3. Chapter Three
Chapter Three
It didn’t occur to me until we’d already entered the corridor how strange it was that Tobago was calling for me when he’d just left our cabin a few minutes before. I turned to ask Zenny about this, only to see her disappearing behind a panel that was sliding firmly shut into the wall.
“Wait!” I called fruitlessly. “I can’t remember . . .”
. . . which way it was to the captain’s quarters. Tobago had pointed it out earlier, but I hadn’t realized there was going to be a test, and so soon.
With a sigh, I turned, then gasped as I realized there was someone standing right behind me. Unease pinged through me as I saw it was the man who’d been staring at me earlier. The one Ursa had shoved.
“Oh, hello!” Apparently I’d decided to cheerfully ignore that my companion had threatened him only a short while before and hoped he would follow suit out of politeness, or perhaps confusion. “I’m looking for the captain’s quarters. Do you know where they are?”
To my relief, he smiled easily back at me. “Sure. Follow me.”
His smile transformed his face, making him appear much less intense. Perhaps I’d misread him earlier. Perhaps he, too, had just been overwhelmed by meeting new people. Or perhaps he had an astigmatism that just made it look like he was staring.
“I’m Croydon, by the way.” Glancing back at me over his shoulder, he paused long enough to extend a hand. With some trepidation, I took it, still half worried he might linger too long, but he released me quickly and resumed his brisk pace down the corridor.
As we neared the washroom, two other crewmen stepped out, gesturing toward me urgently. “We’ve set up the sanitation station,” one of them cried. “Over here! Hurry, we have to rid you of the pollutants!”
I blinked in confusion. Hadn’t they all laughed at me when I suggested doing so before? Still, something in me couldn’t help but instinctively respond to the authority in his voice. “We should get Ursa.” I turned back toward my room.
Croydon stopped me with a firm hand on my lower back, pivoting me back toward the washroom. “There’s no time. We can’t let the contamination spread.”
They were all encouraging me now into the washroom, herding me toward a shower at the end. To my surprise, the curtain had been removed, leaving the stall exposed.
The men motioned toward some unmarked bottles on the floor. “That’s the decontamination soap,” one explained. “You’ll need to strip down to your underwear, quick.”
“We’ll watch to make sure you’re thoroughly cleaned,” Croydon added.
Oh, good Havens.
They all waited to see if this pathetically transparent trick would work. I glared at them, unimpressed. Somewhere in the background, a faucet leaked, the steady drip, drip, drip punctuating the tense silence.
Then one of the stall doors opened, and the older woman I’d noticed earlier stepped out. Val. The quartermaster aboard the Trojan Horse. I knew this was her name because Tobago had mentioned a Zenny and a Val who each got their own rooms, I’d already had the dubious pleasure of meeting Zenny.
Val looked to be in her fifties, with medium brown skin and dark, thick, curly hair. She also appeared unmodified, except for perhaps her skin, which was remarkably smooth and unlined, despite the other markers of age.
She looked contemptuously at the three men. “Do fuck off.”
Heads hung down, like naughty schoolboys called to task, they marched single file out of the room. Croydon and one of the others paused to look back, almost wistfully—disappointed their terrible, asinine plan had not come to fruition.
Finally, though, they left. I looked at the other woman with gratitude. “Thank you for stepping in. That was—”
Before I could finish, she gave me a quick once-over, much as Zenny had done. Though her gaze was not as disdainful, I had the feeling she was not very impressed with what she saw. “I thought you were supposed to be smart,” she said.
I couldn’t do much more than gape after her as she sauntered out of the washroom.
It was only once she was already out the door that I managed to call after her, “I am!” But realizing I was alone in the room now, I frowned at my reflection in the mirror.
“I am,” I whispered again, but I did not look entirely convinced.
It goes without saying that I did not tell Ursa about my encounter with the crewmen in the washroom.
Although the entire occurrence had been too stupid to be truly menacing, it still left me with a grimy feeling afterward.
It was clearly a prank, a way to haze the new crew members.
I went to boarding school, you know; I’m always up for a lark.
But I do wish the joke hadn’t revolved around me being undressed.
Thus, our first family dinner aboard the Trojan Horse was an oddly tense one.
If Tobago noticed anything, he didn’t let on.
Instead, once supper was finished, he motioned for me to join him—alone.
I could tell that Ursa didn’t much like this, but he would have to get used to it.
We couldn’t always be joined together at the hip like we had been on Earth. 2
Tobago’s quarters were, understandably, much grander than mine and Ursa’s.
The captain of the ship had earned himself a spacious respite, with room for a large bed, a table for strategizing smuggling operations, and a large desk pushed up against one of the walls.
