Backflow Boxed Set

by F P Adriani

  Glancing up at the ceiling now, Gary frowned. “I don’t know…. The Keeper science behind the ships is often incomprehensible, but, in some ways, flying the Monument seems simpler—their bridge interface is more streamlined, and so is their computer. It’s like the Keepers have been everywhere before. So much has been figured out already—an uncountable number of paths in the dimensional streams especially. We basically just have to massage the numbers to fit the exact destination we want.”

  “Yeah, but we’re missing coordinating with the Monument’s ‘engineering’, with how the engines are functioning—that’s a constraint on the velocity profiles we haven’t had to deal with directly yet.”

  “Well, Steve’s been going on and on about how the engine areas work similarly: a lot’s already been done for the engineer. You’re basically a watcher in case something goes wrong with the engines.”

  I pointed at Gary. “That’s what worries me: as you well know, flying a ship gets so much tougher when problems come up. Understanding the ship’s science suddenly becomes more important.”

  “I know.” He sighed again, hard this time.

  And I glanced down at one of the omnivelocity pages in my workbook, where I had written: Fuck me: so, to get somewhere, Keeper ships essentially travel everywhere and nowhere. Makes lots of sense…NOT.

  *

  The next morning, I was stepping into my worksuit in my cabin when Babs intercommed me and said, “I need to see you!” I didn’t bother asking her if it was important; the sharp, high tone of her voice told me all I needed to know.

  One of my arms was still being covered by the rising red suit-fabric as I flew out of my room and all the way to her room down the hall. As soon as she let me in and closed the door behind me, she said, “Kostas stole my turds!”

  I almost laughed at her bizarre outburst; then I remembered which turds she was talking about, and my mouth fell open.

  Babs was pacing the room now, her thighs in her red pajama pants pumping in a jerky way. “I just went to look for them before, and the whole damn container is gone. Is that why she seduced me?”

  “But, Babs, it seems you chased her. And I told you not to get involved with a worker—”

  “I know, Lydia, but I’m upset here! This is my science work. You don’t do things like that to scientists. I had the samples secured in a specific way so they wouldn’t decay. I feel hurt that she’d do this to me—”

  I ground my teeth together as I said, “I’ll deal with Kostas on this.”

  *

  I left Babs’ room and went down to my bridge to use the new Keeper communicator-device lying on top of my chair’s front panel-table; that morning, one of the workers had shown up in the hangar to give the communicator to one of my crew. They hadn’t had time to attach it anywhere on my ship more permanently.

  My fingers pressed the largest button on the Keeper communicator now. “Kostas, I need to talk to you—on my bridge. Now.”

  When she finally transported to near me a minute later, I was sitting in my chair—sitting in my chair fuming. I said right away, “You stole something from Babs’ room.”

  Kostas’ mouth twisted ever so slightly. But her back quickly straightened up more, and she said, surprising me, “Humans shouldn’t be on Genteran.”

  “Well,” I said, frowning a little crookedly, “that’s a blanket statement if I’ve ever heard one. Really, the ape our species is and the apes it came from probably should have never left Africa. But it’s way too late to turn back the clock there.”

  “Let me be clearer, Lydia: what humans refer to as Genteran’s Ghost is not a ghost at all. It is an important species in this universe because it consumes large amounts of what humans call ‘strange matter’. And much of that matter is indeed strange: it doesn’t come from this universe. Using that type of matter in a human device is an even stranger state for it to be in, so, naturally, that is why you lost part of your ship on Genteran.”

  My eyes whipped to hers. “How do you know about that?”

  Her dark eyes flashed me an ironic vibe. It was possible Babs told Kostas about the incident on Genteran, but now I remembered that the Keepers had accessed my ship’s records. And maybe they also saw my past events by using their path-equipment on Rintu….

  “Is there nothing the Keepers can’t see?” I asked now, my frown deepening.

