by Ginger Booth
“Well done, Remi. Thank you very much.”
“It is nothing,” he demurred. “May I stay out of the freezer if I treat you like a man?”
Sass’s heart sank. Had she really made him feel that unwelcome? “Cold sleep is optional, Remi. Only to skip the boring months. But you do understand that there can be nothing…physical…between us? Clay is my partner, and I am the captain. I’m off limits.”
“Yes, I understand this, of course!” he cried in frustration, then pinched the bridge of his nose. “You will teach me, yes? Today, you tell me what I do to annoy you. Continue, please.”
“Of course,” Sass agreed. “I apologize. I should have understood sooner.”
He waved the apology away. “I want this mission to succeed. You scare me with the electrocution. This is terrible. We could have lost the warp drive! Be stuck here forever! I must check Darren’s work. Like I check your navigation. A second opinion for a critical calculation, yes?”
Only a cad would stand by her lie at this point. “Remi… The warp drive fails its self-test. It may be damaged.”
“Incroyable!” His voice squeaked up on a hysterical note as his arms flew wide.
Sass summoned her dignity. “Speak to Darren. Quietly. In private. Maybe calm down first.”
“You Mahinans! Repressed and pompous fools!”
He stormed out of her office, bouncing against the doorway.
Perhaps she should have checked with Clay and Darren first. But she had an excellent excuse. No, not an excuse. I made a decision. Because she agreed with Remi. She needed a second opinion on critical problems. She consigned Darren to his fate.
4
“You promise me!” Remi demanded of Sass yet again, wagging his finger within inches of her nose. These past couple weeks out of hibernation he’d made great strides. He behaved like a longshoreman instead of a lech. “You do not wake him without me!”
“Give it a rest, Roy!” Markley grumbled, his mild-mannered Clark Kent routine frayed by the third officer’s abuse.
Sass hunched with the two engineers, Markley’s wife Dot, and Clay on the access balcony in front of cold storage. The morgue-like shelves ran 2.5 meters deep. At the outset of this voyage, Remi installed a good floor over the crew quarters at the rear of the hold. Before he built the cryo facility, only air ducts roamed up here. The space wasn’t quite tall enough to stand straight. He and the crew did a nice job on the lights, subdued and soothing.
They’d already tucked the rest of the crew away for another year and a half, or until needed.
Dot glowered at the engineers, one her beloved husband of 50 years. “Darren. You first. Remi, you lie down, too.” She stood between two drawers, drawn out for easy access at chest height. She filled an enormous stainless steel syringe with her drug-and-nanite cocktail, the liquid like quicksilver.
The injection looked all too much like the one forced on Sass when she was 33. Refugee cop Sassafras Collier died that day, replaced with her current undying self. She was a form of AI instead of a real person, a program running on nanites and neurons. She hadn’t known that part until her trip to Denali. Ignorance wasn’t bliss, but knowledge wasn’t reassuring, either. The needle gave her wicked flashbacks.
But as captain she wouldn’t use cold sleep herself.
Darren stripped his clothes and devices, including his grav generator, down to his skivvies, and laid it all in a carton. He hopped onto his slab and lay flat before Remi finished stowing his gear. His head stuck outward as though slipping his feet into a sleeping bag. Clay lent a hand pulling the thick insulating blanket up to nestle around his neck, and applied the protective gel to his face, redolent with camphor and menthol.
Next came the worst step, in Sass’s estimation. The patient’s eyes got slathered in goop. A sleep mask went over that, mostly to remind the patient to keep their eyes closed. The nose wasn’t so bad, with oxygen cannula. Clay retreated to let Dot attach the electrodes and life sign sensors.
Remi was ready for Sass to perform the ablutions on him. The captain blanched a moment at the intimacy, but scolded herself. This was a scary moment of abject trust on Remi’s part.
“I’ll be here when you wake,” she promised. She tenderly spread the ointment to form an even slobber across his face. Then she paused to gaze into his eyes.
