Asimov's SF, October-November 2011 (5 page)

The bar owner, who was also the bartender, shouted at someone near the entrance, something about non-payment of a bill. Rosealma didn't listen. Out here, everyone was short of money, and everyone wanted something for nothing.

She found it was easier to remain quiet about everything, to be ignored rather than draw attention to herself. She had come as close to disappearing as a human being could without actually losing her identity and starting all over.

The woman at the end of the bar glanced at Rosealma again, then looked at the seat next to her.

Rosealma's breath caught. She wasn't sure if she should walk over. If she had a flirtation with the woman, then she would be noticed, and everything would change.

Still, she hadn't had a real conversation in six months, and surprisingly, she missed talking. Not about trivial things like the quality of the ale or the best place to eat for the fewest credits, but about ideas and politics and science and the things that people talked about when they were laughing and relaxing with each other.

She missed interaction, and she'd never thought she would.

She sighed, stood, and grabbed her mug of ale.

Then the lights flickered out, and her stomach floated. She recognized the moment as it happened: the gravity had changed. The lights came back on just as she floated upwards, her ale floating with her, the glass emptying and beads of liquid dotting everything around her.

No one screamed like they would have had this been planetside, although a few people cursed as their beverages took on a life of their own. The chairs and tables were bolted down, but the mugs weren't, and neither was the ice or the bar snacks or the lemons, olives, and cherries.

She and everyone else in the bar were in the middle of a choreographed mess, which would only get worse when the gravity returned to normal.

Behind her, the bar owner shouted, “You son of a bitch!” and that was when she realized that the gravity change wasn't some kind of malfunction; it had been planned, probably to get money out of the bar owner.

She glanced at the woman and was startled to see how lovely she looked, her cap of hair spiking upward, her long limbs gangly no longer. The woman looked at home in zero-g, as if floating was her preferred method of travel.

She used the tops of chairs to slowly propel herself toward Rosealma.

"It looks like there's trouble,” the woman said, glancing toward the main entrance. The bar owner was shaking his fist, propelling himself backward as he did so, probably the only person in the entire bar who wasn't used to zero-g.

Rosealma couldn't tell which of the people floating around him had made him angry, and she really didn't want to find out. She smiled at the woman.

"I'm Rosealma."

The woman's eyebrows went up, giving her smile a wry cynicism. “Wow, that's a mouthful. You don't have a nickname?"

"Do I need one?” Rosealma asked.

"Everyone out here has a nickname. It's easier."

"Easier?"

"Yeah,” the woman said. “That way we don't have to clarify which Rose or Alma we're talking about. We don't need last names or even first names. We're just too damn lazy anyway."

And then she laughed. The laugh was raspy and deep, and Rosealma realized that the woman hadn't been eighteen for a long time. She was at least in her mid-twenties, maybe older, and she had seen as much or more as Rosealma had.

"What's your nickname?” Rosealma asked.

"Turtle,” the woman said. “You know what a turtle is?"

"Some kind of Earth creature."

"Earth hell,” Turtle said. “The little ones are all the way out here. Some ships have them as mascots."

"You're someone's mascot?"

Turtle grinned at her. “Naw. I look like a turtle."

"You don't,” Rosealma said, although she wasn't exactly sure what a turtle looked like. “You're the prettiest thing in this bar."

Turtle smiled and tilted her head again. Her cheeks did turn red. “You be careful,” she said, “or I'll start thinking you're flirting with me."

"Maybe I am flirting,” Rosealma said, startled at her own boldness.

Turtle's smile grew. “Then we should get out of this bar before the gravity changes. It's going to be a mess and I'll feel obligated to clean it up."

"I don't feel obligated to anything,” Rosealma said. Which wasn't true, of course. She felt obligated for everything, and sorry for even more, and the weight of everything, from the regrets to the losses to the destruction of all of her dreams, threatened to crash her to the floor quicker than a gravity change.

"So you're running away,” Turtle said. Her tone was businesslike, not curious. She wasn't asking a question, just stating a fact.

"No,” Rosealma said. “You have to care to run away."

Turtle studied her for a moment, the smile gone. Then she nodded once. “Well, then, I need to run away from this bar.” She extended her hand. “You want to come along?"

Rosealma looked at Turtle's hand, with its long fingers and visibly chewed cuticles. Rosealma took it almost before she realized she had made a decision.

"Let's go,” she said, “and never look back."

Turtle raised their joined hands. “Deal,” she said.

Now

The station blew.

It started in the middle. A glow built, then expanded. The center disappeared in the light, and that's when Squishy realized it was imploding.

She slammed her palm on the control panel, her fingers grasping for the FTL command. It took four movements to launch FTL, and her shaking hand made all four hard. It felt like the movements took forever, even though it probably only took a few seconds. Still, she had to get out of here.

Silently she cursed herself for wanting to see it go.

The Dane
winked out, the images vanishing from the screen, and as they did, she collapsed in the command chair, hands to her face. Her heart was pounding and she was feeling just a little queasy.

She had pulled it off, and no one died.

"You want to explain to me what the fuck just happened?"

The male voice made her jump. She had thought she was alone. She had
assumed
she was alone. She hadn't even checked to see if anyone had gotten into
The Dane. The Dane
would have masked a heat signature from the station's control board. She would have had to ask
The Dane
as she got into the airlock, and she had been in such a hurry, she hadn't thought of it.

She was such an idiot.

She dropped her hands slowly, making herself breathe as she did so. She wanted to seem calmer than she was, even though he had seen her jump.

She recognized the voice—how could she not? She had lived with it for years, and when she heard it again, even after the loss of decades, it was as if she had never been away from him.

Quint.

She turned her chair toward him.

He leaned against the entrance, arms crossed. There was only one other room in this cruiser, and he had probably been waiting in it. She hadn't bothered to check. Her mistake.

