The Captain chuckled and slapped her side. “What you just said these days refers to an erotic sexual practice. I thought I’d been hired onto something like one of those tour liners that work the Pyrees system.”
“No, nothing like that,” Jim said, putting his arm around Carol. “Maybe in our cabin. After all we are newlyweds.”
They walked down the corridor toward a lift tube. Decorative patterns in greens and yellows covered the bulkheads. Carol had chosen the designs from a collection of computer formulated motifs that especially matched their own character and promoted relaxation.
Jim knew the ship’s layout through hours of studying the plans. The Captain continued on toward the main control room as Jim and Carol entered through the door of the utility Jim formerly knew as an elevator.
“What does strapping in mean?” Jim asked as the lift tube door closed.
“I know about it in principle,” she said then threw her arms around his neck and whispered in his ear.
“Ouch!” Jim exclaimed. “No way known.”
* * *
“Hey,” said the muscular, former bulldozer operator as he extended a hand and caught Jim’s in a vice like grip, “this is some ship.”
Earl was a friendly working man with a definite opinion on everything. He was the third war veteran of the group. As a tank driver under General Patten he had raced across France in 1944. He had refused the minor surgery that would have corrected his rapidly receding hairline as it was his belief that was meant to be, was meant to be. His rugged complexion denoted one who spent his life working outdoors and his muscles enhanced the look.
Jim looked around the observation deck as the male members of the team rose too greet him. An ironic thought crossed his mind. The doctor had told him to select friends and not experts. The fact was that ultimate experts in their fields now surrounded him. Dr. Chin was the galaxy’s leading expert on acclimatizing Old Earth humans as he was the only doctor that had preformed that procedure. Chris, the top expert on late Old Earth sociology was the only sociologist that had observed an Earthman for any length of time. That was doubly ironic as less than a year before he had been the cargo master on a space liner. Levin was the top expert on the functioning of Old Earth machinery. Earl was now the galaxy’s leading expert on operating a bulldozer. Finally Carol, as of yesterday, was the galaxy’s leading expert on marriage to an Earthman.
“Yes,” Earl said as they took a seat, “as my nephew would say, this is real neat.”
“It’s groovy,” Karla said.
“Well, my boys would say it’s radical,” Jim added.
The three turned and looked at Sam. He looked up, suddenly realizing that he was the center of attention.
“Ah... It’s better ‘n sloppin’ hawgs on Sundy mornin’?”
The more contemporary members of the group glanced at each other and laughed.
“I like Sam’s the best,” Carol said and the others nodded in agreement.
Looking around the observation deck convinced Jim that it would be the section of the ship in which he’d spend most of his time. The setting was spectacular to say the least. The sidewalls and the ceiling were transparent with magnificent views of star filled space. The transparent material used was non-reflective so that it gave the impression that no barrier existed. The deck’s adjustable lighting tended to the subdued to emphasize the view outside.
The system’s sun appeared as a soft orange ball as the transparent composition selectively filtered light above a defined intensity. The deck was covered with a soft green carpet with an automated bar at the forward end of the room.
To the front and rear of the deck, bulkheads contained corridors to other sections of the ship.
“First acceleration in five minutes,” came the voice of the captain through the ships computer system.
Jim shook hands with the doctor. “Where’s your assistant?”
“In the cargo bay on deck one. He’s storing our equipment and will go to his cabin for the acceleration. He worked all night getting things transported up here so I believe he deserves a well earned sleep.”
“Celia’s in our cabin,” Chris said. “She overdid the celebrating at your wedding yesterday.”
Sam slapped his knee. “Ya sure do knows how ta put on some shindig. Important people everywhere. Ah had maself more fun than the night Georgia seceded from the Union.”
“I watched you dancing with the governor’s wife,” Carol said. “It’s the most cheerful I’ve ever seen you.”
“Yep, ah was showin’ her some fancy Georgia steppin’“
“Where did those old tunes come from?” Jim asked.
“That’s what ah’ve been a doin’ the last few weeks. A bunch of musicians are paying me ta hum the old songs and tell ‘em what instruments were used. Then they plays and ah tells them if it was jest like back then. Ma business manager fixed it up.”
Earl jumped to his feet. “He said we’d be stuck in these seats for three hours. Just time for the bathroom first.”
Dr. Chin also stood. “Good idea. You seem to know a lot about multi G travel.”
“No, just hours in the back of an army truck,” Earl said with a smile.
* * *
All chairs turned to the forward position and the safety arms extended securing each occupant. The observation deck lights blinked twice in a standard signal then virtual force of acceleration slowly increased.
“Darn,” Levin said as he grabbed for the data pad he had inadvertently left on the floor next to his seat. Chris made a vain attempt to snatch it as it slid past his chair and continued on toward the bulkhead at the rear of the observation deck.
“Looks like you’re going to have to chat instead or read, Levin,” Jim said.
“Oh, if you do not mind I shall just listen,” Levin said nervously.
“Chris, good time for a briefing,” Jim said, turning in his seat. “What’s the latest from Doc’s team on Batalavia?”
