The Threat of Trepanation

Hail-and-Farewell Vinright knew that his mother loved him. This fact should have been comforting, and perhaps it was, in its way, but it only made the headache-throb of guilt press down on him harder.

He and his mother were in one of the Bluebeetle’s bays, floating in 0G, working together to pull down and inspect cargo netting for holes, and repair any they found. They had already been at it for an hour, and it was almost time for his mother to go help cook the next shift’s meal. 

The lights in the bay were on low, to help with Hail’s headaches, but it wasn’t doing much to stop the hot pulse and swell of pain just behind his eyeballs. His mother’s presence, no matter how much he loved her, made it worse.

She knew this, and so when she spoke, it was with a voice too quiet to even echo around the cavernous cargo bay. “Captain Winding is diverting us through Redding Station,” his mother said.

“I know,” Hail replied. 

“How do you know? I only spoke with him about it last shift.”

“Grace told me. Her brother put in the last jump.”

“Ah.” 

They fell silent. His mother pointed out the next net that they needed to take down, and they pulled themselves along the wall of the bay to reach it. They moved in perfect synchronization, reaching hand over hand for the handholds on the wall and making tiny adjustments in the air so that they didn’t crash into each other.

Hail was the same height as his mother now, but he would soon overtake her in size, since he was only fifteen and still growing. They both had the same broad face with ruddy red cheeks and small, watery eyes. Their hair, too, was the same wispy light brown, though his mother’s was pulled into a braid and greying at the temples. Both of them were stocky and large, with the characteristic thick-armed pirate bauplan.

Together, they unhooked the net from its latches and unfolded it so that they could check for damage. There was one long section of the webbing that had gotten caught on a shipping container wrong, and was frayed and stretched. They would need to re-weave the whole section with new material. Hail tugged out a new length of rope from the spool they had brought with them, bracing its axel with his feet so that it didn’t simply fly away in the gravity-free environment when he pulled. When he went to cut it, reaching for the knife at his belt, his mother said, “Where’d you get that knife? I don’t think I’ve seen it before.”

“I won it from Cast,” Hail lied, hoping his mother wouldn’t ask any further questions.

“And what did you wager? It’s a nice knife.” His mother’s voice was a little too casual. 

Hail tried to think of something that his mother wouldn’t have minded him betting. “Two weeks pay,” he said.

“It’s a lot for a knife,” she said. “Glad you won.”

“It was on a card game,” Hail said. “Cast was sure I’d lose.”

“I thought everybody was done playing against you.” His mother shook her head. “Someday, somebody’s going to try to kill you for counting cards, you know.”

“I don’t count cards, mom,” Hail said with a sigh. “I’m just good at the game.”

“Mmm.”

As a point of fact, he hadn’t actually won Cast-No-Doubt’s second best knife in a card game; he had bought it for the price of the rest of a bottle of stimulants that the ship’s doctor had prescribed him. The doctor had thought that adrenaline might help Hail’s headaches, since he professed they were less bad when he was out flying one of the shuttles or dogfighters, but all the pills did was make him extraordinarily jumpy. He had been happy to divest himself of them, and profit in the bargain.

They worked in silence some more, weaving and knotting the rope back into the net.

“How are you feeling today, Hail?”

“Same as usual,” he said. His head was throbbing, but since it always was, he just had to try to ignore it. 

“The doctor on Redding Station’s very good. He’s the same one who took out your uncle Maker’s tumor.”

“I know. You said.” Hail’s fingers, thick but deft, tied the next section of rope. “You don’t have to go out of the way for me, you know.”

“Hail,” his mother said. “Yes, we do.”

“The whole ship is going to lose a week of pay because I have a headache?” he asked. “It seems--”

“We would do the same for any one of your cousins,” his mother said sharply. “It’s a sin to abandon family. And it’s a sin to neglect your health, too.”

“It’s headaches. And Doctor Mayfair said that there wasn’t anything wrong with me.”

“She couldn’t tell what was wrong with you,” his mother said. “That is not the same thing, and you know it. It’s been more than a year of this, hasn’t it? Were you just thinking you’d live with it for the rest of your life?”