The blood had dried on his face, black and crusty, outlining the wrinkles he had allowed to appear on his skin over the decades. The ripped shirt was gone, though, replaced by his uniform's brown jacket. He probably hadn't looked at his reflection. He probably didn't realize the blood was still on his face, if he had even known it was there in the first place.

The fact that he was on her ship surprised her. Not because he figured out it was hers, but because it took some stones to avoid the evac ships and wait for her, stones she hadn't realized he had.

She hadn't answered his question. He raised his eyebrows, silently asking it again.

"The station blew up,” she said. “Or it was blowing up, just like we knew it would. I just hit the FTL. The last thing we want is to be near that part of space. There's a good chance that explosion could open an interdimensional rift."

He frowned. “A what?"

She almost smiled, but she didn't. She had distracted him. He hadn't really been asking about the station before.

"An interdimensional rift.” She swallowed. “The stealth tech was unstable."

"It's always been unstable,” he snapped. “You know that better than most."

She nodded. She did know it better than most. That was why she was here. But she wasn't going to tell him that. At least, not yet.

"Yes,” she said. “But this time, the entire research station paid the price instead of a few volunteers."

"A few . . .” He shook his head. She could almost read his mind. They both knew that it wasn't a few volunteers who had paid the price over the years. It had been hundreds of people, most of whom hadn't volunteered at all, unless their induction into the Enterran military counted as volunteering.

"Only this time,” she said, “no one died."

"That you know of,” he said.

"I do know,” she said. “In fact, I'm certain. That's why I left last. I made the computer system check for anyone else."

"And if someone else was on that station, what would you have done?” he asked. “With five minutes left, what would you have done?"

"Something,” she said, knowing her answer was inadequate, knowing that it was probably wrong. What would she have done? What could she have done?

At that point, nothing. Maybe opened a few corridors, prayed that whoever was trapped would get out on their own. Could get out on their own.

"Something.” He snorted. “Don't lie to me, Rosealma."

Amazing how all of the old patterns came back as if time hadn't passed at all. Time was such a strange thing—fluid and rigid all at once, existing in different dimensions at different speeds, and yet happening right now, this instant, moving forward, never backward.

Or at least, not backward yet.

"How come you didn't go to your evac ship?” she asked, then felt a moment of panic. They hadn't waited for him. Had they?

She made herself take a deep breath. They hadn't. She had checked, made certain that all of the evac ships had left before she had.

She wondered if he saw the thought flick across her face. It had been decades, but he still knew her too. And it was taking him a long time to respond to her question.

"I wanted to make sure you got out,” he said, and she felt a surge of anger. Even the anger didn't dissipate over time. It was like being an alcoholic—one drink, one surge of anger—and everything came back as if it had never disappeared.

"Don't lie to me, Quint,” she said in the exact same tone he had used.

He tilted his head. The expression used to be attractive on his unlined, youthful face. On his older blood-covered face, it was a bit ghoulish.

"I'm not lying to you, Rose. If you'll remember, I tried to get you out earlier."

"I do remember,” she snapped, “and I told you to leave. You did. But you didn't go to your evac ship, and now I want to know why."

He stared at her.

"What if I hadn't come here?” she asked. “You would have died. This ship is tied to me. You couldn't have gotten it out of the station."

"But you did come,” he said softly.

And he had known she would. She had asked the wrong question. The answer to her initial question was simple: he had come here because of her. What she should have asked was this: how did he know she would be here?

She stared at him, feeling a tug. She wanted to continue the fight—it was familiar, it was comfortable, it was how they related—but she also wanted to get him the hell off of this ship. She had no idea who he really was now. She had changed a lot in two-plus decades. He probably had, too.

"The ship is registered to you, Rose,” he said after a moment.

She felt her breath catch. She hadn't expected him to answer her.

"You still use my name,” he said.

She shrugged a single shoulder. She used his last name because it was her last name, at least in the Empire. Quintana. Young and naive and supposedly in love, she had taken his name and had become the wife of Edward Quintana, better known as Quint. He had had a nickname then. She hadn't.

"I saw no reason to change it,” she said.

"Never remarried?” He didn't ask if she had ever fallen in love, ever had another relationship. Quint was about the legalities. He had always been about the legalities.

"No,” she said.

He remained silent so that she could ask
What about you?,
but she didn't.

"Me, either,” he said after a moment.

She nodded once, then swiveled her chair away from him, and looked at the control panel. She tapped the coordinates, altering them. She couldn't go to the rendezvous point nor could she go back to the Nine Planets Alliance, not with him on board.

She wasn't quite sure where to go, so she programmed in a station at the edge of Enterran space.

"You changing our course, Rose?"

"Just making sure it's correct,” she said, feeling a bit breathless. It was hard to lie to him, just like it had always been. Her cheeks warmed. Somewhere inside her was that young girl who thought she had fallen in love.

"Tell me what really happened on the research station,” he said.

"I don't know,” she said, not facing him. “Some kind of chain reaction is my guess. There should have been better protections for working with stealth tech."

"Scientists have worked on stealth tech for years,” he said. “No research station has ever blown up."

"Scientists had never had a dedicated site to work on stealth tech before,” she said. “I suspect that was the mistake."

"Why?” There was something in his voice, something new. He didn't trust her.

Of course he didn't trust her. She had left him, then divorced him. She had never given him the courtesy of an explanation. She always figured he knew.

Only when she got older, and her relationship with Turtle decayed, did she realize that each person experienced the relationship differently. He probably hadn't understood what happened, any more than Squishy could explain why her relationship with Turtle died on a disastrous dive with Boss ten years ago.

"Why would that be a mistake, Rosealma?” His voice sounded strangled as if he was trying to pull the emotion from it.