A Voyage to Pir Mahauw
Boundary Shock Quarterly #25: Gulliver's Other Travels
When Captain Sally Rider finds herself on the wrong end of a mutiny, tossed off her own fluxship to crash-land on a forgotten planet, even her typical optimism is somewhat strained.
Hoping against hope for some shot at a rescue, Sally finds to her delight that there is indeed civilization here. People. And their pets.
She will soon discover which is which, the secrets they harbor, and the cost of her rescue.
A Voyage to Pir Mahauw
I barely made it home after my disastrous voyage to Factos, a planet where everything is calculated, argued, and measured, but nothing is ever produced, a testament to the human capacity for folly.
Also, to the point of pride, a smelly planet. They had calculated the cost of washing against that of becoming inured to stench, and had arrived at a conclusion that reeked of rotten ostrich eggs.
I entered my home on Luna. I drew a deep breath. The air was as clean as lunar high-tech filtration could achieve, yet overlaid with the scent of children between the ages of one and four, a smell that I now remembered all too keenly.
The narrow entrance hallway was strewn with plastic in the form of dolls, spaceships, rovers, and dinosaurs, all in too-bright primary colors. It came to me that I could turn around and leave before anyone realized I was there. The song of space tugged at me like a lover.
READ MOREAs I stood frozen, struggling to stay yet unable to leave, one of my spawn dashed into the hallway and began to shriek.
"Mama-mama-mama!"
The child, perhaps three, threw herself into my arms, smearing my jacket with the muddy brown goo on her face.
"Eat-eat-eat!" she cried, pressing up into my hands a half-filled snack tube.
I have negotiated with warlords and captained ships. I can say no to ambassadors and mercenaries, and make my answer stick. But when it comes to my own children, I have no backbone.
I did as instructed. By taste and texture the tube contained pureed figs. Probably good for the child. Just then, my husband Loghan stepped into the hallway, grinning widely. Suddenly I remembered why I came home.
The man is simply stunning, with long dark ringlets draped over broad, sensuous shoulders. He has large brown eyes and a smile that could power our house for a lunar year.
The nanny worked overtime while for the next five days and nights the two of us became reacquainted. This splendid homecoming came to a predictable end when Loghan became moody. During the ensuing argument he confessed to being pregnant, which did little to resolve our disagreement.
While I was gone Loghan had met with our doctor and obtained the genetic mods needed to quicken a child within his belly, making use of my genetic material. In this case a nail clipping, a hair, and to my weary disgust, my underwear.
I reminded him that we already had four, to which he replied with some volume that he had always wanted five and hadn't I listened? Would I deny him the very meaning of his life? Did I not love him?
While I was still formulating a reply to this barrage, he added sweetly that I was so good at business, surely we could afford all of our tiny treasures? Did I not love them? For a time, he detailed my parental failings, some of which were surely true.
I left the discussion to barricade myself in my office, kicking aside a doll with orange plastic hair out at various angles, made to seem as if its mane were blowing in some planetary breeze. The toy bounced off my office wall toward the ceiling and slowly sank in Luna's low gravity.
At the windowsill sprawled Tomas the cat, with a striped coat the shade of sand and chocolate. Through the viewport was the stunning starscape our expensive apartment allowed. I sat and clicked my tongue. Tomas came into my lap. I soothed my tangled feelings in his soft, thick fur.
Loghan knew that I had never wanted children, because I had told him so, repeatedly. Among other things, I was unwilling to be planet-bound to have them. When we married, we compromised, agreeing to one, which he would carry. But with each new howling infant, he assured me my memory was faulty.
I stared into Tomas's lidded green eyes, stroking his chin to the thrumming of deep purrs. I reminded myself of the old adage: in marriage, you can be right, or you can be happy, but you cannot be both.
"Sally, old girl," I answered aloud, "you are neither."
I applied myself to the household ledger to see just how dry the financial well had become. Now and then I lifted my gaze to the starlit sky, my mind serving up visions of far planets and strange peoples, my wanderlust sparked.
Hours later, I watched the blue, green, and white of earthrise to morning howls of hungry, waking children, leaking in through what should have been a perfectly sealed door. Even the most desperate of my prior voyages began to take on a rosy hue.
Fortune smiled on me, and a few weeks later I was made an advantageous offer to captain the merchant starship _Thousand Roses_ for a year-long contract with lucrative rewards. Loghan and I discussed, quickly agreeing that it was in the family's best interest that I go. Unspoken but understood was that our affection was strongest when we asked the least of it.
I promised him I'd miss him, but declined to trouble his pregnant mind with the details of how soon. In a year or so, I would return with a fat credit chip in my pocket, looking forward to another pleasurable reunion. Perhaps Loghan would feel, at five, that we had enough children.
I was soon away on the merchant vessel _Thousand Roses_, geared and staffed to trade in delicate biologicals at Wesdym VII via the fluxhole Drowsa Connor. The plan was simple.
Or it would have been, except for the mutiny.
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