The weather evened out into my favourite time of year. Mild heat, refreshing winds, and near-cloudless skies that would stretch on for months, day and night. The social season was beginning.
I sat down to a light breakfast one morning, in the usual dining terrace. Arind and Dio were already seated, and Jasha wandered in soon after, still looking half-asleep. The glass wall had been fully slid aside, and an intermittent ocean breeze half-lifted the thin white curtains to either side. Ari was finishing some coffee, and looked to be sorting through a small stack of printouts from the house's message console.
Ari’s got a messy shock of sandy-blond hair, and a rather angular face. His eyes, a light grey-green, have the ability to be piercing and kind at the same time. You’d never want to cross him twice, he’s quiet and has an unobtrusively good spirit -- all he has to do is express disappointment, and his infernally patient understanding of why you misbehaved, and you feel too guilty.
"What are you doing for the day, Jessyn?" he asked.
"I thought I'd go for a swim. Then head over to Southport. Pach wants to do a team headcount and ship inspection for everyone who's racing."
"Oh, that is coming up soon, isn't it?" Ari looked over at Dionyz. "We'll have to set up and watch it out here."
Dio looked at him, and then at me, with forbearance. "We will."
I knew he didn't care for sports, and furthermore dreaded the thought of a racing accident. But he'd only ever been polite about my involvement. Likely because I had never actually competed.
So far.
That was a thought for another day, though. I was excited to see my pilot friends again. Pach had kept up correspondence with those of us on his team, letting us know how his final ship preparations fared. But there was nothing quite like rallying everyone together in person. I had a really good feeling about his odds of winning this year, and was eager to go see how things stood.
Dio watched me, drumming his fingers lightly on the tiles of the tabletop. Somehow I felt the messiness of the robe I was wearing, and the lateness of the hour of morning, and was annoyed at myself for caring what he thought of my habits.
"Quite a few parties coming up. People in from all over the system," he said. "You might keep your ears open for some opportunities."
"I will."
"Have you heard anything from Markus DeBlays?" said Arind.
"Hmm, not yet." I didn't say that I hardly expected to hear from him again. "The thing is, I was a little disappointed in what he told me about the job. It's not that I wouldn't have a chance to learn things, I just wasn't sure it was the right fit." I swallowed a bite of bread that suddenly seemed dry. "He might have noticed."
There was silence around the dining table, and it occurred to me that negative word about that meeting might actually have reached my guardians. Suddenly my heart beat faster.
"He did seem to like you," Dio said. "I've heard a few things to that effect. Then there's this."
He picked up a printout from the pile near Arind's plate and handed it to me. Confused, I looked at it. It used the formal script, which I hadn't seen much of since graduation announcements this past spring. It seemed DeBlays and his family planned to host an event, in one of the largest and most exuberantly ornate hotels in Damor City. I read further, until I was brought up short by one line. "We cordially extend this invitation to the Silva, Murohe, and Skye household."
I looked up, and was even more unnerved by the expression on Dionyz's face. He was...proud of me?
"You must have hit it off better than you thought," said Ari, smiling and pouring himself more coffee.
I'd been to city salons with my family before. They weren't unlike the open houses held out on estate holdings like ours, except they could be called at any time of the year. Mostly my experience had been interminable hand-shaking with off-world business people who didn't know how to dress for the weather. I always felt a bit sorry for them -- just as they would start to shed layers, their vacation would be over. Traveling musicians from across the galaxy were the main highlight of salons. That and the food.
I read the invitation back over, before Jasha plucked it from my fingers to see. The date was set for a few days after the race. It made sense, DeBlays would want to take advantage of everyone being in town.
"I'm not asking you to make any plans with him. Just give his acquaintanceship a chance. A serious one," Ari said.
It hadn't occurred to me to decline. "Of course," I murmured.
My mind tumbled through a series of thoughts as I went to my bedroom to change into my swimsuit. I felt bewilderedly grateful to learn DeBlays had liked me, despite my sore attitude during our meeting. But I also felt oddly torn. Once again, there was a choice to be made, despite my having thought I'd escaped having to. I had a business relationship with him. There wasn't any other reason that our whole household would be invited. I didn't feel pushed, either by DeBlays or my family. But there could be no doubt we'd benefit if I pursued this.
"I'm going to the beach," I said, back in the dining room.
Ari nodded contentedly, not looking up from his tablet. "Turn on your alert."
I programmed an inner weather scanner and public location tracker. If after a few hours I forgot to turn it off, it would send a signal to Arind and the nearest authorities. It was my compromise, years ago, for the terrible habit of swimming alone.
Past the southern edge of the main estate perimeter, a low forest of tropical trees and rough, waxy grass covered half a kilometer down to the beach. An ancient trail wound its way from the estate boundary through birdsong and insect hum, and I took this route now.
Palms curved their long stalks over my head, forming a natural canopy over the footpath. There was too much breeze for undergrowth this close to the ocean. So I could see far into the forest, to where old driftwood logs had been washed up by storms well into the woods. Jas and I had examined them when we were younger, and he had discovered that they came from a region far to the east, almost up to the jungles south of Damor City. I imagined, for the hundredth time, the storms that must have had to happen to push them all the way to our coast, and then this far onshore.
