She never called herself their master, either. It sufficed that at a subconscious level they knew. And anyway, she preferred Dark Empress. It had a certain cachet.
Above the two-tractor caravan, the sky had turned foreboding. Then the clouds opened up and rain spoiled her view. She had to imagine them wet, muddy, and miserable.
Well, the phosphate mines in the asteroid belt were dry enough.
She could almost envy Carlos and Dana. Li would kill for a change of scenery, not to mention a break from this oppressive gravity. Appearing indispensable had its price.
The caravan neared the edge of the settlement proper, the garage’s overhead door creeping upward at a radioed command. That was Li’s cue that someone, if not all three, would swing by soon to visit the children.
Li closed her office door behind her. Whoever came would find her, brow furrowed, shoulders slumped, expression sad, examining one of the babies.
28
Rikki lay bonelessly, eyes closed, head tipped back against the rim of the whirlpool tub, as the hot pulsing jets massaged away knots in her back, arms, and legs. Water and electricity, if little else, they had in abundance. She let the fizzing water buoy her, let it persuade her, that for a few minutes, anyway, gravity’s cruel dominion had been overthrown.
After hard labor from dawn to dusk, it wasn’t a bad way to end the day.
Blake said, “You look like you’re only sleeping.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m going to get out now.”
His voice rose in pitch, just a little, at the end of the announcement. Asking, without asking, “Unless you want to fool around?”
“I’ll be along in a while,” she said.
Eyes still closed, Rikki felt and heard the water slosh as he climbed from the sunken tub. Faint but brisk, she heard the whisper of fabric against skin as he toweled off, and the slap-slap of bare feet on the concrete floor as he padded from the bathroom.
Then she opened her eyes.
Part of her even wanted sex: for the closeness to Blake. To know he still found her desirable, no matter that this godforsaken rock had turned her into a muscle-bound Amazon. To exorcise some of her pent-up anger.
And that anger was why most of her didn’t. Couldn’t. Because what she truly craved, the ache more insistent with each passing day, was the feel of a child growing inside her.
A host of med nanites would not allow that to happen. And Li would not permit that to change. “For your own good,” Rikki mimicked.
“What’s that?” Blake called from the bedroom.
“Sorry. Talking to myself again.”
“It’s about time we head out for dinner,” he said.
“Thanks.” She permitted herself several seconds more buoyant relief. “Okay, I’m getting out.”
He stuck his head through the doorway with a comically exaggerated leer.
“Maybe later,” she said.
*
Beneath diamond-bright stars, shivering in the evening chill, Rikki and Blake scurried down Main Street to the communal dining hall. Celestial sparkles and the nip in the air shared a cause. Dark’s thin, dry air didn’t block much inbound starlight; it didn’t stop much of the day’s heat from reradiating back into space, either.
She searched overhead for any hint of home. As always, the sky had nothing to offer her but alien constellations, many still unnamed, too large moons, and the soul-sucking, inchoate darkness that was the Coalsack.
“Make a wish,” Blake said.
Turning toward him, studying the western horizon where he appeared to be looking, Rikki saw the meteor. Or a different meteor, because the sky was suddenly filled with faint streaks.
“Done,” she said, trying to make her tone light. Alas, no mere wishing star would fix what ailed her.
The meteor shower ended in seconds, eminently forgettable. Planets glimmered overhead, too, the brightest of them so close that with binoculars you could clearly see its Saturn-like rings. Back home, Ayn Rand’s orbit would not have encompassed the inner edge of the Asteroid Belt; the local version of a Belt was shoehorned in between the gas giant and Dark. Nearby asteroids meant nearby resources.
And though they had been fortunate so far, logically those rocks also made Dark a shooting gallery.
“I made a wish, too,” Blake said, waggling an eyebrow at her.
She laughed. “It must be your lucky day.”
“I’m not admitting anything, or it won’t come true.”
The dining hall smelled wonderful. Rikki couldn’t place the aroma. Something different. Something she had not encountered in a long time. Carlos’s muttering, from inside the kitchen, revealed nothing. It was his turn to prepare dinner, and that somehow always entailed guzzling the synthed swill that served as cooking sherry.
Wallpaper to her left and right showed an Earth forest; the wall straight ahead cycled through scenes of something from Marvin’s media library. She didn’t recognize the vid from its previews, and that didn’t surprise her. For those who stayed after dinner, the communal movie was the cook’s choice.
Behind Rikki, a door opened with a squeak. Li said, “I guess tonight’s treat won’t be a surprise. Wow, that smells good.”
“Roast chicken?” Blake asked in wonder.
Because while they often had eggs, they had yet to eat meat. The priority remained expansion of the flock.
It pained Rikki to have learned the proper name for a bunch of chickens. And that tomorrow she would be up before dawn to collect eggs, scatter bucketfuls of feed pellets—dried, chopped bacterial mat—and muck out the coop.
Just as with cooking, they took turns caring for the chickens. Except Li. She refused to do anything so nonsterile lest one of the babies should need immediate care.
Logical…and so convenient.
“Some chickens got into a fight today,” Li said. “Marvin alerted me. Before I could get to the coop, one chicken was severely pecked and clawed. I had to put the bird down, and saw no reason to let its meat go to waste.”
“Fair enough,” Blake said with enthusiasm.
Rikki sat at the dining-room table and Blake sat next to her. Li took the seat straight across from Blake.
Just to bug me, Rikki thought. And it works. Even after she had
