The Ira Twins
“Which god’s righteous wrath ordained in the space between these stars?”
The meeting got through my scheduling filter by mistake, otherwise I’d never have agreed to meet Ms. Lee Ira of Xenia, a suburb of Koji City I was only mildly familiar with. The surname Ira was quite a famous name in Katherineberg and Io, of course—mayors of Octant cities, secretaries of prominent government agencies, even a former Chancellor—and that’s to say nothing of the generational business holdings. So with an imperial name like that, I took the meeting, thinking that at worst, extending a courtesy to even an unknown Ira was worth the time. People in my line of work can never have enough powerful contacts, even young ones, as I planned to keep working at least another couple decades, and the young ones in powerful families, they sure do grow into powerful positions.
The sight of her was shocking. It wasn’t just that she looked younger than her birthdate indicated—twenty-four—but she was breathtakingly beautiful, Lee Ira. From the first sight of her, she was so naturally beautiful that one almost had the impression that she couldn’t be real, that maybe she was some perfectly-rendered holographic spokesmodel for some sophisticated Athosian fashion house. The look on her face as she entered and greeted me was so genuine, though. She looked grim, almost grief-stricken to the point of dejection—so much so that I almost made a quip along the lines of: what could a beautiful young lady like you have to be so glum about? But experience had taught me, in my line of work, that wisdom comes in ten parts listening to every one part talking. So I kept my mouth shut, gestured for Ms. Ira to sit, and asked her what I could possibly do for her on that day.
“I’m in need of your services, Mr. Duran,” she told me. “I’d like to hire you for at least the next month—however long it takes.”
“You do business in the Letters or the Indies?” I asked her.
“Nothing like that, no. It’s more urgent.”
“I’m a solicitor, Ms. Ira. Corporate work. Mostly in importing and exporting, but also multi-system service enterprises. Contracts and the like.”
“I’ve done my research, Mr. Duran. You’re exactly the person I need. Your presence will open doors and offer a degree of protection I wouldn’t be afforded traveling alone. People will take me seriously with you at my side. That is part of why I’m hiring you.”
“What’s the other part?”
“My parents wouldn’t allow me to go off on my own.”
“You’re an adult, no?”
“It’s their money. I couldn’t afford you myself.”
“I doubt your parents can afford me, Ms. Ira. You want to hire me for a month? It’s highly irregular. I run the entire firm. I do serious work here.”
“This is serious. I need you to take this seriously. You have business contacts all over the Western Battery, which means your word carries weight almost everywhere we’ll need to travel.”
“Travel? That’s also not part of what I do. I have partners in the systems where my clients and companies operate. I’ve never even left Iophos myself. Not even to Athos or the cylinders. I don’t travel.”
“Are you averse to it? Or just comfortable here? You don’t have a phobia?”
“Of spaceflight? No. I don’t think so. I’ve just never had time for it. I work, Ms. Ira.”
“This is work. I’ll be hiring you.”
“To do what exactly?”
She paused as though it was a difficult question, as though searching for how to explain herself. It wasn’t going well on that front so far.
“You’ve studied physics, I presume, Mr. Duran? In school?” she asked me.
“I didn’t have a particular talent for it, but I took the usual science courses.”
“You’re familiar with quantum entanglement?”
“On a cursory level, I suppose I understand the concept. Particles that share a connection over space and time.”
“My sister is the physicist. She’s supposed to be studying Stellar Weather at Kappa-Nira.”
“The Kappas? That’s pretty far from home.”
“It’s an excellent program. One of the best in the Battery. The trouble, Mr. Duran is that my sister Marion never arrived. She left four weeks ago, and I mention quantum entanglement because I believe in it on a metaphysical level.”
“I’m not sure I understand what you mean. How so?”
“Marion is my twin sister. It started seven days ago—this horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach, just dread. And for four days straight I couldn’t shake the sensation, an awful ache and then cold. And for the past three days I’ve felt nothing.”
“You’re afraid something’s happened to your twin?”
Ms. Ira nodded sincerely.
“She’s been gone four weeks?” I asked her. “She must not have gone out there on a commercial flight then. She should have been there, what, a week or so ago? A little longer? I haven’t heard of any problems on the commercial routes.”
“Marion was moving to Kappa-Nira. It’s a six-year program with post-doctoral placement guaranteed. She flew out of Katherineberg on a charter. She had a lot of baggage.”
I took a deep breath, trying to process exactly what Ms. Ira was trying to convey. I thought, as much as I didn’t want to, that it might be a bit of an episode of emotional instability. This was not the type of situation I’d ever dealt with in my line of work.
“Ms. Ira, you said Marion is your twin?”
“You’re skeptical, I can see.”
“Have the two of you ever been apart before? I mean for significant periods of time?”
“It’s not like that. We’ve been apart. We’re very different people.”
“But entangled? Your words.”
Lee Ira looked as though she was about to lose control of her emotions. I did my best to wait patiently and betray no emotion on my behalf beyond concern for her. Regardless of how I felt about the situation, she certainly seemed to be taking it seriously, and I didn’t care to belittle that regardless of what was actually happening.
“Eternally entangled, yes. Make no mistake, Marion is everything to me. But this is also a serious situation.”
“But why are you here, Ms. Ira?”
She could tell exactly what I was asking—why she was here and her parents weren’t, if it was the serious situation she claimed it was.
“Mr. Duran, I am a pragmatic person. I understand what you must think. My parents are convinced I’m overreacting as well. But they don’t feel what I feel. I know my sister is in trouble. They are supporting me, I think, because they believe they are willing to pay to put my mind at ease about Marion’s wellbeing. They’re concerned as well, though.”
“Four weeks? It’s not uncommon for a charter to change course out there—to pick up cargo or passengers or other work between ports. It’s a totally different culture out there from here. Not everything is planned on a spreadsheet, especially out in the Letters.”
“I understand all that.”
“I deal with this all the time in my business, smoothing over these disruptions and ensuring resources arriving or departing Iophos are properly accounted for. Sometimes the diversions are weeks long.”
“Your experience in these matters is precisely why I believe you are the correct person to assist me in locating Marion,” Lee Ira replied. “Again, I understand delays are normal for charter flights into the Letters, Mr. Duran. But Marion is not cargo. And even if I didn’t have the sense I do about something being very wrong, there would still be the concerning reality that she is late, her ship has not reached Kappa-Nira, and she has not sent word home to us regarding the delay. Our family has money, so she has money. It’s not so prohibitively expensive to communicate from anywhere in the Protectorate or the Indies or the Letters that Marion wouldn’t think to send a message home. She knows we’d be worried. It’s the first thing she’d do, because it’s the first thing I would do. If I were out there, she’d be sitting here having this conversation with you now.”