Chris turned his head with a mild amount of difficulty, it now pressed on the backrest with one and a half times its weight. “The seeder has completed its job. A new strain of mulch weed is now growing like crazy down there. The primitive anaerobics they used have worked better than expected because the planet, luckily, was ideal for conversion.”
“How about the weather?” Jim said.
“That’s the problem right now. It’ll have to undergo forced settling. The Montoyas have purchased the ionizers and energy channels with a subsidy from the government. They should be on their way within a week.”
“When can we start sending them down?” Jim said.
“In about four weeks, that gives us three weeks to wake up the advance teams and acclimatize them.”
“Yeah,” Jim said. “We’re going to have to get into their computer banks and rearrange their wake up roster to suit the new equipment coming.”
“We need experts,” Chris said.
“We have,” Jim said. “Tal has twelve planetary conversion engineers ready for tutoring over the V phone. The main problem is tapping into their computers.”
Chris forcefully turned his head to the right. “How’s the work on that going Levin?”
Levin looked up. “Huh?”
“What do you think?”
“Oh I’m sorry. I was going over in my mind the procedure for tapping into the colonist’s computers.”
Chris chuckled. “All right, let’s talk about that instead.”
“Oh.. Um.. There’ll be no problems if it’s a standard North American, British or Japanese. If it’s German, French, Russian or one of the odd ones, we have a problem. There’s no information still in existence on those.”
“Well,” Jim said, “hold on to your rabbit’s foot.”
Levin looked down at his feet; the concept had obviously been forgotten in the past two thousand years. “Ah..”
“I’m sure you’ll work it out,” Jim turned slightly to return his attention to Chris. “What about the governme
nt representative, any further word on that?”
“No, just that he or she is Government Secret Service, nothing more than that.”
“Ah,” Earl said, “a G man. I feel safer already.”
“What?” Karla snapped. “I for one am not looking forward to having a fascist pig like that coming along.”
“He’s government,” Earl said, swinging furiously in his seat then flopping back under the force, “they’re there to help you and you owe them your cooperation as a citizen.”
“I owe her nothing. It could be a her you know. I don’t want a fascist asshole poking their nose in my business and telling me what to do. They fucked up Earth enough and they’re probably no different now.”
“Watch your language young lady!” Earl was becoming angrier. “If I was your father I’d give you a good spanking!”
“Oooh, Earl, I didn’t know you were that kinky, your cabin or mine?”
“Don’t you give me that weird shi…. stuff!” Earl extended his arm to the right and attempted to point at Karla. It swung backward and he had to forcefully lift it. “You don’t know what life is all about yet. When I was...”
“Ok, Earl, tell us about the Battle of the Bulge again...”
“Karla,” Jim snapped, “we have things to discuss. Leave the arguments until you’re both alone.”
“Interesting,” Chris said reaching for the data pad mounted on the right side of his chair. As he unclipped it, it slipped from his grip and fell heavily to the rear. He heard the clatter as it landed on the bulkhead behind, probably quite close to Levin’s. “Damn. I guess I’ll just have to trust my memory. Jim, you lived shortly after both times. Did the young people of Karla’s time always use a shock tactic to make a point?”
“Sometimes. My father used to tell me about it. When she left Earth he was nineteen and extremely interested in the military, so he mostly stayed clear of her section of society.”
“What?” Karla said, leaning to one side and looking back at Jim. Her long black hair fell from the back of the chair and trailed in a horizontal line to the rear. “You sound like you think WE are the freaks. Peace and love are the only way to cure a sick world.”
“The word is ‘were’, past tense, if you’re going to use the plural ‘we’. The rest of your ilk is now long dead.” Jim sat back anticipating the inevitable verbal conflict. He didn’t want dissension within the group but thought that ideas and attitudes had to be aired if they were to work together in the confinement of the ship.
“Well,” Karla continued, “what’s your opinion of us?”
“Not freaks, hypocrites. It was more like peace, love and hate, from what my father told me.”
“Hate? We didn’t hate anyone.”
“The peace, love crowd he knew did. They hated him because he wanted to join the army. The irony was, he didn’t hate anyone.”
“Can you pass me your data pad,” Chris whispered to Carol while struggling to extend an arm.
Carol pulled the pad from her chair mount and reached out to hand it to Chris. As the furthest edge touched Chris’s fingers she lost her grip and it too disappeared to the rear followed by a clatter.
“Darn.”
“Well,” Karla said, “he was part of the system we detested. We had a legitimate justification to our attitude.”
“Exactly,” Jim said. “Peace, love and hate.”
Earl pushed himself forward and turned on one elbow. “That system kept you safe from Hitler.”
“Isn’t it strange,” Carol said, playing with her hair, “at first it felt like the ship was horizontal and we were accelerating forward. Now it feels like we’re going straight up.”
“Strange, ah feels that too,” Sam said from the chair furthest up the now vertical floor. “Now what about this here Hitler fellah and Karla a lovin’ everyone.”
“Sam,” Carol snapped, “I was trying to change the subject.”
