Starbridge

by A. C. Crispin

  Rob's dark eyes held hers. "You can talk to the Simiu, and try as I might, I can't even begin to catch up to you."

  Mahree's cheeks grew hot, and she looked away. "I just practiced every day."

  "So did I. I really tried. I'm not bad at languages, either. I speak and read Spanish and Russian, and I read German and Latin. But I'm not in your league. You've got a real gift."

  "I only speak English and French," she protested. "And some Simiu. I may sound good to you, but half the reason Dhurrrkk' and I understand each other is that we're just used to our mangled pronunciation."

  "Ah, but you're bilingual-- you grew up speaking both languages, right?"

  "Yes."

  "The brains of bilingual people are configured differently than those of non-bilingual people." Mahree gave him a skeptical glance. "It's true."

  "But on Jolie, most everyone is bilingual. Uncle Raoul and Paul are, too."

  "But they're not young. The older you are when you try to learn a language, generally speaking, the less successfully you're going to master it. The brain gets less flexible, the older you get." He nodded thoughtfully. "That may be why you alone, out of all of us, really learned to communicate in Simiu."

  She was silent for nearly a minute, then glanced back up, diffidently. "You mean that at least in that respect, I'm not ordinary?"

  Rob raked a hand impatiently through his hair. "There's no 164

  'least' about it, Mahree! You're an extraordinary person, and if you haven't realized it by now, you should. You're smart--Jerry said once that you've got better programming sense than most people who do it for a living. And now this ability to speak Simiu--" He turned his hands palms upward, and shrugged. "Where in hell did you get the idea that you're ordinary?"

  She shrugged. "Until this whole thing started, I was."

  He studied her so closely that she blushed.

  They were silent for a moment, while Mahree cast about for words. She was acutely conscious of his intent gaze. Finally, she said, too quickly: "Did you have a happy childhood?"

  He shrugged. "Not bad."

  She gave him a quick, annoyed glance. "I gave you a real answer.''

  Rob's mouth tightened, and he no longer met her eyes, "Okay, truth time. I didn't have a childhood--at least, not one that I can remember. I wasn't unhappy while it was happening ... it was only later, when my sisters were growing up, that I realized how different I'd been, and resented what had happened. I blamed my parents for allowing it--though nowadays I realize that they probably couldn't have changed things. I was an awfully stubborn, single-minded kid."

  "What did happen?"

  "Before I was four I could read. Know what I used to spend my time poring over?"

  "The Prisoner ofZenda," Mahree guessed.

  He gave a short, ironic chuckle. "No, that came later, when my original interests had flagged a bit."

  "What, then?"

  "The forty-third edition of Calender's Surgical Anatomy. I memorized the whole thing, image by image, and on my eighth birthday, they let me observe an operation. Picture a skinny shrimp of a kid perched on the seat in the holo-vid theater with all those medical and nursing students. My father was doing a heart-lung replacement. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven."

  "No wonder you got through medical school so early."

  "I had to stand on a box to work on my first cadaver. The table wouldn't go low enough. Luckily, I grew a head taller by sixteen, so when I got to assist on a real operation, I didn't need the box anymore."

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  She gave him a thoughtful look. "It bothered you, being short, didn't it?"

  "Still does"--he smiled wryly--"though I've learned to laugh at short jokes.

  Self-defense."

  "But didn't you ever play games, get into trouble like normal kids?"

  "No. Not until organized sports. I was too small for football and basketball, but I was good at soccer. By that time I was in college."

  "How old were you when you started?"

  "Fourteen."

  "That must've been difficult!" Mahree exclaimed.

  "Outside the classroom, it was. My social life was nonexistent the first two years."

  "Did that bother you?" Mahree asked, remembering her own adolescence.

  "At first I was too absorbed in studying to care. Later, yeah, it did."

  So you applied yourself to correcting that lack, and excelled at that, too, I'll bet, she thought ruefully. How many lovers have you had? Have you ever been in love, the way I am with you?

  Aloud she said, "You obviously caught up, somewhere along the way.

  Nobody could call you a social misfit nowadays."

