A Gift for Baba 04/13/2021 - 5:00 PM
By: Will Weissbaum
Writer's Note: A Gift for Baba (Part One) first appeared in Jump Point 5.8. Original artwork by Sean Andrew Murray. Part One Yela lightly knocked on the hatch to the rear restroom, “Daymar?”
A deep, older voice replied, “Occupied.”
That was the last restroom on the transport ship. Suddenly, the hope that her younger brother had disappeared to use the restroom abruptly vanished, alongside the chances of her being able to go back to reading her new book anytime soon. Though, if she were being fair, the book was in large part to blame for her current predicament. If she hadn’t been so wrapped up in Lord Falton’s attempt to reclaim the throne for House Ashen Grey, then maybe she would have noticed sooner that her brother had vacated his seat.
It was their first time flying by themselves and it was already going wrong. Her father had almost canceled the trip when he found out he had to stay and give a lecture, but Yela had convinced him to let them travel to see Baba all on their own. Of course, the whole thing would have been simpler if dad had agreed to her original plan of administering sedatives before they launched. It would have been so much easier! If stasis was good enough for the early space travelers, why not for her brother and sister?
Instead, when he was saying goodbye to them on Mars, their father had made Daymar and Cellin promise to listen to their older sister. So far, Yela felt like her two younger siblings had done almost everything but listen to her.
Even her simple requests like don’t touch the in-flight shopping kiosk had been ignored. Sure, oatmeal was her favorite cookie and it was sort of nice that Cellin had ordered them for her ... and they had tasted way better than the nutri-sticks their dad had packed for them, plus it did mean that they were all less tempted to eat the fancy chocolates they had brought as a gift for Baba . . . but still, it was the principle of the thing. These things weren’t free after all, and her brother, all she asked him to do was stay put and even that proved too hard. Why did he always have to wander off like this?
Yela ran through her mental list of places to search one more time. She had already checked the lounge, the view port and the attendant bay, and had walked all the aisles twice. Cellin was watching their seats and hadn’t seen him. If Daymar wasn’t using any of the restrooms, then where was he? Had he found a way into the engine room? Was he hurt? Did someone take him? Her heart began to pulse faster at the thought that her brother might actually be in trouble.
“You mind moving?” came a deep voice from close behind her.
Yela nearly jumped out of her skin, then turned to see an elderly woman trying to exit from the restroom.
Stepping out of the way, Yela watched the silver haired woman grumble her way down the aisle.
Derailed from her worrying, she took a deep breath and calmed herself, remembering the advice that Baba had given during their last visit. “As long as you’re still breathing, you’re already doing better than the billions of people who came before you.” Dad hated when Baba said stuff like that, but Yela appreciated the way her grandmother could always put things into perspective. Okay, maybe it hadn’t been perfect, but all things considered, their first time traveling through space by themselves could be going a lot worse. For example, on the bright side, since none of the pressure alarms had sounded, she knew that at least her brother was still on the ship.
“I swear, if you kick the seat one more time I’m gonna have you tossed out an airlock!”
For the moment, at least.
Hurrying down the aisle, Yela saw a large, red-faced man glaring angrily at the row behind his. Row 15. Her row. And just as she feared, there was her little sister Cellin, staring back up at the man, equally red faced. “I’d like to see you try!” countered Cellin.
“Oh, you would, would you?!?”
“Cellin, what is going on?” Yela asked as she drew near to the heated scene.
Without taking her eyes off the man’s face Cellin answered, “He was saying bad stuff about people who live on Europa.”
That explained it. Europa was where Baba lived and Cellin was fiercely protective of the people she cared about. Dad described her as “filled with dangerously noble intentions.”
“What I say is my own business,” said the man. He pointed a thick finger square at Yela’s nose. “Do you know how much I paid for this ticket?” The man bellowed. “Way too much to have some little snot-nosed brat kick my —”
Before he could finish his tirade, the door to the overhead luggage compartment near his head opened with a snap. From inside a tiny face peered out. Sleepily, the boy rubbed at his eye with the back of his hand. “Are we at Baba’s yet?”
“Daymar!” Yela cried in relief.
“Hi, Yela. I found a bunk bed like at home,” said Daymar, before reaching an arm out to the man. “Help me down, please?”
The man, still a little bewildered by the sudden change of events, lifted Daymar from the bin and set him down gently on the ground.
Almost out of instinct, Yela prompted, “What do you say, Daymar?”
“Thank you,” said Daymar.
“Uh. Sure,” the man replied, not quite certain what else to do.
