by Mary E. Lowd
An excerpt from Discovery of the Wanderlust. If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, or skip ahead to the next chapter.
The most useful thing that Lt. Diaz could think of to do with her time was research every aspect of the engines and computers aboard the Wanderlust that she didn’t already thoroughly understand. That way, when she did finally get home to the Milky Way, she’d be able to take her knowledge and use it to upgrade technology on Lupinia. Hopefully, there wasn’t going to be a need for an Anti-Ra force protecting Lupinia anymore, now that the planet was safely located in neutral territory. But it couldn’t hurt to be prepared.
As long as Lt. Diaz was being forced to play the part of a Tri-Galactic Union officer, she might as well make the most of it. She would become an expert on the latest discoveries and advancements in Tri-Galactic Union technology, and then she could carry that knowledge with her when she was allowed to finally be free from ridiculous union strictures again.
When Lt. Diaz explained her plans to Ensign Risqua, the purple-blue scales around the reptile-bird’s beak crinkled into a smile, and the red and blue plumes of feathers on the back of her head spread in a sign of approval. “You and I are thinking the same way,” Risqua squawked. “Neither one of us wants to waste our time out here.”
“Exactly!” Diaz woofed. “I’m not gonna putter around playing with plants or drawing silly little cartoons as my life passes me by!”
“Hey,” Ensign Melbourne meowed laconically from where he was stretched out on his bunk, drawing a caricature of Korvax with tiny spaceships speared on the ends of his quills on a computer pad. “My cartoons are supposed to be silly, so if that’s what you think of them, they’re succeeding.”
At the moment, both Lt. Lee and Lys — who hadn’t been granted a rank by the Norwegian Forest cat captain — were on duty, so their barracks room was available as a place to hang out, socialize, or work on projects. Whereas the barracks room that Risqua shared with the Morphicans, Korvax, and the weird toadstool guy had people sleeping in it right now. Sure, Diaz and Risqua could have hung out in the multi-purpose room, but Captain Carroway had an annoying habit of popping into the multi-purpose room unpredictably and checking in on how everyone there was doing. It was infuriating, and it made Lt. Diaz feel like she was a puppy in kindergarten, always being cajoled into playing nicely with the other puppies. She didn’t want to play nicely. She wanted to go home.
“How is the opera coming?” Diaz asked Risqua, pointedly ignoring the white tomcat’s intrusion into their conversation.
Ensign Risqua tilted her computer pad closer to her, shielding it from prying eyes even though neither Diaz nor Melbourne had been trying to look at it. She was clearly quite self-conscious about her abilities when it came to capturing the vision Wilder had shared with her. Lt. Diaz wished that Wilder had ever told her about his plans for the opera so she could be more help.
“I’m up to a particularly difficult part,” Risqua whistled in her sing-song voice.
Lt. Diaz had no trouble imagining someone with such a beautiful voice that always sounded like birdsong in the spring writing a piece of music. She had more trouble imagining Risqua writing a Lupinian-style opera which would involve a lot of deep, sustained howling. Most Lupinian operas were performed under a full moon and were seen as a celebration and call to the bright, shining disc in their sky. Fortunately, since Lupinia had five moons, they experienced full moons often, and most operas were designed with a particular one of the moons in mind. Their largest moon was a beautiful, deep red color, completely covered in deserts. Two of the others were green with verdant forests, and the final two were both icy white, essentially giant snowballs in space.
Lt. Diaz hoped that none of the moons’ orbits had been messed up when the planet had been moved to safety at the end of the disaster that had brought the Wanderlust all the way out here. Based on her calculations — which she’d run over and over to be sure — the moons should be fine. But she wouldn’t know for sure until she got home, and so until she got home, she would continue to wonder. And worry.
If the moons’ orbits had been altered, it could destroy hundreds of years of culture built around them. Operas that were cornerstones of Lupinian culture would be permanently altered. Lt. Diaz didn’t want to be responsible for that kind of violence being wrought on the culture of her homeworld.
“Is there anything I can do to help you? Make it easier for your to concentrate?” Diaz asked, restraining herself from asking again about whether she could answer any questions Risqua might have about Lupinian opera.