“I’m sorry I get mad sometimes,” he blurted. “I just…”
She nodded in sympathy, and murmured, “Close your eyes when you’re ready. No rush. And Remi, thank you for your hard work.”
He’d been right, of course. Darren missed a glitch in one of the power conduits, a contributing cause to the electrocution. The fault was subtle, and took them days to track, trading insults half the time. He’d also led a team to fill the fuel hoppers for her, and mucked out the recycling system. “You’re a talented engineer, and a fine officer.”
His eyelids crumpled, and he swallowed. At last he nodded and closed his eyes to be slimed shut. Sass performed the rites, then gently nestled the mask and air supply onto his face. Dot was still busy affixing sensors to her husband.
“You still have a few minutes before the injection,” Sass encouraged, casting around for something upbeat to discuss. “Do children count sheep to sleep on Sagamore?”
“Meat animal?” he guessed. Sagamore’s core livestock was tilapia swimming in the rice paddies. “I don’t know Earth creatures.”
“Never mind. Do children pray before bed? When I was a child, it went, ‘Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.’” She stopped when she remembered the scary next lines.
But Remi recited an equivalent prayer in French. “My mother said it with me and my sisters. They are married with children. Whether they like it or not. Ah, no. Now their children have children.”
“Throw a prayer their way, too,” Sass suggested. She squeezed his shoulder and yielded her place for Dot to work. “Sleep safe, Remi.”
Clay drew out another two shelves, and she stopped dead. Two? He’d threatened to try cold sleep. But she hadn’t believed him!
She squat-marched to her partner. “Really, Clay? You’re going to leave me all alone?”
“You’ve been alone before,” Clay returned coldly. “The last seven years at your farm, wasn’t it?”
“My parole officer called every other day, and visited once a week,” Sass hissed back. “Solitary confinement is cruel punishment.”
“So wake me when you’ve been alone for a week,” Clay compromised. “You take me for granted, Sass. That ends now.”
Sass scowled. What was he, a one-year-old, to demand constant attention? Of course she took him for granted! What else was a relationship good for? Maybe she should have listened harder. But this was outrageous!
He stripped, and hopped into his shelf. “Prep me.”
She tucked him in, and spread the gel, again waiting on the eyes. The cool sensation of the lubricant’s evaporation reminded her of a morphine injection, long ago and far away when she was human. She checked on Dot’s progress. Darren was out cold, a corpsicle on his tray. He breathed, and his heart beat, but those slow slight movements failed to lift the thick blanket.
She gulped, and turned back to Clay’s eyes, still open. “I’m sorry. I do love you, Clay.” You’re just annoying. But he was infinitely better company than no one. And who else remembered Earth? Raw Mahina before they built its atmosphere? “I took for granted you’d keep me company all the way to Sanctuary. Please. Don’t do this.”
His eyes met hers, dark chocolate and furious. “One week. Alone. No Dot, no Darren or Remi, completely alone. Then you can wake me.” He closed his eyes tight and nodded sharply. “Ready.”
Dragging it out, she finished prepping him, including the electrodes, and the stretchy insulated hair net to keep them in place. She flinched as Dot pushed Darren’s shelf shut, then Remi’s, steel wheels trundling the rails into the back wall. The cupboard doors closed with a snick, advising a good seal.
Dot arr
ived business-like to inspect Sass’s work on Clay, and found all in order. She drew two humongous syringes, ready for Sass to inject. Then the nurse stripped and made herself comfortable on a drawer.
“I’m beginning to relish this,” Dot claimed. “Like a restful spa treatment with cucumber slices on my eyes. You’ll love it, Clay.”
“I doubt that very much, Dot.”
The nurse laughed, then directed Sass to give Clay his injection first, so she could guide the captain through reading his vital signs.
Sass caught a mumbled ‘love you’ while she studied Clay’s tell-tales on her tablet. His diagnostics read rock-steady as he drifted into unconsciousness. Then Sass repeated the procedure on Dot.
Her tablet pinged to report Clay’s body temperature in the hypothermic range, below 35˚ C – 95˚ in the Fahrenheit of their youth.
