Becalmed

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  “The Quurzod came because of you,” she says.

  I look at her.

  “We lost twenty-four,” she says. “They lost more.”

  I cannot move. “How many more?”

  She shrugs—oh, so eloquent. Not frustrated this time, but an I-don’t-know shrug, an is-an-exact-number-really-important? shrug. “You tell me.”

  I have to force myself to breathe. “You’re saying it’s my fault?”

  “I’m not saying anything,” she says.

  But she is. Oh, she is.

  Because I am responsible for communications, language, diplomacy.

  If we went in twenty-seven strong—and we did—that means we went in as a team. A planetside team usually has thirty, but I remember—(do I? Or am I making this up?)—that we lost three because they couldn’t stomach the Quurzod.

  Not that the Quurzod are so different from us. We haven’t discovered any aliens in our travels—not true aliens, anyway, not aliens in the way that we define them, as sentient creatures who build and create and form attachments like we do. We’ve found strange creatures and even stranger plants, but nothing like the human race.

  Although we have found humans throughout our centuries of travel. Thousands and thousands of humans. Each with different languages, different skills, different levels of development.

  But exactly the same—emotional, callous, brilliant, sad— capable of great good and great violence, often within the same culture.

  The Quurzod—the Quurzod, oh, I remember the briefings, snatches of the briefings at any rate. They make an art out of violence. They kill and maim and do so with great relish. When they committed genocide against the Xenth, they did so with psychopathic glee—killing children in front of parents, torturing loved ones, experimenting to see what kind of punishment a human body could take before it had enough and simply quit.

  The stories distressed my team. Three couldn’t face the Quurzod.

  It makes no sense. If I started this, then that was all the more reason to leave me behind. We’re taught from childhood that sacrifices are necessary.

  We travel in a fleet of ships 500 strong. We split off for various missions, and sometimes we sacrifice an entire ship if we have to. An individual life—one of at least 500 lives on the Ivoire alone—means less than the mission.

  The mission: to provide assistance throughout the known universe. We are the good guys, the rescuers; we are the ones who make the wrongs right. We do what we can, interfere if we must, help when we’re needed.

  And when we make mistakes, we make them right.

  We don’t run.

  It seems like we ran.

  “I want to talk to Coop,” I say.

  Leona shakes her head. “Not until you can tell us what happened.”

  “Then I should let the medical evaluation unit run their tests.”

  Her head shaking becomes more pronounced. “You can’t. We need truth here, not legal tricks.”

  “Tricks?” I say. “They’ll be using equipment, running diagnostics—”

  “Asking you questions, putting memories in your head.” She runs her hand over her notebook. “We’ll wait until your own memories return.”

  She looks at the portal, then back at me.

  “After all,” she says dismally. “We have time.”

  ~ * ~

  Sometimes I sleep. The body demands it, and when it can no longer function without sleep, I doze wherever I am.

  I have fallen asleep on the divan. I love the divan. I have put it in the center of my living area, where most people have group seating. But I never hold meetings here.

  I used to study on it let words dance around me as I spoke them. They’d turn red if I pronounced something wrong, and they’d vanish if spoken correctly. I loved word dancing. I loved study.

  Now I lie on the divan and I stare out the portal at all that nothing, not thinking at all. Words don’t even run through my head. I know I’ve been thinking, but I cannot articulate what the thoughts are.

  Yet as I fall asleep, I know I am asleep. I feel the divan beneath me, note that the apartment is a bit too cold, think I should tell the apartment’s system to adjust the heat. Or I should grab a blanket from the bedroom. I should be comfortable.

  But I am not. I claw my way through a pile of stinky, sticky flesh. Arms move, legs flop, a head turns toward me, eyes gone. I force myself not to look I am climbing people and I know that if I don’t I will die.

  I jerk awake, shudder, trying to get the images from my head. Leona wants me to remember.

  I don’t.

  I get up and take a blanket off my bed. Then I stop and look at the wall, the only wall I have decorated.

  An old blanket—a quilt, to use the proper term—adds color to the room. Pinks and reds and glorious blues, mixed together in a wedding ring pattern. The quilt has been in my family for generations, given, my mother said, to an ancestor as the Fleet embarked from Earth itself.

  I don’t know for certain because I’ve never tested the quilt. I keep it out of harsh light. It’s preservation framed, done by my grandmother, and its beauty should remind us of tradition, of homes we’ll never see again, of family.

  I have cousins on other ships in the Fleet, family, some distant in corridors down the way. We are not close. My sister has a daughter, and if I never have children, this quilt will go to her.

  I wrap the blanket around myself and walk back to the divan. I recline on it again, look out the portal, see that brightly lit blackness, threatening starshine, but not delivering it.

