by Rok Chillah
Each of the eight members of WorkPod01 had a round tunnel to crawl through, leading to the quiet and privacy of his or her personal space. Each cube was 20 feet to a side, and arranged as each person saw fit. Typically, it resembled a college dorm room with holos and a thousand little personal mementos attached to neutral beige walls, plus lounging space, a small collection of light recreational drugs approved by the home corporation, enough holofilms to last hundreds of hours, and access to a world's library. One could slide shut what Yu referred to as a moon door made of translucent plast, and be alone.
Jerez emerged from her moon door to find something cold to drink in the kitchen. Jerez was a slender, dark-haired woman of Filipino-Spanish extraction, who'd grown up in Singapore but married a Norwegian and had holos of her several blond children alongside a smiling Oslo businessman who, but for his buckteeth and daffy smile, might have been a Viking in some earlier age.
"Section Leader Ridge, are you there?" said the voice of Captain Venable.
Ridge ran his hand across the wall, and a cube of light flicked on. There was the image of the ship's handsome, graying captain who was from Paris and vaguely resembled Cary Grant. "How are you doing, Sir?" He added apologetically. "I'm working on my report about yesterday's repairs. I'll have those to you before we walk out the door today."
"No hurry," Venable said. "I'll take your report for both days if you want to pass that to me later this evening."
"I'll be tired," Ridge said. "I'd rather not fall behind."
"A sensible policy," Venable said. "Are you ready to go out?"
Ridge shrugged. "Sure, we all are."
"How are the crew taking the work?"
"You mean the disaster?"
Venable nodded. "Just a little concerned. I know you're all professionals but this was a close call for all of us."
Ridge nodded. "I think we are all calm and self-assured, Captain. No panic, nothing like that." He winked. "Your leadership, Sir, is exceptional, of course."
Venable winked back. "Flattery will get you everywhere, Ridge." Venable was an easy-going, confident captain of many years' experience on the Luna-Neptune run. His home was in Miami, where his wife still lived, although his two daughters had grown up, moved away, and married. Though only visible from the chest up, with a bland background in his office in the Bridge Command Post (CP) area forward, as opposed to WorkPod01's location amidships, he looked tanned and fit as always. His bluish-white uniform shirt looked well tailored and crisply ironed, and his little color-garden of decorations sat snugly above his shirt pocket. On his shoulders were four gold stars on a black epaulet, in contrast to Ridge's humble one black bar on a collar tab. In matters of rank and service, the gulf between the two men was vast, but both were graduate cyber-engineers and that made them colleagues and equals on some level. Venable said: "I'll speak to the group again when you are assembled and ready to move out for the day's work."
"Thank you, Sir. I hope by then to have this..." (Ridge made a show of gritting his teeth and preparing to toss his digital tablet into the screen where Venable's image glowed) "...Damned piece of scribbling finished and out of my hair."
Venable chuckled. "There are all sorts of artificial writing systems available on the market if you wouldn't be so damned stubborn, Ridge. Do things the easy way." He signed off, and the screen beside Ridge went blank.
Behind him, during that conversation, the dynamic of banter and conversation had whirled about some unseen axis. The crew one by one disappeared into their cubes. They soon stepped back out of their moon doors, fastening up the tabs on their jumpsuits. In normal working conditions, everyone wore white work suits or jumpsuits with orange trim on the shoulders for safety and visibility. Depending on their occupational specialty, their collar tabs might be tan (bio) or light blue (cyber) or gray (chemical, only Brenna in this workpod), and so forth. Ridge was the only one with a black collar and a black bar edged in white.
Brenna emerged from the shower and sat briefly beside him, drying her hair. She wore a thick, fluffy blue frotte robe and toweled her hair with a white towel. "Am I bothering you?"
"You're never bothering me. You're taking me away from this report thing that I hate."
"I'll write them for you."
"You're kidding. You'll do that for me?"
"You look so helpless."
"Gee, thanks. I didn't know it showed." He sat back in his chair, folding his hands over the flat of his belly. "Talk to home?" It was a standard question. There was no weather here to make small talk about. Calling home was the big event in everyone's daily life.
She nodded. "Ricardo bought a new car."
"What kind?"
"He didn't say."
"Did he look sad?"
