Extent, p.8
Extent, page 8
part #7 of Jekh Saga Series
“Are there others? Godparents, I mean.” Edgar could come back to the other question. One thing at a time.
“Eileen still thinking. So many she could ask. So many already have full broods, though.”
That would have eliminated any of the Beshnis from consideration. They had an absolute pile of kids already. Many of Eileen’s other friends were like Edgar—transient and married to space. They would absolutely tell her yes, but they wouldn’t have been good options. Edgar could certainly provide her with some referrals if she were open to Earth-residing options. He even had an adventurous college-aged cousin who’d move to Jekh with a good enough reason.
“So, the names?” Edgar asked.
“I do you better. Hold on.” The connection sputtered and crackled.
Edgar had to check his wrist receiver to ensure the connection light was still flashing. Leray was still there.
The file tone chirped, indicating Leray had sent a document of some sort.
“What’s that? I don’t want to open it on my work COM. Have to forward it over to my personal device.”
“Little video. They have names on their robes. Gift from Precious. Is so charming.”
Edgar had one mind to skip the shower, find his secured tablet, and open that file up at maximum resolution.
But he tamped down the impulsive urge, took several deep breaths, and then thanked Leray. “Listen, I’m off for the next six weeks or so. I might be in Little Gitano when you visit.”
“With Vincent?”
Edgar pressed his tongue between his molars and gave his head a slow, self-pitying shake. It used to be that people would ask him where Eileen was whenever he happened to be out and about alone. They’d stopped doing that at some point. It was a good thing he didn’t notice when. He needed fewer things to be annoyed about.
“Vincent’s going gambling and frolicking with her friends.” Edgar turned the shower water back on and bought himself a couple of shampoo powder and soap tablets from the vending machine. “She’s supposed to return to work next week, I think.”
“We will see.”
“What’s that mean?”
Leray huffed. “See you soon, Salehi. Bad lands here where I journey. No transmitters. Will fall off soon. Safe travels.”
The connection dropped.
Edgar unclenched his jaw, unfastened his COM strap, and tossed the device into his boot.
Whatever murmurs being passed along that there was something between Edgar and Gemma beyond the professional, he was going to have to aggressively nip in the bud. Beyond simply not being interested in her that way, he suspected his life was about to get too complicated for him to be treading bullshit water.
At least, it would if his prayers had truly been answered.
___
The plane landed at Base McGarry near the Beshni farm. Technically, the facility was situated on a back corner of the private property, but the terminal building was far enough from the farm structures that he could arrive without any of his friends expecting a visit.
He would visit. They were good citizens of Jekh and wonderful, open people to him specifically. He’d never be so discourteous to be in Little Gitano and not seek their company. The visit would have to wait until after he saw Eileen, though. She lived on the other side of the stream at a slightly lower elevation, and he couldn’t see her house from where he landed. Because he was trying to be discreet, he’d have to walk the long way around, but that was fine.
He needed the time to get his head together.
He took the people-mover motorized walkway as far as to the base’s edge and then started walking parallel to the road and the mountain range.
It was a pretty piece of country. Even a city boy like him could appreciate the wonders the changes in seasons brought to the land. Their little sliver of the hemisphere was bursting with the pale greens and reds of tender growth and the countryside was carpeted with soft new shoots.
He almost wanted to take off his boots and run through them.
Silly.
Smiling, he shook his head. He’d never been the sort to frolic, and he wasn’t about to start. Spectacles were for people like the Beshnis. They were much better at the theatrical.
His COM emitted a low beep, indicative of a long-range text-only message. “Read it,” he said, tapping the band.
“Edgar,” came the computerized voice, “that is Mommy’s face on that tiny body. If you can’t see that, you shouldn’t be piloting spaceships. Who the boy looks like, I don’t know. Maybe his mother. But the small one looks like all the Balochs on Mommy’s side. Tell me I’m wrong. I dare you.”
His sister wasn’t wrong. Yara was good with faces.
Aboard the plane, he’d needed a reality check. The moment he’d had a good enough connection, he’d transmitted the picture from Leray to her with a minimum of explanation.
Yara was also good at minding her own business.
The infant named Hannah so closely resembled one of his mother’s baby pictures that Edgar had to check the video’s bones to ensure the frames hadn’t been manipulated. For the moment, though, what little bit of hair the baby had was blonde. Edgar’s mother’s had always been black.
The boy, who was somewhat darker in complexion than his sister, had his mother’s alert, see-everything eyes and high forehead. He looked like Eileen to Edgar, but having observed every inch of Eileen in intimate detail, Edgar also knew what parts of Henry weren’t from his mother.
Or from any other person on that planet, either.
That little preauricular pit in front of his right ear was Edgar’s doing, as was the broader nose bridge, the slightly cleft chin, and the little curl in his hair.
Edgar moved faster. He could be there in twenty minutes if his bag didn’t get too heavy.
“Reply to message,” he told the COM.
It beeped.
“I suppose I should explain. Later, though. This is a matter that requires great sensitivity. Say nothing to anyone else about the subject until I’m able to be clearer. This may yet blow up in someone’s face. Probably mine.”
