Sitting at a long bench table around the edge of the square, chowing on the mess of vegetables and processed protein that he'd been served on a clunky grey-green clay plate, Braxton listened to the saga of the past two years with a raised brow. Traveling for months on end, evading the Council, dealing with illness, weather, alien creatures, penal colonists . . . it was like an adventure right out of the holocinemas.
"Sounds like you got enough excitement down here for anyone," he said to Danziger, who sat across from him.
"Hell, yeah," Danziger said under the sound of Devon Adair’s recital. "We were so excited sometimes we could hardly stand it."
Braxton laughed. "You’ll be glad to get back home."
True looked up at that. "We’re not going back," she said.
Braxton looked around, barely suppressing a shudder. What a shitty place. "Don’t joke like that, kiddo."
Danziger said, "It’s not a joke. We’re staying here."
The fork froze halfway to Braxton’s lips. He stared at the younger man, who met his gaze steadily, as if he’d been waiting the whole night to say that.
Braxton set the fork down and picked up his cup. It was almost empty. He took care of that, then held it out. "True, how about you go get me some more--" He paused, trying to remember what kind of alien fruit had gone in the cider. "Some more."
She didn’t take it. "Anything you want to say to my dad, you can say in front of me," she said instead.
"Baby," Danziger said. "Give us a moment."
She looked from one man to the other, then let out a huff of exasperation and snatched Braxton’s mug. God, she’s grown, he thought. Although she didn’t look a thing like her dad, the way she stalked off toward the bar brought back memories of the adolescent Jack Danziger, mostly rage and sass.
Braxton looked away from the child, to the father, and said, "Are you out of your fucking mind?"
"No," Danziger said.
"You’re staying here," Braxton said.
"Yeah."
"Here." Braxton slapped the wooden table--god, real wood!--for emphasis.
"Figured we might move around a little from this exact spot."
"Don’t mess with me, Jack--" He caught the warning flash. "John." There were times to call a man by his childhood nickname, and this wasn’t one of them. Although if you asked Braxton, John was behaving like a kid, impulsive and thoughtless. "You’re not a drone anymore. You’re out of debt. Both of you. You’re full citizens."
"Right," John drawled. "We’ll get back and the Council’s gonna say, ‘Damn, are you out of debt? Well, here, here’s a nice two-bedroom unit for you, a good job where you’re not just a faceless robot, and a place for your kid in university.’" He gave a humorless laugh. "You know better. You’ve seen it. Back there, citizenship’s just on paper. Nothing would change."
"And this is better?" Braxton looked around. "We’re eating food grown in dirt, off clay plates, in a wooden shack. You’re kidding me, right? You don’t have to do this."
John looked around, too, and shrugged. "Yeah, but see, I want to."
"Want to?" Braxton echoed incredulously.
John looked back at him. "I like it here. True likes it here. Good place to be."
"Right. It’s Nirvana."
"Hell, no, but it’s better than what we left behind."
There was a ripple of laughter at something the Adair woman said, and John glanced over his shoulder. Adair happened to look their way, and for a moment her smile shifted from the bright, public, pasted-on one to something warm and intimate.
John returned it.
"So that’s it," Braxton said sharply.
John looked back. "What?"
"The Adair woman. You're bangin' her."
John's fist was halfway to his face when it paused in the air. Braxton could almost see the muscles tremble as he lowered his hand. "Say that again," he said in a low voice, "and you will lose a tooth."
"What are you, in love with her?"
John looked him in eye. "Yeah."
Trent ate his meal slowly, so involved in Devon’s story that he hardly noticed the strange-tasting vegetables. He had a hard time processing the fact that it had all happened just in the short time since he'd last seen Devon.
"But we made it, we're here, and now so are you," Devon finished up. "You all have a whole new life waiting, and I'm so eager to get it started." To scattered, tentative applause, she sat down across from Trent. "Whew." She took a drink, but her voice was still husky from speaking for so long.
"Hey, Mom," Uly said. "How come you didn’t say anything about the--"
"Easy, honey," she cut in.
"But--"
"Remember, we were going to wait a little while to tell everything about our friends?"
Uly persisted. "But I--"
"Honey," Devon said.
