Edward Willett's Blog, page 43

Free Novel Saturday: Star Song, Chapters 24 & 25

Every Saturday I post a chapter or two of my young adult science fiction novel Star Song . Coming in in the middle? The whole thing starts here with Chapter 1 and an explanation.

En joy!

Star Song

By Edward Willett

Chapter 24

“I sense you are now alone, Kriss Lemarc,” said the Library. “Do you wish to view all of your parents’ records, or do you have a specific area of interest?”

“What do the records include?”

“Besides vital statistics and financial records, they consist primarily of diaries and logs from archaeological expeditions.”

“How long would it take to view all of them?”

“With continuous display, sixty-eight days, sixteen hours, nineteen minutes, forty-four seconds.”

Kriss winced. “I think I’ll want to narrow it down.”

“Where would you like to begin?”

He didn’t answer. Where could he begin? He wanted to know everything about his parents—but he didn’t have time.

“Where would you like to begin?” the Library repeated.

A thought struck him, and he leaned forward eagerly. “Do you have pictures of them?”

“Affirmative.”

The display cube filled with heavy, glowing mist, which coalesced into full-color, three-dimensional images of a young man and woman. Kriss stared at them hungrily. Here were the parents he had never known…but they were so young!

He had to smile at his own surprise. He had always pictured them middle-aged, as they would be if still alive, but of course they had only been in their mid-twenties when they died, just a few years older than he was now.

The picture of his father had been taken outside. His eyes were focused on some distant horizon, and Kriss could almost feel the wind that tugged at his father’s hair, blonde as his own, and the warmth of the sun that beat down on the tanned, lean face, quirked in a faint smile…an expression he found oddly familiar.

He should, he realized; he’d seen it often enough in the mirror.

After a long moment he turned to his mother’s image.

It had been recorded inside. She was laughing at something, and firelight tinged her skin gold, twinkled in her eyes, and glowed in the auburn hair that danced around her bare shoulders. Again Kriss caught echoes of his own face in her green eyes and high cheekbones.

He leaned back and looked at his parents side by side, their images as clear as though they were with him, instead of separated from him by seventeen years of loneliness, and fresh hatred rose in him toward the one who had taken them from him. “Thank you,” he said in a harsh voice. “I’ve seen enough.”

The images vanished.

“I’d like to view the log from their last expedition,” he went on briskly, getting down to business—but the first entry renewed the pain.

“September 30, 2947,” said a young man’s happy voice. “Our anonymous patron came through for us—we can finally start preparing for the expedition! I was afraid that old spacer’s story about an alien city untouched by time would be too tenuous for him, but looks like I was wrong.

“But that’s not the best news of today. I’m a father! Memory gave birth less than an hour ago to our son. We’ve already decided to name him Kriss, after my father. I only wish he and Mom and Memory’s parents were still alive to enjoy their first grandson…

“I hope Kriss likes to travel, because in about six months we’ll be setting out…”

Three hours later the last entry played in the cubicle. Kriss’s father no longer sounded young or happy.

“October 6, 2948, on board our scoutship, Seeker. We’re about to leave this site. We’ve discovered who our mysterious patron is, and he must not find this place. I wish we’d never told him we’d found it…as soon as he realizes we’ve run, he’ll be after us, but I tried to buy us some time by telling him in our last monthly report that our next report will include the planet’s coordinates.

“But we’ll never make that report. We’re going to vanish.

“Even in this private record I won’t say who our patron is, give the coordinates of this planet, or tell where we are headed. He may be able to break even the Library’s security. And there is no point in contacting Commonwealth authorities; he hasn’t done anything yet, and his influence is such that if we were to accuse him, we would be the ones arrested, and shortly thereafter we would be in his hands.

“We’re leaving everything here except the key artifact. It and the fortress must be separated while there is the possibility he could find either one. He must not have access to the planet-shattering power we’ve uncovered, or he could make this place a base of operations from which he could effectively rule the entire Commonwealth.

“This may be my last entry.”

It was. Silence descended in the cubicle, but Kriss knew the rest of the story: they had fled to Farr’s World, but Vorlick had tracked them down. They had hidden Kriss and the touchlyre—the “key artifact”—with Mella. Then they had fled again, to lead Vorlick away from their son and the artifact, and Vorlick had killed them…

Kriss stared at the blank gray wall above the holocube. The early log entries had been cheerful and excited like the first, describing his parents’ search for the rumored alien city, and their breathless, ecstatic excitement when they’d actually found it—and discovered it was not a city at all, but a fortress—deep in a tropical forest on an unspecified planet. The log described the site in sufficient detail to make it easy to locate from orbit, once the proper planet was found.

But not long after that the tone of the messages had changed. Somehow, either from something in Vorlick’s communication with them or through Jon’s own research in the Library’s records, they had begun to realize who their “patron” was—and what kind of man he was. While their suspicions were still only half-formed they discovered the touchlyre, and what it could do—but exactly what it could do, and why it was the “key artifact,” Jon had left tantalizingly unsaid, already distrustful of putting any information in a place where Vorlick could conceivably retrieve it.

He did say he had found the artifact in the tallest tower in the fortress, which he said he had felt “almost compelled” to climb. He also mentioned its musical nature, but again, there were no details.

His reference to “planet-shattering” power particularly puzzled Kriss. Certainly he knew—only too well—how dangerous the touchlyre could be, but “planet-shattering” seemed a bit much. Still, his parents had clearly feared what could happen if Vorlick found the fortress and the touchlyre together—and so they had separated them.

Yet now Vorlick had him and the touchlyre; and Kriss had to somehow locate its planet of origin if he wanted to stay alive.

Maybe it’s impossible, he thought hopefully. “Library, can you scan the log and determine on what planet my father found the alien fortress?”

“Negative.”

He sighed with relief. He wouldn’t have to betray his father.

But the Library continued. “However, it is apparent there are only ten possible planets.”

“How can you tell that?” Kriss asked in astonishment.

“All the log entries were sent through the dimspace relay which orbits Farr’s World. There are only ten planets fitting the available data which are within ship-board communication range of that relay.”

That means one of the possible planets is Farr’s World itself! Kriss thought. Tevera had said the touchlyre couldn’t have come from there, but there was a lot of wilderness…and there was nothing in the log to rule it out. Therefore Farr’s World would be Vorlick’s first destination when Kriss gave him the data he had gathered.

And that decided him. He would pass on the information—because he would never have a better opportunity to escape than on his old home world.

He thought of something else, and calculated mentally. The Thaylia was due at return to Farr’s World soon—so soon, she might either be on the planet or very close when Vorlick’s ship arrived. But “very close” could mean light years, and even if he gained access to a communications terminal, he couldn’t contact the Family while Rigel had the upper hand.

Then he sat up straight. “Andru!” he said out loud. “He’d believe me. If I could contact him…”

“Whom do you wish to contact?” asked the Library.

He stared at the holocube. Of course the Library could act as a communications terminal! And Vorlick had left him alone…

“His name’s Andru,” he said quickly. “Formerly Andru of the Family ship Thaylia. He owns an inn called Andru’s in Stars’ Edge on Farr’s World.”

“Sufficient data…located. Signaling.”

The display cube misted, then solidified into an image of Andru, blinking at the screen, his shaggy, iron-gray eyebrows drawn together in annoyance. “Who is it?” he growled, then his eyes suddenly widened. “Kriss!”

Kriss felt a flood of relief at the sight of his former employer. But he wasted no time in small talk; Vorlick must be getting restless. “Listen, I’m in trouble…” he began, and sketched out what had happened.

“I want to tell Tevera I’m innocent,” he concluded. “But I can’t call the Thaylia with Rigel aboard. Even if he didn’t tell Vorlick, I doubt I’d get a sympathetic hearing from anyone except Tevera…” he paused, remembering how even she had not wanted to doubt her brother’s word. But he pushed that unpleasant thought away. “The Thaylia’s due there soon, isn’t she?”

“Ten days.”

“Could you somehow get word to Tevera? Maybe she could convince the Captain…” His voice trailed off. How could anyone sway that stiff-necked old woman once she’d made up her mind? Andru had, once, but he had nothing left to bargain with—he was no longer Family.

But Andru didn’t seem concerned. “We can do better than that. Vorlick may bring you here, but I can promise you won’t be leaving with him.”

Kriss stared at him. “How?”

“Leave it to me.”

Footsteps sounded outside the cubicle. “Vorlick’s coming. Break contact!”

Andru’s face had barely faded away when the door opened and Vorlick stormed in, his thin face dark with anger. “I’ve waited long enough. You’re stalling…”

“I’ve found what you’re looking for.” Kriss turned back to the holocube. “Library, please hardcopy the coordinates of the ten possible sites of the alien fortress and the description of the structure as outlined in my father’s log.”

“Completed,” the Library said almost at once, and a white sheet protruded from a slit in the table below the holocube. Vorlick snatched it up.

“Why ten sites?” he said suspiciously, looking it over.

“My father didn’t trust you,” Kriss said. “He didn’t record the coordinates. But all his log entries came through the Farr’s World dimspace relay. Those ten planets are all within ship-board communication range of Farr’s World.”

“Farr’s World?” Vorlick smiled. “How ironic if this search were to end right where it began!” He gripped Kriss’s arm and pulled him to his feet. “We’ll start with your old home, then. But that alien fortress had better be on one of these worlds, boy, or I may just decide to cut my losses and settle for the artifact alone…and then I won’t need you anymore.” He pushed Kriss toward the door.

“I trust I have been of some help,” said the Library.

#

Chapter 25

They didn’t return to the decrepit freighter; instead they boarded Vorlick’s luxurious golden yacht, Gemfire, at another space station. Within two hours of departing the Library, they were on their way back to Farr’s World.

No question about having artificial gravity on this vessel; Vorlick led Kriss to his quarters through corridors that would not have been out of place in a luxury hotel—not that he’d ever been in one—past oak-paneled walls and crystal light fixtures, sinking into the royal-blue carpet with every step. Dark wood and red cloth predominated in the cabin into which Vorlick showed him. “Roam the ship as you please,” Vorlick said as Kriss gaped, though not at the luxurious appointments so much as at the space, at least six times what he had had on board the Thaylia. “You can hardly run away.”

He strode away, and Kriss closed the door behind him, then sat gingerly on the automated bed, which shifted beneath him to provide maximum comfort. He found himself looking at an elaborate entertainment and food console in one corner of the cabin.

The Gemfire impressed him—and not just with ostentatious luxury. He’d also been very impressed by the armored bulkhead hatches that could seal the ship into a hundred sections, the gas nozzles, beamers, needlers, netters and surveillance devices that crowded every strategic location, and the fully operational beamer that seemed an integral part of every crewman’s spotless white uniform.

It would take a small army—maybe even a large one—to break into the Gemfire and rescue him. Yet Andru had promised to try, and Kriss knew he would keep his word, no matter how hopeless the attempt. He’ll just get himself killed, Kriss thought miserably. Nothing’s changed; I still endanger everyone close to me.

Tevera had once told Kriss that the trip from Farr’s World to Earth took the Thaylia two months. On board the Gemfire it took only three weeks; but three weeks was ample time for his spirits to sink close to despair.

When at last the room’s viewscreen showed the familiar spaceport of Stars’ Edge, Kriss scowled at it blackly, remembering how jealous he had been of Tevera when he first saw her coming down the ramp of the Thaylia. Could it really have been only three and a half months ago? He felt a century removed from the innocent youngster he had been then—and envied him.

He had the viewscreen scan the rest of the landing field, looking for the Thaylia. But the Family ship wasn’t among the four other vessels in port, and he let his hands slip from the controls. Against common sense he had let himself believe the Family might be waiting for him, that Tevera would sway the Captain to his side. But his fond hope shattered against cold reality. Either Andru hadn’t been able to pass his message to Tevera, or she had been unable to convince the Captain—or worse, she had received the message but not believed it, choosing to trust her brother instead.

Like a starkling settling on a rotting carcass, his mind latched onto that last thought, and he almost relished the anger and self-pity it brought, so strong that for a moment he fancied he felt the touchlyre’s ghostly fingers reaching into his mind from Vorlick’s cabin. “Just a worldhugger who couldn’t make it in the Family, that’s all I am to her now,” he muttered. “All that garbage about giving up the Family for me…nothing but lies.” He smashed his fist against the viewscreen so hard the transparent cover cracked, and the screen went dark. “Lies!”

Probably Andru lied, too, he thought bitterly. But that’s all right. I don’t need him. “I don’t need any of them!” he shouted at the walls. He could cooperate with Vorlick, maybe make a deal…

The door slid open behind him, and he spun to see Vorlick, tight-lipped with anger, and a larger man in an ill-fitting dark-green Farrsian customs uniform. “Ever hear of knocking?” he demanded.

“People hide things from me when I do,” the customs official said. He ran sharp eyes over the room. “Nice cabin.” His gaze stopped on the wrecked console, and he raised an eyebrow. “For the most part.”

Vorlick shot a poisonous look at Kriss, then turned to show the official out. “This way, sir,” he said with exaggerated politeness, placing a hand on the official’s shoulder.

The official shrugged it off. “You look familiar,” he said to Kriss. “What’s your name?”

Vorlick shook his head, but Kriss ignored him. “Kriss Lemarc,” he snapped. “What’s yours?”

“I know you. You were playing that peculiar instrument in Andru’s a few months ago.”

“You want an autograph?”

“No,” the official said. “I never heard you and wouldn’t want to. But I’ve seen your picture. There’s a warrant out for your arrest.” He jerked his head toward the door. “You’re in custody as of now. Let’s go.”

