Company

• 9 •

It’s moving day. I watch on the zoomed-in vid screen as the supply shuttle makes its approach toward beacon 1529, little puffs of uncertainty as the pilot tries to line up with the lock collar. On the HF, I hear him proclaim contact and good hold. They must give these back-sector routes to the greenest fliers. I shudder to think my precious Claire is entrusting her life to this noob.

“Gotcha,” I hear her radio back. That voice. We spent hours the last few nights chatting via the HF, after having spent hours chatting in person, and saying we should really get back to our own beacons, and then saying we should really get off the radio and get some sleep, and then waking up and making up an excuse to see each other again.

When Claire caught me unplugging the CO2 sensor alarm in her life support module—and I fessed up to three other things I’d broken over there that might be serious enough to keep her around, fixing stuff, but not so serious that anything would happen to her—she got a strange look on her face, like she knew this was going too far, and we were feeling too much, even though we still hadn’t had sex, like we were saving that for the people we didn’t love quite so truly. Well, it was after this that she QTed NASA and said the beacon was good to go. To send her an operator. At least, I think this was what decided it for her.

Cricket mews and growls and nudges her head against me.

“I know,” I say, scratching behind her ears. “I like her too.”

The warthen clamps her jaw on my arm and squeezes, like she’ll bite me if I don’t stop lying.

“Love,” I say quickly. “I love her. Okay? But I’m supposed to tell her that, not you. So leave me the hell alone about it.”

Cricket pulls away and walks a big lap around the command module, whining.

“I’m sorry,” I say, throwing my hands up. “Whaddya want from me? Huh? I don’t make the rules. I just break them. Can’t it be enough that we had a good week? Does it have to be all about today?”

Cricket stares at me. I can hear that I’m asking myself these questions. That it’s me angry at the cosmos.

“C’mere,” I say, patting my lap.

Fifty kilos of alien jumps up in my lap and finds a way to curl into a dense, furry ball. Her tail swishes along the ground, back and forth.

“Truth is, I’m scared,” I tell her. “What if sitting still stops working? Or breathing in and out doesn’t do anything anymore? If the gwib doesn’t do anything, what if everything else stops working too?”

She licks my hand. And then I have a scary thought, one I shove away fast before Cricket can pick up on it—and the question is this: What if I were to lose her right now? This animal is the nearest thing I have to the GWB, or Rocky, or Claire, or all the things that have given me peace in the moment but never seem to last. Where’s the everlasting peace? Is there even such a thing? Or do we war like alien races war, eternally, against ourselves? I hope that’s not right. I hope that’s not how it all works.

“Beacon 23, transport KYM731. Requesting permission to dock. Over.”

I look back to my screen and see that the supply ship has left its collar. It’s just the lifeboat there. There are lights in the portholes and flashing lights along the solar panels. She’s all up and running.

“Hop down,” I tell Cricket.

She does, and I grab the HF’s mic.

“Lock collar Charlie,” I say, reaching over to energize the magnetic latch.

I go down the ladder ahead of Cricket and close the ladder’s top hatch behind me. I can hear her pacing and mewing, but she doesn’t put up a big fight. Maybe she can read my thoughts and knows that if she gets spotted here, I’ll lose her, and she’ll probably spend the rest of her life in a zoo. Or get bought up by another bounty hunter, who’ll use her with his dark thoughts.

The pilot whaps the collar pretty damn good. A one out of ten on the pilot-o-meter. I key open the airlock, and we shake hands and exchange names and pleasantries. Then he passes me two dozen plastic crates full of supplies, spares, and food, and I pass him back two canisters of unrecyclable waste. He gives me two empties in exchange. The entire time, I keep expecting Claire to come give us a hand, or say one last goodbye, or at least wave. But the last time we saw each other, it was too perfect a final goodbye to replace. A lingering kiss that I can still feel on my lips. A warmness in my heart that liquor and grav wave broadcasters could never touch.

“One last thing,” the pilot says. He disappears and comes back with a black plastic bag. The top is seized with a red wire. A tear rolls down my cheek, and I don’t turn aside, and I don’t wipe it away. I don’t even feel the pride of someone who does neither. Nor the pride of not feeling this. Instead, I just am. I feel the sweetness of the gift. I feel the sweetness of feeling the sweetness. There’s no shame, just a distant awareness that something in me has changed.

“Can never have too much of this,” I say.

The pilot is looking at me funny. I untwist the wire and pull out the can of WD-80, then make a show of appraising it. “It’s a good year.” It’s been a good week, at least.

“Yeah, whatever,” the pilot says. “The operator just told me to give that to you. I swear you people are strange.”

He turns and heads back through the airlock.

“Tuner,” I shout after him. “She’s a tuner.”

He looks back at me.

“You think she looks like an operator?” I ask.

He shrugs. And then, reaching to key his door shut, he says, “You all look the same to me.”

“Wait!” I say. I peer past him into the supply ship, which brings us our food and our spares and the people who replace us, and which takes us home if we ever decide to go. I search for some sign of her, but there is none.

“Yeah?”

I show him the can of lubricant. One quick burst, and things just slide together. “Thank her for me,” I say. “Just tell her I appreciate it.”

Another look like I’m the crazy one.

“Tell her yourself,” he says. “She’s your neighbor. I’m outta here.”

It takes me three or four stunned breaths to put it all together. And then I take the three ladders quicker than I ever have. If there were an Olympic event for beacon operators, I would’ve set the galactic record. It never would’ve been broken again. That is, until I hit the hatch that leads into the command module.

I free the clamps holding the hatch and give it a shove, but the thing won’t budge.

“Cricket!” I yell. “MOVE! Cricket! Off—!” I grunt with effort, climb another rung and put my shoulder to the hatch. I feel it rise a centimeter or two, but then it collapses back down as Cricket shifts her weight.

“I swear, Cricket, get the hell off! I’m trying to get up there. Bad girl! Move!”

Finally I get it lifted enough that she slides off. She jumps out of the way as the hatch falls into its recessed slot in the deck. Then Cricket’s all over me as I try to get up the last rungs of the ladder, licking me with her rough tongue.

“For fuck’s sake,” I tell her. “Cricket. C’mon. Leave it. No licking. Never lick me again. I swear.”

I’m grumbling at her as I get to the HF and pick up the mic. I squeeze the transmit button, then let go. I nearly said something. Switching to the lock bay’s external camera, I watch the supply ship pull away. No she didn’t, I tell myself. No she didn’t. No she didn’t. She wouldn’t. She wouldn’t.

I try to talk myself down as I wait for the supply ship to get the hell into hyperspace. I try to picture some bald man with a beer gut over on that other beacon, scratching his neck, chewing on a protein pack. That’s the truth. Hold on to that. Don’t get your hopes up.

The supply ship ramps up its drive and vanishes from my screen.

I squeeze the mic.

“Beacon 1529? This is beacon 23. You read me? Over.”

I wait.

There’s no response.

I switch my scanner back to get a visual on the beacon.

The lifeboat is still there. Still attached.

“Go ahead.”

The words are clipped. Came when I wasn’t paying attention. But it was her. I’m pretty sure it was her. Pretty sure.

“Claire?” I ask.

“Go ahead,” she answers.

I take a deep breath. I steady myself with one hand on the dash. Cricket is there, leaning against me. She puts her mouth on my arm and squeezes, threatening to bite me if I make the wrong move.

“I know,” I tell Cricket. “We both do.”

And I can’t remember the last time I said the words and meant them like this. Can’t remember the last time.

But I’ll always remember this one.