“I could certainly look into the matter for you from here before we did anything rash, like setting off after her. More likely than not, we’d end up flying halfway around the Battery only to be the last people to find out she’s perfectly safe at university after her captain took some side-business on their way through the Indies.”
“If that’s the worst thing that happens, I’ll happily introduce you to Marion over dinner when we get to Kappa-Nira, Mr. Duran.” Lee Ira put on a very fashionable set of eyewear. “I’m going to send you a transfer as a retainer, as well as a credit line to book us a charter of our own. No other passengers or business. A large enough ship that we’re assured a private berth but small enough that our passage won’t require any prohibitive permitting or hassle docking in any of the ports along the way. The files I’m forwarding to you include Marion’s travel information. I’d like to leave as soon as possible.”
It was an aggressively forward proposal, especially since I’d given her no indication that I was willing to take her as a client. I still had serious doubts as to her stability. The odds were overwhelmingly in the favor of a harmless delay and a hyper-emotional twin with separation anxiety. I genuinely felt for her, but that was no reason, I thought, to put my life on hold and go flying about the Letters on some wild chase after Lee Ira’s twin.
“Ms. Ira, all I will promise you at this juncture is that I will look into the situation with the same seriousness you conveyed it to me. Then I will contact you with my recommendation for next steps.”
“I appreciate your time, Mr. Duran,” she said as she stood, extending a hand. “Do hurry. I’ve packed my belongings and am staying nearby in Sowenia.”
I did my due diligence, as any decent solicitor would. My first order of business after I reviewed the finances and the information Lee Ira sent over was to contact her parents’ home in Xenia to get their perspective on the matter. Lee’s parents seemed as much apologetic about the inconvenience to me as concerned for their “missing” daughter. In fact, their major concern was for Lee’s emotional stability. It was true, as she said, that the two of them had spent a year apart during their university years, particularly as Marion became increasingly focused on her studies. According to the girls’ mother, Lee had grown more noticeably sullen while Marion was away but never concerningly so. There had never been any incident like this, though, because Marion was only two Octants away, and Lee could hop on the hypermag whenever she felt compelled to see her sister. According to her father, the captain of the Jonathan—the charter Marion had taken out to the Letters—had told the family beforehand that it was likely they’d get held up passing through the Indies. He also related that it was even possible they may make a diversion into the Protectorate if they took on additional passengers along the way.
“What would you have me do about Lee then?” I asked her parents bluntly.
“To the degree it’s reasonable, Mr. Duran, we were hoping you may be able to indulge her. We don’t think it’s unfair for her to be concerned for her sister.”
“Don’t you think a psychologist would be a better use of her time and your money than hiring a solicitor and a private charter?”
“We’d have done that if we thought so, Mr. Duran,” Mrs. Ira replied. “I don’t have a twin, but I imagine the best thing for both my daughters would be for them to see each other. We believe you can expedite that in the safest manner, otherwise we wouldn’t have sanctioned it. We’d appreciate your help in that regard.”
“I appreciate the vote of support,” I told her, “but it’s not exactly my area of expertise. I also have a family of my own and a business to run.”
“Yes, it is a modest concern,” Mrs. Ira replied, clearly referring to my firm. “We could spare a few solicitors from Io to help your company’s officers for however long you’re away. Between your people and ours, I’m sure the firm wouldn’t miss a beat. We really would appreciate the favor.”
“That’s a very generous offer,” I said, understanding at that moment both the type of people I was speaking with and that the offer was less an offer than a demand. “Just a point of curiosity, if I may ask. Do you know how your daughter came across my name?”
“She’s a very bright girl,” Mr. Ira replied, “thinks things through. She did the research. Our name opens doors here on Iophos and on Athos. Your name opens doors out in the Indies and in the Letters, apparently. People are always more helpful when they believe business follows you. You have an excellent reputation, Mr. Duran.”
“That’s good to hear. Let me make a few inquiries on my end. Rest assured, Lee will be in excellent hands every step of the way.”
I reached out on several fronts that afternoon. I did everything I could to confirm the Jonathan’s itinerary and status before looking into a ship for Ms. Ira’s venture. Then I had one of my investigators look into the Iras as quickly and quietly as she could, emphasizing that discretion was paramount. I didn’t want it getting back to them that I was checking up on them, especially if they did turn out to be of the Katherineberg Iras, which they ultimately turned out to be. By that evening, my staff confirmed the arrival of three solicitors from Io. So I spent the rest of the evening procuring a ship and talking to several clients I thought would have useful advice on tracking down a missing ship in the whole of the Western Battery.
The ship I selected, the Herald-Dawn, was a bit of a hybrid transport carrier that took miscellaneous work under Iophan Colors—cargo and passengers, everywhere from the inner Letters to the Protectorate, the Guild, home again to Dreeson’s System, of course, and even a handful of runs all the way back to Floriston under the current owners, who also happened to be the operators, a husband-and-wife team—Popper and Gwen Hernan. Their records were clean on the surface, at least in our system. They almost looked too good to be true—at least their timely availability and rate—so I called in a favor at Intelligence, who did a decent job of keeping eyes on our ships out, many of whom were known to take on work out there that they wouldn’t chance in our space. Even the IIC gave the Hernan’s a clean record, which meant they were probably trustworthy, which was some feat for any currier with nearly twenty years’ experience operating in the Western Battery.
Unlike her sister, Lee Ira traveled light, one small trunk trailing behind her on auto, as well as a small bag slung over her shoulder, and still, the grave demeanor. We met at the public-facing front of the charter terminal just outside Katherineberg. I hadn’t been down to the piers yet to meet the Hernans in person, just spoken over video feed. I’d brought my family’s Samson with us, as I’d heard it was never a bad idea to have a faithful set of hands, eyes, and an extra incentive not to approach with bad intentions in some of the touchier spots out in the Letters and Indies.
Lee nodded as she approached us. “You brought your Samson, I see,” she said, as though she approved of the decision. “I do appreciate the seriousness with which you’ve acted Mr. Duran, and I know taking me as a client on such an unusual case is a major inconvenience and disruption to your operations. I’m grateful, but I need to ask you for one additional thing before we go down and meet the pilots.”
“Please, Ms. Ira, I’ll do what I can to accommodate. I work for you.”
“Then I’ll need you to stop looking at me like that, and I’ll need you to never project that look onto anyone else when I’m not around either.”
“How do you mean?”
“The doubt, Mr. Duran. You look at me as though you can’t decide whether I’m half-crazy or pitiful. From this point forward I expect you to carry yourself as though you have zero doubt about my motives, intentions, or emotional stability.”
I paused for a moment. I hadn’t really considered how she might be reading me. The whole situation was so surprising and unusual for me, I’d merely been reacting to it as genuinely as I could. I had to think about how to answer her.
“I will be your advocate, Ms. Ira, yours and your sister’s, in all things until we locate her and you are satisfied.”
