Pele’s Bee-keeper
THE WORLD WAS pain and light. Jackie didn’t want to go back to that, but a voice insisted.
“Gensh, amik gensh,” the voice said.
“I don’t,” Jackie started to say, then her mind woke up and the language came to her. “I’m here,” she said in rough Farrakhani. She licked her lips, tasting bitter ash and metallic blood. Jackie opened her eyes and blinked against the warm sunlight. A shadow crossed over her and after a moment she realized it was a face.
Her rescuer was covered in a bright purple robe, complete with a veil over her face so that only a small swatch of golden skin surrounding large hazel eyes was revealed. A woman perhaps, Jackie thought, judging by the long lashes and the soft, light tone of her voice.
“Drink this, it will help with the pain,” the woman said, her words clipped and accented, making Jackie wonder if the language wasn’t her native one.
She obeyed, hissing as she lifted her head and disturbed her shoulder. Damn, that’s gotta be my collarbone. That’s six weeks or more out for me, Miles will whine to no end about the fetch and carry. She started to chuckle until she remembered. Crash. Miles. His gurgling screams and that horrible warm wetness.
Whatever was in the water, which tasted slightly sweet, started working immediately. Warm relief shoved away the pain and she laid her head back onto the soft thing beneath her body. A blanket maybe? She wasn’t sure.
“Miles, my pilot,” Jackie asked as the woman’s head reappeared above her, “he’s injured, too, I think. Did the others get him out?”
“Others?” The woman shook her head and a shadow passed through her green-gold eyes. “There are no others here, only I.”
“And Miles?” Jackie was annoyed. Why wouldn’t this woman just say? She started to fade again and fought it, reaching with her left hand to grab at the woman. The medication refused to let her win and the dark claimed her again.
* * *
When she awoke she was inside. The lights had multi-colored paper shades and gave the large room a warm glow. Jackie struggled to sit up and leaned against the headboard of the soft bed she’d been placed in. The room had shelves and cabinets along the edges with neat labels on them in a language that she couldn’t make out. Opaque jars lined many of the shelves and Jackie smelled fresh brewing coffee. There was no sign of Miles.
A curtain twitched aside and her rescuer entered, carrying a tray. The woman was tall, Jackie thought they’d look eye to eye when standing. Her robe swirled around her body, making her shape impossible to determine, but Jackie guessed she was fit enough to be living out here alone.
“How do you feel?” The woman set the tray down and knelt beside the low bed.
I’m injured, alone, and you won’t tell me what the hell happened to Miles. How do you think I feel? Jackie took a deep breath. “Floaty,” she said. “The pain isn’t so bad. Miles is dead, isn’t he?” She forced out the last, making herself look at the possibility head on.
The woman was very still for a moment and then slowly nodded. “If Miles is the red-haired one, yes. He’s dead. I stopped the fire in your shuttle.”
Grief threatened to shred the bandages the pain medication had laid over her mind. Dead. Nothing she could do there. She took a deep breath and regretted it.
“Careful. Your collarbone is broken, here.” The woman touched her right shoulder to demonstrate. “Your arm, too, I had to cast it. Your head just took a little glue, no concussion. I am Darya.”
Jackie almost smiled at the quick, clinical delivery of this information. Not a woman used to company, she guessed. A woman in veils with no surname. Curious.
“I’m Jackie, Jackie Banner. Captain of the IOU. I need to contact my crew, get the other shuttle down here. Also, figure out what happened on my ship.” What had happened to her crew? Why hadn’t the other shuttle come down here yet?
“They are in orbit around the Jewel. Contact from here can’t happen for another thirteen standard hours. You need to rest. After you drink this.”
“I smell coffee,” Jackie said, her mind peeling away again. She did want to rest, wanted to sink into the soft quilts on this strange bed and leave everything behind forever.
“No coffee for you yet. Meds, then sleep.”
Jackie obeyed, sliding down into the covers.
* * *
“I went back to your shuttle. To get my cargo.” Darya’s soft voice broke Jackie out of her dark thoughts.
As soon as she awoke, Darya had made Jackie take more medication and then presented her with a tiny feast of fresh fruit and nuts and smashed, cooked yams. Chewing hurt, but no more than breathing. She forced herself to eat, if only to keep up her strength and pass the time until her ship could be contacted.
“Is, I mean, Miles. His body.” She bit her lip.
