about.”

Meriel looked down. “That’s what my mom told me,” Meriel said and looked away.

“What’s troubling you?”

“I have a problem loving others. Doesn’t God say to forgive your enemies?

“So you were listening. Yes, but it’s not so simple.”

“Well, I can’t forgive,” she said while balling her fists in her lap.

The pastor paused. “I can’t for a moment pretend that I know what you went through, Ms. Hope.”

Meriel flinched in anticipation of “poor dear” delivered in a tone of pity, but it did not come. “You’ve all had your own struggles here, and I’m not looking for sympathy,” she said.

“My trials don’t apply to you, Ms. Hope. Tests of the spirit are always personal.” He paused. “I do know that focusing on those that hurt you leads you away from life. Forgive me, but we know your story, and—.”

“Then you know I will never love them, and I can never forgive them.” Meriel gritted her teeth.

“It’s God’s grace they need, not yours. And all they need to do is accept it. But this is about you.”

“Isn’t God’s commandment to forgive?”

“It’s more of a request, really, but it’s your choice. It’s not about submitting to God’s will, or obeying some instructions for being a good person.”

“Then why?”

“Because God’s concern is for
you
, Ms. Hope. Focusing on the pain distracts you from living a full life of your own. That doesn’t mean opening yourself up to repeated harm by pretending it didn’t happen. God doesn’t ask you to trade your safety for your salvation.”

“It says that in the gospels?”

He smiled. “I’m sure it’s in there somewhere.”

Meriel looked down and clenched her fists again. “Do I need to forgive before I can find peace?”

“You’ve been carrying this with you a long time, no?”

Meriel nodded.

“You have love in your heart, Ms. Hope. Live fully. Peace will come in time. But don’t forget that it’s a frontier out here in more ways than one. Don’t let your kind heart blind you to evil.”

“Is that what JCS says?”

The pastor smiled. “No, that’s what a frontier preacher says,” he said, and Meriel noticed the blaster at his hip blink to indicate a full charge.

“Morning, Colonel,” John said as he walked up to them with plates of food in his hands for himself and Meriel.

“Greetings, John,” the pastor said and rose to leave. “Well, Ms. Hope. I hope to see you again next Sunday.”

Meriel nodded and watched the pastor leave. “Colonel?” she asked John.

“Pastor Lee. He’s a colonel in the militia. I report to him. He lost his wife and two sons with Annie at Kilgore,” John said and turned to the girls playing with their friends.

“Becky! Sandy!” he called. “The fair is waiting.”

***

The whole idea of a fair was foreign to Meriel. Spacers never had fairs. Ships could never stop working and were never in the same place long enough to have such a gathering. Even if stations would permit so many spacers to assemble, there would be the problem of dock space and the likelihood of riots.

Except for the tattoos on the men, spacers tended to wear more subdued clothing than Haveners did. Colors found on ships and docks were the color coding for function and safety. You had to get inside white-zone or a pleasure-cruise ship to see color for color’s sake, but Haveners wore their brightest colors to the fair. And hues were different on Haven—reds were sienna, not H-alpha, and greens were chlorophyll rather than O III. The hues blazed through the haze and made everything glow so vividly that Meriel teased John about being visible from space.

While John went to a
Grange
meeting, Meriel navigated the fair with his girls, marveling at the event that was so big and crowded that it seemed as though the entire planet attended. This was the annual day of thanksgiving for the blessings that God had given to Haven. After a hundred years of just scraping by, the L5ers knew how to make the most of this slightly hospitable environment, and they made Haven bloom. The L5ers knew that Haven was a gift from God that twenty-five billion other humans around the galaxy had not been given. They cherished it and had shed a lot of blood to keep it.

The young who had not experienced their parents’ hardships now enjoyed themselves unselfconsciously and moved with a rhythm like a common heartbeat. And throughout the fair, Meriel saw the familiar cross within an oval symbol of the Church of Jesus Christ Spacemen and the spirals that represented the Haven system in brilliant colors—quilted on bedspreads and drawn on everything from toys to farm machinery.

***

“Hey, M,” Meriel heard in a familiar voice behind her. She turned to see Elizabeth with Cookie and a handsome young lieutenant from the Haven Marines.

“Hey, sprites,” Elizabeth said, and the two girls jumped to hug her and then attacked Cookie. She took Meriel’s arm.

“You look happy, Mom,” Elizabeth said.

“I’m not their mom.”

