The Voyage of the White Cloud

by M. Darusha Wehm

  “A healthy bunch,” Celine said, peering into the cage. “Any trouble catching them?”

  “Naw,” Neils said. “They aren’t getting any smarter.”

  Celine looked up at him sharply. “You can’t apply our standards of intelligence to another species,” she said. “That’s the kind of anthropocentric thinking that made old Earth the mess it was.”

  Neils shrugged. He couldn’t have given a definition of the word “anthropocentric,” but he knew what his boss meant. She was always talking like that, but she went to the Academy. She was a zoologist; Neils was just a wildlife assistant. He liked animals and knew that he was lucky to get to work with them. There weren’t that many out of cryo—a dozen species of birds, some insects, the rodents and the fish. He didn’t deal with the fish or the bugs, though. Those were different specialities. He was happy enough with his birds and mammals. They never used words he didn’t understand in order to make themselves feel superior.

  “I’m just saying I didn’t notice any behavioural changes, that’s all,” Neils said, meeting Celine’s eyes. He saw the dark skin of her face redden slightly and managed to keep the smile off his face. “You want a hand getting them out?”

  Celine nodded. “Yes, thanks. Can you grab the gloves?” He got two pairs of long, heavy gloves and handed a pair to Celine. They both put on the protective gear, then Neils opened two small hatches on the cage. He carefully slipped his hands inside and held on to the birds. “Ready?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Go for it.” Celine opened the main door of the cage and thrust her hand inside. She held a bulky syringe unit and while Neils held the birds she injected them with a mild tranquilizer. Soon they all fell limp and Neils extracted his hands. “Easy as,” he said, smiling. “Anything else?”

  “No, I’ve got it from here,” she said. “I’ll get the data I need, give them a little check up, and they’ll be ready for reintroduction in, say, four hours?”

  “I’ll be back before I knock off for the day, then,” he said. “Give me a shout if you need anything.”

  “I will,” she said, then turned back to the bird, lying almost lifeless on the counter.

  Neils left the aviary and entered the main corridor of Blue Sector. There were a lot of people coming and going at this time in the day and he recognized few of them. He didn’t really spend a lot of time with that many people—Celine, of course, Jan, the other assistant, and his buddy Kiew. Other people didn’t really interest him. He preferred his animals. He kept his head down and walked directly to the mammal lab. It was down a level on Lima deck, so he had to walk a good fifteen minutes, but he didn’t mind. There wasn’t anything special going on today, just the regular maintenance.

  He got to the lab and ran through the usual procedure—food, water, checking for any problems. The animals in here were all still caged. Neils didn’t know when, or if they would be released into a more natural environment. His job didn’t require him to know. He hoped they would, even if it meant he wouldn’t get to interact with them as much. It seemed wrong to keep an animal in a cage.

  After he was done with the gerbils, hamsters, ferrets and the rest, he figured he had an hour or two before he’d need to be back at the aviary. And he needed feeding and watering as much as the animals did, so he set off for his quarters. He preferred to eat there rather than at a canteen, always full of other people. In ten minutes he was in his small quarters, staring at his food storage area, trying to figure out what to eat.

  His handheld buzzed and he sighed. Probably Celine needing help. He picked it up and saw that it was Kiew instead. He smiled. “Hi,” he said, “I was just about to have lunch. Want to come over?”

  “Okay,” Kiew’s voice came out of the small speaker. “See you in a few.”

  He’d only gotten a salad made when the door to his quarters chirped. “Come in,” he said and the door swished open at his voice command. Kiew walked into the galley and sat on zir usual chair. “How hungry are you?”

  “Just salad’s good,” zie said. “How did the bird capture go?”

  “Same as always,” he said, placing a bowl in front of Kiew. He handed zir a fork and zie started to eat. “Celine almost went off on one of her ‘old Earth’ rants again, though.”

  Kiew rolled zir eyes. “Who do they think they’re fooling?” zie asked between bites.

  “I don’t know,” Neils said. “Sometime I think she really believes it, the way she gets so passionate about our so-called origins. But, come on. She’s educated and she’s not dumb. But why pretend?”

  “They want to keep the rest of us in our place, that’s why.” Kiew had some radical political views. Neils didn’t exactly share them, but he didn’t think zie was entirely wrong, either.

  “And you really think that by pretending we have some far-fetched history accomplishes that?” He bit into a piece of bread, and sat back to enjoy Kiew’s upcoming tirade.

  “It’s not just the history and you know it,” zie said. “It’s the whole narrative. We’re on a heroic journey, the last survivors of a dying race, the saviours of humanity. I mean, you’ve got to admit, it’s a lot easier to get people to do what you want to them to do with the weight of that kind of story behind it.”

  “But why bother with any of it?” Neils countered. “Why bother with this complicated reason for our situation? I mean, it’s obvious we’re stuck on a ship.“

  “Is it?” Kiew asked. Neils sighed.

  “You can see the stars outside, Kiew.”

  “No,” zie said, “you can see something on a screen that they say are the stars outside. I’ve never seen a porthole, have you?”

