Backflow Boxed Set

by F P Adriani

  I picked up the stone and held its cool, peculiar fire tighter in my hand. “Firestone—I like that name.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t go yelling it all over the place,” the bartender said.

  “I think you’re being too dramatic,” I replied, but I did stick the stone back into my belt, my fingers repeatedly making sure the top of the side pocket was completely closed over.

  The bartender abruptly moved away, probably to get my drink order.

  Someone had vacated the seat on my left, and now Gary quickly filled it. “I think I’ve heard of those,” he said on a frown, his eyes staring at the wall behind the bar.

  “The fi—the stones?”

  He nodded, his eyes shifting to me. “They’re presumed to be alien.”

  I couldn’t help laughing hard—a.k.a. too loudly—at the serious way he’d phrased that.

  And now he began laughing at me again—and shaking his head at me again, too.

  *

  My crew and I stayed at the Grill for a few more hours. Then we all went back to the Demeter, where Gary and I went straight to my room and got naked.

  The first time I’d ever seen Gary naked, I was surprised at how hairy his whole torso was. But then hairy male bodies were also my favorite kind….

  I ran my hands over my guy’s hairy body, loving the contradictory feel of the scratchy-silkiness there.

  Standing in the middle of my cabin and stroking Gary, I thought of the whole day, of May and Chen, of their marriage and what their future together might hold. I felt a pinpoint of longing inside my chest, but before it could expand, I squelched it. There were too many other things I had to do….

  “What are you thinking about?” Gary asked me softly now, from near my left ear, where his face was alternately nuzzling me and kissing me.

  “I think…I think it’s nice on my ship when people get along well and are happy with each other.”

  I felt Gary still against me. Then his warm brown eyes came into my view as he pulled back from me a bit. “Are we happy?”

  I smiled at him. “I think so—yes, of course. I mean, I am. Are you?”

  “You know I am,” he said then…but had there been a slight, ambivalent vibration behind his statement?

  I sighed, loudly. “Today was a long day; I’m finally not so buzzed and I can clearly feel my surroundings—so now I really don’t want to talk much!”

  “Me either,” Gary said, and a lewd smile filled the space below his mustache as his hands silkily slid over my lower back, then lower.

  For some reason, I couldn’t help laughing—but that lasted only for an instant, because Gary quickly ended my laughter with a kiss.

  *

  When I woke up in my bed the next morning, I was alone. That was often the case with me and Gary: though my crew knew Gary and I were involved, I did not like to show this too much “in public,” so we usually wouldn’t walk out of either of our rooms together.

  I was sighing as I unfolded my naked self from my sheets and sat up—too fast. My head spun and pounded. Remembering last night, I rolled my eyes. I really shouldn’t have drunk so much when I knew that early today I would have to visit several Cardoon offices; I had to make sure everything was ready to be transferred for loading onto the Demeter later, and I had to oversee that the loading was being done right, business-wise, from the Cardoon end. The station was really just the middle person because I was picking up cargo from a private manufacturer and bringing it to another private manufacturer.

  Suddenly, though, I did not want to be bothered doing anything today. I wanted to fall back onto my mattress and fall back asleep. Even though my hangover was mild, it was still annoying. And last night Gary and I wound up having a more athletic session of sex than normal, probably because we’d both been fired-up with booze….

  “Fired-up”—that stone. I sprung off my bed.

  When Gary and I had reached my cabin last night, I’d whipped off my clothes; they were scattered around the room now, and I was really worried…for no reason. I located my belt on the floor; the red fabric was pushed up against the metal frame of my bed, and when I pulled open the belt’s side pocket, I found the stone still nestled inside.

  I couldn’t help breathing a relieved sigh as I removed the stone; I loved the way it looked and felt in my hand, so I really didn’t want to lose it.

  I walked across my room to my black dresser and slipped the stone into the gray lock-box I used for my captain’s ID and my ownership title for the Demeter. Then I put the box into my cabin’s wall safe—and locked it.

