Second Star (Star Svensdotter #1) Read online

  Simon’s grin widened. “Hello, Caleb.”

  “Hello, Simon.”

  “You know each other?” I said, unnecessarily, as the two men were already embracing, thumping each other on the back and calling each other names. Men are very strange; sometimes I think they belong to an entirely different species. If at first sight after a long separation I addressed Charlie as “you old fartknocker,” poked her in the gut, and said she’d gotten as fat as a hyena at an elephant feast, she would deck me, or try to.

  Simon, giving O’Hara a last thump, said, “Before you drafted me, Star, I built and sold a computer system to the New South African Ministry of Defense. They insisted I see to the installation personally. Caleb was my trusty native guide.”

  I said automatically, “I did not draft you. You volunteered.”

  Simon snorted and said to his daughter, “Squirt, you are in serious trouble.”

  Elizabeth was the picture of innocence. I left messages with Frank and Blackwell.

  “Leaving a note explaining you have stolen the aircar your mother needs to get to work doesn’t get you out of a gang-tickle. Attack!” He scooped Elizabeth up into his arms, growling fiercely, and she squealed and giggled all the way to the house.

  It was a duplicate of five hundred others scattered in varying stages of construction around the edge of Loch Ness, with cherry and maple saplings filling up the empty spaces in between. When Shepard Subdivision filled up, Loch Ness would be next in line for the colonists. What Charlie missed most on Terra was water, large bodies of it, with ceilings of amber and pavements of pearl. So Simon convinced Roberta McInerny to finish one cottage on Loch Ness two years ahead of schedule, complete with chemical toilet since the Valley Two sewage treatment plant had yet to come on line. By a strange coincidence Morgan, the architect’s computer program, now had illegal downlinks to the in-house data bases of every major architectural firm on Terra, and another, even more illegal link to the Greek’s Betting Palace in Las Vegas, which was as close as Roberta, born in Kentucky and raised on a stud farm, was going to get to a horse on Ellfive.

  Inside the door, Caleb looked around at the pillow furniture in primary colors, the sagging bookshelves, the corners filled to overflowing with green plants, the large picture window overlooking the Loch. “Nice.” He turned, about to ask Simon a question, and Charlie came out of the kitchen patting perspiration from her brow with the edge of a ruffled apron.

  “Charlie, this is Caleb. Caleb, my wife, Dr. Carlotta Quijance, head of medical services.”

  I’m like Dad, blond, blue-eyed, and all squarehead. Charlie is like Mother and they both look as if they have just stepped down from a Tahitian travel poster—you can hear the rustle of the grass skirt and smell the frangipani in the lei when either one walks by. Charlie had black hair all one length falling from a central part to her waist, her eyes were tilted and merry, and her mouth was wide and never very far away from a smile. I compensate by being thirty centimeters taller, which annoys her, which breaks my heart.

  Charlie gave Caleb her hand, smiled sweetly up into his smitten green eyes, and murmured, “I’m taken.”

  O’Hara got his eyes back into their sockets and his jaw returned to a workable position and said with flattering regret, “I know.”

  She fluttered her eyelashes. O’Hara, that hairy twin of King Kong, looked faint. I wanted to puke. Charlie, the best general practitioner upstairs or down, was also the biggest flirt on two planets, one moon, and half a dozen habitats. “My little sister isn’t,” she purred.

  “Charlie,” her little sister said lovingly, “you really should have been de-tongued at birth.”

  Simon looked interested. “Was it an option?”

  Charlie tucked her arm into Caleb’s and drew him farther into the house. “I’ve heard a lot about you, Caleb,” she said, lowering her voice so he’d have to lean closer to hear her, “but since it all happened before Simon and I were married I suppose it’s covered by the statute of limitations.”

  My ears pricked up. O’Hara looked at Simon and said reprovingly, “My reputation, Iago, my reputation!”

  Simon looked smug and said, “Let me introduce you the rest of the way around. Elmo and Drake, marine biologists.”

  Elmo lifted his arm from around Drake’s shoulders in a gesture of greeting. The other man smiled at Caleb over the rim of his glass. “We’ve met.”