Just above it was a small port window looking out at the stars.
As was to be expected for my old friend, he also had a huge shelf overflowing with books.
Back in school, Tobago had the reputation for being able to finish a sizable book in one sitting; and he always did the assigned reading, even if he stopped turning in the homework and showing up for tests.
I’d always believed it was an overabundance of intelligence, not a lack, that had kept him from graduating from the academy, and which had turned him toward a life of smuggling and thievery. Especially after3
After searching the spines for familiar titles, I smiled back at Tobago. “You’ve done well for yourself.”
“Was that ever in doubt?” Modesty was, clearly, not Tobago’s strong suit.
I shook my head. “Did you ever imagine back in school that we’d wind up here—you, a captain of a smuggling ship, and me on the run from the law?”
Tobago offered his usual blink-and-you’ll-miss-it smile, shaking his head as he moved to pour us two drinks from a cart near his desk. “I didn’t know you knew how to run from anything, much less the law.”
“Haha,” I deadpanned—though in truth, physical fitness has never been my forte.
Crossing the room, he handed me my drink. “To old friends,” I suggested.
“And new,” he added.
I choked a bit on the whiskey he’d poured me; it had been a while since I’d had a drink, and its bite made my eyes sting. “About that,” I said once I’d gotten my coughing under control. “I have something I need to tell you . . .”
I didn’t want to gain a reputation as a tattler, but knowing Tobago, he would be cross if he found out about the crewmen’s “trick,” and just as cross if he found out I’d kept it from him.
And he would find out. He could read people almost as easily as he read his books, and sometimes even more quickly.
When I finished telling him about the encounter, Tobago sighed. “I’ll speak to them. It’s unacceptable behavior, of course, but I wouldn’t take it too personally if I were you. It’s been a long time between ports of call.”
He meant outside of Earth, presumably, which unlike other destinations did not have businesses set up to, um, accommodate lonely space crew members.
Even growing up in the Havens with our strict societal notions about physical intercourse, I was well aware that such enterprises tended to thrive in the outer colonies.
And for the record, I didn’t take it personally—not the men trying to play their disgusting prank on me, nor Tobago for suggesting that it wasn’t any particular attractiveness on my part that had caused it to happen.
I was well aware of my place in the social strata.
I’d grown up alongside people who were so breathtaking that it almost hurt to look at them.
While my features were by no means hideous, it was difficult to summon up excitement for my normalness when you’d been surrounded by astonishing beauty one’s entire life, as Tobago and I had both been.
His own twin, Trinidad, was one of the loveliest women who had ever lived.
She was tall, slender but voluptuous, with warm-toned brown skin; one eye that was pale blue, the other pale green; full, lush lips; and hair the color of night waves that rippled and flowed down her back like a moving body of water.
No surprise, she’d done very well for herself in the social scene of Haven 3 and had married a politician straight out of the academy.
Tobago, too, was an intensely attractive person.
He tried to downplay his modifications by cutting his similarly wavelike hair and letting a light beard grow in to hide the strong, sharp jaw, but there was really no disguising his physical near perfection.
Beyond his looks, Tobago had a natural swagger—the way he moved, the way he spoke.
I’d once seen him pop his collar and make a girl next to him faint at the sight.
Unlike Trini, his eyes were the dark of night, with actual starlight twinkling in them if you looked close enough, and his skin was much paler, his features inspired more from the East Asian template rather than the West Asian template chosen by his parents for Trinidad.
Separately, the two twins were magnificent; together, they were devastating, their differences chosen to both contrast and complement one another.
But their lives had taken very different paths. I’d always been the plain non-mod friend tagging along behind them. Trini and I had both assumed that I might follow in her footsteps, perhaps marry someone in her husband’s circles but not quite so politically affiliated, or a fellow scientist.4
Instead, I was here with Tobago, living outside the law, on the run from my murderous fiancé.
Life can be awfully surprising at times.
As if sensing my introspective turn of thought, Tobago held up his half-empty glass. “More whiskey?”
“God, yes,” I returned.
1. How very like Tobago, to fill his ships with hidden corridors and covert chambers. He might say it was because he was crafty and sneaky. I chalk it up to trust issues.
2. It all seems so foolish to me now, my love. I wish I’d kept you by my side, always. I wish we hadn’t been apart for even a moment.
3. Please don’t think me coy, but upon reflecting, I’ve decided it’s not my place to share Tobago’s back story. There were things told to me in confidence, you see, and one doesn’t simply betray a friend.
4. And just look how well that turned out with Rawley . . .