Darkship Renegades by Sarah A. Hoyt Page B

out at vistas invisible to mere mortals.
    She was wearing a blue mechanic’s whole-body suit. Not that all mechanics in Eden wore one uniform, any more than anyone in Eden was fond of uniforms. Back when I worked as a full-time mechanic, there were people who came to work completely naked, as well as those who came to work in floor-length dresses more appropriate to an Earth ballroom. But the blue mechanic’s body-suit was the most common outfit, because it would fit over practically everything—except maybe the floor-length dresses—and it would protect the more expensive clothing. Also, it had deep and plentiful pockets, into which one could sink tools or parts and avoid walking back and forth to get them, or even wearing a cumbersome belt. The suits were so common for people engaged in manual labor, and so cheap, that they were sold at vending machines throughout the two docking complexes: the Energy Board’s and the Water Board’s.
    There was no way that Zenobia should look graceful with her hands deep in the pockets of the oversized, bulky uniform, but she did. I had a fleeting thought about her having been friends with Kit since childhood, and a stab of unreasoning jealousy.
    Had Kit had a crush on her? I knew he’d loved his first wife dearly, not just because he had told me, but because I knew. Once, our minds had become so intertwined that the normal barrier to the transmission of images and memories had failed; I’d got his memories of their affair.
    Jean, Kit’s father, called Kit’s first marriage a boy and girl affair, a bad case of puppy love, because neither of the participants had known any better, or knew anything of how to make a relationship work, or even that relationships could work. Perhaps it was that. Kit’s love of his first wife had that rosy nimbus quality that edged all her memories with thoughts of how wonderful she’d been. But he’d told me when he’d proposed to me that he’d had other lovers before his marriage. He’d made it sound as if they hadn’t mattered at all and perhaps they hadn’t, but looking at Zenobia’s graceful walk, knowing that Kit never called her anything but “Zen”—surely an affectionate nickname—which Doc used also, I wondered if she’d been one of his crushes or even one of his lovers before marriage.
    I’ve always been suspicious of women like that—naturally beautiful and effortlessly poised. Even when not doing something strenuous, I became sweaty and disheveled. The only time I looked graceful was when I used ballet moves to kick someone. The only way I’ve ever stunned a man with my mere presence was by adding a punch to his head.
    So I might have been less than cordial as I glared at Zenobia, standing there, lost in her reverie. “Well?” I asked.
    She shook a little, like someone awakened from a dream. Had she been in the past? Reliving her last trip in this ship? Or in the future, planning our trip and trying to anticipate all that could go wrong?
    She looked vaguely guilty. Then she cleared her throat. “I’ve looked all over. There doesn’t seem to be anything here that shouldn’t be.”
    I must have blinked at her, because she looked at the pad in my hands and, without giving me time to figure out what she’d do, grabbed for it so fast it might almost have been Cat speed. She read what I had on the screen under the words “parts to requisition.”
    Then she typed quickly and handed me the pad back and resumed her sleep-like walking around the cabin, looking at this and touching that.
    I wasn’t sure what I expected her to have typed. It could, I supposed, be anything from poetry to calculations. But when I looked down, I found out that the note was perfectly rational and clearly intended for me: DON’T LET US MAKE REQUISITIONS. IT GIVES THEM A CHANCE TO SLIP SOMETHING IN THAT COULD BLOW UP THE SHIP OR WORSE. AND LET’S MAKE SURE THIS BAY IS LOCKED AND THE LOCK CODED ONLY FOR ME, YOU, KIT AND DOC BARTOLOMEU.
    I raised my