“WHAT did you do in the Patrol, Papa?”
Rina walked hand in hand with Jorl as they made their way from one of Keslo’s public performance spaces where they had just enjoyed a retelling of the story of Pholo performed by a traveling troupe of Eleph shadow puppeteers. Jorl regarded his daughter, trying to fathom what had prompted the question.
“What makes you ask, little twig?”
“Cuz didn’t you fly? When you were in the Patrol? Like Pholo did.”
“Pholo flew because … well, no one really knows how Pholo flew. But I flew in a ship.”
“Right, I know. But what did you do? Why were you flying?”
“Oh, got it. Well, we did a lot of things in the Patrol. Sometimes we helped out with emergencies at one or another of the outer colonies where things were spread a little too thin. Once our navigator caught a glimpse of a smuggler hiding quiet and hoping to slip away just as we came into a system, and that got … messy. But mostly we were following up on cartographic data from earlier unmanned craft.”
Rina whuffed a put upon bleat from her trunk and gave her father that look, the one she saved for when he forgot that smart as she was she was still just a kid and couldn’t always follow everything he said, particularly if she found it boring. He acknowledged his error with a little squeeze of her hand and tried again.
“Most of the time we were looking for new planets. The Alliance is always expanding, and to do that it needs to find new worlds where people can set up colonies. For that to happen, the Patrol has to constantly push portals further and further out there. The galaxy’s very big, and without the portals it would take far too long time to go from one place to another.”
Their walking had taken them to the door of Dabni’s bookshop and they stepped within. Rina’s mother was helping a customer but she paused long enough to wave her trunk at the pair of them. Rina lifted hers in response and then led her father deeper into the store to a small table surrounded by several chairs. Kokab waited patiently, propped up on one of the seats, a miniature teacup set in front of it. Rina sat at the table and waved Jorl to sit at the sole adult-sized seat. As he got comfortable, she went through the motions of filling a dainty cup full of fantastical tea, a blend composed of made-up words she’d overheard from different visitors to the shop. Today they were drinking ontologically thespianation with just a hint of cribble. She waited for him to delicately lift the cup with one hand and only then picked up the conversation again. “But why?”
“Why?”
“Why push portals?”
Jorl frowned for a silent moment and then set his cup down as he pulled a pair of books off a nearby shelf. “These are two books in a set, volumes one and two, do you see?”
“Yes, but—”
He lifted his trunk interrupting her. “You could read them from the beginning of the first page in volume one all the way to the last page in volume two. Right?”
She nodded, clearly still not seeing but understanding that she had to wait for him to finish.
“That’s a long distance, from beginning to end. But when I put them back on the shelf, I put volume one to the left of volume two. Now the actual distance from the beginning to the end is shorter, do you see? It’s just the thickness of the front and back covers and not all the pages in between. Portals do that for the space between stars.”
“How?”
Jorl smiled. “That I don’t know, little twig. That’s physics, and I studied history. I don’t know how it all works, but I can tell you that portals always come in pairs. A lot of what we did when I was in the Patrol was to push one piece of a portal further and further through space away from its matching piece. Even though our ship went very fast, the distance between stars is vast. It takes a long time to push a portal from one star system to another, much longer than anyone wants to do it.”
“Then how does it get there?” Rina picked up the teapot from the table and filled her own cup to the brim with imaginary tea.
“We took turns, like the runners in a relay race. Part of the time I was in the Patrol, my ship went through what we called an “ongoing portal”—because usually both parts of a portal are fixed in space and people travel from one place to the other. But we flew through a kind with only the first part fixed, because the other end wasn’t at its final destination yet. When we came out the other end, there was another Patrol ship waiting. They’d been pushing that side of the portal for a long time. We took over for them and they went back through so they could have a break and do something else. We pushed it for a while until, seasons later, a different ship replaced us.”
Rina pondered and then pointed to the books Jorl had returned to the shelf. “So … when you were done, it was like you’d added more pages to the books but the distance from the front cover of the one to the back cover of the other hadn’t changed?”
“That’s it exactly.”
“That’s neat. When I grow up, I want to push portals, too!”
Jorl smiled and carefully dipped his trunk into his teacup, miming pulling deeply and then placing the end into his mouth as if to drink. “Trust me on this, Rina, you really don’t. It’s boring work. It’s important, the Alliance can’t colonize new worlds without the work of the Patrol, but I think you’ll find much better things to do right here on Barsk when you grow up.”