He must have heard the steel in her voice, because he let out a sigh and started eating again. Trent couldn’t look away from him, not even to wonder about the odd exchange, and neither could any of the other parents at the table. Devon's son shoveled down food like it was going out of style, a perfectly normal appetite for a ten-year-old. Trent's own son, on the other hand, poked at his salad without scooping any onto the fork.
Devon leaned over and said, "Hi, Max-a-million. Don't you like your salad?"
"It's okay," he said listlessly.
Uly rolled his eyes. "But it has vitamins," he said in a mockery of his mother's voice. "Vitamins are good for you."
She rolled her eyes, too. "Okay, honey, that's just about enough from you. How about you go get some dessert for the table?"
"What is it?"
"Fruit. And if you get us a box, you can save all the greenfruit for yourself."
"Cool!" Uly rushed off. Trent stared after him, trying to picture Max running.
"He's right, you know," Devon said, drawing his attention. "The salad may not taste wonderful, but it does have a lot of necessary vitamins and minerals."
"Good, good," Dr. Miguel Vasquez said. "We need that after all the cold sleep."
"It must be something about the soil," Trent said. "Or maybe being grown under real sunlight. It doesn't taste quite like the vegetables on the stations."
Devon hesitated an instant before saying rather casually, "No reason it should. The greens are native to this planet."
Darla Ketchum dropped her fork. "You mean these are indigenous plants?" She yanked the plate away from her younger daughter and said to her older one, "Molly, spit that out."
"Wait, Darla, it's perfectly fine!" Devon said before Molly could follow orders. "I promise you, Julia tested everything thoroughly, and we've been eating them for months with no ill effects."
"They seem to be perfectly fine," Miguel said to Darla. "Angie really should eat. She needs her strength."
Darla looked down at the plate, then with enormous reluctance put it back in front of her younger daughter. Angie promptly scooped up an entire forkful of the lettuce she’d toyed with earlier.
Miguel said, "I'm sorry I wasn't here, Devon."
Devon waved a hand. "It was just one of those things. You couldn't have helped it. Plus, Julia did a wonderful job taking care of us."
"Yes, it looks like she has."
Rita Vasquez shot her husband a look, but didn't say anything.
"She was tireless," Devon said. She laughed a little. "Some days I thought we'd have to knock her out with her own sedaderm. But it all paid off. We couldn't cultivate anything on the move, so we got a lot of our nutrition from native flora and fauna." She smiled. "It was better than spirulina. That's something we got tired of very fast."
"You can cultivate now," Darla's husband Rob said. "What's wrong with Earth vegetables?"
"Not all of them do well in this soil, and even the ones that finally took aren't mature. Frankly, I think it's going to prove more efficient in the long run to plant the native fruits and vegetables. And you'll find ones you like."
Max let his fork drop with a clatter. His plate was still almost full, but Trent let it go. He wasn’t surprised Max didn’t like the taste of alien vegetables.
Uly came back, toting a crate full of fruit. Instead of leaping to her feet and relieving her child of the burden, Devon glanced over her shoulder. "Got that, honey?"
"Uh-hunh," the boy grunted. He set it on the bench and picked out a yellow, waxy-skinned ovoid. "Max, look, these ones are so good. You gotta peel 'em but they're real sweet. I can peel it all in one piece, look." Tongue caught between his teeth, he dug his fingernails into the peel.
"Can I have one?" Angie asked.
Darla cleared her throat. "Aren't you full, baby?"
"They're really very good, Darla," Devon said, picking one out. "A little like an orange, but not quite. Uly, why don't you split that up and let everyone have a piece? There's plenty more in here."
In order to support her, Trent took one of the sections and bit in warily. Tart, sweet juice flooded his mouth, and he looked at the greeny-orange flesh in surprise. "It's--it's not bad," he said. He hesitated, then handed Max a piece. "Go ahead and try it, son."
The fruit made the rounds of the table. Even Darla eventually tried it, and gave Angie a piece, after the little girl pestered her for five minutes straight.
"Would you like some more?" Devon asked him. "You'll have to peel this one, I'm afraid."
"No, that's fine. They're great, but I'm full."
She smiled at him, stopping his heart, and started peeling for herself. "How do you like New Pacifica?"
"It's not what I was expecting," he said diplomatically.
She split the peeled fruit into several sections and started eating one. "Well, no. But plans changed."