  And Kostas said, “There’s plenty they can’t see and that they know they can’t see, and there’s probably plenty more that they don’t know they can’t see.”

  I was going to respond to her mouthful, but then Babs charged onto the bridge. She had changed out of her pajamas and into a t-shirt and shorts, but the socks sticking out of her brown boots were two different colors.

  She pointed at Kostas and yelled, “After last night, you stole my turds!”

  Kostas seemed to flinch, but then I saw her take a quick, deep breath. “I did not steal anything from you because it did not belong to you. And it is not turds. It is reproductive sputum from ‘Genteran’s Ghost’.”

  Babs’ lips shook. “Wh—what?”

  “Yes—it is not what you thought it is. And I did not intend to take the sputum—I didn’t even know it was there! This morning—” she glanced over at me, then her eyes awkwardly shifted back to Babs, “when I woke up, my message light on my device was blinking, and when I picked it up and turned it on to listen to Thura’s message, my device flashed a warning that there was Ghost material in the cabin.

  “This is actually a serious situation. There is no way their sputum should be on the surface of Genteran. They multiply in planetary cores and only go above to the surface to eat; Genteran is not what you think it is. It is not a solid planet. It’s a type of space body that forms around the nodes of dimensional streams.”

  “Holy shit,” Babs said now, and her lips were still trembling—so were mine, for that matter. Then Babs said on a frown, “I don’t understand something: if Genteran is on a dimensional node, how do ships fly into it without disturbing that stream?”

  Kostas pointed at her. “That is a big part of the problem: we can’t keep an accurate-enough eye on that core area with humans unknowingly interfering in the stream all the time.”

  “We’re not doing it ‘all’ the time,” I said.

  “As I’ve said, you shouldn’t be there at all.”

  Feeling really frustrated now, I glared at Kostas. “Why the hell didn’t you know the sputum was on my ship all this time, and now yours? In fact, you just indicated the Keepers knew of what happened to my ship on Genteran, probably from when you scanned my databases.”

  Kostas’ dark eyes widened at me. “We aren’t constantly thinking about your ship, and we don’t know every single detail of every single encounter of every single path. At the time, we did not think it significant that a crewmember of yours left your ship and remained on Genteran. We didn’t follow what Babs was doing.” Kostas’ eyes fell on Babs’ flushed face.

  And Babs said, “While I was analyzing the pellets, I did wonder if they weren’t stool samples. But I took a piece of one apart and found a carbonaceous ambin compound in the structure, and the molecules seemed to be such perfect, circular clones of each other…at the time, I didn’t think they could be eggs or something similar. I remembered how the being consumed the ambin in the Demeter’s reactor and left a similar ring-like structure behind, so I assumed the stool structures were like a mimicking of the eating and digestion process. How stupid of me.”

  “It’s not ‘stupid’,” Kostas said. “You were on the right track. You just had the exudates coming from the wrong hole.”

  I couldn’t help laughing at that. Babs smiled slightly, but then she let out a hard breath and ran her hands through her hair, which was a bit sweaty so was left sticking up when she removed her fingers. She spread a hand at Kostas. “So now what? Did the sputum come from the one that got stuck in the Demeter’s reactor? Did it get injured in there? Is it going through a metamorphosis now? Maybe it was
exposed to something in the reactor’s components that changed it? I did get samples from the broken mess of the reactor that the Genteran people hauled away. But, oddly, the samples didn’t show anything that looked abnormal.”

  “That doesn’t mean something abnormal wasn’t there,” Kostas pointed out.

  Babs sighed again. “I feel terrible now, in more ways than the one.” Her eyes had been on Kostas, but they quickly shifted away. “I thought I discovered something, but the thing may be out there somewhere hurt for months now, and I’ve been unable to do anything about it. I didn’t even realize it was going on. Maybe had I stayed on the planet, I might have figured that out.”

  “And then did what?” I said fast. “If these things live in the crust and core—you can’t dig up the whole planet.” I turned back to Kostas. “Like Babs said: so now what?”

