Maybe she was just the sort of person who could make herself passionate whenever she wanted: turn it on, turn it off, like the diplomats I’d known on Troyen. Heaven knows, Sam was a master of whipping up whatever emotions she wanted… the same as a hive-queen could pump out pheromones at will, whether she wanted to scare people, or get them to listen, or even to make them love her.
I wondered what kind of pheromones could make the captain not love me.
When we reached my room, Prope didn’t even slow down: right through the door and on into the cabin, never letting me go. I think she intended to drag me straight to the bed… and she might have, if I hadn’t caught a strong whiff of something that reminded me of buttered toast. The smell was more than a smell — it had the feel of toast too, steamy hot, with a gritty, crumbly texture. Don’t ask me how an odor can have a texture; but the sensation was so strong, I drew back sharply in surprise.
My stopping caught Prope off guard. She was kind of jerked back by her grip on my arm — her momentum wasn’t nearly as strong as my inertia when I wanted to stand still. I stopped… listened… sniffed. Prope kept tugging on my elbow, not really hard but persistent, like a kid who wants to pull Dad into the candy store; but I kept smelling that buttered toast and wondering what it was.
"Edward," Prope said in a not-very-patient voice, "what’s wrong?"
"Do you smell it?"
"Smell what?"
"Buttered toast."
Prope gave a polite sniff, but she was just humoring me. "I don’t smell a thing," she said. Then she gave a coy flick of her eyelids. "Do you want to know what I’d like to smell?"
"Um." I thought, What the heck has gotten into her? But I didn’t say it out loud; I was still looking around the room, trying to figure out where the smell came from. The closet? No. The desk? The bed?
Suddenly, something clicked inside my half-asleep brain. "Ship-soul," I said, "lights ninety-five percent dim."
"That’s more like it," Prope murmured, as the room fell darker than candlelight. She leaned in and laid her hand lightly on my chest. "Now let’s just find out…"
Her voice broke off. I’d pulled away from her and stepped toward the bed. That was definitely where the smell came from. With a quick yank, I whipped the top blankets and sheets all the way off the mattress.
On the bottom sheet, low down where your feet would go, where you’d never look before you got into bed, the white linen was dusted with a sprinkle of glowing red specks.
"Ooo," Prope whispered, "very nice. But if I were you, I would have put that up where people could see it. Splash some on the pillow. On the walls. Dribble it up and down our bodies, then lick it off. How much of it do you have?"
I stared at her in disbelief. Was she drunk or something, that she didn’t recognize the Balrog? But then, she’d only seen it as a big mossy clump on Kaisho’s legs, not as single spores; and her mind was definitely distracted, focused on other things.
She reached toward the glimmering spores, like a little kid trying to touch the pretties. I grabbed her wrist and pulled her away. "You’d be sorry if you did that," I told her. I kept hold of her arm as I backed out of the room into the bright lights of the corridor.
"What’s wrong?" she asked. "Aren’t we going to—"
"No," I said. "Not in there."
"My room then? I’m captain. I’ve got a great big room. And a great big bed." She was still talking like a drunk with a one-track mind; I wondered if she’d popped some aphrodisiac drug when I wasn’t looking.
"Not tonight," I told her. "There’s something I have to report to the admiral."
"To Festina?" the captain asked, her voice turning shrill. "You’re dumping me and going to that freak-faced bitch?"
Then Prope screamed. It was the most amazing noise: just a shriek of pure outrage. It scarcely even sounded real — more like some eight-year-old who’d been challenged to a dare by her friends, and was wailing out this ear-piercing screech to prove she had the nerve. But there was nothing childish about the look on Prope’s face; it was fierce and furious, not aimed at me or anyone, just exploding out at the universe along with the scream. A primal venting of absolute rage, neither long nor short.
It happened, it shattered the silence of the empty corridor, and then it was over. Prope closed her mouth with a little clopping sound as her lips came together. She shuffled off without even looking at me, like a sleepwalker moving onto some new part of her dream.
