SENALL

7 On the modest transport ship Sinai, bound for Barnard’s Star, Dorie Senall gripped the sides of her seat as they awaited passage through the jump slot. Dave Crowell was across the aisle, and Forno sat in Helk-sized harness near the back. She craned her neck and glanced at the two pilots up front. The lead pilot was surrounded by the transparent film of the transport bubble. The slot tracker readout blinked green.

Yes, she was nervous. She hadn’t been through a slot since she’d returned to Ribon several years earlier. She’d not, as a general practice, done much slot travel even during the days when Ribon was a growing, thriving colony world. She never liked straying from home. The Coral disaster displaced her, put her on a strange path indeed, but once she returned—once the reclamation project started—she had never expected to leave again. She’d endured so much hardship, had come through so much trauma during the first Ultra scare, that it surprised her, this trepidation.

She pulled herself together. Gritted her teeth as the transport hummed and trembled through the slot. She had changed clothes when Dave visited the Bubble. The pants suit she’d worn during her press conference had given way to comfortable gray slacks, a black blouse, and a gray and blue button-down sweater. It kept her warm enough in the chilly interior of the transport. On the seat next to her was a hastily packed duffle bag of clothes and necessities; a heavier coat was on her lap. She didn’t know how long she’d be gone, but what she had with her would have to do.

Tom Sakson made some noise about her sudden resignation and her nearly simultaneous decision to leave Ribon. He tried to block her with a special citation aimed at Adi Thakur. Adi, to his credit, tabled it long enough to get Dorie the visa to Barnard’s Star and get Sakson out of the Brindos Building without further incident. She worried about Adi, though. Sakson had pull. He would make trouble. It was why she’d contacted Dave the way she had, with care, an unregistered ping, not knowing what Sakson might do if he found out. She hated leaving Adi in this position. But what could she do?

She had her calling. It matched Dave Crowell’s own call. They’d had this unique connection between them that had always felt comfortable. Always felt safe. He’d visited only once after the strange events that first brought them together, but they kept up a dutiful correspondence.

Dave told her what Lorway said about what happened to Terl. That she had saved him at the Rock Dome. Got him off Coral. To Dorie, it seemed more like a kidnapping. Save him from what? They’d been there together. They should’ve left together. Why did he need saving?

More relaxed, she closed her eyes and thought about Terl. She had secretly dreamed he might return—an improbable hope—and announce himself in some typical invincible-Helk way.

Dorie lived several years with the artist and DNA expert Terl Plenko on Ribon in a modest apartment in the Tempest Tower in Venaisaille. She’d met him and discovered an almost unnatural admiration for the Helk, completely taken in by his charm, his intelligence, and his political activism. His passion for just causes and hatred for violence conjured a blistering whirlwind of activity; the rallies and movements he organized were the eye of a perfect storm of unity within a growing base of admirers.

It wasn’t long before some of his followers began mumbling about Dorie’s admiration of him as it changed into a controversial love between human and Helk. Dorie hadn’t cared. She came to love him after they married, which they did to help legitimize his candidacy—or so they thought. They’d never consummated the marriage due to sexual incompatibility. While he worked in his field of expertise, offering services related to DNA coding, he made time for his sculpture, and the two of them also focused on Terl’s political aspirations.

She’d never cared whether he won election or not. She’d have been happy if he did become Venasaille’s provincial mayor, and hoped he would, but her naïve dreams of happiness gave way to the pressures of those who mocked him, and especially to those who mocked her love for him.

She withdrew from him at the peak of his political power, just before the election tore him down. At University, she discovered RuBy and fell down that hole.

Now, here he was again. A ghost between worlds, finding passage from the Rock Dome to the dome of New Venasaille, to give her a sign to rescue his corporal body from purgatory.

If you considered Barnard’s Star purgatory.

It was a place shrouded in mystery, as far as she was concerned. She knew nothing about the world. Dave had told her it was a fast-growing colony, one of the largest. One of the most technological worlds. It had borrowed heavily from the Memors and Helks, infusing every scientific marvel it could into its culture. Dorie had become used to the slower pace of Ribon after the Coral disaster. Sure, technology created the massive domes, ensuring the safety of its citizens, but daily life kept pace with fewer demands, offering more simple pleasures. Spontaneous joys.

A particularly audible groan made her jump. It was simply the outer skin of the Sinai, the transport protesting its slippage through the slot, but it surprised her and brought her out of her reverie. She looked around the cabin again. Dave was looking at her with a bemused smile.

“Been a while,” he said, meaning her, of course.

“A while,” she agreed.

“Do you know the last time a ship didn’t make it through the slot?”

She smiled knowingly. “You’re going to tell me not to worry, that it’s been years since anything like that happened.”

“No, actually, a TWT single cabin passenger flight went missing last week on the way to Aryell.”

She raised an eyebrow, not at all amused.