“Excellent,” she said. “Now let’s go and find our ship, shall we?”
Having never traveled on a spaceship, even within the system, I was very much surprised by the state of the Herald-Dawn. From the outside, she looked quite like her description, a small workhorse cargo carrier primarily, with passenger accommodations. I was fully expecting it to be spartan or at best cold and office-like. The berths and common area aboard the ship couldn’t have been more different, though. The Hernan’s did come out to meet us and get us settled for flight before departing, and then they disappeared for the egress from Iophos, communicating at times about our flight path and then again as they engaged the FTL. Samson was helping me to prepare a cup of coffee in zero-G when Gwen came back to check on us. I was strapped in at one of the tables in the dining area when Samson offered to serve Gwen Hernan a coffee from her own galley.
“Please,” she said. “I came to see how you were settling in. You’re pretty old for a first flight, Mr. Duran. Usually people either do it by the time they’re your client’s age or they don’t leave the rings.”
“If it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t have,” I replied. “She’s sleeping at the moment.”
“Yeah, I imagine she’s a wreck,” Gwen Hernan said. “I don’t have a twin, but my older sister and I are two years apart. We were thick as thieves at that age. It took a while after Popper and I bought the Dawn before she settled down. She still pings sometimes when we’re off our schedule.”
“Your ship is very comfortable. Surprisingly so. Feels more like a home than a ship.”
“It is our home, Mr. Duran.”
“I suppose.”
“In ages past, it wasn’t all that uncommon for people to open their homes to travelers. Popper and I just take care of the accommodations and the traveling. We hope you and Ms. Ira feel at home here while you’re with us.”
“You’re from Iophos, originally ...?” I paused, uncertain how to address her properly, she was all at once Mrs. Hernan, a co-captain on the manifest, and an innkeeper of sorts. She could see me puzzling this out.
“Gwen, please, Mr. Duran. Like I said, you’re a guest in our home. And no, I’m from the Athosian cylinders. I met Popper when he was working as a hand on a cargo carrier. He always wanted to be a captain, and after I met him, I was happy to go with him wherever life took us. It takes us a lot of places these days.”
“I saw from your flight history, Gwen. And if I’m on a first-name basis with you, please call me Marko.”
Samson arrived with Gwen’s coffee. Like all multi-use models, he was perfectly adept to weightlessness in a way I myself was not. She thanked Samson in a genuine way, as though he was a person. She saw me noticing this peculiarity.
“I’m not used to being served on my own ship, Marko. I’d better not get used to it.”
“I’ve researched a little, but as I’m a novice to space flight, I was wondering how exactly you and Popper would go about finding a missing ship. Seems like a shot in the dark from what I’ve discovered.”
“Well, first of all, let’s say from the outset that I’m not certain the Jonathan is exactly missing, as much as I empathize with your young client, I fully expect we’ll catch up with them safe and sound.”
“That seems to be the consensus and certainly the hope.”
“That said, a couple scenarios could be in play. The likeliest, I’m sure you’ve discovered is simply a diversion on the captain’s part, my guess, if I were betting, would be somewhere in the Protectorate. They have a handful of major engineering projects going at any given time that often make for lucrative deals for a ship like ours or like the Jonathan. Custom orders or boutique materials that hold up development timelines, and the Trasp are odd about timelines ... well, compared to Athosians and Iophans. We just look around and think, well, we can’t build the thing till the materials are on hand, so work stops. They count the seconds in cronors, and if it cuts their costs to pay 10X on delivery fees transporting overdue platinum or light fixtures or stone using small freighters on handshake deals, then you bet Popper and I or anyone else in their right mind will take a detour. We like to give our passengers a rich enough dividend they debark on a good note. That’s also the best case for the Jonathan.”
“What’s the worst case?”
Gwen shrugged. “It’s highly unlikely—one in a million, maybe not even that likely.”
I pressed with a curious look.
“There’s been some piracy of late. Most of it is pretty far from the route I’d expect the sister’s ship to be traveling, but it’s been increasing over the past few years. But that’s out around the border systems, along the boundaries between the Protectorate and the Guild. I suspect they like to dip back and forth between jurisdictions, and then sometimes, when the authorities get close, I imagine they jump out into the Letters to fence items wherever they can. But the Etterans and the Trasp are pretty good about sharing intel and keeping their systems clear.”
“You say it’s becoming more common, though?”
“Oh, maybe a ship or two a year. Mostly these are ghost stories Popper and I and our fellow shiprunners share to remind ourselves there’s some shady characters out in the outer Battery.”
I could tell there was something else on her mind, another possibility.
“If that’s the unlikely scenario, what’s the other likely one?”
I could also see some apprehension on her face. She even looked over her shoulder to make sure we were alone. I shot her an inquisitive look.
“I don’t want to make the poor girl any more worried than she already is.”
I looked around as well. “A genuine concern?”
Gwen shook her head, as though hedging. “Mechanical trouble. Popper and I had a look at the make of the ship.”
“Jonathan?”
“Yeah, it’s a decent ship. Good starcraft engine. A Hellenian shipyard is the origin point. Was refurbished about a decade ago and rechristened in Truro and changed hands once since. That’s not too uncommon, but it’s not a great sign. Still, though, if they’re broke down somewhere, they’re going to pop up, more likely than not. A situation like that is more scary than dangerous. We’ve had friends get stuck out like that never want to step on a spaceship again.”
“Why’s that?”
“Well, even if you’ve got heat and power and oxygen, it’s like the clock starts ticking and the longer it ticks and you’re not on the way to your destination, the more the anxiety builds, and there’s not a lot you can do if you don’t have the means to repair your own vessel. And that all depends on what breaks. If you’re dead in the water, it’s just a question of how long before someone comes looking for you.”
“So it’s a good thing we’re going after them, then?”
“Oh, I don’t expect we’d be first to them by a long shot—even if it’s the case the Jonathan is hobbled somewhere.”
“How would anyone find them, or know to look for them even?”
She laughed and then smiled at me. “You’re so calm, Marko, I’m forgetting what a novice you are to this. Strapped in enjoying a coffee like it’s your hundredth flight.”
“I think it must be the hospitality,” I replied, returning her smile.
“So, somebody passing by will pick up what we call a POSO in captain lingo. Stands for Ping-Out-Sing-Out. It’s like an emergency beacon system that’s always waiting to shout if the FTL cuts out unexpectedly. All the starcrafts and the cargo carriers run pretty much the same system so that the very last thing a ship will do before it drops out is ping the nearest ports and ships through that closing FTL window; otherwise, you know, traditional coms, say, four light years from the nearest port would take, well, four years to reach the nearest listening station. And that’d be a long time to wait for somebody to happen by.”
“I imagine it would be.”