  “Crippen Young, one of the first pilots for Space Transportation Services, now an Express pilot. Roger Lindbergh you know. Bolly Blanca, editor of the Ellfive Gazette and our chief of communications. Petra Strongheart, our meteorologist.” The dark woman with the solemn face rose to shake hands. She was thick through the shoulders and neck and had the massive arms of one who flew for a living.

  “Meteorologist?” Caleb said. “I would think weather was about the last thing Ellfive had to worry about.”

  Petra smiled one of her quiet smiles. “Weather, no. But someone has to watch the humidity, keep an eye on the atmosphere mix, help monitor the Helios Satellites, and make it rain.”

  “Oh,” Caleb said, and gave his charming smile. “My mistake.”

  “And this is Paddy O’Malley,” Simon said. “Paddy, this is Caleb O’Hara, the new security chief.”

  The stocky redhead stuck out a square hand, giving Caleb a broad grin and a blatant inspection. “O’Hara, is it now? Sure, and isn’t that the finest tan I ever saw on an Irishman?”

  “Paddy is a structural engineer,” Simon explained. “Don’t pay too much attention to her, she spends most of her time EVA in a p-suit and we think it’s finally getting to her. You can see how shy she is.”

  I left Simon to play host and followed Charlie into the kitchen, where she was shaking paprika into the chicken adobo with a lavish hand. I glanced over her shoulder and sniffed appreciatively. “Eye of newt, toe of frog. What do you know about Caleb that I don’t?”

  “Didn’t Simon tell you about him?”

  “Nobody will tell me anything about him,” I said. “When I ask Helen she just stares at me with those eyes of hers, and when I ask Frank he starts reliving the good old days on the veldt filming Universe. Even Archy says he can’t find anything but what’s on Caleb’s personnel file. So what do you know about him?”

  “I know he makes your wees kneak.”

  My sister is pragmatic and supremely unromantic. She isn’t at Ellfive to explore new frontiers or for the excitement of adventuring into the unknown or to boldly go where no one has gone before. Charlie is at Ellfive because thirteen years previously, two years into actual construction, I made a special trip to Seldovia, Alaska, and begged her on my knees to leave her free clinic to keep me company four hundred thousand kilometers from home. She thought it over, carefully and methodically, making a list of pros and cons and checking each item off one at a time, starting with assigning me the task of finding a replacement to run her clinic. She spent three months with DOS’s flight surgeons learning the ins and outs of practicing medicine in space. She wangled, I still don’t know how, another three months at the Soviet Space Hospital in Temirtau. She spent a week assimilating data before she decided yes, she could do the job. After which she held me up for a salary that would have made Henry Morgan blush for shame and a budget that would have made John D. Rockefeller blanch. She waited impassively until I signed off on both before she said yes, she would do the job. No, not a romantic, my sister. That didn’t stop her meddling in my love life.

  “Caleb,” Charlie said, slapping my hand as I reached for a piece of pineapple. “He makes your wees kneak. Nobody’s made your wees kneak since Grays.” She stirred the adobo. “Why Grays, anyway? I never did understand the attraction. Stuffy isn’t your type.”

  I said, equably enough around a mouthful of pineapple, “Probably because he’s the first man ever to walk into a room with both of us in it and look at me first.” She made a face. “It’s over, anyway. He screwed me to get closer to Ellfive. I’m not the first woman that’s happ
ened to, and I won’t be the last.”

  Charlie dropped her spoon and turned to glare at me with her hands on her hips. “My, aren’t we positively platonic today? So calm, so broad-minded, so matter-of-fact, so—”

  “Tolerant?” Charlie made a gagging sound and, annoyed, I said, “Charlie, is there something you want to say to me?”

  “For only about ten years,” she said. “Grays is a soldier, Star. He defines strength in traditional military terms. How many troops does he have to deploy. How many guns does he have to shoot. How many bombs does he have to drop. And how much more of all those things does he have than the other guy?” She waved the spoon at me. “You, on the other hand, are striving to create a peaceful, self-sufficient community that finds its security through economic strength. Entrepreneurs, not troops. Dollars, not guns. Profit margins, not bombs. And who cares what the other guy is doing as long as your bottom line is in the black?”