She laughed. "No." She had a lovely way of rolling her eyes and smiling so that her teeth glowed and there was warmth tumbling all around her. And all around Ridge, who did not wish she would go away.
"Well, then it must not be too expensive, and it must be a nice car."
She nodded. "I would imagine that's what it is." Her features grew faintly more serious. "How are Dorothy and the kids?"
Ridge thought for a second. "Oh hell. I need to call home, don't I? This report has kept me so busy. Dorothy was fine, when last we spoke. My son and daughter are fine." He added. "In school, doing well." He added. "My girl plays goalie on her soccer team, and my boy is in Cub Scouts."
She leaned her head to one side and toweled in her ear. Then she repeated the procedure on the other side, turning her head that way. Her dark hair lay glossy and wet and tousled against the perfect shape of her head. She had a wide, tall forehead that made her look intelligent, he found as he studied her skin. She had fine, clear skin, without any particular scars or deformations, although her nose had a strong frontal edge and a nice knobby bridge. She saw him staring at her and looked away. As she did so, she twirled the towel and did a dervish thing from the waist up to form a huge fluffy turban in one smooth, practiced motion from having done it many times over many years. He smiled, thinking about all those little habits each person acquired over a lifetime and how they made everyone unique. He wondered again why she made him feel warm and energetic, and why he wasn't frightened since he had a wife at home who would not like to know the truth of such a diversion in his affections. What could he say to her? He placed his hands on his knees, preparing for her to leave and himself to get busy with other things. Should he say, we've got to stop meeting like this? How did one not have small talk with a person on a space ship a billion klicks from home? And what had they really ever done together but sit close, over cups of hot steaming tea in the lounge among all the other crew, and talk softly together about their own wives and children? She had never been to San Diego, but he had filled her with tales of strolling with Dorothy and the children along the sandy paths on Fiesta Island or among the goldfish ponds and botanical gardens of Balboa Park. Likewise, she had told stories of walking with Ricardo and their children along the Plaza de Mayo, on the breezy Avenida Emilio Castro in Liniers, on the beach near Cantilo in Belgrano, or motoring north for the weekend though Pueyrredon. In a sense, all cities and families, all lives and desires, had a universality that made them at once unique and interesting to tell about, yet interchangeable like clothing; or so Ridge had once remarked, and she had laughed that sensual, throaty laugh of hers while throwing her head back aglow with fond teasing. You are too much, amigo. So she had said, still dripping from the fountain of laughter, and he had said with much pretense of wisdom: Better too much than not enough, carissima.
She rose, pressing her turban between her palms, and said: "I'll write your report for you later when we get back. Just leave it there on the table for me."
"Thanks." He rose. "You're a life saver."
"You are a life worth saving," she said, walking to the privacy and secrecy of her cube in long, languid strides. She left him a sultry afterglance, a mix of innocence and hidden meaning he could not fathom.
&nbs
p; Within an hour, Ridge stood by the portal and the others were beginning to form up in a casual line facing the video screen in the bulkhead beside the exit. On the other side of that dark, riveted metal door was a steel grid platform, and beyond that the vast belly of the cargo ship Neptune Express.
Ridge had an uneasy sense in remembering the meteorite impact. No surprise--the wounds and the shock were still fresh, and six plain white coffins sat in a special holding room far away in the stern of the ship, with Federal Earth flags draped over them--mute testimony to the frantic and chaotic days spent saving Neptune Express just recently. Once you lived through something like that, it took a long time to sleep well again and not to jump at the slightest tremor or noise. Then again, people were resilient. They joked. They fought. They talked. They started healing immediately. In space, you had to. There was no choice.
Since Brenna had made his day by relieving him of his report writing agony, Ridge spent some leisure time, first in his personal cube, then at the main crew table eating breakfast.
First he shaved and showered. The showers were in a common area, but each person had a reserved and private bath cubicle. (The potty facilities were also individual and private, located in another area of the workpod, and each crewmember had a virtual library in theirs.) For a good ten minutes in the shower, Ridge stood in the steamy atmosphere while needles of hot water exercised his skin. He changed the showerheads several times, settling finally on a nice steady stream. He used the special milled lavender soap he and Dorothy had picked up on a tour through Provençe, along with sunflower kitchen towels. He'd shaved using a new gold-plated four-blade razor and some very foamy cream, which worked fine as long as no stray suds escaped from the steamy confines of the shower. He changed from hot water to hot air and let the stimulating breeze dry him off. Grabbing a fluffy robe from a dispenser, he wrapped himself up and strode back, through his moon door (named after those round moon gates built into classical Chinese gardens and palaces) into the comfort of his personal cube. He felt much better.