His mother’s annoyed tone made the pain spike in his brain. “It must not be about to kill me,” he said. “I could have hitched a ride to Redding, if you really wanted me to go.”

“Absolutely not,” his mother said. “You’re not old enough.”

“Someone else could have come with me.”

His mother tied off her section of rope netting. “You and I will be going to Redding, and if the doctor there finds something that he can treat, we’ll stay there until the ship can come pick us up.”

Hail frowned, but said nothing.

“What’s the matter?” his mother asked.

“I don’t want to owe everybody,” he said. “I won’t be able to pay back that debt.”

“It’s my debt, and it’s already paid,” his mother said. “Think nothing of it.”

“I’ll have to pay you back, then.”

“Hail, we’re going to Redding, and I pray to God the doctor can do something for you, so please stop trying to convince me that we shouldn’t. It’s a done deal.”

“It’s really not that bad, mom.”

“No? Not that bad?” She began rolling the net back up, the hole now patched. Hail helped her. “None of your cousins flinch when somebody comes into the room with them. None of your cousins can’t stand the sound of their father’s voice, or the smell of their mother’s perfume. None of your cousins spend all of their time hiding in the cargo bays.” She kicked off the wall to hook the net back in place. “It’s not good for your soul,” she said. “And it’s not good for mine, either, to watch you suffer.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Don’t apologize, Hail.”

“I know you’ll tell me that I shouldn’t feel this way, but I really wish I hadn’t said anything about it.”

She laughed, a dry sound. “Even if you hadn’t said anything to Doctor Mayfair, I would have been worried. You’re not so good at hiding things from me, sweetheart.”

“Is it really that obvious?”

“I noticed before you said a thing,” she said.

“I didn’t know.”

“There’s only so much a mother can tally up to teenage angst,” she said. Her concern pressed in on him; made him feel like there wasn’t enough air in the room. Perhaps it was the tension in his back that his mother noticed. She glanced down at her watch. “I said I’d help your aunt with the second shift meal. Can you handle the rest of these yourself?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Hail said. He offered her a smile, grateful that she was leaving, but trying to make it clear that he didn’t want to push her away. He didn’t think he actually struck that balance, because the look in her eyes was one of pity. 

Even still, she smiled back. “I’ll see you for the meal later, na?”

“Of course.”

“We’ll be at Redding Station in ten days. You should start thinking of what to pack, just in case we have to stay there.”

Hail nodded, and his mother kicked off the wall and drifted away towards the exit of the bay. The pressure in Hail’s head lessened when she had gone, though it remained, as always, lurking right on the edge of his awareness.

----------------------------------------

Hail’s cousin, God’s Grace, found him a few days later while he was packing. It wasn’t that Hail had been avoiding her, but he also hadn’t really wanted to see her. She was, by far, his favorite cousin, but she was also his most annoying one. Grace was two years younger than he was, and his aunt’s youngest kid. They had become close when Hail had been responsible for teaching her how to cook in the Bluebeetle’s communal kitchen. She was atrocious at cooking, and he wasn’t much better; they spent far too much of their time demonstrating knife tricks to each other, rather than paying attention to the vegetables they were supposed to be chopping.

He could tell she was coming before she appeared. His head hurt from just the slam of his family’s apartment door opening and her footsteps in the tiny hall.

She stuck her head into his small but clean bedroom, her pug nose wrinkled. “I told you to convince your mom to let me come with you.”

“There’s not anything good on that station,” Hail said, without looking up from the jumpsuits he was folding and stuffing into his bag. “You aren’t going to be missing out on much.”

“Na? Then how come everyone keeps telling me it would be so terrible for me to go?”

“You want to pay for your own month of lodgings if we end up staying? Your dad would trust you with that amount of pay?”

She stepped over his bag on the floor and flopped onto his neatly made bed. “You’re going to owe so much,” she said.

“My mom’s paying it.”

“Yeah, that just means you’ll owe her, stupid ass.”

“Yeah, I know,” Hail said. “But since I don’t owe you, you can stop talking about it.”

“Cast told me that they’re going to take out a chunk of your brain.”

“They might,” Hail said.

“How much?”

“Bigger than whatever you’ve got floating around in your skull,” Hail said.