“So the POSO goes out with the ship’s ID, colors, and location, and it gets bounced around the network until somebody responds. Sometimes it takes a few days, even a couple weeks, but it’s kind of a code out here, we don’t pass anybody by, no matter who they are. Not until we’re absolutely certain help is already on the way, and if it’s not, then we’re the help.”
“So this ... ping out ...”
“POSO, ping-out-sing-out. Calls for help piggybacking on any FTL transponder nearby that picks it up.”
“How long would it take for a distress call like that to get to Kappa-Nira?”
“Oh God, Marko. A long while. No. That’s the trick. It’ll be a localized thing if that’s the case, and again, it’s a remote possibility. Best odds are that we’ll find Ms. Ira’s twin already at Kappa-Nira when we get there. Next best odds is she’s still on the way, likely with a bit of spare change in her pocket from the captain of the Jonathan’s side gig, not that these girls need the money all that much from the looks of things.”
“Well, here’s hoping that’s so,” I said, raising my coffee. “That’s not bad luck is it, toasting a coffee on a spaceship.”
“Stronger spirits are preferable,” Gwen joked. “But Popper and I aren’t too superstitious.”
She excused herself and thanked Samson again for the coffee before stating that she had to head to the deck with Popper. Gwen promised that she and Popper were going to press straight through to Kappa-Nira at Herald-Dawn’s best time, fifteen days, she estimated. “All that anxiety on the girl’s face, poor thing,” Gwen said as she floated off effortlessly. I was still too uncomfortable in weightlessness to unstrap without Samson nearby to steady me, so I stayed put at that galley table. But, with fifteen days, I was sure I’d have the hang of it by then.
I had enough work with me to keep me busy on the transit. Actually, from a business standpoint, the time away afforded me an opportunity to catch up on several long-neglected files, as well as address strategy in the five-year profile with a depth I could never do in the course of usual business. I kept business hours while underway at the advice of a colleague who traveled out to the Letters often. We Iophans are spoiled by the regularity of our reflected daylight and precise twenty-four-hour clock. “The darkness,” as he called the trip to the letters, “can sap the soul fast if you aren’t rigid about your schedule.”
Lee was more reclusive than I. She kept mostly to her cabin, venturing out almost exclusively to eat and exercise. Gwen and Popper mentioned to me over dinner one evening that they hadn’t seen much of her. I did note that during the few times we all did cross paths that both Gwen and Popper were on a first-name basis with Ms. Ira. I did not feel it was appropriate to drop that formality. Even on an extended trip like this one, ultimately, she was still my client and I her advocate. Perhaps especially in such circumstances are seemingly small formalities the most meaningful. Clear lines clearly drawn.
With the added time, I did find myself engaging curiosities I wouldn’t otherwise have bothered to explore. For example, I learned that Kappa-Nira, formerly Kappa-204, had only shed her numerical identifier two centuries prior when the capitol city of Nira breached its corporate charter and became a public city. At the time, there had only been a few cases of such resource-rich planets divesting of their corporate bonds peacefully, and even amicably in Nira’s case. It became a model of sorts for similar systems in the Letters. Cost and revenue sharing were key, while multi-generational settlement incentivized the inhabitants to build larger communities, which in turn ended up profiting their corporate founders far more richly than the average marginal outpost. By reputation, Nira was one of the more impressive systems in the Letters. What that meant to someone from Iophos I couldn’t guess, but I was looking forward to finding out.
When we arrived at Nira, I was surprised to find a most impressive vertical spaceport that stretched into space in a manner that was the first indication I’d underestimated the scale of the city. She was no outpost. In fact that vertical spaceport stretched for hundreds of kilometers atop the city’s space tower, a product of the planet’s corporate past. It was now the municipality’s lifeline and one of the reasons it had become a hub in the Letters. It also, thankfully, meant that Gwen and Popper could moor us there, saving us an atmospheric entry I wasn’t looking forward to.
The downside of the size of the city was the size of the city. Popper said he’d do his best to steer me in the right direction, but this wasn’t some small outpost where I could walk into a central office and have a conversation with a single harbormaster about a late-arriving vessel. There were layers and layers of managers and officers and directors and commissioners, all with their own domains. This was exactly my expertise, though. Once I found the right bureaucrat, I was certain to speak their language fluently.
Lee was the first to debark, taking the elevator down to the university to navigate their bureaucracy in the hopes that someone there had heard from Marion. She reckoned that her sister would never show up late unannounced if it was humanly possible to message first, and Marion’s program was set to begin within the week. And, at the program, Lee had several contacts who would be willing to talk to her.
I still had a bit more research to do.
Popper happened upon me at one of the tables a few hours after the Herald-Dawn had docked. The gentle spin of the port was such that he could walk up to the table at about half gravity—a nice transition, Popper told me, after a long deep-space journey.
“What are you still doing aboard, Marko? I thought you’d be out checking up on the Jonathan?”
“I’m still pulling together my list of contacts.”
I could see by his reaction that Popper wasn’t too impressed by that reply.
“I have a few errands to run while we’re docked, but if you’d like the company, I can send Gwen along with you to help you navigate. We don’t know Nira well, but the Lettered Systems have a similar sort of culture about them. I’m sure you’re kinda familiar, second-hand anyway.”
“As you say, Popper, kinda familiar.”
“Right, Gwen’ll get you sorted out with the right contact.”
“I would appreciate that.”
“Did Lee go off by herself?”
“I sent Samson with her. I hear it’s a safe city, but I felt better about it, and she seemed to appreciate having the company.”
I noted a bit of a strange reaction on Popper’s face at the word “company” in reference to my housebot.
“Good. Good,” he replied. “I’ll let Gwen know you’re waiting on her.”
“Much appreciated,” I told Popper.
It was the first moment since we’d boarded I had even the slightest inkling of a funny bit of energy among us. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, though, and I didn’t think too much about it. About fifteen minutes later, Gwen walked into the galley and told me my list was all wrong.
I wasn’t totally naïve to how things worked out here. I’d learned from my various officers and business contacts what sort of gifts and tokens of appreciation our friends out in the Letters particularly liked. Things like Iophan chocolate and rakia, which actually came from the cylinders and not the ring itself, but such a technicality didn’t hurt the currency any in the Kappas.
“Grease,” Gwen declared with a smile when she saw my bag of goods. “That’ll help.”
My list of the contacts I thought would be useful to approach consisted of managers and officials. Gwen told me on the tram ride down to the station proper that they had their uses. But if I really wanted to find an incoming ship, she told me I had to get to the people who made the port run.
“And who makes a port run?” I asked her.
“The Freightmaster is really the top of the top,” she said. “But that office relies on the Commlogs.”
“The Freightmaster? Even in a port like this with tens of thousands of passengers coming and going?”
“Funny thing about passengers, Marko. They tend to have legs and wheels and a motivation to get where they’re going. Cargo not as much. That has to be moved. Freightmaster keeps the port from clogging up.”