  He chuckled. "My senior year I didn't feel like so much of a freak, because a few freshmen were younger than I was. My grade average dropped into the low nineties, because I even cut classes. Nights I should have been studying, I went out."

  "But it was still easy for you?" Mahree guessed.

  "Yeah." He frowned. "Too easy. That's why what happened with Simon hit me so hard. That and Jolie. I've finally reached my limit, and sometimes things aren't easy anymore. When you've always excelled without half trying, that really brings you up short, to fail when you were doing the best you could."

  "You didn't fail on Jolie, Rob! You set yourself unreasonable expectations, there, if you expected to save every patient during the worst plague the human race has encountered in two centuries!"

  Rob shook his head uneasily. "Okay, maybe I didn't fail on Jolie. I sure as hell did with Simon, though."

  "So, all of us fail at one time or another. You have to learn to accept it, or you freeze up, and then you can't accomplish anything, because you're afraid to try."

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  "You're right, of course. But I've never been like most people, I guess. I'd better get used to it, since I've got a feeling that it's going to happen more often from now on." He spoke with a hint of sadness, but it was a removed, distant sort of sadness that was, oddly, more painful to witness than his agonized recrimination when Jerry died.

  Mahree bit her lip, and did a few stretches, not daring to look at him. "So I'm learning that I'm not completely ordinary, and you're learning that you're not completely extraordinary," she murmured, straightening.

  "That's about the size of it," he agreed.

  "I guess that's fair," she mused, "but, Rob--your best is always going to be better than most people's."

  "So is yours, Mahree," he said. She raised her eyes to find that he was staring at her intently again. Abruptly he cleared his throat, glancing away.

  "Rob, what's wr--" she began, but broke off at the sound of Dhurrrkk's voice at the door.

  "FriendMahree! HealerGable! I must speak with you!"

  "What the hell?" Rob muttered as they hastily grabbed their voders. They bolted out the door.

  "What is it?" Mahree demanded.

  "Better that you see for yourself," Dhurrrkk' said, his crest quivering with some strong emotion. The Simiu dropped to all fours and loped ahead of them through the corridors so fast that they had to run to keep up. Both humans were panting when they reached the hydroponics section.

  "What--" Mahree began, then the inquiry died on her lips as she looked inside. Her breath caught in her throat.

  The Simiu vegetation was drooping, its formerly vivid emeralds and cobalts now sickly and pale. Leaves and stems were withering, turning brownish yellow. Only a few species appeared unharmed. "They're dying!" Rob cried.

  He started to step into the area, but Dhurrrkk', his crest flattened, quickly barred his way. "No! Do not, HealerGable! Your presence may harm them further!"

  "What?" Mahree and Rob obediently backed into the corridor. Dhurrrkk'

  followed them out, closing the portal behind him. "Further? You don't mean that we caused this," Mahree protested.

  Her Simiu friend nodded slowly. "I am afraid so," he said, his crest still trembling with agitation.

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  "But-- how"? We haven'
t been in there! We haven't touched them. Rob?"

  She turned to her companion.

  "Not I," he denied. "I haven't been in there."

  "I did not mean to imply that the damage was caused by anything you humans have willfully done," Dhurrrkk' told them. "But we are in a small, closed environment. The air circulates throughout the ship, and it is constantly freshened by the hydroponics garden, where oxygen is produced by the plants. The water also recycles. I have checked the plants thoroughly, and everything is correct--the water, the nutrient solutions, the airmix, the lighting. Only one factor has been added to their environment-- you two. And that must be what is now poisoning the most numerous species."

  The doctor was staring at Dhurrrkk', comprehension dawning in his eyes.

  "It's possible," he said slowly. "Some trace element that we exhale ... maybe something in the detritus from our skins that's contaminating the water ...

  something about us is killing them. It took a while, but it's showing up, now.

  Oh, shit."

  Mahree turned back to the Simiu. "But. . . but we need those plants to replace the oxygen we use!" she protested.

  Dhurrrkk' nodded silently, his violet eyes full of despair.

  "How far are we from Shassiszss?" she demanded.