“Too late. They’re not giving you a vote, Sis,” Elizabeth said, squeezing her arm. “You gonna stay?”

“Not sure. Maybe for a while longer.”

“You love him, huh?”

“Yeah, but he needs to stay with the girls.”

“And the girls?”

“I love them too, but I can’t bring their mom back.”

“That’s not what they need now.”

“But the
Princess
is our dream, Liz.”

“I’m not sure I’m so ambitious, M. But I understand. You’re twenty-two and just starting out. You know the kids aren’t all gonna stay here.”

“I know,” Meriel said. “Tommy and Sam are likely to renew their contracts, and Erik loves it out there.”

“And they won’t all jump onto the
Princess
when she’s fixed up.

“I know. But this will be an option for them. They’ll have a place here regardless and a ship, if they want her. That’s what our folks wanted.”

Elizabeth nodded. “Penny just passed her medic-two exams,” Elizabeth said. “Turns out she’s a genius.”

Meriel was quiet, and Elizabeth caught her mood. “What is it, Sis?” Elizabeth asked.

“I’m afraid I’ll lose what I have here if I leave.”

“And rightly so. But you know, you can just freeze some eggs somewhere. The kids and I will pick out a papa for them.”

“I’ll pick out the father of my children myself, thank you very much.”

“Well, you better do something to lock down John. Jerri is still on the loose, and Socket plans to take a long vacation planetside next week.

Meriel smiled. “I think Cookie and Socket are going to vacation together.”

“About time,” Elizabeth said. “Hey, M, I’m bored. Abrams here has offered to take us on a tour of Johnston Valley, where the Haven Marines are bivouacked. Want to come?”

Meriel smiled. “He’s cute. You found him, or he found you?”

“He thinks he found me and wants to winch me in.”

“Cookie’s your chaperone?”

“Maybe. For a while. We’ll see.”

“What about Tommy?” Meriel asked.

“Old news, Sis,” Elizabeth said with a frown. “He just won’t let it go.”

“Don’t break his heart.”

“Too late,” Elizabeth said and looked away.

“Thanks for the offer, hon, but John will be back soon.” Meriel said. “You go have some fun.”

Elizabeth kissed her sister on the cheek and turned to wave. “See ya back home. I mean at the farm.”

***

John came back from his meeting and found them a place on a ridge where they could watch the sun set. The girls had finally settled down, tired from playing all day with neighboring children. When John found their spot and sat, Sandy sat near him and leaned onto his arm while Becky cuddled into Meriel’s lap.

“Little girls are blurry whirls,” John said.

Meriel nodded while weaving tiny flowers into constellations in Becky’s hair. Becky aimed the toroidal device at native varmints and made the world safe for children again.

John looked at Meriel. “They came to me last night, the girls, and asked me if you could stay with us.”

Sitting in Meriel’s lap, Becky overheard them. She knew what he struggled to say and closed her eyes and crossed her fingers. Meriel looked back at John with a soft smile.

John took Meriel’s hand. “Darling, stay. We love you. There’s nowhere else in the whole universe you’re happier than here, and I can’t live without you. Together we can make this farm work and quit our wandering. Meriel, I—”

Fireworks behind them interrupted John’s proposal, and they turned to watch. When the display ended, the smoke cleared, and the spiral arms of the Milky Way appeared at a shallow angle. The racket of the fair hushed to whispered sighs, and everyone looked with wonder.

There are worlds out there, uncounted worlds within our reach,
Meriel thought
, places where the future shines brightly as it does here on Haven. These L5ers are spacers, and the night is space to them; it’s life. They know our future is out there, calling us, but you can only hear it clearly from out here.

While the others watched the galaxy rise, Sandy walked a few feet away and looked at the Milky Way.

“Hi, sky. I’ve saved my wish till you could be here all at once. Mommy said that everything that’s made is made of you, so all of you together make my wish as strong as things can be made.

“Star light, star bright,

All the stars within my sight.

Wish I may; wish I might.

Grant the wish I wish tonight.”

She closed her eyes and crossed her fingers again to prove her sincerity. “Please let Merry L. stay here with us.”

Booms from a new round of fireworks returned their attentions to the sky. There was something odd about this round: there was no rocket trail from the ground and fewer sparklers and streamers fell to the ground. And the flashes seemed to encircle the fairgrounds.

John’s link buzzed, and he picked it up. “Time to go, kids. We’ve gotta move. Now.”