“And the Commlogs?”
“Communications and Logistics. That’s where we can start. You’re going to need that grease, though.”
It turned out Gwen was a necessary companion. I’d never have gotten past the front-facing office at the Commlogs division without a registered captain claiming to have official business. And after three different human division chiefs, who all looked at us skeptically but happily took our tokens of appreciation, we finally got to a controller, who we were told very much liked chocolate.
He was wearing opaque eyewear and an earpiece but assured us he could see and hear us just fine. In addition to monitoring incoming and outgoing ships, he had to anticipate cargo volume and availability for an elevator car down to the city for every container. Not surprisingly, every other word out of his mouth, seemingly, was Saraswathi—the goddess of the port.
“What does a solicitor do?” the controller asked me.
“Usually, I manage contracts for the companies that own the types of ships that appear on your eyewear,” I told him. “Legalities across systems, all the way from here to the Protectorate, the Guild, the Indies, and back to Dreeson’s and Hellenia.”
“Hmmph,” he replied, turning away to speak to another controller or perhaps flight operations.
It was difficult to tell when he was talking to us and when he was talking to someone else out there in that logistics network they all collectively managed.
“You’re looking for a ship that came in?” he asked a few seconds later.
“We’re fairly certain it hasn’t come in yet.”
“En route?”
“Supposedly.”
“Name, colors, and tail?”
“IISS Jonathan, KB-99843-06A.”
“That’s right, you’re Iophan, you said. Saraswathi?”
I was about to mention the Jonathan’s situation, that they were already expected, that they possibly took some sort of diversion. Gwen gestured for me to hold my tongue.
“Last time they came in was five months ago. They’re not on a mooring ... nothing on the umbrella, Saraswathi? Negative? No,” the controller said, clearly addressing the AI running the port. Then he spoke to us again. It was getting easier to tell who he was talking to. “It’s not docked and Sara says it hasn’t landed directly. It’s a hefty fine for a ship that size to bypass the port, but sometimes a smaller vessel will, depending on the cargo.”
I looked over at Gwen to confirm I was understanding him correctly. She nodded. Smuggling happened often enough out here that the techniques were known and often tolerated, as the controller said, depending on the cargo.
“Standby a moment,” the controller told us.
He took several minutes to return to us and seemed continuously busy the entire time.
“Sara’s got a contact for IISS Jonathan through Ennis via Torian with the registered destination here at Nira when she touched down at Ennis. Odd.”
I looked over at Gwen for a cue on whether I should ask the next obvious question, or at least the question that seemed obvious to me.
“It’s over four weeks old. Something should have carried a ping in from Torian if she stopped there. She’s not carrying anything illicit?” the controller asked me.
“The ship?”
“Yes, the ship,” the controller answered, seemingly slightly annoyed by my ignorance.
“Doubtful,” Gwen answered for me, as she could see I didn’t fully understand what the controller was thinking. “Unlikely they’d have registered an inaccurate flight log.”
“No, Sara says they’re reliable,” the controller said. “We’ll report it and send word back down the line to Ennis. But I’d suggest you head that way. It might be worth stopping at Torian en route. You did say you came out here looking for them specifically?”
“Yes,” Gwen answered.
“Right, so you’re properly searching for them. We’ll get that into the network. Sara will leave word for you at Torian. Just drop out there on the way ... yes. The network. Well, tell Maícon to answer the ping as a priority, please. It should be waiting for them. I agree, Saraswathi, yes. Concerning. Four weeks is a long time .... She’s going to put the word out. What ship are you, Captain?”
“Herald-Dawn,” Gwen answered.
“Right. We’ll ping you on your egress with a priority code for the Maícon at Torian. He’s the Harbormaster’s AI there. Sara’s going to leave word for him to update you when you get there. There’ll be a POSO somewhere in the area I expect, but we don’t have it yet. Hopefully, your people are already planetside somewhere nearby.”
“Very good, thank you,” Gwen replied.
“Godspeed to you Herald-Dawn. I hope you catch up with them. We’ll keep the Jonathan flagged on our end.”
With no sign of the Jonathan, the one remaining bit of business at Kappa-Nira was to await word from Lee at the university to see if Marion had communicated with them. I suspected the port’s Saraswathi would have had that in the record somewhere if she had.
This was my first exposure to so many things I’d never had occasion to be curious about. How communications worked over such distances was one of them. I knew what I needed to know—that if I sent a missive out to one of our employees, partners, our clients out in the Indies or the Letters, that it took X amount of time, as opposed to pinging Athos or one of the other cities on our home ring. I was peppering Gwen with questions about the topic on the way back to the Dawn. Her answers seemed as confused as my questions—how does such a system work? “Only Shideku knew,” she finally said, shrugging in exasperation. “I don’t think anybody knows the physics of it, just that the ships carry the data. It all depends on the ships going here and there. That’s all.” And that seemed to exhaust the discussion. I decided that I would have to find a Maícon or a Svaarta when I got back to Iophos to explain it to me properly, or, more likely, fail in the effort to explain something beyond my comprehension.
I was surprised to see Popper at the Herald-Dawn’s gate as we approached the ship. And, for the first time, I perceived a strange bit of apprehension from Gwen, as though perhaps we were walking up on something I wasn’t meant to see. So instead of heading directly into the ship, I stopped to talk with Popper, and again, there was that same slightly uncomfortable moment that seemed a bit like he was feeling something out without simply discussing it. I didn’t fancy myself a telepath, so I decided to simply ask him.
“Is there something you’d like to discuss with me, Popper?’
“Well ...” he said, shrugging and avoiding consistent eye contact.
I looked back at him directly.
“I expected you’d take a few more hours.”
“What’s the difference?” I asked.
“It’s a two-hour load time.”
“Did you ...? Don’t tell me you decided to take on cargo?”
He extended his arms, palms open, as though to say, well, yeah, Marko, what did you expect. I asked him again, directly.
“Did you agree to take on cargo, Popper?”
“The goal was to do it while you two were off ship so we wouldn’t hold up the departure any. And Ms. Ira’s still down in the city, so if the loaders are quick—”
“Absolutely not,” I told him. “No. You were engaged with us for the duration.”
“The hold is empty, Marko.”
“Business, Captain. This is a business arrangement. I would be Mr. Duran now. I’m your charter. The hold is mine and Ms. Ira’s for the duration. We’ve hired you.”
“That’s how it works out here, though, Mr. Duran,” Popper said. “We’re going back to Dreeson’s to take you two home anyway. To go all that way back and bring an empty hold is a waste.”
“You’re contracted already. Taking on additional work was not a part of our agreement, Captain.”
“I understand. I just don’t see a good reason we shouldn’t—”
“I’ve just given you the only reason that matters, Captain. Please don’t make me repeat myself.”