“I’m going to need all of you to clear the aisle and take your seats,” a passing attendant informed them. “We are going to be turning off gravity for our approach soon.”
The man seemed to remember some of his anger at the sight of someone in uniform. “Hey, you. Wait a minute.”
The attendant paused, “Yes, sir?”
“You got to do something about these kids. They’ve been arguing, kicking my seat, and climbing all over the place.”
“Is that so?” The attendant asked Yela.
Yela pulled herself up to her full height (which was a full five centimeters taller than last year) and used her most serious adult voice to say, “He said spurious and hurtful comments about Europa and its inhabitants.”
“Oh, is that so?” The attendant asked the man.
“Well, I —”
Cellin immediately jumped in.
“He did! He said that people from Europa were all cold-blooded liars and when I said my grandma was from Europa, he told me to shut up, but I wouldn’t because he was wrong, so I kicked his seat, and then he said he was going to throw me out an airlock.”
“Now, just wait a minute, here. You don’t think that I —” started the man, but the attendant cut him off. “Sir, right now all I know is that we are approaching our transfer station and everyone needs to get strapped in, even people like you.” She turned to the children, “As for you three, come along. Let’s see if we can’t find you somewhere better to sit.”
With that, the attendant marched Daymar, Cellin and Yela past the man (Cellin glaring at him like a hawk as she passed) and up the stairs to the executive lounge.
The room was elegantly furnished in brass fixtures and dark woods, while the entire front wall was lined with a display that projected a realtime view of the ship’s trajectory. Much better than the view from the small seatback displays. The room was mostly empty, with only a few of the plush chairs occupied.
“We were a little light today, so we have extra seats in here, but I need you to promise me that you won’t be any trouble if I let you sit up here.”
“We promise,” they responded in near unison, with Cellin chiming in just a fraction later than her siblings, since she was never one to take a promise lightly.
“Good. Now, let’s strap you into your harnesses.” The attendant helped Daymar and Cellin position their zero-G harnesses into place, while Yela proudly did her own, glad of the instructions she had read earlier in the safety manual.
“There, all set,” said the attendant as she adjusted Cellin’s last strap. “Oh, and my father was from Europa too,” she said with a wink before leaving to attend to other passengers.
Daymar sunk back into the thick padding of the seat with comfortable sigh. “I like being an executive. Cellin, do you think you can kick someone on our next flight too?”
“Yes!” “No!” Cellin and Yela answered respectively and simultaneously.
“Prepare for zero-g,” announced the tannoy. The little gravity warning light overhead clicked on, the counter-spin thrusters fired, and a moment later, they felt themselves lighten until they were pressing against the seat harnesses. “Making final approach to Transfer Station Banaru. Stand by.”
Ahead on the viewscreen, a small speck was quickly growing larger until you could just make out that it was a spoked space station. Long arms jutted out from its central hub and connected to an outer ring, giving it the appearance of a robotic wagon wheel. The station spun about its axis, using centripetal acceleration to provide gravity to those onboard. However, as their ship approached, the spinning appeared to slow to a stop. Yela began to explain to Daymar that it wasn’t the station that was slowing, but rather it was their ship that had begun rotating at the same speed, only making the station look like it had stopped. She would have gone on to explain more about docking procedures, but Daymar had already fallen fast asleep.
- * *
Transfer Station Banaru was a hive of activity. Situated just outside the Sol-Croshaw jump point, travelers from all over both systems arrived to switch between smaller local shuttles and larger starliners. Over the years, Banaru steadily grew from all the traffic passing through and now, as it proudly proclaimed in multiple signs posted throughout station, it had a full hotel, exotic food court and bustling marketplace. The food court was especially popular with people arriving from Croshaw, since it is recommended that you fly on an empty stomach through interspace, at least the first few times until you get used to the sensation.
In a quieter section of the station, the three siblings sat on chairs near the E-12 docking port waiting for their shuttlecraft to Europa to depart. They had just over an hour to go — precisely seventy-one standard Earth minutes according to Daymar, who had very recently learned how to tell time. Through the thick viewing-pane, Yela watched as the transport they had arrived on, having refueled and taken on new passengers, drift away from the station towards the flashing jump point beacons in the distance. Already she could see it spin as its rotation went out of synch with Banaru’s own. As excited as she was to visit her grandmother, part of her longed to visit another system.
“What are you looking at?” Daymar asked his older sister.
“Our transport ship is about to go through the jump point, see?” Yela pointed to where the ship waited to spin up its drives.
“They left without us!” cried out Daymar as he rushed to the viewing-pane.