  “So I was a military objective?”

  “Among other things,” she said dryly, beginning to stir again.

  “And this lecture on Grays and my basic incompatibility is in aid of what?”

  She stopped stirring and spoke in forceful tones. “You’re still mad because Grays took advantage and you fell for it, and the person you’re maddest at is yourself. What are you, omniscient, omnipotent, you know all, you see all? He’s a charmer, I grant you, it would have been a miracle if you hadn’t fallen for him once he turned it on. The minute you saw where it was going, you walked away. Give yourself a little credit, sister mine. You give everyone else on Ellfive a second chance. Why not yourself?” She fixed me with a hard stare. “And why not Caleb, while we’re at it?”

  The worst thing about Charlie was that I couldn’t slug someone that much shorter than I was and look myself in the mirror the next morning. I began to feel that it might be something I could overcome, given time.

  Reaching for a cutting board, she took another, closer look at me, and paused with the knife poised over a green pepper. “You look exhausted, Star. What’s really worrying you?”

  If I told Charlie about the blackout she would have Elizabeth, Caleb, and me strapped to a table in her surgery in five minutes flat, stuck with a lot of uncomfortable probes, and forced to answer searching questions about our diet for the last month. So I said, “Caleb is worrying me.”

  Her gaze sharpened. Charlie might be determined to get me laid, she might tell me with a straight face that it was essential to my continued good health, she might even go so far as to handpick a candidate, but the one thing that superseded Hippocrates’s oath with Dr. Carlotta Quijance was a ferocious familial loyalty. It was that loyalty that permitted Charlie, dedicated to protecting and preserving human life, to stand aside while I ended the life of a terrorist who had threatened mine. If you were Charlie, it all made perfect sense. Bristling with suspicion, she demanded, “What exactly do you mean by that?”

  “He’s too well qualified for the job of security supervisor at Ellfive, for starters, especially for so short a term. When we commission, and remember commissioning is less than a month away, his job is finished. He doesn’t strike me as the kind of man to stay on and run for chief of police. So just what is the heir apparent to New South Africa doing nursemaiding a space colony of less than five thousand people, that will never have a population of more than a million-five?” I added, “He always seems to be somewhere close by me, too. I’ve felt crowded ever since he got here.”

  She relaxed and one delicately raised eyebrow told me what she thought of my peevish tone. “I suppose the obvious explanation won’t do.” I shook my head. “Of course not.” Her voice was mocking. “Why don’t you just ask him why he’s here?”

  “I did. He said he wasn’t interested in going into the family firm.”

  “The family firm being the government of New South Africa.” I nodded. “Well, maybe he was telling the truth.”

  “Maybe he was,” I said. “But there is something he isn’t telling me. I don’t know what it is yet, but there is something. It’s a hunch, Charlie,” I said, stopping her. “I can’t shake it, and I won’t ignore it.”

  “So you’re going to wait before—”

  “Yes. Before.”

  She made a face. “Don’t let the romance of the situation run away with you, Star.”

  “You should talk,” I retorted.

  Charlie tested the sauce for the sweet-and-sour spareribs. “What do you think?” she said, offering me the spoon.

  I smacked my lips judiciously. “Needs more pineapple.”

  “You always say that,” she said, annoyed. “Where did you take Elizabeth today?”

  “The Doughnuts and the Frisbee.”

  “She took off without telling us.”

  “I told Archy to call you.”

  “He did,” she admitted grudgingly. “But she was supposed to go to the dispensary with me today.”

  “Ah.”

  “ ‘Ah’ what, you—”

  “How’s it coming?” my brother-in-law said cheerfully from behind us. “We’ve got hungry people about to riot out there.” Charlie let him taste the sweet-and-sour sauce, and he said instantly, “Needs more pineapple.”

  “What did you two do, rehearse?” she said. “Both of you always say that.”

  “That’s because you never put enough pineapple in,” Simon pointed out in a maddeningly patient voice. “And what are these, green peppers? You’re not going to put those in the spareribs, are you? I hate green peppers in the spareribs.”

  “Fine,” Charlie said. “There will be more for the rest of us.”