"I can't believe you went through all that. It must have been horrible." He wished he could have been here for her.
"Parts of it," she allowed. "But not everything."
"Well, it hasn't disagreed with you too much. You look incredible."
She blinked at him, as if surprised. "Well. Thank you."
He edged closer, secure in the knowledge that nobody was paying attention, not even their children. "Can I talk to you?"
"We are talking," she said.
"No, I mean, in private." Through the babble of conversation all over the square, Trent could just hear that someone had put on music--something old-fashioned and jazzy. He opened his mouth to suggest a dance when a deep voice intruded.
"Hey, Adair."
Him again, Trent thought in disgust.
But Devon looked almost ludicrously happy to see him. "Hey, Danziger."
Uly jumped up on the bench to see him better. "Hi, John! Where's True? You gotta meet True," he said to Max.
"She's over there." John swung him down from the bench with ease, and Uly darted off. John shifted the crate of fruit and sat in the vacated space next to Devon. She was on the tall side for a woman, but next to that hulking brute she looked almost delicate.
She said, "Everyone, this is John Danziger, head of ops. I couldn’t do without him."
"Well, hell," Danziger said. "A colony ship should land every day if you’re gonna be this nice to me." He pointed at her plate, and the several sections of fruit still on it. "You done with that?"
She made a noncommittal noise, and, to Trent’s horror, Danziger hooked a finger in the side of the plate and pulled it over in front of him. Devon barely seemed to notice. "John, these are the Doctors Vasquez, Miguel and Rita. The Ketchums are over there--that’s Rob and Darla, and their daughters Molly and Angie. Oh--yes--Trent Sadler and his son Max."
"We’ve met," Trent said.
"Not officially," Danziger said. He wiped juice off his fingers and shook hands all around, even with the children. His hand was calloused and rough, and his grip so strong that Trent had to massage his hand under the table. He stared at Danziger, wondering if that had been intentional.
The other man didn’t seem to notice. "So listen," he said to Devon when that was taken care of. "Morgan’s had the music on for ten minutes and Bess is too fat to jitterbug. If we don’t get some people on that floor soon, he’s gonna cry."
"Well, nobody wants to see that," she said.
"Nope. Figure you and I should set the example, what do you say?"
"As long as it’s for a good cause," she returned, getting to her feet. "Everyone, please feel free to join us." Almost before she was done speaking, Danziger had hauled her off like a caveman.
They danced alone for only a few measures before more couples trickled out. Staring at them, Trent tried to convince himself that they really were just setting the example. But he had danced with Devon before, at society functions. In a formal gown, heels, and perfectly matched jewelry, she’d never smiled the way she did now, in hiking boots and patched pants, dancing with a drone.
Darla said, "Trent."
He tore his eyes away from Devon. All the adults at the table were looking at him with varying degrees of pity and sympathy.
"It doesn’t mean anything," Darla said. "It can’t possibly."
"Right," he said hollowly, looking at the way Devon laughed through a spin. "It can’t possibly."
Julia pulled her lab coat around her and pushed her hair back into place. Pins were working their way out of her neat upsweep. She’d already lost one down her collar. It was somewhere in the small of her back, slithering around between cloth and skin, driving her crazy. Had she forgotten how annoying they were? Or had the nature of hairpins changed in just two years?
She’d spent most of those two years with her hair in a sloppy ponytail, or loose folded-over bun, or perhaps a half-tail if she had more than fifteen minutes between waking up and the start of her daily duties. Nobody cared if her hair fell in her eyes, just as long as they stayed healthy. She’d forgotten what it was like to have those things matter.
By some miracle, there had been a lab coat and some hair pins in her things. She’d put the costume of the refined, brilliant, controlled doctor over her real clothes. So far, she was passing.
With everyone at dinner, she could pretend the hospital was all hers again. The quiet settled around her like a cloud, the soft beep-beep of monitors somehow enhancing rather than diminishing. She’d turned off all the lights to save energy, except for the ones around four beds at the end.
She looked at the little occupants and sighed.
Four of the colony children hadn’t come completely out of cold sleep, but sunk instead into one of the shallow comas that were such a feature of end-stage Syndrome. The illness was roughly degenerative by age, and they were all over the age of seven, which translated to living on borrowed time.
