Worlds Apart 02 Edenworld

by James Wittenbach

  “He was inside her. It was like falling through a place so dark, it had never known light, nor even of light. Eternal shadow. Depthless and cold.”

  He took a deep breath, as deep as he could, to try to cleanse out the hopelessness that clung to his insides. He made himself breathe slowly. He forced the tears to stop flowing. He reached inside himself for the strength he would need to control his mind and body.

  “You...” he stammered, his voice weak and failing, falling into a crack. Trajan steeled himself and tried again. “You... you will not have me. I... I am not... I will not give into you.”

  Despair looked back at him, doubtfully.

  “You don’t mean that. ”

  “Go!” he ordered.

  A cold breeze, from where he could not know, blew past him just then. He lifted his head from his arm. He was alone with himself, yet somehow less than alone than before.

  He was not going to let Despair claim him.

  He was not going to let his captor take him back either. If he tried to take Trajan again, it would not be without a fight. The boy’s next order of business would be finding a weapon, something sharp or something heavy, ideally both.

  Then, he was going to get out of this place. He would pull himself out of here, climb up until he reached the Habitat levels, and keep climbing up until he made it back home. He would have to do this himself, and although some might have said Vesta was with him, he did not expect her to show up and lead him up to the Habitat levels.

  Bracing himself with both hands, he leaned on the inanimate terminal, and stared at it until his vision cleared and he was breathing in a normal way. He stared at the clear screen of the terminal until he could see through his own mind almost as clearly. Without reference points, it would be difficult to determine whether he was heading toward the bow or the stern of the great ship, but up was easy enough, and everything he needed to get to was forty-four decks above him. If he was correct, directly above him should be the vivaria, and the botany bays. There would be food there, and comm-links that would recognize him, and most blessedly, there would be other people.

  He let go of the terminal and let his hands ball into fists. He felt the strength in his own hands, and felt the strong steady beating of his heart pulsing blood throughout his body. He felt his breathing, regular now, and his mind was clear, his thoughts were focused, and this would carry him past any weakness of the body.

  When he felt steady again, he raised himself up and studied his surroundings. The passageway seemed to branch off regularly, every ten meters or so. He did not think it went all the way back to the ship’s stern, but even if it did, he ought to be able to walk the whole length in less than an hour. Somewhere along, there would be a shaft, and either a lift or a ladder which would take him up.

  Keeping his expression fixed, staring down the long passageway, he wiped the last spot of moisture from his cheek, and began walking.

  Pegasus – The Quarters of Eliza Jane Change

  It seemed to Eliza Change that for every hour she spent on the bridge, she had an hour and a half of follow-up, reviewing status reports from different sectors. Keeler usually avoided such work, giving it only the most perfunctory of acknowledgments, trusting everything was all right. Lear thrived on every detail, frequently sending back reports with corrections and requests for clarification. Change doggedly slogged through departmental reports on power consumption, efficiency, personnel, environmental systems, the landing team reports, and the orbital survey reports. This way was the worst way, she decided. She had already taken to skimming through the reports from the Landing Teams, caring little about planets or what came to pass on them.

  She was more engrossed in a long report from the duty navigator on Second Watch. It was very long, and filled with abstruse terminology about adjustments to trim and refocusing the ship’s Gravitational Envelope because of anomalies in the gravitational and electromagnetic fields of Eden, its mother planet, and some of the other moons. The need for frequent course corrections was correlated to an excess of a rare element called “Turbonium.” Turbonium was abundant in the planet’s mantle, and had the effect of giving the planet its very own special gravitational field that was somewhat at odds with the gravitational constant of the universe. Turbonium incidentally, helped augment the small world’s gravity enough to keep the atmosphere from drifting off into space.