“I laid him out and put a sheet over him, inside. He is safe.” Darya studied her for a moment. “He was more than your pilot? Your lover?”
Is it so obvious? “Sometimes. He’s been a friend a long, long time. Was.” Another wave of grief slammed into her and she choked on a piece of starfruit.
“I did not mention the ship because of him. I mention because I think you were bombed.” Darya set down her water glass and folded her hands in her lap.
Jackie’s head snapped up and she raised her left hand to touch her sore head in reflex as it protested the sharp movement. Her braids were crusted and rough above the cut on her forehead. “Bombed? What do you mean?” She wondered if the language barrier were playing tricks with her.
“Your console, it exploded, yes? I looked at it, after moving your pilot. I think it was deliberate, not a malfunction.”
“Why would someone want to rig my shuttle?” Jackie glared at Darya. This was a headache she didn’t need. It had been weeks since they’d docked anywhere, and no one had been on the ship but her crew. Their cargo was the stuff for this moon, and some bulk plastics for a new Chen Zho station out past Centarus. And those Mudhemedi documents. Jackie shoved that thought aside. Not even her crew knew about those.
“You would know better than I,” Darya said.
Jackie shook her head, but her thoughts churned with the possibilities.
Laine barely left the engine room and had little interest in the shuttles unless something mechanical was wrong, Carsten had been learning the helm lately, and Aitor always did whatever his cousin, Carsten, told him to. She’d taken Aitor on mostly as muscle for using the lifts and moving cargo.
A bomb. That could have gotten anyone. It made no sense.
“How would you know what a rigged explosion as opposed to a malfunction looks like, anyway?” Jackie asked, dark eyes narrowing.
Darya’s expression was impossible to read behind her veil. “I do.”
There was no response to that. Jackie looked away. Laine had been buried in manuals when she and Miles had departed. Jackie was going to stay on the ship, but Aitor didn’t feel well, and Carsten and Miles had always been at best coldly civil to each other, so she didn’t want to send them down together for the drop. So she’d gone with Miles.
Had Aitor’s eyes slid away from her when he told her he was sick? Where had Carsten been then, behind her? Had Aitor glanced at his cousin? Why? She tried to replay the events in her mind but it was hazy.
“No,” Jackie said. “I’m sorry, you have to be wrong. That explosion could have killed both of us, and without me no one can fly my ship. I’ve got the codes; I’m the only one with the codes.”
She had to keep the codes close, and not just because you could never be sure of anyone, not in space, not out here on the edge. Can’t risk someone finding out about the other missions, the ones that don’t pay. Can’t risk losing my ship, not now, now when the resistance needs help so badly.
“Don’t trust your crew so much then?” Darya said and her tone stated clearly that she felt Jackie wasn’t thinking it through.
“Take me back to my shuttle. I have to see for myself.”
Darya looked as though she might protest, her shoulders hunching under the bright fabric. Then she nodded.
“When it is light out, we’ll go.”
Jackie sank back and sighed. More waiting.
“What was in those cargo crates anyway?” she asked, wondering if perhaps someone had wanted to destroy that cargo. The manifest had said only “agricultural supplies, organic.”
“Seeds, and my beehives,” Darya said, motioning to the shelves and cabinets.
Abruptly a memory came to Jackie. A large black insect with glinting blue wings resting on her arm in the smoke-filled shuttle. Her arm. Bones all wrong under the dark skin. She glanced down at it in the sling, but the cast covered everything now.
“So that was a bee,” Jackie murmured. “Did some get out in the crash?”
“One hive was destroyed, despite the wrappings.” There was a hard catch in Darya’s voice at this, as though she were stricken with sorrow about it. “Two made it; the bees are waking up now. They must acclimate in the greenhouse, then I’ll move the hives outside.”
Bees. I lost my best friend and she lost some bees. Thinking about him conjured Miles’ laughing freckled face. Bees and a mysterious woman. Miles would have been thrilled about this adventure. If you hadn’t died, it would be an adventure. A deep shiver went through Jackie and she realized she’d been quiet a long time. Darya just sat, silent and still, watching her.
“Why bees? Why are you here?” Think about something else. Anything else.
“Do you feel you can stand? I can show you.” Darya rose in a smooth, graceful motion.
