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  My brief foray satisfied something I wasn’t sure I could name. I found there was another book or two I wanted to read, and I suddenly looked forward to picking up where I’d left off on my reading list. I grinned to myself and headed back to my stateroom.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  DIURNIA SYSTEM

  2358-JULY-1

  After an adjustment period, the days settled into a comfortable pattern. My workouts with Kurt took up the mornings. He helped me focus my discipline from a kind of theoretical exhibition to a more practical mode of self-defense. He was fond of saying, “The most effective defense is avoiding the fight.” In spite of that, he had a lot of good tips on how to cope when avoidance wasn’t possible. By the time we were preparing to dock at Diurnia, I was not so foolish as to think I’d win against somebody like Kurt, but I was a lot more confident that I could at least survive.

  The trip was not without its surprises. The passenger list included Kurt and his boss, Harvey Blalock—who was some kind of wiggity wig on Diurnia who rarely left his stateroom—and an older couple, the Hokensons—who turned out to be rabid bridge players. They soon had a standing foursome comprised of them, a dour sales agent named Philip Jameson, and Georgina Fredericks. Whenever they played, Georgina’s husband, William, hung about and behaved like a sulky boy being forced to entertain himself while the adults were occupied. Georgina always exhibited a shy and demure air, even while running a seven no-trump hand. Her jubilation manifested as a smile, which was perhaps just a tiny bit broader than normal.

  While the Hokensons and their partners played bridge in the common room most of the afternoon, cinema viewings consumed the after dinner hours. Leslie March, a middle aged woman heading for Diurnia to open a clothing store, turned out to be a very pleasant and knowledgeable film connoisseur. At 20:30 each evening the big viewer in the commons became our movie theatre, and regardless of which film we picked, Leslie had a ready stream of information about the story, characters, actors, director, and even producer. She managed to carry on her running commentary without interfering one iota in the viewing experience. She was one of those uncanny people who knew exactly when to speak and—more importantly—when to shut up. As the trip wore on, and we watched more movies, I came to appreciate her ready wit and insightful observations. Leslie would often spend a few ticks before the film talking about it and sometimes we’d sit around for as much as two stans afterward discussing what we had just seen.

  The transit from Newmar to Diurnia took forty days. Given the distances involved, that had been pretty darn good. The Ellis reached the Burleson limit only sixteen days out of Newmar. Compared to what I had been used to, that was an astonishingly short run out. We had spent six days and three jumps in the between spaces of the Deep Dark running through the un-populated middle of the Western Annex, followed by an eighteen day run into Diurnia Orbital. The published transit time was forty-two days but Captain Lochlan brought the ship in two days early.

  One of the differences between being a passenger and being crew was the sense of unreality. I had a feeling of being wrapped in a cocoon—each day largely like the one before. I knew enough not to dwell on the duration of the journey, but my brain went into a kind of contemplative loop that consisted of the daily workouts with Kurt, the quiet afternoons reading in my bunk, and the bridge games providing a homely—and sometimes not so quiet backdrop. Mr. Hokenson tended toward the boisterous at times, but his wife shushed him with a stern, “Please, William! There are other people on the ship.” Then he would quiet down as the next hand began.

  We were a day out of Diurnia when Captain Lochlan put the view from the bridge monitors up on the large screen in the common room. The familiar orbital shape hung like a tin can in space. The light from Diurnia’s primary glinted from the sides during its daylight passages, and the station’s lights gleamed in the dark whenever it passed into the planet’s shadow. The view served as a kind of wake up call for me. Suddenly the end of the voyage was in sight. In a few days I’d be back on ship, trying to be a good third mate.

  William Hokenson found me staring into the monitor just before lunch on our last day underway. “Looking forward to a new ship, Mr. Wang?”

  I shrugged. “It’s going to be different,” I said. “I had summer cruises at the academy, so I know every ship is unique, but my first one is still kinda like home to me. I hope the next one will be too.”