  “We Keepers and workers will keep a closer eye on the dimensional stream Genteran is attached to—well, we can’t do this right now because we must be elsewhere. But I’ve contacted those who are free on Rintu. We’ll especially look for more pellets. I’m concerned with why the Ghosts were on the surface: the sputum is released in liquid form inside the planet’s core, and the characteristics of the structure there help the growth of the plasma being, preventing it from getting too solid, though sometimes the Ghosts develop solid parts because they do go above ground and will consume solid materials. But, it’s possible the exudates you found, Babs, were a one-time, freak occurrence—something went wrong and now it’s righted itself. My concern, though, is that a reproductive problem has developed. This universe cannot afford to lose the helpfulness of the Ghost’s existence.”

  “Can I—can I work with you on this?” Babs asked now, her eyes suddenly softening.

  “Of course,” Kostas said, and, at this point, her voice had softened.

  And I took all of the “softening” on my bridge as my cue to leave. “Well then, I’m going to grab some breakfast. Keep me informed about what’s up with the Ghost.”

  “Unfortunately,” Kostas said to me, “we will not be able to get very far with that right now. And we will need you and your crew on the Monument’s bridge in an hour.”

  I nodded at her and said, “We’ll be there,” right before I left my bridge.

  *

  To my surprise, delight and relief, things on the Monument’s bridge today wound up going much better than yesterday: my crew and I made no mistakes today. Of course we didn’t have a difficult flight path this time, so maybe our victory along our learning curve wasn’t a huge victory.

  Still, we really did do well because we didn’t fly on a training route now; we flew on a real one, toward our most important destination, and we finally got to coordinate with my engineering crewmembers in the Monument’s engine area—which also went well.

  I couldn’t help grinning at my bridge crew, who were all-smiles too.

  “Well,” Kostas said, from her usual perch on the right side of the bridge, “I must say that you’re all learning very fast.”

  “Maybe it’s out of need,” Gary said. “It seems like you really do need us.” Gary blushed now, as if he realized he’d made too much out of what we could offer the Keepers.

  Nevertheless, Kostas did nod at him. “You’re correct. You would not be on here if that were not so.”

  “Because the Keepers don’t entertain visitors,” I said, in a slightly sarcastic voice.

  “Correct again, Captain Zarro.”

  My mouth twisted a bit; my upper lip began to sweat. “I’m not sure about that—it feels wrong to call me that on here. I’m the captain of the Demeter. On here, I’m just another human semi-worker.”

  Kostas’ eyes were on me. “I think it’s easier for you and your crew if you keep your usual title. And the expression for ‘Captain’ in Keeper languages is something different.”

  “So what is it then?” Babs asked from behind me.

  And Kostas replied, “Humans would pronounce it as ‘Vell’.”

  “Vell Zarro—I like that,” I said. Then I flushed at my presumption.

  If Kostas thought I was being presumptuous, she didn’t say so. Her fingers manipulated the console in front of her. “There are a few exercises I want you to do now—‘housekeeping’ actions that keep track of what state the engines are in and whether that’s being communicated correctly with this bridge area, and with the rest of the ship.”

  “Good,” I said. “I’ve been worried about that—if we’d be able to handle things across such a massive ship. I do feel like we need more practice on the overall workflow during flight, Kostas.”

  “You will get it today and tomorrow,” Kostas said.

  And she wasn’t kidding: today wound up being a longer workday than I’d thought it would be, and tomorrow on the bridge started out very similarly. My crew and I also did similarly well.

  “At this rate,” Kostas said then as she moved beside me on the bridge, “you will soon be able to fly on your own for an extended period of time.”

  “I don’t know about that,” I said, my head whipping toward her.

  “Nevertheless, I have some work to do on another bridge here. I’ll be leaving you for about three hours, and your day today on the forward bridge will last a few more hours after that. The computer knows where it must stop and start along the route to avoid where pockets of saavin matter are likely to be. If something goes wrong there or something else comes up, contact me using one of the bridge communicators, and I’ll come back immediately.” She rushed away from me and off the forward bridge.

