by F P Adriani
“It’s not my arm, Chen,” I said.
And he slowly nodded, punctuating his motion with a sigh. “I’m making do, and, most of the time, it’s okay. I just don’t want to hit the wrong thing today—”
“This is the time to learn,” Kostas said. “You must make mistakes to know what a mistake will look like. There is no ‘wrong’ today.”
Chen was nodding again; he moved even closer to the equipment and finally pressed his left hand against it. I thought of May: she wasn’t on the bridge with us this time, and I was glad she wasn’t, given where the conversation had gone.
Kostas, Shirley and Gary stood right beside Chen now, watching him as he worked one of the consoles. Babs was closer to me, and when I glanced at her now, the odd, distant look on her face made me glance at her a second time. I moved even closer to her and asked in a low voice, “What is it?”
She shook her head, her dark hair glimmering beneath the bridge lights. “I’ll tell you later,” she said, a small smile on her face now as she listened to what the others were saying. Kostas had been explaining more of the science of how the controls actually affect the room-engines. And now I watched both Chen’s and Gary’s eyes eagerly light up.
“It’s hard to conceive that the response can be so instantaneous,” Gary said in an almost breathless voice.
“It is though,” Kostas said. “But that also means there is a shorter window during which to fix any mistakes. Flying Keeper ships is more about how well you prepare your path—how much thinking you do beforehand. Improvising can be more difficult. That’s why I keep encouraging all of you to study a lot when I’m not around. Get in the habit of, well, getting in the habit. While many of the calculations are automated on the Monument, just as they are on the Demeter’s computer, a machine is ultimately only as good as its user. I’m sure I don’t have to tell any of you that,” she finished, her mouth curling into a soft smile.
*
My crew and I learned a lot on the bridge that day, and that learning exhausted us so much that, once we left the bridge, we didn’t take any crazy, errant walks anywhere. We followed Kostas’ exact instructions on how to get back to the kitchen-area of the ship; she’d left us again because she had to deal with something about the cube.
When I finally walked into the Monument’s kitchen, Geena and her gang were inside; they’d been putting the finishing touches on a large meal for not only the Keepers, but for us, too.
“Can I help?” I asked Geena, but a yawn from me followed my question. I pressed a quick hand over my mouth, and everyone in the room laughed.
“No, Captain,” Geena finally said. “We’re almost done, and you sound beat.”
“I am beat. I don’t feel very captainly at the moment, especially on this ship.”
“You’ll always be our captain no matter where we are,” Geena said, and a warm feeling filled my chest as I grinned at her.
*
After my crew and I finished eating dinner in the Demeter’s dining room, a bunch of them wanted to play games in the lounge; I decided to just have coffee in there and watch my crew have fun at the electronic play-tables.
I was sitting back in one of the very cushiony armchairs when May walked into the room. She and her usual cargo-bay workers had missed having dinner with us; another of the Keeper workers had taken them to one of the Monument’s storage levels.
May was holding a plate filled with food now, but instead of sitting down, she walked right up to me. “Oh Lydia—what a day we had! I wondered what on earth I could do on here, but I had no idea how much cargo they have. I should have known!”
Her brown eyes buzzed with excitement as she explained to me how the Keepers stored everything—food, fuel, devices; the devices the Keepers collected for archiving made up a good deal of the Monument’s cargo, but some devices couldn’t be archived so had to be very carefully stored for later dismantling and recycling into energy.
“The cargo area’s much more challenging than on the Demeter,” May said. “I’m not familiar with most of the Monument’s contents; I’ve definitely gotta learn more about them—so much work! But I feel, well—I do feel so damn excited about it, you know what I mean?”
“I definitely know what you mean,” I said, smiling and lifting my coffee cup in her direction before I took a drink.
*
Gary had gone to get some sleep in his cabin right after dinner; I thought that was a good prescription for me in my cabin, so I didn’t linger too long in the lounge.
On my way down the hallway, I ran into Babs. There was a big smile on her face, yet a distant look in her brown eyes.
I pressed a hand to one of her arms, gently pulling her to a stop. “Hey there,” I said. “You weren’t at dinner again.”
Babs looked up at me. I kept walking, slowly, and she turned around and came with me.
“I was with someone,” she said, her voice finally lowering. “Kostas.”
I stopped walking. “Um, what?”
Babs grabbed onto my right arm and pulled me toward where her cabin was. Her head motioned for me to come inside, so I did.
“I was just talking with Kostas during dinnertime,” Babs said, “but, uh, we did spend the past two nights together in here.”
My eyes widened at Babs, my heart began pounding. “What?!”
“Don’t be mad, Lydia—I know I should have said something—”
“No—you don’t have to because it relates to your personal life, but, yeah, I should have known she was physically on the Demeter. And I warned you about that—look at what happened between Geena and Jim. He broke her heart. Though, I guess she does seem better lately…. But, you’re raw still, from another relationship.”
Babs’ face flushed. “I know—it never goes smoothly for anyone. Look at Shirley and Steve.”
My eyebrows jerked up. “Huh?”