  “I didn’t say I didn’t want any, I said I didn’t like cooked green peppers. I’ll eat around the peppers, all right?”

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Fine.” Charlie stirred the ribs with unnecessary vigor.

  “Good,” Simon said. “I’m glad we straightened that out.”

  “Uh, hey?” I said.

  “Fine,” Charlie said again, stirring madly.

  “Hey!” I said. “Remember what I did the last time you two got into a fight.” It wasn’t really a question, the outcome spent the day with me EVA. “I’ve still got a lock on my office door,” I added, but I was bluffing, and they knew it.

  The hardware doesn’t exist that Simon can’t take apart, stir in a bowl, and put back together blindfolded, and since he wrote most of the definitive software during the revolution in parallel processing he could take most computers apart down to their bits and bytes. Simon loved to take things apart. He lived to take things apart, in exactly the opposite way Charlie lived to put people together. But at what Simon really excelled, his true vocation in life, his raison d'être, was pissing Charlie off. “And by the way,” he added, ignoring me, “you left the aircar battery unplugged again yesterday.”

  “I left it unplugged? I did? Whose daughter had no trouble in disappearing in that same aircar less than twelve hours later?”

  “Why is she always my daughter when you’re mad at her?”

  The wooden spoon was making enough revs to power a skiff. Simon winked at me over Charlie’s head and I stole away quietly on little cat feet and told my niece to put the storm flag up.

  In spite of the kitchen skirmishing between cook and kibitzer dinner was enormous and excellent. By the time I got myself on the outside of a fourth helping I had decided I might survive. Elizabeth had fifths and Caleb sixths. Charlie didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow. I never thought I’d live to see the day I would be grateful that Simon picked a fight with his wife.

  As was the custom after one of Charlie’s feeds people lay around the living room and groaned and moaned and wished out loud that they’d worn something without a belt. Then someone sang a snatch of song, someone else joined in, and Simon fetched my guitar from the aircar. I ran through my repertoire of sea chanteys. Elizabeth got out her flute. Charlie plugged in her keyboard, and Simon washed out the adobo pot and provided percussion with a pair of wooden spoon
s. I reminded myself yet again to talk to Helen about a new set of drums. The four of us jammed on Mozart, Jellyroll Morton, and a few new jazz numbers by Shanghai Wang. I scowled down Elizabeth’s suggestion we sing “The Day Star Went Nova.” They sang it anyway. As usual Paddy insisted on “The Hills of Connemara,” and as usual Crip retaliated with “The Green Hills of Earth.”

  When the conversation began seriously to interfere with the music we packed the instruments away. Elizabeth set up the Scrabble board and Elmo and Drake sat down to the slaughter, Crip told lies about the early days in NASA, and I hid or tried to from Bolly Blanca.

  “—she makes ‘stampeded’ out of my ‘stamp’ and your ‘stamped’ and gets a triple word score on top of it and you think she’s cute? I’ll show you cute. Gimme some more tiles—”

  “—rat turds and monkey shit floating all over the middeck and then the toilet broke down again—”

  “I would just like to say, Star, that Emily Holbrook Castellano can take a flying—”

  “Orchids? Who does he think he is, Nero Wolfe?”

  “We lose a pound of atmosphere every time the man inhales.”

  “Lighten up, you guys. You say the same thing every time I show up at Mitchell.”

  “Yes, but, Star, the man makes up limericks!”

  “Well, if somebody kills him we’ll be able to call it justifiable homicide, won’t we?”

  “—and you’re wanting the zeegee corridor open by Monday, is it now? Sure and we’re pedaling as fast as we can, Star, but I’d be grateful knowing if it’s good work you’re after having done, or what an Orangeman would settle for, which is something else altogether—”

  “—theoretical physicists never get the girl.”

  “Come on!”

  “It’s a fact. Experimental physicists got sex appeal—”

  “—son-of-a-bitchin’ bees—”

  “I hear you held mast at STP-1 three days ago, Star.”

  “Oh, my God, yes. Mast number one-one-eight. You should have been there, Simon. Dien Pran had to break up a fight Torkelson and Lachailles were having over Nesbitt.”