by John Barnes
Glisters nods. “Well, you might want to try to split them up anyway. We might want to parole Emerald for something important.”
“I wouldn’t trust her with anything.”
“Have you had any time to think about which two people should start training to go on the cap? Not you, me, or Wychee; we’ve got to stay here to keep the others alive. That leaves F.B., who can be okay by the time we send him; he’s brave enough, he doesn’t learn fast but he learns, and maybe most of all he won’t give up and he knows what’s important. Fleeta couldn’t do more than keep F.B. company. Marioschke flips out and gets all helpless.”
“Besides, we need to consider poor Fwuffy,” I say, grinning. “Let’s not separate a cosmic hippie chick from her pink elephant. And Marioschke’s pretty important from an eating-regular standpoint, since she’s really running the farm—Wychee doesn’t have time. All right, I see where you’re going. We need to send two. F.B. can go, he’ll be fine, and he should, and his most logical crewmate is Emerald.”
Glisters nods. “I guess we could send Derlock—”
“Lock poor little F.B. into a cap with him? Sheeyeffinit. No, you’re right. It’s like the problem about the farmer taking the fox, the goose, and the basket of corn across the river when there’s only room for two of them in the boat on each trip; the secret is to keep the goose with you at all times. Derlock’s the goose. F.B. and Emerald are the most competent people we can spare.”
May 28, 2129. On Virgo, upbound Earth to Mars. 155 million kilometers from the sun, 113 million kilometers from Mars, 31 million kilometers from Earth.
“Would you like to stay out for another two hours?” I ask Emerald after her bathroom break as I’m returning her to her storage container.
She looks back at me as if I’m crazy, and I suppose that really was a dumb question. “If you’re offering that, of course I do. What are the rules?”
“For the moment, you and I are just going to go somewhere for a talk. We were almost friends for a little while, you know. You can get some exercise or take a more leisurely shower, or for that matter just have more time on the toilet, if you’d like. But whatever you choose to do, I’m going to stay with you the whole time, and I’m going to at least try to talk to you. We’re experimenting with giving you more time and more freedom.”
“Is Derlock getting this, too?”
“No.” I hold my voice level and even. “He’s dangerous, Emerald.”
“I guess you’d think that,” she says. “I want to go somewhere with a window.”
“Would you like to go to the Forest? I had Wychee set us up box lunches—it can be kind of a picnic.”
“Yeah, I’d like that very much.”
I pretend not to notice that she sounds choked and is rubbing her face.
In the Forest, we sit on the new grass by a window to eat. Sunflashes alternate with pools of stars.
I can’t think of any tactful way to ask, so I blurt, “Do you understand what Derlock did?”
“What about what Stack did? Did you even think about that? He didn’t practice, so when something went wrong he made a really stupid mistake, and then he was all whiny crybaby and wanting us to rescue him. Did you even think that maybe Stack was not all that deserving?”
“He didn’t deserve to die.”
“And he wouldn’t have if he’d just practiced enough and known what he was doing. It was just a little prank.”
“The second thruster fire threw the antenna off the ship, and the exhaust cooked it, and cut its cable. If he’d been belayed to it and climbing back in—”
“He’d have been back where it was safe long before that happened. It was just a little prank, to teach him that he needed to stop having all these hero fantasies about rescuing the ship and concentrate on his practicing. He’d have been fine if he hadn’t been such a fuckup, and it was just a prank to teach him not to be such a fuckup.” She’s looking down into the window and recoils when the sunlight hits, sudden and hard.
I’m lost for a moment in the memory of Stack calling for me as he drifted out of range and his air ran out. I tell her, “I think Derlock gave Torporin to Bari and King on purpose, knowing it would kill them. I’m not sure the explosion that killed the crew and passengers was an accident; the witness that it might not have been was Stack, and now he happens to have conveniently died in just-a-little-prank.” She stares at me, flat-faced. “Derlock got excited in bed whenever he talked about hurting someone—”
“You never loved him.” She sounds like you’d imagine a zombie would.