Yela got up and put a comforting hand on the boy’s back. “No, remember? That ship is going to Croshaw. We’re getting on a different ship to go to Baba’s.”
“Oh,” said Daymar. A tiny bright light flared and the ship breached interspace, disappearing from sight. “Then why did we leave Baba’s gift on that one?”
Cellin and Yela shared a panicked look before both of them quickly dumped open their bags looking for the box of chocolates they had brought along for their grandmother. They had picked out the flavors together at Baba’s favorite chocolatier in Port Retanus. She always talked about how it was the thing she missed most about living on the red planet, aside from the three of them and their father, of course. Baba even joked that the only reason she still visited was to refill her supply.
The first time they had visited her on Europa, they had sat curled up under a blanket together watching one of the crystal storms through the small porthole in her workshop. They each had gotten to select one of the chocolates from the box and Baba showed them how she would eat around the edge, letting each bite melt, before finally popping the filling in her mouth.
And now, thanks to being so distracted by the argument, they had forgotten Baba’s gift on the starliner and her chocolates were somewhere in a whole other star system.
“It was in the back pocket of the seat,” Daymar reminded them. “You said I wasn’t allowed to touch it, even though I promised to be careful.”
“Why didn’t you say something!” Cellin demanded.
Daymar’s eyes got wide like they did when he was about to cry. Yela felt like crying too, but that wasn’t going to help anything. “It wasn’t his fault. I forgot too.”
“Baba’s going to be so mad with us,” said Cellin.
“No, she isn’t,” said Yela.
“Yes, she is,” said Cellin. The thought of Baba being mad at him was enough to burst Daymar’s seal and tears came flooding down his face. His face curled like he was about to cry out, but the sound never came. Daymar had always been a quiet cryer. Their father said it was like watching a vid on mute.
“It’s my fault for getting into a stupid fight with that stupid man. It’s always my fault.” And with that, Cellin angrily crossed her arms and started to cry as well.
“If anyone’s to blame, it’s me. I should’ve remembered,” said Yela. “I’m in charge.”
“You’re right. It is your fault,” agreed Cellin through her tears. That’s when Yela started to cry too.
Now, if a different attendant had been assigned to watch over them at the docking-port, things might have gone very differently for the three siblings. However, Tyva Montclair had been given the task and if asked, Tyva would quickly tell you that even from a very young age she has been no good with children. At the sight of the three siblings sobbing their eyes out, instead of going to comfort them and find out what was wrong, Tyva decided that she in fact really needed to use the restroom at that exact moment, and that is exactly what she did.
Left on their own, the children continued to cry for a few minutes longer. Daymar was the first to run out of tears. Sniffling, a thought occurred to him. “Let’s get her a new present.”
“Those chocolates were from Mars, we can’t get her more,” explained Yela.
“We can get her something better,” said Daymar with growing enthusiasm.
“There’s probably something stellar in the market! That sign says it’s the best shopping in the whole sector,” said Cellin, suddenly caught up in the idea that there might be an adventure happening soon.
“But the attendant said we weren’t supposed to leave,” said Yela.
“Good thing she isn’t here then,” Cellin pointed out. “We can go get a gift and be back before she even knows we’re gone.”
“I don’t think we should. We could get in trouble.”
“Remember what Baba says? No one’s ever done anything great without getting into at least a little bit of trouble,” quoted Cellin.
Yela remembered this as another of Baba’s sayings that their father didn’t like.
Before she could respond, Yela saw Daymar already heading down the corridor towards the central hub. “Wait up!”
- * *
The trio traveled down the connector spoke until it opened up into the vaulted central hub. Rimmed along the sides by multiple floors, the massive space was filled with people flitting from stall to stall — shopping, eating and talking. There was even a live musician playing complicated music on a lexion from Persei. Daymar covered his ears as they walked past, not yet accustomed to the recently-introduced instrument’s rasping and buzzing.
As they walked, they stared wide eyed at the people flowing around them. Even though the town they lived in on Mars received its fair share of visitors, it was nothing compared to the hodgepodge of colonists, traders and settlers that crisscrossed their way through the hub. The children took turns pointing out the travelers’ origins.
“That old guy is from Mars like us!” said Daymar, spotting someone wearing the smooth, thick jacket-style that so many Martians wore to keep out the dust.
“Those pressure lenses mean that person is from Gonn,” noted Cellin as a person wearing a thick set of purple goggles walked past returning her stare.
“And those two women wearing the scaly green and yellow robes are definitely from Davien,” observed Yela.
