Orb

by Gary Tarulli

  “I’m glad you came to get me.”

  “Are you? I didn’t want to disturb you. I thought you might want to be alone out here.”

  I reached out in the darkness and, taking her two hands in mine, urged her to sit beside me. I put Angie between us, where she wanted to be, where I needed her to be. For several minutes, and without saying a word, we gazed at the ocean and stars.

  “Will you help me to understand something?” I managed to ask.

  “Anything.”

  “Is it right to feel lonely even when you’re with a person you care about?”

  She knew I was referring to myself. When I was with her.

  “Here’s one answer,” she said after a time. “I can say it applies to me, so maybe you, too. Loneliness is an unwinnable battle that never ends. You have the right to expect the person you care about to fight the battle with you. Don’t you realize, you did that earlier today … for me? You knew I was hurt and lonely and you gave me the best thing you could under the circumstances. You gave me Angie. That’s one of the reasons I care for you. And why, if you let me in, I’d do the same for you.”

  Determined not to drain the life out of the moment, I squeezed her hand. My way of letting her know that I’d think about what she said. That it was not lost on me.

  Then, with her tug of my hand, we went into the ship together. Kelly to her cabin, Angie and I to mine.

  And that was OK.

  Ixodes

  I WAS STANDING alone on a floating island of clear ice, not knowing when, why, or how I got there. A misstep would send me tumbling into the ocean below. The air was warm, but the only ice melting was beneath the soles of my feet. I looked straight ahead—to find only an endless expanse of perfectly still water. Suddenly, at the periphery of my vision, I detected movement. I turned my head as far as I could to both sides but whatever was there stayed behind me, out of sight. I tried turning my body, but my feet … planted firmly in a growing puddle of water … my feet would not move.

  I was laying flat on my back, in a spacecraft, on a planet of ocean, a wormhole separating me from Earth.

  As it was, I had more than the usual difficulty establishing if I was awake or asleep, distinguishing reality from dream. My only clue was that reality has a tendency to linger. I jotted the dream’s ebbing imprint on an old-fashioned writing pad kept handy by my pillow in the hope, a writer’s version of the tooth fairy, that a creative idea would be found scribbled there in the morning.

  One thing was for sure: I needed to haul my ass out of bed in order to be punctual for Thompson’s usual morning meeting. Angie, stretched out on the bed like a miniature sphinx, stared at me expectantly.

  “What do you dream about, my faithful dog?” I asked.

  Cupping my hand, I petted along the top of her head starting at her snout, rubbing over her eyes (she likes this immensely), and down across both ears. Her puffy tail began rapidly vibrating as she happily faced a world full of future prospects: Time to eat, time to drink, time to explore and, of course, time to pee—thereby scenting, and proudly proclaiming as her own, the entire planet. Like the humans on this trip, she was (thanks to specially designed nano-substitutions) microorganism free. We would have to find other ways to contaminate the worlds we visited.

  Opening the door to my cabin, expecting a peaceful early morning, I was instead confronted by the disturbing sound of two loud voices. Exiting the ship, I observed Diana, as angry as I’ve ever seen her, shouting at Melhaus. At the same time I noticed Paul and Thompson, responding to the commotion, rapidly approaching from across the expanse of Red Square. A split second behind me, still adjusting her clothing, was Kelly.

  The first sentence that I could make sense of was from Diana. She was right in Melhaus’s face.

  “How could you let this happen?!”

  “Apparently, Diana, you’ve completely closed your mind to any other possible explanation!”

  “Have I? You’re the bloody math genius. What are the probabilities? Put forward a plausible one!”

  “Are you trying to tell me a malfunction on Ixodes is impossible?!

  “Are you listening?! Diana shouted. “Whatever happened, it was due to your fucking negligence! You left her unmonitored! Let’s call this what it is! It’s what you’d call ‘blatant incompetence!’”