Jackie shifted and swung her legs out of the bed, using her left hand to pull away the covers. Her undershirt was still on, though missing the right sleeve now, but she lacked pants with her jumpsuit removed.
Her thighs and knees were mottled with reddish bruising. Jackie was impressed since it took a lot for her dark skin to show damage like that. She knew it should hurt more, but the meds created a squishy barrier against that reality.
She stood. “Pants would be nice.” She looked down and realized her ankle holster was missing as well, though she still had socks on. She guessed her sidearm was still in its locker in the shuttle.
“Your jumpsuit is ruined, but your boots and gun are fine. I will find you pants. Please wait.” Darya slipped out through one of the three curtained doorways.
She returned and helped Jackie pull on a pair of wrap pants that were soft and smelled herbal, but clean. The boots were harder to get on, but the two women managed. Jackie made no comment as Darya strapped the ankle holster to Jackie’s left leg, but she smiled to herself as at least a small piece of the mystery was solved. Darya’s long, calloused fingers knew exactly how to fit the holster on, the strange woman barely looking at what her hands were doing as she snugged the gun into place. Definitely not what she seems.
The robes, the veil. Her knowledge of guns and explosives. The mysterious woman had seen war, Jackie was sure of that. But which faction? Which war?
Clothed and more or less steady, Jackie followed Darya through another curtain into a dim hallway. Darya hit a code into a solid door panel and it slid aside. Warmth and heady scents of growing things rushed out to greet them. The lights flicked on, revealing an immense greenhouse. Trees, some six feet or more in height, bore heavy fruits while tables full of leafy plants filled the expanse. Flowers of numerous colors and shapes overflowed their pots. The place brimmed with life, a lush paradise enclosed in glass.
Jackie stood just inside for a moment, taking breaths of the humid, earthy air, as deep as her injuries would allow. Slowly the pieces fell into place.
She looked at Darya with a little awe on her face. “You’re terraforming. That’s what you need the bees for. Right? You’re trying to single-handedly transform a barren moon into what? This?” She waved her left arm about and regretted it as her shoulders shifted and the pain stabbed through the medicine blockade.
Darya laughed, low and soft. “Yes. And I will. Pele is not barren or we wouldn’t be breathing. The seas are teeming with phytoplankton, and a few other organisms. The land masses are volcanic, the soil here is rich and ripe, a womb awaiting its seed. I am just the sower.” Her hazel eyes turned more gold than green under the lights and burned with deep passion.
She’s a fanatic. With plants. Weird. Jackie smiled despite herself. It was an ambitious idea. She could admire that. Plenty of people thought running a skeleton crew and dragging all sorts of strange cargo along the galactic rim was crazy too. Those people died old and boring in their beds.
Not screaming and burning and alone. Again the wave, and again she forced it back.
A light touch on her arm drew Jackie’s attention. Darya had moved up close enough she could see the veil move as the other woman breathed. Understanding filled those lovely hazel eyes and somehow it was more painful to see than pity would have been.
“Come, Jackie,” Darya said, “Come see the bees you brought me.”
The hives were two large boxes, almost cone-shaped near the tops, with large slats that turned out to be vertical drawers. The bees were still sluggish from cold storage, but some took flight around the women as they approached. They were black with bluish wings and as long and thick as the first joint of Jackie’s thumb.
“Those are honeybees? I thought they were supposed to be yellow and black, and well, smaller.”
Darya laughed again. “Some are. These aren’t. The gravity here is a little less than standard, the oxygen a little more. These should do well on Pele.”
“Pele? My star charts just have a designation and number. Did you name it that?”
“No, not I.” Darya turned away so Jackie could not read her face as she added, “It was named by others, long before I came here.”
A bee landed on Jackie’s arm and she froze, all her questions slipping away. “Is it, do they sting?”
“Yes, but they are nonaggressive. Nasty sting if provoked, however.” Darya turned back. “Just lift your hand gently and it should take off.”
Jackie did, and the bee vibrated its wings, lifting away and disappearing among the thick, waxy leaves of a breadfruit tree.
The remaining hours until daylight passed quickly. Darya deftly avoided any personal questions and instead distracted Jackie from both her curiosity about the woman and her own problems by explaining the ecology she was trying to produce. It was, as Jackie had suspected, an ambitious project.