  My crew and I stared after her, our mouths hanging open a bit: I suspected that my crew, like I, still felt that we didn’t know what the hell we were doing, that maybe things going well lately had just been a fluke.

  I thought of the saavin matter; it was supposedly common along the path we had set the ship on, and the saavin was a big reason why getting to our final destination would take The Keeper ship a longer flying time than was normal for its technology; we had to fly discontinuously now, skipping in and out of omnivelocity profiles and destinations. Keeper ships were unable to use the super-sticky saavin matter for fuel, and an accidental collision with the saavin would supposedly force us to stop for a long while, because the Keepers would have to unclog the Monument’s exhaust and other systems….

  My fingers pressed the black, bridge communicator-button on my panel to contact my engineering crew—I wondered if they had been left to work alone at the engine-controls. But when I asked them that now, Karen replied, “Nope. We’re still with a worker—thankfully. We’re still quite wobbly on our feet here—or even off our feet.”

  “I know what you mean,” I said, my voice very dry.

  *

  Saavin matter notwithstanding, because so much of flying the Monument was automated once a flight path had been initiated, and because we had plotted out the ship’s course for the next few hours, my crew and I weren’t continuously busy on the bridge.

  I contacted Kostas to ask her if one or two of us at a time could briefly go to the adjoining rest-room and get snacks and use the bathroom, and Kostas said that was fine.

  Shirley and I were the last two to leave the bridge for a break, and when we were standing by the white counter in the rest-room, pouring ourselves some fruit juice, I noticed her eyes looked a bit too red.

  I frowned as I asked her, “Are you okay?”

  She nodded my way fast, taking a sip from her white cup. “Just a bit tired. I was up late last night.”

  I wondered why, but I didn’t want to ask her why. I hoped that my looking her directly in the eye would make her tell me more…it worked.

  “Captain Lydia, I don’t want to cause friction here, or complain or anything. I’m just trying to deal with something personal, you know?”

  It was my turn to nod. “You mean with one of the other crew.”

  Shirley sighed hard now, her blue eyes dancing my way, then quickly dancing away from me. “Alcohol does weird
things to some people—that’s why I rarely drink. But sometimes it’s like the alcohol itself does something the person himself would never do. This particular person—he’d never like me.”

  I didn’t ask her who “he” was; I also didn’t tell her I knew who she meant and what she was talking about because Babs had told me about it.

  I swallowed the last bit of my juice and put my empty cup on the counter. “When I asked you to become part of my crew, I wanted to help build you back up—your confidence after your divorce. But I guess that was a mistake on my part.”

  Shirley grabbed one of my forearms and rapidly shook her head, her thick dark hair bouncing. “No! This is the best thing that could have happened to me—truly.”

  “But, Shirley, you don’t look happy. And I’ve been so busy with all this other shit on here, I should have said something sooner—I should have noticed sooner. Are you sure you don’t regret it here?”

  Now she spread her arms. “If I wasn’t here, where would I be? I had nowhere to be. I still would have nowhere if I wasn’t part of this crew. I tend to get giddy with excitement over something new, as if that new thing will change my life. But then I have to settle down to reality at some point: life never goes completely smoothly. I don’t think I’m alone there in getting my hopes up too high. It’s something everyone does sometimes.”

  “I agree—definitely. But I really want you to come tell me if you’re unhappy on here—I want everyone to, even while we’re working with the Keepers—no, especially while we’re working with the Keepers. My door’s always open, no matter who you want to talk to me about—understand?” My eyes were right on her now, my eyebrows arching high.

  She grinned back at me, nodding quite vigorously. She opened her mouth again, as if she was about to tell me more, but I heard something then—a loud piercing noise, so loud and so piercing that Shirley dropped her cup on the floor and both of our hands rushed to cover our ears.