Among The Stars (Heinlein's Finches Book 2) Read online

  “Alyushka, come here.” He opens his arms out. I think he must have lost it, because she looks more likely to lump him than to hug him, but after standing there vibrating for a few seconds she flings herself into his arms.

  “You are ok. Everything is ok.”

  “Everything is not ok! Did you see…”

  “Hush now. I see. I hear. Will be ok.”

  “That was so damn unfair. He didn’t deserve any of that. I blew it, I really did.”

  “So you tell him. Then is fixed.”

  She pulls away from him. “Is he angry?”

  “No, no. He is upset. Sad.”

  “Will you tell him that I’m sorry? I never meant to…”

  “You tell him. He has com.”

  “I can’t speak to him after what I did.”

  “What you do?”

  “Yelling and running off. Especially the running off.”

  “Which running off, Alyushka?” he asks gently. “Today or tomorrow?”

  She looks momentarily furious, then her face breaks and she throws herself into Kolya’s arms again. He pats her head until she’s calmed down, then leads her into her ATR.

  Tom shakes his head at me. “Man, I know these people are your friends, but you’ve got to admit this is like some kind of cheap threedee. Like the kind you’d take a girl to so you get to hug her while she’s crying.”

  “Yeah, because I’ve done that so much I’d know.”

  “This is such a clusterfuck.”

  “I don’t get it. You know I don’t.”

  “Neither do I. Do you want to do something slightly less depressing for a while? It’s still early and it’s a ship move tomorrow. Only half the work.”

  “Half the work is still a fuckton of work. And we won’t start pulling down until after the shows.”

  “I wish you weren’t so sensible. You’re getting old before your time.”

  I shrug. “Man, most of my life I’ve been worried about not getting the chance to get old at all. This seems better.”

  “I’m not so sure. If the whole idea is to work your ass off so you can have a miserable time, that doesn’t seem like much of a deal.”

  There may be something to what Tom is saying. When we get to work in the morning, Alya’s nowhere in sight and Kolya is so withdrawn he might as well not be here. I’m glad I work with Tom, I really am. Nothing gets him down. Still, I spend lunchtime resting, like the boring asshole I am, because I know how crappy I’ll feel later if I don’t.

  I keep thinking something’s gonna happen. I can’t quite believe that this is it, that we’re going to just take off in a matter of hours and be gone for months, if we come back at all. I can’t believe Alya’s coming with us. As stories go, this one makes fuck-all sense.

  All day long, I am half waiting for something to happen to either explain this, or fix it. Nothing happens, though. The rest of the day goes on as move days always go, apart from the sick tension that’s grabbing my chest. That’s new.

  As soon as the last show is over, the four of us dive straight into getting the animals packed and loaded. It’s become fairly automatic now and it seems to go faster, be less chaotic. It’s still a busy time, though, and it stops me daydreaming.

  The dream must be carrying on by itself, because when we take down the last wall of the stables and I look up to see Raj’s ATR just behind Alya’s, it feels like it belongs here, like reality is getting pulled back into its proper course. Raj is sitting on the outside step, looking calm and determined. He’s going to come over and pull Alya to him, she’s going to go off and be a princess in his mansion, and somehow we will all go too because Raj loves Kolya and so does Alya, and they all care about me too, and I care about Tom, and although this isn’t the way normal families are made we are a family of sort, and there’s no way in hell we’re just going to get on that ship and leave all of this, wreck it as if it didn’t matter, because it does, it’s the only thing in the world that actually does matter, and it can’t all be over, it just can’t.

  I freeze looking at him. Alya sees him and freezes too. Raj looks up and their eyes lock.

  I’m standing there staring at them, waiting for it all to happen, for it all to get fixed, when a hand on my shoulder makes me jump out of my skin.

  “You leave them now,” Kolya whispers. “This is hard for them.”

  When I look into his eyes, what I find there feels like a punch in the guts. He’s not happy. He’s not hoping. He looks desperate. But he’s got to be wrong. He has to be.