“You just go study the zephyr drive and the mycelial network for the computers like you said,” Risqua answered distractedly. It looked like she’d already sunk back into working on the opera, her talon-tips tapping away at her computer pad. And after a moment, she pulled the headphones up from her shoulders where they’d settled and covered the sides of her head with them.
Lt. Diaz sighed. She wished she had something so absorbing and important to distract her. She’d simply have to do the best she could in the engine room.
The engine room was quiet. Sure, it needed occasionally checking and some infrequent maintenance, but mostly, the coils of the zephyr drive hummed along, purring like a happy kitten, and pulsing softly with a gentle blue light. Peaceful as a lullaby. If you didn’t understand the physics involved and how those coils violently warped space around them, sending the Wanderlust hurtling through space at seemingly physically impossible speeds, you could mistake the entire device for a giant’s sleep machine — complete with white noise and night light.
Lt. Diaz had studied zephyr drives at the Tri-Galactic Union academy. She knew how they worked. When she’d been younger and still starry-eyed, it almost seemed like magic. Now, it was old hat and — quite simply — not good enough. The Wanderlust might be flying faster than the speed of light, but even so, they were on a path that would take months to years. Lt. Diaz poked and prodded and fiddled with every aspect of the zephyr drive, and she even managed to improve its efficiency by several percent. When she told the captain about that, they’d probably all celebrate with extra synthesizer rations for a few weeks. Big whoop.
Lt. Diaz didn’t want to be able to synthesize fresh graalagh soup with perfectly sliced, translucently thin pieces of graalagh meat in a nearly boiling, clear, spiced broth. (Yes, she did. She wanted that very much.) She wanted to go home.
Unfortunately, increasing the efficiency of the zephyr drive wouldn’t actually shave any time at all off their trip. Not even a few days. It might make their trip more pleasant, but it wouldn’t shorten it at all.
Lt. Diaz’s peaceful yet sulky solitude in the engine room was broken by the entrance of Cmdr. Chestnut and Lys. The golden-mantled squirrel was explaining something to the pudgy green caterpillar about safety regulations, and when he finished, she said, “But even if we’re following those regulations, I think we could still squeeze a few plants in around the edges in here.”
Lys gestured to the space behind the coils of the zephyr drive with three of the hands on the right side of her body. She had a lot of hands. Or feet. It depended on how much of her body was being held upright versus crawling along the floor at any given moment. Lt. Diaz supposed that was probably why Captain Carroway hadn’t insisted on her wearing a Tri-Galactic Union uniform as much as any nonsense about technically being a drafted civilian aboard the Wanderlust. Realistically, there were no designs for a Tri-Galactic Union uniform that would fit Lys’s body. Nor Korvax’s with all his prickly quills sticking out all over either.
Lt. Diaz wished she had a whole row of hands and a bunch of stickly quills. Then she wouldn’t have to wear this stupid uniform either. She hooked a dull claw under her collar and yanked at it. The fabric didn’t really chafe or irritate her any more than her Anti-Ra uniform had… She just resented it more when it did.
“Hmm,” Cmdr. Chestnut mused. “I suppose a few of the cuttings we took from that last planet orbiting the supermassive blue giant star would really benefit from the blue light emitted by the zephyr drive coils.”
Lys clapped her two rows of hands together and exclaimed, “That’s exactly what I was thinking! So we can do it?”
“If we keep them a regulation distance from any sensitive equipment then… yes,” the golden-mantled squirrel agreed. Then startling, he noticed the much larger canine leaning despondently against one of the control panels.
When her superior officer — the only officer who was supposed to be her superior officer — noticed her, Lt. Diaz rolled her brown eyes and growled, “Regulations. You sure do love those ever since taking up with Carroway.”
“Captain Carroway,” Cmdr. Chestnut corrected the Xolo-Lupinian sharply, unthreatened by her much greater size. “And aren’t you off-duty right now?”
Lt. Diaz grumbled a couple of choice Lupinian swear words in a voice low enough not to trigger the translation features in the comm-pins they were all wearing.
“I speak Lupinian,” Cmdr. Chestnut chided.
