I began to understand why the captain looked so agitated, so distracted. He said, “Mr. Dunne?”
“Sir?” I was trying not to think that he and Ferguson had arranged my beating that first night and tried to have Sorcha raped, just because we took precautions in an uncertain situation.
“The first duty of an officer in the Royal Interstellar Service is what?”
I felt my stomach flutter as I panicked for a moment. “Uh, to protect the Home System Community, sir.” I released a great jet of breath, relieved at finding the right answer.
The captain came over to me and shook my hand. His hand was cold and moist, his eyes disturbing. Fear trickled down my back. He said softly, “Good man.”
Nine
We rendezvoused with Queen Helen two days later. Admiral Caroline Greaves and her senior staff were invited aboard Eclipse, and there were the usual formalities, tours and the inevitable inspection. The Eclipse officer complement gathered at 1900 hours in the main assembly hall, formed into crystalline arrays in our dazzling white dress uniforms, standing at attention while Captain Rudyard, his racks of medals and citations gleaming under the halogen lights, escorted the admiral along the ranks. He made a special point of introducing Admiral Greaves to the members of the Contact Team. From my position in the rear of the formation, I watched Greaves’ reactions as she met the other contact members. I was surprised at how small she was, with delicate bones, no more than five feet tall, even in her boots. She had a brisk manner, sizing up the officers with one sharp glance, instantly spotting the slightest, most minute imperfection in uniform or presentation. Her gestures were economical, her smiles fast and bright. She wore her vivid red hair in a two-millimeter bristle over her pale, weathered scalp. She looked tiny next to Rudyard, and tinier still next to Grantleigh. The captain looked like a man playing his part with little preparation. His polite smiles were too wide, his gestures too big, and even his uniform looked wrong, like it was a half-size too large.
I had spent most of my free time the previous two days trying to coax an immaculate dress uniform from fab systems around the ship. I must have tried a dozen times, but every time the clothes came out with tiny but noticeable glitches in the weave somewhere, or the brass work wasn’t quite right, or the boots had a flaw in the mirror finish. In the end I had to spend hours in my quarters polishing and touching up, working like a dog trying to improve on the so-called flawless machine. I remembered the story going around the Academy that fab machines deliberately provided flawed dress uniforms, just to make cadets and officers put in this extra work. It was meant as a reminder of earlier days, before instant nanofacturing, when discipline mattered a lot more.
There was also the Zen school of uniform imperfection, which held that the process of fixing the fab-glitches in one’s uniform was a necessary humbling ritual, and the act of glitch fixing was a way of wrestling with the chaos of the universe, fighting entropy. The first time I heard an upperclassman tell me that, I laughed. “Chaos of the universe? Fighting entropy?” This skepticism led to a lecture, delivered between swift kicks and punches to parts of my body where bruises would not show, about how the whole purpose of the Service was to make the universe safe for human expansion, that it was literally a matter of imposing order on chaos, and ultimately challenging the divine will of God. God gave the universe its first push, its initial breath, and in doing so had given us chaos and entropy. It was the purpose of humanity to push against the chaos, and wind back the unravelling of order. By the end of this lecture, I was a beaten and bloody lump on the common room floor, reflecting on how all this came out of a complaint about imperfections in uniforms.
Waiting for the admiral to inspect me, I tried to contain the jitters I felt in my gut and the sweat I could feel beading on my forehead, down my back, in my armpits. Greaves was stopping to shake hands with the Contact Team people as she came to them in the formation. Shaking hands! How was I supposed to stop my hands sweating? Nobody told me the admiral wanted to shake hands, or I might have grabbed some temporary washbots beforehand to take care of the sweaty palms. Nobody told me! And I was sure all those much-repaired imperfections in my uniform were obvious, even from a great distance, and that they had giant signs pointing to them: “Look! Crooked service crest on second jacket button!” Worse, that morning in the bathroom, I found two pimples: one on my forehead, the other on my upper lip. Standing there, staring in the mirror, I cursed: “Twenty-one years old, and still getting pimples!”
