Best Destiny Page 4

  Without a pause the boy shot back, “You got yours?”

  The mate paced a few steps.

  “This is no toy boat,” he said. “What will you do on big merchant ship?”

  “Whatever it takes,” said the boy with the chamois curls who appeared to speak for all. He stood with one foot on a piling, leaning forward on that knee, boiling with the know-it-all cockiness of youth.

  The first mate sucked on his cigar and strode a few feet along the ship’s rail, turned casually away to get that smile out of his cheeks, then faced them again and paused. “Deckhands?”

  “That’s right,” the boy said.

  “What do you know about a dynacarrier? What I tell the captain I am bring on his ship?”

  “You can tell him it’s got a hull design that can be adjusted in sections by the navigation computer, and that she carries harvested crab, shrimp, and fish from the continental hatcheries to the statis outposts so they can be preserved and sent to our colonies in space. Tell him she’s got telescoping masts with duckwing stabilizers that fold back in harbors and expand on the open sea. Robotics do most of the work and that she goes out of the harbor on antigravs and you turn off the antigravs and settle into the open water, because somebody figured out that cargo carriers don’t have to be fast, just efficient. And tell him he’s got six apprentices who want to learn to run the robotics.”

  The first mate wasn’t particularly impressed, but he was amused. The boy had a belittling tone in his voice and an uncharming bitterness in his eye, but he’d obviously done his homework, prepared for this moment. Cheap labor. Hmmm . . .

  “What you want for pay?”

  “I told you,” the boy said. “Passage, berths, food . . . and no questions.”

  Real cheap.

  The first mate shrugged with his expression.

  “I see what I can do.”

  Down on the dock Jimmy repressed any sign of victory and kept a stiff scowl on his face. He was sure the others were amazed. Deliberately he didn’t look at them.

  “How can you know all that stuff, Jimmy?” Quentin asked. “How did you know how to get us here on the train? It was a great trip! I want to go on that train again someday, don’t you, everybody? I can’t believe all the stuff you know, Jimmy!”

  Jimmy narrowed his eyes and gazed up at the looming panorama that was their future—a red and gray sea monster stretching across their entire field of vision, loaded to the gunwales with ocean harvest, and rumbling.

  “It’s my business to know,” he crowed.

  Quentin appeared in his periphery. “What I mean is . . . how can you know if you don’t read any books?”

  Color flared in Jimmy’s cheeks.

  He buried his embarrassment in a cough and brought his foot down off the piling. He felt the heat in his face and turned away quickly to hide it. Above, three sea gulls circled, whistling with laughter.

  “Well,” he pushed out, “you . . . gotta read the right books.”

  He buried his blushing complexion by fussing with supplies and packs they’d dumped a few feet back on the dock.

  “Jimmy?”

  “Yeah?” He straightened suddenly, and found himself looking into Lucy’s overused, overmade-up, over-everythinged face. It took some hard looking to see past the cake and lipstick and see she was still young. He lowered his voice. “What’s the matter, Lucy?”

  “You didn’t tell certain people that this son of a bitch would be so big,” she said. “There was nothing like this in Riverside.”

  “That’s the point,” Jimmy said firmly. “We’re not in Iowa anymore, Toto.”

  “Why do we have to go on the ocean? I don’t want to barf all the way to South America. Why can’t they just fly cargo around?”

  He felt the eyes of the others on him. Answers. They always wanted answers. Reasons to keep doing what they had decided to do.

  Then he would give them reasons.

  “You want to know why we don’t fly?” he began. “If you’re at the bottom of a well and you want to get to the other side of the well, do you climb all the way to the top, then walk around, then climb all the way down again?”

  Lucy snarled. “Oh, sure.”

  “Why wouldn’t you?”

  She shrugged one shoulder. “Because it’d be brain-dead.”

  “Because it’d be a brain-dead waste of energy, right?”

  “What’s that got to do with this?”

  “Earth’s at the bottom of a well of gravity. If you want to move a half-million tons of harvested seafood, you don’t use up energy lifting it thirty thousand feet in the air just to bring it down to the same level later, do you?”

