Stories: All-New Tales

“Yeah.”

“There’s something you’re not telling me.”

“It tried…Tricks. You wouldn’t believe me.”

“You didn’t believe me when I told you Leif’s birds were real.”

Brennan straightened up. “I’m still not sure you were right. Maybe I caught a delusion. You want to fetch the ’corder?”

“Somebody’s supposed to stay on the bridge.”

“Leif. I’ll get him.”

This time she offered no objection.

The green food lockers were on C Deck. Brennan caught the handle of one in Aisle 10. “This is it. I’m going to level with you, sweetheart. I don’t think it’s still in here, but this is where I put it. I threw it in and locked the door.” He took the key from his pocket, a strip of plastic no larger than a paper clip.

Ena sighed. “Walt was supposed to have those. Keep us from eating too much.”

“Walt’s dead.”

She nodded. “So now I can eat all I want.”

“With three gone, it won’t matter. Don’t worry about it.”

“So I ought to eat too much. Bored people always eat too much.”

Watching her, Brennan nodded. “That was why Walt kept the keys.”

“But I don’t. I don’t eat enough. I keep driving myself to eat. Or try to, anyway. All my uniforms are loose.” She paused. “Aren’t you going to open it?”

“In a minute, maybe. Boredom makes people eat—you’re right about that. Depression keeps them from eating. Get somebody depressed enough, and she’ll starve herself to death. You tried to bribe Leif with sex. I heard you.”

Slowly Ena nodded.

“I’m not going to say I don’t want sex. It would be a lie, and you’d know it was a lie. Every man wants sex, but that’s not the only thing I want. I want you to love me. I want you to love me the way you loved Walt. Okay, I want it for my own selfish reasons. Hell yes, I do. But I want it for your sake, too.”

Brennan paused. “For a second there you were trying to smile. I wish you’d made it.”

She said, “So do I.”

“When I kissed you, up on the bridge, you kissed back.”

She nodded.

“So there’s hope for us.”

“‘Hope is the thing with feathers.’” Ena waited for Brennan to speak. When he did not, she added, “That’s Emily Dickinson.”

“Yeah, I know.” Brennan pulled himself toward the food locker. “You want me to show you the bird and quit talking about all this, because it bothers you. I’ve got it. Only it might help you, too, so I’ve got to keep it up. You think I don’t miss Barbara? You think I don’t wake up when the cabin’s dark, wondering if she’s asleep? I need you almost as much as you need me. You don’t have to believe that.”

“What I believe doesn’t matter.”

“The hell it doesn’t! I need you, and that’s why I’ll never quit. You’ll see, and Ena…”

“What?”

“We’ll get back home alive. Both of us.”

She kissed him, and it was like—yet not quite like—their kiss on the bridge.

“I don’t think the bird’s still in here,” Brennan said rather later. “Not really. It was too tricky for that.”

“We didn’t think they could nest in Leif either.”

“Yeah. What the hell are they? Devils? They can’t be angels.”

Ena said, “I don’t think we’ve got the word. Or the concept either. We’ll have to develop them.”

“Maybe. If we can.”

Brennan opened the locker, and something smaller than a bee flew out.

“It got out,” he said. “Some way it got out. Where the hell did it go?”

“‘They get smaller as they come closer.’”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What it says, perhaps. Leif said it before you pulled him in.”

Brennan rubbed his jaw. Rather to her surprise, Ena discovered that she enjoyed watching him rub his jaw.

“Mine didn’t get smaller when I was chasing it.”

Ena nodded. “It wasn’t coming closer. You were, or you were trying to.”

They jumped.

“Sonofabitch! Did you feel that?”

“Yes.” She discovered that she was holding his arm, and let go. “Yes, I did. It was Leif, up on the bridge.”

“Sure. Had to be.” Brennan glanced at his watch. “He went the minute recharge was complete.”

She nodded. “Now we’ll have to see in which direction.”

THEY HELD A TRIAL the next day, a kangaroo court with Leif tied into his seat. “I’m the prosecutor,” Brennan explained. Brennan no longer sounded, or looked, angry, but his voice was deadly serious. “You’re the defendant and the counsel for the defense, too. Ena’s the judge. She and I think that will be fair. What you think doesn’t matter. I’m going to put the case against you. You’ll be given an opportunity to rebut it. Ena will decide on your penalty.”

“If any,” Ena said.

“She’ll decide your penalty, if there is one. Do you understand?”

“I didn’t want to hurt any of you,” Leif said. He might have been talking to himself. “I just wanted to go back. Fuel’s forty-seven percent surplus. Food’s—”

Brennan raised his fist and looked at Ena.

She shook her head. “We used to be friends, Leif. I’d like us to be friends again. Like us to be friends right now.”

“All right.”

“Good. This is a trial. I am your judge. Do you understand that?”

“I’m not stupid. I just want to go back.”

“I know. Brennan?”

“He sabotaged our mission. Not by some accident. Not even by inattention. He did it deliberately. He brought his damned birds in. We don’t know how many there are, but there’s a lot. You and I will have to round them up and kill them. It may take years, and we may never catch them all.”

Leif started to speak, but Brennan silenced him. “He negated our last jump, and he’ll be a danger to us, and to the mission, for the next fifteen years. Say that we let him live. We’ll have to lock him up and feed him, just you and me, on top of all our other duties. We’ll have to make sure he stays locked up, because we can’t trust him out for a minute. One of us will have to walk with him in the spinner, and that will have to be me, because he might jump you. If—”