Endless Blue

by Wen Spencer

  Paige sighed. "Someone should just shoot me and get it over with."

  "Pardon?"

  "Charlene!" Paige shouted. A moment later her sister appeared. "Take the wheel. Follow the course that Orin's plotted out. I'm going to be teaching Turk how to fish."

  * * *

  Turk hated fishing. It was boring. It involved taking rotting animal flesh, impaling it onto a sharp hook of metal attached to a line, and throwing it overboard. And then waiting. And waiting. With washing dishes, and cooking, at least there was something to occupy his mind. They'd reached open water and the islands were dwindling to nothing in the distance. Without anything but water to look at, nothing to do but sit, he found himself at the unfamiliar edge of dark emotions. His instincts were screaming for him to run from those feelings, fill up his world with something else until they were drowned out. He was anchored, though, to one spot of the boat's deck, fishing pole in hand.

  "How long do we have to do this?" he asked Paige who sat beside him under an awning fixed over the stern of the boat. He had expected her to leave, but apparently there would be some difficult parts once the fish actually took the bait.

  "Until we catch something or go hungry," Paige said. "Getting tired?"

  He was, but he didn't want to admit it. It was like she said: you didn't show your weakness to your enemies. Until he was sure that the crew had nothing more than slave labor in mind for him, he had to remember that. "Why don't you catch the fish ahead of time?"

  "Usually we do, but the freezer unit was one of the things hit by lightning a few days back. Fresh fish becomes inedible a few hours after it dies."

  "Can't you keep them alive?"

  "Normally we do, but the holding tank was hit by the drop nut. We've either had very bad luck or very good luck, depending on how you want to look at it."

  "How could either of those be good luck?"

  "No one was killed by the lightening, and we only lost the freezer, the ship's intercom and the radio. And the drop nut didn't sink us."

  He supposed that looked at that way, they had had good luck. He supposed that he was fortunate to survive his fall and be rescued by Paige. But he'd lost his whole universe. Mikhail. The Svoboda. His Reds. The life he and Mikhail would have built if the nefrim didn't wipe everything out. Was his life worthwhile if it was reduced to being trapped on a boat as a virtual slave? Fishing?

  They fell silent. Turk fought to keep his eyes open and stay awake, and yet not dwell on the things he'd lost.

  "Can I ask you something?" Paige broke the silence.

  "What?"

  "What kind of name is Turkish Delight?" When he didn't answer, Paige guessed. "Does it have something to do with sex?"

  "No!" He supposed it wouldn't hurt to tell her some things about himself. "I wasn't raised in a crèche. I was picked off a standard production line by a powerful man to be . . ." Be what? He was never sure why Ivan bought him. "Be raised with his son. He left it to my foster brother to name me. Nyanya had been reading Misha a fairy tale about a boy who was kidnapped by an evil witch. She lured him away from all that was good with his favorite candy—Turkish Delight."

  "Because you were what Misha wanted most?"

  "Actually, he wanted a puppy." Mikhail stated that whenever they fought as young children. He stopped saying it when Ivan offered to sell Turk and get a puppy.

  "How old were you when they pulled you out of the crèche? A month old? A year?"

  "Why?"

  "I was just wondering how much of the viral behavior you picked up."

  "Viral behavior?"

  "When the crèches were first trying to create adapted, they were looking at them as colonists for planets with extreme habitats. The idea was that once Reds landed on a planet, they would have to adapt not only physically but behaviorally to survive. So the first Reds were exposed to a range of animal behaviors on top of typical human behavior, so they would have a large pool of successful cultures to model on."

  Turk was familiar with all crèche behavior programs. "There's nothing like that in the military production lines."

  "Yes, but the experimental colonial Reds were still maturing in the crèches when they switched over. They had interactions with the military Reds. The animal behavior became viral in nature, passed on to all the following generations."

  "It's a disease? Like a retro-virus?"

  "No, no." She sighed out and thought for minute. "Let's play a word game. I'll start it." She looked around them, and then nudged the bait can with her foot. "Look at all that tasty bait. I one it." Paige glanced up at him. "Now you say 'I two it.'"