Lt. Diaz gave him a look that very clearly said that she knew he was well aware that she already knew that fact about him, and she did not care.
“Ah, I see,” Cmdr. Chestnut observed. “You’re in one of your I’m Going to Break the Laws of Physics and Get Us Home Tomorrow or Die Trying phases.”
“What?” Lt. Diaz woofed.
“They happen every few weeks,” the golden-mantled squirrel chittered. “You get all determined and excited about it… and when it doesn’t work, you go into a depressive phase for a few weeks before trying again.”
“I do not!” Lt. Diaz objected, but as soon as her commander — and honestly, whatever divide they might have between them right now, her friend — pointed it out, she was able to see the pattern for herself. It was clear as day. Maybe, if there ever were straightforward days on this blasted ship, she’d have been able to see the pattern for herself. Instead, she just kept padding her way through this interminable twilight without either the aid of high noon or a full moon.
Lt. Diaz got all twitchy without the occasional full moon. Her fur started itching, and she just didn’t feel right.
“Ensign Mike pointed the pattern out to me,” Cmdr. Chestnut continued. “They’re a very observant fellow, that one. You know that they’re offering counseling sessions now? You might want to consider trying one.”
Lt. Diaz bristled at the idea of talking to a mushroom with a computer implant for a brain about her problems. It wasn’t like talking to them would make this journey go any faster. Though, a small, annoyingly reasonable voice in the back of her mind pointed out that it might make the journey feel like it was passing faster.
But did she really want that? To lose all of this time on this waste of a journey and just feel like it wasn’t happening? Numb herself to how her life was slipping away between her grasping claws, and there wasn’t a thing she could do about it except — apparently — get therapy from a talking mushroom.
“Ensign Lee has been doing something very similar, you know, going through cycles of determination and depression,” Cmdr. Chestnut added, causing Lt. Diaz to bristle even more.
It was one thing to be told that she was behaving so predictably that a mushroom only a few months old could see right through her. It was something else entirely to be compared to that prissy, captain’s boy, cat-pleasing Papillon. He was everything that was wrong with uplifted dogs — too tame, too controllable, too domesticated. And sure, Lt. Diaz was half uplifted Xolo, but she was also half Lupinian, a species that had risen to full sentience entirely on their own paws.
Everything that Lt. Diaz could think of to say to her commanding officer in that moment would only make it worse, and despite the cloud of rage that had settled inside her, she could still see clearly enough to know that. So, she held her tongue, turned away from the small golden-mantled squirrel and even smaller caterpillar beside him, and sulked at the computer display in front of her, trying to look busy.
Cmdr. Chestnut returned to talking to Lys about expanding their arboretum into the nooks and crannies of the engine room, and after a few minutes he left. Lt. Diaz assumed that Lys had left too until a soft voice said to her:
“I know you used the Waykeeper’s hyperspatial slipstream–” Lys pronounced those words very carefully, as if she’d had to memorize them to get them right. Even though she’d spent her entire life up to six months ago living on the Waykeeper’s turtle-like back, she’d never known anything about the physics allowing it to fly at such great speeds across the universe. “–to save your homeworld and mine. Have you considered looking for more hyperspatial slipstreams in this galaxy?”
The Xolo-Lupinian looked up from the computer console she’d been staring blankly at and then blinked down at the caterpillar. “Why would I do that?” Diaz asked. “There was only one Waykeeper, and it’s not like a hyperspatial slipstream on its own would be enough to get us back to the Milky Way. That particular maneuver required a pre-existing crinkle, as it were, in the folds of spacetime, making it a one-way journey that we already didn’t take.”
Lys shrugged with two pudgy arms on each side. “It can’t hurt to look, can it?”
Lt. Diaz’s contrary nature and grumpy mood meant that her immediate reaction was to want to tear down this naive caterpillar’s idea and list every possible way that it could hurt. But the truth was: it was the best idea she’d heard in weeks. Sure, a hyperspatial slipstream wasn’t likely to exist around here, but if it did, it would certainly imply some wacky physics going on, and if she wanted to get home faster than at the snail’s pace they were traveling at, it would require wacky physics. Extremely wacky.
