Shop’s Closed

The Calculus remained on Gelassenheit for a final day. The nearby farmers that Buckle worried wouldn’t come arrived soon after the sun finally broke through the clouds, pulling their carts through the soggy field by defeated horses. Their wagons carried hand-crafted dinette sets and boxes of quilts. Some were filled with corn, grain, or vegetables, rising height behind their driver’s heads. A small trail of vegetation led back to the communities from which they came.

Buckle sat upon a pressure case like a king, assigning values to each good brought before him and turning away those he found lacking. A pistol rested in his lap and he waved it with an officious air toward Oka when the goods on offer qualified for medicines of equal or lesser value. Oka felt herself grin at seeing her skipper back in his element and did as she was told to carry out her part in the performance.

As she bent down to fetch two cases of antibiotics, Oka spied Samantha lurking in the hatchway of the Calculus, dressed in borrowed clothes and looking quite the shipper. The gray trousers and work-shirt with the ship name emblazoned over a breast carried very well on the girl with some strategic cuffing to make them fit. Only the extra weight and old-fashioned shoes gave her away to more than the casual observer. But Samantha kept her distance and Oka grinned, feeling like Buckle might have done some good by landing on the little moon.

“No tomatoes,” Buckle said. He pointed at the cart and shook his head. “I don’t want rotten fruit stinking up my hold.”

“Very fresh,” the farmer replied. He bit into one to prove his point and smiled at its tangy flavor. “Very good.”

“No,” Buckle said. “Oka, would you get that guy out of here?”

He pointed at a man with a load of furniture and beckoned him forward. “How many pieces?” Buckle asked. The man displayed a full hand of fingers and Buckle sighed. “The fuck am I going to do with five chairs around a table? Not six?” he asked.

The man shook his head.

“Well, let’s see it…”

The man, with the help of a boy, unloaded four wooden chairs and a small square table from his horse cart, arranging them before Buckle like a chorus line.

“Of course,” Buckle mumbled. “Lam?”

Lam circled the kitchen set, inspecting it like an auction house appraiser, searching for flaws in the tight joins or dribbles of glue marring the stain under the finish. But it was perfect. The lathe had carved elegant legs that tapered from thick posts into fine feet and the top had a pleasing grain pattern highlighted by the cherry stain. The steam-bent backs of each chair curved up with a graceful sweep from the seat. Lam whistled as he leaned over and ran his hand across the smooth surface.

“Wow, skip,” he said. “I’m guessing the table’ll get us near thirty grand, easy, and the chairs’ve got to be worth about five apiece.” He added the figures on his fingers, brightening at the result. “Shit, this right here is almost fifty banks.”

Buckle nodded toward the craftsman with appreciation and lifted himself off the pressure case. With the turn of four latches, it opened to reveal rows of shrink-wrapped medicine. The craftsman appeared at his side with a shopping list, the molecule names listed and Buckle rummaged through looking for each.

Buckle fetched out three cases of antibiotic vials and handed them over. The craftsman seemed anxious and Buckle patted his shoulder.

“Very fresh,” Buckle said. “From Darwin.”

Buckle wasn’t certain how much the man understood but he seemed relieved at the answer. Lam turned toward the skipper and shrugged, a question on his mind.

“How long you been flying?” Buckle asked.

“Five years,” Lam said.

“You never traded drugs before?”

“Not the non-recreational kind. Why? What’s the difference?”

“Antibiotics don’t hold up through much space travel,” Oka said. “Tend to die off after a week or so.”

“No shit?” asked Lam.

“No shit,” said Buckle.

“Why?”

“Radiation. For some reason they just don’t hold,” said Buckle. “I don’t know. I don’t have the science.”

The traders came like an army until the fourteenth hour of the day and dwindled into a trickle until the eighteenth when they stopped coming at all. Buckle, Lam, and Oka thanked their respective gods as they reclined on the emptied pressure cases, exhausted from the day’s work. Between hits on Lam’s marijuana-laced cigarette, they massaged aching limbs and sipped from bottles of beer as the sun dropped over the shallow horizon.

“I figure we get her in the air and set course tonight,” Buckle said. “We should be to New Normandy in, what Marty, seventy-two, seventy-five hours?”

“Sure,” Lam mumbled, half asleep.

“Might actually eke out a profit on this one.”

“That’d be a pleasant change of pace,” Oka said. “Will it get us out of the system? Take us somewhere with a bit more traffic?”

“That’s the idea,” said Buckle. “Shit, with today’s profit we might even swing a bond. Head for Fenghuang or Hwon or something, I don’t know. Imagine a hold full of coke or steel and what that’d bring us.”