He tossed down the bag and ran.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“I don’t reckon you’re going to get much work done in that getup, but who am to judge?” Eileen expelled a chuckle through her nose and leaned her hoe against the pea trellis. The kitchen garden was coming along with a few hiccups, though she couldn’t quite say the same for Zilkat. He was still processing what country life meant.
He tightened the vibrant red sash around his coveralls and kicked a clump of mud off his work clog. “I saw a similar outfit in your magazine archives. I couldn’t find the exact same footwear, but on Jekh, one does what one can.”
“Martha Stewart never wore her coveralls as cutoffs or left the zipper down at her navel.”
“Maybe she should have.”
Eileen clamped her lips together to keep her words to herself and, shaking her head, headed toward the kids. The shadows had moved while she’d been building potato hills, and there were few ailments that crept on as quickly as a Jekhan sunburn. She tugged the portable canopy a few feet to the right and gave them back the toys they’d tossed off their play mats.
She must have unwittingly appeased some spirits of maternity at some point in her life for the babies to be as self-entertaining as they were. Everyone had warned her not to beat herself up too much if she couldn’t get work done while they were little. While her productivity was nowhere near a hundred percent of usual, she was farther along than she’d ever imagined. Her house had started as a square cottage that she was having to expand one room at a time, but she at least had a roof over their heads, running water, and enough solar panels installed to guarantee them electricity in all weather conditions. Her ranching venture was at an extremely nascent stage, but the skeleton was in place, and she could ramp up at any time.
The only major complication she had to contend with was her transition back to the Corps. Admiral Marlwen was dangling a hell of a bonus in front of her face if she could manage to rip herself away. If she were frugal, she could stretch those credits to go a long way.
“I’ve got seeds for you,” she said to Zilkat. “Precious brought a big crate of things from my mother. Hid all the seeds inside the baby stuff. You know how they are about allowing agricultural products onto the planet before they’ve been quarantined and deemed non-invasive.”
Zilkat planted a hand against his chest and performed a faux gasp. “You mean to tell me a member of Jekh’s own Service Corps treats laws as mere suggestions?”
“Ha ha.” After a glance at the time, she cringed. Hannah was almost overdue for a meal. Eileen had been trying to get better about the over-feeding thing. Dorro had a new pediatrician working under him at the clinic, and that woman was a champion, blue-ribbon nag. She’d had Eileen keeping all sorts of spreadsheets and feeding charts. Hannah was healthy, but little. That demon with the stethoscope thought she could catch up to her brother, but Eileen didn’t see how that would be possible. Even to her untrained eyes, it was evident the kids weren’t built the same.
She got a squirt of hand sanitizer from the diaper bag and got Hannah situated against her chest.
“It’s not that I don’t respect the laws.” She was going to pretend she didn’t see Zilkat nudging some of her larger Murasaki sweet potato slips into his take pile. They’d been hard to come by, but she was hoping if they diversified the locations they were planted in, they’d have better chances of getting them to thrive somewhere local. Zilkat just liked the way the sweet potato flowers looked. She didn’t think he’d ever even eaten a sweet potato before.
“I know they’re there for a reason,” she said, “and I probably understand them better than anyone. Remember, my family’s been doing this kind of work since before dinosaurs became chickens.”
“The what did what?” The tip of his pert nose wrinkled in that peculiar way it always did.
“Never mind. Anyway, nothing my mother sent is going to spread faster than I can kill. Plus, I sterilize all my seeds, so they’re not going to introduce any funky stuff to the environment. Sometimes it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. But you didn’t hear that from me. You keep on following the laws. I don’t want to have to bail you out of detention. I don’t think you’re built for jail, Zilkat. Not even the cushy Jekhan ones.”
Zilkat made a suspicious face and pointedly looked away.
Ah.
She snorted.
“You’ve been in detention, huh?”
“Who hasn’t?”
“I, for one, have not.”
He shrugged. “Occupational hazard of the before-times. I’m totally on the up-and-up now, though, aren’t I? Regulations and such. No one’s going to complain to a peacekeeper that I took their money and conveniently neglect to inform them that it was money I earned on my knees.”
“You’ve lived a colorful life to be so young.”
“I could try to get some schooling and find a job behind a shop counter, but I’m not designed for quiet dignity. The money is better being a flagrant libertine. That’s what Precious calls me. I looked up those words and I thought they seemed to suit.”
“Oh, they suit, all right.” Eileen didn’t think she needed to mention that Precious would know better than anyone what being flagrant meant. He knew how she was. Everyone knew.
“She said she would bring me back a gold necklace from Queens with a pendant that says that,” he said. “Where’s Queens?”
“New York.”
“Ah. I’ve heard of it. In the magazine, that is where the shows are. The ones with the music. I saw a replay of one at work several weeks ago. A client insisted we watch it together since he had time left after. I liked it.”
“What was the show?” Eileen gently removed Hannah’s probing fingers from her nostrils. She’d hoped that by four months old, the child would find her mother’s nose infinitely less interesting. No such luck.
“I believe it was The Book of Mormon. I can’t say I understood it all at the time, but I looked up what things meant. Something called Wicked is supposed to broadcast overnight tonight. I may stay up late and watch. What sorts of seeds did your mother send?”