The valley they were in was just her test ground; Darya had hope that once she’d unleashed the plants and bees into the environment, nature would take her course and begin working all on its own. If the bees survived, Darya planned to bring in other insects, and maybe bats as well. All Jackie managed to learn was that a settler’s conglomerate paid the strange woman to do this.
“Aren’t you lonely here, though? Why don’t you have assistants?” Jackie asked.
Tension vibrated through the other woman and she turned her face toward the ceiling. “It’s daylight now, we should go to your shuttle. If you still want to, that is.” Darya said. “Do you need more meds?”
The meds were fading, the pain getting sharper. Jackie shook her head. She wanted the pain. The meds deadened her brain, fogging things over. She needed to think clearly. “Let’s go.”
The skimmer drifted across the plain towards the glinting wreck and Jackie wondered if running wouldn’t have gotten them there faster than this old machine. Darya seemed to read her thoughts and pointed out that there were pockets of sharp volcanic glass beneath the soil, making foot travel dangerous.
Jackie stepped off the skimmer and walked into the dim interior of the shuttle. She paused, staring at the shape under the indigo sheet on the cargo platform. The cloth had slipped, revealing a shock of deep red hair. Miles. Miles grinning, his teeth coffee-stained and slightly crooked, holding the vial of dye. “Just enhancing what the good lord gave me.” She gritted her teeth and looked away.
The front of the shuttle was a mess. Jackie forced herself not to think about the dark stains and mangled webbing as she picked her way to the console. It was blown apart, looking very much like something just beneath the screens and control array had torn through. Burning plastic had pocked the entire area and melted wires hung loose like orphaned vines.
“Plastique.” Darya’s voice startled Jackie. The robed woman slipped past Jackie and bent in front of the torqued plastic and metal where the blast must have originated. “This bit of shielding here; it made it act like a shape charge, pushing it out through the screens. And this fracture here… “ She motioned to a deep, long scar in the side of the console.
“No, that was there. Not that big, but there. Laine said it wasn’t critical, so I had her leave it.” Jackie shivered, ignoring the lance of pain up her neck and then down her right arm. She wanted to reject what Darya was saying, reject the melted, blown apart mess in front of her. She brought her hand up and rubbed it across the bridge of her nose. “It made it worse, didn’t it?” Ignoring reality in space got you nowhere but dead.
“Yes.”
“So it could have been an accident. This much damage, I mean, not the explosion.” Jackie thought about Aitor’s face shifting away, Carsten standing big and cool behind her. “Designed to keep me here for a while, keep me busy.” She said the last more to herself, slipping back into Esper from Farrakhani. If Darya understood she gave no sign.
“It is possible. But why disable the shuttle? To steal your ship?” The robed woman rose to her feet.
“No. I have a guess.” Jackie hesitated. This woman was alone out here, just an employee of a conglomerate. It was unlikely she was a spy for one of the factions, or even involved at all in the various disputes and wars that flared up as regular as a sunrise in the galactic race for wealth and power. But Darya’s strong hands deftly attaching the ankle holster to Jackie’s leg was an image she couldn’t afford to ignore.
The veils and robe. Farrakhani women sometimes wore a type like this, to signal the loss of family. There was a sect of the Farrakhan faction, the Akkisti, orphaned warriors trained in secret. Supposedly they were responsible for the genocide at Cerebin. 300,000 people had lived there. Then, none. None alive. No one knew what had really happened. The Akkisti had become more legend than anything, these days. Her brain felt slow and jumpy from the meds.
“Are you Akkisti?” Jackie said.
Darya flinched as though struck, eyes narrowing. “Why would you ask this?”
“My gun,” she said, motioning to her ankle, “and this, this mess. You can read the explosion; you knew it wasn’t from some tech failure. Your accent, your dress. All of it. You’re not what you seem.”
“Are you, Jackie Banner?”
Those documents, the lists, will save lives. “I am captain of the IOU, yes. I work for no one but myself.” That job isn’t work, it’s personal, I promised Inri. And the Mudhemedi didn’t, don’t, deserve what has happened to them. She lifted her chin. Just as she’d thought, they were of a height, hazel eyes staring into her own black irises.
Darya held very still for a long time. Jackie’s hand twitched and she pressed her tongue against the back of her teeth. Then Darya’s head dipped, twice, in what might have been a nod. Jackie waited, willing the woman to answer her question.
