Star Wanderers: Tales of the Far Outworlds (Omnibus V-VIII) Read online

  Something is holding him back.

  All at once, he began to speak very quickly. Whatever he was saying, he wanted very much for her to understand him. She nodded and looked into his eyes, trying to catch some glimmer of meaning. Out of frustration, he bunched his fingers together and made the sign of the cross across his chest.

  “Married,” he said.

  Noemi’s heart leaped in her chest, sending a bolt of electricity to the end of her fingertips. Yes! she screamed inwardly, nodding her head. Yes! I know we barely know each other, but father married us before we left, so—

  “No,” he said, wagging a finger at her. “No married.”

  Her stomach fell through the floor. Not married? What do you mean?

  He sighed and spoke again, waving his hands this time. It was evident he felt very passionately about whatever he was saying. His speech became more and more impassioned, until finally, in one final act of exasperation, he turned and stormed off to the bathroom. A moment later, the sound of the shower filtered through the bulkheads.

  What just happened? Noemi wondered, leaning back against the wall. Her hands fell into her lap along with the blanket, leaving her upper body naked. She looked down at her tiny breasts and felt suddenly embarrassed—not at all like in her dream.

  If he didn’t recognize their marriage, then perhaps it was best just to pretend it had never happened. But what would that mean for her? She couldn’t go home—that much was clear. Wherever he was taking her, it was bound to be someplace far away where she didn’t speak the language. And if he felt no connection or commitment, he’d probably just drop her off at the next port—and what would happen to her then? There was no law in the Outworlds—nothing to shield her from the abuses of evil men. If she couldn’t convince him to accept her, then she could easily find herself in a situation that was much worse.

  Besides, of all her sisters, he had chosen her. That had to count for something. No one else had ever shown much of an interest in her, so the fact that he had meant that there was at least some potential. They barely knew each other, yes, but starfarers were used to striking up relationships in short periods of time. It was their way of life.

  One thing was for sure, though—she wasn’t going to convince him to accept her just by getting him in bed with her. He’d proved that he was a decent man, and she’d just as soon walk out an airlock as manipulate him through guilt.

  She dressed in the jumpsuit he’d given her and gathered her clothes from the day before. I should probably wash these, she thought to herself—ever since the water recyclers had broken down on Megiddo Station, there’d been a strict rotation for laundry. Her clothes weren’t exactly dirty, but they weren’t clean either, and could use a wash. Besides, this was a perfect chance to prove herself. If she could wash her own clothes, she could wash Jeremahra’s as well.

  If nothing else, it gave her something to do besides torture herself with her thoughts.

  * * * * *

  While Jeremahra finished his shower, Noemi figured out the washer and made her bed. She would have made breakfast, too, but he finished before she had time.

  That’s right, she thought as he admired her work. It’s not bad having a woman around, is it?

  He shrugged and muttered something to himself before turning to the synthesizer. She wrung her hands silently as he made breakfast, reading his every little movement for some hint as to what he was thinking.

  If he rejects me, then I really will be alone. She imagined him dropping her off at a distant outpost, where she knew no one and didn’t even know how to speak the language. What would she do? Where would she go? How would she fend for herself? The prospects made her legs feel weak.

  He motioned for her to sit down on the floor, same as the day before. She kept her eyes down and was careful not to meet his gaze, but when he wasn’t looking, she watched him like an astrographer charting the stars. He passed her a bowl, and for a very brief moment, their hands touched. A bolt of electricity shot through her, but he turned quickly away and left her to her meal.

  The food wasn’t flavored particularly well, but Noemi ate it gratefully. After taking just a couple of bites, he stopped abruptly and started talking to her.

  What’s he saying? she wondered, wishing for the hundredth time that they spoke the same language. Strange, how he kept trying to talk with her—either he had an odd habit of talking to himself, or he had something that he really wanted to say and was just as frustrated as her that he couldn’t get it across. Perhaps both. She nodded, trying to placate him, but he clenched his fists and became more and more excited, until she started to feel a little scared. He didn’t hurt her, though—he slammed his bowl down and stormed off to the cockpit, evidently wishing to be alone.

  What did I do? she wondered, playing every moment of the last few minutes over in her mind. Had she made him angry? Had she done something wrong?

  A sickening feeling grew in her stomach, and the floor and walls began to spin. At first, she thought she was going mad—but then, the room began to shrink, and she realized it was the sensation of jumpspace. She grabbed the nearest handhold and held on as tightly as she could, while the spinning and the shrinking and the gut-wrenching nausea grew worse and worse—

  —and then they were through, and she was running for the bathroom before she vomited all over the floor like last time.

  A fine starfarer you’ll make, she thought despairingly as she threw up most of her breakfast. Not only are you the plainest girl on Megiddo Station, you have the weakest stomach of anyone in a dozen parsecs. For someone who was supposed to be a starfarer’s wife, she was off to a miserable start.