Miguel had spent a lot of time reassuring the worried parents, all but promising that they would be out soon. He had quietly instructed Julia to key their gear channels and his own into her speed-dial, however--an instruction she hadn’t needed, and had resented mightily.
She went from bed to bed with her diaglove, checking vitals and recording stats. Mona looked the best, comparatively speaking. Of course, at seven years and two months, she was the youngest of the four.
Lynnie, their old woman at nine years and three months, looked the worst.
Since there was nobody to see, Julia brushed the little girl’s dark hair out of her eyes. Her own tanned fingers looked dark as coal next to the dead pale of Lynnie’s skin, and it felt too cool under her fingers. If not for the steady beep of the heart monitor, Julia would have checked her pulse.
Instead, she picked up the holo that sat next to Lynnie’s bed. It showed a fuzzy-headed baby, wearing the slightly dazed look of every baby in every image recording since time began, sitting on the lap of a dark-haired boy. Lynnie and her older brother. He held her steady with both hands, grinning so hugely at the camera that Julia could see the gap where his two front teeth had fallen out.
She sighed and set it down, looking at Lynnie. Nine years hadn’t done much for the little girl. She looked as if she’d had more weight when the holo was taken than she did right now. And her big brother’s protectiveness might have kept her from falling to the floor on that long-ago day, but it hadn’t saved her from the Syndrome.
Resting her hand on Lynnie’s forehead, Julia wondered if even the Terrians could save her.
"Any better?"
Julia jolted, then pressed a hand to her thudding heart. "Miguel?"
The senior doctor came into the puddle of light. "Did I frighten you?"
"Startled," she corrected, lifting her datapad and generating a graph of Lynnie’s levels. "She’s a little bit better," she said, handing it over.
"Very small improvement," he said, studying it.
"But improvement," she returned.
"The others?"
Julia glanced around. "I estimate Mona will be out within the hour, and Suchiko and Brendon perhaps before midnight."
He checked the children’s levels thoroughly before concurring, and she had to bite back a sigh. She’d forgotten what it was like to be the most junior member of a medical team. She’d ruled supreme over the medtent for two years, and now had to readjust to having other doctors around.
He ejected Mona’s datachip from his pad and dropped it into the box on the end of the bed. Then he turned to Julia and beckoned her away from the beds, toward the offices. She followed, very afraid she knew what this was about.
He stopped at her desk and turned with a benevolent smile. "I’ve been meaning to talk to you all day. I want to commend you on your discretion."
"Thank you," she said, wondering if she could just flee.
The lines around his eyes crinkled benevolently. "We had some good times, didn’t we?"
"Yes," she said faintly. "We did." She tried to emphasize the past tense.
Apparently, she hadn’t emphasized it enough, because he continued reminiscing. "Do you remember the dinner we had? In that restaurant in the inner ring?"
"Very good lobster," she said at random, wondering desperately if she could just hide under her desk until he was done.
"And the weekend we spent in your unit with wine and cheese?"
"Yes." She actually didn’t remember that weekend, but she had the feeling that if she’d said so, he wouldn’t have heard it. Miguel Vasquez rarely heard anything he didn’t want to hear.
He smiled warmly at her. "You’re a wonderful woman, Julia. Very beautiful, very intelligent." His smile turned regretful. "But I really am committed to working things out with Rita."
"Of course," she said, praying that would be it.
"Now, we’re going to be working very closely for the next few months, if not more. I just wanted to make quite sure that you understood the current status of our relationship."
"It’s going to be completely professional," she said swiftly. "Completely."
"I’m so glad you understand." He put a hand on her shoulder, and she looked at it incredulously. "I truly do regret that you were hurt, my dear. I don’t pretend that if things had been different, I--well. We probably shouldn’t talk about that."
"No, no." She stepped back. She should tell him about Alonzo right now, so he wouldn’t get any ideas. "There’s something I should--"
"Hey, Jules!"
She spun. "Alonzo?"
He paused just inside the door. "Sorry--am I interrupting something?"
"No, of course not," Miguel said, rather heartily. "A professional discussion."
"We’re done now," Julia said firmly.
"Good, great. Listen, have you eaten?"
Her stomach growled, and she put her hand over it in surprise. "Oh--well, actually not."
