Alien Earth. Megan Lindholm
on the trip back, she’d chosen the minimum Wakeup routine. For her, a matter of days had passed. But for Delta Station and everyone on it, thirty-seven years had passed. She felt a sinking in her belly as she mused on it. Tug was mercifully silent. Thirty-seven years. The longest she’d ever been gone before had been five years, and she’d taken maximum Wakeups on that trip, so it had seemed like a year’s trip. This time, while she’d slept and then docked at Rabby and supervised the unloading of the Human-manufactured textiles and ceremonial robes that the Rabby Geltehan queen had ordered for her trouba’s rejuvenation ceremonies, and then slept and waked again, thirty-seven years had passed on Delta.
She’d chosen Waitsleep, and she told herself firmly that she didn’t regret it. “Time is a greater distance than space.” So the saying went, and she hoped she’d prove it true. She had seen her generation slowly aging away from her, two and three years at a stretch, until most of them had been twenty-seven years older than she was when she’d last left Delta. But this time, when she got off the ship, they’d be sixty-four years older than she was. They’d be ninety-seven years old now. Sexually mature. Physical adults. They might recognize her if they saw her, but she probably wouldn’t know them. And that was how she had decided she wanted it. Not to know them anymore. Not to have any contemporaries, not to have anyone who came up and looked searchingly into her eyes and complimented her on how much more relaxed she seemed since she’d gone through Readjustment. Too damn many of them had heard about her Readjustment. It would be better to go on with her life, to make new connections and friends, ones that didn’t look curiously at her and wonder just what had been wrong with her to require Readjustment.
John frowned around the cluttered walls of his awake quarters. Dammit, he was running out of room again. He thought he could fit one more restrainer shelf against the bulkhead by his lounge, as long as he always remembered it when he was sitting up. It wouldn’t leave him much head space. But the only other option was eliminating some of his reader tape collection, and he’d long passed the point in his collecting where that was really an option. Sometimes he felt he treasured the minor works of the ancient authors more than the major ones. The major ones stood a chance of survival on their own. The minor ones by the lesser thinkers would survive the Conservancy’s strict policies on information hoarding only in pirate collections like his own.
Once more his eyes roved his cluttered stateroom, so unlike the bare austerity that characterized the rest of Evangeline’s gondola chambers. There were gaps in the shelves that only his eyes could see, gaps that would never be filled: spaces for Kipling’s second Jungle Book, for Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet, for the myriad sequels to Dumas’s Three Musketeers, for— He forced himself to stop thinking about everything that had been lost long years before he was born. Instead he cleared the litter from a hasty meal off his workspace, putting the packaging down the recycler and the tray itself through the cleanser.
That done, he seated himself and accessed the communications board from his terminal. He opened a private communications channel on the hobby band usually frequented only by adolescents and oldsters, and increased his security by coding it in for keyboard only. Only the most basic licensees operated here. If the Conservancy went looking for secrets, this would be the last place they’d check. He two-fingered out a message to Ginger and waited. Interminably. This had to be the slowest method of communications ever devised. The waiting was the most annoying part. But this was the only way she’d communicate with him. The “she” was an assumption on his part. He’d never met Ginger, and considering how long he’d been doing business with her, there was a distinct possibility she wasn’t even a single individual. He’d probably never know. She was so security conscious, she bordered on the paranoid. As he watched his unanswered message flashing on the screen, it dawned on him that perhaps that was why he dealt almost exclusively with her these days. One contact meant only one person could give him up to the Conservancy.
“Acknowledged.” It came onto the screen at last. Ginger used no signature at all.
“Available?” he tapped in.
Seventeen titles and authors came up on the screen. John frowned at the paucity of the selections. He knew they represented only a fraction of the works the Conservancy had decided to delete from the public information banks since he was last in port. If this was all Ginger had managed to salvage, she was either getting lazy or the Conservancy was getting more alert to the pirate salvage trade. As he scanned the prices beside her entries, his heart nearly stopped.
“Gouger,” he muttered. His frown deepened as he reminded himself that he’d better be careful with his funds until he secured a new contract for Evangeline. He set about the painful process of selection, idly noting that Crime and Punishment was on her list. Not to his taste, but … He paused, scowling as he tapped in his selections and received back no reply other than a drop location. He cleared the screen and debated a moment longer. It was stupid to take any kind of chances. But.
He leaned over, opened a standard ship-to-ship channel. “John Gen-93-Beta on the Beastship Evangeline, calling Beastship Trotter.” It was a long shot that Trotter was even in port right now. But a few moments later the answer came.
“Beastship Trotter replying. Jason Gen-99-Pollux-Agri-27 speaking. Your message, sir?”
“Just a personal call, Jason. Have Andrew call me back, will you, on my channel? He knows where I stand by. John Gen-93-Beta, Beastship Evangeline, clear.”
John listened to Jason clear, then shifted over to a quieter frequency. A few minutes passed before he heard Andrew hail him.
“Hey, John, when did you get back in? It’s been a while.”
“Just docking now.” John debated how to phrase his offer. “I wanted to know if you’d have time for a cup of stim and some talk while we’re in port? Because if you do, I think I can arrange a meeting between you and a mutual friend.”
“Who?” Andrew demanded in confusion.
“Fyodor.” John paused. “I know, you remember him as sort of an idiot, but he’s gotten past that now. But if you still consider it a social crime that merits punishment …”
“Oh, yeah. Yes, I do.” Dawning comprehension in Andrew’s voice, and the unmistakable lust and excitement of the collector. “Good old Fyodor. Will he be with you?”
John hesitated. But Andrew would be good for the money. Maybe that would be the best way, to keep Ginger and her dealings private. Besides, if she thought he had told anyone else how to contact her without her prior consent, she’d probably refuse to ever deal with him again. No, better pick it up himself and find a way to get it to Andrew. “Yes, he’ll be with me. I’ll meet you at, oh, just past the security checkpoint, at about 2100. You can take me to dinner, or whatever.”
“Sounds fair. I’ve wanted to talk to you anyway, for some time. Just didn’t expect to catch you in port for a while. Uh, you still have Connie on as crew?”
Was that trepidation in Andrew’s voice? A sudden uneasiness made John more formal. “Yes, she’s still on as crew. I meant to talk to you about that, too.”
“Oh.” John heard Andrew take a breath. “Sounds like you already heard the rumors.”
“Rumors?” John asked coldly.
“Uh, about why she went for Adjustment.”
“She went in for Adjustment?”
“Yeah, that’s the story.” Andrew sounded totally miserable now. “Swear I hadn’t heard about it when I recommended her. Uh, why don’t we leave this for dinner, okay?”
“Sounds like we’d better,” John replied. Already he was regretting his generous impulse toward Andrew. “Let’s clear this channel, and I’ll see you after I dock, okay? I got a few things to set up.”
“Right, John. See you then.” As John switched back to the hobby channel and Ginger, he wondered just what Andrew had to tell him.
“Penny for your thoughts, my dear?”
Connie jumped, and only