“Ah knows that,” Sam said, chuckling to himself, “that’s why ah changed it back agin’”
“Well,” Jim said, attempting to lean forward in his seat, “getting back to the G man. They have a function but I’d keep an eye on them. I feel like a drink. Computer, release safety arms on my seat.”
“Warning,” the computer replied, “due to acceleration, retraction of the safety arms may cause injury.”
“Override,” Jim snapped.
“Please be careful,” Carol said.
“Strange,” Chris said, “The attitude to government changed in so short a time. First complete trust, second a total rejection followed by acceptance with reservation.”
Jim now free from his restraints swung around and sat on the backrest with his legs dangling over one side. “One saved my life on Tranquility. I would’ve walked into an ambush if it hadn’t been for him.”
“See,” Earl said as he looked down at Jim’s back, “they are there to keep us safe.”
“Karla,” Jim said, looking up, “the spare seat to your right, could you slowly release the anchor control until it starts to slide. I’ll see if I can catch it on the way past.”
Karla rolled to the right and reached for the control under the arm to the electromagnetic mat in its base that secured it to the floor. “It’s their violent methods and sinister secrecy I object to. That’s too much power for one group to have which can be directed at those who know the truth. There are better ways, just love the people who are against you. They’ll soon change.”
The chair slowly slid toward Jim as he reached out to fully activate its anchor again. “I would’ve liked to have seen you throw flowers at Hitler and him throw bullets back. That true fascist I met on Tranquility would’ve done what he wanted no matter who loved him.”
Karla smiled sarcastically. “What about the man’s followers, without them he’d be nothing.”
“All either part of the system or brainwashed.”
Jim climbed to his knees reaching for the backrest of the seat now between him and the beverage dispenser. “What do you think Chris? Why did things happen that way on Earth? The violent swing of attitude back and forth.”
Jim crawled from backrest to backrest struggling under the extra half a man he had to carry.
“As an objective researcher I’d rather not say,” Chris said as he watched Jim’s backside with concern. “My opinions would affect the ones I’m observing. But, as you all have to live in this society I guess I’ll have to. The reason was information versus tradition. In Earl’s time facts were learned from parents or an authority such as a teacher. If there were discrepancies between that information and reality, that was only discovered years later, and very slowly. The respect for the authority wasn’t lost because the younger was then the older and in the position of protecting their own credibility.
“In Karla’s era, information, for the first time in history, was instantly available to the younger generation through extremely efficient paths other than a traditional authority. They had television. A comparison produced an immediate reaction to errors and loss of credibility. That would have probably been easily resolved had the older generation admitted that they were fallible and used the new technology themselves, but that didn’t happen. Authority tightened and demanded the more traditional respect that they themselves had given their elders years before. Even when blatantly wrong they refused to recognize the fact.”
“Yep,” Karla said. “My stupid parents would never admit they could possibly be wrong.”
“This cycle eventually produced a complete rift, which was a pity as the older had much true fact to teach. Jim’s time tended to be a compromise between the two. In him I see a tendency toward the ideas of today.”
“Drink anyone?” Jim asked, retrieving a can of his favorite beer from the dispenser. “I suggest beer in the can. A full glass would be difficult to throw to you.”
“See that Earl,” Karla snapped, “you don’t know as much as you think you do.”
“Well you should learn more about life b
efore you go around telling people how they should live it,” Earl shouted and then lowered his voice. “I’ll have one of those beers Jim.”
Jim looked around and found Chris giving him a wave, Carol nodding and Dr. Chin raising a finger. They all copied Jim. They released their restraints and swung around sitting on the backrest of their seats.
“As far as you giving advice on anything I would listen carefully then do the opposite,” Karla said then turned to the left to take the cold can from Jim’s hand as he carefully stood on the backrest and reached up.
Earl extended his arm to receive the can from Karla. “In that case I will give you some advice,” he said. “Whatever you do, don’t walk into the airlock and don’t play with the controls. And above all, put on a spacesuit while doing it.”
“Screw you; I’ll do what I want!” Karla said.
Jim stuffed four more cans into his jacket then looked across at Chris. “What’s your opinion on that Chris? The older generation giving genuine good advise only to have it instantly rejected due to the source. It did happen in the area of drugs, getting an education and honoring ones responsibilities.”
“Unfortunate side effect. From what you’ve told me, Karla’s section of society was just as inflexible as Earl’s.”
“How do you account for me?” Jim said, climbing back to his seat. “I rejected both. My father was right most of the time but refused to admit that I could possibly have the occasional legitimate opinion of my own and demanded that only he was correct. On the other hand, the so called counterculture was just as uncompromising. They...”
“We are... ah... were all individuals!” Karla shouted furiously. “We were free to think what we wanted!”
“And you all thought the same, great individuality.” Jim handed Carol three cans. She in turn carefully handed two to Chris who reached up handing one to Dr. Chin. “Well I thought it my duty to defend my country if called and...”
“That’s a depraved concept better off gone with the dinosaurs,” Karla interrupted.
“Karla, in my former time you would’ve been the dinosaur. We had a war where the troops were supported and honored. If you’d have said that in a crowd they would’ve beaten the crap out of you.”
To Wake the Living (The Time Stone Trilogy Book 2) Page 6