  “Someone is at the portal,” came the voice of her auto-announcer. Some in the ship’s company preferred chimes, or tones. Some liked neural reminders that alerted them to the presence of a visitor by placing the thought directly into their heads. She preferred the direct voice; inobtrusive and functional. She put the report aside, marking her spot. Eddie appeared in her doorway. “Hoy, Eliza, mind if I invade your realm?”

  She had been expecting him to drop by. She did not want to see him, but could not think of away of avoiding it. “You can come on in, Eddie, but I am not feeding you.”

  He stepped into the room with a casual lope. “I can’t believe I’ve never been to your quarters in all this time.” He looked around. “These are … big.”

  Senior officers quarters were quite spacious, especially compared to a Technician Third Class. Change’s seemed even moreso because of the sparseness of her personal effects.

  “What do you want, Eddie?”

  “You sound like you’re still mad.”

  “I got an exception for you to get into Rec Services, and you couldn’t even behave yourself long enough to get through the interview.”

  Eddie shrugged. “I did them a favor, Eliza. We both know it never would have worked for me, it’s better off I just shot myself down.”

  She snapped at him. “Eddie, I have to face Executive Commander Lear in PC-1 every day for the rest of our voyage. Now, she has this lapse of judgment to lord over me. After I trusted you, and gave you a shot at the easiest job on this entire ship and you throw it away. Everybody breaks their coccyx for you, and you don’t even try.”

  “It wasn’t right, Eliza… and it’s better they saw who I was right away.”

  “The point is Eddie, I tried to help you. I extended myself for you and you humiliated me. I don’t see any reason Ex. Commander Lear shouldn’t freezer pack you and send you home. You are not happy on this ship. You don’t want to be on this ship. It might be best for all of us, you included, if you just went home.”

  “My home doesn’t exist any more,” he answered. He combed his stubby fingers through his thick shocks of hair. “Everybody I know dead. I’d be the same freak on Sapphire two hundred years from now as I am on this ship now; the freak who washed out and was sent home in an ice bucket.”

  He looked her with his big brown eyes. “But here, I have you, anyway. Without you, I would have quit a long time ago. I never would have come this far without you.”

  She squinted at him.

  “Without me, you would have quit a long time ago, too,” he reminded her. Eliza sighed, but answered him with a tone just as strong as before. “O.K., so we’re both responsible for the other one being here. Neither one of us wanted to be here, but I’ve adjusted Eddie. Life on this ship means something to me now.”

  He looked at her in surprise. “You mean you’ve drunk their Ankh wine??”

  She shook her head. “More like I have accepted the fact that I was meant to live out my life on this ship. It’s not the life I had planned for myself, but it isn’t a bad life. I have a duty, and I find meaning in it, guiding this ship from one star to the next. It is enough.”

  From Eddie’s face, she could not tell if any of this was registering. He availed himself of a small cushioned chair. “What’s your theory on rules?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “What do you think rules mean? When you gored my life the first time, you said it was because I broke the ship’s rules. What do you think the reason of rules is?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s like this: Sapphireans don’t have a lot of rules. We
have a general sense of right and wrong, a lot of moral and ethical theory gets shoved in our heads from when we’re babies on up, but we don’t make a lot of rules. The rules we do make, you obey the rule, but you have to follow the sense around the rule, too. Law says I can’t hit a man, so I kick him. The way Sapphireans see it, either way, the man’s hurt and I assaulted him. So, I’m in trouble.

  “Republickers, on the other hand, they think you gotta have rules for everything, but if you can find a way around a rule, you’re platinum. Law says I can’t hit a man, doesn’t say anything about kicking him. So, I can kick him until he’s cripple and nobody has slag on me.

  “So, how are you, Eliza Jane? How are you on the reason of rules? If I kick a man, do I get away with it, or is it okay because I followed the rules?”

  She answered him. “In my experience, good people don’t need rules, and bad people won’t follow them.”

  “Neg, neg, neg. Do you think, if the rules of this ship are followed to the letter of the law, even though … even though it lets me kick a man and get away with it, is that okay with you?