Gwen, who had been standing beside me, quite uncomfortable through the altercation, looked up at Popper and said, “I’ll go see about Lee.”
“No need,” I told her. “I’ll ping Samson and let them know we’re ready to push off as soon as they get back.”
As Gwen and I embarked, Popper remained at the gate, presumably to explain the change in plans to the loaders—and somewhere down the line, I knew, there would be a controller gazing into a headset, harrumphing as he adjusted the outgoing cargo on the word of a fastidious Iophan solicitor who had no good reason why the Herald-Dawn’s cargo hold should remain empty in the moment. It was the principle of the thing, I thought. A bit like FTL communication. I didn’t know how or why it worked that way, but it did.
So we took on no cargo at Nira, and when Lee Ira returned a half hour later, we pushed off for Torian.
Eight days seemed a long time under the circumstances. I could see it in poor Lee’s bearing. No matter how many times Gwen tried to reassure her that someone would have picked them up—or at worst, they were simply stuck and awaiting rescue from a passing ship—it didn’t seem to make the angst any more bearable for her.
For the first couple days, there was a frostiness between myself and Popper. Whether Lee even noticed it, I didn’t know. She had more pressing concerns on the top of her mind. But Gwen did her best to mediate on my end, and I’m sure on Popper’s end as well. I got the impression that it was as much about feeling a sense of shame about getting caught and called out like that, maybe more so than the loss he seemed to think they were taking while already chartered. But by about halfway to Torian, the incident seemed largely forgotten.
The sixth evening on our way back to Torian, I floated out of my cabin for dinner to find Lee Ira sitting by herself in the galley. She was wearing the same pained look of concern that had always been either prominently affixed to her face or hidden just slightly below the surface since I’d met her. I imagined that when we did finally find Marion, I might be able to distinguish the two of them by the five years worth of stress Lee had endured in the act of finding her twin out here.
We’d had few conversations of any depth. I don’t suppose she felt much like talking, but I sat with her nonetheless and attempted to make small talk—anything I could think to take her mind off the one thing her mind had on it. I thought a familiar topic might bring her some comfort.
“I’ve been reading about Xenia,” I told her. “I didn’t know much about your city. It’s a nice little place.”
She did her best to smile at my effort to lighten her anxiety a little.
“Did you always live there, you and your family?”
“Yes. Our parents grew up in K-Berg, but they didn’t want us to be creatures of the city. They liked the waterlands, so they moved to Sowenia right after they got married, and then out to Xenia the year after, and then even that was too big.”
“Oh?”
“Our estate is in an enclave on the edge of Xenia called Reader’s Circle. It’s the kind of place people probably do think of when they imagine where people from my family live. Green grass. Trees. Water. Birds even, real birds.”
“Sounds peaceful.”
“If you want it to be,” she said, and a hint of a smile crept up on her face. “Marion, she wasn’t in search of peaceful very often growing up. She likes the city. The second my parents let us get a hypermag pass, she was always planning some excursion, and she dragged me along everywhere, of course. I was always so nervous going off like that on our own, but Marion was going, so I always went. I thought she was so brave, so it made me brave—eleven years old, and we just got on the tram and went all the way to Abrahms for a day. That got us in a little trouble.”
“I imagine it would.”
“I didn’t figure it out till much later, but Marion never would have done it on her own. She knew she’d always have me beside her.”
“Or chasing after her still,” I said, hoping she would take the comment as I intended it, as optimistic.
“Sure,” she replied, the sullen look redefining her face.
“Xenia, I didn’t know, it was a cultural law of sorts,” I said, trying to change the subject to something safer.
“Yes. We had to read about it for our lessons. Hospitality in some ancient place. I wasn’t that interested when I was younger.”
“If what I read today is correct, it seemed like the custom was a way for a society that hadn’t invented the hotel to travel about—reciprocal hospitality. You’re welcome in my home, if I’m welcome in yours.”
“That sounds about right.”
“Maybe that’s why it sounds like such a nice city.”
“Some of us are like that, aren’t we?” Lee asked.
“Iophans? Most of us I would say.”
“It felt different,” she said, “Nira.”
“You weren’t there very long.”
“I didn’t have to be. They seemed more concerned that I wasn’t Marion when I told them.”
“How do you mean?”
“I met with her program’s director. He knew she had a twin, and when I introduced myself and told him I was looking for Marion, he asked me whether she was still coming. Can you believe that? As though I’d just stopped out to the Kappas on a lark. It was almost like it didn’t register to him that I didn’t know where she was.”
“That was the first thing you told me though, Ms. Ira, wasn’t it. Quantum entanglement. The program director was a physicist after all.”
“You’re giving him too much credit. Some of those sciency types, Mr. Duran, they lack social awareness.”
I smiled at her to let her know my comment was a poor attempt at a light-hearted joke. I did my best to be light of heart for her that evening as we ate dinner together, sharing our table, as in the days before there were such things as spaceships, or even hotels.
At Beta-Torian, Lee couldn’t wait for word to filter back to her from our co-captains. She insisted that she be allowed onto the flight deck when we dropped out so she could listen in on the communication with the control beacon there. I decided to join her. It didn’t take long for their Maícon to get back to us.
“We do not have the ping directly,” the AI’s unmistakable voice came back. “However, we have heard reports that a POSO was detected somewhere in the space between Veronia and Tak roughly six weeks ago. I suggest, Herald-Dawn, that you proceed to Veronia directly and discuss with control there how you might best triangulate IISS Jonathan’s position.”
“I don’t understand,” Lee Ira said to Gwen. “How do they know something about it but not have the information?”
Gwen looked back at her rather vacantly, shaking her head. “I’m not sure, dear,” she said. “Let’s hope it’s because someone found the people and didn’t prioritize the ship. Maybe the distress call got disregarded that way.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Lee replied.
I could see her tighten, her muscles, the tension around her eyes. The energy from Gwen and Popper. That was the first time I truly began to worry for Marion Ira.
It was a sixteen hour jump out to Veronia, somewhere along the nebulous border between Trasp and Etteran territory. Veronia was a sparsely populated system with an Alpha designation 1556, yet there was a Trasp mine that was largely automated but fully operational. There was a single small cylinder that operated as a spaceport orbiting the small moon circling one of the system’s inner worlds. At the time of our arrival, sixteen ships were affixed, and two large mining freighters were floating nearby.
Again, Lee and I joined Gwen and Popper up front. They had no intention of docking, just pinging for information about the Jonathan and moving on as quickly as possible. At first, their control station didn’t answer—quite a surprise to Gwen and Popper. Neither I nor Lee knew enough about traveling in these areas to know what was commonplace. They sent four pings over seven minutes before a human finally responded to their calls.
“Iophans?” the respondent replied. “Herald-Dawn on the transponder. Pinging your authentic registration, are you?”
