They laughed and knew it would be a good story to share with their friends at T Station.
“This girl, this K,” asked Cuthbert, “we’re letting her leave us at T Station?”
TC glared at him. “Don’t touch her. You hear me? She leaves at the T, and that’s all I’m going to hear about it.”
* * * *
As he returned to his cabin, Real’s head was dizzy with a mixture of anger and embarrassment. How dare they pry into his business. He knew that K was perfectly safe, and by making a big deal out of it they had only opened up the chance for more problems. When Real planned to have K literally shipped to Ancia with him, he knew that he was taking a big risk, particularly what her reaction would be when he took her out of her prison. His hope was that she would be taken at how beautiful Ancia was, and with the fact that they were so far away and no ships returned to Earth, she would accept her new life. Then Rolondo Rees had to come along and complicate the plan, by wanting his girlfriend to pretend to be Real’s, and yet the two could not hold a two minute conversation with each other. Real knew that complications only increased the chances of problems arising, and he kicked himself that this was what was happening now.
He had not asked Rolondo the reason why he needed to take two women on such a trip. The fact that he was being secretive about it indicated that Rebbi knew nothing about it. Real began to wonder if Rolondo was going to wait until they arrived at Ancia before he cheated on Rebbi, or if he was actually cheating on her on the ship. He wondered if Chera would tell Rolondo whenever Real left their quarters, and sneak him in there. As he stormed back to his room, he wondered if they were in there right now, and laughing at him, and his frozen girlfriend.
Only Chera was there, but that did nothing for Real’s mood. Why couldn’t K have just agreed to the whole Ancia thing, and they would have all been happy? He would never have seen this Chera woman, unless Rolondo had cooked up some other deal with one of the other passengers, or crew.
“Hi, doll,” Chera greeted Real as soon as she noticed his return.
Real hated her calling him that, even if it was just for show. No one had ever called him that, and her doing it only emphasised how different they were.
“Don’t call me that,” he yelled. “In fact, why don’t you just get out.”
“What did I do?”
“Just get out. I don’t want you here.”
“You do what?”
“Leave me!”
Chera was stunned and tears blurred her vision as she gathered a few clothes and stepped out to the corridor, to the sound of the door quickly locked behind her.
* * * *
Rolondo and Rebbi were cleaning their quarters, following the instructions given to them by the Wilsons. They had agreed to be vigilant about their cleaning requirements, in the hope that TC will treat them better, and perhaps help to find good land for them on Ancia. Rebbi found herself enjoying the voyage, even if Rolondo seemed a little remote, and was keen to spend time by himself down in the cargo area. All of the things she had feared about the voyage had proven false. Her biggest fear was in getting a life-threatening illness that was beyond the ship’s ability to help her. There was also the possibility that she might be afflicted with the sheer terror that could strike some people when they realise that they have left their home planet.
Chera appeared in their doorway and started talking before either of them knew that she was there.
“You’ll have to tell her, Ro,” Chera announced, shaking he head at him. “Tell her now. Come on, Ro. Be with me on this one. It’s gone as long as it could.”
“What’s wrong?” Rebbi asked her, horrified. “Did you do something to her, Ro?”
“I have no idea …” he started.
“Real kicked me out,” Chera said to him. “That’s right, Real, went and kicked me out!”
“I’m sorry,” Rebbi tried, not yet wondering why Chera was ignoring her.
“Don’t be!” Chera snapped at her. “Real made a deal with Ro. I’m with him, and you’re just baggage.”
Still unsure what was going on, Rebbi asked what she meant, but Chera answered by grabbing her hair. The two women then started screaming and pushing each other. Rolondo yelled at them to stop, but was helpless as they started backing into the mops and squeegees. Then Chera gave Rebbi a good hard slap across the face. That stunned her and made her look at Rolondo for help. With horror she saw that none was coming. He was too busy not knowing what to do, and which one to side with. Rebbi ran from the room, her hands covering her face, not wanting anyone to see her tears and red cheeks.
“And where were you?” Chera challenged him.