Above my head, the ship-soul spoke through one of its speakers. "Is there a problem? Do you need help? Is there a problem? Do you need help?"
"Ship-soul," I said, "get a robot to take all the linen off my bed. I don’t care if it’s a cleaning robot or one of those that handle toxic substances — whatever you have handy. Take the sheets and leave them in Kaisho’s room; break down her door if you have to."
"I am afraid that is not—"
"Just do it," I snapped. "My father is Admiral of the Gold, Alexander York, and he doesn’t appreciate lippy AIs who don’t follow orders. Give me results, not excuses."
I wheeled around and stormed off down the corridor… as if the ship-soul was somebody I could stomp away from. Every two seconds I walked under another of the computer’s speakers, but I didn’t hear any more protests. Apparently, whoever programmed the ship’s system must have anticipated getting bullied by an admiral’s retard son.
Festina wasn’t in her room… even though it was almost midnight, Jacaranda time. I found her alone in the gym, already sopping with sweat from pounding the heavy bag. And I mean pounding it hard. Not one of those controlled sessions where you try the same combination twenty times, or see how many roundhouse kicks you can do in two minutes. She was throwing elbows and knees and head-high jump kicks, plus all kinds of palm heels, knife-hands, snake-strikes, that thing where you clap your opponent’s eardrums… even some plain old body checks, whomping into the bag with her shoulder and yelling something bloodthirsty. That didn’t look like a real martial-arts move to me, but maybe it was okay if you just wanted to smash something with all the strength you had.
I didn’t say anything — just waited for her to notice me. Festina was moving around the bag, hitting it from lots of different angles; eventually she got to the far side, facing the bag, facing my direction. When she saw me, she stiffened a little and stopped, panting lightly.
She looked good, puffing and sweating. For the workout, she’d put on a plain old T-shirt and loose cotton pants… both colored admiral’s gray, but very simple. You don’t see simple clothes very much in navy gyms — people are always wearing smart fibers that keep the body at perfect temperature, or chemical paints that make fat burn faster. Not Festina; but then, she made a point of being different from regular navy folks.
"I thought you were with Prope," Festina said, not quite meeting my eye.
"Prope was with me. Not vice versa. She was acting kind of funny."
Festina glanced at the clock on the gym’s wall. All of a sudden, I got the strangest feeling: that she was figuring out how long I’d been with Prope, and trying to decide if we’d had time to… you know.
Embarrassed, I said, "There were more Balrog spores in my cabin. Like a booby trap. I was lucky I smelled something odd."
"Oh?" She gave her arms a bit of a stretch across her chest. She must have been starting to cool down. "I’ve never noticed the Balrog had a smell." She still wasn’t meeting my eye. "Maybe you’ve got a better nose than I do."
I shrugged. "Being three percent Mandasar has to be good for something."
"Does that bother you?"
"I like Mandasars," I said. "It’s just weird, thinking I’m not all human."
"You’ll get used to it," she replied. "Feeling not all human is an Explorer’s natural state."
"You’re human," I told her. "One hundred percent."
She looked up at me for the first time since I’d come in — met my gaze no more than half a second, then shied away and slammed a fist into the b
ag in front of her. "Christ," she muttered, "there must be something in the water."
"What do you mean?"
She hit the bag with another punch. "At this second, Edward, I want to chew your clothes off. It’s so amazingly powerful…" She leaned forward and planted her face against the bag’s hard leather. "Maybe you should go away before I embarrass myself completely. If I haven’t already."
I just stared at her. After a few seconds, she said, "I notice you aren’t going away." Her voice was muffled up against the bag; from that position she couldn’t notice anything.
"Do you really want me to go?" I asked.