And in the back of my mind was the lurking, stupid thought: “What if it’s the first sign of an alien infection?” I had seen too many stupid vids.
The captain and the admiral were proceeding along my row now. I was sixth in line, standing rigidly straight, arms at my side, thumb and forefinger touching the navy piping on the side of my trousers, as perfect a regulation stance as anyone could hope to see. Hardly breathing, I was aware of my heartbeat making me move slightly. I tried to breathe even more slowly. It wasn’t helping. I felt sick, and like I might need to urinate at any moment. I could smell Rudyard’s too-strong cologne; hear the admiral’s crisp, deep voice whispering to him. The sound of their boots on the floor was soft yet ominous.
“And here we have the last member of the Contact Team, SSO1 Dunne,” Rudyard said, coming at last to me. I did my damnedest to stare straight ahead at the cropped blond hair of the officer in the row ahead of me. Mustn’t speak unless spoken to, the regs said. I wasn’t about to rock the boat.
Yet I was aware of Rudyard sweating; I could smell it under his cologne. His voice was strained. It struck me as inconceivable that he would be as terrified of this woman as I was. Rudyard said to me, “Mr. Dunne, this is Admiral Greaves, of HMS Queen Helen. She is anxious to meet you.”
Greaves said, looking up at me, “Good evening, Mr. Dunne. A very great pleasure to meet you. How are you?” And there was the hand. I wasn’t looking down, but I could feel it there, puncturing my personal territory. For a moment I tried not to think about Greaves’ rank, Spacecraft Command Officer level 8; it boggled the mind to imagine such a rank. Greaves, according to public record, was in her early sixties, still a young woman for such a prestigious position.
She had to notice all my flaws and imperfections from this range. She had to be aware of my sweat, my fear. I almost wanted to tell her about the second button with the Service Crest at that angle. But she only stood there, hand out, waiting, now scowling.
Rudyard cleared his throat discreetly.
I blurted, “I’m nervous, ma’am. Uh, otherwise fine. Thank you for asking. Ma’am.” And, beginning to poach in the juices of my embarrassment for making such a botch of a simple greeting, I then shoved my own hand out. She took it, and gave me a crushing handshake Ferguson would have envied. I could see Rudyard behind Greaves; he was rolling his eyes, neck veins bulging. He looked very red and moist; even his immaculately brushed hair looked wet.
The admiral took back her hand and said to me, “I understand you had the most contact with the foreign vessel, Mr. Dunne. That you actually … went inside it?” Only later did I reflect how odd it was that the admiral referred to the alien vessel as “it,” rather than the customary female pronoun for a ship.
“Yes, Ma’am. Yes. I did. Ma’am.” I was ready for God to hit me with a lightning bolt now.
“That must have been a unique experience. I would like to hear about it from you, if you have some free time.”
This was a surprise. I had become used to most of the Eclipse crew having no interest in the matter, or indeed an active antipathy towards the information, like they were trying to stay in their singular, borderless world as long as they could. I said, my mouth dry, “Of course, ma’am. It would be my pleasure, of course.”
Instead of nodding politely and moving on, she stayed there, still looking at me. “I’ve always wondered, Mr. Dunne, if we really were a
lone out here. Haven’t you?”
I blushed and stammered, “Y-yes, ma’am.”
She smiled at me suddenly, perhaps trying to ease my nerves. “Then we shall have much to talk about. If, of course, Captain Rudyard can spare you?” She glanced at the captain, smiling.
Rudyard cocked an eyebrow. “I think Mr. Janning and I can arrange something, Mr. Dunne. It won’t be easy, of course, with you being such a vital member of the crew…”
Admiral Greaves politely laughed at the captain’s drollery, and they moved on. The tension eased. I could breathe again. It was like the time immediately after a solar eclipse, as the moon slides away from the sun, and light returns to the world. Normalcy reasserted itself. I wanted to collapse.
Until I remembered: She wants to talk to me? Shit!