“I’m always here for you, babe,” he said, still in shock and not knowing how to fix the mess.
“When Rebbi went for me like that you were nowhere. That girl’s dangerous. You act like that, I’m starting to wonder, who you really want here. And who you don’t. I’m not to be messed with. Is that what you think? That you can mess with me? No more, no more.”
He started for the door, wanting to help Rebbi, but then he hesitated.
“Let her go,” said Chera. “Her turn to live with Real.”
* * * *
Of course, Jupe’s restriction to only his small quarters and the crew’s lounge made him feel a prisoner, but the more he watched the antics of the passengers, the more he came to see them as prisoners too. At least, he laughed to himself, he didn’t pay for the pleasure. He could see the conflict between Chera and Rebbi coming, even though he did not know why Real had suddenly turned nasty. That had something to do with Real’s visit to the flight deck, one of the few restrictions to his viewing. That and the rooms where the Wilsons lived.
He chose to believe TC’s claim that he’ll be let out and given access to the entire ship when they reached T Station, and he focused on that as he counted down the days. But he also knew that there was a chance that the story wasn’t true, and perhaps TC was planning to take him all the way to Ancia. He noticed that the Wilsons were careful to not say anything about him when they knew he could be watching. Should that happen, and he would have to go all the way to Ancia, Jupe told himself to roll with the punches, and humour the old man before he could figure out the best and fastest way to get back to Earth.
The main monitor flashed and changed, as it did when someone was moving to a new room. Jupe saw that TC was walking down a corridor, and he tried to remember where on the ship his father was going. TC then turned and looked up at the camera, looking directly at Jupe, before he knocked on his door with loud pounds. With that Jupe realised that he was outside his room, and he felt stupid for not realising.
“Come on out, why don’t you?” TC called. He had a bitter edge to his voice. “Time to meet people. They’ve been dying to see you.”
“Are you kidding?” Jupe spoke into the monitor’s microphone. “You’ll let me out? What do I tell the passengers? They’ll think I’m a stowaway or something.”
“Not them, just the brothers. I’ve had enough of their faces. I need someone new to look at. You have no reason to see any passengers. Just forget about any passengers, they’re not worth worrying about. They are like freight, and that’s how we treat them. Believe me, some things about them, you don’t want to know.”
Jupe switched the monitor back to the passenger lounge, thinking that he would much rather mingle with them. The one he did know, the boy Dorrington, seemed normal enough, and perhaps the rest of his family was too. There was no way he would let TC know that he had met the boy. As he waited for TC to open the door, he told himself to remain calm and remember that this nightmare would soon be over and he would not have to go near any of them again.
His father seemed pleased to see him, and Jupe didn’t know what to do. “They’re starting to get to me,” TC said with a low voice. Then he brightened up and asked, “Want to see the flight deck?”
* * * *
The first chance Jenna had, she told the others about K, not cari
ng that Cuthbert told her not to. Cuthbert was always telling her what he thought she could and couldn’t do, and she hated it. Most things she shared with Sarra, but the news of a frozen woman on the ship was too big to keep to the two of them.
Chera was as surprised as anyone, since Real had not seemed like the type who would want two women, and she was quick to say that. To her relief, they believed that she had nothing to do with it.
At first, Rebbi was horrified when she heard that Real had a woman stored in deep sleep. But as the others began to laugh about it, she too saw it as funny, more for that fact that she just didn’t like Real at all. The first few weeks in his company she was polite and apologetic to his moods and lack of communication. After a while she realised that the man was not someone that she ever wanted to see after the voyage was over. Now that she was upset with Rolondo, she was beginning to view him the same as Real. Except that she was married to Rolondo.