“Good one.” She reached over and opened his bedside table drawer. Hail threw a pair of socks at her to get her to stop fishing through his belongings, but she was undeterred. “Can I have your old knife, now that you’ve got Cast’s?” She pulled it out, unsheathed it from its utility holster, and balanced it on the calloused tip of her finger. Hail glared at her, but she just grinned.

“No,” Hail said.

“If you see a nice one on Redding, would you buy it for me?”

“I’m in debt, remember?”

“Oh, come on,” she said. “Please?”

“How would I get the money?”

“There’s gotta be people on Redding you can con at cards,” she said. “You’ll have a fresh supply of people to scam.”

“I’m not scamming anything,” he protested. 

Her glee made her voice extra piercing. His head throbbed. “I need you to tell me how you always win, then. It’s not fair that you won’t share your tricks. I promise I won’t tell anyone.”

“There’s no trick,” he said. “I’m not counting cards. I’m not cheating. I just play the game.”

“Sure.” She tossed his old knife up in the air, then caught it by pinching the blade when it came back down.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“And my mom’d kill me if I tried to play cards on Redding. She’s sure people would hunt me down if I kept winning.”

“You gotta make sure you lose every once in a while,” she said. “That way nobody can hold a grudge. And play with different people every time.”

“If you’re so smart, how come you don’t win every game?”

“Because I don’t know whatever trick you have.”

“There’s no trick, I keep telling you.”

“Sure.” She didn’t believe him in the least. 

“What is it going to take for you to believe me?” he asked.

“Just show me how you do it,” she said. “Come on.”

Hail stopped folding his clothes. “You’re not going to go away until I do, are you?”

“Of course not,” she said. “I need you to show me, so that when you leave, I can beat everybody for you. I gotta profit while you’re gone somehow.”

“You got cards on you?”

She was gleeful, but that just exhausted Hail. “Always.” She pulled a well worn, rubber-banded set of cards from her pocket and held them up.

“You got something to bet with?” he asked.

“What? You’re just going to teach me how it works. I’m not carrying.”

“You’re making me work for free,” he said, then turned and fished in his desk drawer for a handful of pieces of candy. He handed half of them to Grace, and kept the other half for himself. “You can keep any you win.”

“Why are we actually betting?”

“It doesn’t work unless you’ve got something to lose,” Hail said. “Shuffle your deck.” 

She did. Hail sat down on his desk chair, and the stack of cards sat between them on the edge of the bed. 

“What are we playing?” she asked.

“You’re going to name a number of cards to draw, and an amount for us to bet. You’re going to hold out your hand of cards, and if I pull the highest one out of your hand, I win the pot.”

“This is so stupid,” she said.

“Are you in or out?”

“In,” she said, unable to resist the urge to gamble. “Five cards. Three pieces. I’m gonna win, easy.”

Hail obediently dropped three hard candies onto the bedspread between them, and she did the same. She pulled the top five cards from the deck, looked at them, shuffled them around in her hand for a moment, and then held them out so that Hail couldn’t see them.

He stared her down for a second, and her eyes narrowed. “Come on,” she said. “Pick. I want to win.”

He reached out his hand towards her set of cards. They were all perfectly, evenly splayed. His head ached, but he squinted his eyes and grit his teeth. There-- when he hovered his hand over the third card in her set, maybe it was her breath hitching a little, maybe it was some other, nearly invisible tell, but he was sure this was the right one. He fingered it, then pulled it out of the stack. 

“Show me the hand,” he said.

She scowled and displayed her four remaining cards. His ten did indeed beat the twin eights, four, and two that she had remaining. Annoyed, she scooted the candy over to him. “Pure luck,” she said.

“Maybe,” he agreed. “Want to bet again?”

She did, and upped both the number of cards and the ante. This time, she tried to be obvious with her tells when his hand hovered over the wrong card. He saw past her immediately, and easily plucked the highest card out of her hand. She demanded they try again, with an even larger number of cards. Hail won again.

“Let me try,” she said. “You’re cheating, I know it.”

“I’m not,” Hail said. “But you can try, if you want.”