  "Even if I were to boost our speed so that we have no auxiliary fuel supplies left, we face at least another ten days' journey," Dhurrrkk' told them.

  "Well, we can close off unnecessary portions of the ship, leave only the bridge and galley," Rob suggested. "We can sleep on the floor of the bridge, you can sleep on the floor of the galley, Dhurrrkk'. If we do that, how long can we last?" he wondered.

  "Don't forget that we brought all those breathing paks with us," Mahree said.

  "We can tap them for extra oxygen. And you must have some auxiliary air paks for your spacesuits, right, FriendDhurrrkk'?"

  The Simiu nodded. "Yes, we must not forget them. How many breathing paks did you bring?"

  "I think it was ten." Mahree glanced at Rob for confirmation. "And each has three hours' worth of air."

  Dhurrrkk' nodded as he began muttering into his computer link. Mahree and Rob waited tensely.

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  Finally, the alien looked back up at them, his violet eyes bleak, his crest drooping low. "Calculations show that even with minimum oxygen usage on our part, it will not be enough," he said slowly. "At best, we have only enough air to last six days. If we do not locate another source of oxygen within that time, we will all surely die."

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  CHAPTER 12

  Countdown to Oblivion

  Twenty-four hours of air left, now.

  I'm considering casting caution to the winds and washing my hair. It won't be easy, but I really hate the thought of dying with an itchy scalp and dirty hair.

  Rob says we shouldn't move around much, so as to use as little air as possible, but if I sit still and do nothing, I start to hyperventilate. I don't even dare watch holo-vids, because I get too emotional.

  Yesterday I watched Rob's film Casablanca (for the tenth time) and broke down completely. Fortunately, Rob and Dhurrrkk' were in the control room, so they didn't see. Concentrating on how yucky my hair feels is much safer than sitting here thinking about today being my last day alive ...

  Just reread those sentences, and they sound more than a little mad. Maybe I am.,Every time I try to swallow, a big lump in my throat nearly chokes me. It's a sour, evil-tasting lump, and its name is FEAR. I'm terribly afraid . . .

  Of what?

  Death, of course. I never thought much about what, if anything, might happen After. One doesn't, at seventeen.

  (Funny to think that I had a birthday those last days aboard Disiree, and nobody noticed. I didn't even remember myself, till the next day, and then what was the point in saying anything about it?)

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  I have to stop thinking, or I'll start screaming, and not be able to stop. If Rob and Dhurrrkk' can stay calm, so can I.

  Actually, that twenty-four-hour figure isn't really the bottom line. We have about twenty-four hours until the last of the breathing paks Rob and I brought is exhausted. We can live off the air in these few compartments for several more hours. I suppose, at the end, we'll even break down and use the breathing paks on our suits, though at the moment we're committed to saving them, in case the alarm goes off.

  It was Dhurrrkk's idea to plot a course that would bring us in and out of S. V.

  drive (wasteful of fuel, but fuel consumption is a secondary consideration in this extremity) long enough to take a spectroscopic reading of each system we reach. If the instruments detect a world with usable oxygen in its atmosphere, the alarm will sound.

  We've been taking turns standing watch over the alarm, though the thing is so loud we'd hear it, even asleep. (Though none of us has been sleeping much. It's cramped on the bridge, where Rob and I sleep, and worse in the galley, where Dhurrrkk's been bunking. And, when you've only got a limited amount of time left, you're understandably reluctant to waste it sleeping. I've barely slept at all, these past two "nights.")

  You may ask why we don't just pop into the nearest system's Oort Cloud (they all have them) and scoop up a few good-sized chunks of embryonic comets. They're made up mostly of ice, remember? Frozen H2O?

  We thought of that--but we're not aboard a mining ship. We have no grapples, no way of "scooping" up ice short of sending someone out in a suit. And none of the suits aboard have jet-paks. Even if they did, I doubt that any of us could maneuver around well enough in no-weight to accomplish anything worthwhile. Managing a jet-pak in space requires practice.

