Starship Summer (Starship Seasons, #1)(17)

“…I knew there was something unusual about her—her clothing, the mugs and utensils. I plucked up the courage and asked, and she told me about the operation. Anyway, one night we both got drunk and I took her back to my place and we tried to make love, with a piece of polymer sheeting between us. Just molecules thick… but it was an effective enough barrier, and when we ripped it off and held each other… ”

He trailed off, eyes distant, and shook his head. “Maddie screamed as if I’d slit her throat. We’ve never touched each other since.”

I wondered if Maddie had felt Hawk’s pain that day, sensed the reason for his jacks being sealed and puckered with scar tissue.

“We’ve had a strange relationship since then. We both feel a lot for each other, but without being able to consummate that feeling physically… Something’s missing, and I think Maddie hates herself for it, and as a result maybe hates me a little for making her hate herself. Does that make sense?”

I nodded. “We’re complex beings, Hawk.”

“And Kee doesn’t help. When I took her in, began living with her, Maddie was sarcastic, to say the least. I accused her of being jealous—I was drunk at the time, and Maddie’d been sniping—but she said she wasn’t jealous, just ashamed that someone she knew was exploiting an alien. It wasn’t at all like that, and I tried to explain, but Maddie wouldn’t listen. She’s mellowed since then, but we still spar from time to time.”

I smiled. “I’ve noticed.”

“But deep down we still feel a hell of a lot for each other.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah… I’m sorry, too. For Maddie. She’s one of the nicest women I’ve ever known.”

“And now she’s going through it all again with Matt,” I said.

Hawk nodded, but said nothing.

We had another beer and watched the sun plummet into the sea. As darkness fell and the Ring of Tharssos brightened overhead, I left Hawk, still drinking on the observation deck, and drove home to Magenta.





SEVEN



The following afternoon, before Hawk arrived to inspect the Mantis and the others came for dinner, I left the Fighting Jackeral with a beer and walked along the creaking, sun-warped timbers of the jetty. I came to the end and peered down at the silver, sequinned water of the bay as it sucked at the jetty’s barnacled columns. A young girl was sitting cross-legged nearby, a small blonde kid of about ten, fishing with a net. A part of me wanted to strike up a conversation with her—for the very same reasons, I supposed, that I had made myself confront the heaving waters below, and had come in the first place to live beside the sea. I needed to banish the fear, the fear of the element that had robbed me of Carrie. And I needed to get over the pain I felt every time I saw a girl who might have been an older version of my daughter. The hell of losing a child is that the future, the parental fantasy of the years that stretch ahead and the shared joys that will fill them, is suddenly ripped away, leaving you with nothing but fading memories of the past and an empty present. Self-pity is one refuge, but it’s way too easy and self-destructive. I know. I had gone down that road in the year after Carrie’s death, which was one of the reasons why my wife had left me. I could have gone two ways, after that: gone further down the futile road of self-pity, propelled by what I saw as Sally’s desertion, or faced the fool I had become and done something about it. I’d chosen the latter path, left Earth behind me and come to live beside the sea at Magenta.

Now the swell of the bay sickened me, and the child looked up and smiled hesitantly at my tears. Very quickly she jumped up and ran off clattering over the loose boards of the jetty.

I thought of Maddie and Hawk and Matt, my new friends who all carried the scars of the past, and I knew I had come to the right place.



A couple of hours later Hawk arrived with a carricase of tools and a diagnostic flatscreen.

I talked him through my investigations of the ship, the areas I’d examined and found nothing. I described the alien apparition, or projection, and Hawk asked me how many beers I’d been drinking.

As he moved around the lounge, examining sliding panels and concealed units, he said, “To think, I salvaged this tub, left it at the back of the yard and forgot about it for years. I admit it—I didn’t even examine the thing.”

I grunted a laugh. “Thought the golden goose was a turkey?”

“Go on—” his head was in a recess, his voice muffled “—rub it in.”

“Sorry, Hawk, but you know how it is when an amateur puts one over on an expert.”

He was peering into a recess in the bulkhead. “Strange,” he muttered, and he wasn’t talking about me or my childish quip.

“What?”

“I was expecting to find chips—or the alien equivalent. Fibre optics or something like.”

“And there’s nothing in there.” I knew that from my inspection of the previous day.

“Oh, there’s something in here okay, but it’s not what I was expecting.”

Intrigued, I tried to peer past his bulk. “What is it?”

“Inset into tubing which is moulded into the very skin of the ship—there’s a very thin strip of… well, it looks like crystal to me. Or something like crystal. Far as I can make out, the ship is cocooned in a matrix of the stuff. Never seen anything like it.”