Ky dumped her shoes and boots in the corner of San’s office, and pulled up more of the data she needed on his station. Facts flowed into her mind: the history of the Glennys Jones, details of her last trip through maintenance, background information on the crew, details of the contract. She hardly moved until her father opened the door to tell her it was time for dinner.
“I’m not sure what Gracie’s got in mind for you, Kylara, but you probably should come back here tomorrow. Or just go out. You won’t have a chance to snorkle or ride again for a long time.”
“Would that be all right?” Ky asked.
“You’ve been working hard. I’m sure you can decide how much more work you need to do. Take the day if you feel like it.”
Ky dreaded the thought of dinner, but Aunt Gracie, her mother told her, had retired to her room with a headache. Ky thought about a late swim in the pool, but remembered in time that the guest room had a clear view of the pool, and sound carried over water. Instead, she rummaged in her closet and found her snorkling gear, then linked her implant to the home library’s marine database for an instant to download whatever she might need.
Early the next morning, she was down at the shore shortly after dawn, squinting into the light to check the buoys supporting the protective nets that kept out the larger marine predators. How long had it been since she had a day to herself, a day free to do whatever she wanted? She couldn’t remember—years, anyway. Every brief vacation from the Academy had been filled with duties—courtesy calls on this or that family member, dinners, parties, required shopping trips. Now the day stretched before her, empty as the beach itself.
Little waves slid meekly up onto the sand, leaving interlocking arcs of wet behind them; squirts of water revealed the hiding places of burrowing clams. Ky struggled into her wet suit, clipped on her safety beacon, put on gloves and flippers, and almost fell on her nose when she started toward the water and caught a flipper in the sand.
Once in the water, she moved slowly out to the first of the broad, knobbly coral heads, where she knew she’d find a flurry of brilliantly colored small fish. Her implant gave her the names. A black-tooth undulated into her view; she turned to face it. It retreated to deeper water, then dove into the sandy bottom, fluffing sand over itself. Her implant marked that location; she would be careful not to step on it.
She had set the timer for two hours; when the implant beeped, she stroked back to shallow water, then stood up. She felt heavier; she always hated coming out of the water once she was in. Her father had used that as a metaphor for growing up, leaving the easy support of a family and carrying her own weight, but she resented his lecture. Unless it meant you could drown in your support system, and this day she simply wanted to enjoy the beauty.
She looked again at the lagoon, and thought about the rest of the day. She could saddle a horse and ride out through the plantation, or… she could stay here. She queried her implant. Aunt Gracie was on the move. All the horses were in use. Half-annoyed and half-relieved, Ky waded back into the water and let herself rest on its buoyancy. She wasn’t hungry, and the suit had its own water supply system. When she tired of the water, she pulled herself back up to the beach, to the shade under the trees, scooped out a hollow in the sand, and took a nap. She woke to the turquoise and pink sky of evening, and stared a long time at the colors as they deepened before she turned her back on them to head for the house.
“I made this just for you,” Aunt Gracie said at breakfast the morning Ky was leaving. She handed over a gaily decorated sack. Ky almost dropped it when she took it; it must weigh, she thought, five or six kilos.
She looked in. There, swathed in bright-colored flowery wrapping paper, were the unmistakable shapes of three of Aunt Gracie’s special fruit-spice cakes. Aunt Gracie beamed at her.
“You’ll be gone a long time, and I always say that a taste of home is the best thing to cure homesickness…”
Aunt Gracie’s fruit-spice cakes were, without doubt, the densest mass of flavorless, tooth-breaking pseudofoodstuff in the galaxy. She produced them at intervals, for birthdays and holidays, and the family disposed of them discreetly as soon as she was out of sight. Even a sliver of Aunt Gracie’s product left Ky with a day or so of gastric uneasiness.
“Uh… thanks,” Ky said. She could always leave them under her bed as insect repellent blocks… she’d done that with the ones Aunt Gracie had given her each year to take to the Academy.
“I know how rushed it can be, when people leave on a long assignment,” Aunt Gracie went on. “So let’s just let Jeannine put them in the car for you right this minute…”
San made a sound; Ky looked at him, and his lips were folded tight but his eyes danced mischief.
“Thank you,” Ky said again. She handed the sack to the maid and resigned herself to dumping Aunt Gracie’s creations into some unsuspecting trash container on the way to her command. She was not going to spend five kilos of her personal baggage allowance on inedible crud.
She finished her juice, and made her escape—not without kissing that withered old cheek—to the car, where her father waited to drive her to the airfield.
“If you’re planning to dump it somewhere,” he said without reference, “don’t do it in sight of anyone who might, by any conceivable means, know anyone who knows us. Your aunt Gracie’s connections are legendary. The only reason she doesn’t know the whole truth about your resignation is that it’s a state secret. But she suspects, and she’ll worm it out of someone inside another week, I’m sure. I don’t want to have to deal with her if she finds out you’ve tossed her cakes in the trash; it was bad enough when she found out you’d been leaving them under your bed.”
“How did she find that out?” Ky asked.
“Bribed the staff, I shouldn’t doubt,” her father said sourly. “But look at it this way. Anything is a commodity to someone. In a very large universe, your aunt Gracie’s cannonballs may be someone else’s favorite underwear.”
Ky snorted, surprised into a laugh for the first time since her private disaster.
“Courage, Ky,” he said, as he stopped the car and leaned over to give her a kiss. “You’ve got what you need to start a good life. Go.”
Gaspard was waiting on the apron. “You look better,” he said, as he looked up from checking the oil. “So, what did the family do for you?”
“I’m taking Glennys Jones to the scrapyard,” Ky said. She took her duffel from old George and slung it into the baggage compartment. “It will keep me out of the public eye.” The boring start to a dull, boring career as a truck driver in space, she did not say. She looped the tie-downs around the two bags, and slammed the door shut, latching it carefully.
“And give you a chance to show your talents,” Gaspard said. He went on with the preflight check while she looked around, trying to fill her memory with the home she would not see for months, maybe years. Maybe ever again, space being what it was, and life being less certain than she’d thought the last time she left.
“Well… assuming I have any.” What talents did it take to captain an experienced crew on a boring one-way run? Now if she could figure out a way to avoid scrapping the ship and surprise the family with a great triumph of trading…
“Don’t fish, Ky; it doesn’t become you.”
“Right. And we shall hope I don’t exercise my talent for leaping in to help…”
“At least not until you’re a little more experienced,” Gaspard said. “Though you could help me, if you would, by agreeing to copilot on the way in. There’s some serious weather between us and the mainland.” She had seen the satellite images; a cold front nosing under the warm sea air and lifting clouds to towering heights.
“Of course.”
“Good, then. Let’s be going. That front’s going to toss us around some.”
Ky climbed into the copilot’s seat, and concentrated on her part of the checklist as they finished preflight and started the engines.