  When he pulls me along, I go with him. We carry on working as Alya slowly makes her way towards Raj, moving as if her feet were made of lead.

  We store the last of our gear and look out of the ship. They’re still talking, Raj still sitting, Alya standing oddly rigid in front of him. Raj gets up, bends down over her, and kisses her on the forehead. She turns away, walks to her ATR, gets in, and drives it into the ship.

  I’m standing there watching these events unfurl, completely unable to understand what the hell is going on, because it can’t be what it looks like. Alya’s getting out of her ATR and is closing the cargo doors. Tom is standing in front of me looking concerned.

  “Are you ok? You’re looking weird and acting weirder. Luke?”

  I stare at him until he grabs me by an arm, pulls me along to the bridge, and pushes me into a seat.

  “Luke. Buckle up.”

  My hands do that automatically. My brain is somewhere else. Through the window I can still see Raj leaning against his ATR, his face set.

  I don’t believe we’re really going even after the engines start, after we start moving. I keep thinking we will just turn back until the g-force of our acceleration squeezes that hope right out of my chest.

  5.

  When our course stabilizes, I feel hollow. Nothing feels real. Tom gets up to talk to Alya, whose eyes look as empty as my chest feels, then comes back to where I’m sitting.

  “Come on. Get in a bunk. I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with you, but you’ll be better off horizontal. Up you get.”

  He drags me off to the bunk room and gets me to lie down, all the time running a string of “fucking asshole, I wish you would cut this fucking shit out because you’re creeping the fuck out of me.”

  My brain flashes back to the dozens of times this scene has played out, Tom putting a cool pack on my head after I got whacked, Tom bandaging me up when I got cut, Tom getting me to drink and eat when I came down with the ‘flu, Tom being there every time in the last four years when I haven’t had it in me to sort myself out.

  I stare at him in amazement, surprised that he’s still here. I feel as if I’ve just found him again after losing him without realizing it. He looks at me looking at him and puts the back of his hand against my forehead. “I swear that if you’ve caught some godsdamned Anteian plague I’m going to cut you into chunks and throw you down the shit chute, you useless prick.”

  “Thank you.”

  Hearing my voice startles him briefly, then pisses him off. “So you’re not catatonic. You really are just a prick.” He still straps me in and puts a blanket over me and makes me have a drink, verbally abusing me all the way through, before he lies down into his own bunk, still staring at me.

  “Are you going to tell me what the hell happened or what?”

  I find it hard to make my mouth work, but I do my best. “You wouldn’t believe me.”

  “Ok then. You can save it. Are you ok now?”

  I think about it for a little while, because I’m not sure. “No.”

  “Are you going to be ok?”

  “Dunno. Think so.”

  “Ok, then. Shut the fuck up now, so we can get some sleep. Wake me up if you need anything or you’ve gone weird again. But I’d prefer it if you didn’t. Ok?”

  “Ok.”

  I doze off or pass out, I’m not sure. I nearly come round when I hear Kolya’s voice, but Tom’s hand against my shoulder stops me getting up.

&nbs
p; “You stay where you are. I got this.”

  I flicker out again.

  When I wake up, Tom’s already awake. He’s lying down in his bunk, hands behind his head, glaring at the bunk above as if daring it to start something. I watch him for a few seconds before he turns around to look at me.

  “Are you ok now?”

  I run a quick internal scan. “Chest hurts.”

  “Where?”

  I point to the left of my breastbone.

  “You just pulled a muscle. Ok?”

  “Ok.” I don’t think I have and I know he doesn’t either, but that story works for me.

  “Are you back?”

  I don’t have to ask him what he means. “Yeah. Mostly.”

  “Good. Are you hungry?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Me too. You made me miss dinner. Not that anyone was in the mood to cook, I bet.”

  “I can cook.”

  He looks unconvinced, so I carry on.

  “I’ve been watching Nicky. I can. Basic stuff.”

