For Ever and Ever

Mary Anne Mohanraj brings us back to the Jump Space universe for a third installation of Anju’s story, with its multi-layered relationships, consequences, distances, and connections (you can read Mary Anne’s previous Sunday Morning Transport stories in that universe, “Expulsion,” and “Fated”). ~ Julian and Fran, May 25, 2025

From mermaids to spies and everything in between, May’s Sunday Morning Transport stories are ready to entice and ensnare you. Authors Suzan Palumbo, Kelly Robson, Christopher East, and Mary Anne Mohanraj will be your conductors this month! As always, the first story of the month is free to read.

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For Ever and Ever

by Mary Anne Mohanraj

Anju read him Winnie-the-Pooh the night before she boarded the shuttle to exile. Banned from her home planet, forced to leave her son behind.

She was Kanga, trying to keep her voice cheerful, secretly panicking about what could happen to baby Roo if she let him leave the safety of her pouch. Roo could fall off the bed, down the stairs, off a cliff. When you become a parent, your heart starts walking around outside your body. If anything happened to her son, Anju’s life would be over.

Rohit was playing Tigger, jumping around his bedroom, ignoring every request to come back to bed, get under the covers. Yet she had no heart to scold him.

“Rohit, love, stop jumping around.”

“Amma, don’t be ridikkerous! Tiggers don’t jump! They bounce!” And off he went, bouncing, black hair flopping in his eyes.

He needed a haircut. Would her cousin Vasugi remember to take him for regular haircuts? If Rohit had hair in his eyes, if he couldn’t see, he was more likely to fall.

***

The little man in the dingy store frowned at his screen. “You’re short; this’d cost another two thousand credits.”

“Will you take these?” She offered her wrists, adorned with a pair of gold wedding bangles. He nodded, his fingers flying. Old-fashioned, a keyboard, but some folks preferred that interface; it was fast. Less than ten minutes before he lifted his hands. “Done.”

She’d thought it would be hard, giving up her bangles, but Anju found it surprisingly easy to strip them from her arms. She’d never been to this part of the city before, but Vasugi had a friend who knew someone.

Anju couldn’t get her record completely expunged, but now accessing it popped up a string of small misdemeanors. Nothing that anyone would flag as a problem for a trader. Her almost fatal assault on Bedi hidden far down the list, misfiled. Just far enough that someone might overlook it.

***

It was one of her father’s ships that got her the job. But she got no favors after that. Anju slept in the same bunks as the other crew—six of them, crammed in close quarters to maximize cargo space. She ate dull but nutritious paste, drank water recycled from body fluids—not so different as on Kriti, where everything was saved and reused for the terraforming effort. But on ship-scale, that process was closer. Intimate. The first time she lifted a glass of water to her lips on board, Anju gagged and had to force it down. It tasted like nothing.

They mostly traded on Fringe planets, brought back paper money; the captain gave her a cut. In theory, they all rotated trading, but in practice, three of the crew preferred life on ship, and the captain was too busy. So she and Niveen alternated trading, bringing the other for backup if needed. Some of the Fringe planets were rough, and Anju had no real defense training.

When he’d issued the stunner, the captain said, “The controls are simple enough, but it takes practice to get any real accuracy. Use the wide-beam mode until you’ve had a chance to practice in the gym.”