“They found the ship, eventually, all passengers safe.”

She nodded, relieved.

“But it took an extra five days for a rescue vehicle to locate it, outfit a new slot tracker with the correct insertion codes to Aryell and do a cold jump from inside the slot.”

“I’m now filled with the utmost confidence.”

Dave waved it off. “Nah, we’re good. Besides, you had your own people prep this thing, right? It’ll be a dream.”

“Unless one of Sakson’s people found a way to sabotage—”

“No.” He looked toward the pilots and nodded. “We’re good.”

She stared at his profile, not quite used to his aged appearance. Did it give him an even greater aura of confidence? She hoped she could be as confident as he was. Dave didn’t know Sakson like she knew him. Didn’t know his Separatist cronies and what they were capable of in a tenuous political climate, even if that climate was now a long way behind them. The transport breezed through the slot toward Barnard’s Star, and she should forget about Sakson and New Venasaille.

“So,” she said, straightening herself in the seat the best she could, “do you know where we’re going? And don’t just say—”

“Barnard’s Star.”

“—Barnard’s Star. Jesus, Dave.”

He smiled. “Morgan did that to me when he first hired me. Sort of. I assume you’re familiar with the port of Bestus.”

“Of course. After we arrive at the port, where do we go?”

“Bestus is completely metropolitan. Large. It’d be the best place to hide, you would think. Then again, it wouldn’t take but a single sighting of the infamous Terl Plenko to have the entirety of the Union’s resources coming down on him. A number of Union Arks already have their base in orbit around Osprey Station.”

“So he’s not in Bestus?”

Dave shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

Dorie grumbled inwardly. “Do you know where he is?”

“No.” He reached into the bag next to him and pulled out the stack of Tarot cards. He fanned through the cards, taking them all in. “But I just might know someone who does.”

“From the cards?” Her curiosity spiked. “Ah. Is it some kind of encoded message in the cards? Something that secretly spells out where?”

Dave shot her a bemused look. “No. Morgan scribbled the name on the back of one of the cards. I just can’t remember which one.”

She watched him fumble through them. A couple fell out and he had to pick them up. “Be careful. You’re going to lose some.”

“You should’ve seen Lorway handle the deck as if it were an extension of her own hands.” He found the right card. “Here it is.” He held it out so she could see the front. “The Hermit.”

She thought that made sense, considering their search for Terl, who’d been missing, presumed dead, hidden all these years. “What’s the name?”

“Heston Teska.”

“That’s a Helk name.”

“Yep.”

“And where’s he?”

“In Bestus.”

“Big city—”

“We’ll search via the DataNet. NIO office there if necessary. We’ll be arriving in the bright light of late morning. Morgan said he’s in hiding, but not technically hiding. He’ll be easy to find. Whatever that means.”

Forno scoffed from the back of the transport, in his harness. “DataNet. How sweet. There are better ways to search—”

Another slippage groan echoed in the transport. It was followed by a disconcerting shimmy. Dorie reached for the armrest just as the shaking stopped.

“Of course, he may not want to be found, or be a part of this operation.”

“There could be trouble?” She didn’t like the sound of that at all. But when was there not trouble when she was around Dave Crowell?

“Yeah, there could be trouble.”

Tem Forno chuckled. Dorie looked back at him.

“Now you know why I’m on this little expedition,” he said.

It did make her feel a little better.

They were on final approach to Osprey Station fifteen hours later. Dorie awoke from a deep sleep when the proximity alarms pinged, and she unfolded herself from her prone position across two seats. The Sinai was about to exit the slot. Dave was talking to Forno in the back, but she couldn’t hear what they were saying. When the alarm pinged a second time, he quickly regained his seat.

Barnard’s Star. Long before the coming of the Memors and the Helks, long before the eight worlds of the Union and the jump slots, Barnard’s Star was well known to humans: a red dwarf star with a storied history.

Dorie had learned some of that history in school on Ribon. The fourth closest star to Earth, Barnard’s had fascinated scientists and stargazers for decades. At the time, no one knew whether Barnard’s was a viable future habitat for humanity. Assuming anyone could ever get there—the most likely possibility had been to create generation ships to travel the extreme distance—would there be any livable planets that those future generations could colonize and survive on?

The answer had been yes. Then no. Yes. No. Then maybe. And then maybe yes. They bandied about ideas of possible exoplanets. About gas giant planets larger than Jupiter. Then Earth-sized planets. There was a time, less than a hundred years ago, that Barnard’s Star was declared barren of any planets whatsoever.

The Memors gave the planet a name from their alphabet and number system. They might have called it Memory 2, or Memory 3. But when they gave Earth jump slots, Memors announced it was Earth-like. Although the Memors themselves had not colonized it, they thought it would be a good colony world for Earth.

