Wayfarer: AV494

by Matthew S. Cox

  At least this place separates men and women into different bathrooms.

  She spent a moment standing there enjoying the rinse before reaching for a bottle of cleansing gel set in a small recess. A small squeeze dispensed a portion of neon blue gel into her hand. The soft clunk of a locker door closing came from the one doorway out of the shower pod.

  Damn. So much for having the room to myself.

  “Hey,” said Gina as she entered.

  Kerys twisted left, putting her right arm―and the handprint Will left on it―out of sight nearer the wall. She smiled at Gina who held eye contact for only a half-second before looking down with an expression like a child about to be scolded for doing something wrong.

  The slender dark-skinned woman didn’t have the physique Kerys expected of a soldier, her limbs more sinewy than bulky. She crossed the room to the third stall on the right side, opposite from her, and turned on the water.

  Kerys resumed washing herself, trying to stand such that Gina couldn’t see her bruise. She rubbed the hand-shaped mark, scowling at the memory of Will grabbing her in the hallway because she dared to walk away when he ‘hadn’t finished talking’ yet. That had been the man she left. She didn’t at all trust ‘nice Will’ who’d showed up in her room.

  Nice guys don’t break into rooms. She shivered at the thought of lying naked in bed with him staring at her for hours. Who knows how long it had taken him to cover her with the blanket. Had he done that before or after taking pictures?

  At feeling watched, Kerys peered back. Gina seemed too casual.

  Did she see the mark? Again Kerys covered it, ashamed of herself. The spike of humiliation faded in seconds, and she worked a lather into her hair. Moments later while rinsing her head, she caught a glimpse between her arm and body of Gina, who had turned to look at her.

  Why is she watching me?

  Kerys didn’t react, continuing to run her fingers through her hair. Do they suspect I’m trying to get back with Will? Do they think we’re screwing?

  “I wish they’d give us something different. I’m so sick of this honeysuckle soap,” said Gina, her voice echoey.

  “Yeah,” said Kerys into the wall. “I’m not sure I trust using the same soap for my hair as everything else.”

  Gina laughed. “Saving money wherever they can, right? It’s supposed to be good for hair.”

  In a patch of light gleaming on the wall, Gina’s reflection peered back for an uncomfortably long few seconds. Worry welled up in Kerys’s gut. Though young, the other woman was part of the military detachment here. Kerys felt like a random cop had decided to follow her, hoping to catch a misdeed.

  Her eyes shot open wide. Do they know about the flower? Someone found the towel!

  Kerys rushed the rest of her shower, skipping the washcloth and running soap over her body with her bare hands. When she turned to rinse her back, Gina startled, again looking too innocent. Kerys kept her gaze on the floor, afraid if Gina stared into her eyes she’d know all about the forbidden flower. Or maybe she suspected her complaining about Will had been a cover to allow for them to break company policy. Will had seemed truthful when he claimed others in the outpost ignored that rule.

  A slender, dark brown foot stepped into her view.

  Kerys’s breath caught in her throat. She looked up at Gina, standing close enough to hug, holding an empty plastic bottle.

  “Hey.” Gina smiled. “You done with the soap? I’m out.”

  “Uhh yeah.” Kerys twisted around behind her, grabbed the bottle, and handed it over. “This one’s almost new.”

  “Sorry.” Gina bit her lip. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I’m used to the USIC barracks, fifty people in the same shower. Guys too. Kinda loses its awkwardness after a few months.” Playfulness glinted in her large brown eyes. She wagged the soap bottle. “Thanks.”

  “Sure.”

  Gina walked back to the stall she’d left running.

  That’s… odd. Kerys blinked. She’s… Oh. Relief pushed the weight of guilt from her shoulders. I’m not under investigation… she’s got a crush on me. She turned under the spray for a final rinse, debating mentioning the flower. If Gina did ‘like’ her in that way, a little bias in her favor might prevent Will from manipulating appearances. Question being, would it be worth the resulting crapstorm?