“That’s correct,” Popper replied. “IISS Herald-Dawn out of Katherineberg. Looking for information on a POSO in this area for the vessel Jonathan, last pinging out of Ennis, en route to Kappa-Nira via Beta-Torian.”
There was a long silence, followed by a muffled, “Hmm. I don’t know anything about that. Let me see.”
“Who are we speaking with?” Gwen asked.
“Well, you weren’t expected. Our controller’s out of the box. This is Pete. I just picked up. Let me see if I can get him on his headset.”
Gwen and Popper exchanged a look of disbelief. Then she, in what I can only categorize as a near-supernatural act of intuition, said the following: “Hi, Pete. This is Gwen. We’re looking for our friend’s ship. No need to bother the controller if he’s out. Do you know how to access the board?”
“I’m learning my way around it.”
It was only when his voice came back again then that I registered it as distinctly juvenile. A teenager at most.
“That’s great,” Gwen said. “Time is of the essence. If you could open up the register and find the search panel?”
“I can do that.”
“Great. When you do, start a simple search for one word—POSO, it’ll probably ask you for a category. Then select the domain for ‘open.’”
“Yup. I see that.”
“Are there any results?”
“No. Uhm. Negative, nothing comes back.”
“Scroll back and try closed. Depending on how far back your registry goes, it could be a long list.”
There was a silence of about fifteen seconds.
“POSO, Jonathan, you said?”
“Yeah, that’s it,” Gwen replied.
“That first one, yeah. Says closed, from Tak—that’s Etteran space, just over the boundaries. Uhm. I’m looking at the date and that’s what forty-something days, I think. A little while ago now.”
“That’s all we need,” Gwen said. “Thank you, Pete, you’ve been a great help.”
“Why don’t you have an AI on your control station?” Popper added. “Somebody could get missed out here.”
“Everybody who’s coming we know is coming before they get here. Well, usually. I guess there’s exceptions, Herald ... what was it again?”
“Herald-Dawn,” Popper replied. “Keep at it, kid. You’re learning.”
“Good luck finding your friends. Tak’s a small system, a little bigger than us but not by much. Decent people over there. They’ll treat your friends good.”
“Glad to hear it,” Gwen said. “Take care now, Pete.”
During the four-hour jump to Tak, Lee Ira retreated to her cabin. I didn’t quite know how to read the odd encounter at Veronia. By reputation, the Trasp were serious people, very business-like and buttoned-down. To find a kid poking around their unmanned comms station would have struck me as peculiar even without the awkward energy I picked up from Gwen and Popper.
When Popper floated into the galley, he looked around. It appeared that he was looking for Lee, but then his eyes settled on me. Whatever animosity he may have harbored from Kappa-Nira was nowhere to be found on his face as he pulled himself down to the chair across from me.
“Hey,” he said, almost whispering. “I want you to know, Marko, Gwen and I don’t have a good feeling about this. Torian, whatever that was back at Veronia, just, bad energy all around.”
“Can you be more specific? I can’t pick up on the subtleties you two are reading. This isn’t my territory, you understand.”
“I don’t know. Lots of things. The totality of it.”
“The boy said the distress call was closed, correct? On its face, isn’t that a good sign?”
Popper grimaced as though considering. “I’m not sure. Yes, on its face it should be. It means somebody closed it out in the register. But that kid ... I mean, you’d have to believe that an Iophan ship a couple dozen light years away breaks down, the call goes out to Veronia, to Tak, to probably about five or six other nearby systems, and that kid Pete, who pokes around the control station for fun just on the off chance he gets the opportunity to be the one to answer the radio someday—that kid doesn’t know the story front and back? Hasn’t gone out of his way to follow up on every rumor? A tiny little mining outpost like that? It’s odd.”
“Okay,” I told Popper. “It’s a valid point. I’m not sure why you’re making it to me, though. What should I make of it?”
“I am preparing you for the possibility that this venture is not going to end well, Marko. We’re going to find the Jonathan. What we find when we get there is what worries me right now.”
Popper subtly gestured with his head toward Lee Ira’s cabin. And then he shook his head, an entirely somber gesture.
“I take your meaning, Captain. Thank you.”
At Tak, the Etterans were not nearly as direct as young Pete. Their controller didn’t have straight answers to Gwen and Popper’s questions. They couldn’t say who closed out the distress call on their register, but it was closed, just as it had been at Veronia, with no information on the state of the Jonathan, the whereabouts of the occupants, or the vessel or vessels dispatched or whether contact had, in fact, been made.
It took nearly fifteen minutes of back-and-forth over comms before the supervisory controller relayed the original comms signal that had come in from the Jonathan. They could not, or would not, reveal any information about how the status of the distress had been changed from open to closed in their register. And now, finally, I was seeing why Lee Ira had arrived in my office with the foresight to bring a solicitor with my familiarity of these specific legal areas. The POSO had been received in three distinct legal jurisdictions—the Trasp Protectorate, the Etteran Guild, and four different independent systems that all operated under Battery Common Law that was nearly identical to ours in Dreeson’s.
I was preparing for the worst as we neared the location of that final ping of the Jonathan, drafting legal notices to be remitted to every outpost that received the Jonathan’s call to preserve every bit of data regarding the call itself and their outpost’s response. I began to research the laws in each jurisdiction.
Lee appeared in the galley. She looked the same again as when I met her. She knew the seriousness of the situation, and she’d always known. What I could see now on her face as she floated toward my table to sit with me was the recognition that I now finally understood her sense of urgency. I hoped to convey in my bearing that there was still hope. That even if no one had picked them up, there was still the possibility that they were still alive and well. Popper had assured us from the outset that a hobbled ship could operate for months or even years as a floating hotel—his exact words—depending on the depth of their provisions. I wanted her to be able to see that hope in my eyes.
She smiled as she strapped herself to the same chair Popper had occupied a few hours earlier when he came to prepare me for the worst. The stress was evident on Ms. Ira, but even so, she tried to return a similar hopeful bearing. She called me Marko for the first time the entire trip. And she began to tell me stories, stories that couldn’t help but bring laughter to us both. I can’t ever recall anything like those moments, the countdown to the moment, the greatest possible outburst of relief in the entire universe or the shattering of an entire existence. I could do nothing more than be there.
When the ship jumped out, Gwen notified us over the galley speakers that it may take them a little while to find the Jonathan’s exact location, but it wasn’t more than a few minutes before Popper appeared in the galley.
“We’ve found Jonathan,” he declared. “Marko, you and Lee are going to stay here with Gwen. I’d like to take Samson with me while I go over and have a look.”
“Are there any signs?” Lee asked.
“We’ll know in a bit, dear,” Popper replied. “Just try to be patient. It’s still likely they got picked up.”
“Of course, Popper,” I told him. “Samson is at your service.”
