by John Barnes
I giggle. “Wow, are they in for a surprise.”
Fwuffy snores loudly, and rolls over slowly, waving his legs in the air in a dream. We all watch in awe.
Marioschke suddenly snorts with laughter. “The other watch was going to get up at the same time as the watch on duty, which I guess officially makes us the graveyard shift. So they’ll be coming in here all together, Emerald and all—”
Glisters rests a hand on both our shoulders. “Well, if Fwuffy wakes up an hour before they do, that should be just enough rehearsal time.”
11
THE BEST STEWARD WITHIN TEN MILLION MILES
EMERALD AND WYCHEE swim in through the hatch together, and blurt, “What is that?”
All of us, including Fwuffy, simultaneously say, “What’s what?”
She gawps at us. Fwuffy says, “You must be Commanda Emewawd.”
“It talks,” F.B. says, from behind her.
“Why not? You do,” Fwuffy says—another product of our careful coaching.
Emerald’s consternation dissolves into laughter. “And I am guessing that this is Fwuffy. No offense, Fwuffy, but I was expecting a larger number of something smaller.”
So we explain that situation, and then Glisters walks everybody through all the things that have to be watched—I need the review, too!—and what to do about the few things that we can do anything about. “So, if you all feel like that’s what you need to know, I guess it’s time to leave you to it.”
“I’m ready,” F.B. says. This must be the first time anyone ever actually counted on him for anything, and it looks like he’s desperate not to screw it up.
“Whatever,” Derlock says.
Emerald looks at me, and I almost say, What? What? before I realize I’m the ranking officer on the watch.
So I make something up, and say, “Commander Emerald, the cockpit is in good order, and I request that you relieve me of the watch.”
She’s smiling back at me; we both know it’s silly and we both feel we ought to do it. “I relieve you of the watch, Pilot Susan. Go get some rest, you’ve sure earned it.”
In the big bathing room, I throw my soggy-with-crud coverall into the Phreshor, then climb into a showersphere; I’m glad there are five of them, so no waiting. Showerspheres sense your body, and aim extra-hot extra-forceful jets at the big muscle groups and gentle sprays on your face, and balance out the force so you turn over slowly in the center of the sphere. All I have to do is remember to breathe and stay relaxed, and in about five minutes the showersphere has tumbled me around in a swirl of hot soapy water, pounded all the crud of a twenty-hour day off me, and massaged most of the tension out of my muscles, and, with bursts of warm, drying air, made me feel perfectly clean. When I airswim out I feel ready to sleep for a million years.
I hear Marioschke’s showersphere releasing her, and Glisters’s is shutting down, too.
“I sleep nude,” I say, “and grew up in a family that was pretty casual about nudity, so a glance is okay, but stare and you’re dead, and I decide what staring is.”
“Same rules here,” Marioschke said, “except I probably won’t notice the staring.”
Glisters chuckles, still not opening his sphere. “It’s okay, you all go on ahead, and I’ll just miss my chance for lookies. The truth is I’m shy—I sleep in PJs. So as much as I’d love to be out there shooting pictures, I’ll wait till you all go and then change into my PJs in here. And I’ve already recorded you both more than once, I know that you’re beautiful but I can control myself anyway.”
As we airswim to the bunk room, Marioschke asks, “Would you say we’ve just been respected or insulted?”
“Respected,” I say. “It’s Glisters. What else would it be?”
“Yeah.” She smiles a little. “We’re lucky we have him.”
“Yeah,” I say, because it’s true.
I’m just closing my faceshade when Glisters airswims in, wearing his pajamas.
It turns out I’m the one that stares. “Ducks?!”
“I also have clowns and teddy bears. Mom ordered the patterns when I was little, and being Mom, she made it a perpetual order and never rechecked it. So every year it messages me to ask for my size and sends me new clown, duck, and teddy bear jammies. It’s okay, it reminds me I have a mom and she wants to care about me.” He climbs up into his bunk, over mine, and turns around to face me for an instant. “When I travel on her account the hotel always brings me a pancake sandwich with a strawberry jam smiley face in the morning, and I’ve never changed that order either.”