  “No,” Neils said, “but it fits the rest of the evidence that I have seen.” He started ticking points off on his fingers. “A finite space, fabricated out of plastic and metal. Reduced gravity on the upper deck levels including the weightless room. A huge aeronautical engineering program. Careful botanical and zoological management for a closed system.”

  Kiew shook zir head as he enumerated his arguments. “Points one and four could relate to any closed environment. And point three could be more of their lies to throw us off.”

  “What about the gravity?”

  Kiew looked at him askance. “Are you a physicist now?” zie asked.

  “No,” Neils said. “But I know how to use spin to create force.” He picked up a towel and started spinning it over his head. He let go and it flew straight into Kiew’s face. Zie started to laugh, then threw it back at him.

  “Fair enough,” zie said. “I didn’t really think that idea was going to fly. But still, a ship isn’t a prison. Just because we’re stuck here doesn’t mean we have to live like slaves. People like you and me can never be anything more than the staff—we’re just here to make everything work for the ones who matter, up on the top decks.”

  Neils shrugged. “I don’t know about slavery, Kiew,” he said. “Besides, none of us will see new Earth no matter what deck we’re on, no matter what school we went to. So, really, who cares? Anyway, I like my work, when I don’t have to deal with people.”

  “Well, that’s because you don’t work in waste reclamation.”

  He laughed. “It’s suits you, you’re so full of shit.” His handheld chirped then, and he picked the towel off his shoulder. “I have to go back to the birds,” he said. “You coming over after?”

  “I can’t,” Kiew said. “I’m on second shift for the next while.”

  “Okay,” Neils said. “Well, I’d better get going.”

  “I’ll clean this up,” Kiew said, “see you later.”

  When Neils arrived at the aviary, he was a little early. “I’ve still got one bird to examine,” Celine said when he walked in the door. “You can come back if you want.”

  “It’s okay,” Neils said. “I’ve got a few things to do around here.” He began tidying up the lab, his mind on his conversation with Kiew. Zie just enjoyed arguing, usually the more far-fetched the better. Though zie wa
s right about one thing—there wasn’t any conclusive proof about a lot of the things they’d been told about their journey. And so much of what came out of the leadership and the Academy was so obviously mythological garbage, that it did make him wonder what you could believe.

  He looked over at Celine, who was carefully handling a now-awake but groggy starling. He’d had his differences with her over the years, certainly, but there was no doubt that she cared about the animals as much as he did. Of course, her idea of concern was to capture them, inject them with drugs and make sure they developed properly. Neils was no biologist, but he thought the birds would be happier left alone, hidden in the trees.

  “All done,” Celine said, as the last bird began to feebly flutter its wings. She put it back into the wire cage with its fellows and took off her gloves. “They’re doing great,” she said. “I’ll have to analyze the samples I took to know more, but all in all I’d say that we can all be really proud of the avian project.” She stepped back and smiled broadly at Neils. “This is a great contribution to the mission. It feels good to be making history, don’t you think.”

  “Sure,” Neils said, picking up the cage. “I’m going to get these guys back where they belong now.”

  “All right.” Celine’s smile faded. “Thanks for your help.” Neils nodded and left.

  He opened the first door to the forest as the birds regained their voices. They obviously didn’t like the tranquilizers, and were always loud once the drugs wore off. He waited for the outer door to close, then opened the inner door. Once it had closed, he gave it a little tug to be sure before opening the cage. He was careful to keep away from the hatch as the birds fought to escape. They flew off into the trees and it took only seconds before Neils couldn’t see them anymore. He could still hear them, though.

  He went through the careful double door procedure to make sure none of the forest creatures got out, then walked back to the lab with the empty cage. He thought about the birds.

  They didn’t need stories about how they were the most heroic starlings ever, living carriers of precious DNA across the years of space and time. They didn’t need to believe that they came from a forest of unimaginable beauty and fragility, that they had allowed it to be destroyed, and their penance was to be trapped in a cage for generations until they finally reached a new tree full of possibility and promise.

  The birds didn’t need any of that—they still sang.

  Chapter 12

  Trapdoor

  “Such is the force of magic and my spells.”

  A pop, a groan and the room filled with gasps of awe. Elly couldn’t keep the smile from her face, but it was dark and everyone was transfixed by Mephistophilis and his materialization out of thin air.

  “Now Faustus, what wouldst thou have me do?”

  “That was brilliant, El!” Gryff’s makeup was smudged and there were streaks where he’d been sweating, but he didn’t seem to mind. “You are a genius.”

  Elly shrugged but she was proud of this set design. It was the first she’d done on her own and was more complicated than any of the others she’d helped with. ”I’m just glad it worked,” she said. “I had nightmares about you being trapped halfway out of the floor, looking up at Faust like a little kid.”

  “I’m a baby devil!” Gryff squealed in falsetto and laughed. “I never had a doubt. You’re a genius,” he repeated.

  One of the other actors appeared—not in a puff of smoke from a clever device in the floor but from around a corner—and Gryff’s attention was pulled away. Elly didn’t mind. Gryff was a good actor and had developed a following after the last production. People were saying that he might be able to start a full-time theatre. Everyone wanted a moment of his time.