  *

  Not long after, I was dressed in my usual shirt-and-leggings, chewing on a cruller and walking into the cargo bay.

  I wiped my mouth when I reached May, who was standing near one of the bay’s decontamination poles as she made adjustments to the red seal around the top of a large container.

  “How are you doing?” I asked her in a cheerful voice.

  She spun around and spread a hand toward behind her, wiping her other hand on her brown overalls. “Great, Captain! I finally found the missing columite.”

  “Good. Maybe last night helped jog your memory. I hope you had a good time then.”

  “I can’t thank you enough, Lydia—Captain, I mean,” she finished, quickly glancing at a few of the others working in the cargo bay, including one of the new, temporary crewmembers.

  I lightly laughed off May’s use of my first name; I wasn’t such a hard-ass boss that I needed to hear my title all the time, pulling rank over everyone around me. This wasn’t a military operation, though I did appreciate when people did their jobs to a competency level equivalent to military positions, which my regular crewmembers always did.

  I swallowed the last of my cruller. “May, don’t worry: you always do a great job, or else you wouldn’t be on the Demeter. Congratulations again, to you and Chen. Now I’m off to see the Cardoon powers-that-be. We’ll see if our estimate of lift-away time will wind up being an accurate one.” I rolled my eyes. “I doubt they’ll be as efficient here as you are. Keep up the good work.”

  I walked away, my eyes roaming over the others in the bay, including a few of the temporary crewmembers. One of them was quite wide in the torso area and he didn’t move too fast. I knew one of the cargo-loader machines was being repaired, and I also knew from the status-update panel in my cabin that one of my regular cargo crewmembers wasn’t feeling too well; yesterday he’d remained on the ship on an extended downtime while the May-Chen festivities were going on….

  I wondered where Chen was now, and as I walked out of the cargo-bay hatch and down the bay’s long gray ramp, I used the communicator on my belt to contact my bridge.

  “Chen here,” Chen said over the line, and there was a touch of tiredness in the sound.

  “How are you doing today?”

  “Oh—I’m fine, Captain—it’s just taking me longer than usual to fully wake up….”

  “I’m sure it is—after last night,” I said, unable to help myself, or the slight shake of laughter behind my words. “I’m off into the station—I might be gone for a few hours. I want hourly updates to the bridge on our status—engines, fuel, and cargo especially. I don’t want to hang around here any longer than necessary. Yesterday Space Entry said that a higher number of ships than normal would be coming in and going out today—I don’t want to be stuck here, waiting for permission to leave this leaf.”

  “You got it, Captain,” Chen said. “I’ll take care of everything while you’re gone—and here’s Gary. We’ll both look after the Demeter.”

  “Great—tell him I said hi, and see you later!”

  *

  The work I had to do with the station’s powers-that-be offices took me an hour longer than I would have liked; nevertheless, it was a good hour longer: I managed to get a deal for a future delivery for this actual station.

  It wasn’t my usual kind of shipping work because this new deal wasn’t for useful goods and materials; this deal was
for an enormous technology exhibit that Cardoon Twelve would be hosting. Luckily, I happened to have another deal worked out for the week before, on the planet the exhibit would be transferred from. It would be easy—and quite cheap for Cardoon Twelve—for me and my crew to pick up the exhibit from where we would already be dropping off cargo.

  “Didn’t you wait till kind of late to set up the delivery if the exhibit’s so important?” I asked the woman in charge of the paperwork in the Cargo Office.

  From her long black desk, the woman frowned up at me a little sourly, and I thought she must have taken my question as a criticism. But she said now, “My boss sprung it on me only two days ago. I’ve been scrambling to find someone with a reasonably priced service. All the shipping companies are hearing the cash register sing louder than ever.”

  I couldn’t help laughing. I watched her blue eyes roll and her mouth drop open in an overly dramatic way. Then she said, “I’m sure you know bosses.”

  “Actually, I don’t. I haven’t worked under one for eons. I’m my own boss.”