At the end of the inspection assembly, Captain Rudyard stood with Admiral Greaves at the front of the hall, and announced, “In honor of this unexpected visit from the Service flagship Queen Helen, I would like to invite Admiral Greaves and her senior command staff to a formal dinner to be held here tomorrow evening.” This much was standard protocol for a Service ship encountering the flagship. So much of Service life consisted of the correct exchange of courtesies, the recognition of status, position, and power. And I knew what kinds of punishments awaited those who would flout these courtesies.
Admiral Greaves allowed herself a quick, terse smile, and said that she and her senior staff would be delighted to attend this dinner.
Rudyard then surprised all of us. He added, “There will also be a small ceremony honoring the members of the Eclipse Contact Team.” He flashed a broad, fake-looking smile at that, and encouraged a round of applause that quickly degenerated into lacklustre duty-clapping. I felt myself flushing hot, unhappy about all this fuss. I wanted only to fit in, do my job, and not be a problem, to not rock the boat. This endless fuss about the damned aliens was starting to embarrass me. I wondered what the regs said about politely refusing citations and other honors when the captain offers them, especially in the company of the flagship’s command staff. I didn’t like my chances.
That night I couldn’t sleep — again. Since getting out of quarantine, I slept badly most nights. And I noticed I was finishing my sim sessions feeling worse than usual, more fatigued, like my brain was having to work harder than it should to absorb the things it was learning. I tried not to think about these machines changing my nervous system and mind to handle helm tasks without the necessity of conscious thought, that I was being trained to be a tool, a system component. When I looked at displays of local space, the images meant more to me; I could read the starscape in ways I couldn’t before. Calling up a hypertube weather display, color-coded with drifting tube entry and exit points, and seeing that they did seem to move in formations reminiscent of weather patterns. I found I was beginning to identify regions in the display containing entry points that would lead to particular destinations, or at least I had a sense about where such tubes might lead. And I was starting to know how to distinguish entry and exit points according to trace particle emissions. There was no conscious thought involved in this process; I was learning to read tube weather, and nobody was more astounded, or more unnerved, than I was: beneath my conscious awareness these bridging lessons were rewriting my cerebral cortex and nervous system, building molecule by molecule the neural links that once would have taken years of classroom lessons and book study to form. At some fundamental level I was becoming part of the ship’s systems, a machine. I loved having the new skills; I wasn’t so keen on what it might be costing me.
During this time I received occasional mail from Sorcha. Our schedules were incompatible, with training and work shifts rostered at different times. She had been behind me at the big inspection, and teased me about a scratch she saw in the back of my left boot and the trailing thread dangling from one of my trouser legs. And that the collar of my jacket was drenched with sweat once the admiral had finished with me.
Sorcha also reported much the same things were happening in her head when it came to engineering problems and matters relating to ship’s systems. She said she was starting to hear things in the background hum of the power plant, getting feelings and hunches about troublesome system problems. The only real problem, she said, was dealing with the men on the engineering team. It was one of the biggest teams on the ship, responsible for maintaining every system, from simple fab machines to the power plant to the metastructures governing spacecraft integrity. She wrote at one point:
System problems I’m starting to get a good feel for. The thing that really pisses me off is the way Shackleton lets his men behave around me. I’m not some whining fem, and I can take care of myself, but I expect a bit of dignity and respect in the shop. Bad enough being the only SSO1 — that doesn’t help. You know one of the 2s the other day, Gorman, saw me working with a component of the Thormann processor trunk, a thing bristling with more neuroids and processor mesh than twenty human brains, fairly heavy, and this bastard told me, ‘Give it here, love. That’s too heavy for a girlie like you.’ I told him to piss off, of course, among other things, which generated a round of applause. But there are other things, too. During quiet times most of them just stand around talking about their sexual exploits during past shore leaves, and what they’re planning when we get back to human space. These discussions get very — how shall I put this? — graphic. And charming discussions like talking about particular female celebrities and asking, ‘How long would she have to be dead before you wouldn’t shag her?’ You’d think we’d be beyond this kind of thing.