  “I guess not.”

  “That’s why we don’t fly cargo around.”

  “Hey! You, down there!”

  He and Lucy turned, as did the others, looked up, and saw the first mate grinning down at them with a weird, devious glint in his eye.

  “Hey! Captain say he won’t notice if you come on board. Then we get a look at you.”

  “Attention, Cockerell! This is Port Authority. You are being detained on suspicion of illegally transporting minors into international waters. Put your engines in neutral, fall off your course, and prepare to be boarded.”

  Garish fog-cutting spotlights jabbed from the Port Authority hovercraft as it hissed toward the dynacarrier. Its aircatcher quivered like a sea slug’s skirt.

  The big hovercraft was dwarfed by the dynacarrier, but there was no doubt as to who was in charge.

  At the Cockerell’s bridge rail, the captain frowned at his first mate and said, “Damn you, Klein. These deckhands you brought on board—have they brought false identifications we can point at?”

  “They all claim to be eighteen years old. I saw the cards, with pictures,” the German responded. Then he grinned. “Just like last time.”

  “Stick to the story. Where are these children?”

  The mate grinned wider, crookedly. “In the galley . . . scrubbing mouse shit from the corners.”

  The captain grunted. “Hmm. Thought they would be on sail computers, and they end up scrubbing—who is that!” He pressed forward against the upper deckhouse rail and peered down onto the deck of the hovercraft as it came alongside their boarding ladder. “What is Starfleet doing here!”

  Before the mate could answer, the captain was on the stairs to the lower deck.

  “Contact the galley! Lock up those children!” he shouted as he dropped to the deck. He didn’t wait for the mate’s confirmation, but just hoped the ship’s comm was buzzing.

  The captain met the hovercraft, having worked down only part of the dread on his stubbly face—if only he’d shaved today! He barely managed to choke out a civil greeting to the Starfleet Security Division team as they stepped aboard.

  Three men and two women, neat as a picket fence, none particularly amused or affording his ship the usual visitors’ appreciation.

  They weren’t there to visit.

  The highest-ranking officer was a muscular man with iron-red hair and no fun in his face, who obviously took this situation personally.

  “Captain,” the officer said, “you picked up six teenagers in Bremerton, just outside of the naval base. Where are they?”

  “In custody, Lieutenant!” the captain said quickly. He pointed at a little coffee station near the middle of the ship. “We put them in the midships deckhouse as soon as we saw that their identifications were fake. We didn’t know when we hired them—”

  “Save it, Captain,” was the growling response. “And I’m a commander.”

  He tapped his rank insignia with a forefinger.

  “You can take it up with the Coast Guard,” he said. “They’ll be here in ten minutes to lodge charges against you and your parent company for antagonizing the laws of your host government and for illegal international transport of minors. This practice is going to stop. You’re going to have to pay the competitive price for consenting adult labor, and that’s it. Now,” he
added, “where are those kids?”

  Sweating and turning purple, the captain snapped his fingers at the mate and shouted, “Get them!”

  “Bringing them now!” the mate called instantly.

  Coming toward them were several crewmen of the dynaship, flanking the teenagers, all of whom were particularly grim. There’d been a fight. Two of the Cockerell’s crewmen were dabbing at bruises on their faces. Another was holding his arm and trying not to wince.

  The Starfleet commander squinted, then glowered. “There are only five. Where’s the other one?”

  Viciously the captain shouted, “That bulldog! Where is he?”

  One of the crewmen gestured back at the shabby white deckhouse. “He’s fighting. Kicking and spitting. Crazy. Like a barbarian or something. Won’t come out. No respect for nothing.”

  Everyone paused, and sure enough the deckhouse was physically rattling. From inside, the muffled noises of contention boomed. Bodies hit the old plank walls. Coffee spilled under the door and spread onto the deck. The door clapped and squawked against its hinges.

  “Don’t worry,” the captain said, pulling at his mustache. “We have control, don’t worry . . . we’ll get him out.”