Kriss just stared, caught off guard. Vorlick blocked the doorway. “Wait a minute—”

“Get out of my way or I’ll charge you with obstruction,” the official snapped.

“Do you know who I am?”

“Carl Vorlick—and the law applies to you the same as anyone else.”

Vorlick lowered his voice. “I’m sure we can work this out…”

“Mr. Vorlick, if you are thinking of offering a bribe, don’t. Despite the reputation of some of my colleagues, not all officials on Farr’s World are corrupt or incompetent. If you offer me a bribe you will join this youth in custody, and you just might find yourself before a judge as unimpressed as I am by your reputed wealth and power. Do I make myself clear?”

Vorlick’s fists clenched, but he stepped aside. “All right, take him! But I’ll have him free by this time tomorrow.”

“Maybe. But in the meantime…” The official gripped Kriss’s arm.

“What’s the charge?” he demanded, trying to hold back, but the official, too strong to resist, only pulled him faster along the plush corridors.

Outside a waiting automated groundcar whisked them swiftly across the landing apron to the administration building. They stopped in front of a door marked “Customs and Immigration: Detention and Impound,” and the still-silent official led Kriss inside, through a maze of corridors, rooms and fenced areas piled high with crates. They finally emerged through another door into the main lobby, as usual nearly empty except for a handful of bored-looking workers behind a long black desk. Brilliant sunshine streamed through a tall wall of glass beyond which Kriss could see the familiar ring road and its steady flow of transports, groundcars and wagons.

The official stopped at one end of the desk. “Wait here,” he said, then strode swiftly across the bright mosaic floor to an open door, climbed into another groundcar and drove off, leaving Kriss staring after him, astonished.

He glanced around. No one was watching him, or apparently even aware of him. He took two tentative steps toward the door, and nothing happened. He strode casually halfway across the lobby, and still no one shouted or even looked up.

Finally he hurried out the door and onto the sidewalk, then glanced both ways along the ring road, wondering what to do. Vorlick would soon find out he’d escaped and Andru’s was the first place he’d look. He didn’t dare go there…yet he had to warn Andru, and tell him not to attempt any rescue.

Before he made any decision a blue groundcar with mirrored gold windows pulled out of traffic and stopped right in front of him. The glass on his side rolled down.

“Need a ride?” asked Tevera.

#

Free Novel Saturday: Star Song, Chapters 22 & 23

Every Saturday I post a chapter or two of my young adult science fiction novel Star Song . Coming in in the middle? The whole thing starts here with Chapter 1 and an explanation.

En joy!

Star Song

By Edward Willett

Chapter 22

Kriss’s captors carried him to a dark warehouse at the edge of the field, through a creaking door and into a musty room, empty except for a few broken crates. They dumped him on the floor, then one closed the door and the other turned on the lights.

One of the men was bald and middle-aged, the other young and bearded. Neither was the man who had been following Kriss for a week, but he assumed his “shadow” was the one who had chased him into the trap. “So where’s Vorlick?” he demanded as soon as the younger man undid his gag.

“Who’s Vorlick?”

“The man you work for!”

“Never heard of him,” said the bald man.

Kriss struggled upright and glared at him. “You expect me to believe that?”

The bald man shrugged. “Don’t really care.”

“What are you going to do with me?”

“What we’re being paid to.” He looked at his watch. “Going to keep you here until an hour after midnight—then let you go.”

“Let me go?”

“That’s right.” The bald man sat down on a crate, leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. “You might as well make yourself comfortable.”

Kriss stared at him. He couldn’t be telling the truth. What did they really intend to do with him—kill him? “Where’s the touchlyre?”

The bald man opened one eye again. “The what?”

“I think he means this,” the younger man said, holding up the well-wrapped instrument.

“There you go. Now be quiet or I’ll put that gag back on you.” The bald man closed his eyes again and soon began snoring.

Kriss struggled uselessly with the cords that bound his wrists. Finally he subsided and lay still, fuming. Maybe they don’t know who they’re working for, he thought. Vorlick could be trying to cover his tracks. But I’ll bet he shows up in another hour or two.

It was a bet he would have lost. Precisely an hour after midnight the bald man’s watch started beeping frantically, and he opened his eyes and sat up, stretching. “Well, lad, that’s that.” He stood and nudged the younger man, who had also fallen asleep, with his foot. “Some guard you are!”

“Still here, ain’t he?” the other man grumbled.

“No thanks to you. Cut those cords, give him that touchlyre thing and let’s get out of here.”

Two minutes later Kriss stood on the landing field outside the warehouse again, while his captors vanished into the darkness. He stared after them, completely bewildered. Was somebody playing a joke?

Finally he set out for the Thaylia. They must have been searching for me since I failed to show up for the banquet, he thought. Nicora will think Vorlick got me. I thought Vorlick had me. He shook his head. “I don’t understand,” he muttered.

A young cousin of Tevera’s stopped him as he entered the ship. “The Captain wants you,” she said stiffly.

“Thank you.” They must have seen me coming, he thought as he made his way deeper into the ship. Nicora will be glad to see I’m still alive.

He wasn’t prepared for the greeting he received as he stepped out of the elevator at the Captain’s level. Nicora’s guards awaited him, and seized his arms roughly, ignoring his angry protest.

Nicora sat behind her black desk—with Rigel standing beside her. She spoke without preamble. “Crewman Lemarc, you failed to appear as ordered at the Coronach to play for the assembled captains and their officers. This has shamed the Thaylia.”

“Captain, I—”

“Silence!” The ice in her tone froze the words in his throat. “I know what you have done. Rigel saw you leaving the port, entering the city, at the very hour when you were due on board the Coronach. How dare you go to play in some worldhugger bar when Family captains await you? And worse, while you were confined to port?”

“But I didn’t! I was kidnapped!”

“Kidnapped?” The Captain raised a frosty eyebrow. “By whom?”

“I don’t know! Vorlick’s men, maybe.”

“And how did you escape?”

“I didn’t. They let me go.” Even as he said it, Kriss realized how ridiculous it sounded.

The Captain glanced at Rigel. “My report stands,” Tevera’s brother said. “He left the port alone, of his own volition.”

Kriss lunged at him, but the guards pulled him back. “Liar!” he shouted.

The Captain’s eyes transfixed him. “We in the Family do not lie.”

“But you’re saying I’m lying!”

“You were not raised in the Family.” She took a deep breath. “Crewman Lemarc, you are confined to your cabin for the duration of our stay in Try-Your-Luck, and for the duration of the next Jump, except for periods of special disciplinary duty. Nor are you to contact Crewwoman Tevera during that time. Dismissed!”

“But—”

“Escort him!”

Choking on helpless rage, Kriss was dragged from the room, his last view a glimpse of Rigel’s stony face.

Later he sat fuming in his cabin. Why was Rigel lying? He stood and paced, five steps from wall to wall. Had Rigel known what really happened, or had he just decided to take advantage of Kriss’s mysterious disappearance?

He stopped suddenly. Or had he set up the whole thing? What if Rigel were the one who had hired the men to hold him, knowing it would widen the gap between him and the rest of the Family?

Did Rigel hate him enough to lie to the Captain? Kriss shook his head. There had to be more motive than that.

But he still hadn’t puzzled out the answer when the intercom at the head of the bunk beeped, disrupting his thoughts. He banged the switch with his fist. “What do you want?”

“It’s Tevera,” came the whispered answer.

“Tevera!” He sat on the bed, as close to the intercom as though it were the girl herself. “How—”

“I’m alone in my cabin. I’m not supposed to even talk to you, but unless someone looks closely at the monitor on the bridge…what’s going on? Why are you locked up?”

Briefly and bitterly Kriss told his story. When he finished she was silent. “Tevera?”

“I’m…still here.” Then, in a rush, “Kriss, are you sure there’s no way Rigel could have seen what happened and just misunderstood? He’d never lie to the Captain…”

“I was bound and gagged! How could he misunderstand that? And if he saw it at all, why didn’t he help? We’re both supposed to be Family!”

“There has to be an explanation…”

“There is,” Kriss said grimly. “Your brother hates me.”

“But Rigel is Family. Family men don’t lie!”

“He’s human. We all lie.” Anger grew in him. “You obviously think I’m lying!”

“No…”

“But you don’t believe me.”

“Yes, I do! It’s just…I believe Rigel, too.”

“You can’t have it both ways!”

Another silence. “I need to think,” Tevera said finally.

“Think all you want to. But don’t call me again until you’ve decided to trust me!” He smashed the intercom switch closed, then hurled his pillow across the room and flung himself on the bed.

After a bitter time of black thoughts he drifted into sleep, but woke only an hour or two later when his cabin door opened.

He couldn’t see a thing—but he hadn’t turned his lights out before sleeping! He sat bolt upright. No light came through the door, either, though the corridor outside should have been filled with dim blue nightglow. “Who’s there?” he said into the darkness.

A hand suddenly clamped over his mouth. “An old friend,” a voice whispered, and something cold pressed against his temple. “That’s a beamer, so keep quiet. You’re leaving this ship right now—forever.”

Kriss didn’t have to see his assailant. He knew that voice.

“Get the touchlyre,” said Rigel.

#

Chapter 23

Rigel produced a hand-light, and, once Kriss had retrieved the touchlyre from its locked cabinet, led him quickly and quietly through the blacked-out corridors to the lowest level. They exited through the small one-man hatch and down the ladder Kriss had climbed on his first visit to the Thaylia. Once down on the landing field Rigel pointed him toward a beat-up, antique freighter near the perimeter.

“Where are you taking me?” Kriss demanded.

“Vorlick.”

Kriss stopped in shock. “But why?”

Rigel jabbed him with the beamer. “Keep quiet and keep moving.”

Stunned, Kriss walked on mechanically. It all made horrible sense. Rigel had hired the men to keep him from making it to the banquet on the Coronach. Then he had convinced Nicora Kriss had sneaked off on his own. Now he would deliver Kriss to Vorlick—and tell Nicora that Kriss had deserted. Vorlick would have Kriss, and the touchlyre, without having to worry about Family vengeance, and Rigel…No doubt Rigel will get an ample reward, Kriss thought bitterly. Plus the satisfaction of insuring that no hated worldhugger would succeed in becoming part of the Family, or involved with his sister.

A small hatch opened and a ladder descended as they neared the base of the freighter. Two tough-looking spacers met them. One took the touchlyre, then together they escorted Rigel and Kriss into the ship and up a series of ladders to a small, brightly lit cabin.

As they entered the room Carl Vorlick stood up from behind a smaller version of Nicora’s computerized desk. “Kriss Lemarc. How nice to see you again,” he almost purred.

Kriss said nothing.

One of the guards tossed the touchlyre roughly on the desk. “Careful, you idiot!” Vorlick snapped. He touched it almost reverently, then looked up sharply at Rigel. “You’re sure no one will suspect?”

“I’m sure.” Rigel’s voice sounded strained, and sweat beaded his forehead. “I’ve convinced the Captain that Kriss is a liar who will never fit into the Family.”

“The Family never lies,” Kriss repeated bitterly. “Except you. Why, Rigel?”

Rigel looked at Vorlick, who shook his head. Rigel’s shoulders slumped. “Ask him.”

“You’d better get back to Thaylia now and report his desertion,” Vorlick said coolly.

Rigel nodded and went out. Kriss folded his arms and glared at his enemy, though fear made a lump of ice in his stomach. “Are you going to kill me now or later?”

Vorlick laughed. “My dear boy, I have no intention of killing you.”

Kriss blinked. “What?”

“I have a better use for you. You’re coming on a trip with me.”

“Where?”

Instead of answering directly, Vorlick touched a control on his desk. “Captain, we can take off now.”

“Yes, sir,” a man’s voice came back. “Destination?”

Vorlick looked up at Kriss. “Earth.” Then he laughed at Kriss’s expression.

Kriss didn’t see Vorlick again during the month-long journey. But he felt more like a low-ranking member of the crew than a prisoner. His duties included cleaning and general maintenance, much like he’d been doing on board the Thaylia—dull, but better than being locked in a cabin.

He had a lot of time to wonder—uselessly—what Vorlick was up to. Vorlick had the touchlyre, so what did he need Kriss for, on a planet he had never even seen?

But however inexplicably, at least he was still alive, he thought as he swabbed a corridor early one ship’s day with a zero-G mop that cleaned the walls and floor and sucked up the grime without ever letting a droplet or particle free to float around the ship. He wondered again, as he had daily, what had happened on board the Thaylia. Had Nicora believed Rigel’s lies?

She believed them once, he thought bleakly. Even Tevera believed him. The thought that Tevera might believe he had deserted made him feel sick.

A bell shrilled. “Prepare for docking with Earth station,” said a disembodied voice, and Kriss hurriedly stowed his mop and pulled himself down the corridor to a nearby observation port. Maybe today he would finally get some answers.

He grabbed a hand-hold and stared out at the still-distant barrel shape of the space station, and the blue-and-white planet beyond: Earth, capital of the Commonwealth, homeworld of humanity—and, almost unbelievably, his birthplace.

The slowly spinning station drew nearer. Over more than a century micrometeorites and space junk had pitted and discolored its hull, but the symbol of the Commonwealth, a star enclosed in three interlocking circles, burned bright blue on the central, stationary docking cylinder.

The freighter’s bow steering-rockets fired and station and planet alike swung out of view as the ship turned its fat stern for the final approach. At the same moment a voice crackled over the intercom, “Kriss Lemarc, report to hatch two.”