“Glisters, no wonder you’re such a great ship’s engineer.”
“What? Why?”
“Because you’re such a lousy pornographer.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” he grumbles. “I’ll never understand girls.” But he’s smiling as he says it. I pull down my faceshade, and in the perfect darkness, I’m asleep instantly.
April 27, 2129. On Virgo, upbound Earth to Mars. 149 million kilometers from the sun, 164 million kilometers from Mars, 4.5 million kilometers from Earth.
I wake up at about one in the afternoon, totally arbitrary ship time. Digging out clean clothes from my scootsack, I look up to see Glisters’s head just emerging from the faceshade. “Uh, sorry.” He retreats like a turtle into its shell.
“Oh, no,” I say. “Come out here and show me your ducks, jammie-slut.”
Laughing, he rolls out of bed, grabs his scootsack, kicks off, and airswims into the bathroom. I take a minute to run my smartcomb around on my head, letting it put everything back to where the style template says it should go, and stroke my face with the coswand. Supposedly they’re good for years without recharging or reloading; I wonder how soon I’ll get tired of my face and hair? Or if anyone will care, including me?
Glisters returns, dressed. “Going up to the cockpit?”
“Probably the quickest way to find food,” I say. “Let’s go.”
Wychee intercepts us just before we turn into the spur corridor. “Come up to the kitchen. I just finished feeding Marioschke and Stack, so I have plenty of breakfast set up and ready to go for you guys.”
“What are they doing?”
“They took off with that bizarre pink elephant to take inventory in the farm sections. My request. As your steward I want to know what we have growing and what we should maybe think about planting.”
As we airswim in, I smell the eggs, cheese, and bacon. “This is wonderful. Do you really think we need to start things in the farm?”
Wychee shrugs. “Suppose we get rescued at Mars like we’re planning to, and we’ve been farming all along. Then we leave behind a lot of food, and we’ve done some unnecessary work. Suppose we don’t get rescued at Mars and we haven’t been farming. My inventory of what’s in cargo—that was the first thing I did on my watch, that steward thing, you know—shows us running out of food about a hundred days after Marspass, and as a couple of people once pointed out to me, we don’t have anywhere to go shopping out here. And we can’t change our minds and just grow a bunch of crops real fast if it turns out we were wrong. So I think it’s better to do a little extra work, and have it turn out to be unnecessary, than save a little bit of work, and go hungry for more than a year.”
“Wychee,” I say, “I don’t think we could have picked a better steward, and I’m so glad you took the job.”
“Speaking as your superior officer,” Glisters says, spreading jam thick on a warm biscuit, “you have just successfully bribed me into giving you one hell of a good performance review.”
“Thanks,” Wychee says, “but I’m going to pretend it’s because I’m hot.”
“Actually, as Glisters’s superior officer,” I say, “I’m going to overrule him and say it’s because you’ve been doing a great amazing awesome wonderful job and we’re so grateful to have you with us.”
She looks a little stunned by the compliment, and does an abrupt change of subject. “So is it okay for officers to gossip?”
>
I say, “Mandatory. What do we have?”
Wychee shrugs. “Maybe just my overactive imagination?”
“Does it involve Derlock?” I ask.
“Um, yes, actually.”
“Then if it’s bad, you’re not imagining it. He’s good at making you think there’s something wrong with you, but if something about him creeps you out, you’re right.”
“Well, the part I am sure I’m not imagining is that he’s ultra cranking up a charm campaign on Emerald. Ultra ultra. I’ve seen him go after nice-looking girls and guys before, you know, I mean he—well, he’ll say or do almost anything for almost anyone who can do something for him—” She looks like she’s trying to find a way to say something; I realize that I’m the reason.