  Had she gone mad? "I two it?"

  She nodded and pointed to herself. "I three it." She pointed to him and mouthed the word 'four.'

  He guessed at what she wanted him to say. "I four it."

  Paige pointed at herself again. "I five it." And then pointed at him to take his turn. Behind them, Hilliary came out with a basket and started to take down the sheets hanging on the clothesline.

  "I don't see the point of this," Turk said.

  "Just say it. 'I six it.'"

  He frowned at her.

  "I six it!" Hillary called from the clotheslines.

  "I seven it." Paige said.

  Both females gazed at him expectantly.

  "I . . .eight it?" Turk said.

  "You ate it? Oh gross!" Hillary laughed.

  It took him a moment to understand the play on words. Paige laughed at his face.

  "That game would not work in Russian." He said.

  "No, I don't think it would." Paige said. "The point is that no adult ever taught me that. My older brother taught it to me. Our older cousins had taught it to him. And I didn't teach Hillary. I taught it to Orin, who taught it to Charlene, who taught Hillary."

  He understood what she was trying to explain. "So the game passes like a virus."

  "Yes. Just like with my family and this game, you've been infected with the inexplicable cat behavior of a crèche-raised Red. It's something you learned. It's not some part of you that you can't get rid of. All you have to do is decide to ignore it."

  The Rosetta tilted suddenly, leaning hard to the port. There was the flash and whine of a laser cannon. Something large bellowed in pain.

  Paige went tense beside him but didn't move to investigate. "Jones?"

  "I'm getting it!" Jones called back. There was a flash of a second and third shot. There was a loud splash and the boat righted. "Got it! Sorry. Thought we were clear of the shallows."

  Turk was much more awake than he'd been a few moments earlier. Also much more aware that they were just eleven souls on a small boat, out in the middle of endless water, with a failing engine and the nearest friendly port over three thousand kilometers away.

  Something that looked like a cross between a killer whale and octopus floated past, its massive jaws still working even though it was clearly dead.

  "Could we eat that?" He asked.

  "Nah, it's poisonous. It was someone's bio-weapon that got loose. Roams free now."

  "Oh." And then to show he was listening. "I one it."

  8

  On Razor's Edge

  Repairing his ship became a razor's edge that Mikhail had to walk. The damage was emotionally overwhelming; yet he had to deal with it all, every little detail. He couldn't afford to spare himself the ordeal. Their time was limited; if a new disaster caught them unprepared, it was unlikely they'd survive. He forced himself to dispassionately check each system, assign repair priorities, and then, to keep himself sane, firmly put it out of his mind.

  The lower decks were the worst. The omnipresent damp scent of the ocean and muted rumble of the surf were constant reminders that Alpha Red where Turk died was still filled with water. That water waited for the smallest of cracks to flood the rest of his ship. He found it increasingly claustrophobic, and finally had to escape to the outer hull.

  Outside, with his back to the ruined bridge, he let the beauty of the world distract hi
m. Mikhail's father liked to remind him of the long Russian naval tradition that went back to an age of ocean going vessels, but it never occurred to him that it would mean a genetic love of open water. It seemed ironic that this death trap was so beautiful.

  From his vantage point on the top ridge of the hull, he could see for countless kilometers in all directions. Their sandbar island might be an oblong swath of dazzling sand, but the coral base from which it grew was a rough mushroom-shape, full of crevasses and fissures. The water over the coral was cyan, and beyond its edge, the color deepened with the water to a sapphire. In all directions, he could see that other coral bases were growing toward the surface. A few had broken through to sandbars. None would provide safe shelter during a storm.

  And a storm was brewing, off to his right, forming a gray menacing wall. Just looking at it made him uneasy. Judging by the direction of the wind and tide, the storm would move toward them. They had days, maybe even a week—distance being impossible to judge—but they were firmly stuck in its path.

  Another thing he had to put out of his mind for sanity's sake.