"Of course not. I want you to throw me onto the nearest judo mat and fuck my brains out. Which is so entirely unlike me, I don’t…" She stopped and shook her head. "I can barely speak in completely sentences. I’ve been horny plenty of times before, but I have never…" She broke off laughing — the sort of laugh when you’re afraid that otherwise you might cry. "This is so completely pathetic," she said. "Do you know how blind-raging jealous I was when I thought you and Prope were going to—"
"We didn’t," I put in quickly.
"Good for you," she answered, "and tough on Prope. God, the woman was ready to undress you right at the dinner table. Like it was the first time in her life she’d ever truly wanted to get naked and rub up against every beautiful dimple on your…" Festina gave another strangled laugh. "And I dearly wanted to smash her face so I could have you all to myself. If it hadn’t been for the Mandasars going catatonic… and I wanted to tell them, ‘Friends, I know what you’re going through, I’m a basket case myself.’ " She broke off. "Am I babbling? I’m babbling, aren’t I? I’m truly babbling. I have never talked to a man like this. And the appalling thing is, I’m only doing it because I desperately hope you’ll get aroused. A man wants women to throw themselves at his feet, right? Right? Because if you want something different, just tell me and I’ll probably do it. I lost all shame three minutes ago."
She might have lost all shame, but I hadn’t. My cheeks were burning. First Prope, now Festina… like both women were drunk or drugged. But that was crazy. Who would…
Festina shoved herself away from the bag and turned straight toward me. Her face was flushed; there were tears dribbling down her cheeks. "Edward," she said, swallowing hard, "please leave now. Go and forget you were ever here. Christ knows I’ll probably forget it myself — my head is spinning like a son of a bitch. Just… get out before I do something unforgivable. Please."
I wondered what she thought would be unforgivable. Throwing herself on me? Why did she think that would be awful? Because it would be taking advantage of a… someone like me?
All of a sudden, I thought of Counselor the previous night: her offering herself, and me turning her down. Because I thought she was just a kid who couldn’t possibly think for herself, someone I had to protect because she was really stupid. As if going to bed with her would be raping a mental defective.
Now Festina was protecting me.
For one brief second, I wanted to shout, "Why do you think I wouldn’t like throwing you onto a judo mat? Maybe I’ve dreamed of getting naked and rubbing dimples too. Why would you see it as committing some terrible sin?"
Did Festina think she’d be raping a mental defective? I didn’t want her protecting me. But I had to protect her. She was drugged or something.
Turning quietly, I walked from the gym. Outside the door, I stopped and waited. I could hear her sobbing softly. After a while, she began hitting the bag again. Really really hard.
I was so sleepy I felt like I was going to drop. Too bad my cabin was infested with Balrogs.
The Mandasars weren’t using four of their five rooms, but the ship-soul wouldn’t let me inside when they weren’t there. Maybe the computer thought I might steal something.
The way things were going, I probably could have walked into the cabin of any female crew member and got an invitation to stay the night. Maybe the male crew members too. But I didn’t want to find out if that was true.
Up to the front of the ship. A door just this side of the bridge.
Prope was still awake. When she answered my knock, I could see she’d been crying. I don’t think she’d done much crying before. And in the whole rest of the ship, she had no one who’d hold her till the crying stopped.
Oh well. She was right about having a great big bed.
Waking up, smelling my own sweat. And Prope’s. She lay sprawled behind me on the great big bed, her hair slick and damp from exertion. She was deep deep asleep, drawing in loud lungfuls of air and letting them out again heavily. In stories, women always sleep with a little smile afterward, but thank heaven that’s not true in real life. I don’t think I could have stood it, her looking all smug.
Me, I found myself sitting naked at the captain’s own computer terminal. No memory of how I got there. My skin felt really cold, like I’d been sitting out a long time.
The screen in front of me showed a list of files stored on bubble with the ship-soul. My own personal files, almost nothing in them — just official navy records, and my pathetically small personal address book. (Containing only my father’s name. It used to have Sam’s name too, but a woman I knew on the moonbase made me erase it.)