“This’ll make Darren horny,” were the last words the nurse uttered. Sass cocked a dubious eyebrow. But euphoria was a phase of hypothermia. It couldn’t hurt to keep a happy thought.
She lay the tablet aside and ran a hand along Clay’s washboard abs, muffled beneath the thermal blanket. She didn’t touch his gelled face. Then she pushed his shelf into the wall with the rest. By then the system pinged that Dot was ready for the same.
And Sass was alone.
She walked along the cabinets, counting the green lights of occupied slabs, and the blue lights of empties.
The long months outbound were bad enough. At least she could call old friends on Mahina. And Clay reliably clamored for attention
She turned to leave, gazing down from this odd perspective onto her echoing ship. She could almost see the ghosts of her crew striding the catwalk. The zero-g ball games. The missing slide and mushroom. Dot pestering her husband, bent over a workbench ignoring her. Remi teaching the green crew to muck out the recycling. Flamboyant Kassidy Yang and the Denali envoy Aurora, leading tug-of-war grudge matches across the same cesspit. Cope and Walker pounding each other for sport. Ben and Eli, Jules and Abel egging them on. She missed them all so fiercely she ached.
She whispered to herself, “Get a grip, Collier.”
She picked up the box of castoffs, and hopped down to the accommodation level with a flick of her grav generator. Remi didn’t install a ladder to the cryo bay. They wore their personal grav generators everywhere. She landed by the stairs, then stepped down to the med-bay. She cleaned the syringes, ready and waiting for wake-up day.
Storing the box of personal effects on a shelf, she paused to sniff Clay’s shirt.
Now that’s just maudlin. “Computer, erase the last 5 minutes from med-bay video logs!” She shoved the box into its spot. She resolved never to sniff again.
The med-bay lights remained on as a safety measure, a bright white beacon through smoke in case of fire. She tried lowering the work lights in the hold to their evening settings, then immediately restored the usual schedule. Her mental health required a steady progression of light levels through the blank 24-hour cycles stretching before her.
What shall I do today?
Her tablet pinged lunchtime. She wasn’t hungry, but seized on the event. She should program more activities into the thing, to regularly draw her to another part of the ship.
Pops and sighs sounded throughout the old boat, as heating and ventilation cycles warmed and cooled and blew. She tried to focus on her footfalls instead as she climbed up to the catwalk. The steel rungs echoed.
The truth was, being alone was her deepest fear, ever since she gradually became aware that she couldn’t die. While humanity died in its billions. She suspected that’s why she bought Thrive. If Mahina perished, she’d fly away.
She opened the fridge to find the housekeeper left her several containers of salad fixings – just tear some fresh greens and dump these on top. The gift was like receiving a quick hug. Even better, since Sass cringed from Corky’s bearhugs.
Each bore a little note. ‘Spice up your day!’ ‘Something’s fishy,’ and ‘Better with bacon!’
Sass smiled as intended. Bless Corky! She’d have to remember to thank the booming battle-ax next year.
5
Staring at Corky’s kind gift of salad fixings, Sass reflected that she’d harvest daily. Most of the produce she’d throw straight into recycling. Copeland and Eli determined long ago that composting was pointless. They developed presets to generate recycled potting mix on demand, and skip the stinky pile of rotting veggies.
Gardening afternoons at 15:00, she decided, and entered a recurring appointment into her tablet. Review engine burns at 10:00. And 21:00, why not. After each navigation check, she could review ship diagnostics.
She prepared Corky’s taco salad. While picking at it, she struggled to think of something to do between now and gardening time. And where she’d like to do it. Though she intended to structure her days, part of that regime should be to do something fresh.
The Nanomage database, she thought, without enthusiasm. Drilling into data bored her silly. Clay was the analyst. Sass preferred to investigate stories and motives face-to-face, not follow wispy trails in cyberspace.
How to make this fun?
