Boneyards by Kristine Kathryn Rusch Read Free Book Online

this been planetside, although a few people cursed as their beverages took on a life of their own. The chairs and tables were bolted down, but the mugs weren't, and neither was the ice or the bar snacks or the lemons, olives, and cherries.
    She and everyone else in the bar were in the middle of a mess, which would only get worse when the gravity returned to normal.
    Behind her, the bar owner shouted, “You son of a bitch!” and that was when she realized that the gravity change wasn't some kind of malfunction; it had been planned, probably to get money out of the bar owner.
    She glanced at the woman and was startled to see how lovely she looked, her hair spiking upward, her long limbs gangly no longer. The woman looked at home in zero-g, as if floating was her preferred method of travel.
    She used the tops of chairs to slowly propel herself toward Rosealma.
    “It looks like there's trouble,” the woman said, glancing toward the main entrance. The bar owner was shaking his fist, propelling himself backward as he did so, probably the only person in the entire bar who wasn't used to zero-g.
    Rosealma couldn't tell which of the people floating around him had made him angry, and she really didn't want to find out. She smiled at the woman.
    “I'm Rosealma.”
    The woman's eyebrows went up, giving her smile a wry cynicism. “Wow, that's a mouthful. You don't have a nickname?”
    “Do I need one?” Rosealma asked.
    “Everyone out here has a nickname. It's easier.”
    “Easier?”
    “Yeah,” the woman said. “That way we don't have to clarify which Rose or Alma we're talking about. We don't need last names or even first names. We're just too damn lazy anyway.”
    And then she laughed. The laugh was raspy and deep, and Rosealma realized that the woman hadn't been eighteen for a long time. She was at least in her mid-twenties, maybe older, and she had seen as much or more than Rosealma had.
    “What's your nickname?” Rosealma asked.
    “Turtle,” the woman said. “You know what a turtle is?”
    “Some kind of Earth creature.”
    “Earth hell,” Turtle said. “The little ones are all the way out here. Some ships have them as mascots.”
    “You're someone's mascot?”
    Turtle grinned at her. “Nah. I look like a turtle.”
    “You don't,” Rosealma said, although she wasn't exactly sure what a turtle looked like. “You're the prettiest thing in this bar.”
    Turtle smiled and tilted her head again. Her cheeks did turn red. “You be careful,” she said, “or I'll start thinking you're flirting with me.”
    “Maybe I am flirting,” Rosealma said, startled at her own boldness.
    Turtle's smile grew. “Then we should get out of this bar before the gravity changes. It's going to be a mess and I'll feel obligated to clean it up.”
    “I don't feel obligated to anything,” Rosealma said. Which wasn't true, of course. She felt obligated for everything, and sorry for even more, and the weight of everything—from the regrets to the losses to the destruction of all of her dreams—threatened to crash her to the floor quicker than a gravity change.
    “So you're running away,” Turtle said. Her tone was businesslike, not curious. She wasn't asking a question, just stating a fact.
    “No,” Rosealma said. “You have to care to run away.”
    Turtle studied her for a moment, the smile gone. Then she nodded once. “Well, then, I need to run away from this bar.” She extended her hand. “You want to come along?”
    Rosealma looked at Turtle's hand, with its long fingers and visibly chewed cuticles. Rosealma took it almost before she realized she had made a decision.
    “Let's go,” she said, “and never look back.”
    Turtle raised their joined hands. “Deal,” she said.

T he station blew.
    It started in the middle. A glow built, then expanded. The center disappeared in the light, and that's when Squishy realized it was imploding.
    She stared at the screen in the Dane for just a moment. The silence in the cockpit