"Jeez. I thought you were a doctor." He shook his head at Miguel. "She’s got all these initials after her name and she doesn’t know how to take care of herself." He sat on the edge of her desk and took her hands in his. "Well, here’s the plan. We’re putting some food in you, then I’ll stuff Morgan in a closet and put on some real music. And then we’re dancing the night away. What do you say? Tempted?"
She couldn’t help smiling, even as she wanted to drag Alonzo out of the hospital before he said one thing more. "Yes, but--" She looked over her shoulder. "I’m the physician on duty in here. I can’t just--"
"You’ve been in here all evening! Dr. Vasquez’ll take over, won’t you?" He turned to Miguel. "You don’t mind. You’ve eaten and everything."
"I’d be happy," Miguel said stiffly.
"See? He’d love to. He’s dying to. C’mon."
Following Alonzo out the door, she paused to glance over her shoulder. Miguel still stood at her desk, a stunned look on his face. Her own face went hot, and she hurried out.
Alonzo felt like he’d missed something in there. It sure hadn’t looked like a professional discussion, not with Vasquez’s hand on Julia’s shoulder like that. Maybe the old guy had a case on her. Alonzo could understand that. Julia would tell him if it was important, so in the meantime he wasn’t going to worry.
She already looked better with some food in her. He leaned over and stole another pin.
"Alonzo!" she yelped as her whole hairstyle slid to one side. "Stop that."
"Nuh-uh," he said, stuffing the hairpins in his pocket. "I hate your hair up."
"It’s my hair." She tried to bat his hand away, but he got the last couple of pins and it all fell around her shoulders. She made an exasperated noise.
Across the table, Sheila shook her head. "You can’t take him anywhere. You remember that one bar, ‘Lonzo?"
"There were a lot of bars," he said, peeling a piece of greenfruit. "Which one, exactly?"
"There was a singer there. Name of Marla?"
"Right. Big, uh, personality."
Julia looked at him sideways. "You’re a great connoisseur of . . . personality."
He grinned at her. "But I still like yours the best."
"Man, I feel for you," Jovay said to Alonzo. "Two years in real time."
Sheila peered at Alonzo. "Looks like it was rough," she commented. "You got a dent in that pretty face, don’t you?"
"Huh?"
She touched her nose.
Alonzo laughed, fingering the bump on the bridge of his once-straight nose. "Oh, yeah . . . that. That’s a story."
Julia muttered, "Alonzo--"
"So what was it?" Jovay wanted to know. "Wild animal? Penal colonist? Fall off a cliff?"
Alonzo shook his head at each option. "Baseball in the face."
"No VR ever did that," Sheila objected.
"Not a VR. We played real baseball." Alonzo grinned. "Real baseball, real ball, real bats . . ."
"Damn," Jovay said in awe. On the stations, even the top levels didn’t have room for stadiums. "But how’d that break your nose?"
He looked at Julia.
She sighed deeply. "Go ahead." She dug into her salad.
Alonzo settled into the story, propping his elbows on the table. He loved this story, even though it drove Julia crazy. "We got the idea of ball games over our first winter. Because, damn, it was boring holed up there. So we made balls and bats, y’know, just sort of improvising. Well, you saw our numbers, man, we couldn’t have two full teams. We had to go with one outfielder, and the robot was the umpire. Come spring and we find out, Jules here has never played. Not even in VR."
They all looked at Julia, who looked down at her plate. "I had other priorities as a child," she mumbled defensively.
He put his arm around her shoulders, cuddling her into his side for a moment. "So, see, we had to teach her. And the thing about Jules here is, she’s like super genius brain woman, she gets everything first time around. Except baseball. She could not hit that dumb ball."
"I did a couple of times," she defended herself.
"Sure you did, and it went boink-boink-boink--" With his hands, he demonstrated a baseball bouncing no more a few feet away from him. She made a face at him. He grinned and turned back to his friends. "So finally Danz just loses all patience and yells, ‘C’mon ya weenie, put some muscle in it!’ And that pissed her off real good."
"He always says that was his intention," Julia said dryly. "Actually, he was just being a jerk."
"And I pitch, and she swings and crack and phwoosh and wham and I’m lying on the ground spouting blood like a shankin’ fountain."