He turned on the wall screen and dialed up San Diego. Familiar scenes of beaches, palm trees, botanical gardens, workaday streets, shopping centers, and freeways flashed by. Dorothy's face appeared on the screen, looking a bit formal since she'd had a makeover just to create this video reply. "Hello. I can't answer my personal comdeck just now, maybe because I'm in the garden or busy with the kids or out shopping, but if you will leave a message I will return your com as soon as possible. Thanks, and have a lovely day."
"Honey," Ridge said, "sorry I missed you today. Give the kids each a big hug for me, and a kiss, and maybe I'll have a chance to catch you after we get back from our work detail if I'm not too tired. You know how it is. Long hours, no sleep, and I'm too beat to even fall into the shower. Love you. Bye." These messages were always awkward, though he could tolerate them a lot better than writing reports.
With an hour to kill, and knowing the long exhausting shift ahead outside the workpod, Ridge crept into bed--a fancy sort of sleeping bag on a large upper bunk. He snuggled in to get comfortable, thinking it ironic that the living quarters were called the workpod, while the work was done anywhere but in here; although, one might allow, the entire lower floor consisted of specialty workshops for welding, brazing, chemical analysis-almost a mobile factory, so to speak. Closer to home though: in the cube, below the bunk where he now lay, was his desk, his thinking area, his place to speak recordings for home, read poems sent by his two small children, watch holovids directly on the desktop of Dorothy relating neighborhood gossip. Sometimes she would shoot him an hour or so of just plain day to day, moment to moment footage, like the mailman ringing, the children tramping through on a rainy day and getting yelled at, the golden retriever romping from couch to love seat and around all the living room furniture in one big circle while Dorothy, predictably, doubled over in a mix of laughter and yelling. These were the truly relaxing and wonderful moments of his day. What a miracle, that the tiny moments of life in a San Diego suburb could be beamed across such vast distances to such a tiny dot in space. Ridge had not slept well last night for some reason, and now his body hungrily sopped up the extra hour of sleep, like a plant soaking up a good watering.
As he drifted off, he looked forward to spending a little time, maybe a half hour, talking with Dorothy and watching the kids, all with a delay of several hours, of course. He and Dorothy couldn't directly talk because of the delay, but sent each other loving little messages. The pix of the kids were usually a few hours old. The time of day on board Neptune Express was synchronized with that in San Diego, but this time delay threw it all off. Dorothy liked to transmit early, so he tended to be watching early morning footage. He could just put it all together in his head, from the senses and from memory. He could imagine that the dew was still wet on the grass, and maybe the street lights were still lit against a dark blue sky, and the morning breeze smelled fresh with the faint distant undertones of ocean and desert, not to mention eucalyptus and jasmine wafting up from the canyons, and maybe a touch of anise, a scent of citrus blossoms, and of course always that noxious hint of hydrocarbons not burned well from a passing mail truck.
Daydreaming of Dorothy and his little son and daughter, he dozed off. Distantly, he thought he heard laughter from a card game in the galley. He felt regular little tremors as the workpod moved on its axis, as it crept along on greased mirror-like steel surfaces. What luck, he thought again, to be alive, when they could all have died if a slightly larger object had struck the ship.