Buckle stretched across his case and pulled up his shirt to scratch a hairy stomach. He tapped his belly button with a tip of a finger, soothed by the popping it made when hit just right. Oka reclined onto her elbows and watched the Norman sun disappear behind the deepening red of the gas giant.
In the distance, Oka caught the glimpse of a lone rider headed their way and sighed. She pulled herself upright and nodded in the general direction. “Skip,” she said. “Got another customer.”

“Shop’s closed,” he said. His eyes were closed and his voice weary with the onset of sleep.

Oka stood to meet the rider, a tall man in prime physical condition with a stone face beneath a ragged black beard. Oka did not know Jacob to look at, but the mean glare he shot at her left Oka feeling dirty.

“Nothing for sale,” she said. Oka backed up a step as he swung his leg over and dismounted, landing in the weeds with a heavy thump. He towered over her and a single step closed the distance between them by half. Oka’s finger danced on the heel of the pistol strapped to her thigh as she retreated a pace. “Skip! Marty!” she called.

Buckle and Lam pulled themselves up with the sluggishness that came from being stoned, laughing at a joke neither man told. Buckle stood and stretched.
“Haven’t got anything else for sale, friend,” he said.

“You have my daughter,” said Jacob. His voice was deep and smoky, coming, it seemed, from a cavern within his chest, but nasal at the same time. It was Deitsch accented English but understandable. “I want her back.”

“We have no idea what you’re talking about,” Oka said. She crossed her arms in defiance. “So, why don’t you just move on?”

“Do not play stupid with me, English,” Jacob said. “I know she is here. Where is Samantha?”

“Shove off, mister,” Buckle said. “You don’t want our kind of trouble, yeah?”

Oka’s hand held the grip of her pistol but it stayed in its holster, waiting. A metal rasping came from the ship as Lam dragged a pressure case up the loading ramp. Oka and Buckle turned at the noise and Jacob pushed past.

“Martin!” Buckle called. “Don’t let him inside!”

Jacob stormed across the landing zone with the kind of confidence that came with intent. His steady rhythm betrayed no great hurry but his long legs outpaced both Buckle and Oka’s sprints. Lam let go of the case, struggling with his thigh-holster to release his weapon. Jacob was halfway up the ramp before Lam had it pointed in the right direction.

“Just hold it there,” Lam said. He trembled and the brushed steel barrel wavered from side to side, up and down. Jacob grinned a sinister display of rotten teeth and Lam stepped back, tripping over a crate of corn. His finger pulled the trigger, firing into the cargo bay ceiling, clanging against but not penetrating the rusty steel.

Jacob charged. His head whipped from side to side, processing the contents of the Calculus while determining his path through the hold.

“Stop!” Lam cried from the deck. “Stop, god damn it!”

But Jacob’s forward motion was unstoppable and he navigated between the dining set and a box of apples overflowing from their wooden crates. Lam fired but the second bullet did as little damage as the first except to the fruit, apples exploding in a spray pattern. The third made contact.

The soft lead of the bullet flattened as it slammed into Jacob’s thigh, widening more than its advertised caliber. It ripped through muscle, painting the forward section of the hold red. Jacob collapsed to the floor, a roar of pain echoing through the ship’s passages.

“That fucker can really move,” Buckle said, coming up behind Lam in a breathless pant.

Lam nodded with a dumb expression, watching blood and muscle slide off the bulkhead.

“Martin,” Oka said. She waited for his eyes to meet hers. “Marty? You okay?”

“I don’t think he’s ever shot someone before,” said Buckle.

“Well, then I guess we’ll forgive his self-aggrandizements,” she said. “Marty, why don’t you hand me your weapon and get some bandages.”

“Yeah,” said Lam. “Yeah, sure.”

“And get Samantha while you’re at it, too,” Buckle said. “The young lady has some explaining to do.”

Samantha peered around the hatch, gaping at the carnage within. She heard the animal cries of her father as Oka tightened a tourniquet around his leg. Buckle stood, fists on his hips, glaring down. One hand held a pistol by the barrel as if ready to swing.

“Samantha,” Buckle said. “Would you get the fuck in here please?”

She pried herself away from the bulkhead and shuffled forward, around long streaks of blood and applesauce. Her eyes were glued to the deck and she shrank with every meter. Jacob shot a blaming look at his daughter.

“This your dad?” asked Buckle.

Samantha replied with a dumb look.

“She doesn’t speak English,” Oka said.

“Right,” said Buckle. “This your girl?”

“Yes,” said Jacob. Oka yanked the loose ends of the t-shirt-turned-improvised-tourniquet and Jacob bellowed. The sound bounced off the steel walls and ricocheting through the ship.

Samantha retreated a pace, clinging to a toolbox.

“I want the two of them out of here,” Buckle said. “And I want off this fucking rock, yeah?”