She busied herself preparing Kokab’s cup before asking, “The others in the Patrol, people you were pushing the portals with … they weren’t Lox like us?”
“They were not. Nor Eleph.”
“That’s not fair. I want to meet other people. Other races. I’ve read about them here in Mama’s shop. And you talk with them all the time. You said the other senators are all different. Brady and Cynomy and Marmo and lots of others.”
“That’s true.”
“And Pizlo has told me stories about how he got to meet some when he wasn’t much older than me.”
“Well, to be fair, Pizlo is always a special case. I didn’t meet anyone who wasn’t a Fant until I left Barsk, and that didn’t happen until I was older than you and Pizlo combined.”
“But Papa—”
Jorl raised a hand and she stopped. “There may be an opportunity at hand. Let me talk to your mother about it and we’ll see.”
“Talk to me about what?” Dabni had come around the corner of the bookshelf, knelt alongside one of the child-sized seats and helped herself to a teacup. Rina’s head turned to regard first one parent and then the other. Her mother’s eyes held a twinkle that she now also saw in her father’s.
“Rina was just bemoaning the fact that she’s never met anyone who wasn’t a Fant,” said Jorl.
Dabni laughed. “You mean, like nearly everyone else on Barsk except you?”
“And Pizlo,” added Rina.
“Well, yes,” admitted Dabni. “And Pizlo.”
“I’ve not had a chance to mention it to you yet, but Druz is here.”
“Here? Here where?”
“Here onworld,” said Jorl. “Something … came up and she’s arrived a season ahead of schedule. And she brought a Procy with her.”
“You’re telling me that in addition to your personal Sloth, there’s also a Raccoon on Barsk?”
“Really?” squealed Rina.
“Not on Barsk,” said Jorl. “That would be unlawful.”
“And what does this have to do with Rina?”
“I thought … well, Druz has my complete trust, and it’s long past time for Rina to meet her. And since Abenaki is here and desperate to make a good impression—”
“Who is Abenaki?”
“Sorry, that’s the Raccoon. She’s from Caluma.”
“Caluma? What does that have to do with—”
“Absolutely nothing. Just another datum. But my point is—”
“You want to take Rina to your yacht so she can meet your visiting Brady and Procy.”
“Well, they’re not mine, but yes, it’s an opportunity—”
“Of course they’re yours, Jorl. You’re the senator. That’s the only reason either of them are here. And that’s fine. I do think that Rina should expand her horizons, though I’m not so sure this is the best way to do it. She’s not going to have the kind of wanderlust that boys get, and she’s certainly not leaving the planet like you did.”
“Mama?” Rina bit her lip, having tried and failed to keep the hint of a whine from her voice.
Dabni regarded her daughter. “Yes, dear?”
“Are you saying I can or can’t go meet the people on Papa’s ship?”
“Yes, Dabni, what are you saying?”
The sound of amusement in her father’s question wiped away her own worries. Her mother rolled her eyes, a gesture that sometimes meant that patience had been exhausted and she was in trouble and sometimes that her mother was about to give in to one of her father’s more silly suggestions. It was never easy to tell which until it was past the point of doing anything about it. Then Dabni ran her trunk behind Rina’s ear in a gentle caress and the girl knew the answer, if not the particulars.
“I’m saying a great many things, Jorl ben Tral, all of which you know and none of which you want to hear. That women are more stable. That men are more prone to foolishness. That young girls adore their fathers despite the good sense of their gender. And that this is an unsought-for situation and I won’t let my own bias withhold the opportunity from our daughter, so yes, take her to meet with your visitors. I’ll speak to her teachers and maybe she can write up the experience for some extra credit.”
“I think that’s a fine idea,” said Jorl and ran his own trunk lovingly around Dabni’s ear.
Rina’s squeals of delight broke off suddenly and she leaned in, folding one ear to envelope her doll. “Papa? Can Kokab come, too? He says he’s hardly met anyone.”
Jorl smiled, cast a glance to Dabni, and then nodded. “I think we can manage to find room for Kokab, too.”
“We’re gonna meet a Sloth and a Raccoon! I can’t wait to tell Pizlo!”