She had VR, their virtual reality setup. She was leery of how addictive it could become, starved as she’d be for companionship. But maybe she could construct virtual Ganymede, Luna, and Mars colonies. She’d study the origins of the people she’d meet on Sanctuary.
She doubted many on Sanctuary would remember their roots directly. The Colony Corps crew that brought her to Mahina arrived here 63 years ago, objective. The rogue nanite designer Belker acted without permission when he made Sass and Clay immortal. No telling whether Belker left any other Methuselahs behind. But the Gannies picked up the early phase of Mahina nanite technology to prolong their lives, if they chose.
She might meet wildcatters. In addition to crewing the vast refugee ships, the Colony Corps sent explorers outward to seek better worlds. For the ‘first shell’ – the seven systems of the Diaspora – they obeyed an arbitrary 20-year emergency time limit. They sent out probes, then surveyed any real estate they found, no matter how cruddy, like the Aloha system. Perforce, all the worlds were within 10 light years of Earth.
But they continued searching outward for more promising worlds beyond. These explorers would have taken one look at the Aloha star system and burned straight for the exit warp, seeking better. They sent no probes ahead. They jumped blind, because they couldn’t predict which systems would survive for their probes to report back to, after decades lost to warp. But they brought the coordinates to rendezvous at Sanctuary when their work was done.
Sass would love to meet a wildcatter. They might remember Earth.
But even if few remembered their first colonies, the society on Sanctuary would be based on them. And she had nothing better to do.
Project selected. She’d start with Ganymede. She’d met them, after all. Now that she thought about it, she was curious about their home.
She settled to work in the dining room, with its enormous display. She cranked some tunes to mask the lonely pings and sighs of the air vents. The careful research and drafting soothed her, reminding her of early years on the farm with good friends by her side, planning the fields and irrigation mesh.
Her virtual colony would feature five floors, three of them stacked and another two in detached working domes.
By the time her timer prompted her to head for the garden, she’d laid out half the first floor of her new virtual Ganymede Colony. On a roll, she told it to ping her again in an hour. When the prompt repeated, she’d started on the second level.
Ready for a break, she cut the music and grabbed her harvest basket. Her body longed to move, so she took a running start and leapt over the catwalk railing to sail into the hold below, landing a meter shy of the far bulkhead.
“Sass!”
She spun and craned her neck. Clay sat perched on the edge of the dark cryo platform, in damp underwear, feet dangling. She laughed. Nearly naked
, face and neck glistening with goop, he must be freezing. She bet he sat there arguing with himself over whether to jump and break a few bones, or wait.
“I’ll be right up!” She ducked into the med-bay to retrieve his things. Then she flipped her gravity to run up the wall to reach him.
“All I needed was the grav generator,” Clay griped. “Thanks.” He slung it around his hips.
“Cryo doesn’t work on our nanites,” she guessed.
“No. Blacked out for maybe 20 minutes. Been sitting here ever since. Guess you found something to do.”
Her eyes narrowed. “On the Vitality. Did you try cryo before?” Even as a freshly implanted nanite being, Clay was self-destructive, forever teasing to find the limits of their immortality.
“Only as an experiment. Different drugs.” He hopped down to the catwalk next to crew quarters, and she followed. “Excuse me while I sluice off.”
He started toward their quarters on automatic, then paused to look back at the crew quarters. Their 8-person bath was enormous. He shrugged and headed that way instead.
“I’ll join you!”
“No.”
“Aw, c’mon, Clay. I got lonely without you. You made your point!”
“Still no.”
“So did Dot’s nanites make you impotent? Inquiring minds.”
He turned and fixed her with the most exasperated glare he’d ever bestowed on her. And that was saying something, because she often elicited that response. “Go to hell, Collier!”
“I came up with a project –”
He slammed the bunkroom door in her face. The giant bath was only accessible through the crew quarters.
He’ll change his mind soon enough, Sass consoled herself. Or his libido nanites would change it for him. She clanked down the stairway to the garden humming, to pick veggies and fruit for two.
Only 508 more empty days to fill. Those wildcatters must have been the craziest men and women alive.