  He chuckled and nodded. “First job out of school?”

  “Yes well, intellectually I know this won’t be the be-all and end-all, and I’m not anywhere near as good as I think, but part of me hopes that I know at least some of what I’m doing.”

  He gave me a pat on the shoulder. “You’ll be fine, Mr. Wang. You’re already ahead of many. The academy is a good school.” When I glanced from the screen, his eyes held a twinkle. “Of course, it won’t be easy, but in the end? A hundred years from now, who’ll know?”

  I grinned at that. “Well, I hope I will,” I answered.

  He chuckled again. “Yes, there is that to consider.” His voice stayed playful but his tone shifted as he observed, “Now that school’s out, the real lessons begin.” His eyes closed and he added, “Learn them early and learn them well. Remediation is painful.”

  I sighed and nodded my understanding. “I suspect you’re correct, sar.”

  He opened his eyes and refocused with a rueful smile.

  “Well, the bitter voice of experience, my boy. Since I crossed the century mark, I find I use it more and more often.” He offered an almost apologetic shrug.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  One of the things that the academy had drilled, and practically beaten, into us as cadets on summer cruise was that we really weren’t qualified to be third mates. The degree only permitted us to have some confidence when taking the Third Mate’s exam. The ink was barely dry on my CPJCT license when I had left Newmar. Most of us had sat for the license in a mass examination organized by the academy during the latter half of our senior year. Everybody I knew passed. Or at least said they did. The actual licenses—arcane and freighted with significance—were delivered physically as well as digitally. I had a nicely framed document, complete with scarlet seal, calligraphic embossing, and all the rights and privileges appropriate to my rank—which, from my informal observation, really wasn’t much. While the instructors at the academy were quick to assure us that we were learning what we needed to know to be good officers in the Deep Dark, the summer cruises tended to disabuse us of any such notions as we mixed it up with “real” officers. I hoped that some amount of that could be chalked up to hazing the next crop of cadets. I knew in my heart of hearts that a large part of it couldn’t be. Standing there, staring at the live feed from the bridge, trying to pick out the ships docked around the middle of that gleaming tin can, and listening to Mr. Hokenson, I hoped I wasn’t going to be one of those “fresh-out-of-school-know-it-alls.” The next couple of stanyers would be fraught with all kinds of peril along those lines, and the last thing I wanted was to add to the stereotype.

  As if sensing my thoughts, Mr. Hokenson patted me once more on the shoulder and nodded. “You’ll be fine, my boy. You’ll be fine.”

  Paul Mueller pushed up the door of the pass-through with a loud rattle, announcing the start of lunch. Mr. Hokenson wandered off to get some, leaving me contemplating my future for a moment or two longer before the rest of the passengers trouped in.

  That evening’s movie was an older one—from around 2290, according to Leslie. The camera work was excellent and the plot revolved around a middle-aged woman rebuilding her life after the tragic death of her husband and children. The lead actress was not the typical media darling sylph but rather a meaty woman made up to look even older than she was. The story revolved around a younger man that she had met on holiday. It was somewhat predictable but poignantly done and—again according to Leslie March—shot largely on location on Fangipani, one of the heavily islanded resort planets in the Chiba quadrant. As the m
ovie ground its way to its telegraphed conclusion—where the woman finally realizes that life is fragile, bittersweet, and worth living brought on by having multiple encounters with the younger man in a variety of settings before being killed herself when a freak ocean storm barrels into their secluded hideaway and blows the small bungalow in on her—Leslie became less and less talkative. Her commentary stopped completely and in the end she sat staring at the closing credits and nursing a gin and tonic while the rest of the passengers called it a night.

  She was one of the last to rise. “Ishmael?” she called as I was about to leave the lounge.

  I stepped out of the passageway to allow the Hokensons to go by. Mrs. Hokenson smiled at me in a very grandmotherly fashion and murmured, “See you in the morning, Mr. Wang.”