  But that's beside the point. Rob remembered how one extracts oxygen from water through electrolysis, but we don't have the equipment, materials, or expertise to do it. We'd need to melt the ice, purify the water, then either salt the water, or (better) add an acid or a base to it, then run an electrical current through the resulting ionized solution. Then we'd have to collect the hydrogen (and do what with it? Pump it out into space, I guess). The other product of the process is oxygen.

  If we were aboard Desiree and had Paul or Ray around, it 171

  would be a cinch. But we don't. Believe me, the notion was tempting enough that we spent a whole day ransacking Rosinante to see what we might be able to cobble together.

  Unfortunately, Rosinante is the Simiu equivalent of a luxury yacht, made for relatively short hops. It doesn't have Desiree's labs and machine shops. And none of us is an engineer.

  Shit.

  I feel so guilty for dragging Rob along on this ill-fated voyage. At least Dhurrrkk' and I chose to risk our necks--but I shanghaied Rob.

  It's a measure of Rob's unusual decency as a human being that he hasn't--

  by look or word---implied or said one thing to indicate that he blames me. In a way, it would be easier if he'd lose his temper and scream at me.

  But we're all trying to stay calm. Hysteria increases respiration, which wastes oxygen.

  This won't be my last entry. I'm going to do an official one, in lieu of a nonexistent log, so that anyone who finds Rosinante drifting will know what happened to us. I'll edit this journal and remove all the angst. I can't stand the thought of being laughed at for a lovesick adolescent, even if I won't be around to care.

  But right now, I've made up my mind what I'm going to do. I'm going to go pour a cup of water over my head again. At least then I won't have to die with an itchy scalp.

  "Rob, can I borrow your surgical scissors?"

  The doctor looked up as Mahree entered the control room, where he and the Simiu sat staring morosely at the silent alarm.

  "My scissors? What for?" he asked warily.

  "Don't worry, I'm not considering anything rash," she reassured him with a grim smile. "One of the hair bands on my braids is twisted. I want to cut it free."

  Rob stared at her blankly. "Huh? Why?"

  "Because I'm going to pour some water over my head. I can't stand it any longer, it's so
itchy. My hair's so long that I can't wash it in that little basin ... I wouldn't feel right using that much water anyway."

  He located the scissors in his medical bag, then handed them to her. Mahree stood staring down at them, frowning. "What I really ought to do is cut it, then I could manage to wash it."

  She turned on her heel and headed resolutely for the galley.

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  Cut off all that hair? Just to save water? Rob thought. When we're going to die tomorrow, no matter what? "Hey, Mahree!" he called, getting up and going after her. "Wait a minute."

  She stopped at the entrance to the galley. "What?"

  "Do you want your hair short?"

  "Nooooo," she admitted, in a tone of reluctant honesty. "But it's silly to try and keep it long under these circumstances. I wouldn't feel right using the water it would take to wash it. Not to mention that it would be hard as hell to manage in that tiny basin."

  "Not if you let me help," he pointed out. "I can use a minimum amount of water, and do it a section at a time. It won't take that much. Our water reserve is holding out fine. I hate to see you cut your hair off. It's so pretty, long."

  Mahree blinked at him. "Really?" She blushed. "I mean, do you really think I should use the water?"

  He smiled at her. "Everyone's entitled to one last fling, honey. Clean hair isn't much to ask. And I promise I'll use an absolute minimum."

  She smiled back, gratefully. "Well . . . thanks. I really didn't want to hack it all off.''

  She unplaited her braids, grimacing at their lank, oily feel, then, as Rob located shampoo and a towel, she stooped over the little basin. The doctor filled a cup with icy water, then poured it over her head. She gasped. "Watch that," he said, mock-severely. "You used up three extra breaths."

  Briskly, he began lathering her scalp, enjoying the way the soft strands slid through his fingers. "That feels soooo good ..." She sighed with genuine pleasure. "This is awfully nice of you, Rob."

  "Self-preservation," he said, pouring another cup of water. "If I'd stared at that damned alarm for another minute, I was going to lose it completely."

  A hand-span at a time, he washed her heavy mass of brown hair, until it lay, a lank, tangled rope, between her shoulder blades, reaching past her waist.