“No,” I say. “I didn’t. I never did. Back at Excellence Shop, and when I was only thinking about how I could get splyctered, it was zoomed to have a boyfriend that was probably going to be splyctered into n-nillion hooks because of something weird and scary. The scariness was ultra attractive, because I didn’t know he was a full-on sociopath who kills people. Out here, he’s just scary. And no, no, no, I never loved him.” She’s slumped over the window like a cyberpuppet that’s lost its control. “Do you?”
“Can we just look at the stars, and enjoy the open space?”
So we do; I help her find the Earth and Moon (back by the tail, a tiny bright dot that you can just barely see is round, and almost on top of it, a dimmer little star), and then pick out Mars (a dimmish star halfway down our sky toward the nose).
“Would you like to do something like this again tomorrow?” I ask as we turn to airswim back to the storage container that is her prison.
“Well, I’ll have to check my calendar, but I think I can fit it in,” she says.
I laugh; she doesn’t acknowledge that.
June 18, 2129. On Virgo, upbound Earth to Mars. 167 million kilometers from the sun, 87 million kilometers from Mars, 37 million kilometers from Earth.
For the next three weeks, nothing much changes. Every day Glisters gets up and works on how to build a submillimeter-wave detector array that he can plug into our communication system. Wychee and I take turns drilling F.B. and Emerald on what to do in the cap. Marioschke’s crops grow in the farm sections, Fwuffy gets better and better at helping, Fleeta seems more lost, and Derlock makes no noise from his locker.
As we start preparing them for the cap trip, Wychee and I slowly realize F.B. is not the poor moron kid we thought he was. His enthusiasm and attention make it easy to forgive him as he muddles and misses and does everything wrong. That’s on the first try—by the tenth, he’ll sort of have it; by the twentieth, he’ll be right more often than not; and he keeps going a hundred or maybe a thousand times, till the only way he can do it is the right way.
Emerald is ultra polite and quiet about doing everything we ask her to do and absolutely no more.
One time, after practice, Emerald says. “I’ve been thinking. I’m sorry about the things I said about Stack, because working on this with F.B., I’ve started to understand how Stack felt, about practice and all. That’s the sweetest thing about F.B., he has to work for everything, everybody’s a natural compared to him, but he doesn’t seem to resent anyone.”
“Would you like to talk about maybe moving out of the storage container and back into your regular bunk till you go? We’d have to set some conditions—”
She shrugs. “Wear a tracker and don’t go near where Derlock’s locked up?”
“That’s it. Thanks for understanding.”
She nods, not looking at me. “I can do a better job preparing for the trip and I’ll feel better. I just hope the rest of them accept me as much as you do.”
“That’s out of my control.”
“That’s why I’m just hoping.”
18
I GUESS YOU’LL NEVER UNDERSTAND ABOUT LOVE
June 24, 2129. On Virgo, upbound Earth to Mars. 171 million kilometers from the sun, 74 million kilometers from Mars, 39 million kilometers from Earth.
WE’VE TESTED THE emergency siren to find out what it sounds like, so when it rips me out of a sound sleep, I snap awake analyzing:
Lights are on, we have power.
Gravity is almost weightless, normal in the bunk room.
Clock shows it’s the first hour of F.B.’s and Wychee’s watch—no wonder Glisters and Fleeta are staggering around half-lost, they must’ve just gotten to bed.
As I yank on my coverall, Glisters is struggling out of his ducky jammies in an aerial flurry of arms and legs; Fleeta is blinking and feeling for her clothes.
I bounce and airswim as fast as I can; behind me I can hear Glisters scrabbling along, bumping the corridor walls, almost at my feet as I shoot into the cockpit, to find Wychee frantically racing through screen after screen. Without looking up she explains, “I think Derlock and Emerald have taken off in the lifeboat cap—the screen is showing an emergency ejection, that’s what set off the siren. Looks like they dumped a little air and water, and did a hot takeoff, so there may be rocket-exhaust damage up toward the nose.”