Daymar wanted to talk to a gentleman slurping wide, fat noodles at a food counter who had the same triple-plaited braids that their own grandmother wore, and Cellin was about to go ask a tall woman with blueish skin where she was from, when Yela focused them on the task at hand. As interesting as the people were, they were supposed to be finding a gift for Baba.
After instructing them not to touch anything, and writing E-12 on Daymar’s hand so he would know which docking port to go to if he got lost, Yela steered her two younger siblings towards a row of stalls that featured beautiful jewelry. There were gilded rings, necklaces made from gemstone flowers, and even a broach that looked like a dust beetle, but after thinking for a bit, none of them could ever remember seeing Baba wear jewelry. “Maybe that means she really needs some,” said Yela.
“Or that she hates it,” said Cellin.
“Let’s keep looking.”
They proceeded through the marketplace, visiting a stall with long scarves for filtering air, another stall with little bright red lizards for sale, and a hawker who was peddling genuine pitambu fruit all the way from Reisse, but after wandering up and down the market, they had narrowed down their options to two booths. Yela thought that they should get Baba a fancy bottle of lotion made from digary blossoms that, according to the vendor, only grew on Aremis. “She works with her hands a lot, and the cold weather makes them dry,” explained Yela.
Cellin thought that they should get Baba a little silver multitool. It had a monkey wrench, five screw-drivers, a fullband burst scanner, a Geiger counter, an arc-torch, a nail file and a bottle opener. “It’s like a hundred gifts in one!” Yela pointed out that Baba already had most of those tools, and Cellin pointed out that lotion was stupid.
It seemed like there wasn’t going to be any way to reach an agreement, when Daymar settled the debate saying “We should get her that.” Yela and Cellin looked to where their brother was pointing and agreed instantly. He had found the perfect gift for Baba.
- * *
“I am truly sorry, but I cannot let it go for any less,” said Vasko, the owner of the stall. To show how dismayed she was, she gently shook her head, which caused the thick folds in her neck to wobble. Daymar stood in front of her, gently holding the gift in his hands, staring up with wide, hopeful eyes.
They had been negotiating with the woman for several minutes now, but she could see how much the children wanted the gift and was holding firm. And the children really did want it. Just looking at the gift, it was clear that Baba would love it, even more than the chocolate. Functional and beautiful, they would have paid twice as much as Vasko was asking, but since they couldn’t even afford to pay once what she was asking, it was looking less and less likely they were going to be able to get it.
Yela quickly counted their pooled funds again. It was all the emergency money their father had given them, plus the allowance Yela had been saving for a new book and the dollar that Daymar had found walking through the spaceport in Port Renatus. Despite Yela’s fervent hope that the amount would come out different this time, they were still eight short of the asking price. “Are you sure you can’t go lower?”
“I’m already charging ten less than I normally would because you seem like such nice children, but if you do not have enough money, I am afraid there is nothing I can do.” Vasko reached to take back the gift, but Daymar stepped out of reach.
“Please? We have to get this for our Baba,” said Daymar.
“What do you have here?” A big meaty hand plucked the gift from Daymar’s grasp. The three children turned, surprised to see the man from the transport ship standing behind them. He held the gift up to his face. “Oh, look at this. Very nice.”
“Give that back!” demanded Cellin jumping up to try to snatch it back. The man raised it high above their heads.
“That’s for our Baba!” added Daymar.
“Now children, you had your chance,” scolded Vasko. “If this nice gentleman wishes to purchase it, then well . . .”
“You know what? I think I am gonna buy it,” said the man, sneering at Cellin.
“Excellent choice,” said Vasko. “You have wonderful taste.”
“He doesn’t even want it, he’s just doing it to be mean,” said Cellin.
“You’re wrong there, kiddo. I’m actually a collector and this is a real find,” said the man while examining it closer.
“That it is. All that detail work? Hand done. Very few like it,” said Vasko.
“Please, there has to be some way we can —” Yela paused. Something caught her eye on the back counter. “Wait. Is that a Banu lockbox?”
“Have you ever opened it?”
“No . . .” Vasko reluctantly admitted. “Not yet.”
Crafted for the heads of Banu guilds to hold valuable items or documents, every Banu lockbox is unique in design. To make them extra secure, no two have the same solution and often not even the artisan who makes them knows how to open them. When the original owner passes away, whatever mysteries it holds can remained unclaimed for generations . . . though often they were simply destroyed in the process of opening them. That’s what made intact ones so rare. Yela knew all about Banu lockboxes thanks to her father.
“I can open it for you,” said Yela.
“Like some kid can solve a Banu lock.”