  Nah. Just keep your head down girl. Anything goes wrong it could cost you big again. She scowled at the smug grin Doctor Furroughs had given her when she realized they’d stolen the credit for her work. That’s not happening again. I will not let Will screw this up for me.

  She killed the water and hurried out to the adjacent locker area. After drying off, she slipped into a clean tee shirt and sweat pants.

  Gina walked over to the locker area, her expression mostly neutral with a touch of disappointment.

  “Sorry for running off so fast,” said Kerys. “I’ve got so much work to do. We just found some writing in the dig site and it’s all I can think about. My head is spinning.”

  “Oh, cool.” Gina took a clean set of underwear from a bag but stood there holding them, smiling. “It say anything interesting?”

  Kerys sighed out her nose. “That’s what I’m hoping to find out.”

  “Right on.” Gina stepped into her underwear and pulled them up, watching Kerys the whole time.

  Not wanting to send the wrong message or hurt the woman’s feelings, Kerys grumbled about having had so much work dumped on her, waved, and jogged back to her quarters. As soon as she got inside, she hit the button to lock it and stared at the small red screen on the control panel.

  “This time, I know I didn’t forget.”

  Kerys’s dream of being interviewed about everything her team found on AV494 took on a surreal quality when the host’s perfume grew overpowering. Purple mist poured out of the microphone. Reality blurred as she gagged on the taste of peaches. Everything went blank.

  She squirmed in bed, fidgety and uncomfortable trying to sleep in sweat pants and a tank top. Not since she’d been in high school had she worn anything to bed, but after Will’s surprise visit, she didn’t feel secure enough.

  At the realization she’d awoken, she pushed herself up off the mattress ready for a fight. She gazed out at her room, but it remained empty of other people. The privacy screen over the window by the desk glowed grey, the sunlight strong enough to overwhelm the little blue LED at the base of her desk terminal. The clock read 6:52 a.m., eight minutes before the alarm would’ve gone off.

  With a groan, she shifted around to sit on the edge of the bed and rubbed her eyes. That reporter’s perfume hung in the air, so strong she tasted peaches.

  Kerys shifted her gaze to the clear plastic box. The flower stood exposed on the black square pedestal, the transparent shroud next to it―open. Furious, she leapt to her feet and glowered at the door, but it still showed ‘locked.’

  “Did he do that before?”

  She approached the desk, unable to recall if the flower had been open when she returned from her shower. Again, she’d stayed up too late working on the 3D models of the obelisks, and didn’t pay much attention to her room before crashing. Sporefall tinted only the black base lavender; none had spread beyond onto the desk.

  “Asshole.” She covered the flower, removed her T-shirt, and draped it over the box to hide it. “He’s trying to be cute, but it’s seriously creepy.”

  A tingle spread over her sinuses for a few seconds. She froze, waiting to sneeze, but the sensation faded.

  “Ugh. Please tell me I’m not getting sick.”

  Kerys shoved her sweatpants to the floor and lifted them to her hand with a toe grip. Should I ask Anna about this flower? I hope jackass isn’t trying to hit me with a ‘love potion.’

  She tossed the pants over the back of her chair and changed into a clean set of underwear and a fresh blue jumpsuit. Guilt grew stronger, dread that she’d get in trouble and lose everything she’d worked for. I shouldn’t tell anyone about t
his thing… yet.

  Kerys entered the cafeteria a little early. A light crowd populated the rows of tables with ample seating available between them. The only familiar face, Marco, sat on the far right end of a bench, his cast-enshrouded leg stuck straight out into the aisle by the wall.

  She collected two ladles of eggs, two sausage links, some toast, the largest coffee available, and carried her feast across the room to sit near him. Men and women paused in their conversations, staring at her as she went by. Moods ranging from suspicion to overt hostility greeted her. Kerys looked around, feeling like she’d walked into the wrong bar in the wrong part of town.

  “Hi… morning,” she muttered randomly.

  People continued glaring at her.