I explain, “You ultra don’t have to worry about hurting my feelings. Yeah, I was about to declare with him before, and all that sheeyeffinit, but that’s over. I stopped letting him fool me. Or I stopped fooling myself. Which might be the same thing.” I squeeze a sip of warm coffee into my mouth. “The problem is I do understand the guy. We’re alike, in a lot of ways. We both just have to be on top, any time we see people stacked up. Can’t stand to finish anywhere except first, can’t stand to be anywhere but first in line, top of the pyramid… if there’s a game, we want to win. If there’s a list, we want to be at the top of it. We’re the horrible two-year-old that wants all the attention at the family reunion, and the horrible hundred-and-nine-year-old that still wants all the attention.
“You want to know what I saw in him? Somebody I could talk to about what really mattered to me, which was winning the whole big game. Realism here, I maybe could have been an okay hobby scientist or actor, but I didn’t have the kind of talent that the talent-eenie actors and the talent-eenie scientists do. So the only ladder I could climb all the way was the celeb-eenie ladder.” Besides, I think, but don’t say, what was there left to do? My best friend was turning herself into a vegetable, I let them talk me into killing my dog, my mom said she never wanted to see me again, and Pop only wanted me as a prop for his stupid Revive the Family! rallies. “So I set out to hit just the right mix of scandal, sympathy, and interest about as soon as I turned hot. Derlock did the same thing—it’s what most of our pillow talk was about. He was the first person I ever met, other than me, who had really analyzed what the pathway up to the top looked like.
“So I understand him, I feel what he’s doing, ultra better than the rest of you do. Every move he makes, it’s about pushing up his recognition score.”
Glisters looks slightly ill and strongly disbelieving. “And you’re telling us that you’re like that?”
“You recorded some of my best meeds. Did they look spontaneous?”
“Yeah.” He shakes his head. “Now I feel dumb.”
“You are not dumb, and you know it. I’m just a good fake.”
“I just thought the camera loved you. All right, so how soon are you going to stab us all in the back?”
“Well, that’s what I don’t get about Derlock. He called it right—we are already all going to be awesomely famous celeb-eenies as soon as we get home. So to me, that implies we should get home in one comfortable piece as quickly and safely as we can. But Derlock… he wants to be famous for… no, make that infamous. His father is famous for being a son of a bitch, and Derlock wants to be a bigger son of a bitch than his father ever was. Has Stack told you—”
As if his name had called him into existence, Stack appears. “Hey, Glisters, you’re up! Would you have time to run over some of the antenna stuff with me before my watch starts? We’d have like half an hour?”
“Sure.” The two of them are out of there like twin rockets.
“Poor Glisters. Afraid of what he might learn if he stays here.” Wychee takes a sip of coffee. “Wow—look under the tree and find the apple, and it wants to grow into an even bigger tree. Your father is famous for playing likable people and telling us all to treat each other better. Derlock’s father is famous for keeping really vile scum out of prison, turning them loose on us, and telling us all we ought to admire them. So here you both are, trying to outdo your crazy parents.”
“You know, I wish I was nice like you.”
“I don’t. I have niced myself into second place for my entire life.” Even though it’s just a couple of seconds, the pause is so awkward that I am relieved when she says, “Look, I know something you don’t.”
“Lately everyone knows a lot of things I don’t,” I say. “It’s that kind of adventure.”
“I bet you and Derlock talked a lot about strategies for becoming famous, didn’t you? And checked your recognition scores every six hours?”
I nod. It’s embarrassing but true. “I studied those numbers like no numbers have ever been studied. At one point, no joke, I built a computer model to correlate my exposed cleavage area against my recognition score.”
Wychee laughs; such a strangely happy sound after my glum self-accusation. “Hits per tits!” she says.
That derails the conversation until the giggles fade into an awkward silence. My turn to blurt. “How come you and I hardly ever talked one-on-one the whole time we were moes together, when you’re so interesting?”
“I thought you were stuck-up, cold as a snake, and wouldn’t want to be friends with a lesser mortal like me. Which, it turns out, I was right about, but things have changed. And if you had half a brain you noticed I was the worst case of loser mentality you ever saw, and always whining,” she says. “And you were right about that. But now we have a spaceship to fly. We have ten minutes till my watch starts. Are you ready to hear my big secret?”
