19

FAMILY IS EVERYTHING

FEATHER, PENCIL, COFFEE cup, star, heart, alligator. They weren’t there.

Kathy was trapped in that alien prison pod, close to hyperventilating. She closed her eyes and said her own private rosary to calm down. Feather, pencil, coffee cup, star, heart, alligator. But it didn’t work if her bracelet wasn’t there to touch.

The pod lid opened, and she screamed. The lid came back down and sweet-smelling gas flowed into the pod. She fought the sedation, but the panting and screaming forced her to breathe faster than she wanted, and she passed out.

Kathy woke in the pod again, with the only family she had left looking down on her. She was trapped inside an alien pod and had been through hell already just to get here. But she had made it. Family.

Mallory hadn’t responded as Kathy had expected her to, holding back and looking at the floor as if Kathy frightened her. As if she frightened Mallory, when Mallory was a self-proclaimed murder magnet. Of course, that was only to get attention, but most orphans sought attention. It was okay.

When Mallory turned to her on the balcony, instead of sitting where Mallory pointed, Kathy wrapped her arms around her niece. Didn’t matter. She held her close. “I’ve missed you so much, Mallory. Are you all right?”

Mallory was still and stiff for a moment, and then she struggled out of Kathy’s arms, just as she had when she was a child. “I’m fine, but my shuttle hasn’t just been attacked. Are you all right?”

She looked stressed, older, with her hair hanging in her eyes and dark smudges underneath. She smelled a bit like sweat and anxiety; the girl really should have gotten herself a little more made up before she was going to see her aunt, for goodness’ sake. She should be using night cream now as well.

Kathy reminded herself that she hadn’t told Mallory she was coming, so how would she know to make herself up? But it was true that Mallory hadn’t left a forwarding address, and when Kathy had finally found her, Mallory should have immediately gone to clean up to welcome a family member. Kathy had tried to teach the girl how to be a good host. But she was still rude.

She handed Kathy what looked like a small fishbowl, or a brandy snifter without the stem. It held a clear liquid. She looked at Mallory in suspicion. “Is this water?”

“Of course it is, Aunt Kathy,” Mallory said, smiling tightly. “Do you think I’d poison you?”

This was too much. “Don’t talk to your aunt like that,” she snapped, the rebuke coming without a thought. Mallory had not learned any manners since growing up, it seemed.

Her niece sighed. She looked like her mother then, suspicious, unwilling to accept the generosity that Kathy and her family provided them when they were without a home. “I’m sorry, Aunt Kathy. That is water, yes. You’ll want it after your time healing in the pod. I understand it takes a lot out of you.”

“What happened?” Kathy asked, looking around her. On the balcony, others from the shuttle chatted quietly. Everyone from her cabin was there, except for the young man who had sat across the aisle from her. “The boy, where is the kid from the back that was with us?”

“He didn’t make it,” Mallory said sadly. “You’re looking at the only survivors. There are eleven of you. Everyone else is dead.”

“That boy . . .” Kathy’s eyes filled with tears as she thought about talking with him and the hopes he had in coming to the station to meet Mallory. She sniffled. “Well, he wasn’t a boy. He had to be at least twenty. He was a big fan of yours, you know.”

“He was?” Mallory asked, frowning. “Why me?”

Kathy smiled through her tears. “Your little books! He’d read them all. He told me he was coming all this way to meet you.”

Mallory guided her to stand a little ways from the others, and leaned on the railing that overlooked where they had been sleeping. She was frowning, causing creases to appear on her forehead and cheeks.

“Don’t frown like that, Mallory,” she said. “You’ll get wrinkles.”

“Sorry, can’t bring myself to smile right now,” she said, her voice flat and ugly. “Why would someone come all this way to meet me now? I mean, I was on Earth for decades.”

“He wanted to see space and said you being here made it a bonus,” Kathy said. “I told him I was your aunt, and he was so excited. I had promised him I would introduce you.”

“That’s great, Aunt Kathy, but I have to ask you some questions about your trip here.”