  “Ok then. Make yourself useful. Quiet, though. It’s still way early.”

  We get to the kitchen and he sits down while I cook. I still feel weird, hollow and brittle, so I’m not really up to talking. Tom puts up with it for as long as it takes me to put food on the table, then lays down the law.

  “Ok. I’m not too sure what the fuck went on. It’s probably partly my fault for letting you get all up in your head for way too long. I know how you can get. But this stops here, now. You hear me?”

  “I just made you breakfast.”

  “Yes, fucking splendid. Now shut the fuck up and stop trying to change the subject. Ok?”

  “Ok.”

  “You want to learn to cook and play guitar and do fuck knows what else, ok, that’s great. But you need to snap out of this, this… Whatever the fuck this is, and stay out of it. Your head is not a good place. So from now on you’re going to spend an hour a day with me working out.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. We can do weights and shit. Get you out of your head. Get some bulk on you, too. I’m fed up being able to count your ribs and doing all of the hard work.”

  “I work too. And we never work out.”

  “Now we do. Not on move days, because I’m too soft on you, but you’re not going to sit around and mope all the godsdamn time. Not anymore. And you’re going to come out with me and meet people. Not every day, ok? Every other day.”

  “I’ve got nothing to say to them.”

  “Then you can fucking listen. And anyway how the fuck do you know that you’ve got nothing to say to them when you’ve hardly met them? You’re going to get out and about or gods help me I’m gonna leave you to your shit. For good. You wanna fuck yourself up, you don’t need any help from me. Ok? And stop pouting. You’re not three.”

  “Feels like it, the way you’re talking to me.”

  “Deal with it. So that’s the plan. And you can start eating at the café.”

  “No.”

  His eyes widen. “Beg pardon?”

  “I’ve seen the menu. It’s shit and everything is expensive.”

  “Do I seriously have to explain to you the importance of meeting people? Spending time with them? You keep hiding in your bunk, you’re gonna end up a bad way. I’m fed up rescuing you.”

  I think about it. “We can invite people. I can cook. Not all the time. Once a week?”

  “Hmm. That could work. Once a week you come to the café?”

  “If I have to.”

  “You do. That’s it for now. I might think of something else.”

  I nod. His eyes narrow.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you? You should have told me to fuck off ages ago.”

  I shrug.

  He leans over the table and flicks me on the forehead.

  “What the fuck?”

  “Get out of your head.”

  “What?”

  “You’re still all up in your head. Life’s outside.”

  He flicks me again.

  “Cut it the fuck out.”

  “You gonna make me?”

  He goes to flick me again, so I grab his finger and twist it, so he grabs my hand and bends my wrist, so I pull my arm back and nearly get him to faceplant on the table, so he throws himself sideways and pulls me right off my chair and on the floor and piles on top of me, so I jab him in the eye while he’s trying to get a choke on me, and it’s then that Alya turns up at the kitchen door, looking dismayed, and shrieks “What the fuck is going on here?”

  It’s hard for me to talk with Tom’s arm against my neck, but I manage to croak “Good morning. I made breakfast.” That makes Tom let go of me because he’s laughing too hard, so I elbow him in the gut, so he slaps my ear, and that makes Alya growl “Cut it the fuck out now.” She sounds like she means it. We cut it out.

  I get up and put Alya’s breakfast on the table. She’s still standing in the doorway, apparently not believing her eyes.

  “You really made breakfast.”

  “I tried. I hope it’s ok.”

  “You just got an urge to cook, then kill each other?”

  “Pretty much.”

  Tom is still sitting on the floor, desperately trying not to giggle. He looks at me all proud and shit, and I realize that for a few minutes there I did feel better, or at least more worried about kicking his ass than about anything else. So I try to kick him, but he grabs my foot and he’s about to twist it and pull me over on my ass when Alya shouts “Stop!”