  She scurried to Marco’s side and climbed over the bench. “What’s going on?”

  Marco shrugged. “Beats me. Caught a few snips here and there. Captain Chen was screaming at her terminal last night, sending an angry-ass message off to someone, but no one knows any details.”

  “Oh. I wonder what that’s about.” She stabbed at her eggs. “Has everyone been glaring at you too?”

  He shrugged. “I dunno. Haven’t really been noticing much but the blinding pain in my foot. Thanks for that.”

  Kerys froze, staring at her food. “Umm.”

  Marco grunted and shifted his weight.

  She glanced to her right. Sweat covered his forehead. “You know I’m sor―”

  “Stop apologizing. Bad enough you laid me up for days and I’m not out there with the team; the whiny good girl thing isn’t helping.”

  Kerys slid her jaw side to side. What’s going on? Deciding against making things worse, she slumped in place and ceased trying to talk to him. She ate in silence for a while, Captain Chen’s name rising out of the murmuring around her every so often. It seemed rumors of the commander being angry enough to scream had set the entire crew on edge. Everywhere she looked, people glared at each other.

  Eventually, she couldn’t take the staring anymore. “What do you want me to say?”

  Marco cringed and massaged the bridge of his nose. “I’m… sorry. The pain meds aren’t doing anything for me and I’m just snapping at people. It’s not you. Can’t seem to shake this bad mood. Every little thing is setting me off―and I think someone gave me their cold too.”

  She managed a weak excuse for a smile. “You think we’ll ever find a cure?”

  “Nah.” He dumped a jelly packet out on his toast and mashed it with a knife. “If it was curable, they’d have done it by now. Doctors don’t even think anymore. Like everyone else, they just push goddamned buttons and let the damn computers do all the work.”

  Kerys leaned away from the hostility in his voice. She ate, content to avoid talking or making eye contact with anyone.

  “Knock that shit off!” yelled a man three tables in front of her.

  She snapped her head up. A tall, pale guy in a grey jumpsuit sprang to his feet, one hand gripping the shoulder of the crewman next to him, the other cocked back in a fist. They stared at each other for a few tense seconds before the bigger man seemed to forget what had annoyed him so much, and sat back down.

  Soon, the murmuring resumed. The tone of simmering anger shifted toward confusion.

  “Something’s not right here,” whispered Kerys.

  “Yeah.” Marco gestured at his leg. “My goddamned foot’s busted.”

  She stared guilt into her eggs.

  “At least it’s Saturday and I won’t be missing anything.” He slugged down a quarter-mug of coffee in one gulp, clenching his jaw at the heat. “Doc thinks I’ll be good to go Monday.”

  “Saturday?” She blinked. “So? They didn’t care about weekends on Copernicus.”

  “Oh, sorry this isn’t your fancy pants expedition.” His lip curled in a sneer. “Maybe someone with your prior experience can work on a weekend if you want.”

  Will made her nervous, but the glint in Marco’s eyes offered a peek at real violence, the way a man might look at her in a dark alley right before driving a knife into her heart. At his worst, Will had never given her such a frightening stare. The unbridled malice flickered away in a second.

  She stiffened. “That’s not… I mean… it’s not like we can go anywhere.”

  “Ehh.” He waved about dismissively. “It’s all psychobabble stuff. We need time to recuperate. Normal people can’t handle working seven days a week for six months.”

  “I suppose there’s the holographic beach.”

  “Course, normal people don’t spend three years as an ice cube on a fuckin’ starship to come out here.” Marco went to take another drink of coffee, found the mug empty, and glared at it. “Son of a―” He drew his arm back as if to throw the mug across the room, but changed his mind and pounded it onto the table. The slam brought silence to the din for a few seconds.

  Kerys hurried the remainder of her breakfast and stood, still scooping eggs into her mouth. “Gotta check on something.”

  He muttered something she didn’t catch, and waved as she hurried by.