Oka jabbed a finger into Jacob’s seeping wound for another cry and stood, kicking the stiffness out of her knees. She waved Buckle aside to a corner of the bay.

“Let’s put him on his horse and go,” she said.

“That’s what I just said.”

“But we can’t leave the girl, Jonas.”

“And why the hell not?”

Oka glanced at Samantha cowering behind freight and then toward Jacob as Buckle followed the silent tour of his bay. Oka pleaded with her skipper with her eyes and he replied with a smirk.

“It’s not our problem,” he said.

“What’ll it cost us?”

“It’s already cost us a load of apples and maybe our furniture.”

“Come on.”

Buckle exhaled through his nose with slow, deliberate frustration. He scratched his beard with the heel of his pistol. “Fine,” he said. “But she’s yours until Sarajito. And you and Lam need to take care of that sonofabitch, right?”

“Sure,” Oka said. She lingered. “You’re a good man, Jonas.”

“Get out of my face. And give me a cigarette.”

“A good man,” she said. Oka traded him the handgun for a cigarette from her dwindling supply with a grin.

Buckle lit his smoke with a dour expression, using the exterior hatchway as a support brace. Jacob’s auburn mare gnawed at the weeds forty meters distant, unaffected by the events inside or the drizzle from the darkened sky.

Lam returned with the first-aid kit, an orange tackle box stuffed with syringes and bandages, and knelt beside Jacob to inspect the wound. The blood flow had reduced to a trickle but the damage was serious. Oka stood over them, pistol in hand, watching Jacob with careful attention.

“He’ll live,” she said. “We need to throw him over his horse and lift off.”

“I want my daughter,” Jacob growled.

“Shut up,” she said. She kicked his leg with the toe of her boot. A fresh splatter of blood appeared on the deck. Jacob held his wound, grinding his teeth against the pain.

“Ayame, Jesus,” Lam said.

“Pick him up and get him out of here,” she said.

“I will not go anywhere,” said Jacob.

“Shut,” Oka said, swinging the pistol down as if her arm were a pendulum and striking Jacob’s head with solid steel. “Up,” she said, arm returning for a second blow. Jacob fell silent, blood dribbling down the sides of his head where contact broke the skin.

Samantha pushed herself against a bulkhead as the Calculus fled the atmosphere. She held herself there until Oka pulled her away, not noticing that the thumping of the ion-plasma engine had returned to its rhythmic pulse, converting subatomic particles into energy and powering the onboard systems. The ship’s heart beat three times every second and even in the most isolated sections of the craft it could be heard like the low-frequency rumble of an earthquake.

As Oka walked Samantha down a passageway, Samantha heard the life-support systems hissing through vents that lined each deck, exchanging the air within the ship every minute with something recycled but breathable. Even the deck plates had a hum from the heating coils that warmed the Calculus and the gravity generators.

She paused at a dorsal port and watched the stars, creeping by silent and respectful of the view. As far as she could see, there was nothing but distant light. A lot more than she’d ever seen.

“I know it looks like we’re a long way out,” Oka said. “But we’re really only a couple hours away from your home.”
Samantha returned a confused look and Oka gave her a comforting smile. “Space is a big place,” she said, knowing it was more for herself. “It’s tough to find anything. Even a girl.”

Oka motioned Samantha forward, stopping at intervals to point at random objects along the way, saying their name in English. Samantha followed, repeating after and stumbling across the decks, still unaccustomed to artificial gravity and using the bulkheads for support when she lost her balance. They made their way into the mess and Oka took a mug off the rack.

“Cup,” said Oka.

“Cup,” Samantha said.

Oka turned the knob on the faucet and a pump awoke, churning with sluggish purpose. A weak dribble of water flowed into the sink, sometimes circling the drain left but then changing right without notice, creating minuscule waves.

“Water,” Oka said.

“Water.”

“How’s it going with daddy’s little girl?” Lam asked, coming in from the quarterdeck. He opened and closed several cabinets, not finding anything appetizing. He slouched onto a chair by the table.

“We’re working on nouns,” Oka said.

“Cup water,” Samantha said.

Oka filled the mug and passed it over. “Cup of water,” she said.

“Cup of water.”

“Is she retarded?” asked Lam.

“Not you’re the baseline.”

“Ha ha,” said Lam. He leaned on the chair’s hind legs, keeping his balance with effort. “She seems retarded.”

“Go clean the hold already, Martin.”

“Why me?” whined Lam. He rocked back onto the front legs of the chair and bounced out of it with momentum and injustice. “It was her old man that caused it.”

“You made it, you clean it,” she said. “Those are the rules.”

“Rules,” Samantha said.

“Shut it,” Lam said. He stomped across the deck pausing to pick up a mop and bucket.

Oka pointed after him and said, “Asshole.”

“Asshole,” Samantha replied.