Chapter 8

Jase’s shoes clapped against metal, a hollow sound. The ship was small, with only four decks and a large cargo bay. Their quarters were gray, and the recycling system couldn’t keep up, so the air got musty and left a taste like thick fur on Jase’s tongue. Since the ship didn’t have a name or a registry number, they called it just the ship.It couldn’t go very fast either, just warp three or something, and they’d already been in space ten days from the time they’d transferred at a rendezvous point from a transport vessel to the ship. (The transport was the second one they’d taken; the first one they’d caught on Betazed had dropped them after thirty light years on Beta Calara III, and then they’d met up with the others—Pahl and his uncle—and then they met up with anothership…Jase couldn’t keep everything straight, and all this changing and switching was very odd, too, like maybe people were worried that someone might follow them, or something.)

There were five of them aboard: Jase and his father; the stocky, muscular man named Su Chen-Mai; and two Naxerans, the pilot Lam Leahru-Mar and his nephew, Pahl. Pahl was Jase’s age and it was good to have someone around to talk to, probably because Pahl didn’t really want to be there either.

The ship belonged to Chen-Mai. His dad said that Chen-Mai came from Guangzhou on Earth and was an old friend from his graduate school days at the Tarkava Institute on B’Utu Aura. Jase allowed that might be true (why would his father lie?), except Chen-Mai and his father didn’t act like two guys who liked each other very much. The air always got thick around Chen-Mai.

No, sticky.Standing by a viewing port, Jase looked at stars smeared to long rainbows by the ship’s warp bubble. Just like the air got heavy and angry, almost green-black, around his parents—it was the best description Jase had of their feelings crackling back and forth—the air got stickyaround Chen-Mai. The air felt—no, wasbad.

Jase rested his forehead against the portal. The tensor-treated glass was cool and that was good because his face was hot from crying. He didn’t like this ship. He didn’t like Chen-Mai, and his father was lying, and there was something very, very wrong.

He heard a small scuffling sound out of his right ear and in another moment, Pahl came alongside. Jase didn’t turn to look at his friend because he thought his eyes might be red, and he didn’t want Pahl to know he’d been crying. He wasn’t sure how he felt about Pahl being there at that precise moment, but Jase didn’t want to be rude. It wasn’t as if either of them had a lot of other friends to be around. So Jase didn’t do anything except make a sound in the back of his throat, a sort of grunt.

“That’s okay,” said Pahl. Pahl’s voice was soft and whispery, as if he always had laryngitis. “Not talking, I mean. Is it okay if I stand here?”

Jase made another sound that Pahl seemed to take as assent. At least, he didn’t leave. For a good long time—long enough for Jase’s forehead to cool and his eyes to stop burning—they stood together, in silence, staring out at streaky, smudgy stars. Crying always left Jase feeling wrung out, like an old used rag, and the stars whizzing by were hypnotic and made him sleepy. Jase had almost forgotten Pahl was there until Pahl said, “You think we’ll get there soon?”

Jase scrubbed his forehead against the portal in a weary shake of his head. “I don’t know. Dad hasn’t said.”

“Neither has Uncle Lam,” said Pahl. “I think it’s going to be soon, though. Today. Just a feeling.” He paused. “Talking to your mother is hard, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Jase, not really surprised that Pahl knew. (For not the first time, Jase wondered if maybe Pahl was a telepath, like hisdad. Jase had asked Kaldarren about it once, and his dad had only said that he didn’t know and wouldn’t go prying into another person’s mind, not unless there was a very good reason, or he’d been invited. If Pahl was a telepath—though this was highly unlikely because there was no record of any Naxeran having telepathic capabilities—his skills would develop in their own good time. Anyway, his dad said, a good telepath never barged in when he hadn’t been invited.)

Jase looked at his friend. The Naxeran boy regarded him with a solemn, appraising look, and his face was very still except for his frills that quivered slightly as if Pahl were a type of cat who’d sniffed out trouble. All Naxerans had frills: pileated appendages that ran four to a side and were arranged horizontally on either side of their nose, just exactly like a cat’s whiskers. Except Jase had to be careful never to say whiskers.Naxerans were very sensitive about their looks, though Jase couldn’t understand why. After all, the galaxy was filled with all types, and it wasn’t as if Pahl had the antennae of an Andorian, or something. But the Naxerans were very particular about their frills and didn’t like it at all when anyone called their frills anything but.

Pahl asked, “Does your mom make you sad?”

“Sometimes. Angry, too. Like I want to break something.”

“You’re not angry now.”

“No.”

Pahl turned away to stare out the portal again. “I had a dream about mymother.”

“Again?”

Pahl nodded. Jase saw that he was paler than usual, which was saying something for a Naxeran. All Naxerans had skin that was very dark, like ebony. But Pahl’s coloring was closer to milk chocolate. Jase thought that was probably because Pahl’s mother had been a Weyrie. Weyries were a special kind of Naxeran. Jase didn’t really understand the particulars, but he knew that Weyries’ skin was snow-white and their eyes a deep blue, like ancient Antarctic ice, instead of gold like other Naxerans.

Pahl closed his eyes, ice-blue as a Weyrie’s, as if staring at some inner vision. “If I haveto dream, why can’t they be good ones?”

Jase didn’t know what to say. (Naxerans didn’t dream. They weren’t supposed to sleep either. Except Pahl did both. He didn’t sleep long, only two or three hours at most. Long enough for him to dream, though.)

“You know what Uncle Lam says?” Pahl’s eyes were still shut tight. “He says I’m a freak. He says it’s because of my mother that I dream. Uncle Lam says all Weyries are crazy and that my mother was a Weyrie and that’s the reason I am the way I am and look the way I do. He says that no one on Naxera understands the Weyries at all. He says that the Weyries are all mistakes and throwbacks. So whenever I tell him I dream, he gives me this look, as if he’s worried that I’ll go crazy, like my mother.

“Do you know,” Pahl’s face swiveled toward Jase, and his blue eyes were wide and swam with a bright shine of pain, “he said that I was lucky not to know my mother. He said it was a good thing she jumped off that cliff and drowned when I was only three, so I wouldn’t have to know anything about her. I don’t understand that.” A solitary tear slid down Pahl’s cheek, and his frills shuddered.

Jase felt a lump at the back of his throat. Pahl’s distress was so obvious, Jase forgot his own and he desperately wanted to make his friend feel better. “Tell me your dream. Was it the cliff again?”

Pahl nodded. “Only this time, the water was different. Instead of it being green, the way it is on Naxera, the water was silver. Like it was night and there were two moons, only the moons were in the water, so the water was silver.”