Michael Flynn - Up Jim River

“I need to get out,” she said abruptly, pushing herself from the table. “I need air and trees and brooks; or I need cities and bustle. Something beside hotel apartments and liner staterooms and recycled air and water and artificial miniature streams in a damned porcelain bowl!” She strode across the room to where her harp rested on one of the chairs.

The other two stared at her openmouthed. Donovan shuddered as the Fudir took control. “Alabaster,” he said, “is plenty outdoors. Ever see the Cliffside Montage? It’s out in the Prehensile Desert past Luriname. The prehumans carved the side of an entire butte into the most intricate shapes and figures. It’s the farthest of all their artifacts from the Rift.” He fell silent as it became clear Méarana was not listening.

He tried another tack. “Boldly Go isn’t safe. The matriarchs are always looking for fresh blood, and have been known to kidnap women touristas and ‘adopt’ them. Without a Circuit Station, you couldn’t call for help.”

“I can take care of myself,” she said, picking up the harp. She began to prowl the room, playing.

“Away, away on the Rigel Run [she sang]

And off through California.”

“What’s that you’re singing?” said Donovan.

“A song I’m working on about people who heaped together all their most precious treasures…

All we are and all we hope to be

Are outward bound, for hope can never die…

“and they set off to find a refuge from their oppressors in far-off California.

Our green, familiar world is fading into time…

“You said something like that yesterday. Time is distance; or distance, time. It’s just fragments of song for now. I can’t decide whether it is a goltraí, a sad song of exile and farewell…

So farewell to ye, all of ye, grand treasure fleet ,

You carry our hopes far awa’ .

We’ll hold ourselves true to ye, never submit…”

“Treasure fleet,” said the Fudir. “You’re building a song on Hugh’s teasing question?”

“California,” whispered Billy Chins.

Donovan turned to him. “Do you know what that means? California?”

But the khitmutgar shook his head. “No, is sounding nice. Californ-ya.” He rolled out the syllables. “What means it, the word?”

Méarana shrugged. “A place of hope, perhaps; which would make it a geantraí. It could be both, maybe. The sadness of exile followed by the triumph of hope.”

Donovan threw his napkin down on the table. “You live in a fool’s world, harper. I know what your hope is, what your ‘California’ is. But, hope dies! It must. Because it hurts too much while it lives.” And he strode out of the room and slammed the door to his sleeping quarters.

Billy ate another biscuit, stuffing the thing whole into his mouth, and chewing as he began to clear the table. On his way to the kitchenette, he paused and swallowed. “All bungim waintim?” he said open-faced to Méarana. “You pack him, the luggage?”

She nodded. “Last night.”

“Me, too. I come with. You Billy’s new memsahb.”

“Oh, Billy, you can’t help me on Boldly Go. They allow no men on the planet.”

“Maybe no help there. But maybe help…find ‘California.’ Is tramp freighter Reginão Luck pass through this week for Matriarchy. Big Board, him say so. They take him, the passengers, so Billy make book two berths.”

She looked toward the closed door. “I can’t…just walk out on him.”

“Why not?” Billy answered. “He would.”

Méarana put her harp in its case, strode quickly to her room, and fetched her bags. She returned to find Billy in the suite’s foyer with his own meager belongings. “I should buy you new clothes,” she told him. “The Kennel can’t object to that, can they?”

But the little man shook his head gravely. “Billy most objectionable man.”

They left quietly; but that night, on board the Reginão Luck , the harper sang no songs.

Traveling in the limited appointments of a tramp freighter throws one among a class of rough men and women, unaccustomed to the pampering of passengers. The harper’s presence meant an addition to their profit but they did not otherwise know what to do with her. There were no stewards.

Into the lack of service stepped Billy Chins. The Corner of Harpaloon had toughened him far more than his obsequiousness had made apparent. Out from under Donovan’s thumb, he came out of himself more. He could talk the talk that freighter crews understood, and a certain swagger began to inform his steps. He was still “mistress harp’s khansammy,” and while he never quite spoke with her as an equal, neither did he bow and scrape as he used to. He collected their meals in the freighter’s galley and served them to Méarana in her quarters, always ensuring that she had eaten before he did.

Throughout the brief transit to Boldly Go, Méarana could not shake the guilt for having abandoned the Fudir. Playing for the freighter crew lightened the melancholy and dark; but she could not quite find the joy, and she wondered if she had left a portion of her art behind her in the Hotel of the Summer Moon.

“It wasn’t right,” she told Billy the day they rendezvoused with the Freight Center in the high coopers of Boldly Go. “I spent years in the finding of him, and minutes in the leaving.”

But her servant only said, “Sometimes the search please better than the find.”

Bumboats did not drop down-system from the Freight Center, so Méarana and Billy had to wait two days for the regular shuttle run to Stranger Station, the passenger terminal. Arriving at the complex, they found the usual transient hotel, shopping arcades, and other facilities. Boldly Go was an important nexus on Electric Avenue, with connections to Sumday, Gatmander, and Alabaster as well as Siggy O’Hara; and over the next few days, while they waited for the bumboat to drop, several liners and smaller ships entered Boldly Roads for rest stop, maintenance, or terminal activities, and several more passed through “on the fly,” dropping and picking up passengers and freight and squirting and receiving comm traffic. Although not as large as Jehovah or Old ‘Saken, the interchange at Boldly Go was a prize worth plucking. There had been a war with Foreganger twenty years since and no more than five had passed since Yves Whitefield’s mercenaries had briefly seized the transit points. Without an Ourobouros station, the Cooperating Matriarchs of Boldly Go relied on their own Amazon Joint Navy—which had fended off both attempts.

Boldly Go was not a popular destination, and the bumboat carried mostly locals on leave from jobs on Stranger Station. These kept to themselves, chatting in high-pitched, excited voices. The outlanders were a mixed bag: two news agency crews, a dame from Angletar in a blue, head-to-toe borke , an Alabastrine businessman in a flowing green-yellow-red striped dashki, a High Taran in fringed cloak and kilt.

The pilot, a thickset woman with close-cropped hair, viewed her outland passengers with obvious disdain. Méarana’s long, red hair came under her disapproving eye, as did the head-to-toe borke . But the pilot reserved her greatest disdain for Billy Chins and other men onboard.

“Once we reach Charming Moon,” she said, “you bikes are off my boat! We got a nice holding facility there for males. Got urinals and everything. Whatever your business with down below, you can telepresent. And no complaining about the time lag. Be happy we don’t make you do it up here, where you’d have to wait five hours just to trade hellos.”

“Well,” said the woman in the borke , “so would your people on the ground. The inconvenience works both ways.” This earned her a scowl from the pilot.