  Chapter 4

  The all-encompassing darkness enveloped Noemi like a blanket, the same as it did every time she plugged into the dream monitor. Before the simulator could fully load, she halted it and let herself drift in the infinite void. While some people feared the sensation of nothingness between simulations, she loved how it felt to be the only person in all of existence. With all the computer processes humming just beneath the plane of conscious awareness, she could feel the potential from the back of her neck to the tips of her fingers. The void was an entire universe just waiting to be born, and she was a goddess of creation.

  She started with the stars. With one wave of her hand, a million tiny perfect points of light blinked into existence, their familiar constellations surrounding her. Next, she added the galaxy, a milky white carpet textured with dust lanes and nebulae. The sun came next, a dim red orb on the edge of her vision, not quite bright enough to drown out the rest of the stars with its light. Finally, she added the dark blue ice giant world of Megiddo, with the wispy white clouds of its upper atmosphere, and Megiddo Station, a tiny point of light just on the edge of the crescent horizon.

  Her simple white dress fluttered soundlessly as she flew toward the station that was—or rather, had been—her home. As she drew closer, the details began to distill from her subconscious. Megiddo Station was a large wheel with a hodgepodge of additional modules built on. They protruded from the main hull like barnacles on the belly of a whale, a fascinating water-bound creature from Old Earth that Noemi had discovered while browsing through the archives. She imagined that life for those barnacles must feel very much like it did for the people on the station, drifting through an incomprehensible vastness in a tiny shell that was the sum total of their world.

  Not anymore, she remembered. Megiddo Station was dead to her—even if she managed to go back someday, she doubted it would be little more than a space-bound derelict, only useful for scrap and spare parts. The thought made a lump rise in her throat, so she put it out of her mind and focused on the simulation.

  The challenge was to see how much of her home she could recreate from memory starting from nothing but scratch. It was simultaneously a way to preserve her memories and exercise her creativity.

  She stopped a short kilometer above the station’s orbit and painstakingly added every module, exactly as i
t had been when she’d left. She’d never seen the station from this point of view, of course, but she’d reviewed enough maps and schematics to have a clear picture of the structure in her mind. Towers protruded from the far-flung sections of the rim, while a large bulbous hydroponics module protruded from the bottom of the hub like an upside-down garden. She descended toward the planet and turned herself around so that her perspective shifted, making the module appear right-side up.

  She didn’t spend much time on it, though—she couldn’t bear to, after everything that had happened in the last few months. Once, she had looked to it with everyone else as the man-made miracle that would save them. Now, it was a symbol of failure and despair, the last great collapse before the famine took them all. She kept the windows of the module dark and flew out toward the rim, skimming less than a meter above the dull gray surface of the age-worn station hull.

  In a flash, she passed right through it and found herself standing in the middle of a wide, empty corridor. Now came her favorite part. Her feet touched the floor, and she took off running with her hands outstretched behind her. As she ran, the place came to life, shops and doorways popping into existence all around her. There was that small electronic parts store that she always loved to frequent, nestled in a tiny alcove between a port authority office and a warehouse facility. Narrow stairwells led up to courtyards and apartments on the upper levels, while airlocks led down to the rimside dockyards. Up ahead, the corridor opened up a small concourse with a high ceiling and narrow atrium. She looked up and saw right through to the opposite side of the station, upside down somewhere far overhead. Pausing only for a moment to add in the relevant details, she took off running once again.

  She ran until she came all the way around to where she’d started. Her breath came short and quick, so she had to stop and rest for a moment. In the simulation, she didn’t ever have to feel tired or exhausted, but she kept those sensations just to add a touch of realism to the experience. A short moment of breathlessness was a small price to pay in order to feel that she’d come back home.

  The station was empty, though—empty and eerily quiet. The old ventilators still chugged, of course, and the bulkheads still hummed, but the people sounds were all gone. Noemi hesitated—she could channel her subconscious to add the projections, but something held her back this time.

  Growing up, she’d always been something of a loner. The boys were never really interested in her because she was too plain, and the girls her age never spent much time with her because she was too quiet and shy to fit in with the popular types. Her sisters had always been there for her, of course, but as the oldest daughter she was the one they looked up to, rather than the other way around. Lately, as her few childhood friends had gotten married one by one, her feelings of loneliness had only compounded. Most girls on Megiddo Station had found their husbands by the end of their seventeenth year, and the fact that she was nineteen and perpetually single felt, in a lot of ways, just as bad as the famine that had ravaged her home.

  The empty halls and corridors echoed that aching sense of loneliness. As much as she missed Megiddo Station, had she ever really fit in there? Not really. That was why she’d always spent so much time in the simulators—here, she could be the goddess of a thousand worlds.

  But what good was that, if she had no one to share it with?

  That isn’t exactly true, she realized. There was Jeremahra—he was supposed to be her husband, after all. But was he really interested in her, or had she just been imagining things? Since they didn’t even speak the same language, it was difficult to tell.

  Could things work out between them? Her thoughts wandered to their awkward first night together, making her cringe. The only things driving her had been terror and an awful sense of duty, but now, things were changing in ways she didn’t fully understand. Yes, he’d rejected her that night, but given the circumstances, that was probably for the best. If he had taken her, she’d be wondering if the sex actually meant anything, or if she were just an object for his lusts. At least this way, if he did decide to take her, she’d know that that meant a degree of commitment.