  Does that satisfy your sense of duty, your sense of obligation.”

  “You’re going to ask me to do something, aren’t you?” It was Eliza’s way to get the point with a minimum of distracting preliminaries.

  “Only if you let me. I read the principles and imperatives, Eliza Jane. I got the idea from the children.”

  “The children?”

  “Za, I looked at ‘em, and all I could think of was, nobody makes them do scut work just to earn their keep.”

  “That’s because they’re children, Eddie.”

  “Better ‘n’ that, they are ‘ancillary personnel.’ That’s the word the ship’s personnel code uses for them, ‘ancillary personnel.’ They are family relations to people in the crew. They don’t have to do anything. It’s not just the little house apes either, it works for adult relatives. If I had my mom on board, and she was … I don’t know… assistant pastry chef, anything, I could live free. Same if I had a sister… or a wife.”

  He stared at her deep and meaningfully for a second, then grinned.

  “What do you think?”

  “I am not going to marry you, Eddie.”

  “Neg, wait, neg. I knew you were gonna think that way, but look, it’s only a rule. We’d be living within the rules, and nothing would be any different than it is now. I’d be happy, your life wouldn’t be any different, and to top it off, you’d be getting one by Lear, and that’s gotta do somethin’ for ya.”

  He thought he saw a momentary gleam in her eye. Then, she asked him. “What would I get out of this arrangement?”

  “What? You mean apart from the status attached to being the wife of the most beautiful man on the ship?”

  “Affirmative, apart from that.”

  “I was thinking you’d ask. First of all, as a married officer, you get bigger quarters.”

  “Which I would have to share with you.”

  “You say it like it would be bad.”

  “Eddie, the floor of your suite looks like cargo hold of a garbage scow.”

  “There’s also promotion. Married officers get promoted.”

  “There are only three people on this ship who outrank me, and I don’t want any of their jobs.”

  “Sapphirean citizenship.”

  “Sapphire is more than a hundred light years behind us.”

  Eddie shrugged. “All right. I get more out of this than you do. That bud’s for you. On the other hand, you don’t lose anything from being married to me either.

  “Gee, Eddie, I feel like I have been waiting my whole life to hear a man say that to me.”

  He knelt down in front of her couch, folded his arms together in an attitude of abject supplication. “Eliza, I’m at the end of my trick-bag here. If you say, Eddie, go twist yourself, I don’t have any more alternatives. Working on the flight deck is like a livin’ death. Going back to Sapphire, even if I wasn’t scared outta my balls at the thought of being frozen and shot through space… I might as well be dead anyway.”

  She took his hand in hers and stroked it gently. “Eddie, is this really what you want? Is this what you’ve boxed yourself into? The only way you can be happy is to just do nothing, just be useless.”

  Eddie slumped at her feet. “You sound like Driver. I’m not lazy, Eliza. If I could do something useful like you and him, I would do it. But I can’t do anything useful. I can’t fly a shuttle. I can’t navigate. I’m just no damn good at anything. And what I am good at, just isn’t worth doing.”

  With some effort, Eddie force himself to look up into her eyes. To his surprise, he did not see either the resolve or rejection he had expected to see.

  Pegasus – Main Bridge/Primary Command

  Executive Commander Lear came to PC-1 during Windjammer’s watch. Although taken by surprise, the good lieutenant greeted her warmly. “Good Morning to you, commander. What brings you here. Are you returning to duty?”

  She brushed him off brusquely. “I won’t be returning to duty for at least another three days. I have come to make a personal request. My son is missing in the UnderDecks.”

  “Missing in the UnderDecks?”

  “He was undergoing his Rite of Passage. He should have returned to the Meeting Point nearly eight hours ago.”

  “Perhaps, he is simply running late. Has he attempted to contact you?”

  “He has not been in contact with us.”

  “Is that part of the ritual? The ship’s inter-communication network is completely functional. He should have been able to get to you from almost anywhere on the ship.”