“Only if we get a fresh start on the friendship thing.”
“What do you think this is?” She’s smiling, and so am I. Suddenly serious, she adds, “So what do you call a person who is just as determined and obsessed as you and Derlock, but doesn’t have the family connections, or the looks, or the charisma, or anything, for it? And hates everyone for having a better chance than she does, and it eats her alive?”
“I, uh—”
“Emerald.” Wychee’s mouth twitches. “You know, I was amazed when she reminded us of how her mother got to be famous. She’s so ashamed of that story.”
“Her mom was a hero.”
“Exactly. She was incredibly brave and did exactly the right thing and saved all those lives. But she was just a really good kindergarten teacher. Still is. I’ve met her. Dumpy-looking like Emerald, and if you’re not in kindergarten she doesn’t know how to talk to you, dull as primer paint. Emerald is so ashamed. I have heard her say she wished her mom would just die.”
“It sucks that she feels that way.”
“Yeah. So… you know Derlock, I know Em, do you think he’d, um—?”
I think about that for a moment. “Derlock’s capable of anything. What about Emerald?”
“Well, she really is a good person, I mean she does have a big chip on her shoulder and a lot of envy, but she’s also got a big heart and common sense and… I don’t know, Susan.”
“I was thinking what a good job she’s been doing as commander. Actually I think that about every hour.”
“Me, too. And she’s still my best friend. So I’m worried sick about her because… well, I know her and love her, but—”
“But I know Derlock and loathe him, and you’re absolutely right to be worried,” I say.
In the cockpit we put all our attention on making sure Wychee knows all the basic procedures cold, even though I can tell in half a minute she’s already letter perfect.
12
THE ONLY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN US
May 5, 2129. On Virgo, upbound Earth to Mars. 149 million kilometers from the sun, 151 million kilometers from Mars, 12 million kilometers from Earth.
A FEW DAYS later, I’m up in the observation sphere at the tip of the nose spire. Wychee’s watch just started, it’s hours before mine will, and everyone else is either going to bed, busy with work, or playing some we
ird noisy game with Fwuffy in the Pressurized Cargo Section. There are plenty of things I could be doing, and I’ll start doing them soon enough, but for right now, I need a little quiet approximation to sanity.
So here I am, with the steel shutters pulled back, in the center of my glass bubble in the stars, letting the universe look like it looks, letting the surrounding emptiness resonate with the emptiness inside me. Except, maybe, the emptiness inside me doesn’t feature a big burning sun. Or anything like as many stars. Maybe I’m not resonating hard enough.
Space is so deep and empty. The red star of Mars on one side and the shielded glare of the sun on the other mark out where we are in our orbit; still whipping around at the bottom, ducking slightly inside Earth’s orbit, we’ve barely begun to climb away from the sun, and at the moment the sky looks much as it does from home, except for the blue dot of Earth and its little star companion, the moon, now only three thumbnails apart.
My phone rings. Wychee says, “Susan, I’ve got something I need some quiet help with. Could you come to the cockpit?”
“I’m on my way.”
I airswim back to the entrance—not starting by pushing off from a surface, it takes an extra few seconds till my hand closes on a handhold inside the access tube. “Close the steel shutters around the nose bubble.”
“Closing,” the mechanical voice says, and behind me the dark, starry night clanks into total blackness.
My few minutes of quiet have given me the urge to use my muscles. I go tailward through the spire in one big lunge, then ricochet through the coretube the way Emerald showed me, hitting the sides first to boost, then to slow down, flying the two-thirds of a kilometer to snag the auxiliary ops hatch in much less than a minute.
Wychee is alone in the cockpit. To my raised eyebrow, she says, “Stack is with Glisters and F.B. on the antenna project, and though Fleeta’s technically on this watch, she’s functionally useless. So I didn’t want to leave the cockpit.” She gestures at the screen. “I was doing my steward stuff and checking inventories everywhere. Look what I have in the infirmary.”