“Our father’s a professor. He lectures on the Banu.”
“Do you really think you can open it for me?” Vasko asked eagerly.
“She can for the right price,” said Cellin.
“Yeah! Give us Baba’s gift!” insisted Daymar, reaching up to where the man still held it.
“I have been trying to open it for years . . .” Vasko considered the proposition. “If you can actually do it, then we have a deal.”
“Hey!” the man protested. “I thought you were going to sell it to me!”
“Not anymore. Hand it here.”
“What if I pay you twice as much?”
“You can pay me twice as much when the girl proves unsuccessful.” Vasko took the gift from the man and then, very gingerly, she placed the delicate lockbox on the counter in front of Yela. “No forcing it. You have to open it the proper way.”
“I know.” Yela wiped her hands off on her pants before gently running them over the surface. Banu had a slightly different approach to numbers and geometry than Humans did, so the first step was to switch her brain to see the world the way they did. She took a deep breath and blocked the sounds of the marketplace from her mind. It took a lot of concentration to be Banu.
“She’ll never do it,” said the man. “Heck, I got a ten-spot right here that says she breaks the thing trying.”
“Quiet!” Cellin and Vasko said in unison.
She counted to twenty-seven over and over until she had the right rhythm. Every other odd number sound needed to strike between the beat of her heart. Placing her index finger on the smooth spot along the short side of the box and her thumb on the corner closest to her, she tapped along. When she felt she had it right, she pressed firmly in time, matching the black and white pattern that repeated on the edge of the box. On the fifth tap, the box clicked and a series of ridges rose along the top.
“She did it!” exclaimed Vasko.
“Only the first part,” said Yela, and thought to herself, “the easy part.” Rotating the box, she adjusted her hands so that they interlaced over the ridges. As she began to count again, she was interrupted by an announcement from the station speakers.
“All passengers for Europa, this is your last boarding call.”
“Oh no! That’s our flight!” Yela completely lost her train of thought. “We have to get back.”
“We can’t leave without the gift,” said Cellin.
“We can’t miss our shuttle,” said Yela.
“I guess it looks like you don’t have a deal after all,” said the man happily.
“Docking-port E-12. Last call for Europa,” said the voice on the tannoy.
“Here,” said Vasko, holding out the gift. “Take it. I’ve had the box for years and I never even got this far.”
“Are you sure?” asked Yela.
“She’s sure,” said Cellin as she took the gift and placed it in her bag.
“She’s crazy is what she is,” complained the man.
“Just promise me that you’ll stop by next time you’re in Banaru.”
“We promise!” said the three siblings before they turned and raced through the marketplace.
- * *
The corridor was jammed with people. A starliner arriving from Croshaw had just docked, and passengers were streaming out from it, clogging the way. Yela and Cellin tried to find a way through, Yela by saying, “Excuse me” and Cellin by shoving.
Daymar was having a much easier time weaving his way past the crowd. Soon he was ahead of his sisters. Yela tried to tell him to wait up, but he couldn’t hear her over the din. Soon, he reached the point where the corridor split off towards the individual docking-ports. Yela was trying to squeeze past a group of sojourners hugging each other goodbye, when she saw Daymar pause and study the directional. He held up his hand, looked at the smudged E-12 Yela had written there earlier, and turned left down the corridor towards docking-port F-12.
“Daymar, wait!”
He paused to look back at them. Rushing around a stalled luggage drone, Yela urgently waved for him to come back, but he just returned her wave and continued down the wrong way, disappearing from view.
Yela was instantly filled with regret for not spending more time helping him learn his letters.
Desperate, Yela adopted Cellin’s method of traversal and soon the two of them were pushing their way through the throng of people. When they finally cleared it, they saw Daymar standing in front of the docking-port’s airlock.
“Daymar! That’s the wrong —”
Too late. He rushed on board. Yela and Cellin ran after him.
Passing through the airlock, the sisters emerged into the cavernous hold of a large hauling ship. Daymar stood a few steps in, gawping up at the rows and rows of massive cargo containers.
“We get to fly on this ship?” asked Daymar, excited by the prospect.”Where are the seats?”
“No, we’re not. Come on. We have to go,” said Yela. She grabbed Daymar and pulled him back towards the airlock when it sealed with a hiss in front of them.
Yela hurried to the controls and pressed the release button, but a red alert told her she didn’t have permission. Before she could figure out what to do next, a loud rumble sounded as the engines came to life.
“Looks like we are flying on this ship,” said Cellin.
Daymar cheered as they disconnected from the dock.
To be continued