  And—

  I’m still climbing. The sunlight beats down on me, the heat nearly unbearable. I’ve been praying for the wind to stop since I got here, but now that it has, I want it back, if only to get rid of the insects and the stench.

  I am the only one alive. I do not want to look but I do— faces, eyes especially, eyes glazed over and an odd white. Blood everywhere. I climb, standing on people, and if I look up, lean see an edge to the pit I am in.

  I stop, listen, hear only my ragged breathing. If I can hear it, someone else can hear it too. Someone lurking out there. Someone who will—

  I can’t do it this way. There is no comfort in this apartment, in these rooms. If this is a memory, then I do not want to be alone with it.

  If it is a nightmare, I want it banished.

  If it is an example of how I will live from now on, I cannot. I will not. I will die before I continue like this.

  I contact Leona. Her face appears on my wall screen, looking concerned. I do not give her time to speak.

  I say, “I’m going to have the evaluations.”

  And then I sever the link.

  ~ * ~

  The guards escort me to the medical unit. I’m not used to being escorted. I’m used to leading. But these two men, both bigger than me. walk beside me, brushing against me, making it clear that I’m in their power.

  They lead me down one of the main corridors in the ship, so it’s wide enough for people to pass us. Everyone who does averts their eyes, partly because I no longer look like me, and partly because I’m being escorted.

  Just because there are five hundred of us on the ship doesn’t mean we all know each other. Some of us apprenticed on other ships. Some of us grew up elsewhere in the Fleet. I met Coop on the Brazza, when we were going to school. That we both ended up on the senior staff of the Ivoire had less to do with our designs than with our abilities, and a gap in leadership at the Ivoire at the time.

  Back then I was young enough not to realize that I profited from other people’s failures. I notice now.

  Just like I’m being noticed, even though people are looking away. They see a crazed woman, hair down, so distracted she forgot to put on shoes before she told the guards she wanted to go to the medical unit. I’m walking through the cold corridors with bare feet, wearing a knee-length white shirt and matching pants—my comfort clothes—in a place where almost everyone else is in uniform.

  Th
e medical evaluation unit is on the fifth level of the medical wing. Everything here is as white as my clothing, with nanobits that keep the walls and floors clean. My bare feet leave footprints that get erased by the nanobits after just a moment. The dirt from the guards’ shoes evaporates as quickly as well.

  The staff working in the medical unit must work one week in other parts of the ship. This area is too sterile for good human health, and the medical personnel who do not leave find themselves developing allergies and sensitivities to the most normal things—like skin cells and cooking oils.

  I’ve put in time in the medical unit as well—all of the linguists do as part of our training. We program the medical database with medical terms from any new language we’ve learned. We also train the staff to speak the most rudimentary forms of many languages—enough to ask after another person’s health— and to understand the answers.

  The guards lead me to the fifth level. There a woman waits for me. She’s not the woman who invaded my apartment. Nor is she anyone I know.

  She’s tiny, with raven-black hair, black eyes, and a straight line for a mouth. She extends her hand.

  “I’m Jill Bannerman,” she says. “I’ll help you through the evaluation.”

  “I can’t do anything until my advocate gets here,” I say. The words come out awkward and ungracious. I’m excellent at being accommodating, at saying the right thing at the right time—or I used to be.

  “I know,” Bannerman says. “I’ll get you ready, and then we’ll wait for her. She should be here shortly.”

  I don’t know what ready means. It makes me nervous. I shake my head. “I’d like to wait.”

  “All right,” she says, as if she expected that. “Sit here. We’ll get started as soon as she arrives.”

  She leads me to an orange chair that curves around my body as I sit. I’m so paranoid that I wonder if it’s taking readings from me.

  But the Ivoire—the Fleet, actually—has privacy laws. Even if this chair records information off me, no one can use the information without my permission.

  Have I given permission by agreeing to the evaluation? I have no idea. I should have checked with Leona first.

  That’s what she’ll say.

  Jill Bannerman speaks softly to my guards, then she leaves the room. The guards move out of the main area and back outside the doors. I’m alone in a room with half a dozen chairs, with walls that reset themselves, and furniture that changes color every ten minutes. First orange, then red, then mauve, then purple, then blue. I watch the furniture, a bit unnerved by it all.

  There is nothing else to watch, no entertainment, no open portals, no other people. Just me and the constantly changing furniture.

  I tuck my cold feet underneath my legs and make myself breathe deeply. I want to tap my fingertips on the chair, but someone will read that as nervousness, I’m sure. I don’t know why I’m worried that they will notice—it’s hard to miss, and if the system is recording my vital signs, the nervousness will show in my elevated heart rate, my slightly higher-than-normal blood pressure, and even in my breathing.