“Idiots!” Glisters says. He’s awake now. “It’s four full days before the window! They don’t have enough air and water to survive for their flight time. They—”
Wychee holds up her hand to quiet him, and gestures to the screen in front of her. “I’m trying to find F.B. I think he’s locked in Derlock’s cell, but I don’t dare leave here in case they’re still on board—we can’t let them take over the cockpit—”
“Exactly right,” I say. “Lock yourself in. Confirm before letting anyone in, call Fleeta and tell her to come here right away, then lock her in here with you—let’s not have any hostages available. I’ll check Derlock’s cell and see if F.B.’s there. Glisters, go to the tailward entrance of Vacuum Cargo Section 2, and put on a pressure suit. Don’t close the breathing loop unless you have to, but be ready to. Then take a crowbar, go up the coretube to the cap dock where the lifeboat was, and see what’s going on. Look for pressure leaks or any other damage—”
“What’s the crowbar for?” Glisters asks.
“Derlock,” I say. “If you do find him, try to hit him before he sees you. Don’t stop hitting him till you’re sure he’s helpless. If you find Emerald, same procedure. No conversation till they’re helpless. Got it?”
He says “got it” over his shoulder as he shoots out the door.
At the locker where we’d been holding Derlock, I work the combination and the door pops open; F.B. is in there, all right, floating in the middle of the space, waving his hands in a little ineffectual flutter, crying. I pull him out. Derlock’s and Emerald’s ankle bracelets are in there with him.
“Wychee, I’ve got F.B., he was in the locker.” I’m turning him to better see his swollen, puffy face. It’s silly but I think, But that’s not fair, we’ve rebuilt his teeth once already! He tries to say something but bubbles out blood.
Marioschke airswims in, takes one look, and barks, “Fwuffy! General Injury Kit from the pharmacy!”
“Wight!” There’s a thundering boom out in the corridor.
At my glance, Marioschke says, “He’s learning to read. The voice actuated software recognizes his speech. And when he’s in a hurry he jumps down long open corridors, ultra faster than—”
F.B. bubbles. I pull out a clean utility rag to blot blood from around his mouth. “I can do that,” Marioschke says, “and I’ll be safe as soon as Fwuffy gets back. Wychee wanted me to relieve you so you could back up Glisters—”
Wychee comes online. “Marioschke, Fwuffy got the kit and he’s on his way back. He says he thinks the infirmary has been looted. He’s—”
A whoosh and a boom out in the corridor; a horton going full speed into a four-footed landing makes some noise. Fwuffy’s trunk reaches into the locker and hands Marioschke the kit. “Hold F.B. steady for me for a minute,” she says. “Firmly but gently.”
Marioschke applies sensors to find the contusions, air-injects nanos to seal up the damaged capillaries, and checks for fractures. “You’ve got a bunch of little cracks in your cheekbones and one just below your eyebrow,” she tells him, swabbing his face gently, “so I’m putting in some addressable nanos that will glue that and make it secure again. Your mouth is a mess, I’m afraid you weren’t all the way healed and then he hit you again. Poor guy. I’m going to put in stabilizing foam, slap my arm if you have any trouble breathing.”
She puts the nozzle of a can that looks like cake frosting between F.B.’s lips, carefully in the least-bruised place, and squeezes the button. He jerks and she asks, “Did it hurt?”
He nods with a shrug; I guess he expected it to.
She’s calling for a robot stretcher from the infirmary as I bound away to join Glisters. “Where are you and what have you found?” I say into my phone as I fly along the coretube.
“I’m in the nose spire at the cap dock. The cap is gone, all right. No sign of them. There’s heat-scarring on the metal outside the cap dock, and the shielding water near the nose is 20 kelvins hotter than it should be. Looks like they blew the door on the airlock, so that’s permanent damage, but we’ve got seven more airlocks.”
Wychee breaks in. “I’m running the body-heat and moving-mass detection programs they use in case a cargo animal gets loose, and all I’m finding is us. I was pretty sure they were gone anyway.”
Glisters and I spend twenty more minutes scouting just to be sure, but “We knew they were gone from the first second,” I point out to Glisters. “You might as well get out of that pressure suit.”