When Chera had burst into their room and said what she did, it was like she was bursting into Rebbi’s soul. The shock of realising that Rolondo had his girlfriend on board the ship, right under her nose, made her feel humiliated. The more she thought about it, the more she kicked herself that she should have realised what was going on. Chera was exactly Rolondo’s type, too, and a lot like herself. But there was more to it than that. In the time aboard the ship the two women had become friends, since they shared a lot of the same interests. And the entire time they had talked together, Rolondo had never said a word to her besides polite answers and greetings. When he did that, Rebbi had thought he was trying to show her that he was changing for the better, as a good husband and gentleman. Now she saw it as something else, that he was hiding something. He was deliberately not talking to Chera in front of Rebbi. Then there were the odd glances she had noticed between Rolondo and Real, which she now saw as the sign of a deal between them. Chera was Rolondo’s girlfriend, not Real’s, and Real had his real girlfriend sleeping in the cargo area. Or, as Jenna pointed out, dying in the cargo area.
When Rebbi saw Chera talking with Sarra, the thought came to her that she was just as much a victim, being used by Rolondo as much as Real used her girlfriend. She searched herself, wondering if she really wanted to believe that, or if she was still in shock. She decided that Chera probably didn’t know Rolondo as well as she did, and that would mean that she was certainly a victim.
“What, you want some more?” Chera asked Rebbi when she saw her looking, ready to resume their fight.
“I want to apologise,” she said softly.
“For what? Being on the ship, or being alive?”
“Let her speak,” said Sarra.
“I should have known he’s no good,” said Rebbi. “He’s done this before.”
“He’s done what before?” asked Chera, still agitated with her and ready to give her some heavy slaps.
“Cheated,” said Rebbi.
“You’re saying that?”
“It’s true.”
Chera looked at Rebbi for a moment and then burst into tears.
“What is it, girl?” Sarra asked as she tried to comfort her.
“He told me he had left you,” Chera confessed to Rebbi. “Before the flight, he came to my house, he said you didn’t want to go to Ancia. He promised me he’d take me there instead. And then he changed his mind, and said you were going. I was so upset, but when he told me to pretend to be with Real …”
“It’s not your fault,” said Sarra.
“Who’s fault is it if not ours?” Rebbi asked them. “We were the ones who let him talk us into this thing. It was all his idea. Ancia is his dream, not mine.”
“Go ahead and let him go to Ancia,” said Sarra.
“We’re all going to Ancia, Sarra,” said Chera.
“We’re not; me and Jenna,” said Sarra. “Soon as we get to T Station, we’re off this old ship, and catching the first shuttle back to Earth. If we ever see those Wilsons again, it’ll be too soon. I suggest you two skip this thing and go back with us. Leave Rolondo to go to Ancia by himself. How just would that be?”
“He can start his farm with Real and his frozen girlfriend,” Chera joked, and she giggled at that, helping to stop her crying.
“They’ll probably be shot to pieces as soon as they get there,” said Sarra.
“He really told you we were over, Chera?” asked Rebbi.
“You and him were through; that’s his words to me. You know, he says that every time. Every time.”
“Why would we ever trust them? Did we think they’d treat us different out here?”
Sarra laughed at that. “Yeah, I think we did think that. They would change and treat us with respect.”
“We’re really going to T Station?” asked Rebbi.
“It’s all they talk about up on the flight deck,” said Sarra.
“It’s not a one-way flight to Ancia?” asked Rebbi. “I didn’t know there was a stopover. You’d think they’d tell us?”
“Whatever they do,” said Sarra, “it’s a one-way flight for us, back home. What do you think, Chera?”
“Soon as I’m away from him, the better,” Chera said, and then looked at Rebbi like she was a sister. “Sorry I hit you.”
“I would have hit you too, girl, had I been in your position.”
“You did. Hurt my hair.”
Rebbi then felt remorse at the situation, not for Chera and her hair, but for herself, that she had been fooled into this mess. She didn’t really care much for either Chera or Sarra, but she knew that she was stuck with them as friends, until they could change ships and go home. What she would face there she didn’t want to think about; life as a single woman, with her father telling her over and over that she should have listened to him. What she had heard her entire life.
She looked at them and said loud enough for everyone to hear, “Ancia’s not worth it.”