Vorlick awaited him there. Kriss felt a faint vibration and a couple of bumps, then, “Docked and secured,” the captain reported. Vorlick acknowledged, then opened the inner airlock door, moved into the lock, opened the outer door, and floated into the cylindrical chamber beyond, Kriss close behind. “I’ve already cleared us both through customs,” Vorlick said as he drifted across the room and hit a switch, opening another door. Beyond, a tube-shaped corridor ran to their left and right. “We won’t be going into the spinning portion of the station. We’ll board my private shuttle in one of the other docking tubes.”

“Then will you tell me what you want with me?” Kriss demanded, following his captor to the right.

“Only when you need to know.” Vorlick stopped by another door, and they floated through two more airlocks, finally emerging into a room with deep gold carpet, dark wood paneling, crystal and silver lighting fixtures and velvet and satin-cushioned chairs and couches. “We’ll have artificial gravity as soon as we’re out of the station,” Vorlick said. “You’d better sit down.”

Kriss looked at him in astonishment. “Artificial gravity? In a shuttle?” Such a profligate use of energy in something so utilitarian was—well, “decadent” was the word that came to mind.

“Of course. A little luxury I can well afford which serves the dual purpose of impressing those I want impressed and making me more comfortable.” As Kriss settled himself in a padded corner Vorlick said into an intercom in the wall, “Take her down.”

After a moment of faint scraping and the beginnings of acceleration, the artificial gravity came on and Kriss sank into the cushions. “That’s better,” Vorlick said. He crossed to a cabinet and took out a cut-crystal goblet and matching bottle. He poured something blue-green and sparkling, then returned the bottle to the shelf.

He sipped from the goblet and turned toward Kriss. “Two months ago—even six weeks ago—I would have killed you on sight,” he said conversationally, sitting in one of the well-padded armchairs. “You thwarted me, with the help of the Family—temporarily, of course, but I’m not used to waiting for what I want.” He took another swallow, then set the goblet down on a polished marble drinks table. “But since then I’ve realized how you can still be of use.”

“What if I refuse?”

Vorlick shrugged. “I can still kill you. But why worry about such an unpleasant possibility? You won’t refuse.”

“Why not?”

“You want to know about your parents, don’t you?”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“I share your curiosity. In particular, I would very much like to know where they found that artifact of yours; or rather, mine, now, of course. And I know how we can both find answers to our questions.” He lifted the glass again and drained it, then set it aside and went to a large viewscreen in one wall. When he activated it it showed the view from the shuttle’s bow, and Kriss was astonished to see they were already inside the atmosphere; he hadn’t felt so much as a bump. Sparkling towers glittered near the distant horizon.

“That’s New Oxford, home of the Commonwealth Central Data Bank and Information Processing Center—usually called the Library.” Vorlick tapped the screen. “The Library is the nerve center of the Commonwealth. The actual administrative personnel are elsewhere, but every order, every law, every public communication, every bit of information gathered in the Commonwealth is stored and correlated here. Every planet in the Commonwealth, most ships, and many individuals maintain dimspace contact with it.” He glanced at Kriss. “Like your parents.”

“I don’t understand.” Kriss stared at the rapidly nearing city, now close enough that he could see the immense, complex system of antennae spread around it for miles.

“Your parents were in contact with the Library during their expedition. They may have told the Library where they were, or at least left enough hints for me to figure it out.”

“Then why haven’t you?”

“Because I can’t get at the records. That’s why I need you.” Vorlick frowned at the city. “The Library’s security is impenetrable, even by me. It’s overseen by the most advanced artificial intelligence in existence. It would never let me access your parents’ privacy-locked communications. But it will let you.”

“Why?”

“I’ve had your identity confirmed. You are now officially recognized in Commonwealth records as Kriss Lemarc, son of Jon and Memory Lemarc of Earth, born on this planet not quite seventeen standard years ago and therefore an Earth citizen. As sole heir of the deceased Lemarcs, you have the right to access their private records.” He spread his hands. “You’re going to give me what I want—and it will all be quite legal.”

Kriss stared at the viewscreen. For years he had longed to find out everything he could about his parents. Now Vorlick had given him that opportunity—but at a very high price.

The shuttle landed uneventfully, and they walked from the small spaceport into the city, a quiet place with few people in sight but a great many flowers, fountains and trees. The buildings, low and simple near the port, rose stair-step fashion to the towers at the city’s centre.

They didn’t have to go far to contact the Library intelligence, however. Vorlick led Kriss into a small white building, surrounded by flowering shrubs, and down a short corridor to one of several cubicles containing only a chair, a desk, and a holographic display cube. Vorlick pointed Kriss to the chair and stood behind him as he sat down. At once a disembodied female voice said, “Please identify yourself.”

“Uh…I’m Kriss. Kriss Lemarc.”

“Insufficient response. Commonwealth Citizenship Number?”

“I don’t—”

“Z9A-S0P-L9L-Y4K-1129746,” Vorlick put in.

“Applicant must give data himself,” said the Library.

With silent prompting from Vorlick, Kriss repeated the string of letters and digits.

“Place of birth?”

“Earth.”

A moment’s pause. “Scan complete. Identity confirmed. Second person, please identify.”

“I’m not applying for information,” Vorlick said.

“Immaterial. Current security programming requires that I confirm the identity of all humans within the Library. Please identify.”

“Carl Vorlick, of Earth. CCN A2A-E6V-W4R-N9A-0403998.”

“Scan complete. Identity confirmed. How may I help you, Kriss Lemarc?”

Kriss looked helplessly at Vorlick. “What do I say?”

But the Library answered first. “I am capable of conversing in all known human languages, in all dialects. I have full command of slang, metaphor and simile, and I am not confused by hesitations, speech impediments, improper grammar or other irregularities. No special syntax is required. Simply state your area of interest and I will request further clarification if necessary.”

“You know what I want,” Vorlick growled. “Get on with it.”

Kriss turned back toward the display cube. “I’d like to see the personal records of my parents, Jon and Memory Lemarc.”

“That information is privacy-coded. As their son, you may access it, but your companion, Carl Vorlick, may not. I cannot release it with him present.”

Vorlick looked down at Kriss. “All right, I’ll wait outside. But see you find out what I want to know—and don’t think you can lie to me, because you’ll be coming along on the search. Understand?”

Kriss nodded, and Vorlick went out—leaving him alone with his past.

A nice new review of Magebane…

…courtesy of T.E.J. Johnson, who gives it 91%. Read the whole thing, but here’s an excerpt:

This is a rich book, and Chane sets the plot zipping through a crackling political landscape.  The land of the Evenfels is wonderfully realised…The way Chane describe the use and abuse of magic makes sense, you can feel the characters make a spell, or draw on energy and it is with this careful kind of craft with which he weaves the lands behind the barrier.

The books principle characters are strong and Mother Goodwind (sic; it’s actually Northwind, but, oh well – Ed) is a particular standout.  A dotty, forgetful Miss Marple kind of character, looking like a harmless old woman, with a somewhat inappropriate sense of humour.  This exterior and lewd banter masks her ruthless true nature and terrifying powers…She is awesome, and complex; you will be in turns rooting for her and hating her.  Chane does away with any flat archetypal hero/villain characters, each one is complex, rational and occasionally irrational.

The prose is tight, Chane has a great vocabulary, and it is an easy read. It is long, I thought it great value; for $10 it lasted me three weeks and I thought I was a quick reader!  The last hundred pages of the novel absolutely fly as the story reaches its crescendo.

The novel is often very funny, and I defiintely LOL’d when reading.  Chane has a good risque sense of humour, often at the expense of the main characters which I really enjoyed.

 

 

News item about my Freedom to Read Week visit to Weyburn

It’s not, alas, from the Weyburn Review, the newspaper I used to edit: instead it’s from Weyburn This Week. The interview was conducted before I made my appearance at the Weyburn Public Library last week for Freedom to Read Week, but didn’t appear until after…and while I appreciate the coverage, it’d have been nice to have it appear beforehand to boost the rather anemic attendance.

You can read the whole thing here, but here’s an excerpt. All I’ll say about the photo above is that I obviously should have combed my hair.

Willett spent a great deal of time at the Weyburn Public Library as a child, where he first indulged his interest in science fiction books.

***

“Growing up, my parents never said anything about what I chose to read, as long as I was reading,” said Willett. “I think that’s probably the best approach to take. Generally, kids are ready to read something if they are ready to read it and if they find it and they’re not ready to read it, it goes over their heads or they get bored and put it down again. Certainly, I ran into books like that, too.”

***

“Keeping people from reading something is just another way of trying to control ideas,” he said. “I think the last thing you want to do is to limit the free flow of ideas. I’m pretty much an absolutist when it comes to freedom of expression and the right to freely express yourself.”"I think it’s very, very important that ideas flow freely if we’re going to have a democratic society,” said Willett.

“It’s easy to say, ‘I support freedom of expression’ when people are expressing ideas you agree with,” he noted. “It’s when they’re expressing ideas you disagree with that your commitment to freedom of expression has to really come forward.”

Willett noted that the classic formulation of disagreeing with what one has to say, yet being willing to defend their right to say it, is how democracy is upheld.

“It gets dangerous to say, ‘they shouldn’t be allowed to say that,’” he said. “That’s when you’re getting on the slippery slope to censorship – and dictatorship, eventually.”

Free Novel Saturday: Star Song, Chapters 20 & 21

Every Saturday I post a chapter or two of my young adult science fiction novel Star Song . Coming in in the middle? The whole thing starts here with Chapter 1 and an explanation.

En joy!

Star Song

By Edward Willett

Chapter 20

That night Kriss took up the touchlyre for the first time since leaving Farr’s World.

He uncovered the instrument and let it float freely, slowly spinning, in the centre of his cabin, watching the light play across each surface, glowing in the polished wood, shining on the burnished copper, glittering off each silver string. Finally, hesitantly, he gathered it in and touched the copper plates, tensing, ready to fling it away if those immaterial fingers reached into his mind again and tried to turn his anger at Rigel into a weapon. He wanted—needed—to play it, but whatever Rigel did to him, he would not allow the touchlyre to hurt him, or anyone else in the Family. He had felt no threat of that when he had played for Tevera just before leaving Farr’s World—and the memory of that warmed him even as he thought of it—but his feelings then had been considerably more benevolent than they were now.

He felt the touchlyre in his mind, as always since his grief at Mella’s death had broken whatever barrier had kept it out in the years before that, but it was firmly under his control. It still built its music from his thoughts and emotions, but this time he was able to choose which thoughts and emotions it would draw on; and rather than feed it his anger at Rigel, he gave it his memories of Mella and his childhood home, and for an hour or two lost himself in his past. When at last he set the touchlyre aside, he felt better: better about himself, and better about the touchlyre. It’s changed, he thought. I can control it now. He wrapped it securely again, and as he did so the thought crossed his mind that maybe the changes weren’t in the touchlyre at all, but in himself.

The change in Rigel, at least, seemed permanent. The next morning, and every day thereafter, he treated Kriss with absolute regulation courtesy, cold and impersonal as a computer. To be sure, he corrected even the slightest deviation from Family Rule that Kriss committed, but as the days passed he found less and less to correct, and Kriss settled, if not comfortably at least obediently, into the tightly woven net of regulations in which members of the Family lived their lives aboard ship. But as the weeks passed, he thought more and more about getting off the ship and exploring a bit of a new world, without having to worry about who to salute or which side of the corridor to travel or how much water he could use in his shower or the proper way to scrub Type 47 residential-area decking or the correct procedure for acid-scouring the auxiliary life support bionetic filtering system…

It didn’t help that he saw Tevera only rarely. Their personal watch schedules never seemed to coincide, so that she was always free when he was on duty, or asleep when he was free. Tevera assured him, during one of their rare meetings in the rec area, that Rigel had nothing to do with setting watch schedules, but that didn’t make him feel much better. What if the Captain herself were trying to keep them apart? She might have officially accepted him, but she might still very well feel, beneath her regulation exterior, that “once a worldhugger, always a worldhugger,” and no worldhugger was good enough for her great-granddaughter.

That fear he didn’t even mention to Tevera; even though she’d stood up to Nicora for him on Farr’s World, he’d discovered since that she responded to any criticism of the Captain, however slight or oblique, by changing the subject and growing remarkably cool to him for minutes or even hours.

Six weeks out from Farr’s World, and still two weeks from their first planetfall, all non-essential watches were suspended for one day to allow everyone to celebrate the Captain’s birthday. The livestock hold that Kriss had come to know so well in the first days of the journey was decorated in the colorful gossamer veils the Captain liked and the entire ship’s company crowded into it for several hours of feasting, music and dancing, which took on a breathtaking dimension in zero-G. Kriss allowed Tevera to pull him out into the middle of the dance globe but his best efforts to mimic the graceful moves of the others only succeeded in setting him spinning, which threatened to result in a repeat of what had happened inside the spacesuit, so he quickly retired to a secure handgrip and contented himself with watching Tevera.

When the music ended she arrowed over to him, face aglow and eyes sparkling. “They’re starting the talent show in about ten minutes,” she told him breathlessly. “You should play.”

“The touchlyre?”

Tevera laughed. “What else?”

“But—”

“No buts. I’ll go tell Cousin Thellis. She’s the emcee.” Without giving Kriss another chance to protest, Tevera leaped away.

It will be just like playing in Andru’s, Kriss told himself as he headed to his cabin. A lot of them even heard me play there. There’s nothing to worry about. And I’ve played for Tevera since Salazar, and in my cabin…I’ve got control, now. There’s nothing to worry about…

But even that first night in Andru’s his hands hadn’t shaken like they did when Thellis called his name half an hour later and he made his way to the performance space, aware of how clumsy he must still appear in zero-G to all these offworlders—

He caught himself. They weren’t “offworlders” any more than he was a “worldhugger.” They were Family—his Family. Andru had made them so.