“I am not just a bee-keeper, no. Before this I lived another life. Here, now, I am what I am. I am terraforming Pele. And keeping an eye on the ansible array in the system.”
“What?” Jackie said. There was no listed ansible in this system. She bit back pointing that out. It wouldn’t be the first unregistered array.
There was a distant crack, like thunder. Jackie looked questioningly at Darya. “Storm coming in?”
“No, not here. You came in over the ocean, yes? And then made a descent toward here?”
“Damnit. That was our other shuttle then,” Jackie said, putting it together. “Out of time.”
She walked out of the ruined craft and shielded her eyes from the rising sun. The gunmetal glint of the second shuttle appeared, making a far more controlled glide and landing than she and Miles had managed. Jackie knew who would be on board. She wondered what Carsten’s explanation would be and thought about drawing her gun. She glanced behind her as Darya emerged, recalling the sidearm still in its locker in the shuttle. The other shuttle settled, kicking up a haze of black and red dust.
“Maybe I can still get out of this without shooting,” she muttered. Darya said nothing as the hatch opened and two figures walked across the field toward the women.
Carsten was six and half feet tall, a head taller than Jackie herself and hulking with biogenetically enhanced muscles. His cousin was shorter, maybe five eight, but just as musclebound. Both men were armed, Aitor carrying a rifle. Jackie had no idea where he’d gotten that.
Maybe Miles and I let ourselves get too distracted, with the easy jobs lately. Or maybe Miles was right to dislike Carsten. Maybe? She shook her head and winced. Too late to go for the ankle gun now.
“Captain!” Carsten’s voice boomed across the closing distance. “Are you all right?”
Jackie hesitated. He looked genuinely concerned, dark brows knitting over light brown eyes. He stopped ten meters or so from her and looked at Darya. Behind him, Aitor stopped farther away, rifle held easy and ready in his hands, but not quite pointing at anyone, yet.
“Who’s that? Where’s Miles?” Carsten said.
Decision time. Miles would have played it cool, talked them into thinking she was totally in the dark about what might have gone on here. Miles would have made it work without violence or accusations. She glanced behind her and saw the indigo body lying amongst the shadows inside the ruined shuttle.
“Miles is dead,” Jackie said evenly. “The bomb killed him. Why’d you do it, Carsten?”
His face shifted like a mask slipping on. Or coming off.
“No one was supposed to get hurt. I mean that, Jackie. I don’t know what went wrong.” He glanced behind him at Aitor, who now held the rifle pointed at Jackie.
“I got hurt. Miles got dead.” Anger rose in her, mingling with grief. These idiots had served with her for a year, and then had killed her best friend by accident, and for what? “What did you want with my ship?” She ground out the words as though chewing gravel.
“You picked up something, a package, last jump stop. We’d heard you were helping those vermin, but couldn’t believe it. Not neutral, don’t give a damn Jackie. What the hell are you doing with lists of Farrakhani supply caches, Jackie? Going to hand them over to the Mudhemedi rats?” Aitor called out.
Jackie heard Darya gasp and turned her head sharply to look at the woman. It was a mistake. Her broken collarbone shifted and nauseating pain danced through her. She dropped to her knees with a whimper, trying to breathe through it and focus.
Carsten aimed his gun at her. “I’m sorry it had to be this way. But you’re aiding the enemy.”
“What damn enemy? Don’t tell me you’re allying with a faction now.” Jackie looked up, fighting another wave of pain. She turned her body slightly, giving him her injured right side and hiding her left as much as she could. She inched her left hand down her leg.
“His accent, the short one.” Darya said in Farrakhani. “It is ironic, yes? He is Akkisti.”
Aitor tipped his head to one side as Carsten took a couple steps closer. He called out in Farrakhani, “I am. This does not concern you, Mamme. We will not trouble your moon here long.”
Carsten glanced back at Aitor again and Jackie slipped her hand under her pant leg. Aitor nodded and Carsten looked almost apologetic.
“Sorry, Jackie. I didn’t want it to come to this.”
“You can’t fly the IOU without me,” Jackie said, speaking softly, willing him to come a little closer.
He did, taking a few more steps toward her as he raised his gun. “Yeah, I know. But Aitor says local has to have a way to communicate with somewhere outside this place or we’d have no delivery order for here.” Carsten jerked his head toward Darya. “Jewel Box is remote, but we’ll figure it out. Too bad our captain got burned up in a shuttle accident.”