They swapped positions, and Hail made a moderate bet on a small number of cards. He kept his face perfectly neutral when Grace reached for his stack, and even when her fingers danced over the top of the cards he was holding out, he didn’t flinch. She picked one at random and lost the bet, scowling.

“You’re cleaning me out, Hail!” 

“You’re giving me a headache.” This was true, though he had already had one before she came in.

“I don’t get it.”

“I’m just lucky,” he said. “I’m not cheating. I’m not counting cards. I’m just good at it. And you’ve got tells.”

She flopped back on his bed and sighed, eating the last piece of candy she hadn’t bet away. “I hope when they take that chunk of your brain out, you’ll still be able to win.”

“Yeah, they’re gonna pull out just the part that makes me gamble real great,” Hail grumbled. 

“You think you could get them to give it to you?”

“What?”

“The piece of brain they’re gonna take out.”

“Why?”

“Put it in a jar, you know?”

“Seems pretty gross.”

“I’d buy it from you.”

“Really? What’s the going rate on my brain?” he asked.

Grace reached up and pulled one of her earrings out of her ear, tossing it over to Hail. “I’ll trade you my jade earrings for it,” she said. “They’d look good on you.”

Hail held the earring up to his ear and looked in his mirror. “Yeah, sure. If they let me keep it, I’ll sell it to you.”

“Sick.” She held out her hand, and he gave her the earring back. She hesitated a moment. “Are they really going to cut you open?”

“Look, I don’t know, Grace,” he said, scowling. “It’s probably nothing. I bet the doctor’s gonna take one look at me, say he can’t do anything, and I’m gonna owe everybody for having to detour the ship for no fucking reason. It’s just--” He cut himself off.

“And if the doctor says there is something wrong with you?”

“Who let you in here, anyway?” Hail asked. “I’m trying to pack.”

She collected all her cards scattered on his bed, then stood up. “Don’t let them kill you or nothing, na?”

“Don’t think I’ve got much of a choice.”

She bumped his arm with her elbow. His head rattled. “You just gotta kill ‘em first.”

----------------------------------------

The shuttle ride with his mother to Redding Station, on the worst shuttle in the Bluebeetle’s roster, was long, tense, and silent. Despite the rules of propriety that tended to reign in the airspace around black stations-- honor even among thieves that a visiting ship wouldn’t be attacked-- Captain Winding had still thought it faster and more prudent to jump the ship in far away from the station, and not wait the requisite eight hours to jump it closer. So it was a long, long trip by shuttle, watching the hulk of his family’s home disappear out the rear window, and many hours later, the heavy rock of Redding Station come into focus on the shuttle’s cameras. 

It looked just like any other station Hail had visited, lit up with all its docking lights, and he had been here once before. There wasn’t much to distinguish it. Like his family’s ship or any station, its gravity was maintained by huge, rotating rings that girdled its center, though these ones were many times larger. The station orbited a gas giant at a great distance, far out from the system’s star. Given the angle of their approach, the planet itself was only visible where it passed in front of the stars, a great shadow blocking them out.

His headache, though it had been just a dull throb for most of the journey, mounted as they approached. Something like thirty thousand people lived on Redding Station, not even counting any passers-through and ships docked, and Hail was not in the least looking forward to the crowds. Stations like this were the biggest metropoles he had ever been to; pirate ships rarely went within spitting distance of occupied planets, or at least not close enough for their crews to take shore leave. In a few years, Hail might pay for a false ID and leave his family’s ship to see more of the universe, but he didn’t think it was likely he would ever spend much time on a planet, if any. Pirates stood out.

His mother negotiated for dock space for their shuttle, the radio garbled and hissing, and Hail shut his eyes to block out the noise. The shuttle swung sickeningly in towards the bay. He never usually got sick from its motion-- in fact, he loved taking the dogfighters out to do tricks-- but as his mother pulled them closer to the bay, his stomach turned and a cold sweat stood out on his brow.

“Are you alright, Hail?” his mother asked. Her own voice was strained, and she glanced over at him, taking her eyes off the lit curve of navigational beacons guiding them into the station for just a second.

“Fine,” Hail said through gritted teeth. “You?” He didn’t open his eyes.