I stared at the screen blearily, not paying attention to the file names… till I realized something was missing.
Search. Search. But the file I was looking for had disappeared: the file containing the backdoor access code Samantha gave me. Vanished in the night.
And I was sitting at Prope’s official terminal, with no memory of the past few hours. Shivering, I wondered what I’d done.
Part 4
ENTERING THE CATHEDRAL
28
SAILING THROUGH SPACE
I left Prope’s cabin before she woke. Spent the rest of the night in the lounge. In the morning, two female life-support techs woke me and said I looked terrible. They were nice to me, in a spend-time-with-the-cute-stranger way, but they weren’t voracious or anything. Whatever I’d had the night before must have worn off.
Later in the day, Festina and Prope tried to act like nothing had happened… but for a long time, Festina wouldn’t look me in the eye, and Prope was always staring at me when she thought I wouldn’t notice.
Wrapped in its Sperm-tail, Jacaranda sped its milky way through the silence of space. Nothing happened as we crossed the line out of Celestia’s system… nothing beyond a few tense faces easing up, and people suddenly remembering gossip or jokes they’d been meaning to tell each other. We’d all survived another one. Life goes on.
As Tobit predicted, Kaisho claimed she’d put the spores outside my door and in my bed just as a joke. "To see the look on your face, Teelu" she said; which was kind of scary in itself, if she could see the look on my face when she was nowhere in sight. She swore the Balrog had always known I’d find the spores without stepping on them… so where was the harm?
Festina still gave her a real good chewing out, and Kaisho promised not to play such tricks again. None of us really trusted her; but Festina was reluctant to lock her up or invent some other punishment. Explorers liked to keep things in the family — it was one thing to yell at a fellow Explorer in private, but nobody wanted to take measures that might be noticed by the crew. Anyway, leaning on the Balrog too hard might backfire: if we got it mad, there was no telling what it might do… or what we could do to stop it.
So we pretended everything was all patched up. I spent my mornings with the Explorers — Festina, Kaisho, Tobit, and Benjamin — answering their questions about Troyen. They soon saw I knew nothing about the twenty years of war (nothing specific enough to be useful), so we turned to subjects like how to incapacitate a warrior without killing him, and the personalities of Queens Fortitude, Honor, and Clemency. Since they were the longest-established queens, maybe one of them had come out on top… except they were also the most obvious targets for the outlaw queens, so maybe they’d been eliminated early on.
No way to know. All those records kept by observers on my moonbase were marked TOP SECRET, and even Festina couldn’t get at them. Some higher admiral didn’t want us learning useful stuff about Troyen — likely the admiral who sponsored the recruiters, and Willow’s mission. Or my father, trying to hide how badly Samantha had failed.
About Samantha’s failure — in those days on Jacaranda, I finally realized how crazy it was to put an inexperienced twenty-year-old in charge of a diplomatic mission… then to leave her in charge for fifteen whole years, as things went from bad to worse. What the heck had Dad been thinking? And why had the other admirals allowed it? The way I figured it, Dad must have given the council doctored-up reports, so they wouldn’t know Sam was doing a bad job. Dad wanted to protect his daughter, and protect himself too; after all, he was the one who put her into a position she couldn’t handle.
I’d never had such thoughts before: recognizing that Sam had screwed up her mission. Screwed it up really badly. Why hadn’t that ever occurred to me before?
Maybe I was getting smarter. Festina kind of hinted at that after we’d been together a few days — she thought I should take an intelligence test, because she couldn’t believe the low scores in my official records. "You’re better than those scores," she told me. "You may not think you are, but it’s true."
I knew it was the other way around — Dad had fudged my real scores upward to put me over the navy’s required minimum. Anyway, if I had got smarter I didn’t want to know; all my life, I’d been who I was, and I hated the idea of changing.
But I was changing. When I was with Kaisho, I could smell that buttered-toast aroma all the time. Nobody else could. And as the days went by, I began to smell other things… strange things.
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