“Yeah. See you at the infirmary; is F.B. bad?”
“Pretty bad, I think, but Marioschke’s done all the first aid tutorials, and she’s got a touch. After we look in on F.B., we probably need to have a meeting for everyone in the cockpit.”
The infirmary recommends knocking F.B. out for ten days in a suspended animation tank; that way, he’ll get up healthy and functional, but if we try to let him heal while doing ship’s duties, it could be a month, and he’d be in pain for most of it. He indicates that he wants to do his duties and I override him and order him to get all the way well, quickly.
We roll out a suspended animation tank from the recessed storage in the wall. Very gently, Marioschke tucks him in, smoothing creases and wrinkles in the smartfiber cocoon so that he won’t wake up stiff or with sore spots. Just before we close the cover she strokes his face and I see him try to smile.
We’ve been so busy that it’s only then that I notice all the drawers in the infirmary hanging empty. Wychee runs an inventory from the cockpit. When we’ve all joined her there, including Fwuffy, Marioschke asks, “Why do people hurt F.B. all the time?”
“Well, I don’t, or at least I try not to,” I say. “I don’t think Glisters ever did, or you.”
“I didn’t say all people,” she points out. “I was just wondering why it is that when some people are struggling and doing their best, something about that just invites everyone else to stomp on them.”
“I don’t think anyone who is left on the ship will act like that,” I say.
“Yeah. And we’re going to be here for weeks or months, aren’t we?”
“I’m afraid so,” Glisters says. “Could be years, truthfully. Your farming work is probably going to save us all.”
“At least F.B. will get some time without being picked on for being himself.” Marioschke sounds oddly satisfied.
I say, “All right, let’s talk damage, everyone. They looted the infirmary. Wychee, what do we know about that?”
“Still working on—hey. The system just popped up a note: PLEASE RELAY TO SUSAN, WHOEVER IS TAKING INFIRMARY INVENTORY.”
“Of course,” Glisters says. “They didn’t want to send a note that might arrive and alert you before their getaway, so they tied it to something you were bound to do after they had already left.”
We all lean over Wychee’s shoulders and read the words scrolling down the screen:
Susan,
I’m sorry, I guess you’ll never understand about love. The first thing we’ll do on Mars is t
ell them you’re back on Virgo and need rescuing. I made Derlock promise that. And don’t worry that we won’t make it, I know Glisters said we had to go in a very narrow window, but Derlock said Glisters’s numbers are wrong and he’d checked them out, and besides if we have to he’s loaded in a bunch of oxygen tanks, and anyway if we have to we’ll just make more oxygen out of the water on board. So we’re fine and we’ll send help.
I wish we could have been friends,
Emerald
P.S. Really sorry about how hard Derlock had to hit poor F.B. but we had to do it, he was going to rat on us. We couldn’t let anything keep us apart. Someday maybe you’ll understand; you seem like a nice person.
“Sheeyeffinit.” Glisters drags the syllables out till that expression is a paragraph.
He clatters at a keyboard, pulling something up on one of the side screens. In a minute or so, he says, “This makes no sense. Derlock took the time and effort to load in a quarter of a tonne of drugs, which couldn’t possibly have done him any good, but I’m not seeing that he did what Emerald said he did, at all. I mean, what he said could almost have been true. If they rode down as far as they could on the air recycling system, then bled oxygen into the system from LOX tanks, they could extend their range enough to get them to Mars alive. Or just barely maybe they could do that with an electrolysis rig running their whole flight, if they bled off the hydrogen and released the oxygen, though they’d be nearly out of drinking water by the end. But she mentions both, and the inventory isn’t showing any LOX tank or any electrolysis rig is missing. So instead of the things they needed to survive, they took—”
“That son of a bitch!” Wychee looks up from her inventory of the infirmary’s drug supply. “Fleeta, how much Fendrisol do you have left?”
She looks confused. “I never have any. I take it whenever the infirmary calls me and tells me to come and take it.”