  But the commander gestured to the captain, the sailors, and his own people to stay behind, and he stepped forward himself.

  “I’ll get him out.”

  The teenagers averted their gazes and didn’t meet his eyes as he stalked past them.

  The captain and his sailors gathered closely and watched the Starfleet man get smaller on the huge deck. The man’s fists were knotted, his thighs grinding like pistons, his head forward and his shoulders set, the wind picking up his blood-colored hair and flopping it down with every step.

  “I wouldn’t want to be that bulldog boy,” the captain muttered.

  One of the sailors rubbed a sore jaw and said, “I wouldn’t want to be the Starfleet man.”

  The commander caught the deckhouse door handle at that instant and raked the door open so sharply that the others heard it shriek all the way across the deck. He disappeared inside.

  Everyone winced in anticipation and waited, making bets inside their heads and wondering if they had time to make them out loud.

  Almost at once the deckhouse stopped lurching.

  Another ten seconds trickled by.

  The deckhouse door scratched open, and three battered sailors slogged out with obvious relief, happy to leave that under-aged terror to somebody who was armed.

  But suddenly there was no more thunder from inside.

  Instead, the door opened one last time, and the Starfleet officer stepped into the spilled coffee, dragging Jimmy Kirk by the collar of his jacket so hard that the jacket was nearly being pulled off.

  The boy allowed himself to be hauled, but like a convict in the hands of an abusive guard. He refused to look at his captor, only blinked into the sea wind as he was made to pass by his bitter comrades and stand before the captain and the Starfleet Security team.

  “You see the problem we had!” the captain insisted to the commander. “We saw the mistake, but too late! Tell me—how did you get him to come out? We had to fight! It was terrible. You see my men’s faces—all scratched and hit. How did you do it?”

  The Starfleet man swallowed several times and stood braced against the ocean wind, holding the boy’s arm with each of them standing as far from the other as possible.

  “I didn’t have a choice,” he said. He looked at the boy then, and spoke with a digging shame. “He’s my son.”

  THREE

  “Petty theft . . . fraud . . . shoplifting . . . leaving school without permission . . . falsifying identification . . . breach of public security . . . unauthorized use of private credit lines . . . invasion of official records and illegal use of accessed information.”

  George Kirk’s forefinger drummed on the galley’s scratched tabletop, his face bayed by anger. With a flop of oxblood hair hanging in his face, brown eyes scowling, and his scarlet and white Security Division jacket collar bunched up under his chin, he looked like a mad rooster.

  Under his boot soles, the rumble of the hovercraft provided a constant ugly drone. He was glad the two of them were alone.

  “You strike off to see the world and this is the gang you follow? Lucy Pogue? Her juvenile record didn’t give you a hint that maybe she was somebody you should avoid? Zack Malkin? He’s got a computer crime file as long as his leg. Quentin Monroe? A skinny, sick kid. Brilliant choice. Tom Beauvais? The only thing lower than that backslider’s goals are his grades. And Emily! You talked her into going, didn’t you? A girl like that, on a dynaship! You not only follow these junior-league swindlers, but you entice somebody like Emily to go along? What were you thinking?”

  He hesitated, but got no answer.

  After a few seconds he lowered his voice. “You don’t have a clue how to pick the right people to be close to, do you?”

  At the corner of the table, against the bulkhead, as far down the bench as he could get, Jimmy Kirk sat with his knees flopped apart and his touring cap pulled low over his eyes, doomfully silent.

  His father paused, ticked off five seconds, then shifted his feet. “Nothing to say?”

  Like a prisoner of war, Jimmy remained resolute, stony, and refused to meet his interrogator’s eyes. His wait-it-out posture was damningly effective.

  “Okay, let’s have it.” Pacing across the tiny cabin, George demanded, “Who’s the ringleader?”

  Jimmy turned his head so his father wouldn’t see the smirk that erupted on one side of his mouth. He tapped his thumbs on the seat of the chair, rattled his imaginary handcuffs, and remained uncooperative.