Eileen was just about to open her mouth and answer when a moving splotch of black and gray entered her periphery. She turned her head toward the road. There was about a quarter of a mile between the lane and her garden, and whoever was in that stretch was moving like the devil was on their heels.
“Expecting someone?” Zilkat asked.
“I didn’t think I was, but that doesn’t mean anything. People pop in all the time with deliveries and whatnot. Especially the construction guys. They come and go without saying anything because their schedule is so erratic. They’re always waiting on shipments. Anyway.” She switched Hannah to the other breast and stealth plucked the non-native, but thriving all the same, bug that Henry was trying to grasp, likely to examine inside his mouth. “Lots of veggies. Don’t know if they’ll do well here, but Trigrian and I are both going to give them all a try. The Beshnis have got about three different microclimates over there, so we might get lucky somewhere, even if not here. That’ll motivate me to get a greenhouse set up soon. She also sent me some fruit tree seeds. Apple, pear, plum. Lots of flowers. So many flowers. You can look at them and see what colors you might like. Some are tricky, though. Gotta start some of the seeds the winter before you plant them, and seasons are kind of weird here.”
Zilkat thrust his chin forward with determination. “I will research them all. That will give me plenty to do when I can’t sleep.”
“Oh, Lord. What now? Why can’t you sleep?”
Eileen wasn’t trying to keep track of Zilkat’s habits. She simply couldn’t ignore them. He was at her place so often to “make sure the wolves didn’t spirit away the babies” that she’d started internalizing them.
He shrugged and turned his gaze toward the path.
Eileen was more interested in the fact he was restlessly wringing his hands. He didn’t have a nervous personality. Or at least, he hadn’t before. That was perhaps another thing he’d started realizing about himself.
“I think my schedule is to blame,” he said. “I used to be a creature of night. Up during the dark and sleep all morning. Hard to break that.”
“Have you tried transitioning slowly? Winding down an hour earlier every week or something until your body figures things out?”
“I ought to try that. My clients have been confused by my hours as of late. They prefer fucking at night, I guess.”
She grunted. “Reasonable. There’s something to be said about doing the dirty in the dark. Listen, you’ve just got to train them to expect different. Start the next time you see them. Let them know the deal. If they don’t like the way you operate, refer them to one of your employees. You’re the owner. You can do whatever you want.”
The slow widening of his eyes suggested that he hadn’t considered that possibility.
“And maybe try to make your office a little darker so it feels like night back there, if that’s so important to them.”
“I like the way you think.”
“Yeah? Sometimes I even get paid for thinking.” She laughed and crooked her thumb toward the open greenhouse. “Seed haul’s in there. Feel free to thumb through.”
Zilkat sashayed to the little building in such a hurry that an outsider might have thought someone had shouted “Free tacos!”
The Jekhan obsession with carnitas was a fascinating phenomenon. It nearly rivaled in intensity their recent love affair with poutine, of all things. If Zilkat enjoyed anything more than telling Hannah long stories about his experimental skincare routines, it was a taco.
With her unplanned son rooting around in her greenhouse, she coaxed the planned one back onto his belly. Henry would have been content to stare at the clouds, but the pediatrics shrew doctor said his skull would get flat if he kept at that. “How’d humankind survive so long without snippy little doctors fresh off the turnip truck telling us we’re doing everything wrong, huh, Hannah?”
Hannah obviously had no response, but a winded male voice returned, “Sheerly by population mathematics. Eventually, someone has to defy the odds.”
Eileen’s head snapped up and swiveled toward Salehi approaching from the path. The groundcover was so lush that she hadn’t heard his footfalls, and she’d been too distracted by Zilkat to watch the visitor closely.
Her heart started pounding in her throat. She’d gotten used to not seeing him and not beating herself up after every time they crossed paths, and there he was on her farm without warning.
It was almost like a ghost had come to visit. A ghost she’d once loved.
“Uh…”
She closed her mouth and swallowed hard, trying to get her wits about her.
Huge circles of perspiration bloomed under his arms and drenched his hair and face. His forehead and cheeks were red from exertion.
He’d hustled up that path with the energy and knees of a twenty-year-old. Like her, he was far from twenty, but he’d always been far too discourteous to show it.
“Damn, what happened?” she asked in something close to her usual frank tone.
Self-conscious, she tucked her tit away and planted Hannah chest-first against her shoulder for a quick burp. She wasn’t going to make a fuss about the kids. She wasn’t going to make things awkward. After all, he’d known she was pregnant. He had to know what would happen next, so she was going to treat him like the incredibly intelligent creature he was. “I…could have sworn my COM was on.” She turned her wrist over and shook it until the device screen illuminated. “Don’t tell me Admiral Marlwen’s recalled me and had to send you out there to fetch me. Not happening unless he wants every day to be ‘Bring Your Babies to Work Day’.”
And things had to be about to get bad on Jekh if they were pressing Eileen back to work that way. Most days, she still felt like her pelvic floor was dragging against the ground. She couldn’t go into outer space like that. For that matter, she couldn’t go anywhere that was more than five minutes from a toilet.