But some children giggled as he carefully maneuvered himself into position, and whispers ran around the room, and just as had happened in Andru’s that first time, when he put his hands on the copper plates the first sound the touchlyre made was a harsh, unmusical squawk. Someone laughed unpleasantly. Kriss closed his eyes, shutting out the encircling Family. It’s just like Andru’s, he told himself again, and took that as his starting point.

He called on the memories and emotions he wanted to share, and felt the touchlyre take hold of them and turn them into its unique mixture of music and empathy. He played of Andru, and the way he had felt when Andru made his sacrifice; he played of those first glorious moments of lift-off, when he looked back and saw Farr’s World receding behind him; he played of the struggles he had had fitting into the Family Andru had given him, of his loneliness and uncertainty; and he played of Tevera…and there he ended, because he opened his eyes and saw her face, and the feelings that welled up in him then were for the two of them alone.

Silence met the ending of his music; silence that stretched out for thirty seconds, almost a minute—and then erupted with applause. He looked from face to face, many of which he still could not put a name to, and for the first time sensed no barriers between them and him, no “offworlder-worldhugger” distinctions. He felt their acceptance, and when Tevera came arrowing out of the crowd and hugged him exuberantly, sending them both twirling end-over-end, the Family members only laughed and applauded more. Even the Captain, watching from her place of honor at the exact center of the hold, smiled and nodded, and Kriss felt guilty for having suspected her of deliberately trying to keep him and Tevera apart.

But beyond Nicora, in the semi-darkness near the hatch, he saw Rigel watching, expressionless, his eyes coldly reflecting the light that was focused on Kriss.

Two weeks later they made planetfall on a world called Fortune, in the capital city of Try-Your-Luck, where they were to discharge the fuzzychips Kriss had helped inspect in the NLS hold and pick up a cargo of holographic slot machines for delivery to an out-of-the-way planet trying to boost tourism by promoting gambling.

Such a strategy seemed to have worked on Try-Your-Luck, Kriss reflected as he read up on the planet shortly after they landed. Aside from near-Earth atmosphere and gravity—gravity he found surprisingly difficult to get used to, after six weeks in space; he’d already dropped a half-dozen things from absent-mindedly letting them go and thinking they’d float where he’d left them—the planet Fortune had even less going for it than Farr’s World. But it was within a week’s travel of some of the most heavily populated worlds in the Commonwealth, and had made a fairly infamous name for itself as a pleasure planet.

Kriss couldn’t wait to get off the ship and test that reputation for himself. His first new world—and this time he would walk the streets as an offworlder, wearing his Family crewsuit proudly, one of the select few who called the whole galaxy their home. He planned to take the touchlyre with him and find a place to play. If he could do as well as he had in Andru’s, with a clientele drawn from only a couple of ships, he figured he should be able to really rake in the feds on a planet like Fortune, where novelty was king and no one would ever have seen anything like a boy from a Family ship playing an instrument like the touchlyre.

He checked the time, killed the reader, and headed for the elevator. His watch’s twenty-four-hour shore leave was about to officially begin…and in eight hours, Tevera’s watch would begin its shore leave, which meant they’d have sixteen hours to spend together off the Thaylia and out of sight of brothers, cousins, second cousins, uncles, aunts-in-law…well, he reminded himself wryly, you wished you had a family. This’ll teach you to be careful what to wish for!

When he reached the exit hatch, Rigel was waiting, checking out the members of his watch. Kriss joined the line of a half-dozen men and women. “Looking forward to your first new planet?” the man in front of him asked as he stepped into place.

“It’s a dream come true, Philix.”

Philix laughed. “Well, brace yourself for a culture shock. You can end up lying in a back alley stark naked, flat broke and drunker than a wobblewing inside an hour and never know how it happened. Believe me, I know!”

“I’ll be careful,” Kriss promised. “No drinking, no gambling, and no—”

Philix looked dismayed. “Hey, I didn’t say you couldn’t have any fun!”

“You’re up, Philix,” Rigel said. He handed Philix his pass. “And please don’t make me have to carry you back to the ship this time. You’ve put on weight.”

“I promise to remain ambulatory, sir!” Philix said, and saluted smartly before adding, “And anyway, that made up for the time before last when I had to carry you!”

Rigel laughed. “Get going.”

Kriss, grinning at the exchange, stepped forward—and Rigel’s smile disappeared. “Yes, crewman?”

“Ready for shoreleave, sir!”

Rigel shook his head. “I’m afraid not, crewman.”

Kriss stared at him. “What?”

“You are not authorized for shoreleave.”

“But I’m in this watch—”

“You are not authorized for shoreleave,” Rigel repeated. “Return to your quarters.”

Kriss couldn’t believe it. “You can’t deny me shoreleave just because—”

“You’re approaching insubordination, crewman.”

“With respect, sir,” Kriss said, in a voice that had no respect in it at all, “I request to know why I am being denied shoreleave.”

“I am not required to give you reasons for my orders,” Rigel said coldly. “If you will refer to the Family Rule, you will discover that it is my prerogative to withhold shoreleave from anyone in my watch. That is all you need to know. Return to your quarters.”

“Sir—”

“Return to your quarters, crewman!”

Kriss glared at Rigel, then spun and pushed past the two women who had come into the exit lock behind him. Once in the elevator, he banged his fist against the wall. Oh, Rigel was within his rights, no doubt about it—and he knew exactly how to use those rights to get at Kriss.

Kriss stopped the elevator short of his deck. “I won’t let him get away with it,” he muttered. He punched new orders into the elevator’s controls, and sank swiftly downward again, this time emerging in the cargo section. The two men working in the NLS hold, loading the fuzzychips onto the big cargo elevator, greeted him amiably as he joined them for the ride to the base of the ship and took at face value his explanation that he just wanted to see first-hand the process of unloading cargo. “All part of learning how the Family works,” he said, and as a result had to endure a twenty-minute explanation of the finer points of cargo handling before escaping onto the huge Try-Your-Luck landing field.

“Enjoy yourself!” one of the cargo-handlers called after him.

“I intend to!” Kriss yelled back, and with a final wave, set out toward the beckoning towers of the city.

#

Chapter 22

Kriss sat in the dim, blue-lit bar and played; played of the magic and mystery of the endless Void, of the far-flung stars burning within it, and of the fragile vessels that sailed its infinite reaches; played the essence of his childhood dreams, and the reality he had come to know—and when the last note faded, no one moved for a long time.

Kriss cradled the touchlyre in his arms and looked out at the small crowd of Union spacers until at last they burst into table-thumping applause. Finding a place to play in Try-Your-Luck had been harder than he’d expected, but in the silence, knowing he had touched his audience deeply, he realized he already had more reward than however many feds came his way. He glanced at the dour, thin-faced barkeep, who had been dubious about allowing a strange Family youth to try to entertain his hardened clientele, and the man nodded his approval.

But then Kriss looked the other way, toward the door, and saw Tevera sitting alone at a table, not looking at him, and suddenly he felt guilty. Every minute he spent in Try-Your-Luck without a pass he dug himself deeper and deeper into a hole on board the Thaylia. He’d hoped Tevera, when she came out of the spaceport for her own shoreleave, wouldn’t know that he had left without a pass, but in the eight hours between when he’d emerged and she did, his absence had been discovered. She’d tried to convince him to go back right away, but he wouldn’t give Rigel the satisfaction. “I’ve got twenty-four hours coming to me and I’m going to take them,” he told her. “I’m going to enjoy myself with you and Rigel can go eat vacuum, for all I care.”

“It wasn’t Rigel’s idea,” she said. “It was on order from the Captain. They’re worried that Vorlick could still be after you. His ship was faster, he could be here somewhere waiting…”

“Did Rigel tell you that?”

She nodded reluctantly.

Kriss snorted. “I don’t believe it, then. It’s just an excuse. He wants to spoil our shoreleave together, and now that he knows I’ve escaped he’s trying to spoil it through you. Well, it won’t work!”

Except, of course, it had; he hadn’t been able to fully enjoy his time with Tevera, not with the specter of what would happen on his return to the ship hovering around them. He’d managed to put it out of his mind while he played, but now…

He jumped up from the hard plastic stool and strode through the metal tables to the barkeep, who willingly paid the hundred feds Kriss had asked for “on approval.” But then he had to face Tevera.

“Feel better?” she said sardonically as he came up to her.

He began wrapping the touchlyre in its white leather. “Everyone else gets shoreleave when we make planetfall. Why should I stay locked up like a prisoner?”

“Everyone else doesn’t have Vorlick out to kill them.”

Kriss jerked the leather wrapping’s thongs tight, and shoved the touchlyre into the pack he’d brought from the ship. “I haven’t seen any assassins.” He slammed out through the swinging glass doors.

Though it was nearly midnight, the street was bright as noon in the glare of the garish light-signs of the bars, nightclubs, gaming halls and other spacer traps that lined it. Kriss walked toward the spaceport, thrusting his arms through the straps of the backpack and settling it on his back with a vicious tug. Tevera had to almost run to match his long, angry strides, but he hardly noticed. “What can he do to me, anyway?” He had to shout to be heard above the roar of the traffic and the competing music from the bars. “Confine me to the ship? He already has!”

“Only to port—and not even there, not indefinitely! With a proper escort, you could have—”

“An escort. Bodyguards!” Kriss shoved his hands into the pockets of his crewsuit and walked even faster. “I thought once I got off Farr’s World I’d be free. Instead I have rules and orders and regulations wrapped around me like baling wire!”

Tevera grabbed his arms and jerked him to a stop, pulling him around to face her. “But you’ve got the Family—and me!”

He said nothing, and looked away.

She let go of him. “What’s wrong with you? Everything’s been so good since the Captain’s birthday—you’ve been fitting in so well. But now—”

“Fitting in? Oh, I fit in all right. Just one of the Family. Except all of a sudden I find out I’m not one of the Family. I’m more like a prisoner of the Family! And when I get back I’ll be punished for daring to try to escape.” He spun away from her and strode toward the port, yelling, “I’m sick of being told what I can and can’t do every minute of the day!”

“You’re Family now!” she shouted after him. “You have to live with Family discipline!”

“Then maybe I was better off alone!” He took half a dozen more steps before he realized she was no longer following him.

He glanced back to see her leaning against a building, her back to him. Remorse hit him like a punch to the stomach, and he hurried back to her. “Tevera…” Tentatively he touched her shoulder, but she jerked away.

He spread his hands helplessly. “You know I didn’t really mean that, Tevera. It’s just that…” He groped for words. “Sometimes I feel like…like I’m in a cage, a cage of rules and orders and yessirs and no ma’ams, and I’ve got to break some of the bars just so I can breathe. I had my hopes set on this planetfall, on shoreleave, and then Rigel…”

Silence.

“Tevera?”

Still no reply.

Shoulders sagging, Kriss turned away. “Come on. We’ve got to get back.” He moved away a couple of steps, heard Tevera start to follow, and walked on without looking around.

As they neared the spaceport the clubs and bars petered out into quiet, dark warehouses and widely spaced streetlights. “Wait, Kriss,” Tevera finally said. He stopped without turning around, and heard her move up close behind him; then, with a gentle hand on his arm, she made him face her. “I understand,” she said softly. “Sometimes I feel the same way. But you have to realize the Family is more than just a group of relatives. It’s also the crew of a starship. We have to have rigid discipline—it could save all our lives someday.”

Kriss started to speak, but she hushed him, touching a finger to his lips. “Every time you break a regulation they bind you with two or three more. If you keep trying to break free so you can ‘breathe,’ you’ll end up suffocating—or you really will break free and lose the Family.”

He pulled her hand from his mouth and clasped it. “And you?”

She shook her head. “No. Never. I said on Farr’s World I’d choose you over the Family, and I meant it. But it doesn’t have to come to that, Kriss!”

He pulled her slim body to him. “It won’t,” he said. Her short-cropped hair was soft against his cheek, and smelled as sweet as fresh-mown hay. “I promise.”

An hour later Kriss sat glumly in his tiny cabin on board the Thaylia. It could have been worse, he reflected; Yverras, the officer on duty when he returned, could have locked him in his cabin instead of just re-confirming his confinement to port, assigning him disciplinary work-duty for the remainder of their stay on Fortune—and, worst of all, declaring Tevera off-limits until they were once more in space.

Rigel had told her the truth, he’d learned; the order to refuse him a solo shoreleave pass had come from the Captain. He would have had his chance, under guard, as Tevera had said—but instead he’d acted hastily, out of his anger at Rigel.

He suspected Rigel had hoped he’d react in exactly that way.

During the next few days he did his best to be a model crewman, performing his duties promptly and conscientiously, even sending a formal apology to the Captain via intraship communications, and receiving an equally formal acknowledgment.

He spent little time in his cramped cabin, preferring to wander around the port; boring compared to the temptations of Try-Your-Luck, but better than four blank walls. At least the spaceport offered a little variety. Several ships were scattered across its miles of landing field, among them two other Family ships, the Athabasca and the Coronach, both somewhat smaller than the Thaylia. Their captains had visited the Thaylia for a banquet their first night in port.

Kriss wished he could have roamed the spaceport with Tevera, but though she wasn’t with him, he gradually realized he wasn’t exactly alone.

At first he put the feeling down to imagination, but day after day he saw the same person, never very close, but not far away, either: a wiry man with a black beard, dressed in a dirty, patched crewsuit a couple of sizes too big.

Vorlick’s man, Kriss decided. Keeping an eye on me. He considered reporting it, but put the idea aside. He was under enough restrictions without adding more fuel to the “we’re-only-doing-this-for-your-own-good” fire. Let him watch me, he told himself. He won’t dare do anything.

