Crossways (41 page)

The landing pad was a little small for the
Solar Wind
, but he dropped her in neatly on antigravs, her fully flexed wings overhanging the pink grass equally on both sides.

“What the hell is this?” Rion was waiting for him at the bottom of the ramp, Tam and Lol sitting by his side, their tails thumping the ground, but too well trained to leap and greet Ben without permission.

It was always a shock to see Rion, only three years older according to their birth certificates, but because of Ben's long periods of cryo on missions, effectively much older, steel gray at his temples already. His skin, actually lighter than Ben's when they were children, had weathered to a deeper shade of brown. Rion's mouth habitually turned down at the corners. The crinkles around his eyes were from squinting into wind, rain, and sun, not from laughter.

“I love you, too, brother. This is a spaceship. My spaceship. I stole her.”

“So the accusations are true. You've gone rogue.”

Ben raised one eyebrow. “We can talk about it while you're packing.”

“I'm not going anywhere.”

“We can talk about that while you're packing, too.”

“Nan and Ricky—”

“Safe. Pack for them as well. Do you need some help?” Ben started to walk toward the house.

“Dammit, Ben, what's going on?”

“I wondered when you'd ask that. Short version: Crowder tried to shaft ten thousand people on Chenon in
order to get his hands on a planet-load of platinum, and he tried to kill three hundred psi-techs to stop the news from getting out. We weren't too keen on the idea. Conflict ensued and now we're on the wrong side of the law because the law is on the wrong side. Clear so far?”

Rion's mouth was still open.

“And in addition there's a missing boatload of settlers which we need to find. And you might be Crowder's next target, so get packing.”

“I can't leave the farm. A thousand head of beef cattle, horses in the barn, the chickens, the dogs, the dairy herd.”

“You won't be any use to them dead. Call Bunty Jaeger. Get her boys to farm-sit for you until further notice.”

“Dead?”

“Cara had to bust Nan and Ricky out of Crowder's holding cell. There's no way Crowder's going to forgive and forget. Call Kai. I need him at the hospital in Arkhad City visiting a burn patient called Fowler. Tell him to keep his head down.”

“I . . . I already told him that when Nan and Ricky went missing. They're really safe?”

“I promise you.”

Rion's shoulders sagged.

They walked together to the house in the deepening gloom. Ben usually came here between missions. It was his safe haven. Even though he only used it once every couple of years his room was still his, with all the reminders of his childhood, his art portfolio and several sets of half-used, dried-up paints, a wooden spaceship that had once belonged to his father, and hard copy images of his parents, the same as the ones he carried in holographic form on his handpad.

The house was pure Chenon frontier, a circular pit house, like a four-story bagel set into bedrock with an open central atrium. Kitchen and living space were on the upper level, with a horizontal row of slit windows to the outside up close to the ceiling where someone standing on a stepladder could peep out beneath the eaves and see out at ground level. Bedrooms and storerooms occupied the lower three levels. They grew tomatoes, peppers, grapes, and soft fruit in the atrium. It collected heat in winter and cooled the house down in summer.

The only part of the house substantially above ground level was the entrance and the thatched roof sloping from center to edge of the outer ring. When Ben was a boy the central atrium had been roofed over with a plasglass dome, but that was long gone and now it was open to the weather. A shallow sunken pool collected rainwater.

He'd brought Cara here once, to visit Nan, back when he thought his main problem was going to be the upcoming mission to Olyanda with a bunch of fundy settlers. Rion had been away, which probably added to the pleasant memories he had of Nan and Cara laughing together over the kitchen table. Rion had always been curmudgeonly about Ben's girlfriends, and he'd never liked Serena, Ben's college sweetheart and later his wife. Their relationship hadn't been strong enough to survive Ben's few years in the Monitors, so perhaps Rion had had some insight that Ben lacked. He wondered what Rion would make of Cara, or, indeed, what Cara would make of Rion.

He came up from his room with the wooden spaceship.

Rion eyed it. “You're not intending to come back, then.”

“I hope it doesn't come to that.”

“Taking the spaceship . . . it seems so final.” Rion turned away and gazed through the curved glass down at the forest of grapes and tomatoes. “I can't leave here, Ben. I'm too much of a fixture, too old to change. Not cut out for space travel. Take Nan and the boys somewhere safe. I'll wait it out here.”

“No, if you do I'll only have to come back and rescue you from Crowder.”

“You needn't bother.”

“Rion, you're my brother. Why wouldn't I bother?”

Rion just shrugged.

“Make the calls, pack your things and Ricky's. I'll throw some of Nan's clothes into a bag. Hurry.”

Ben headed for the stairs, then realized Rion hadn't moved. He stopped, hand on the banister. “Come on, man. You know it makes sense.”

“Not going anywhere.”

Ben sighed. He was going to have to do this the hard way. He crossed the living room into the kitchen area and reached into the cupboard for two mugs.

“Nan thinks tea solves the problems of the universe,”
Rion said, following him to the door and leaning on the frame. “You can't change my mind with tea.”

“I'm not trying to. Sit and drink it anyway. How long is it since we've sat down together?”

Rion shrugged. “A year? Two?”

“Try three. Three for you, anyway. Two for me, subjectively.”

Ben held the pot under the spigot. Nan always insisted on proper tea, brewed in a prewarmed pot.

“Cryo has torn this family apart,” Rion said.