He suggested I take Lee up to the deck to wait with Gwen while he worked to get the Jonathan’s top hatch open. She directed Lee to sit beside her. She had gentle music playing in the background while she confined the direct comms line to Popper in her earpiece. She didn’t utter a syllable that gave us any interpretation, but perhaps that in itself was telling enough.
It took Popper and Samson a little over twenty minutes to get the hatch open. Perhaps two minutes later, Gwen told Lee that they were coming back.
I’ve never hoped for anything more in my life than to see that captain return with the declaration that the Jonathan was vacant, that she was tagged, as was the custom, with the destination port and rescuing vessel’s tail, dated and timestamped for anyone who followed. When we got to the galley, though, it was plain enough on his face. He took one look at Lee and shook his head and couldn’t keep from tearing up himself as Lee Ira broke down. Were it not for the weightlessness, she’d have fallen to the floor in a heap. The mercilessness of space denied her even that. Gwen grabbed hold of her and pulled her to a table, as in the moment it did not seem she had any control of her body.
Popper gestured for me to follow him. “Let Gwen,” he said. “I need you.”
In the hours that followed, Popper, myself, and Samson returned to the Jonathan, where inside, we moved seventeen deceased passengers and their frozen corpses, including Marion Ira, to the rear cargo hatch so that we could directly transfer them to the Herald-Dawn’s empty hold without bringing them into the ship, sparing Lee Ira the horror of the sight, one I will never forget.
Afterward, we went through each compartment, gathering the personal effects that seemed most important. I found out more about Popper and his character in that moment than I had in the totality of hours I had passed on his ship. The reverence. The way he never lay a hand on one of them that wasn’t gentle, respectful, or solemn. Even their belongings he handled as though their owners were watching him and would want their things back when we arrived again, back at Iophos, where most of them belonged.
Finally, Popper spent nearly an hour pulling the flight data, the logs, the ship’s maintenance files, and then he meticulously photographed the key points inside the vessel, documenting anything he thought might point investigators toward a cause for this tragedy. When that was finished, there was no more we could do but bring them all home.
“Seventeen souls,” Popper said to me as we left the Jonathan that last time for the Dawn. “I’d like to thank you, Marko, for your help here today, and for your foresight.”
“My foresight?” I had no idea what he meant.
“Back at Nira—the empty hold.”
“Oh, no—” I said.
“But you did,” he stopped me before I could protest. “Even if it was just the principle of it. It was the right thing to do. This ...” he said, and he shook his head, and, as though it was too much to fathom or bear, he didn’t say another word.
My presence at the start of the scandal that ensued turned mine into a widely-known name, certainly in Io, if not all of Iophos. I suspected this may become the case on the return transit, but I had little sense of the scope of the scandal and the anger of the Iophan people.
It was a long nine days back to Dreeson’s. Lee only insisted on seeing her sister’s body that first evening. Popper told her firmly that it simply would not happen, not until after Marion was transferred to the care of the government in Katherineberg and then released to the funeral director of the family’s choosing. At first, he told her access to the compartment en route was too dangerous, which Lee knew for a lie. She turned to me to call him on it. Gwen was the one to reach her. She convinced Lee that she didn’t need that image in her head for the rest of her life.
At day three, I had my documents in order for the ports in question. We altered course in the area of Port Cullen to transmit. The data shared with Herald-Dawn at Tak indicated that there were sixteen ports who received the Jonathan’s POSO in time enough to respond before the occupants perished. Popper was an invaluable resource, with knowledge on the astral corridor between the Guild and Protectorate, on communications between vessels and ports, and on the thermal physics of a ship losing heat once their reactor fails. He had also documented signs that another ship had responded and been aboard the Jonathan—recent scuff marks on the hull by the top hatch, digital wrinkles in the array data that indicated possible scrubbing. His guess was that a ship responded late, not to poach, but simply late-arriving and unwilling to take on the scrutiny without benefit.
I couldn’t make sense of it—why so many ports and ships would allow the Jonathan’s occupants to perish in such a prolonged, painful, and needless way. I did know enough to form an opinion. So after I’d pressed Popper for all the facts and the totality of the circumstances as we knew them, I asked him for his.
“I don’t know that there’s a why behind it, Marko,” he answered. “There are probably a hundred confounding circumstances—maybe that kid Pete was eating lunch when the ping came in. Maybe a couple people had a conversation about who would go and misunderstood each other. I don’t know. One thing I do know, though. That never would’ve happened to an Athosian ship or a Trasp ship or an Etteran ship, probably not even an Indie. Only us. We’re the only ones they’d dare to leave out like that, and I don’t know why. We’d never do that to anyone. We’d make sure.”
His anger seemed to grow to a crescendo with each sentence. By the time he finished speaking, he could barely keep his voice down. He didn’t want his emotions to get away from him. He didn’t want Lee to overhear from behind her cabin door.
“I can’t talk about this anymore, Marko. I’m sorry.”
“I understand,” I replied.
I still didn’t know enough to know whether Popper was right, or whether I should share his visceral anger. But it brought me back to thinking about Xenia—the irony of our final destination, Marion Ira going home. That city, that name.
I welcome you to my home: You welcome me.
We come to your rescue: You come to ours.
Popper’s anger struck me as ancient. Which god’s righteous wrath ordained in the space between these stars?
Lee Ira’s grief was incomprehensible to me. At times along the way back to Iophos, I wondered how it was possible she herself simply didn’t break apart into a million pieces and scatter into nothingness. It seemed that only the habits of physics and necessity kept Lee Ira tethered to our place here, breathing. From the very first hint of her existence she was one of a pair. Most siblings share a household and a childhood. The Ira twins shared a womb, shared all of their experiences. “My heart,” she said to me in a quiet moment after she’d made another failed attempt at eating. And I didn’t know which heart she meant.
Word of the Jonathan did not precede us back into Katherineberg. It did not take long for the city officials there and in Io to respond. By the time we’d made ingress, the gate Herald-Dawn flew into was swarming with officials and functionaries. My final duty, before escorting Lee through the cordoned gate to her parents, was to shield her from the investigators, whose overeager manner was not right for the somber time, that moment of our return. Lee just needed her family.
There are tram cars on the hypermag with no windows. I’d never given them any thought till then. That final ride home for Marion Ira to Reader’s Circle in Xenia. I didn’t see that connection in my future when Lee Ira appeared in my office weeks before, but somehow, on some level, she did. She’d felt herself becoming disentangled from hundreds of light years away. She knew, and yet she didn’t fully.
There are some things in this life you can’t prepare for. Until the moment you know, you don’t know. And once you know, the universe will never be the same. A grief so profound ripples out like a wave over time, across a sea we cannot fully fathom, conveying God-only-knows what bitter sorrows in its wake. I must remain with the hope that over days and months and years, as that wave washes outward, that there must be balance somewhere—that this moment, this wave, must someday crest and break its back on the joys of brighter days.