  The woman blushed a bit, her eyes nervously shifting. “Oh—sorry. No disrespect meant. You’ve talked so personally to me today, which is refreshing, actually. And I’m pretty new as the Organizer here—as an Organizer, period.” Her voice lowered. “I took this job because I needed the money; all the science positions in this layer were filled at the time. I’ve been looking at elsewhere for a science or even a tech position, but, so far, I haven’t found anything.”

  I frowned a bit, thinking. “What’s your specific background then?”

  “I taught chemistry at an obscure university for 15 years—on the other end of this layer, on the planet Tryton. But there are so many political problems there, and the money for my job finally dried up—right before my marriage did.” She sighed, the sound soft and sad. “It’s been a bad few years. I needed a job somewhere with a change of scenery so I wasn’t reminded of…things.” Her blue eyes rose up to me. “Well, that was embarrassing—too much information!” She laughed under her breath a little.

  “You seem to have a good sense of humor about yourself,” I said, smiling at her now.

  “I hope I have one about life. I do have one, really—that’s how I’ve been moving forward…. Speaking of which,” she lifted a piece of paper and a pen from her desk, “you just need to sign here and write your ICFC shipping ID number beside your signature. I’m sorry you said things have been delayed for you today.”

  “Oh—no problem. It’s not your fault. And my crew’s been sending me updates about my ship; things are going well there. I’ve got a really good crew.”

  “That must be interesting—traveling around and working as one group, never knowing what you’re all going to see next.”

  As I signed the Cargo Office paper, I glanced at her. “You ever thought of working on a spaceship—I mean in science again?”

  “Actually, no, to the space traveling. I got into that university job right after I graduated college. It was comfortable for me. I always wanted to live on Tryton; my grandparents grew up there and used to tell me stories…but the reality there today isn’t the same as their reality from back then.”

  “Yeah, living has a way of destroying reality over time…. You know, I’ll be honest: like I said, my crew is great, but I recently lost a female crewmember from my bridge. And I’d like one back, especially in science. Right now, my science right-arm Gary’s on the bridge, but I think I might need a science department on the ship in general. We spend a lot of time in space, so we come across phenomena that we need to deal with in more detail sometimes. My engineering crew are too busy keeping the science of the ship functioning, so they can’t spend enough time on the other science stuff. Would you be interested at some point—in living and working on my ship? I’ve noticed how efficient you are with the paperwork. Things in the Records Office did take too long, but this stuff with you went much faster than usual at Cardoons. It seems like you had all the paperwork ready for my pick-up here even before I landed yesterday.”

  Her face was very red now, and she pressed a hand to her thick, dark hair, then to one of her cheeks. “I did have it ready days ago, actually. I like to keep ahead of schedule. But, oh—it’s so embarrassing that I was just complaining to you about bosses. I came off like I’m a complainer who can’t take orders. Why would you offer me a job now?”

  I sighed. “It’s been my experience that the stuff you don’t plan quite often works out better then the stuff you do plan. While making plans and keeping to schedules is my business, part of that planning and scheduling is being familiar with what new opportunities might offer—and how they’ll affect the ones I’ve already accepted. I’ve just got to stay fluid and be open to things.”

  “I like that thinking, Captain Zarro.”

  “Call me Lydia when we’re just talking casual like this, and, half the time on my ship, my crew does the same.” I looked down at the woman’s nameplate on the front of her desk: Shirley Sanchez. “Can I call you Shirley?”

  “Of course!”

  I straightened up more and adjusted my red belt. “So, I’ve got to check the Demeter again now. You want to come along and get a little tour of my ship? I know this is, like, out of the blue, but—who knows? If not my ship someday, maybe you’ll decide on another.”

  She got up from her desk. “I’m actually due for a lunch-break right now, so, yes, Lydia—I’d love to see your ship!”

  *

  “Wow, this is really impressive!” Shirley said when we were finally standing in the Demeter’s cargo bay.