That seemed to be true; by the end of the week, when Captain Nicora summoned Kriss, he had almost forgotten his shadow.

The summons, coming while he was being disciplined, made him uneasy. He put on his best blue crewsuit, carefully brushed his blonde hair, shorter than it had been on Farr’s World but still longer than most Family men wore theirs, and made his way to the central elevator for the journey to the Captain’s quarters. Nicora’s black-clad bodyguards gave him only cursory glances when he reached her door, then waved him inside.

The Captain stood looking out over the spaceport via a viewscreen in the wall, but she turned as he entered, her shimmering robe rippling with color. “Good morning, Crewman.”

“Good morning, ma’am.”

She sat behind her desk and motioned him to sit down opposite her, her clear green eyes piercing him. He sat, but only on the edge of his chair.

“You are confined to port, I understand,” the Captain said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You realize the original restriction on your movement was for the safety of you and the Family.”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry.”

“You showed a disturbing disregard for Family discipline in this matter, Crewman. I also have reports of other breaches of Family Rule. Most of them have been minor, and I have put them down to your unfamiliarity with the Family—but this latest incident causes me to reevaluate them. I feel that you are not fully comfortable with our way of life, Crewman. I remind you of the sacrifice made so that you might be a part of this Family—the sacrifice, I might add, you played of so movingly at the celebration of my birthday. I trust we shall see improvement in the future.”

“I’ll…” try, Kriss started to say, but then thought better of it. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Very well.” She glanced at a display on her desk. “I have changed the duty roster tonight so that you are free at 2030. You will report at that time to the Coronach with your instrument. The captain of the Coronach is returning the hospitality I showed him on our first night here, and is interested in hearing you play. The Captain of the Athabasca will also be present.

Kriss’s heart beat faster. To play for three Family captains! “Yes, ma’am!”

“Dismissed.”

He stood, bowed, and strode happily back to the elevator, even smiling at the dour guards. This would be far better than playing for a few spacers in a dingy bar, or even playing for the Thaylia’s crew. This would be the kind of audience he’d only dreamed of!

He only wished Tevera could be there, too.

At 2000 he inspected himself for the third time in his cabin mirror, then made his way to the exit hatch and down the ramp to the spaceport landing field, the touchlyre tucked under his arm. The Coronach stood half a mile from the Thaylia, beyond a dark, empty portion of the field.

He hadn’t gone far when he heard someone else nearby, and suddenly remembered the man who had been watching him. Gripping the touchlyre tightly, he stopped and called, “Who’s there?” His only answer was the clatter of running footsteps—footsteps between him and the Thaylia!

He dashed toward the Coronach. His unknown pursuer shouted something after him, but he ignored it, pounding across the hard pavement. The gleaming spire of the Coronach grew nearer. I’ll make it! he though.

Then two men leaped out of the darkness ahead of him, silhouetted briefly against the brightly lit ship. One clamped a rough hand over his mouth and threw him to the ground; the other jerked the touchlyre away from him and whipped plastic cord around his ankles and wrists.

Then, taking his arms and feet, they carried him across the darkened port.

A brief discourse on freedom to read and freedom to speak

I’m reading in Weyburn tonight at the Weyburn Public Library. It’s partly in honor of Freedom to Read Week, and so here, in a nutshell, is my Freedom to Read philosophy:

People should be free to read whatever they want.

Want more? Okay, I’ll add this:

People should be free to write and say whatever they want. In general, people should be free.

There lies within all of us a desire to censor those who say things we don’t like. The hardest tests of anyone’s commitment to freedom of speech is when others choose to read, watch or say things we find abhorrent.

Just today I see people being urged to sign a petition to try to stop the Sun News Network from being seen by more Canadians, because those pushing the petition are hearing opinions on Sun TV with which they disagree.

Also today, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled on a tough free-speech case involving Bill Whatcott, who vociferously attacks homosexuality as abhorrent.

I believe the Supreme Court came down on the wrong side of freedom of speech in that ruling.

I hear many opinions every day that I think are wrong, malicious, or even verging on downright evil, but I will always come down on the side of more, not less freedom of speech: the solution to speech you disapprove of is not to shut down the speaker, but more free speech to refute him or her.

Voltaire’s philosophy (as paraphrased in 1907 by S. G. Tallentyre) sums it up best: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

 

Free Novel Saturday: Star Song, Chapters 18 & 19

Every Saturday I post a chapter or two of my young adult science fiction novel Star Song . Coming in in the middle? The whole thing starts here with Chapter 1 and an explanation.

En joy!

Star Song

By Edward Willett

Chapter 18

When he woke Kriss felt almost like himself again. He figured out how to use the zero-G shower, though he couldn’t say he liked the way the water, drawn by the suction of a fan beneath his feet, crawled down his body. Nevertheless, he emerged from it feeling quite human. His inches-deep closet, he discovered, contained three fresh, new and highly creased Family crewsuits, plus underwear, and he managed to struggle into both while only ricocheting off the walls twice and the floor once. He was admiring what he could see of himself in the small mirror when his door beeped.

Opening it revealed Tevera, hanging upside down (though he supposed from her point of view he was the upside-down one) and grinning. “I’ve got official permission for both of us to take one day for your ‘general orientation,’” she said. “We’ll start with a tour of the ship—”

“I’ve got a better idea,” Kriss interrupted. “Let’s start with breakfast.”

“You must be feeling better,” Tevera said twenty minutes later as she watched Kriss down his third sweetberry flatcake, chasing down even the smallest crumb before it could be carried away by the constantly moving air to one of the air-filtering ducts encircling the eating room.

“I feel wonderful,” Kriss said as best he could with his mouth full, and meant it. His nausea had subsided, he was having breakfast with the beautiful girl he loved, and he was in space, on his way to other planets, just as he had longed for since—well, if he were honest, probably since Mella first told him his parents were offworlders. Farr’s World had been a prison, and he’d just been set free. He flipped the last bite-sized piece of flatcake out of the syrup that held it in its container, and gobbled it out of mid-air. “Let’s go see the ship,” he said, tossing the container into the recycler, which sucked it in with a sharp popping sound.

“We’ll start aft and work our way forward,” Tevera said. The central “transport pod”—with no up or down, it couldn’t be called an elevator any more—took them back to the surprising simplicity of the engine room, all silver and glass and clean white light. From there they proceeded forward one deck at a time, bypassing the huge cargo holds, the largest of which, Kriss was surprised to learn, was filled with an unprepossessing type of grain from Farr’s World considered absolutely essential in the making of a gourmet bread on a planet he’d never heard of. “That’s the kind of cargoes Family ships generally carry,” Tevera explained. “Low-volume—because our ships are relatively small—but high-value. It requires a lot of trading savvy to make connections between planets that may never have thought of trading before. Captain Nicora is one of the best. Ordinary bulk goods almost always go on Union ships.”

Living quarters, communications, sick bay, galley, recycling, life support, food storage, hydroponics, computer room—the complexity of the “relatively small” Thaylia astounded Kriss. It had all the resources of a city crammed into the space of a single high-rise building, operated by just under three hundred men and women—and children, because even the youngest had some ship-related duty, thought it might only be cleaning a bit of glass on an inspection port or setting rodent traps. And everyone was related, Kriss learned; “Family” was more than just a term. Tevera and Rigel were among twenty-seven great-grandchildren of Captain Nicora currently living on the Thaylia. Another twelve were on other Family ships. “It’s called bloodswapping,” Tevera told Kriss. “We have very strict rules governing interbreeding. In bloodswapping, members of one ship’s crew are adopted into another. Out of our two hundred and seventy-two, about one-third were bloodswapped to us. The rest of were born on the Thaylia.”

By that time they were back in the transport pod, en route to the final stop on the tour, the bridge, which, Kriss had been interested to learn, was not the very top deck, but the one beneath it. The top deck was reserved for the Captain’s quarters. But five decks aft of the bridge, among the crew quarters, the pod stopped and the doors opened—and Rigel entered.

“Hello, Rigel,” said Tevera.

Rigel nodded to her, but he spoke to Kriss. “Well, worldhugger, so you’ve gotten over your spacesickness.”

“Yes,” said Kriss neutrally.

“Good. That means you’ll be able to work tomorrow.” He glanced at his sister. “Or have you managed to get him out of that, too?”

Tevera said nothing.

“What sort of work?” Kriss asked.

Rigel grinned. “Oh, you’ll love it. You’ll just love it.” The transport pod stopped at the floor beneath the bridge, and the door slid open. Rigel scooted out and turned around. “Tomorrow,” he said to Kriss. “Tomorrow we’ll find out what you’re really made of, worldhugger.” The door slid shut.

“What sort of work?” Kriss asked again, this time of Tevera.

“I’m not sure,” Tevera said, not looking at him.

“But you have a pretty good idea.”

“Well…”

“Well?”

“I think Rigel has been put in charge of cleaning out Hold Three,” Tevera said reluctantly. “I imagine that’s what he wants you for.”

“Hold Three?”

“Livestock hold. It’s always a problem. Herd animals don’t adapt well to zero-G and they tend to overload the automatic waste-recycling units, so…”

Kriss winced. “I get the picture.”

“Anyway, that’s not until tomorrow. For now—” The door slid open. “The bridge.”

The bridge filled the entire deck, and every square foot of bulkhead seemed to be covered with switches, buttons, video and holographic displays, digital readouts and lights. Yet most of the complex controls, Kriss saw at once, were unattended. Only six people crewed the bridge, although there were acceleration couches for three times that many, and they didn’t seem particularly concerned about anything being displayed. In fact, one of them, Kriss was almost sure, was playing a game on his holographic computer terminal. He asked Tevera about it in a low voice.

She laughed. “He’s running a simulation. There’s not much to do up here while the ship is in dimspace. Take-off, re-entry and landing, orbit insertion and dimspace jump are the busy times. This is just a skeleton crew monitoring systems to make sure everything’s working properly.”

“What happens if something goes wrong?”

“While we’re in dimspace?”

Kriss nodded.

Tevera shrugged. “I believe the current theory holds that our constituent subatomic particles would be randomly distributed throughout the universe.”

“Oh.” He resolved not to touch anything.

“Normally we wouldn’t be allowed on the bridge,” Tevera told him as they returned to the pod. “But I cleared it ahead of time.”

“Are there any other areas that are off-limits?”

“No…but if an officer sees you somewhere you haven’t been assigned to be, you’d better have a darn good reason for being there.”

They returned to the computer deck, where Tevera guided Kriss to a cubicle containing a voice-terminal. “Computer, hardcopy Family Rule,” she ordered.

After a prolonged whirring sound, a small opening appeared in the wall and extruded a thick book, which floated gently into the cubicle. Tevera picked it out of mid-air and handed it to Kriss, who read the cover out loud. “The Rule of the Family. As set down by the Council of Captains, Standard Date 01292765, and subsequently revised in decennial Councils. This edition that of Standard Date 03302954.” He glanced at Tevera.

“Learn it,” she said simply.

“Learn it?” Kriss opened it at random. “Family members accused of a crime while on a planetary surface are subject to the legal system of that planet or the sub-planetary politico-geographical entity in which the offense occurred, except in extraordinary circumstances as determined by the Captain, who must defend his or her actions at the next Council. The Family will assume all costs incurred by the accused Family member, with the following exceptions (see also Expenses, On-Planet, Reimbursement of)…” Kriss looked at Tevera again. “All of it?”

“From the moment you were adopted by the Thaylia, you became subject to Family Rule. And the Rule does not permit ignorance of it as a defense, although the Captain may show leniency.”

“But—” Kriss looked at the thick book helplessly. “It will take years!”

“If I were you, I’d start with the section on shipboard life.” Tevera smiled. “I doubt you need to know about the rules governing bloodswapping and market information exchange among Family ships, for instance, and hopefully that section on death rites can wait…don’t worry, you’ll manage.”

Kriss, carrying his copy of the Rule and thinking it was a good thing they were in zero-gravity because the book looked heavy enough to require a wheelbarrow, doubted it. But of course Tevera was right; he did manage. For one thing, he soon discovered that learning who to salute and who to call “sir” or “ma’am” was no problem, because absolutely everybody on board except for certain small children outranked him—but he also learned that when two Family members were off-duty, it didn’t matter if one was an officer and one was a livestock-hold scrubber; they were officially equal. His first test of that, however, was less than successful, since he had failed to take into account the difficulty of telling the difference between an officer who was off-duty and one who was just visiting the recreation lounge on an inspection tour. Fortunately, the officer chose leniency over the prescribed Rule punishment of three days of double duty.

The scrubbing of the livestock hold went on for a week, and Kriss, to his own surprise, found he had an advantage over his space-born fellow workers: he’d cleaned out the barn and the chicken coop often enough back in Black Rock, and while he didn’t enjoy it then and he didn’t enjoy this now, neither was he as disgusted and miserable as the others. He worked almost twice as fast as any of them, and at the end of the week surveyed the now-spotless, disinfected hold with satisfaction dampened only by Rigel. “Should have known a worldhugger would feel right at home in a pigsty,” Rigel said. “Starting tomorrow we’ll see how you do with some real spacework.”

“I’ll do my best, sir,” Kriss said smartly.

“Then I won’t expect much.” Rigel shot across the empty hold, flipping gracefully at midpoint and exiting feet-first through the open hatch on the far side. Kriss resisted the impulse to throw the scrubber after him.