  “Who was it that invaded the voting records? Zack, right? Was it Beauvais’s plan? Are you going to waste your life following Tom Beauvais around?”

  Jimmy folded his arms, belittling his father with his disinterest, and slumped further.

  “How were you expecting to survive once that ship docked in South America and those people were done with you?” George demanded. “Do you have any clue how tough it is to make a living down there?”

  “I’d have been fine.”

  George stopped, gaped down at the unenchanting representative of youth, and wondered what button he’d pushed to get an answer that time.

  “Fine?” he echoed. “Okay, let’s say you’d have been fine. Then tell me what’s down there for you. Why would you want to go there?”

  “Didn’t want to live at home anymore.”

  “Why not? What’s so bad about home? It’s a decent little town, isn’t it? Lots of fresh air, polite Amish neighbors still farming with horses, close to enough cities that there’s plenty for you to do—legally . . . how do you think this is affecting your mother?”

  The touring cap’s brim came up just enough for George to see his son’s broiling eyes masked by a band of shadow. The voice was a grim dare.

  “Leave her out of this.”

  Another light snapped on in George’s head. He widened his eyes and nodded.

  “Leave your mother out. Sure. Easy. Like she’s not home worrying about you. Like she got up yesterday morning and said, ‘Oh, Jimmy’s run away from home. Guess I’ll fry a couple less eggs for breakfast today.’” He paused and changed to a tone that put this issue on the top of the list of crimes. “You should’ve heard her voice when she contacted me,” he said. “If you had, you wouldn’t say, ‘Leave her out of this.’”

  Stern as a circus firebreather, Jimmy folded his arms tighter and changed the subject.

  “How’d you find us?”

  George parted his lips to tell him, maybe get a good gloat out of all this, but then he changed his mind.

  “Why? So we won’t find you the next time? Forget it.”

  He continued pacing.

  “Now you’ll be looking for ways to avoid being found again, right? Why don’t you tag along behind some light-fingered punk with a bright idea to beam out of Iowa? Does that sound
fancy and intriguing enough for you? Violate beaming regulations, scramble the patterns? Adventure enough for you? It’s real fast, y’know. I sure couldn’t trace you, not that it would make much difference.” He slapped his own thigh and added, “Your leg’ll end up on some old lady’s neck and I won’t be able to do a thing for you anyway. Sooner or later you’re just going to be too big for the safety net, Jimmy, and you’re going to fall through.”

  He leaned forward on the galley table and glared at his son.

  “Jimmy,” he asked, “when is it going to dawn on you that rules exist for a reason?”

  The words settled poorly against the hovercraft’s hum.

  He straightened. His head came into the direct line of the cooking light near the galley stove, turning part of his hair carrot-red as though in punctuation.

  “What is it you want?” he asked. “What’re you doing all this for? What do you want?”

  Jimmy’s eyes were cold. “Respect.”

  “I can’t give that to you. You’ve got to earn it.”

  “Whooo,” Jimmy mocked. “A zinger from the book of parental clichés. I’m burned.”

  His father straightened and swallowed hard. “I’m real disgusted with you, I want you to know that. Nothing like this is ever going to happen again. And when we get back to Riverside, we’re going to figure out what to do about this.”

  Jimmy shifted his feet and, if possible, turned farther away. “You can try,” he said doomfully. “But it’s all just a broken mirror to me, ‘sir.’”

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  George fingered the kitchen curtains and looked out across the tenant farmland he owned and the two Amish farms between there and Riverside. Off to his left he could see the English River almost flowing out of its banks.

  A fleeting memory of crossing that river on a rented road-and-float vehicle flicked back at him. There he was, barely an adult himself, with his wife, a toddling son, and a brand-new baby boy, antigravving across a swollen creek that laughed at him for moving in the spring instead of waiting two months until the water dried up. George and Winona Kirk, and their boys, George Samuel, Junior, and James Tiberius.

  George winced. Poor kid, named after a constellation . . .