Jackie took a steadying breath and risked a glance at the other woman. Darya stood a little ways off, green-gold eyes narrowed against the sunlight, her hands tucked into her sleeves. No help there, not for Jackie. She cursed herself for liking the quiet, competent woman.
Saving my life, then standing by while I get murdered. Great, thanks.
“Carsten,” she said. “I have a final request.”
“Stay out of my line of fire, Carsten,” Aitor growled as the big man moved closer to Jackie.
No luck there, but Jackie figured going down with one was better than nothing.
“What is it?” Carsten held his gun steady and towered over her.
“Be like Miles,” she said, jaw tight.
“What?” He blinked at her.
“Die screaming, you asshole.”
Jackie brought up the .32, squeezing off a close-range shot into Carsten. He collapsed forward as the frangible round tore into his belly.
She threw herself to the left, praying Aitor wasn’t a legendary shot. The shock of agony through her body from her broken bones nearly blacked her out again, but she heard the shots clearly.
One, two, then three. Quick, the first almost on top of the next with a slight pause before the third. She waited for impact, something. All she heard were Carsten’s horrible gurgling moans.
“Jackie?” Darya’s voice was as soft and calm as ever.
Jackie opened her eyes and saw the woman moving toward her, Jackie’s own sidearm held loosely in one hand. She forced herself upright and climbed to her feet.
Darya kicked Carsten over and the huge man stared up at her with glassy eyes, his moans turning to garbled begging in both Esper and Farrakhani. Slowly Darya unhooked her veil and then pulled back her hood.
Her face was scarred, a thick rope of whitish tissue disfiguring a full and otherwise lovely mouth. Her head was nearly hairless and the skin had a too smooth, plastic look. Jackie realized they were grafts. On the left side was a deep furrow just above a misshapen ear. Elemental weapons had done this, weapons outlawed by treaty among the major factions since the devastation of the main Mudhemedi colonies on Segina, fifteen years before. Jackie had seen footage. Everything on fire, a fire that spread and spread, burning all it touched. Animals, people, metal buildings. Things that shouldn’t burn.
“Misc Mudhemedi,” Darya said, “Sor gale, a’mud ismam.”
I am Mudhemedi. This death, that life may continue. Inri had taught Jackie a little of his people. Enough.
Carsten’s eyes widened and then Darya pulled the trigger and his face spread out over the black and red plain. Jackie looked away and shivered. She walked to Aitor’s body.
Two in the chest, one in the head. Perfect shots.
“I am sorry I called you one of them,” Jackie said, walking back to Darya.
The woman pulled her hood and veil into place. She shrugged. “I am what I am.” She motioned to the bodies. “I will take care of this.”
Jackie nodded, suddenly very tired. “I’ll take the working shuttle. And Miles. You can do whatever you want with the ruined one. I’m sure I have an extremely confused engineer up on my ship right now. If they left her alive.”
She didn’t want to think about that. She didn’t want to think at all, just collapse and sleep and wake up to a grinning, freckled man and a warm cup of not too stale coffee.
Darya talked her into going back to her compound. Jackie was too drained and in too much pain to argue much. The morphine put her out again and she awoke numb and determined.
Darya handed her a warm cup of fresh coffee and Jackie almost broke down crying right there.
“I wrapped your pilot and put him in your shuttle. We should go now, before you get tired again. You need meds and sleep. Much sleep.”
Jackie didn’t argue. The skimmer took them out to the plain one last time. There was no sign of the two men other than drag marks that disappeared into the red and black earth.
“Good luck, Darya bee-keeper.” Jackie managed a half smile as she nodded. “And thank you.”
“Thank you, Jackie Banner. Why would you help the Mudhemedi? We are a lost people.”
“I made a promise to a man, once.”
“Was he a lover, too?” Darya’s eyes crinkled in amusement.
“Sometimes,” Jackie replied and smiled back. She turned and stepped into the shuttle, letting the airlock door close behind her.
She settled carefully into the pilot seat and gingerly strapped in, glad for the painkillers. Jackie took a deep breath and hit the controls to start the shuttle. She glanced left to the co-pilot seat, a pang of loss digging deep. Then she did a painful double-take.
Tied into the seat was a large jar of coffee beans with a note scrawled in crisp Esper. “Thank you-–the bees.”