  Leslie had drained her glass and slipped it onto the rack for Paul to get in the morning.

  “What did you think of the film?” she asked, not quite looking in my direction.

  “Predictable, but pretty,” I said.

  “In what way, predictable?” she asked, looking up at me with soft green eyes.

  She was very attractive in ways that hadn’t been obvious when I first met her.

  “Well, women who try to control their own lives—their own destinies—even after all humankind has been and done—those women must die. She was killed by a storm—a wind of fate—because she dared to look for happiness in the arms of a young lover.” I shook my head. “My mother, a lit professor, would have had a lot to say about it, I’m sure, but it seems like a recurring theme. Women aren’t allowed to be happy, unless their happiness comes from the largess of a man.”

  As I spoke, Leslie cocked her head slightly to one side. “That’s a pretty mature view for a guy who’s fresh out of the academy,” she said, without making it sound like a left-handed compliment.

  “Yeah, well, I learned a lot from my mother. The old stories are full of this stuff. I cut my teeth on it.”

  She was silent for a few heartbeats, looking at my face, trying to read—something. “You think it’s still the case that society believes that men should control their women?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. My first ship was run by a woman. It was named for her great grandmother.” I nodded my head down the passageway. “But we have two examples right here of women who are controlled largely by the men in their lives.”

  She smiled and asked, “You’re including Mrs. Hokenson?”

  I grinned ruefully. “Well, that’s a good point. She probably let’s him think he’s in charge.”

  Leslie chuckled and seemed to make up her mind. Crossing the lounge, she took my hand in hers and started down the passage toward the passenger staterooms. “How do you feel about women who take charge? Do you believe they need to be punished, to be put in their places?” She looked up into my face as she asked.

  I smiled, feeling the temperature rising in the ship as we sauntered down the hall. “That depends. Do you like being punished?”

  It was her turn for a rueful smile. “No.”

  I shrugged. “That works for me too.”

  She led me into her small stateroom and closed the door behind us.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  DIURNIA ORBITAL

  2358-JULY-2

  When we docked at Diurnia Orbital, I got the full treatment of a Confederation customs inspection. It wasn’t the first time, but they were much more thorough than on Newmar. Perhaps it was because in the past I’d always traveled on freighters, and this was my first passenger trip. The rest of the passengers didn’t seem all that surprised, and Kurt even escorted his very reclusive employer voluntarily into a private inspection room. Or perhaps that was just how the rich people did it. Kurt smiled and nodded once in my direction as he disappeared behind a blank door.

  The rest of us presented ourselves and our goods at the lines waiting at the banquettes behind which stern-faced inspectors in rubber gloves waited. It seemed a waste of time to me. They’d had the ship’s manifest for days as we maneuvered into the orbital. Our luggage had been sniffed and scanned when it was taken aboard, but the Diurnian custom officials, men and women alike, had the same no-nonsense expressions. They looked as if they expected to find something, and woe unto the unlucky passenger who neglected an item on the declaration form. All told, though, it didn’t really take all that long to clear customs. A few questions, such as: “Where are you coming from? Why are you here? Where are you going?” a review of my credentials, a perfunctory examination inside my grav trunk, and a fast body scan were all behind me fairly quickly. I stepped through to the arrivals lounge and caught up with the luggage that had taken an additional pass through some kind of magnetic resonance scanner.

  Leslie March was standing there with a pair of grav trunks and thumbing for them as I stepped up. She gave me a warm smile and winked without saying anything, turning to trundle her trunks off toward the exit. We’d exchanged contact information before leaving the ship. I didn’t expect she’d call, but one never knows, and she was a very considerate woman.

  I thumbed the receipt for my own single trunk and tagged it to trundle along behind me. I had a couple of days before my appointment with Diurnia Salvage and Transport, so I needed to find a room. After cooling my heels aboard the Ellis for forty days, the last thing I wanted to do was wait around the orbital, but my appointment was for July 5, 2358, and then I’d find out what ship and when I’d be able to board.