  Providence brought us together for a reason, she told herself. I just need to find out what that reason is. It seemed a little strange that the right person for her would be someone who didn’t speak her language, but if they loved each other, did that really matter? Language barriers could be overcome, and love—real love—was something that grew.

  A light flashed in the corner of her vision, breaking her out of her thoughts. It was an automated message, stating that someone else had requested to use the dream monitor. Her heart leaped—how long had she been in the simulation? She didn’t want Jeremahra to think she was hogging it all for herself.

  With a swipe of her hand, she wiped the dream world clean from existence. It pained her to do it, but she’d be back to re-create it later. Besides, a couple of days ago, she’d forgotten to delete it, and the simulator had probably kept it open for Jeremahra to see after he’d plugged in. Her cheeks reddened, even in the simulator—the thought of him stumbling on something so personal to her made her cringe.

  It took a few moments for the wipe to finish, but when it did, she found herself floating in the same vast nothingness as when she’d started. A few quick adjustments to return the simulator to its defaults, and she jacked out.

  * * * * *

  Noemi hugged her knees to her chest and stared out the forward cockpit window at the stars. They looked so different here, out in deep space. Back home, she had sometimes gone to the observation deck to lie across the floor and watch the stars pass slowly underneath her. Those had always been such peaceful moments—so unlike what she was going through now. Yes, she was alone, and yes, things were quiet—perhaps even quieter than they ever had been on Megiddo Station—but there was so much uncertainty in her life now, it was impossible to find any peace.

  If Jeremahra hadn’t chosen her, would things have been any better? The part of her that missed home screamed yes—better to die among family than to live and never see them again. He should have chosen Marta—or better yet, he should have never come at all.

  Stop, she told herself, blinking through the tears that inevitably came. It isn’t right to think like that. She reached down to her chest and pressed her fingers against the cross, her last possession from home. Providence had brought her this far, saving and preserving her from the famine that was ravaging her home. It couldn’t be coincidence that Jeremahra had come when he had, and had chosen her. Even if he rejected their marriage and dropped her off at the next port, there was a reason she was still alive, and that reason brought with it the weight of responsibility. Now was not the time or the place to feel sorry for herself.

  Perhaps—but even so, she couldn’t help but miss her home. As she stared out across the vast unmoving starfield, the painful emotions rose within her heart, constricting her throat and making her vision blur.

  In the cabin, Jeremahra began to stir, snapping her out of her thoughts. She rose to her feet quickly, meeting him in the doorway. He grunted and stepped back to let her through before returning to the cockpit and settling down in the command chair.

  He wants to be left alone, Noemi realized. After a brief moment of indecision, she turned to the cabin, where the dream monitor still hung out of the compartment in the ceiling. She settled down on the cot and grasped it in her hands; it was still warm to the touch.

  She looked back to the cockpit, but Jeremahra appeared firmly settled, and there wasn’t enough room up front for both of them. With nothing else to do, she pulled the monitor down over her head and plugged in.

  For a brief moment, the weight of the device pressed down on her neck and shoulders. She leaned back against the headrest, settling her hands into her lap—

  —and then she was in a dark, wet forest, surrounded by leafy green ferns and deeply furrowed tree trunks.

  She frowned and looked at the strange landscape. Trees as wide as the main corrido
r at Megiddo Station stood all around her, stretching up further than she could see. She was in a forest—that much was clear—but it was a kind of forest she’d never seen before. The air was wet and heavy, thick with the scent of mulch. The trees themselves were a sort of pine or conifer, with deep red bark covered in patches of moss. She stepped forward, and the pine needles tickled her toes while the ferns and undergrowth gently brushed her legs.

  What is this place? It had to be one of Jeremahra’s dream worlds, probably of a real-life place he’d visited. But the vibrant imagery and the striking level of detail told her that it wasn’t just any simulation—it was one that he visited often.

  As she stepped onto a forest path, a deep and poignant longing for home threatened to overwhelm her. In spite of her natural curiosity at the place, her eyes blurred and she began to choke up. What’s happening? she wondered to herself, trying to brush it off. It was no use, however—the feelings were too strong.

  Gasping for breath, she sat down on a rock and pressed her fingers to her forehead. As she did so, she realized that the powerful combination of emotions was actually a residual effect of the simulation itself. With her programmer’s eye, she skimmed the data and built a shield to block her from its effects. As soon as she did, the homesickness faded until she felt she could continue.

  What was that? she wondered, opening her eyes again. Physically, nothing had changed, but the streams of data showed an intense amount of emotional residue. That was often a sign of frequent, repetitious usage: in order to properly interface with the mind, the simulation dug into the subconscious to create meaningful projections. Over time, if the thoughts and feelings drawn from the subconscious were similar enough, they became integrated into the main line of the simulation.

  It was clear that this place meant a lot to Jeremahra, though how or why, Noemi couldn’t say. The details of any projection were impossible to predict, much less extrapolate backward to the memory or image that was its source. But perhaps, if she—