“When he was drunk that night on Makron and Shirley helped him to his cabin, they kissed before he passed out. But, ever since, he’s been acting like nothing ever happened.”
Now my eyebrows dropped low as I frowned. “Damn. I didn’t know this was going on.”
“Everyone’s been busy adapting here. You’ve been really busy.”
“I think I need to start paying attention more—maybe if I had, you all wouldn’t be bouncing all over with everyone.”
“I don’t know—ever since I first saw Kostas, there’s just something so alluring about her. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that way toward another woman before. Even with Derry—it was just very comfortable. It wasn’t exciting.”
“Exciting relationships don’t necessarily wind up being the best relationships,” I said.
“I just want what you and Gary have.”
My shocked mouth dropped open, not just because I couldn’t picture Babs and Kostas as a couple, but also because I wasn’t so sure that what Gary and I had was unique. “And you think you can have something day-to-day with Kostas?” I finally asked Babs.
“She’s warmer than you think she is,” Babs said. The reappearance of that distant look in Babs’ brown eyes confirmed to me that she really was smitten with Kostas.
I sighed hard, my brow wrinkling again. “Wait a second—how did she get aboard the Demeter?”
“Oh—she transported, so the rest of the crew wouldn’t see.”
“Including the captain,” I said dryly.
Babs was blushing again. My sigh this time was softer. “You do look happy—I don’t mean to put a damper on it. Just be careful is all I’m saying. And I don’t think we’ve really decided how long this working relationship with the Keepers will last.”
“I know,” Babs said, on a sigh of her own.
*
A little later, I was finally alone outside my cabin door. I hesitated there; then I swore to myself; then I left that deck and went down to the cargo bay; then I left my ship.
I stood still in the hangar and said, “Kostas,” loudly.
“I am here,�
� came her voice. “I’m on the bridge, actually—”
“I want to speak to you. In person.”
“If you know how to get here by mechanical means, do it. If not, then transport. Why not test that out?”
Why not, indeed: the workers had finally turned on our transporters, and I hadn’t changed out of my worksuit yet.
I had my little gray device in one of the thigh pockets on my suit, but I decided to use my sleeve-readout: I opened it and looked for any information on the bridge’s location for transporting; when I found the info, I selected it using a fingertip, then used my sleeve-controls—and was instantly transported to the middle of the bridge area beneath the clear upper bridges.
I felt a little lightheaded and the area looked a little too dark to my eyes now. I stood still there for a moment—till I spotted Kostas up ahead on the forward bridge. She and several robed Keepers were moving around inside.
I walked there fast and said to Kostas, “Can I speak to you alone?”
“I don’t have much time,” she said in a clipped way. “We have finished the cube dismantling, and we will be leaving the anomaly now. I thought we’d be departing while you were all sleeping—at least I thought that after your hard day today, you would have all gone to bed early.”
“We’re all tired—it’s true,” I said.
I hesitated now: I knew the Keepers might be privy to everything going on no matter where it went on, but I was still human, and I didn’t want to discuss the private matter of Babs with Kostas when the Keepers were nearby. Yet Kostas was busy at a console and she didn’t seem to want to budge from it.
“Kostas,” I finally said in a lower voice, “I want to talk to you about Babs.”
Kostas’ head shot up, and there was a small frown on her face. “We’ll go into the bridge rest-area,” she said.
I followed her as she walked toward one of the dark walls, where a doorway now opened. The large space the door led into was quite warmly lit; there were chairs and floor cushions scattered around, and a kitchen cabinet and counter area, with colorful bowls stacked on top of the white counter.
Kostas stood with her back to the counter. “Sometimes on extended flights across the universes, we workers and the Keepers sleep in here. There’s a large bathroom through that doorway—”
“That’s good to know, but, right now, I want to talk about your involvement with Babs, as in: if you hurt her, I’m going to be really angry at you.”
Kostas seemed to startle backwards. “Why would I hurt her?”
“In sexual relationships, people don’t always mean to hurt others, but they can still hurt those others anyway. And going on the cold way Jim’s treated Geena, I thought you crowd aren’t supposed to have relationships.”
“Though I am intimately linked with the Keepers, I am still me, Kostas. I have always followed the ancient ways of my ancestry, and I go with whoever I want to go with, when the opportunity comes up.”
I was breathing too hard now, and I shot an angry arm out at the room. “Is that what Babs is to you—an opportunity?”
“Do not paint me as The Evil Thing. She made overtures to me. And I accepted them. I did not plan this. Since I’ve been with the Keepers, I’ve only rarely had any intimate contact with another human. I have too many things on my mind because of my working life with the Keepers. I normally don’t concern myself with the personal comfort of individual humans.”
“Well, excuse me, but all that means is that you’re an insensitive person,” I snapped.
Then Kostas sighed, loudly. “This conversation is going all wrong. I was in the middle of executing our departure from the anomaly. I don’t have the presence of mind to address what’s happened with Babs. I will talk to her later.”
“On my ship, huh? Don’t you think you should have let me know you were on there?”
