“Frontier necessity,” Rethis said. “You cooperate, or you don’t last.” He looked at me again with a knowing expression. “Good to see you out, Andrek.”
He moved on. I watched him go and made a note to address that conversation at some future point when I had more optimism about its outcome.
“You served together?” Danielle asked.
“Yes.”
“He seems like someone who would make an excellent first officer.”
“He was my first officer.”
She looked at me. I kept my eyes on the stall ahead, where I needed to acquire some items on my list. She stared at me with a look I learned to recognize as ‘she’s going to ask a follow-up question.’
“You were a captain,” she said.Not a question.
“For eleven years.”
“Of what kind of ship?”
“A patrol carrier on frontier routes with some recovery operations.” I stopped at the stall and began examining the calibration supplies. “Rethis was with me for the last six of them."
“Including Yxia,” she said.
“Yes, including Yxia.”
She said nothing. I found the calibration cells I needed, handed them to the vendor and paid without bartering. Pip reached out from Danielle’s arms and touched one of the display items with one careful claw. Danielle caught her hand and said ‘no’gently, and Pip stopped.
We moved through the market for another hour. I knew where everything was; Danielle knew nothing and was interested in all of it, which meant we took longer than I had planned, and I found, to my total surprise, that I didn’t mind. Her questions visibly startled vendors, who were unused to them because most long-term colony residents had stopped seeing the specifics of what they sold years ago. She negotiated, poorly but with great enthusiasm, over a piece of colored glass she wanted for her window and eventually got within fifteen percent of a reasonable price, which I considered a reasonable outcome for a firstattempt. Pip fell asleep between the textile section and the food stalls, boneless and snoring. Danielle carried her with a careful adjustment of her arms that she’d worked out without my help.
Old Sethara who said what I had yet to voice.
She ran the seed stall at the end of the eastern corridor, had run it for thirty years by her account, and she knew people. She’d watched me come through the market alone for all seven years I’d lived here. Today, her face rearranged into something luminous as the three of us approached her stall. Danielle with Pip sleeping on her shoulder, me with the supply bags, both of us walked closer than strangers.
“Captain,” she said, and then, before I could respond, “What a beautiful family you have.”
Danielle stilled.
I turned back to Sethara.
I had a correction available, but reading between the lines, I could see where it would go in the conversation, and how Sethara would nod and apologize.
I took a second glance at Sethara’s joyous expression and my correction flew out the proverbial window.
“Thank you, Sethara,” I said.
Danielle remained quiet.
I bought my seeds.
We walked to the end of the eastern corridor and out into the docking bay where I’d left the shuttle, and neither of us addressed the word, ‘family.’
As we lifted off, the hub of the colony fell away below us. Through the viewscreen, the lights of the market district organized themselves into patterns, and then the patterns became part of the larger pattern of the colony’s structure, and then we were in the transit corridor.
Danielle had her face turned toward the side view port. I kept my eyes on the route. The autopilot could manage this transitwithout my attention, but I forced my hands to remain on the console. Over the past weeks, I found it useful to have something to do with my hands when I was in proximity to Dani. If they didn’t keep busy, I wasn’t sure I could keep my hands off her.
“Sethara seemed kind,” Danielle said, to the viewport.
“She’s been at that stall since before the colony’s second expansion,” I said.
