He wasn’t happy. But it was a place, and until now he’d had none. He walked in and the door shut the moment he cleared it. He stood there, appalled and this time, yes, he tested it out, angry. He wanted to throw things. But there wasn’t a single item available except the duffle he’d brought, no character to the place, just—nothing. Cream and green walls, lockers that filled every wall-space above the mattresses and bed frames. Cream-colored blankets secured with safety belts. That promised security, didn’t it?
A check of the lighted panel at the end of the room, which looked to fold back, showed a toilet and a shower compartment, a mirror, a sink, a small cabinet. The place was depressingly claustrophobic. He checked the lockers out, found the first right-hand one full of somebody’s stuff—bad news, that was—and slammed it shut, tried the left-hand side and found it empty, presumably for the clothes he’d brought.
There was more storage under the bunk, latched drawers that pulled out. He unpacked his duffle and stowed his dock-side clothes, his underwear, his personal stuff, where he figured he had license to put them.
Most carefully, he unwrapped what he really wanted to put away safely, the most precious thing—the hisa stick he’d wrapped in layers of his clothes.
The stick that customs hadn’t found. That the authorities on Downbelow hadn’t confiscated. That everything so far had conspired to let him keep. It was hisa work. It was a hisa gift.
It was illegal to touch, let alone to have and to take off-planet. But hisa bestowed them on special occasions—deaths, births, arrivals. And partings.
He smoothed the cords that tied the dangling feathers. The wood—real wood—was valuable in itself. But far more so was the carving, the cord bindings, the native feathers—only a very, very few such items ever left Downbelow, and the government watched over those with jealous protection from exploitation of the species, their skills, their beliefs.
But this particular one was his. He’d told his rescuers how he’d gotten it, and where he’d gotten it, and wouldn’t turn it loose. The planetary studies researchers had grilled him for hours on it, and he’d thought they might try to take it—but they’d only asked to photograph it, and put it through decon, and gave it back after that, and let him take it with him. He’d expected customs would confiscate it and maybe arrest him for trying to smuggle it out, a hope he actually entertained, thinking that maybe a snafu like that would get him snagged in the gears of justice again and maybe keep him off the ship—but Quen’s intervention had meant he hadn’t even had to deal with customs.
So one obstacle after another had fallen down, maybe Quen’s doing all along, and by now he supposed it really was his. And it was all he’d managed to take away that meant anything to him.
It meant all the hard things. It meant lessons Melody had tried to teach him—and failed.
It meant parting from where he’d been. It meant a journey. It meant eyes watching the clouded heavens. It meant faith, and faithfulness.
Maybe a human who was born to space couldn’t have the faith hisa had in Great Sun. Maybe he couldn’t believe that Great Sun was anything but what they said in his education, a nuclear furnace. Maybe Great Sun wasn’t a god, maybe there was no god, or whatever hisa thought or expected when they looked to the sky. But Melody was so sure that Great Sun would take care of his children, that Great Sun would always come back, that the dark never lasted…
The dark never lasted.
For him it would. Forces he couldn’t control had shoved him out where the dark went on forever, where even Melody’s Great Sun couldn’t walk far enough or shine brightly enough. That was where he was now.
But this stick he touched had lived, once. These feathers had flown in the fierce winds, once. Old River had smoothed these stones. All these things, Great Sun had made. And they were real in his hand, and he could remember, when he felt them, what the cloud-wrapped world felt like. They were his parting-gift.
Hisa put such sticks on the graves of the dead, human and hisa. They put them near the Watcher-statues. And when the researchers asked, bluntly, why, the hisa didn’t have the words to say.
But he knew. He knew. It was when you went away. It reminded you. It was a memory. It was the River and Great Sun, it was weather and wind. It was all those things that he’d almost touched, that the clean-suit only let him imagine touching without a barrier. It was waking up to a sunrise, and watching the world wake up. It was sleeping in the dark with no electric lights and waiting for Great Sun to find his child again—knowing that Great Sun would come for him the way Melody had come in the darkest hour of his childhood, when he was hiding from all the crazed authorities.
That was the faith the hisa had. That was what he took away with him.
Bianca had sworn she’d wait for him. But he knew. People didn’t keep such promises. Ever. And hisa couldn’t. Their lives were too short, too precious for waiting. It was why they made the Watchers.
And now Quen had tried to psych him with this last-minute offer of hers… just a psych-out. A ploy to get Fletcher to behave, one more time.
He wound the dangling cords about the stick and put it away in the back of the underbunk drawer, behind his spare station clothes, so no prying roommate would find it.
He quietly closed the drawer, telling himself he was stupid even to think of falling for Quen’s line. He knew the drill. He could almost manage a cynical amusement past the usual little lump in his throat that conjured all the other bad times of his life. Have a fruit ice, kid. Have another. You’ll like it here. Look, we’ve got you a teddy bear.
Ten weeks later the new family’d be back to the psychs saying he was incorrigible.
This one was already a disaster.
Work in the laundry, for God’s sake. He’d pulled himself from police-record nothing into a degree program in Planetary Studies, and his shiny new family had him doing laundry and matching socks. That was damn near funny, too, so funny it made the lump in his throat hurt like hell.
He latched the drawer. The locker didn’t have a lock. The bath didn’t have a lock. When he looked at the door to the outside, it didn’t have a lock. There wasn’t anywhere that was his.
All right, he said to himself for the tenth time in five minutes, all right, calm down. A year. A year and he’d be back to Pell and he’d survive it and if Quen reneged, he’d go to court. Do what they said, keep them happy until, back at Pell after that year, he ran for it and held Quen to her word.
Meanwhile the captain’s nephew had said go back down to the laundry and check out some clothes. He could do that, while his heart hammered from anger and his ears picked up a maddening hum somewhere just below his hearing and he wasn’t sure of the floor. He told himself he was going to walk around, telling himself he wasn’t going to be sick at his stomach, he wasn’t even going to think about the fact that the ship was moving. He walked out to the hall and down to A14, to the laundry.
He wasn’t the only one looking for clean clothes. He stood in a line of six, all of whom introduced themselves with too damn much cheerfulness, a Margot with a -t, a Ray, a Nick, a Pauline, a Johnny T., and a John Madison who, he declared, wasn’t related to the captain. Directly.
He didn’t intend to remember them. He wasn’t remotely interested. He was polite, just polite. He smiled, he shook hands. Their chatter informed him you could pick up more than laundry at the half-door counter. You could buy personal items on your account, if you had an account, which as far as he knew he didn’t. As he approached the counter he could see, beyond the kid handing out the clothes, a lot of shelves with folded clothing sorted somehow. He saw mesh sacks of laundry left off and folded stacks of clean clothes picked up, and this supposedly was going to be his post. Big excitement.