“I thought that’s what I was telling you about,” Kathy said stiffly.

A few thin plastic chairs were unoccupied in a corner where no one else was hanging out, so they sat down, somewhat uncomfortably.

“This isn’t comfortable. Don’t they have any human-size chairs?” Kathy asked in disdain. She had kept her marveling at the interesting, and frightening, aspects of the space station to a minimum, knowing Mallory would rather hear about home and how her cousin was doing.

“There haven’t been a lot of humans here to justify the creation of too many chairs that fit us,” Mallory said. “But I need to know about your shuttle trip.”

“Why?” she asked. “What happened to us? It’s a blur.”

“Your shuttle was attacked, and the crew and nearly everyone in first class died.”

Kathy laughed. “Don’t tell me you had to go all the way to space to get your dream detective job!”

Mallory looked at her blankly.

“You have been playing detective since the moment we got here!” she explained.

“Your shuttle was attacked,” Mallory said. “This isn’t the only emergency on the station, and security asked me and Xan to find out what happened on the shuttle. It’s not a game.”

Mallory pointed to a lean, muscled Black man talking to the rude Asian woman. He wore a dirty T-shirt. Kathy was unimpressed.

“You sound very important. I’m proud of you,” Kathy said. “Looks like you found a space for yourself.” She paused and realized she’d made a pun, and laughed at herself.

“We’re talking about the shuttle trip,” Mallory said, rubbing the back of her head and making her hair stand out.

“All right,” Kathy said, nodding. “I was sitting in the same row as that boy. Sam, I think it was. He was in college. Coming here to meet you. He just chattered on and on. I had hoped he would talk in a foreign language to test that translation device—those things are clever! But I think he was talking English. Then we jumped. It was so beautiful, the one minute we were going so fast!” She paused to remember. It had truly been a miracle to see the hyperspace colors swirl around. But Mallory probably knew all of that already. She wasn’t one to be impressed by nature’s beauty. “And then we came here. We saw the station, and then that big man kind of froze in front of me. He was stiff for about a minute and then he relaxed and said, ‘The station spoke to me!’ and he was totally amazed! Then she started to talk to all of us!”

Mallory nodded and didn’t interrupt, so it seemed Kathy had taught her some manners. “Anyway, then I got all stiff, and—I’m not sure I can remember everything, but the station spoke to me, too.”

“Can you tell me anything she said? I know it’s extremely personal, but we need all the information we can get,” Mallory said.

Kathy thought for a moment, running through her charms to keep her sane. Feather, pencil, coffee cup . . . “She talked to me about the important things in life. Joy and the safety of home, and family.”

Mallory wasn’t impressed. “Okay, a sentient space station talks to you about home.” She wrote it down. “Anything else? Can you tell me anything else about Sam?”

Kathy frowned at Mallory for not taking her beautiful moment more seriously. “He was reading one of your books. Then he got up to wander around, completely stressed! That Chinese woman talked to him, and then he came back to his seat. Then the station started talking to us in turn, and then she spoke to Sam, and then me. Then I heard a crash, and I don’t remember anything after that until I woke up here.”

Mallory sighed. “Okay, Aunt Kathy. Thanks.” She frowned again. The wrinkles this girl was going to have someday! “One more thing. Why the hell are you here?”

Kathy gasped at the bluntness of the question. She blinked, tears coming to her eyes again. “Isn’t it obvious? I came to bring you home! You’re the only family I have left! Don’t you want to come home?”

Mallory sat there, the ungrateful child that she was, and watched the tears stream down her aunt’s face.

“No,” she said, then turned away.

Kathy flung herself onto Mallory’s neck, weeping loudly. “How could you? I have nothing left. Nothing. When you had nothing, I gave you everything,” she said.

Her husband was dead. Her son was in jail. Mallory was all the family she had left, and if you didn’t have family, you didn’t have anything.

Mallory stayed still and let her cry.

The fingers on her right hand sought the bracelet on her left, but it was gone.

 . . . star, heart, and alligator.