As he dozed off, he could imagine what sorts of dreams the others might have. Lantz might dream of running along the deep, mysterious green rainforest trails around the Olympic Peninsula, her home. Mughali might dream of shopping for clothing in the fashionable Marais in Paris, where her parents had moved, in this cosmopolitan and global world. Yu probably thought of his family, who lived in a planned development on Chongde Lu near Huaihai Park. Tomson, on the other hand, most likely had stormy thoughts of a crowded neighborhood in Sand City in old Philadelphia, a blues joint, a good pizza, and a brisk whiskey before bed. What did Jerez think of...sleepily, he lost track and thought of Brenna strolling arm in arm with Ricardo on the Plaza Dorrego in Colegiales, Buenos Aires, or perhaps sharing a half-pint of Italian-style cerveza tirada while watching tango dancers and listening to sensuous but melancholy bandonéon music. Why did he somehow feel he belonged there with her? He almost sobbed with frustration at the impossibility of it. Why have these dark thoughts? Why have these forbidden fantasies? In his dreams, as he lay on his back savoring the quiet and comfort of his cubicle, Ridge forced his thoughts in another direction. He made himself think about how he would take Dorothy and the children up onto the breezy bluffs of Cabrillo Point, high above San Diego bay and North Island, with the sandy and sparkling Coronado far below, and the red conical roofs of the Victorian-era Hotel Del, and beyond that the high-rise condo hives of wealthy Mexican economic refugees along the Silver Strand.
Feeling rested and refreshed, Ridge woke about an hour later. He could still feel occasional gentle rocking motions as WorkPod01 traversed forward under pressure of its inner worm gears all packed with grease and silicon. He put that off--work would begin in the dimness, far from the sun, inside the vast hangar-like structures of the ship, and that was what they got paid to do, and do well. He washed his face at the sink, dried himself with a towel, donned fresh underwear, and changed from his robe back into his jump suit.
Out in the lounge area, a loud card game was in progress as the staff sat in their jumpsuits ready to go. They looked stiff and bulky in web gear with back and front packs containing water, oxygen, and tools. The place was cheery with laughter, the aromas of brewing coffee and tea, the sweetness of pastries, and the occasional exhilarating whiff of stimtube. The conversation was a customary desultory mix of cross-talk, some of it revolving around salaries. They were all paid well, on standard sliding scales, and everyone pretty much knew what everyone made, base, but
of course the company strung them all along with various bonuses and nobody actually revealed what he or she really had waiting in their bank account back on Earth. Whatever it was, it had to be comfortable and the envy of Earthside labor, or these people wouldn't risk life and sanity out here in the eternal silence, so Ridge thought as he wandered through.
Ridge fixed himself a little breakfast in the galley and sat at the table. Someone had cleaned away last night's Asian detritus and the empty containers sat in an autowash incubator ready to get cleaned and processed for reuse as Greek or Tejano or Hawaiian or Belgian or whatever was the next culinary adventure. Ridge blocked out the general noise as he sat reading Homer's The Odyssey and slurping milk and cereal from a bowl. In artificial gravity, one could slurp from a bowl, albeit cautiously. A loose loop of sugared, cinnamoned, toasted wheat could float away in the low gravity ten feet above the baseline floor, get into a vent, and seriously hog up the whole show if it found its way into just the right--or wrong, Ridge supposed--tube or hole or whatever. As he read, he idly plashed a finger in the liquid that pooled around his cereal bowl. A milk container stood like a little tower nearby, still beaded with condensation from the fridge. Like much else on board the markings on the cereal box and milk carton were cheery, subdued, and functional without the excessive clamor of commercial advertising. There was, however, a small caricature of a smiling cow on the milk carton, and pictures of happy children with red cheeks on the cereal box.
A red light began to silently wink on and off, high up in the dark struts that resembled faux ceiling beams. The ship was loaded with psychological tricks to put walls of comfort between the interplanetary travelers and their natural fears, their loneliness, the constant nearness of disaster and death. For one thing, the ship maintained a natural cycle of days and nights in exact concordance with that at the travelers' most recent stay on Earth--the northern temperate zone space center near San Diego, where Colfirio had its global headquarters. Next, although the ship was a cylinder ten U.S. football fields long and one football field in diameter, with huge amounts of empty air space inside, one normally never saw any long vistas. There were tight spaces for coziness, wider spaces for communal but still cozy activity, and of course the huge warehouses for cargo. Most of the time, by day, you were surrounded by glassy and light-reflective surfaces reminiscent of the semi-arid mesas and canyons inland from San Diego. Dry, fresh breezes maintained the illusion further. By night, one tended not to see ceilings and far spaces, which stayed in shadows and countered any feelings of claustrophobia. In short, the ship was state of the art, first lulling the body with unspoken cues that it was in a familiar and safe place on earth. In so doing, the ship cued the subconscious into believing this information. Finally, this lulled the conscious mind into forgetting where its owner really was--on a fragile dust mote floating far from home.