“Why did you come with us on this ill-fated voyage?” Lt. Diaz asked, confrontationally. If she wasn’t going to tear down the caterpillar’s idea, she needed some way of being unpleasant and aggressive.
While Lt. Diaz waited for an answer, she also started punching in some lines of code onto the computer console, trying to develop a scan that might be able to detect the signs of a hyperspatial slipstream from a distance. She didn’t expect to find anything, but like the caterpillar said, it couldn’t hurt to look. And it wasn’t like Diaz was getting anywhere with her own ideas which all seemed to have dried up, curdled, and spoiled.
Lys stepped closer to the hostile canine, unfazed by her attitude and curious about the code she was writing. “I wanted to experience a wider universe than I would have been exposed to under the Waykeeper’s protection,” Lys said. Her voice was gentle and musical, though in a very different way from Risqua’s. Where the reptile-bird’s voice had a sharp, brightness, the caterpillar’s was rounded and soothing. “Besides, in every future where I stayed, the Zakonraptors would have destroyed my people. It’s better for them to be safe, a long way away from me, than… well…”
Lys trailed off, and Lt. Diaz stopped her typing to look down at her again. The caterpillar’s face was alien — instead of eyes, she had dark brown patches on her green skin that were photosensitive eyespots, and instead of a muzzle, she had a mouth ringed with wriggling cilia-like mouthparts. And yet, the wistful emotion she was expressing was extremely familiar to Lt. Diaz. The Xolo-Lupinian had also sacrificed being at her home with her people to save her home and her people.
“I don’t know how you could possibly know that,” Lt. Diaz woofed. “There are always a lot of possible futures. But… I know what you mean.” Her voice got very low, and she added, “I know it far too well.”
Lt. Diaz didn’t know that Ollallans — including Lys — had mild telepathic abilities, and so, in addition to having lived through similar experiences, the caterpillar was pushing some of her feelings onto the canine. Lt. Diaz felt a moment of clarity as those emotions came into focus, harmonizing with her own: pride in what she’d sacrificed for her people, intense longing for them, but also, an overwhelming contentment at the knowledge that — out there somewhere, even if it was very, very far away — her world was continuing. Day to day life continued for both the Ollallans and the Lupinians. And that was because of the sacrifices Lt. Diaz and Lys had made, leaving them stranded here.
Overcome by the feeling of synchronicity, Lt. Diaz woofed, “You’re not going to see a very wide spectrum of the universe traveling under Captain Carroway’s control.”
“What do you mean?” Lys asked. If her eyespots had been capable of widening, she’d have been wide-eyed. As it was, there was simply an openness, a youthful innocence in her small alien face.
“Captain Carroway is a member of the Tri-Galactic Union, and they’re overrun by rules, regulations, and unrealistic ideals about how the universe works,” Lt. Diaz explained. The Xolo-Lupinian carried so much bitterness inside herself about how the Tri-Galactic Union had failed Lupinia, but she didn’t know how to communicate it properly to this alien caterpillar. She wanted to warn Lys. She wanted to share what she’d learned about how the Tri-Galactic Union could let you down, and then, it might kick you while you were down. But she didn’t know how to put it into words that Lys would understand. “Just be careful, okay? Don’t get too attached to the starry-eyed, pie in the sky image Captain Carroway likes to sell.”
“Pie in the sky?” Lys asked. She’d probably never heard of pie before. She’d certainly never encountered that particularly saying.
“Yeah,” Lt. Diaz agreed. “Pie is a dessert. Mention it to Korvax, and I’m sure he’ll find a way to whip up a butchered version of the idea, but all you really need to know about it is this: they don’t fly. You’ll never find one in the sky.”
Lys’s cilia-like mouthparts wriggled in a way that seemed to be her species’ version of a smile, and she said, “If Korvax makes one, then since we’re in a spaceship flying through the sky, there will be at least one in the sky.”
“It also won’t really be a pie,” Lt. Diaz woofed acerbically. But before she could say more cutting things about Korvax’s cooking skills or Captain Carroway’s ideals, the program she’d thrown together and been running on the computer console chimed, displaying its results.
It had found a hyperspatial slipstream.
Continue on to Chapter 3…