“I am always possibly on there; so are the Keepers. They cannot always control where they move to, as you well know. Your ship is very close by. Keepers move through it sometimes without intending to.”
I was frowning now. “I know, but you aren’t a Keeper. As a human, you should have told me you were physically there. And I thought you said the transporters can make us sick—yet you use yours so much.”
“I really was just trying to discourage you and your crew from using them a lot when you’re new to them. The only real danger is if you accidentally transport yourself to somewhere you shouldn’t, though there are safeguards inside the transporters—” She seemed to jerk into being quiet. Then she said, “I’m coming back now.” Then she turned around and walked out the doorway to the bridge.
*
I was sighing as I followed her out of the rest-room; she rushed to one of the consoles on the right side of the forward bridge. The front viewscreen was on, and I could see that the floating anomaly particles outside seemed to be floating faster than ever.
“Are we moving?” I asked.
One of the Keepers standing on the bridge spoke to me in my mind: We are priming the engines, and we are using some of the anomaly matter almost as what you would call a “lighter fluid.”
“Oh—cool,” I said, my eyes widening at the screen. “Do we need to strap in—should I tell my crew?”
My hand was on my belt’s communicator, but Kostas rapidly shook her head my way. “No need, Lydia. The Monument flies almost completely smoothly. You will see,” she finished in a confident voice.
And then a moment later, I did see: the viewscreen image turned completely black; at first I thought it had been turned off, but then I realized that the lights on the bridge had also dimmed, and there was a dislocated feeling inside my mind, as if I couldn’t quite place my body’s location on the bridge. Then, a moment later, the sensation was gone.
“I feel like I just had an out-of-body experience,” I said, watching Kostas and the Keepers at the bridge controls, and also trying to learn from the motions of their hands, which motions were quite quick but very methodical looking, as if flying this ship meant doing the same by-rote motions over and over and over again, till you could do them with your eyes closed.
Kostas finally turned to me. “We’re out of the anomaly and in another layer of space—a far layer that humans do not use. I suggest you get some sleep. Tomorrow will be a busy training day for you and your crew.”
I nodded at her, but I was sighing as I pushed at my suit controls to transport me back to the hangar.
*
Kostas hadn’t been kidding when she said my crew and I would have a busy day the next day: as soon as Kostas joined us where we had been waiting in one of the larger meeting rooms, she said, “We are sending you all a roster over your suit-readouts for where you are to go. I will transport us all to our designated stations now.”
“Hang on a second,” I said fast. “What’s the rush?”
She arched a dark eyebrow at me. “We are running late. It takes time to get to where our ultimate mission is. As I’ve explained, it’s not an instantaneous route. And you and your crew have yet to do any real training.”
“I feel like I have been doing real training,” someone said—it sounded like Matt. “Your classroom here has been real, hasn’t it?”
“I can only teach you so much in an indirect way,” Kostas said. “We must see how you do on the bridge and at the engine controls.”
I was staring down at the roster on my sleeve-readout—my crew’s names were all listed, and next to my name it said that my position would be on the bridge; the same for my usual bridge crew on the Demeter. I glanced down the list for the stations where the rest of my crew would be—and found the same kind of natural alignment with their Demeter work.
I couldn’t really argue with where the Keepers were stationing us, so I didn’t argue. I just said to my crew, “Okay, everyone, you’ve got your instructions. Let’s go.”
*
When Gary, Babs, Chen, and Shirley and I had been transported to the forward bridge, there was no one else on it. For
a moment, my nervous heart pounded like crazy.
Then Kostas suddenly materialized on the bridge. I let out a hard breath and said to her, “You almost gave me a heart attack—leaving us alone like this.”
She moved to the largest console on the right side of the room. The consoles had actually been rearranged today; some of the ones that had been flush against the side walls had now been pulled around to face the front of the bridge.
Kostas apparently made another adjustment now; cushioned silver chairs finally slid out from beneath the consoles and unfolded.
“I’m sorry you were alone here for thirty seconds,” Kostas said now, her voice slightly dry. “I had to pass through one of the engine control-rooms to make a quick adjustment there. It will be a long day; I’ve extended chairs for all of you. But if you’d prefer to stand, just press the button on the back of the chairs to put them away.” She turned around to face the five of us. “Now, let’s begin. Lydia, move to the largest front console on the left; everyone else stand at the positions I sent you on the roster.”
I pointed at an eye-catching collection of long, vertical, glowing neon-green tubes that only existed on the right side of the bridge. “What’s that?” I asked Kostas.
Her eyes glanced there. “That is something you won’t be using. It’s a special Keeper transporter for navigating inside the Monument.” Kostas’ eyes fixed on my face; she was apparently waiting on me to move to the very front of the bridge.
I thought it would be an annoying position to remain in because the viewscreen would be so close to me; however, as I moved toward the front consoles now, the viewscreen and its strange, carved red frame automatically moved farther away toward the Monument’s nose, as if another dimension of space had just been created between me and the nose.
I finally stopped at the largest front console—and waited for instructions from Kostas, who finally said, “Excellent. You’re all where you belong. Now, let me explain: today, we will be flying within this area.”