Earth scientist Simon Daniels gave it the name Barnard’s World. He’d been inspired by a science fiction novel published in the 20^th century that used the same name for the fictional planet. There was a rival group who wanted to call it Hyperion, for the same reason, but Barnard’s World won out. Now, if you mentioned Barnard’s, or Barnard’s Star—most humans used those names rather than the actual planet name—it meant Barnard’s World.

The exit from the slot was smooth—more so than the actual slot travel, Dorie thought—and they docked at Osprey Station twenty minutes later. They waited for the umbilical, left the Sinai, and endured the Station’s overly-long security protocols, which included declaring our weapons. They were allowed on a shuttle with seven other travelers to the surface port on Bestus, capital of Barnard’s World. They had to do security all over again at the Bestus port, revealing their weapons once more, but finally received official permission to carry them for the duration of the trip.

She was ready for planet fall. Ready for a world that had natural air, real sky, no artificiality. Or so she thought. The port was stark. White, sterile, and underwhelming. The long, wide passageways from pad to exit were simply functional in getting visitors from point A to point B.

Bestus awaited beyond the port gates, which were also white and featureless, and nothing could prepare her for the colony world’s blatant blend of modern chic and alien technology. She paused a dozen steps from the gate, the brightness of Bestus already filtering through, daring her to go on.

Dave touched her elbow lightly. “You okay?”

She’d worried about this day for a long time. Not because of wild rumors about Terl alive somewhere, but because she had emerged from under the Ribon domes to walk on a planet’s surface without breathing aids or environmental protections. She was scared, and she shouldn’t be. She should have felt relief.

“Let’s give Bestus our best,” Forno said, urging them forward.

She nodded, smiled at Dave, and walked on. Most of the other passengers had already passed through the port gate. Forno crossed first, then she and Dave walked into the capital city side by side.

Bestus was bright and Bestus was flashy and Bestus was all chrome, silver, and burnished copper as far as Dorie could see. It was flashscreens taller than New Venasaille’s dome. It was layered walkways that crossed avenues from angles not thought of before. It was massive structures, technological marvels that seemed to have no obvious purpose. It was quiet, for all its advanced grandeur. Everything moved through the city silently: people, machinery, and wildlife. Above all, Bestus was new. It smelled new. It was clean and sterile, like the finest dust-free mechanism, and she could imagine nothing that would rid her of that smell, other than leaving Barnard’s World behind.

“Oh, Dave,” she said.

“It’s a bit overkill, isn’t it?” he said to her.

Understatement.

Massive copper tubes larger than skyscrapers wrapped around the immediate city elegantly, connecting buildings, connecting the avenues to the buildings and stabilizing flashanalia powered by offshoots that spiraled and shot out toward some unknown nexus in the distance, as if the city itself were one massive super computer or Memor sleep engine. The Helk influence was less obvious from here. She’d told Dave that Helk design reigned on the internal structure of Barnard’s infrastructure, which included massive amounts of imported blackrock from Helkuntannas.

Forno was tapping the air with his heavy fingers, then drawing circles, then pinching the air as if he could pull it toward him.

“What are you doing?” she asked him.

Forno ignored her question.

“Dave, what is he doing?”

He shrugged. “A new dance routine?”

“It’s good that someone knows how things work around here,” Forno said, just as the air turned chrome and silver around his hands and morphed into a detailed interface outlined in white. It took less than a minute for the interface to expand, glowing with purpose and potentiality.

“How’d you know about this?” Dave asked. “Underworld secrets?”

“You learn about these things,” Forno answered. “Maybe you just open your eyes. Maybe do a little research.”

“I wasn’t planning any off-world trips a few days ago.”

“And look where that got us.”

“Gentlemen,” Dorie said, “can we figure out what we need to do and where we need to go?”

“Working on it,” Forno said. “It’s an information kiosk, half virtual, half physical, transparent 3D flashpaper lying in wait in hidden air receptacles.”

“Memor magic,” she said.

“Magic,” the Helk said, “that should help us find our target, Heston Teska.”

“How will that help?” Dave asked.

“The Morganism said he’d be easy to find. So I figure we just bring up the city’s general information lookup and ask it.”

Dorie doubted it. Everything in Bestus gleamed with promise, but you had to know the language. You had to understand what the interface was telling you. “It’s silly, Forno. You can’t expect that thing to just spit out—”

“Here he is,” Forno said.

“What?” She squinted at the glowing interface, and she couldn’t read a thing, but she saw a profile graphic of a Helk that looked huge. Hard to tell in a profile about actual size.

“That’s Teska?” Dave said, coming closer to the interface.

“It’s him. Second Clan. And his residence is listed on the grid. Actually not far from here. Like I said—” Forno stepped away from the air kiosk and it vanished, now tucked back into its air receptacle. “He’ll be easy to find.”

“But,” Dorie said, “remember the part where he might not want to be found?”

“Then I guess we don’t call ahead.”