“It’s no better,” he complained to Tevera later in the rec lounge, as they floated by the huge holographic display of their journey—or what that journey would have looked like if they’d had the requisite several hundred years to make it in normal space. “He doesn’t want me on this ship and he doesn’t want me with you and never mind what the Captain says—or this blasted Rule of yours.” Kriss had spent the previous night reading the section governing Andru’s gift of Family membership to him, and had gained a new appreciation for the sacrifice. But he obviously should have been reading a different section, because on his way to the lounge he had been yelled at by an officer—one of Tevera’s uncles, he thought—for failing to announce his presence at a blind curve. “Page 236, paragraph 5, section 2a, intraship movement under micro-gravity conditions, safety, curves, blind, announcing presence at,” the officer had quoted.

“Are you sure he’s your brother?” Kriss went on. “Maybe he’s really a bloodswap.”

Tevera laughed. “No, he’s my brother, all right.”

“Well, maybe your parents should give him a good talking-to.” Kriss knew immediately he had said the wrong thing; Tevera’s face suddenly closed up like a steel hatch.

“Our parents are dead.”

“Oh.” Kriss felt like something scrubbed off the wall of the livestock hold. “I’m sorry—I know what that’s like—”

“No. You don’t.” Tevera pushed away from the display. “I think I’d better go now—”

“Tevera—” Kriss grabbed her, remembering again what she’d done to him the first time he’d tried that, on Farr’s World. But this time she hung there, not looking at him, but not struggling, either. “Tevera, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. But please don’t shut me out…”

After a long moment she took a shuddering breath and turned toward him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You’d think I’d be over it by now, but…”

“You’re never completely over it.” Kriss had woken up crying only two nights before, calling Mella’s name… “I do understand, Tevera. I really do.”

She nodded. “It’s just…ten years ago we landed on a planet called Varago, colonized at about the same time as Farr’s World but even more—excuse me—backward.”

“You don’t have to apologize to me for insulting Farr’s World,” Kriss said dryly.

Tevera didn’t smile. Her gaze moved past him, focusing on something far away in space and time. “It was a new trade venture,” she went on, as though talking to herself. “Some small pieces of a beautiful gemstone called blue jade had appeared on the previous planet we visited. We were told it came from Varago—and that the Varagoans would be eager to trade it, because their world offered little else to interest other worlds and they needed absolutely everything.

“My parents specialized in trade negotiations. They wanted Rigel and me to follow in their footsteps, so they took us along. I was six and Rigel eleven—almost twelve; old enough to be useful, while the best I could do was practice my newest skill, sitting still and staying quiet.

“The blue jade came from a particularly primitive part of the planet, where the planet dwellers lived in an almost pre-industrial state. They seemed very nervous when we arrived, but my parents thought it was just pre-negotiation jitters.

“Unfortunately, it turned out they weren’t nervous because they were worried about the negotiations; they were worried because a rival village had found out about the Family’s interest and decided to take over the bluejade mines themselves. Their timing was very bad, however; they attacked after the Family negotiators—us—had arrived.

“I don’t remember much about it—screams, explosions, people falling down and not getting up. What I remember very clearly is my parents, looking out the window of the house in which they’d been negotiating, seeing the attackers closing in and sending Rigel and me into the basement. Their last words—their last words ever—were to Rigel: ‘Take care of Tevera.’ And then…” Her voice broke. She blinked away two tears that floated from her eyes in perfect glittering spheres, and finally focused on Kriss again. “We hid, and we heard shouting upstairs, and then shooting, and finally when everything was still we went upstairs, and…” She shook her head.

“You found your parents,” Kriss said softly.

“Why did they kill them?” Tevera almost shouted at him. “Why? It made no sense. When they killed my parents, their precious bluejade became worthless—the Family placed the entire planet under a trade interdict. No Family ship will call there again for a hundred years. They must have realized…”

“In a situation like that—things happen.” He thought of Mella, dying in the doorway of the house where he had grown up, her belongings strewn like worthless garbage around the yard, and his throat tightened. “Things happen.”

“Things happen,” Tevera agreed bitterly. “And that thing—that thing changed Rigel. He blamed himself for not staying with our parents, he blamed me for being there to be taken care of—and then he felt guilty for that and tried to take care of me all the more. That’s why he’s so protective.”

“And that’s why he hates worldhuggers so much,” Kriss said slowly.

“It’s stupid. Stupid! You had nothing to do with our parents’ murders, and you’re certainly not going to kill me.” She smiled a little. “Are you?”

“No.” Kriss looked at her squarely. “Rigel doesn’t have to protect you anymore. I will.”

Tevera’s smile faded. “Will both of you get it through your vacuum-sealed skulls that I don’t need protecting?” And with that she brushed past Kriss, setting him spinning, and plunged through the hatch. By the time he reoriented himself, she was gone.

“What’d I say?” he asked the empty air, and receiving no answer, sighed and made his way back toward the tiny cube he called home, for another hour or two of study on the Family Rule.

He just wished it included some advice on Family girls.

#

Chapter 19

“Real spacework,” Rigel had promised for the next day. Kriss didn’t know what he had in mind, but he suspected it would be unpleasant. He felt uneasy as he made his way through the corridors to the assigned rendezvous, in an area of the ship near the holds. Most of the Family members he met—and you couldn’t go twenty feet on the Thaylia without running into somebody—nodded neutrally, ignored him, or in the case of small children, stared at him as he passed and then giggled to each other afterward. Only one or two people, friends of Rigel’s, were ever openly hostile to him. At least he understood that hostility after talking to Tevera the day before. In some ways the cool neutrality of the others bothered him more—what did he have to do to really belong to this Family? They accepted bloodswaps easily enough—why not him?

But of course he knew the answer. Bloodswaps were still Family, still space-born and space-bred. He was a worldhugger, and a Family man had given up his position for him. That had shaken them up, and they weren’t over it yet.

Some nights, as he struggled with the Family Rule, he wondered if they ever would be over it. Every aspect of their lives seemed tightly controlled; everything structured and in its place, just like the layout of the ship itself. No wonder they didn’t like planets, so disorderly and random; and he, breaching shipboard etiquette a hundred times a day, must seem equally unpredictable.

He went through the same cycle of thoughts each night. At the beginning of the evening, he would take up the Rule with fresh resolve, determined to smooth off a few more of the rough edges that grated on the well-polished traditions of the Family.

At the end of the evening he would throw the Rule against the wall in tired frustration, and float awake in the dark, his brain filled with regulation upon regulation that blurred together until he could hardly remember the details of any of them, convinced he would always be an outsider.

But finally he would remember that to Tevera, at least, he was more than just an out-of-his-element worldhugger, and drift off to sleep.

And then in the morning…in the morning there was Rigel.

He saw him up ahead, at the end of the corridor, floating beside a red door which must be his destination. Kriss frowned.  Red…red…a red door meant something…

He had it! “All doors leading into or out of airlocks shall be colored red as an immediate visual cue for crewmembers…” Kriss felt a chill. What did Rigel have in mind?

“You’re late, worldhugger,” Rigel growled.

Kriss checked his chronometer. “No, sir,” he said. “I’m precisely on time.”

“I like my workers to be five minutes early. If you’re on time, you’re late.”

Faced with such logic, Kriss said nothing—usually the wisest course where Rigel was concerned.

“You don’t know what this red door indicates, but—”

“Airlock,” Kriss said. “Are we going outside the ship, sir?”

Rigel snorted. “In dimspace? Spectacular suicide, worldhugger.” He put a special emphasis on the last word, an “everybody-knows-that” kind of emphasis Kriss found increasingly grating. “No, this airlock leads into the NLS hold. We’re going to—”

Kriss hated to do it, but… “NLS, sir?” he interrupted.

“No Life Support,” Rigel supplied, in that same scornful tone. “Some items are best shipped in vacuum. We’re going to suit up and conduct a standard cargo inspection of the high-density fuzzychips we’re currently carrying in there.”

“I respectfully point out that I’ve never worn a spacesuit, sir.”

“Yeah, well, this is also a training exercise for you. Captain’s orders.” Rigel turned and slapped the lockpanel, not for the red door, but for one a little further up the corridor. It slid open, revealing a locker filled with bulky white spacesuits, like a row of disconnected robots awaiting orders. “All right,” Rigel said briskly, moving into the locker and motioning Kriss in after him, “first get out of your crewsuit…”

Twenty minutes later, encased in several layers of bulky, rubbery material, hooked up to hoses in embarrassing ways and sweating like he’d run a mile in the summer sun, Kriss locked the transparent bubble down over his head, took a deep breath of air that smelled like the crowded Black Rock inn on a hot day, and suddenly heard Rigel’s voice filtered through the communications system. “There’s a small control panel on your left wrist. Touch the green button in the centre of that.” Kriss did so, and the suit stiffened around him and cool air filled the helmet and his lungs, thinning the smell but not doing away with it completely. Kriss wondered how many other people had worn that same suit over who-knew-how-many years.

“Normally for in-ship work like this we wouldn’t bother with all the under-suit layers and plumbing,” Rigel said. “But this is what you’ll wear if you ever go out of the ship while we’re in normal space. In the event of a suit drill, you skip the undersuit and just throw on the outer layers. That will protect you against vacuum, but it won’t do a thing to keep you from cooking on one side and freezing on the other if you’re out of the ship in sunlight.” Rigel droned on, explaining the various read-outs Kriss saw in the helmet’s heads-up display, apparently floating about six inches in front of him. Finally they moved out into the corridor, and Rigel opened the red door. The chamber beyond was barely big enough for both of them in their suits; Kriss heard a hissing that rapidly attenuated to silence, and then the inner door opened soundlessly and Rigel launched himself out into the eerie, blue-lit space beyond.

The NLS hold was a large cylinder, with the lock in one end. Kriss stayed in the doorway of the lock as Rigel sailed grandly across the hold and came to rest on the far side, among the handful of hexagonal crates that were the only things that broke the otherwise perfectly smooth interior. “Come on,” Rigel said, and gestured to Kriss, who hesitated—he’d never crossed that large an open expanse in zero-G before. They’d stayed close to the walls in the livestock hold.

“Come on,” Rigel repeated.

No help from that quarter, Kriss thought; and gathering his legs under him, he leaped.

He knew at once he was too fast. He’d jumped as though trying (impossibly) to leap that distance on a planet. He would hit the far side hard enough to break an arm or a leg or his neck, or maybe smash his helmet to shards and die with his own lungs trying to force themselves up his throat…

Something struck him a glancing, numbing blow on the shoulder, setting him tumbling—but also absorbing much of the energy of his leap. His stomach rebelled as the hold whirled crazily around him. Throwing up in a spacesuit is a very bad idea, his mind told him, throwing up in a spacesuit is a very bad idea, throwing up in a—

His mind lost.

He hit the wall near one of the hexagonal crates and managed to grab it and hold on, retching, his helmet filling with globules of the vile liquefied remnants of his breakfast. Miserably he closed his eyes and breathed shallowly and wished, at that moment, he were back on Farr’s World.

“Little fool! Worldhugger!” Rigel raged in his ears. He opened one eye and saw Rigel floating beside him. “If I weren’t responsible for you to Captain Nicora I’d leave you to choke in your own vomit!” But instead he grabbed Kriss’s arm and launched both of them back across the hold. Five minutes later they were back in air, and Kriss hurriedly yanked off the helmet, almost gagging again.

“You’re going to clean that suit inside and out,” Rigel snarled at him as he jerked off his own helmet. “What were you playing at? You almost killed both of us!”

“Both—”

“If we’d hit helmets when I hit you—”

“I didn’t ask you to, did I?” Kriss began stripping out of the suit, wincing as he did so; the whole right side of his body was sore. “I’d have managed all right.”

“You’d have broken your neck and smashed your helmet—and probably your skull—the way you were going,” Rigel snapped back.

“Well, then, why didn’t you let me?” Kriss shoved the suit away from him; it bounced against the wall and drifted back. He stopped it with his foot. “Wouldn’t you be happier if I were dead?”

“Kill yourself on your own time!”  Rigel was already out of his suit and reaching for his clothes. “On my watch I’m responsible for you.”

“Yeah, and you’ve got enough on your conscience already, don’t you?” Kriss snarled.

Faster than he would have believed possible, Rigel leaped across the room and smashed him back against the wall, holding onto a racked suit with one hand and keeping Kriss motionless with the other. “What do you mean, worldhugger?”

“You blame yourself for your parents’ death! Isn’t that why you hate worldhuggers? They killed your parents—and you weren’t able to stop them. You didn’t even try—you were hiding with Tevera!”

“They told me to look after her. I did. And how do you know all this anyway?”

“How do you think?”

Rigel glared at him from about three inches away. “Tevera.”

“She doesn’t need protecting any more, Rigel. She can take care of herself.”

“She needs protecting from herself,” Rigel said. “She doesn’t know what’s best for her, or she wouldn’t have taken up with a miserable worldhugger like you.”

“Oh, and you know what’s best for her?” Kriss’s anger and frustration boiled up in him. “You’ve let what happened to your parents turn you into a miserable bastard, and you resent the fact she’s learned to get past it, don’t you? You want her as miserable as you are. Well, it won’t happen—not while I’m around!”

“Maybe you won’t be around—” Rigel began, then stopped. Almost visibly he gathered his composure. When he shoved back from Kriss his voice was calm, though his face remained flushed. “Clean out the suit you fouled, crewman,” he said. “Then report to sick bay for an examination. Looks like you could have some nasty bruises. Tomorrow report back here again. This cargo hold still needs inspection.”

Kriss didn’t trust this sudden change any more than the rage that had preceded it. “Rigel—”

“I’m awaiting your acknowledgement of my order, crewman,” Rigel said coldly.

Kriss took a deep breath, and saluted. “Orders acknowledged and accepted, sir!”

“Good. Carry on.” Rigel pulled himself into the corridor and disappeared, leaving Kriss staring after him.