  The only thing I’m not doing right now is regretting my decision. I’m suddenly quite happy to be out of my apartment. I hadn’t realized how claustrophobic I felt in it, how shut down I had been.

  How terrified.

  The doors slide open and Leona sweeps in. Her green tunic changes the color scheme in the room. Now the chairs float through forest colors—green, dark green, blue-green, blue. She slides into a chair across from me.

  “We can still leave,” she says.

  I shake my head.

  “We need a consult, and we can’t have it here,” she says.

  So I am being monitored. “I’m doing this,” I say.

  “You made that clear,” she says. “Now we determine how to do it best for you.”

  Whatever that means.

  “There’s a privacy room just over there,” she says. “We’re using it.”

  I’ve read up on advocacy. She’s not supposed to give me orders. She’s supposed to follow mine. But she’s worried and I’m not strong enough to fight her. Besides, I’m not leaving the medical evaluation unit. I’m just stepping into a private room for a few minutes to consult with my advocate.

  I don’t have to take her advice.

  She touches the wall and a door slides open. I hadn’t noticed it while I was waiting, distracted (apparently) by the constantly changing furniture.

  This room is also white with a black conference table that has grown out of the floor. Two chairs sit side by side. I suppose if more people walk in, more chairs will grow out of their storage spots on the floor.

  The overhead lights spotlight the chairs and nearby, coffee brews as if someone set it up for us.

  Leona ignores it, but I help myself. As I touch the coffee pot, pastries slide in from the far wall. Pastries and an entire plate of fruit, some of it exotic.

  “I thought we’re on rations,” I say to her.

  “We are, but maybe the medical wing is exempt.”

  The food gets her up and she stacks a plate with strudels and Danishes and things I don’t even have a name for. I grab a banana that looks like it came from one of the hydroponics bays, and something with lots of frosting and raisins.

  My stomach actually growls. I’m not sure when the last time I ate was.

  We sit down with our food and our coffees, suddenly so civilized.

  She picks up one of the Danishes, but doesn’t take a bite. “I know I can’t change your mind, but I want you to know what’s at risk.”

  I eat the banana first. It’s green and chewy, not really ripe, almost sour. I don’t care. It feels like the first food I’ve eaten in years, even though it’s not.

  “I found out why they brought you back to the ship,” Leona says.

  That, of all things, catches my attention. It sounds ominous.

  “Why?”

  “They need to know what happened planetside. They need to know if it’s our fault.”

  A shiver runs down my back. If it’s our fault. Of course it’s our fault. The Fleet meddles. That’s what we do.

  “What do the other two survivors say?” I ask.

  She doesn’t look at me. Instead she takes a bite of that Danish and eats slowly. I want to push her on this. I want her to tell me everything right now.

  But some vestiges of my training remain. I sit and watch, counting silently to myself because it’s the only way I can keep still.

  Stillness used to be my best weapon. I could wait for anyone. I could listen forever, and learn, without making a move.

  But I seem to have lost that ability. I’m restless now, and time feels like it has sped up. Even though I know it has only taken a moment for her to eat that small bite of pastry, it feels as if she has taken an hour.

  “What do they say?” I ask because I can’t wait any longer. So much for stillness.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “I haven’t spoken to them directly.”

  “But you know,” I press.

  She shrugs a shoulder—a sorry-said-all-I-can shrug.

  Then she sets the pastry down and wipes her hand on a small napkin. “Look,” she says. “If that mess turns out to be our fault, then you’ll probably be executed. Now do you see why I don’t want you to do this?”

  “I need to do this,” I say softly.

  “Why?” she asks.

  “The memories are coming back. I can’t experience them on my own. It’s better if they all come back at once.”

  She stares at me, and then sighs. “I’ll see what I can do,” she says, and leaves.

  ~ * ~

  I sit in that room for what feels like forever, but really is only about an hour. There is a bathroom next to the service area, and I’m able to use that, but I’m not able to leave the room itself. I pace. I count to ten in fifteen languages. Then in six more. And then I start over because I can’t remember all the languages I just tried.

  I�
�ve just started counting to one hundred when Leona returns.

  “Jill Bannerman is outside,” Leona says. “When she comes in here, you tell her what you told me about not being able to cope. Be dramatic. The more threatened you feel the better.”

  “I won’t be lying,” I say. “I can’t do this alone.”

  Those words are so inadequate. If I close my eyes, I can feel the heat, the blood drying on my skin, the bodies rolling beneath my hands. I can’t sit still with that. I have to move. And the more of it that comes back to me, the more movement I need to make.