  He'd lost most of his radar crewmembers along with the bridge. It took him a moment to recall who fell next in the chain of command. "Moldavsky," he spoke into his com. A moment later he got a reply.

  "Ensign Moldavsky here."

  "Bring whatever mobile observation equipment you can lay your hands on and meet me on top of the warp engine housing."

  There was a pause as Moldavsky was probably confounded by Mikhail's orders, and then, "Yes, sir."

  Bracing himself against the stiff wind, Mikhail walked along the flange. He checked the condition of his ship while keeping an eye on the storm front. The rivets dotting the flange in a neat orderly row looked sound. They would have check, though, for stress cracks at the molecular level. There had been no reentry burn, at least, with no heat discoloration anywhere, not even the safety signage which routinely needed to be replaced.

  Normally the ladder on the warp drive housing was stowed to reduce wind drag on re-entry. The release on the access panel worked, but the manual hand crank refused to budge. He struggled with it for a minute and then turned to the Red that been trailing behind him. It was the littlest of the Reds, and one of Turk's favorites, Rabbit. Despite his relatively small size, Mikhail knew the tom was much stronger than himself.

  "Give this a try, Rabbit."

  Rabbit looked startled at being addressed directly but saluted, "Yes, sir!"

  The tom shouldered his weapon and bent to the task. The wind tugged at their clothing, trying to pull them from their narrow perch on the ridge. Here the hull slimmed and they were one misstep from a steep fall. Mikhail glanced down at the boil of white water where the surf roiled against the edge of the ship.

  One step, and he would be free of all the pain riding in his chest in a cold, hard lump.

  He felt a moment of deja vu; the ship's ridge taking him back to the last time he stood on a cliff-edge with unbearable pain urging him to step off. There was a flicker, like something had passed overhead. Something large loomed over him, close at hand.

  He started to look upwards . . .and fell into a memory . . .

  Mikhail gazed over the edge of the cliff. True it was a sheer drop, but trees and tall grasses softened the foot of the cliff. Water would have been best, so he'd drown if the fall didn't kill him. He didn't want to just cripple himself. He moved down the edge of the cliff, considering ground far below. Too soft. Too soft . . .

  Mikhail struggled to push the memory aside; to dwell on that moment seemed dangerous. It was the last time his life had fallen to pieces. He'd been crushed when he failed his final psych test at the U.C.NavalAcademy. The military had become a refuge, a place to be wholly himself and no one else. Ironically, being seen for his own strengths and weaknesses had caused his downfall; his fragile mental state was something that the review boards wouldn't overlook, not even for Viktor the Great's clone. That day his life seemed over . . .

  He found a section with rocks. He stood a moment, wondering if he should actually bother to hike the miles to where the cliff would overlook the river. This seemed sure enough. If he wasn't killed instantly, he should be hurt enough to die before anyone would find him; a little messy and painful but totally fatal.

  It was like being trapped in a nightmare. The recall drowned him in details: the green smell of the freshly cut grain fields behind him, the distant growl of the trashing machines, and the gray of the rocks below. It wasn't that he couldn't wake up—he wasn't asleep—and that terrified him. But his fear didn't stop the memory from replaying . . .

  This should do it, his younger self thought while his older self prayed that he was standing still, not moving, on his dangerous perch.

  His younger self stepped out into the void—and was jerked backwards, slammed to the ground, and pinned against the sharp stubble of cut-grain by Turk.

  "Why?" Turk snarled into his face. "Why?"

  "I just want the hurting to stop." Mikhail tried pushing Turk off him. His little brother was intractable as Mikhail's future. Muscles like iron bands shifted under black fur and Mikhail couldn't even struggle.

  "So what if they won't give you a posting?" Turk growled. "You graduated. That was the plan. Four years at the academy and you redeem us. You can do anything you want now!"

  "I wanted a posting! I wanted to be something other than a pale imitation of a man that vanished forty years ago. A puppet to what father wants."

  "You're not Viktor, and you know you aren't. And you're not a puppet. A puppet wouldn't be as stupid as this! You're Mikhail."