A sneak peek at Masks

That gorgeous cover, by Paul Young, will grace my next book from DAW, Masks, written under the pseudonym E.C. Blake. I just got it this week, and now I’m doubly excited about the book coming out.

Here’s what DAW has come up with for the book jacket flaps (Masks is coming out in hardcover, my first hardcover novel, so it actually has flaps). Now all I have to do is live up to it!

Masks, the first novel in a mesmerizing new fantasy series, draws readers into a world in which cataclysmic events have left the Autarchy of Aygrima—the one land blessed with magical resources—cut off from its former trading partners across the waters, not knowing if any of those distant peoples still live.  Yet under the rule of the Autarch, Aygrima survives. And thanks to the creation of the Masks and the vigilance of the Autarch’s Watchers, no one can threaten the security of the empire.

In Aygrima, magic is a Gift possessed from birth by a very small percentage of the population, with the Autarch himself the most powerful magic worker of all. Only the long-vanquished Lady of Pain and Fire had been able to challenge his rule.

At the age of fifteen, citizens are recognized as adults and must don the spell-infused Masks—which denote both status and profession—whenever they are in public. To maintain the secure rule of the kingdom, the Masks are magically crafted to reveal any treasonous thoughts or actions. And once such betrayals are exposed, the Watchers are there to enforce the law.

Mara Holdfast, daughter of the Autarch’s Master Maskmaker, is fast approaching her fifteenth birthday and her all-important Masking ceremony. Her father himself has been working behind closed doors to create Mara’s Mask. Once the ceremony is done, she will take her place as an adult, and Gifted with the same magical abilities as her father, she will also claim her rightful place as his apprentice.

But on the day of her Masking something goes horribly wrong, and instead of celebrating, Mara is torn away from her parents, imprisoned, and consigned to a wagon bound for the mines. Is it because she didn’t turn the unMasked boy she discovered over to the Night Watchers? Or is it because she’s lied about her Gift, claiming she can only see one color of magic, when in truth she can see them all, just as she could when she was a young child?

Whatever the reason, her Mask has labeled her a traitor and now she has lost everything, doomed to slavery in the mines until she dies. And not even her Gift can show Mara the future that awaits her—a future that may see her freed to aid a rebel cause, forced to become a puppet of the Autarch, or transformed into a force as dangerous to her world as the legendary Lady of Pain and Fire.

I also had to come up with a short segment of the text to put on the back cover. This is slightly edited from what’s actually in the book, but then, it’s intended as an appetizer, not the full meal deal:

“Mara Holdfast,” the Masker intoned, “you have reached the age of fifteen years. It is now the will of the Autarch that you become a full citizen of Aygrima, and serve him and his heirs for the rest of your life. Do you accept the will of the Autarch?”

It was hard to say “I do” through the lump in her throat, but all too soon the Masker stepped forward with the beautiful copper-colored Mask in his hands. “Then I welcome you to full citizenship, to adulthood, and to the service of the Autarch: and I present you with this Mask, symbol of your devotion, guardian of your thoughts!” The Masker settled the Mask onto Mara’s face.

It was the most beautiful, wonderful, joyful moment of her life…

…and then it all went wrong.

The Mask squirmed and wriggled like a basket full of snakes, faster and faster, harder and harder. Mara gasped, then screamed, as she felt the skin above her cheekbones rip, the skin of her forehead split, her nose break. She fell to her knees, eyes squeezed shut, scrabbling at the Mask, tearing at it with her fingernails, but it wouldn’t come off, it was going to kill her—

The Mask shattered. A dozen pieces fell away from her face and crashed to the dais. Her blood, shockingly red, splattered the white tiles. She coughed and choked and spat out scarlet-laced saliva and mucus. Gagging, she peered up through bleary eyes to see the Masker looking sternly over her head. “This candidate has failed the Masking. She cannot be made a citizen. In the name of the Autarch, clear this place!”

She heard her mother screaming her name. What’s happening to me? Nothing made sense.

The door to the Maskery slammed closed, cutting off her mother’s screams.

And finally, here’s the E.C. Blake bio:

E.C. Blake was born in New Mexico, “Land of Enchantment,” and the state’s nickname seems to have rubbed off: he started writing fantastical stories in elementary school and wrote his first fantasy novel in high school. He’s been a newspaper reporter and editorial cartoonist, a magazine editor, a writing instructor and a professional actor, and has written (under another name) more than 30 works of nonfiction, ranging from biographies to science books to history books, but his first love has always been fantasy. He now lives in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, with his wife and a daughter whose favorite stories all involve “sword-fighting princesses.” Come to think of it, so do his.

Lots more to come as the months tick down to release…

Free Novel Saturday: Star Song, Chapters 16 & 17

Every Saturday I post a chapter or two of my young adult science fiction novel Star Song . Coming in in the middle? The whole thing starts here with Chapter 1 and an explanation.

En joy!

Star Song

By Edward Willett

Chapter 16

Kriss pulled Tevera to him, but she struggled free and stood defiant. Andru, Rigel and Nicora’s guards surged forward, but the threat of the beamers stopped them.

Vorlick himself carried no weapon. A blistered streak of red flesh marked his left cheek, and his once-immaculate suit dripped muddy water onto the hardwood floor as he strode into the common room, his fists clenched. When he spoke his voice was colder than the wind that whipped around him. “I’ve come for the artifact, boy.”

“My parents wouldn’t deal with you. Neither will I!” Kriss spat the words, and Nicora’s piercing green eyes locked on him.

“Remember what happened to them,” Vorlick said softly.

“Kill me and you’ll never even find the touchlyre. It’s hidden.” As he told the lie he prayed the Family would not betray him—and that Vorlick would not recognize the misshapen leather-wrapped bundle on the bar as the touchlyre.

Vorlick’s blue eyes narrowed. “Killing you would almost be worth losing it.” He smiled sardonically. “It’s not as if I need the money.”

Tevera edged closer to Kriss, and he saw Vorlick’s eyes flick to her, then back. Vorlick’s smile broadened, making Kriss think of a predator licking its chops after a kill. “But I have a better idea. I’ll keep you alive…for a while. Why don’t I start with the girl, instead?”

Rigel growled a curse and took a step forward, but three beamers swung to cover him and he froze. The muscles in his neck stood out like steel rods.

Kriss’s stomach knotted. “You wouldn’t…”

Vorlick jerked his head and the black-bearded giant to his right showed his yellow teeth in a humorless grin. He holstered his beamer, then drew a knife from his belt and started forward.

“I’ll break your arm if you try it,” Tevera said softly. The bearded man only grinned wider. Tevera tensed—

“All right!” Kriss cried. He closed his eyes. “All right.”

Tevera spun toward him. “Kriss, no!”

“Kelly, back in line,” Vorlick ordered. The bearded man shrugged, sheathed his knife, drew his beamer and returned to his place.

Tevera grabbed Kriss’s arm as he turned toward the bar, but he threw her off and pulled the sodden leather wrapping aside, revealing the glowing smoothness of the touchlyre. A deep hush fell on the room, through which he could hear Tevera’s ragged breathing—and the sharp crackling of the fire.

“Bring it here!” Vorlick snapped.

“All right,” Kriss said—and dashed toward the fireplace.

Tevera screamed. A beamer ray seared his cheek, dazzling him. He stumbled and another bolt shot over his head, then he smashed through the last chairs between him and the hearth and held the touchlyre over the blazing logs. “Hold your fire!” Vorlick yelled.

“Now we’ll bargain, Vorlick!” Kriss shouted, his eyes fixed on the leaping flames. “Or the touchlyre burns!”

But trembling gripped his limbs at the thought of the black wood burning, the silver strings melting and breaking, the copper plates buckling…the vision was so real it shocked him. He thought he felt the touchlyre’s phantom tentacles in his mind, scrabbling for survival.

“I can kill you from here!” Vorlick cried.

“Instantly? Because the last thing I’ll do is throw this into the fire!”

Silence. Sweat stung Kriss’s eyes, but he shivered as though standing naked in a mountain snowstorm. And all the time horror gnawed inside him at the thought of destroying the touchlyre, horror he held at bay only by thinking of the even more horrible alternative, of Tevera in the hands of that black-bearded monster…

Vorlick tried again. “I can kill everyone—including your girl!”

“The touchlyre will still burn!”

More silence. Kriss gasped for air, tortured by the heat, but he would not move. He could not.

“All right!” The offworlder’s voice was choked. “What do you want?”

“Let everyone else go. Now. When they’re gone—the artifact is yours.” What’s left of it, he added to himself, for once the room was empty, he would throw the touchlyre into the fire anyway. He couldn’t let Vorlick abuse its power. As for himself—his parents, Mella, Tevera, others had died or been endangered because of this alien monstrosity. It was time he faced that same risk. “Now, Vorlick!”

But Nicora, not Vorlick, replied. “No.”

He squeezed his eyes shut in agony. “Captain, take Tevera and go!”

“No, Kriss.”

“Who are you?” Vorlick demanded.

“Captain—” Kriss began again, pleading.

But Nicora snapped, “Tevera, keep him quiet.”

Footsteps. “Tevera, no—”

But she had already reached him. She snatched the instrument out of his hand and flung it on a table, then hugged him tightly.

He closed his eyes and held her. “What are you doing?” he whispered in anguish.

She silenced him with a kiss, then reached up and brushed his sweat-slick hair out of his eyes. Tears glittered, fire-lit, on her pale cheeks. “Trust the Captain.”

“But Vorlick—”

“Thank you,” Vorlick said sardonically, self-assured once more. Kriss looked the length of the dark room and met the man’s cold-steel eyes over Rigel’s tense shoulder. “Take him,” Vorlick commanded.

“Stay where you are!” Nicora’s tone assumed obedience. The armed men hesitated.

Vorlick’s glare shifted to her. “Old woman, I came for the artifact and the boy. What happens to you is of no concern—unless you get in my way.”

“I am already in your way.” She pointed at Kriss. “To take him, you’ll have to shoot me.”

Kriss drew in his breath, but Tevera gripped his arm painfully tight. “Shut up!”

“Old woman—”

“Captain, to you.”

“Of what? A fishing boat? A garbage scow?”

That drew a hissing intake of breath from everyone in the room, but no one moved, held impotent by the threat of the beamers.

Nicora drew herself up, and her scarlet robes and gleaming silver hair made her queenly. “I am Captain Nicora of the free Family trader Thaylia.”

“Family?” Vorlick sounded incredulous. “Then why are you protecting this—this ‘worldhugger’?”

“He is not a ‘worldhugger.’ He, too, is Family.” Kriss stared at her. “He and his artifact are under my protection.”

“I said take him!” Vorlick shouted to his men.

Two started forward, but the Captain stepped between them and Kriss and spread her thin arms. “I said you’ll have to shoot me first. But if you do, you will be marked men.” Nicora’s voice, calm but intense, dropped to a whisper. “Vorlick can’t protect you from the Family. No one can. The only place you might be safe is a planet where no Family ship would ever call—and there are no such planets, not in the Commonwealth. And even if you found one, you’d know we were after you, and what we’d do if we caught you. Will you risk that?”

One man stopped. “It’s not worth it.” His companion took only two more steps, then looked back uncertainly. “I’m not shooting a Family Captain,” the first man said. “No way.”

The other nodded, and both strode back to their places, beamers now pointed at the floor.

Vorlick glared at them, then at the rest of his men, but they wouldn’t meet his eyes. One by one, they lowered their weapons. He spun back toward the Captain. “You can’t keep him on board ship forever. Whenever and wherever he steps off, he’s fair game.”

“He’s Family, Vorlick,” the Captain said in the tone of one explaining to a not-very-bright child. “If anything happens to him, we’re going to blame you. You know we have ties to the Union. You harm Kriss, and we’ll put you out of business. You won’t be able to buy a ship, land or unload on any planet in the Commonwealth. And you’ll have to have guards around you all the time. Ask your men about Family vengeance.”

“But he’s just a worthless boy!”

Nicora’s gaze didn’t waver.

“All right! Maybe you could damage my business—but I own a lot of planet-based industry, too. How long can you last without supplies?”

“You have competitors. We don’t.”

Vorlick looked from face to face, as though searching for a way out. “Sell him to me! You’re traders. How much for the boy and the artifact? Any of you—name your price!”

A sound like a muted growl ran through the Family. The Captain stood a little stiffer yet. “This conversation is ended.” She turned her back on Vorlick, robes swirling.

“Damn you—” Vorlick started forward, but Nicora’s bodyguards intercepted him, beamers aimed at his heart, and his own men stood motionless. Stopped by their unwavering weapons, he made a small motion toward something at his belt, then suddenly swore, spun, and strode out into the rain.

His men backed nervously through the door after him. Rigel slammed the door shut behind the last one, and the room erupted as everyone suddenly had to talk about what they had just witnessed.

Kriss let out a deep breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. Tevera did the same, and they looked at each other and laughed—laughter that died as the Captain approached. For a moment as she stared at them her ancient face sagged with fatigue, but then she took a deep breath and straightened. “He won’t cause us any more trouble before we leave.”

“But afterward?” Kriss said softly.

She met his gaze without wavering. “He hasn’t given up. But remember—you’re not alone anymore.”

He looked down at the floor for a moment, then back up at those piercing, sea-ice eyes. “Why?”

“You put our safety above your own. That is the essence of the Family.”

And she had put her frail old body between him and Vorlick’s guns. His heart warmed toward her for the first time. “Thank you,” he said.

She nodded, then went to talk to Andru.

Tevera hugged him again. “Welcome to the Family!” she said joyfully, then looked past him, her smile fading. “Rigel…”

Kriss turned to face Tevera’s grim-faced brother. “Rigel?” he said tentatively, and held out his hand.