  10

  Overtime

  A middle-aged woman in a grey jumpsuit bearing the nametag ‘Nakamura’ glared at Kerys as they passed in the hallway. She shifted sideways from the intensity in the stare, expecting a sucker punch, but the maintenance worker kept going, shaking her head and grumbling to herself in Japanese.

  Urgency hastened Kerys’s stride, and she rushed to the office section in search of Annapurna. Moments later, she stopped at the woman’s empty cube. Three unfamiliar men plus Christopher Mardling, all in green jumpsuits, stood in a group off to the right, staring at her. Their expressions mixed shock and disdain; she felt like a filthy vagrant walking into an exclusive restaurant.

  “I’m looking for Anna… anyone know where she went?”

  “Probably huffing more incense while listening to that racket she calls music. Like a pack of wailing cats.” Chris turned away, focusing on his terminal again. “No bloody idea.”

  Two of the men continued glaring, leaning toward her as if on the verge of bodily removing her from their work area.

  “Think she went to the lab,” said the fourth man. His expression remained hostile, though his tone sounded confused. “Terminals are locked by the way. There’s nothing for you to snoop on.”

  Kerys raised her hands. “Hey, relax. I just want to talk to her. Why is everyone so moody today?”

  “Because we’re being bloody audited,” yelled Chris. “Sod it. It’s Saturday and we’re stuck here combing over piles and piles of data.”

  “Sorry.” She backed up. “I didn’t know.”

  The Middle Eastern-looking man scowled at her. “Someone’s real interested in the data about that cursed head you found. If you hadn’t brought that thing inside, we’d all be relaxing.”

  “She should be doing this, not us,” said a pale man.

  “Sorry.” Kerys darted out before the hostility level rose further.

  She raced down the stairs to the ground level and cut across the dome, running past a handful of others. Most shot her dirty looks, three cowered away from her as if guarding the most valuable secret in the universe they didn’t want her to see, and one older man screamed in terror at the sight of her and took off running.

  “What is going on?”

  Near the south end of the dome, the corridor split left and right at a door labeled ‘Battery Relay 2.’ Arrows on the wall indicated a left turn went to the labs, while going right led to a storage pod and the primary power station. Kerys headed for the labs. A short hallway connected to an interlock where more of the semi-rigid hamster tubing linked the dome to the closer of the two external laboratory pods. The walkway bounced and clanked under her, making the whole tunnel undulate.

  The tube bent around a ninety-degree turn and plugged into the west-facing wall of Lab Pod 1. Clear plastic didn’t do much for her feelings of safety, but it did give her a nice view of a mild dust storm swirling around the area
between the outpost and the excavation site. The tumult had enough density to block the mountains behind a thick charcoal-grey curtain. Bits of the regolith gathered in clusters like swarms of locusts, before falling away from the wind to pelt the metal shell of the lab pod in a surging hailstorm.

  Kerys hurried to the end and mashed the button on the wall to the right of the hatch, eager to escape the plastic tube that felt so much like a deathtrap under a rain of daggers. Much to her relief, it opened. She ducked into a hallway with gleaming white walls separated by long sections of window that looked in on laboratories. Some contained simple tables and desks, small pieces of scientific equipment arranged among them. Others had elaborate machines she didn’t recognize, as well as huge devices with armholes and robotic hands inside sealed chambers to allow technicians to work with dangerous substances without exposing them to the air.

  Whoa. What are they doing here?

  She jogged forward, swiveling her head side to side at each window. About halfway down the hundred-meter-long pod, the hallway pulled a ninety-degree right, becoming an alcove with a break room and two bathrooms. South, a passage led to a link ring where a hamster tube connected to Lab Pod 2. Another corridor continued east, passing between three large labs on the left side and a handful of small workstation rooms on the right.

  From the break room, she spotted Annapurna in the center lab on the left. She appeared to be in panic mode, walking back and forth with a hand in her hair. A Chinese man she hadn’t seen before, Will, and two pale-skinned women stood around her. Will seemed amused, though the other three had the hangdog expressions of employees about to be written up or fired by their boss.