Starship Summer (Starship Seasons, #1)(15)

We came to a range of sectioned engine cowls, and before them stood a blue pod perhaps three metres square. Set flush into its facing flank was a sealed hatch. The alien squatted in the dust and pointed at the pod. “Hawk, he is in here.”

I looked from the girl to the pod, then stepped forward and knocked on the hatch. “Hawk? You in there?”

“Hawk, he cannot hear you,” said the girl. He can’t?”

She blinked up at me from where she was squatting.

Why can’t he hear me?”

She stood quickly and skipped around the pod. A second later her blonde head reappeared and she said, “You follow me.”

I stepped around the side of the pod and found the girl standing on tip-toe, peering through a small observation panel in the flank, her face pressed comically to the glass.

She turned to look at me. “Hawk, there he is.”

Unsure what to expect, I joined her and ducked to look through the panel. The interior of the pod was dim, but I could see Hawk stretched out on a flight couch, leads snaking from his upper-arm and neck. He wore a flight visor and was twisting this way and that on the couch, as if in the throes of a bad dream.

Hawk was in a flight simulator, reliving his past…

I didn’t know whether to be gladdened that he had recourse to this recreation, or saddened by his need.

The girl was beside me, peering in and smiling.

I said, “How often does Hawk use this?”

“How often?” She thought about it and nodded. “Every day he comes here.”

“Do you know how long he might be in there?”

She looked up, at the sun, and said, “Nearly over. Out soon.”

I nodded and moved from the window, the girl following me. I sat on the projecting fin of an old tug. The girl leaned against the flank, watching me silently.

I found her alien gaze discomforting. “How long have you known Hawk?” I asked to break the silence.

“Known Hawk?” She considered this. “Two years.”

“You’ve lived with him that long?” I think I sounded surprised, the prude in me shocked.

She repeated my question and nodded.

“How did you meet?”

“Meet?” She smiled suddenly, as if at the recollection, then said, “Hawk, he found me.”

“Found you?” I couldn’t help laughing.

She nodded. “My hive mother, she leave me in jungle for koah tree. Three days later Hawk, he finds me, brings me here, feeds me.”

I tried to make sense of her first sentence. “And your mother, she doesn’t come back for you?”

“Come back for me? Of course not. She left me for koah tree.” I nodded, feigning comprehension. “And you like it here, living with Hawk?”

“Hawk, he is a kind, good man.”

“He looks after you well?”

She stared at me, then said, “No. I look after him. I make his life worth living. He tells me this.”

“You don’t miss your people?”

“Miss my people?” she repeated, then shook her head. “My hive mother,” she explained with what might have been infinite patience, “she give me to koah tree.”

“Right,” I said. “I see.”

She looked at me, and then asked her first question. “You are David Conway, yes? Hawk’s new friend?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“Hawk says you are a good man.”

I smiled. “I’m pleased he thinks so. I think Hawk’s a good man, too.”

As if on cue, to put an end to the vicarious compliment session, the hatch cracked with a pressurised sigh and Hawk ducked from the simulator and straightened in the sunlight, stretching as if to ease aches from his tall frame.

Then he saw me and smiled—a little uncomfortably, I thought. The girl pushed herself from the flank of the tug and danced across to Hawk, standing on tip-toe and whispering something in his ear. He smiled, then limped across to where I sat, the girl beside him.

“She wants me to tell you her name,” he said. “You see, it’s impolite for the Ashentay to tell a stranger their name, until the stranger asks. Only then can they become friends.” He shrugged and smiled. “When in Rome… David, this is Kee. Kee, David Conway.”

She smiled and inclined her head.

Hawk pulled her to him, kissed her forehead and said, “We’d love a couple of beers.”

She hurried off and Hawk hitched himself onto the fin beside me. I watched her go. “Strange child,” I said.

“She’s alien,” he said. “What do you expect? And don’t be deceived by appearances. Kee’s no child.”

I glanced at him. “No? I had her down as around twelve.”

“She’s thirty Earth years old,” Hawk said. “A mature Ashentay adult. What do you think I am, Conway?” he laughed.

“Kee said you found her. Something about her hive mother giving her away to a koah tree?”

“Many humans would call the Ashentay primitive.” He shook his head. “I’d rather say they’re just very different. Alien. They live in hive tribes, with a single mother spawning as many as twenty children in a litter. They have a ritual—the twentieth child of every birthing, when they reach maturity, is left with the koah tree. A kind of gift to the gods of the jungle.”