  She closes her eyes and rubs her forehead, and I finally register how awful she looks, red-rimmed eyes in a face grey with exhaustion. I feel bad for fucking around, and for not feeling as bad as she does.

  “Alya? I could try and make coffee, but nobody’s shown me yet.”

  “No, it’s ok. Thank you. Thank you for the food, too.”

  “You’ve not tried it yet.”

  “Thank you for making it, however it turned out. And sorry for snapping. I just didn’t expect to find the two of you beating each other up. It’s a bit much, first thing in the morning.”

  “Sorry.” I am. She doesn’t sound good at all. But she sits herself down and eats her food, so at least she’s well enough to eat.

  Nicky walks in as she’s finishing. Tom’s still on the floor and I’m massaging a lump on the back of my head I don’t remember getting.

  “I miss something?”

  “Wonderkid made us breakfast. It’s actually not bad. Worse than yours, better than mine.”

  “That is all the food in the world, Alyushka.” He pats her shoulder on the way to his chair.

  Tom gets up and shoulders me on his way to the door. “Come on. You don’t need to watch these poor people suffer through your cooking.”

  I have no idea what the fuck he wants, but I follow him out. When we get to the bunk room, he flops on his bunk.

  “Ok, shit-for-brains. So the old folks are clearly down and upset. What do we do?”

  “Is this a trick question?”

  “Kind of an intelligence test.”

  “Well, normal people would say that we look after them until they’re feeling better, so I’m guessing you’re going to come up with something else entirely.”

  “You guess right. They fucked up and we can’t fix this. They’re gonna feel crappy for as long as it takes them to get over it. So we stay the fuck out of their way, so we don’t get down too.”

  “Seems suitably cold.”

  “How exactly would it help to have four depressed people instead of two? Well, three, because I’ll be damned if I let them drag me down. If you let people’s bad decisions get you down, you’re going to be down a hell of a lot.”

  “I hate to say this, but you might have a point.”

  “I’m right.”

  “You’re also kind of an asshole.”

  He shrugs. “Happy to own that. Not happy to be dragged into despair by people who should know better.”

 
I plop myself on my bunk. “Ok. Let’s try it your way. But I’m not going to make an effort to avoid Alya and Nicky. They’ve been good to me.”

  “I’m willing to bet my left asscheek that you won’t need to. They’re unlikely to be in a sociable mood.”

  Tom’s right. We work all morning and don’t see any sign of Alya. Nicky’s just doing his work and leaving us to do ours. At lunch Alya cooks and we eat together, but we hardly exchange a word and everybody splits as soon as we’ve finished. As we’re still tired from the move, we nap until it’s time to go back to work. The afternoon is more of the same. In the evening Tom and I watch a threedee on the bridge.

  All day long, every time I look slightly down he wallops me one. I don’t know how much it’s helping with my mood, but my reflexes are improving and he seems to be enjoying himself.

  The next four days are more of the same, apart from the fact that we start our workout program. I’ve not done this kind of crap since school. It never occurred to me to even consider it. Tom’s been in and out of training in juvie, though, so he knows what we’re doing, kinda.

  I start the whole thing because it’s less effort than arguing with Tom, thinking it’s bound to be a waste of time and energy, but I have to admit that it’s making me feel better. During the workouts I forget about everything that’s happened. I forget about everything, really, who and where I am, my past and my future. Arguing with heavy things is surprisingly absorbing. It hurts too damn much for me to think about anything else. Afterwards, instead of feeling tired, I get a huge buzz. The first time it happens I don’t think much of it, but when it keeps happening I figure there’s something to it. I have no idea if Tom feels the same and I can’t ask him, because that’d make him way too smug.

  I have to admit, though, that it’s making the time on ship go faster. I’m still spending some time on the guitar, though Tom doesn’t help with that. He seems to want me to be able to play without having to go through the trouble of learning, as if I could just pick tunes right out of the air. Then again, he’s happy to sit there and listen to me mangling tunes for hours, so I can’t really complain about him.