  “He has not, and you are correct. The Rite of Passage requires three days of isolation. That’s why I did not come here sooner. I didn’t want to look like a panicky, over-protective mother.”

  She tried to chuckle amiably, but it came off as forced and uncomfortable. “I am concerned he may be lost, or possibly injured. I would like you to dispatch all available personnel to search parties along his route in the UnderDecks. Half the team would begin at his starting point, half at the ending point, and proceed to search in a maximum intensity search through the ship. We could also bring in volunteers from off-duty and ancillary personnel to assist.”

  “Sounds like a major operation.”

  “Not really, I have prepared detailed search patterns.” She handed him a datapad. He looked it over. “This is very well planned.”

  “I simply adapted an existing search protocol.”

  “Are you sure this requires a full mobilization? We could start out with the regular on-duty security team.”

  She paused, and let a thin wan smile play across her lips. “It is a mother’s prerogative to be over-protective, sometimes. I know I may be over-reacting.”

  Specialist Farah Telecom, was at Operations. “Let me scan for his identity sliver.” Before Lear or Windjammer could respond, she had already input the request. “Trajan Lear was last recorded in section 22, deck minus twenty-six,” reported the Specialist.

  “That was about one day into his passage,” Lear explained.

  “He has not been tracked since?” Windjammer asked.

  “Correct, that was sixty-three hours ago.”

  “Is it possible his identity Sliver lost its ambient power source when he passed under a quantum wave relay?” Lear asked all-too-calmly. “It has been known to happen.”

  Windjammer had made his decision. “I’ll authorize the search.” He walked to the security station and gently put his hand on the shoulder of Specialist Telecom. “Order a full security mobilization. Sweep the UnderDecks according to Exec. Commander Lear’s recommendation. Call up reserve personnel and any volunteers you can get.”

  “Thank you, lietenant. You might also consider its value as a training exercise. In an intruder alert situation, our people may have to search the UnderDecks. They constitute a vast area of the ship, and few of us are familiar with them.”

  “You’ve ma
de the sale, commander, you can stop selling. I don’t think any one on this ship would refuse a request to search for a missing child.”

  “Are there any personnel with extensive experience in the UnderDecks?” Lear asked.

  “Some maintenance technicians. Nobody goes down there much.” Telecom answered.

  “See if any are available to lead or assist the search,” Windjammer ordered. Lear put her hand on his, a rare gesture. She was seldom known to touch other crewmen.

  “Thank you, once again, lieutenant.”

  “You don’t have to convince me, Commander. I have three boys of my own. Would you like to stay here and monitor the search?”

  “A generous offer, but I can do so equally effectively from my suite.”

  Queequeg put a paw on his command interlink pad. “Lt. Windjammer, I have received a transmission from landing team beta. They are requesting permission to support some indigenous people in a rescue operation.”

  “Busy night,” Windjammer mumbled.

  Lear scowled and hissed. “What is that animal doing in Primary Command?”

  “He was designated by Tactical Redfire as his team-to-ship interface for this watch.”

  Lear was about to object, but knew she had no grounds. Only Redfire would have designated a cat to cover his duty shift. Obviously, this was another one of his juvenile attempts to annoy her and subvert her authority.

  Windjammer answered Queequeg without approaching the station. “What is the nature of the rescue operation?”

  “Team Beta is requesting to assist in the escape of slaves from the Dayside hemisphere to sanctuary zones on the Dark Hemisphere.”

  Lear had been keeping up with the regularly Landing Team reports. The command interlink in her suite had read them aloud to her, to prevent eyestrain. She knew something about the slave system on Eden. “Will this operation involve armed conflict with local indigenous persons?”

  Queequeg relayed the question and the response. “Team Beta reports there is a possibility of conflict.”

  Lear spoke into Windjammer’s ear. “We have a mandate to avoid conflicts with other colonies unless the ship is threatened.”