  Stepping out of the arrival’s lounge into the gently curving promenade of the orbital’s One Deck, felt like I was coming home somehow. While I’d spent a lot of time studying cargo and cargo handling on Newmar Orbital, and summer cruises had taken me to several of the orbitals around the Venitz quadrant, those all felt temporary. Diurnia was about to become my new home port. The realization sent a shiver of disbelief through me. I wasn’t sure which ship I’d be going on, but Diurnia Salvage and Transport operated among only four other systems in the quadrant. I could expect to see a lot of Diurnia Orbital. Well, As much as a spacer saw any station.

  I paused at the observation window and looked out at the Ellis, nuzzled up against the small craft lock on the deck below. I marveled again. My next trip would be aboard a freighter and would probably take nearly as long to reach the Burleson limit on its way out as the entire trip from Newmar had taken. I snorted in amusement and pulled my trunk along the corridor in the direction of the lifts. I could find a reasonably priced hotel up on the Seven Deck, and I needed to get settled in for the next few days.

  Having all the orbital stations standardized under the rules of the Confederated Planets Joint Commission on Trade made them very easy to navigate for people who saw them a lot. There were always spacers needing rooms as the ships came and went. The rapid turnaround of ships and crews, and predictability of the process, made the operation of the various hotels and hostels run like clockwork. I could have gotten a bunk in a transient hostel at about a quarter of the cost of the hotel room, but knowing I’d be shipping out again soon, and having gotten used to my privacy on the Ellis, I decided that I could afford to splurge on a few nights of relative luxury. As a third mate, I was probably going to be sharing a cramped stateroom with another of the junior officers.

  Within three stans of docking, I was settled in my room, had my trunk stowed, and my civvies hung in the closet. I’d worn my own shipsuits on the way out, and I was ready to get back into civvies. I took a few moments to double check my accounts and go over my paperwork, just to make sure I hadn’t confused any of it in my head.

  My tablet linked into the StationNet without any problems, so I could access ship movements, station events, and the normal access to message traffic. I didn’t know anybody in Diurnia to send a message to, so that function was rather moot. I dropped a quick “I’m on station” message to let Diurnia Salvage and Transport know I’d be keeping my appointment on the fifth.

  So I sat there, remembering my first day off the Lois McKendrick, sitting in a ho
tel room paid for by the ship on the Dunsany Roads Orbital. The feeling of “I’m alone now” returned. The memory of it, even so many stanyers later, threatened to overwhelm me. The feeling of rootlessness and unconnectedness was a cold hand in my guts.

  I shook myself and muttered, “Get a grip!”

  Remembering a small packet in the bottom of my trunk, I went to the closet and pulled it out. The small zippered pouch held all I had kept of my mother’s things. When she’d been killed back on Neris, much of her stuff went away—either to charity or trashed. Some small amount of her writing, and her ashes, had gone into storage. The storage agreement had expired while I was at the academy, and the company forwarded her effects to me at Port Newmar. I got rid of most of her books and almost all of her papers. I scattered her ashes at sea off shore at Port Newmar. She’d have liked that, I thought.

  I’d kept only a few pages and photos. I didn’t look at them often, but I’d riffled through them a few times in the three stanyers since they’d been forwarded to me. The papers contained her marriage license—dated March 3, 2328—and divorce decree—dated May 21, 2335. Both were issued here on Diurnia. My father’s name was there on both of them: Franklin Prescott Wang. Talk about non-sequitur monikers. I had only vague recollections of my father from before we’d left Diurnia and went to Neris, but in the papers there was a photo of a young man sitting at what appeared to be a restaurant table, smiling into the lens of the camera. He looked something like me, I suppose, but that young man was my father, apparently when he was courting my mother. The time stamp on the back read “Feb 2327” and had faded almost to illegibility over the years. Mother had never displayed this picture. But she had shown it to me when I was young and asked the “Where’s my daddy?” question.