What’s really puzzling is that most of them seem pretty competent engineers. On the job, they know their stuff. But once they relax, they get attacks of the stupids. I used to see this a lot at the Academy — it’s one reason I got up to speed with self-defense. We might live in enlightened times, but that’s only for show. When it gets down to it, things between men and women are the same as ever. I tried to complain to Shackleton, or at least as much of a complaint as it’s possible to make (you musn’t rock the boat, and all). He said, ‘Live with it. Join in. Give as good as you get. We work hard here, and we play hard.’ Which is the same sort of answer I used to get at the Academy. So I’ve decided to take him at his word. Though there have been times I’ve come this close to decking some of those bastards for ‘accidentally’ brushing against my breasts or backside once too often. I think about all that stuff they told us at the Academy, about how the Service is so progressive, so enlightened, and how the men and women who serve on the cutting edge are professionals and have nothing but respect for each other, blah blah blah. Makes me want to spit!
I read all this, amused at her tone of indignation, and knowing that she would indeed flatten anybody who gave her too much trouble. She shouldn’t have to put up with crap like this while going about her job. And being a SSO1 shouldn’t be an excuse anymore than her gender. But like her, I had seen the same behavior at the Academy, where the men present generally acted like they were in a wonderful club in which they were the preferred members, and the women were only granted membership if they behaved ‘properly’.
She spent a lot of time monitoring the guys fixing the alien ship’s drive system. In another of her letters, she tried to explain it:
It’s fascinating, watching them tackle this immense engine. It’s completely foreign, yet at the same time, mostly understandable. The basic reactant materials are kept separate, then forced together at a key point, and the resulting titanic energy is contained and shunted through further post processing to increase exhaust velocity. The basics of it are right out of a textbook, but the details: the how and the what and the where — that’s where it gets tricky and strange. And the actual components look so odd [image files attached]. At times it’s like looking at a peculiar sculpture, like something pulled from the bad dreams of a mad sculptor. So many peculiar, tiny structures within othe
r structures. Is it decoration, or is it hardware? It’s almost impossible to run simulations on this thing, not knowing what all the bits are for, what they might do. Then there’s the actual damage; it looks like the main reaction chambers might have blown, though some other things might have gone wrong first, leading to a supercritical build-up of plasma in the chambers. The guys are talking about building a whole new drive system from scratch, attaching it to the ship and using that to push her back to human space.
I read all this lying in my bunk, trying to sleep and thinking about that ship. Those endless kilometers of tunnels filled with cold black gel, like congealed blood in a corpse. Remembering the claustrophobic, shivery feeling of crawling through it, breathing recycled air that almost tasted fresh, and how that essential darkness formed the perfect backdrop for my projected nightmares and phobias. This is what I was supposed to talk about with Admiral Greaves? “Well, Admiral, for most of the time, when I wasn’t shitting myself, I felt like I might be going mad. And, oh yes, I found some aliens.”
It seemed likely she was going to tap me for a chat during the big dinner. Could a SSO1 admit to being scared shitless while engaged in such duty? Was it okay for a Service officer to have such feelings? What about a disturbing preoccupation with those creatures, and having strange, half-asleep, sweaty dreams involving them? Was I going mad? Were the creatures trying to reach me somehow? Perhaps both? That was a cheerful thought.
At 0320, I found myself heading for the isolation tank again. Shuffling my feet along the deck tiles, yawning behind my hand while managing to salute whoever I saw, regardless of their rank. I told myself I was trying to confront my fears, even as I also dreaded that something about the creatures was drawing me to them: that maybe my journeys through what seemed like the endless wretched bowels of that ship had in fact changed me somehow, or that I had become a little bit alien, a little less human, simply from contact with it. My brave, rationalizing brain tried to tell me that I had had a totally impervious environment suit on at all times, equipped with state-of-the-art equipment that would prevent anything known from getting in to me.
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