Taylor-Marie heard her and then saw them all looking at her. She pretended she wasn’t worried, or a little sad that was wasn’t included in their group.
* * * *
TC nodded his approval at Jupe and walked him through to the flight deck. He would never admit it to his son that he felt bad for locking him in there, but he couldn’t think of any other way of doing it. After he had calmed down from hearing about Real’s girlfriend, and then after having a good laugh over it with the Wilsons, he realised that what he was doing to Jupe was not too different. There was no threat of death over him, as was the case with K, but he still saw a similarity. Both had not planned on going on such a significant journey, and hardly had sufficient preparation. It was the preparation part that bothered TC the most. He had put his son’s health at risk by forcing him to go into space without warning. There was something about the fact that he was his son that made him act that way. He would not have done it to anyone else, not even Dawn-Star. If someone had done it to him, he would be out for revenge.
When Jupe came out of the room, he noticed that his father seemed nervous, and that was too much of an opportunity to miss. As he sat down with him in one of the two pilot’s seats, he noticed something else, and it was something even more unusual than nervousness. If he didn’t know his father, he would swear that he was being apologetic; the awkwardness and lack of conversation was a sure sign. They both sat for several minutes in silence. Jupe was determined not to speak first, to make his father suffer as much as possible.
“See that red star?” TC eventually said, pointing to a place just off from the centre of the main front viewing window. “To its left, a smaller red star. It’s a little faint, and not far from that little cluster. Got it? That’s Ancia. The great paradise world everyone dreams of going to. If you said it doesn’t look like much, I’d agree. Perhaps that’s why it took so long to find. I missed it. We all missed it. Even the probes. Life’s like that; funny.”
“It’s red?” Jupe asked, looking where TC had said but not really interested.
“Some reason it shouldn’t be red?”
“I thought only yellow stars held life planets.”
“We all did, until Ancia. Finding that changed everything. But that’s normal. Big discoveries usually change the basic knowledge. Makes things all the more complicated, actually. Just when you think we’ve got it all worked out, along comes something to make us start over. But take a look at the universe. How can we expect to know everything about it? Too big for knowing anything about. Never will, probably.”
“Show me Earth.”
“That’s behind us.”
“That’s all I care about.”
TC didn’t let the comment put him off. “That bright star there in front of us, the yellow one, that’s the T. That’s where your care should be.”
Jupe shrugged like it was obvious, and he wasn’t caring about that either.
“You know,” TC said with the tone more of a friend and not a father, “you can drop this act now. I get it, we all get it, you don’t like being here. But since you are, why not learn something? Few people get this chance, and many would kill for it.”
“I know all I need, thanks.”
“Hidden celestials, black rocks, radheat flares? Do you know that? Know what to do if the ship takes one? What about pigs, sand, breeze, ellesses, rouges? What do you do about shape change? Or large pull? Do you know how to read the computer’s odds of a swing, know when it’s not doing what it should, when you should go to manual control, and when you should not?”
“I know surfing. That’s all I want to know.”
Jupe was only partly lying, since he did know about all those dangers and risks, at least on a basic level. If TC wasn’t there, he would know how to turn the ship and get it back to Earth. He would know that all he would need to do is send a few distress calls and they would be rescued, eventually. The closer he could get the ship to a UDE base, the greater their chances of survival. And there were plenty bases around between where they were now and Earth. Jupe wondered if TC knew how close he was to sneaking off a distress call when he wasn’t looking. He also wondered if he actually realised how angry he was with him, and how far he would go to get home.
“I never wanted to fly deep-space either, when I was young,” said TC. “Then I got some sense into me. Technology has taken huge leaps since then, too. We are on the verge of a time of great exploration. With this opportunity you have now, you could become better than me, you know that? Bizarre to hear, I know, but it’s a fact. I never had this. You know what I had? A company more intent on making a fast buck than caring anything about the pilots. You think you have it hard? Try flying alone, just the once, see how far you get. That’s when you know what kind of a man you are. Face to face with nothing, and only your own self to battle; your own fears, or delusions, or just plain boredom.”