  Elly left the two and slipped out the backstage door into the corridor. It was late and the silence of the passageway echoed after the boisterous theatre. “How did I ever end up doing this?” Elly wondered as she began the long walk back to her quarters.

  She was on her third trip to the canteen for a cup of tea when Taha caught up with her. “Up late last night?”

  Elly sighed. It was almost certainly a perfectly innocent question, but she couldn’t help but read into it. For what felt like the millionth time, she chided herself for getting invoked with a colleague, even if they had managed to avoid the drama most workplace romances developed when they failed.

  “Yeah,” she said, fighting to take the question at face value. “It was the opening.”

  Taha’s face creased in confusion and Elly felt a wave of heat that was part annoyance, part tiredness and partly an uncomfortable reminder of why she’d gone against her better judgment in the first place. “The opening?”

  “Yeah, the play.” She blew on her tea then took a sip. It was too hot but she drank it anyway.

  “I forgot you were involved in that,” Taha said, nearly brushing against her while reaching for a mug. “How’d it go?”

  “Really good,” Elly said. She wanted to talk about how she’d solved the problem of having performers appear and disappear all over the stage, of the prototypes she’d made, how she’d tinkered and fiddled until it was just right. She wanted to share that with someone who would understand—Gryff and the other theatre people knew it was difficult and were suitably impressed but they weren’t interested in the technical details. Taha would be. But…

  “Yeah, it was fine,” she said and turned. “See you.” She walked out of the canteen and back to her workshop, feeling petty, relieved and a little bit sad.

  “Mom!” André launched himself at Elly as she walked through the door of their quarters. She scooped him up and they enjoyed a cuddle as she settled on the sofa.

  “What exciting things did you get up to today, sweetie?”

  “We practiced letters and numbers and tomorrow we’re going to the weightless room in the centre of the ship!”

  “Wow,” Elly said, “I wish I was going to the weightless room tomorrow.”

  “So come with us.” André looked at her with earnest seriousness.

  “I can’t sweetie. Mommy has to go to work.”

  “Why?”

  Elly couldn’t suppress the smile. She knew some parents found the relentless questions of their children maddening, but she loved André’s irrepressible curiosity. And it was a perfectly legitimate question.

  “Well, someone has to build the things we all use and that’s what I do. If I didn’t go to work, then someone’s quarters wouldn’t have a table or a galley or something else they need. And I like building things. It’s fun.”

  “More fun than going to the weightless room with me?”

  “Aw, sweetie, you know I love being with you more than anything. But you know how you can’t just do whatever you want at school—you can’t play all day, sometimes you have to learn letters or numbers. Well, it’s the same for me. That’s why Sandy stays with you after school.” Elly looked up and caught the eye of the babysitter. Sandy was one of Elly’s neighbour’s kids and had a been a lifesaver. The teenager shot her a sympathetic glance.

  “Okay,” André said and snuggled into Elly’s embrace. The topic was obviously settled to his satisfaction.

  “See you tomorrow,” Sandy said and Elly nodded.

  “Come on,” Elly said, “let’s do something fun before supper.”

  André was sleeping soundly, so Elly settled into the couch with her tablet. The Faustus set was working fine, but she felt like there was room for improvement to her system. It relied on strong stagehands and perfect timing—there had to be a way to simplify it. She rotated the three-dimensional model, absent-mindedly worrying her bottom lip. She had that maddening feeling like the answer was right in front of her but she just couldn’t see it. It wasn’t helping that she was still thinking about running into Taha that afternoon.

  They weren’t well suited to one another. Her mother had said as much when it ended and Elly had agreed. Though how much of it was just coming up with an explanation to try and make
Elly feel better, she sometimes wondered. But it seemed that they truly did have profoundly different world views. Elly remembered endless good-natured but unresolved disagreements about so many things: Elly’s love of family life, her interest in theatre; frankly, her interest in anything other than the relationship. She always felt Taha was singular-minded, interested in a simple life of work and partnership, with everything else a distant second, if even considered.

  It wasn’t as though Taha had discouraged Elly’s other interests—she’d never have been with someone who had. Instead it was as if Elly’s eclecticism were some alien artifact—fascinating but baffling. She remembered one night when they’d gone to a concert. She’d asked Sandy to watch André, who was still too young to sit through a whole symphony. At the intermission, she’d turned to Taha and said, “I can’t wait until I can bring André to something like this. He’d adore those trumpets and trombones, I can tell.”

  Taha squeezed her hand. “You don’t have to worry about him, you know. Sandy is very responsible for a teen and he’ll be fine.”

  Elly had frowned. “I’m not worried.”

  “Then why bring him up? Aren’t you enjoying yourself?”

  “Of course, I’m enjoying myself. That’s why I thought of him—because he would enjoy it, too, and I can’t wait to share it with him.”

  The lighting dimmed then and the cacophony of the orchestra’s tuning ended their conversation. As the swell of music began, Elly wondered whether Taha even perceived of children as other people with interests and tastes, that she could feel more than just the love that comes with responsibility toward her son. That she could genuinely like him as another person.