* * * * *
Amanda’s eyes snapped open. She lay on a bunk in a standard shipside cabin, with An-jing sitting beside her, absorbed in her tripad—or was it An-jing? Amanda frowned. An-jing had been wearing a green coverall, and this girl’s was red, so unless she’d been asleep for long enough that An-jing had changed clothes—
“Oh, you’re awake!” The girl lowered her tripad, smiling. “I’m so glad. I’m Séarlait, An-jing’s sister. Sorry to keep changing family members on you, but there are a lot of us, and we all do different things well, so we’ve been switching off who’s staying with you. I hope you’re feeling better.”
“I—am. Much better.” Amanda levered herself up in the bunk, blinking in surprise. The fuzzy feeling in her head, the racing heart and sweating palms which had been afflicting her for the last week, all had vanished while she had been sleeping. More than that, her memories of the past six months, her memories of herself and Dai, of their married life, were clear and sharp once again. She could recall the wave of his black hair and the rich tone of his laughter, the exact shade of coral pink she had chosen (over his half-joking objections) as the accent color for their shipside cabin, even the sound like a sigh that the inside door of the California’s main lock made when it closed. “What—”
“You were being drugged,” said Séarlait, her brown eyes cold and angry. “Someone had been slipping a drug into your food, your drinks, everything. When you missed a dose, the one you would have had in your lunch today, your system overreacted to the sudden dropoff and you became ill. Fortunately, we have cousins who are healers, Heartsease and her daughter Heartbud, and they were able to find out what kind of drug had been used on you and counteract it.”
“Thank them for me, please.” Amanda swung her legs off the bunk and let her toes touch the floor. “I don’t suppose you know if anything else has been done while I was sleeping?”
“Actually, quite a lot.” Séarlait turned her tripad around, revealing not the novel or movie Amanda had been expecting but a chat window, with several names she recognized attached to members of the multiway conversation. “My brother Stefan checked on your grandparents, and they don’t seem concerned about you yet. Certainly they don’t know how much you’ve found out about what they’re up to. And I was able to run a tracking exercise on the sensor data we had from the flyby of your ship…”
“The California,” Amanda interjected. “That’s her name.”
“The California. Excellent.” Séarlait’s fingers flew across her tripad’s keyboard. “You wouldn’t happen to know where she’s registered?”
“Out of Dover.” Amanda grinned, and Séarlait chuckled under her breath. Most worlds required that a person wishing to register a ship on their rolls should either live there or have their primary business address there, but on the planet of Dover, absentee owners were permitted so long as they had a registered agent in residence on the planet’s surface. It had been estimated that sixty-five percent of Dover’s adult population listed their primary profession as registered agent, and the only reason the proportion was not higher was that the planet still grew some of its own food.
“Well, I was able to follow the trajectory of the California, out of Dover, until she disappeared beyond that furthest planet, and with that I was able to get a sensor reading on her where she is now.” Séarlait smiled gently. “There were power readings consistent with a single cold sleep tank, up and running. He’s alive.”
Amanda distinctly felt a knot in the pit of her stomach release. “Thank you,” she breathed. “Thank you so much.”
“You’re welcome. But even though we know where he is, and that he is alive, you may want to think about a few things before we decide on what to do next.” Séarlait looked grave. “I’ve had some experience with this sort of thing. Even people who don’t want you around can get angry if you suddenly disappear, and your grandparents do want you. Granted, they only want you because they can get some advantage out of you, but that’s still a reason why they want you.”
Amanda sighed, her good mood deflating like a popped balloon. “You think even if we’re able to rescue Dai, even if he and I get away this time, they might try coming after us again.”
“My family does, and so do I.” Séarlait tapped a finger on her tripad. “But there might be a way to keep that from happening, and you’d even get a chance at a bit of poetic justice while you’re at it. The only thing is, you have to be very brave. Brave enough to go back to your grandparents, brave enough to pretend nothing happened, until you hear from us again. Can you do that?”
“Will it save my Dai, and bring me home to the California in time for Christmas?” Amanda countered.
“Yes.” Séarlait’s eyes were steady on hers. “If you follow the directions we give you, it will.”
“Then yes.” Amanda nodded. “I can do that. As long as you’ve got some way to keep me safe from whatever drugs they’re using,” she added, a brief shiver running through her. “I’m not magical.”
“We’ll see the healers before you leave,” Séarlait promised. “For the rest of it…” She grinned again. “Tell me, where do your grandparents stand on things like showing appreciation for local culture?”