“We’re almost here,” she said. “We’ll have this figured out once and for all, and that will be better, won’t it?” The false reassurance in her voice might have worked on him when he was five, but he was too old for that now, and her anxiety echoed and bounced off him, filling the air of the shuttle so thickly that he could hardly breathe.

“I’m not worried,” he said, which was mostly true. “You’re more worried than I am.”

“That’s my job.” She sighed. The bay doors were opening before them to let them in, and then a minute later Hail felt the characteristic thump of the magnetic landing skids catching hold on the floor or wall of the bay, to hold the shuttle in place without gravity. 

They waited for the hiss of air entering the bay, and for the atmosphere warning lights to stop flashing before they could open the doors to get out.

As they did, Hail was immediately assaulted, clutching his head in sudden pain. It must have been the smell of the air that was setting him off; every ship and station had their own unique musky smell, people living in close, recycled-air confines, and this one was different than his family’s ship, heady with sweat and a metallic tang. And maybe they kept their oxygen levels different, too-- it was cheaper to keep the CO2 higher, and that was the fear that struck him low in his gut. He clung with one hand to the side of the shuttle, trying to adjust and steady himself, trying to get used to the pressure on his skull.

He couldn’t look his mother in the eyes as she came over to him, hoisting herself over the top of the shuttle in order to reach him faster, laying her hand on his forehead. Her concern was cloying on his tongue; it made him shiver and want to get away. “Hail--”

“It’s just the air,” he said. “I’ll be fine.” It took great effort to get the words out. “Should we leave our bags?”

“We radio’d to set up the appointment as soon as we jumped in,” his mother said. “So we won’t have to wait to see the doctor. If we need to stay, we can come back for them.” She touched his shoulder, gently, an attempt at comfort but also a reminder to get out of the path of the swinging shuttle door, and he moved away from it, kicking to drift down to the floor, the magnetic soles of his own shoes latching him in place so he could shuffle along and exit the bay.

Though his moment of unsteadiness had passed, the throb in his head only grew more intense as they left the shuttle area and paid the docking fee. His mother paid this fee in a small brick of vena, which the station guard checked for weight and quality before letting them pass, but Hail knew that the doctor was to be paid in gold. His mother was carrying that on a chain around her neck, the heavy rings of it tucked underneath her jumpsuit collar. Hail had caught a glimpse of her putting it on, and he hated knowing exactly how much was being paid for this visit. He understood the value of gold, and vena, and the precious time it took to jump their ship away from its usual routes, quite well. 

Designed entirely around accommodating travellers and making their purchases easy and efficient, Redding Station was not hard to navigate, even for Hail and his mother, who were unfamiliar with it. The corridors were well marked, and once they entered the main rotating ring and were caught by its gravity (half of standard, Hail noted), they could make their way to the bustling main concourse, the primary attraction of any station.

The family that owned Redding kept it clean and well maintained, and Hail spotted cameras out of the corners of his eyes when they walked down the halls. The owners of this place took the security of the station seriously, despite, or perhaps because of, their clientele. It wouldn’t do to have two families end up fighting and costing the station damages and reputation. Still, despite the promise of order, the whole place was almost menacingly industrial. Although every ship tended to look similar in construction-- walls studded with rivets, safety doors with pressure gauges on each side, sterile electric light-- there was something about being in an unfamiliar place that made the corridors seem colder than they would have on the Bluebeetle. At home, where he knew every twist and turn and place where the wall was dented, it was cozy.

The concourse itself was crowded and loud, spanning the entire length of one of the station’s circular rings. Hail wasn’t used to spaces this wide open except for gravityless cargo bays, and his mother caught his sleeve, as though he might wander off and get lost in the crowd. His head hurt too much for him to focus on it. Everywhere he turned, there were flashing neon lights, vendors hawking every kind of ware imaginable, and the press of strangers against him. It was an assault on his senses.

There was a man selling food, frying oil hissing and sputtering, making Hail flinch as they passed. On a ship, that never would have been allowed outside of the kitchens, but here it was, just in a stall next to the stream of passers-by. Right next to it was a tailor shop, and Hail almost crashed straight into a mannequin, nearly mistaking it for a person. And then the next stall was the hazy entrance to a drug den, where more exotic offerings than vena could be enjoyed in relative comfort. Hail caught a glimpse of customers leaning back on plush divans, their heads tilted back, eyes closed and jaws slack, when the door briefly opened.