It wasn't just Ben's cryo trips he was talking about.

“Our parents are long gone,” Ben said. He let the water heat up the ceramic and tipped it down the drain. He shoveled three heaped teaspoons of leaves in, set the spigot temperature to boiling and half-filled the pot.

“You never cared like I did.”

“Don't fool yourself. I was younger. Maybe I bounced back faster. I haven't forgotten. Every time I fly the Folds I wonder if their ship is still out there, a hulk full of dried-out husks.”

“
Cassandra
. Their ship was called the
Cassandra
.”

“I know.” Ben looked at the wooden spaceship he'd set on the kitchen counter. It had never had a name, but he'd named it in secret, his childhood self imagining his parents inside it. Sleeping into eternity. Safe and untroubled.

“Tea for two.” He placed the pot on the table and put two mugs next to it. “Sit, Rion.”

“Have you got time for this? Shouldn't you be going?”

Ben found milk in the cooler, poured a splash into his own mug and offered the jug to Rion. Then he sat down and waited.

“Sit, Rion. I've got time. It may be the last time if you're so stubborn you're going to risk your life here just because you're afraid of the Folds.”

“That's not why—”

“Bunty Jaeger's boys are more than capable of looking after the farm. It'll still be here. You can come back when we resolve this.”

“You think there's a resolution?” Rion walked over to the table and poured a few drops of milk into the second mug and held it out for Ben to pour tea into. He sat, cupped his hands around the mug and breathed in the steam.

“I hope so. I have information that will discredit Crowder completely, I'd have gone public with it sooner, but I wanted to make sure the settlers were safe first. Then I heard Crowder had Nan. Once all my family is safe—and that includes you—Crowder is toast. Then you can have your life back.”

“The Folds . . .” Rion took a sip of his tea. “I don't think I can.”

“I'll not pretend foldspace isn't dangerous, but statistically—”

“Are our parents only a statistic to you now?”

Ben wanted to say,
I was almost a statistic,
but Rion didn't need to hear that. “We've got a medic on board. You can have a sedative if you wish. A lot of first-timers do. There's no shame in it.” He took a deep breath.
I might even be joining you,
he thought.

“There's got to be an alternative . . .” Rion's speech slurred. He frowned at his mug and looked up at Ben. “You didn't . . .”

“I'm afraid I did.”

Ben took the scalding mug out of Rion's hands as he collapsed slowly forward onto the table.
*Okay, you can come and get him now,*
he said.
*I had to use the goodnight drops.*

*On our way, Boss,*
Yan replied.
*One antigrav gurney and two packers coming up.*

*All set?*
Cara reached for Ben across Chenon. His newly achieved Psi-4 rating wasn't strong enough for him to contact her from halfway around the planet.

*Rendezvous at Norro in thirty minutes,*
Ben said.
*I had to knock Rion out to get him on board, and we've got Jussaro curled up in a cabin mewling to himself, but apart from that we're okay.*

He flashed the whole Jussaro story to her in an instant. There was something else he wasn't telling her, but Cara didn't pry.

*Is there a plan?*
Cara asked.

*Yeah, improvise.*

“That's Norro ahead,” Hilde said over her shoulder. “Should I put down on the beach?”

“Overfly it a couple of times so we can take a look,” Cara said.
*We're ahead of you,*
she told Ben.
*Just checking it out. There's a village on the south side, plenty of lights, fishing boats in the harbor, and a couple of larger craft anchored off the bay.*

*Tourist yachts most likely. Good beaches at the west end, sheer cliffs north and east. Commercial landing pad center-island and a private one at Northcliffe, that's where the ex-Mrs. Crowder lives when she's not attending functions. I never met her. Crowder used to keep all his family well away from his work, but I do know their split was not amicable. There was a lot of very unpleasant fallout.*

*There's a Trust flyer on the landing pad at Northcliffe.*

*Size?*

*Not a huge one, maybe capacity for ten or twelve. It's guarded. Two heat signatures. More in the house. Twelve or fifteen people.*

*Have they spotted you?*

*We flew over at about a hundred meters. Yes, they spotted us, but we're in a rental flyer. Hopefully we look like tourists.*

*Land on the commercial pad. Pay the landing tax. Take a walk with Bronsen, see if he can confirm whether it's Crowder there. Don't act suspicious.*

*Suspicious? Us? Wouldn't dream of it. What about you?*

*Water landing.*

Ben brought
Solar Wind
across the last fifty klicks of the Calman Sea submerged. Rion slept like a baby in Ben's own cabin and Jussaro, having refused a sedative, was curled up further down the corridor, alone with his misery.

Cara had confirmed that Bronsen had
Found
Crowder located somewhere within the complex at the north end of the island. Now that they were so close Ben was able to contact her directly rather than having to wait for her to contact him—still a joy to him. He'd even been able to have a conversation with Nan, recovering spiritually from her confinement, if her anger was anything to go by, but still weak-muscled after a month of sedation. Ricky, Nan said, was bouncing off the walls of the light flyer, confined to an even smaller space than their cell, and sharing it with Tengue and Gwala, keeping out of sight so as not to arouse
suspicion. Tengue and Gwala, having been in this kind of situation before, took their confinement philosophically, and sat back, talking quietly, playing games on their handpad or reading. Neither of them connected into the planetary network, of course, since they needed to stay invisible.