But Rigel made no move to take it. “The Captain says you are one of our Family,” he said coldly. “I must accept that. But I warn you—if you do anything to hurt my sister, anything at all, I’ll make you pay for it, with interest! Understand?” He turned on his heel and strode out the door and into the storm—and Kriss silently lowered his hand.

#

Chapter 17

The Family officers soon followed Rigel, leaving Kriss with orders to report to the Thaylia the next morning. Finally only Tevera remained.

They sat together near the fire, the touchlyre on the table between them. Kriss ran a finger over its gently curved flank. “It doesn’t look dangerous, does it?”

“It’s beautiful,” Tevera said softly.

Kriss looked up at her. The firelight burnished her hair with copper, and warmed the curve of her cheek. “So are you,” he whispered.

She smiled. “Thank you.”

He plucked a string, and a single, crystal-clear note rang in the deserted common room. “Tevera…when you stood up for me, I…I couldn’t find words to say how I felt, so I said I loved you. That’s true, but…it isn’t enough.”

“Yes it is.”

“No. It isn’t. But it’s as close as I can come—in words.” He took a deep breath. “I’d like to tell you another way—with this.” He picked up the touchlyre, and she watched him silently. “I was afraid to play it earlier. I still think I was right. I was frustrated and angry, and it was those feelings the touchlyre forged into a weapon to use against Salazar. I couldn’t risk that with your Family.”

“Your Family,” Tevera reminded him, and he smiled at her.

“Our Family.” He settled the touchlyre into playing position. “I thought I’d never dare play it again. In fact, I hated the thing. But now…” He paused, looking into her eyes. “There’s so much I want to say, and the touchlyre is the only way I can say it. You know I can’t lie with this. If I play of my feelings for you…it’s up to you.”

Tevera leaned forward, resting her head on her folded arms. “Play.”

He nodded once, closed his eyes, and touched the copper plates.

A new song welled up in him, a fresh song, a song born for the first time not of longing but of fulfillment. The touchlyre drew out the love in his overflowing heart and gave it wings of music, forming it into crystal chords that rose to the great wooden beams of the ceiling and reached beyond to the stars, and bound him to Tevera in an intimacy closer than an embrace. This time he welcomed the artifact’s ghostly touch, and wondered how he could ever have feared something so wonderful, the final gift of his long-dead parents.

At last the music soared into silence. Kriss gently lay the touchlyre on the table again as Tevera, tears gleaming on her cheeks, stood and came around the table. “I love you,” she whispered, then put her arms around his neck and kissed him before going to the door and out.

Kriss went to his room and slept away the rest of the day.

The next morning, as he packed his handful of clothes and other belongings into his pack, he heard thunder from the spaceport. He ran to the window and leaned out in time to see Vorlick’s golden ship disappearing into the clear blue sky. Relieved, he finished packing and descended to the common room, where Andru and Zendra waited. “Ready?” the innkeeper asked. Kriss nodded, and together they went into the street.

The previous day’s storm had cleansed the air, and a pleasantly cool, fresh breeze from the mountains was all that remained of the howling wind. The whole city seemed bright and sparkling to Kriss, and the silver spires of the starships gleamed like a promise of the future.

They walked without speaking to the gate nearest the Thaylia, and paused there a moment in awkward silence. “I don’t know what to say,” Kriss said finally. “I want to leave, but…” He paused, then laughed. “I never thought I’d say this, but in some ways I don’t want to leave.”

“You must.” Zendra hugged him warmly. “You have a new life ahead of you.”

He returned the embrace, then, as they separated, said, “At least let me say I’m sorry…for what I said yesterday. It was stupid, but…I thought…I didn’t think anyone cared.”

She smiled. “It’s forgotten.”

He smiled back, then turned to the innkeeper. “Andru…”

“The best way you can thank me is to play for me whenever you come back.”

“I will,” he promised. “But it doesn’t seem enough.” He looked into Andru’s gray eyes. “I know how I feel now I have Tevera, and the Family. But I have to know—how do you feel? You’re alone now…”

Andru shook his head. “I’ve still got a family.” He glanced at Zendra. “Twenty years ago they told me my heart wouldn’t take another lift-off or re-entry. In all that time I’ve lived by Family Rule. But now…” He put his arm around Tevera. “I’m not Family any more. I’m going to marry Zendra.”

Kriss beamed. “That’s great!”

“I thought so,” Zendra put in.

“I meant what I said about coming back and playing for me,” Andru added. “I want to hear the songs you will sing after visiting the stars.” He smiled. “Besides, I’ll need all the help I can get to rebuild my reputation after throwing all my customers out into the street when I called the Council.”

Someone shouted Kriss’s name, and he turned to see Tevera waving near the Thaylia. He waved back. “I’ve got to go,” he said. He kissed Zendra on the cheek, then shook hands with Andru. “Good-bye.” He swallowed the sudden lump in his throat. “And thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Andru said quietly.

Kriss hurried through the gate to join the Family, but it seemed to him he was leaving family behind, too. Too much family, he thought wryly. That’s a new problem!

Sometime later he lay in an acceleration couch next to Tevera, looking up at viewscreens that showed the ground below and blue sky above. A voice crackled over the intercom. “Ten seconds.”

I’m almost free of Farr’s World, he thought; but in some ways he knew he would never be free. His parents and Mella had died there; he had grown up there. Only now that he was leaving it did he realize how much a part of him it was.

“Five seconds.” Tevera gripped his hand and he turned his head to see her smile—but saw Rigel glaring at him over her shoulder, too. There’s going to be trouble with him, a voice warned him inside, but the impending take-off blotted out all other concerns. He grinned at Rigel, then turned back toward the viewscreens as the voice completed the countdown.

“Two seconds…one…engines firing.”

White fire blotted out the ground and acceleration pressed him into the couch; but with what little breath he could spare he whooped with joy as the starship thundered skyward. Stars’ Edge dwindled and finally vanished beneath them, and in the other viewscreen the sky darkened and stars began to appear, brilliant jewels scattered across the eternal night. At last, Kriss thought. At last!

If Kriss had been writing a song about his life, he would have ended it at that moment, with Farr’s World fading behind them on the viewscreens and the universe unfolding in front of him like a spring flower. But his life wasn’t a song, or if it was, he wasn’t writing it, and as he gazed hungrily at those stars he remembered Vorlick. Somewhere out there lurked a man who wanted to kill him. And when he glanced at Tevera again and once more met Rigel’s angry gaze, he wondered if maybe there wasn’t someone on board who would be only too happy to help.

Absolute proof his life wasn’t a song came after the viewscreens were turned off, acceleration ceased and the Thaylia and everything on it became weightless—because nobody in a song would ever have become as violently ill as Kriss suddenly did.

“Space sickness,” Tevera informed him sympathetically in his tiny cabin as he floated out of the “head,” as they called it on-ship, after his third bout of retching into the vacuum-assisted toilet. “Your inner ear is confused by the lack of gravity. It will take you a while to adjust—but it does get better.”

“Sometimes,” said Rigel from the cabin’s open door, hanging upside-down relative to Kriss, who gulped and closed his eyes. Luxury passenger liners had artificial gravity, and space stations simulated it with spin, but the Family couldn’t waste the energy on the former and the Thaylia was too small for the latter. Instead they lived the space-borne half of their lives in zero-G, and moved through it like fish in a lake. He felt more like some clumsy calf that had fallen into the water and was floundering around desperately to keep from drowning. He swallowed hard; how could he still feel like throwing up when there was nothing left in his stomach to throw up? And where was up, anyway?

“Rigel—” Tevera warned, but her brother ignored her. Grinning, he came over to Kriss and clapped him on the shoulder, setting him spinning. Kriss grabbed the “bed”—which in zero-G became nothing more than a rack you tethered yourself to—to stop himself.

“Sometimes when we carry passengers they never get used to it at all, and we just have to dump them off at the next planet,” said Rigel. “Sure would be a shame if that happened to you, wouldn’t it, worldhugger?”

“Rigel, go away,” Tevera snapped.

“Can’t,” Rigel said cheerfully. “I’m here on duty. Crewman Lemarc has been assigned to my watch and I’m supposed to give him the guided tour of the ship. So if you’ll just follow me, ‘Crewman…’”

Kriss tentatively shoved off after him and succeeded only in cracking his head on the ceiling—or what would have been the ceiling on the ground. Spots swam in front of his eyes. Tevera turned on Rigel furiously. “You know he can’t come now! He’ll hardly be able to move around for at least a day.”

“First day, and he’s already missed a watch.” Rigel looked down at Kriss scornfully. “Not off to a very good start, are you, worldhugger?” He spun neatly in place. “I’m afraid I’ll have to report this…” He arrowed through the door and disappeared.

“Don’t mind him,” Tevera said. “I’ll get you a medical leave-from-duty. You just strap yourself into your bunk and try to get some sleep. By the time you wake up your brain will have made sense of the new sensory inputs and you’ll feel a hundred percent better. Then I’ll give you a guided tour of the ship—and teach you a few tricks for getting around in zero-G. All right?”

“Whatever you say,” Kriss said miserably. He pulled himself down to the bunk and, with Tevera’s help, secured himself loosely with the restraining straps.

“How’s your head?” Tevera asked before she left. “I could arrange for a painkiller—”

“It’s fine,” Kriss mumbled. “I’m sure Rigel is disappointed.”

“Rigel.” Tevera looked at the door. “I don’t understand him.”

“I don’t either. Why does he hate me so much?”

“He thinks he’s protecting me,” Tevera said.

“From me? I would never hurt you.” He closed his eyes, and the churning in his stomach and the dizziness in his head really did seem to ease. Hurt her? He remembered the way she had almost twisted his arm off when he’d dared to touch her at their first meeting, and smiled. She was more likely to hurt him…

“Try to convince my brother of that. It’s all because…” Her voice trailed off. “Well, it’s a long story.”

Kriss hardly heard her; his memory of their first meeting eased him seamlessly into a dream in which the brush of her lips against his and the sound of the cabin door closing all made perfect sense.

#

The Space-Time Continuum: “Dammit, Jim, I’m a storyteller, not a social worker!”

My latest “Space-Time Continuum” column from the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild‘s newsletter Freelance…

***

This column I want to return to the World Fantasy Convention held in Toronto last November…and a panel that rubbed me the wrong way.

Entitled “The Changing Face of YA Fantasy,” the panel was described this way: “Fantasy works for young adult readers have changed over the years, perhaps even more than their counterparts for adults. The themes tackled are more cutting-edge; a wider variety of cultures is explored; locations are often more realistic, more gritty and urban, than in the past; a more diverse cast of characters is brought into play; and the heroines and heroes are perhaps more realistic than their predecessors. Our panel will discuss the popularity of YA fantasy, its changing face, and its future.”

The panelists were authors Tone Milazzo, Laura Anne Gilman, Hiromi Goto, Morgan Keyes and Amanda Sun.

They began with a discussion of whether YA fantasy is getting “too dark.” The counter to that concern seemed to be that a) the “darkness” in young adult fiction is simply a reflection of the darkness of the real world and b) anyway, the darkness is good for YA readers.

“Any genre has to look at what’s happening outside us,” said Goto. “It’s been a scary time, and the literature is going to reflect that…these books are teaching kids it’s okay to be afraid.”

She noted that “there’s so much violence in children’s lives already in terms of games culture. A lot of it is graphic and gratuitous. As a writer and a parent I find it really important to sort out the context of violence within the narrative, not just splash and gore, but what is the context, the relationship of the violence between the characters, how can the character negotiate it.”

Gilman said, “The fear always seems to they’re not ready to handle this, they don’t have the tools. My argument is always that the book is the tool…most fantasy is proactive even in the worst-case scenario; it helps them deal with the reality outside. Even if they’re not succeeding they’re doing something.”

Sun said, “These issues are issues they have, these are things they’re dealing with.”

The panel continued in that mode: the ways in which swearing, sex, race and other hot-button topics are dealt with in YA fiction were all discussed in terms of being good for the readers.

It’s not that I disagree with that. It’s true, I’m sure, that books help young readers deal with problems and I know it’s true more for some readers than others, and I’m really glad it’s true, and it’s an important function of YA books, and blah, blah, blah…but what I kept hearing, underneath all that, was “Swallow your medicine like a good little boy.”

Why did I feel like pushing back against this oh-so-worthwhile discussion of how oh-so-worthwhile YA books are? I think it goes back to a lecture one of my junior high teachers gave me when I couldn’t remember the author of a book I’d enjoyed: it was important to remember the author’s name, he (or possibly she; I don’t remember the teacher, just the lecture!) said, because otherwise I was “just reading for escape.”

As if that were a bad thing!

Even the panelists in Toronto would probably say “escape” is a good thing, a doorway into a better world than the oh-so-terrible real world. But you know what? Escape is a good thing even if you don’t really have anything you need to escape from. Entertainment is a worthwhile goal in its own right.

I’m as good as any author at talking about the oh-so-important issues in my books. But the truth is, I’m not writing novels to help readers deal with their problems. I’m writing out of the sheer joy I get from creating worlds and entertaining readers.

It’s very nice if readers put down one of my books and think, “I feel so much better about my own problems now that I’ve seen that character deal with theirs,” but all I really want them to think is, “What a terrific story.”

I am not a pharmacist, a counselor, a psychologist or a social worker. I am a storyteller. I tell stories set in the past, present and future, in worlds that exist, could exist, and can and do exist only in my mind. I write stories that span the space-time continuum, and I welcome readers along for the ride.

As far as I’m concerned, that’s a high enough calling right there.