“The doctor is in the next quadrant,” his mother said. “I should have had us take the elevator.” She was harried by the experience as well, but not to the extent that Hail was.

“Mom--” Hail said. He was truly nauseous now, and his mother stopped and looked at him with concern as he grabbed at her, his fingers digging into her muscled forearm so hard that he must have bruised her. “Can we sit down?”

“The doctor’s office will be quieter, sweetheart, come on. It’s just a little farther.”

She pulled him on, and they entered a new section of the marketplace. His mother hastened her step, but Hail’s feed dragged, involuntarily. He was moving through sludge. All around, this was the section of the market where human beings could be bought or sold, sometimes for labor, a simple servitude in payment of a transferable title of debt, but often much worse. The distance out of their usual ambit was only one reason why Captain Winding rarely brought the Bluebeetle to this station, or any number of others like it.

Despite the alluring signage promising every conceivable delight, the air was suffused with palpable misery. Hail’s head was an open wound. 

“Mom,” he said, much more urgently, though the word was soupy in his mouth. His vision swam. When his fingers went slack on her arm, his vision greying out at the edges, she didn’t quite catch him as he crumpled to his knees, face hitting the diamond-textured metal floor. The last thing he felt was the taste of blood in his mouth.

----------------------------------------

It was the chill that brought Hail back around. He woke up, laying flat on his back, in a sterile doctor’s office, on the examining table. He would have bolted upright, but the throb of his blood in his ears when he moved cautioned him against large movements. He could hear his mother speaking to a stranger in the next room, her concerned tone carrying through the door, though the words lacked clarity.

There was a bottle of water on the counter next to the examining table, and Hail grabbed it, cracking it open and sloshing the ice-cold water around in his mouth. He winced as he realized that he had bit his cheek somehow in his fall-- it stung when he poked it with his tongue-- but at least he hadn’t cracked a tooth on the floor. Half gravity was kind in that way, at least.

Footsteps pattered in the room outside, and then the door swung open, revealing his mother. Her hair had frizzed out of its neat braid, and she looked at him with soft eyes. “I’m glad you’re awake.”

“How long was I out?” Hail asked.

“A couple hours,” his mother said. To forestall his immediate objection, she held up her hand. “You came to for a second right when we got you in here, but you weren’t lucid. The doctor gave you a sedative so that he could look at you.”

Hail slumped back against the cold wall. “Oh.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Okay.” Now that he identified the sensation of lethargy in his arms as the remnants of a drug, he could process it better. The throb of  his headache was diluted, like he was feeling it behind a heavy and warped pane of glass. “How long until it wears off?”

“Probably another hour or so before it’s completely out of your system.” She sat down backwards on the doctor’s chair, wrapping her long arms around the cushion. Though the examining table that Hail had been laying on was normal sized, the chair was comically small for his mother’s large frame; the doctor must not have been born a pirate, despite the demographic he served. His mother’s posture gave away that something was wrong.

Hail touched his temple gingerly. “How much are they going to have to take out?”

“We’re going back home,” she said. “The doctor couldn’t find anything wrong. Nothing he could treat.”

“Oh,” Hail said. He had to admit that he was relieved. “Good.” He wished his mother could be happier about this, but her knuckles were white as she held her own arms around the back of the chair.

“He thinks it might be an old brain injury, something causing epilepsy. He gave us another doctor’s name, on another station--”

“I’ve never had a brain injury, mom,” Hail said. “I’ve never hit my head.”

She pinched her eyes shut. “He says-- pirate kids-- they can injure themselves in zero G without ever hitting their head on something. Sudden starts, stops, spins in the dogfighters--”

Hail shook his head. It felt clearer every second, though that meant the pain crept back in around the edges. “Then there’s nothing that can be done about it,” he said. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters,” she said. “It matters to me. You scared me, Hail.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry that you paid for nothing.”

“Please don’t--”

“Let’s just go home.” He looked at his watch. Every second cost their whole family money. “The sooner we can jump out, the better.”