  Mikhail was tired of fighting reality. "I can't be anything but Viktor. I'll make all his mistakes including making another clone to wallow in the same pain."

  "What's so bad about being Viktor?" Turk shouted. "He was a powerful man that everyone respected and loved and obeyed. What is so bad about that?"

  Mikhail struggled to explain it to Turk but gave up. It was like trying to describe the difference between air and carbon dioxide to a rock. Turk couldn't understand why he was suffocating. "I just want the pain to stop."

  "Shut up!" Turk lifted him up slightly only to slam him back down. "Shut up!"

  Turk's outburst destroyed the last of Mikhail's control and despair overtook him in a blinding flood of tears. He lost sense of everything but the burn of salt in his eyes and the massive growing ache that was trying to burst out of his chest and throat. Slowly, though, he became aware that Turk still had him pinned and had his face pressed hard against Mikhail's shoulder. Tremors shook Turk. It took several minutes before Mikhail realized that Turk was crying. Turk never cried.

  While he could not find strength to comfort himself, it came easily for Turk.

  "Hey. Hey." Mikhail rubbed Turk on the back like he would when they were little. "It's okay. I signed all the papers to free you and I set up a bank account for you. Father can't contest any of it. It's a lot of money. You'll be able to . . ."

  "Stop it!" Turk cried into his shoulder. "I don't want to you to die! You're the only one that ever gave a damn about me. What am I supposed to do if you leave me alone?"

  "Anything you want! You wouldn't have to be Volkov's pet Red anymore. You hate being my Red."

  "You idiot!" Without lifting his head, Turk raised his fist and punched Mihkail in the chest. "I don't hate it. We're a team. The two of us against the universe, and the universe will lose."

  Mikhail shook his head against the false bravado. "You have to hate it. No one looks at you and sees you. They see every crèche-raised Red that they've met before. Sooner or later, you're going to hate me for keeping you locked in place. If I wasn't here, you could be anything . . ."

  "Shut up! Why do you have to think so much? Nothing stands if you poke at it and poke at it and poke at it. Sometimes you just got to trust something and leave it alone."

  "Captain!" Someone cried close at hand, and finally the memory released him. He was lying on the high ridge of the
ship. Rabbit had him pinned in place to keep him from falling; the same inescapable but non-bruising hold as Turk had had him on the cliff side.

  Oh god, Turk! Mikhail's grief welled up as he realized that Turk would never be at his side again, calling him idiot and making him face the world head-on.

  But then Rabbit growled. Even in the little Red, the sound was a deep menacing rumble not to be ignored. Mikhail pushed away his grief and focused on Rabbit. The tom's hackles were up and lips drawn back into a snarl, but Rabbit wasn't looking at Mikhail, but slightly above and behind him.

  "What is it?" Mikhail followed his gaze but saw nothing but the waver of heat.

  "Something moved." The Red growled, scanning the area while still covering Mikhail with his own body. "But I didn't see . . .anything."

  Mikhail remembered the sense of something looming over him earlier, just before he slipped into the memory and how it seemed like he was held under, forced against his will to relive that moment. I'm not crazy, Rabbit sensed something too.

  Sensed what though? There seemed to be nothing around them now but sea and sky. Mikhail had only had a fleeting impression of something large and the shift of shadows and light. Rabbit should have heard/saw/reacted before him; Red's senses were more finely honed. And how could anything trigger a five-year old memory to play out in such detail? He suspected, if he'd tried earlier to recall that day, he wouldn't have remembered the fresh cut grain fields. The harvesting had been so inconsequential to his painful loss.

  And when he'd relived the night that Nyanya Nastya left, he'd remembered everything. If he tried now to think back to when he was six, he could only dredge up wisps. They'd colored the nursery shortly afterwards; he knew even then it was to discourage him from clinging to her memory. The walls had been faint cream yellow the night Nyanya Nastya left. He wasn't sure what they became—what they stayed up to the day he moved to another part of the palace—what they might still remain.

  But it didn't make sense that if something could make him remember an event, why it would ignore all secrets of war and state to pry out some ancient memory of childhood loss.