  It was buzzing with activity, both from my crew and from the station’s cargo crew bouncing up and down the Demeter’s long ramp, either on foot or inside cargo loaders full of containers of both minerals and plastics. My crew and I would be taking the cargo to an industrial manufacturing complex on one of the Keron planets, but, for now, May was organizing slotting the containers into the free space in the cargo bay, based on her layered, alphabetized system.

  She was standing in the center of the huge room now, giving orders. Her brown overalls were half-covered in gray dust, and her arms were pointing this way and that way, but there was a satisfied smile on her face: everything was going on schedule.

  I glanced down at the clock readout on my belt: as far as I’d seen and heard today, it looked like we’d be able to lift away on schedule too, provided that would be suitable to the station.

  My head turned back to Shirley; her blue eyes were wide open and transfixed by the busy scene in the bay. I said to her now, “I guess this is quite a change from working in a college or in an office.”

  She laughed. “It certainly is! Is it like this all the time?”

  I shook my head fast. “No. It can actually get even more busy. But most times we’re flying in space, and it’s a boring grind—or we’re not working at all but we’re playing board games in the dining room, or just vegging out on Aper Minor or on Earth. But, come on—I’ll show you a bit more of the ship.”

  We moved through a few of the decks now, chatting as we did so. I introduced Shirley to a few of the crew, including Gary, but, ultimately, my time was short and so was hers: she had to get back to the Cargo Office.

  As I was walking her out of the Demeter, I asked her, “So, what do you think—of my offer? You look like maybe your head is spinning.”

  She laughed, her head bobbing a few times now. “It is—it is. You know, I don’t often go into the docking leaves. I see the ships through the viewer-window in my office sometimes, but when you’re standing right next to spaceships, or in them, they seem a lot bigger. Traveling to this station is the most space traveling I’ve ever done. I grew up in the other end of this layer.” Her eyes fell on my face again. “You must lead an exciting life.”

  Now it was my turn to laugh. “I guess I do—actually, sometimes, it’s a lot more exciting than I really want,” I said in a dry voice.

  “There are quite a few handsome men on your ship,
including that Gary.”

  “Well, uh, Gary is actually spoken for.” I was smiling, but Shirley must have seen something behind my smile that I really hadn’t intended to be there.

  Her face turned the darkest red I’d seen on her so far. “Oh god…. I guess I said the wrong thing again?”

  I shook my head fast. “Gary is handsome. You’re not the first woman to say so to me, but, yeah, Gary and I are an item, which is no secret on this ship…. So, about the offer—I’ve gotta make a drop-off of today’s cargo on Keron-3. Then I might have to make another smaller drop-off afterward. Then we’re heading to Earth. But, on the way there, we can swing back this way and pick you up. Would you like to see Earth? I think it’s something no human should ever not see.”

  “Oh, I agree.” Shirley’s blue eyes suddenly widened so much, the whites of her eyes looked like two light bulbs had been switched on behind there. She grabbed one of my forearms. “Actually, Lydia, you know what? Could I come with you now? I can’t explain why, but I suddenly feel like this is right for me. I just turned forty-five—and, well, I’ve been looking for something, something new and exciting. But there’s been nothing. I thought this station would be exciting, but, reality again—let’s just say people are in and out of here so fast that the excitement is only momentary. I’ve made no ties here. And I barely have any belongings. I got rid of nearly all of them when I became single again—maybe a life of travel would really suit me now!” Her lips twitched—into a slight frown. “But, if I do wind up hating being on a ship and you wind up hating me on yours, you can just drop me off on another Cardoon or something.”

  “But won’t you be out of a job on the Cardoons if you walk out of this one?”

  She nodded fast. “Yes, but I meant you can get rid of me quickly if you want—wherever.”

  “Oh I doubt that will happen,” I said. “Shirley, if you don’t mind my saying, you seem like you underrate yourself. I’ll have to make it my mission to build you back up. I was once newly divorced, too. I was young then, but I still know first-hand how difficult it can be after a marriage fails.”