"I didn’t mean to," she said as his friends roared with laughter.
"I know, baby, I know. If you’d meant to, you’d’ve hit it at him."
"So you played a lot of ball?" Jovay asked.
"Actually--" Alonzo had to stop and think. "We got in--what, Jules, two games? Before--"
"Maybe three . . . but then . . ." The laughter leached out of Julia’s face like water draining. "We started getting sick. Eben died and then we had to leave Devon--nobody really felt like playing baseball after that."
"Oh, yeah," Sheila said sympathetically. "Yeah, I can see."
Looking at her, Alonzo got a shock. Sheila could feel bad for them, but she hadn’t known Eben--funny Eben who played practical jokes and flirted even-handedly with every guy in camp from Yale to Uly, and who pitched fastballs like rockets. And Sheila would never, could never, understand the helpless horror of the six weeks Devon had been in cryo, or the miracle of getting her back again. She couldn’t understand the strangeness of their first days, or the bitter day-by-day survival of winter, or the way the camp felt at night, when they all huddled around the same fire, listening to the familiar rise and fall of each others’ voices and knowing that for one more night, the darkness wouldn’t eat them alive.
For a moment, one of his best friends looked like a stranger.
"We had a few games here," he said quickly, to break the spell. "Not a lot, but some--hey, you know, Jules, we can actually play a real game now! We’ve got more than enough people--"
"Not until it warms up," she said. "Moon Cross is only a few weeks away."
"Moon Cross?" Sheila questioned.
Again that jolt. Alonzo was so used to Moon Cross meaning the start of winter, cold, the earth and the Terrians settling in to sleep, that he’d forgotten that they were just two strange words to Sheila. "Winter," he said. "No ball games, it’s too cold. But when it warms up, we can have a lot of teams. It could be like a league. We’d have a tournament, and--"
"Whoa there, rocket boy," Jovay laughed. "Aren’t you forgetting something?"
"What?"
"When it warms up, you won’t be here."
"Jovay!" Sheila hissed, and tilted her head at Julia.
Feeling his neck creak, Alonzo looked around at her. She sat, moving the last piece of leafy green around her plate. Every so often, the fork scratched against the unglazed pottery.
"Oh man," Jovay said. "Oh--wow. Man. Sorry. Didn’t you know? Didn’t he tell you? Lonz, didn’t you--"
"He told me," she said. "I knew."
It was one of the unwritten codes of sleepjumping. Don’t let ‘em fall for you. Don’t let it get serious. Don’t let them believe it’s going to be forever, because forever’s eaten up by one jump. Other sleepjumpers knew better, but they all had to take care with lovers who lived in real time.
Sheila and Jovay looked at him accusingly. How could he explain to them how it had been? He had followed the code and told her, way back, way before their first winter. But back then, his departure had been a nebulous, hazy event far in the future. Now it was here, and he’d broken the code anyway.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Julia put down her knife and fork with the same precision as she would a live lascalpel. There was still a little food left on her plate. He would have bothered her into eating it in other circumstances, but the atmosphere felt oddly delicate--like a crystal cobweb. He didn’t want to shatter it.
Her voice fell into the air like pebbles dropping into a pond. "You promised me a dance." Soft and quiet, and very, very careful.
"I did, didn’t I?" He reached down and took her hand, feeling the familiar narrow-boned construction of it as if it were the first time he’d ever touched her. "Well. Come on then."
He danced with her to one of Morgan’s old-fashioned slow tunes, something with dreamy piano under slow lyrics asking wistfully not to be forgotten.
Her body moved soft against his, totally familiar. Julia, he thought helplessly. She’d never asked him for anything, and he’d ended up giving more than he ever had to anyone else. With an odd sideways jolt of his heart, he realized he’d been with her about twenty times longer than he’d ever been with anyone.
But he would leave. It was what he did. Sleepjumpers left, and he was a sleepjumper, and just like he’d done before, he would leave.
Author's Chapter Notes:
Soundtrack Note
John and Devon’s dance: In the Mood by Glenn Miller
Alonzo and Julia’s dance: Dream a Little Dream of Me. Pick your favorite version.
John and Devon’s dance: In the Mood by Glenn Miller
Alonzo and Julia’s dance: Dream a Little Dream of Me. Pick your favorite version.