The palms ended and the low ground vines spread out for a few yards, and then there it was. The gorgeous expanse of white and blue. A steady warm wind blew in off the ocean. Some of the best moments of my life had been spent here with Jas and the others, and with my sister on her rare visits. Peri storms blew things around, for sure. But aside from slightly different configurations of dunes, campfire locations, and driftwood piles, the beach stayed the same. All that worried me, all that made me feel an alien in my own life, would fall away into the waves.
I spread my towel on the sand above the high tide line, and adjusted my internal sun protection up to its highest level. I laid down and stretched my arms over my head. Here I was again, as if I'd never left. As if university had just been the scenic route back towards home. I could have been any age, laying here. Except for the length of my shins, hanging off the end of the towel into the warm sand.
I felt like I wasn't straining towards anything, or avoiding anything else. I just was.
The waves crashed with smooth regularity on the shore behind me. There was something about the predictability of the booms and hisses, interspersed with random pauses and quick crescendos, that sounded like a giant organic machine. I felt the gentle trickles of sweat running slowly down my sides. This heat would drive me into the water soon.
Thoughts of DeBlays and his salon invitation intruded back into my mind. I could admit that I liked him and his optimistic energy. So what if he wanted us to work on his spaceport for a few years, before designing ships? It was obviously part of some philosophy he had. It couldn't hurt to hear him out a little more, especially since it felt like a second chance.
I wanted to make a commitment. I felt that draw inside me. But I didn’t know to what, and I was scared of making the wrong decision. The apprenticeship one took, especially coming out of a highly specialised focus like starship navigation engineering, usually led to the first job, which determined at least the first five years of your career. Often the first ten. I didn’t want to spend a decade wasting my time on something wrong for me. Especially if it were a daily reminder of my own limitations.
I squirmed a bit on the towel, trying to make the sand more comfortable.
Everyone had expected me to regret my degree. On some level, I knew that. What kind of dumb kid majors in something he’s terrified of? But it wasn’t the ships themselves, oh no. I loved the beauties. Crawling all over them and inside them, imagining the connections and technology that made them move, and then later on finding out exactly what comprised it … It had been amazing. It made me feel alive. I had soaked up both the oblique theories of experts and gruff shortcuts of mechanics, and felt equal respect. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with this yet, but I loved it with a passion so deep I almost felt like I had to hide it.
Laying here in the beach, as much as I enjoyed it and could afford to do it all my life if I wanted, wouldn’t make me satisfied. That was only an act. I knew my family wanted to see me go far. Arind and the Murohes, Jasha and my sister -- even, I admitted, the family I had on Mercuria, as distant as I'd let them become. I joked about it, but I didn’t really want to let myself down or waste what I knew I was lucky to have.
Working for Markus DeBlays just felt like a different direction.
I stood up off the towel and started towards the surf. The water was a crystal turquoise here at the southeastern edge of the continent. It was inviting any time of the year, though swimming was cold exercise for a month or so around Aphelion.
I always tried to walk sedately into the sea like a dignified adult, but it would hit my legs like it was doing now, slapping me playfully, and I’d run the last few steps and throw myself into it like a little kid. Waves broke over my head, and a slight current drifted my hair out alongside me. It was a strange new sensation to have it this long. Rai hadn't liked it. I had told myself then that I didn't care, but, really? How much of it had been rebellion? I smiled, and it surprised me.
Pushing everything else out of my mind, I flipped over into the water, then twisted to dive under. I skimmed along the bottom, kicking my feet, running my fingers over the subtle ripples in the sand.
Nothing sounded like waves did underwater, bubbling and crashing, muted but surrounding me. I stood up when it was about waist deep, past the breakers. It was always interesting to look back at the beach from in the water. It seemed far away, miniature and distant, another world entirely.
I turned towards the nothingness in the other direction. Just more and more turquoise, shading out to dark blue near the horizon, which was piled with gold-touched clouds. Above it all, the shimmering brightness of the early morning sky. I thought about how much there wasn’t, out in that direction. No more land, all the way down to the southern pole. Why wasn’t I afraid? I caught myself thinking. I could face hundreds of kilometers of emptiness with more equanimity than I could face a simple space flight, something that thousands of people did each day.
I dived under the water and opened my eyes. It stung for a few seconds, then came into blue focus. All was teal and murmuring, rocking me up and down, pulling me backwards and forwards. I swam out to chest-depth, came up for some air. Dived again. Was space like this, as Marseline said? I floated weightless, halfway to the sandy bottom. I turned over, stared up at the glistening silver mirror of the surface. It didn’t reflect anything. Or was that shimmering darkness me?
Out here, the waves were less an accessory of the beach, and more part of the breathing of the world. They came from nowhere.
How did the ocean get around things? The easy answer was that it pounded away until the obstacle was eroded. But that took centuries. The quickest way for seawater to get anywhere was to leach its way through cracks and crevices. To leak silently into the space it preferred to occupy. It had no pride.
Something pulled at my consciousness, just on the verge of thought. I felt hesitant to explore it further. Too many changes had taken place, suddenly, and it could be any one of them.
I turned over in the soft swells and began to swim away from the shore, arm over arm.