  I was starting to catch on. There was a mishap involving Melhaus and the submersible. I thought back to how he reacted to my story regarding the demise of the Mars Orbiter, how he expressed contempt for the missteps of the mission’s engineers and scientists. Now his own words were being repurposed as potent weapons, causing his face to flush red, leaving him groping for words.

  Diana, momentarily taken aback by the marked effect of her insult, halted her assault and retreated a step. Neither antagonist was intending for this interlude to last.

  Thompson, on the other hand, did. He jumped into the fray. With both feet.

  “You two again?!”

  “Well, he—” Diana started, but was immediately cut off.

  “No, not another word from either of you,” Thompson said. “Unless it’s to answer a question from me. Is that perfectly clear?! If not, I will damn well lock both of you in the spare cabin.”

  The combatants shifted their attention from each other to the mission leader. There was no doubt he meant what he said. He always did.

  “Larry, your version,” Thompson demanded. “What’s going on here?”

  “There is no signal from the submersible,” he answered.

  Thompson’s jaw tightened and a look of concern flashed across his face, but he managed to pose the next question without missing a beat.

  “Including the emergency transponder?”

  “Yes.”

  “Any precursor to this? Any record of a system malfunction prior to signal loss?”

  “No. And I am unable to explain why, or what, may have caused such a complete failure.”

  “Have you determined her last time and location?”

  Melhaus hesitated. His eyes shifted back and forth.

  “Well?” Thompson asked again.

  “Coordinates were 361.2 and 423.1.”

  “Is that where we agreed to send her?”

  “Yes.”

  “What time was the signal lost?”

  Again, the hesitation.

  “Come on Larry, don’t make me pull it out of you.”

  “Zero one hundred hours.”

  That was several hours past when the sub should have been placed in quiet mode. The incriminating response gave Thompson pause. In that brief interval Diana was poised to make a very bad mistake by speaking—were it not for Paul. Quickly intervening, he placed all imposing two meters of himself squarely in front of her, and that, together with an unmistakable and well-timed warning gesture, accomplished his saving purpose. Today, I thought, was shaping up to be full of surprises.

  “That’s a good three hours past the time the sub was to have ceased operation for the evening,” Thompson said. “Why didn’t you bring her back sooner?”

  “I programmed Ixodes for a specific quadrant of operation, then placed her on auto navigation. I fell asleep sometime before she went missing at zero one hundred hours.”

  “How much before?”

  “I can’t say exactly.”

  “We’ll come back to that,” Thompson said, unsatisfied with the response. His expression told me he decided, as had I, that Melhaus’s choice of words was suspect. He turned his attention to Diana.

  “Ixodes has gone missing. Now I understand why you’re upset. Fair enough. So, before you bust a gut, what’s your problem with Larry? Keep it civil.”

  “Oh, you’re getting to it,” Diana said. “He doesn’t know exactly what time he fell asleep?!” Her voice took on a note of incredulity, then sarcasm. “First off, he never sleeps. And even if he did, it would have been hours beyond the time you ordered him to retrieve the sub and place her on standby. On standby, where established operational protocols r
equire it to be—not subject to unsupervised risk!”

  As Diana spoke, Kelly moved alongside Melhaus. She was taking a cue from Paul, ready to intercede, in any way she could, if Melhaus chose to unwisely speak out of turn.

  “So let’s cut to the heart of the matter,” Thompson said. “You’ve come to the conclusion that Larry countermanded my directive which, in turn, resulted in the loss of the submersible?”

  “Yes,” Diana said, sounding placated, believing Thompson’s succinct paraphrasing of her argument meant he was completely sympathetic to her angry reaction. What he said next disaffected her of the notion.

  “So, taking this one step further, you then decided to inflame a bad situation by not only failing to bring the matter immediately to my attention but by also using incendiary and accusatorial language in your conversation with Larry?”

  The assertion, taking Diana completely by surprise, was going to make her either more combative or contrite. If I had the measure of Thompson, he deliberately intended to force such a choice. Since he was an excellent judge of character, especially Diana’s, he already anticipated her response.

  “I’ll shut up,” she said, looking glum, her anger turning to somber resignation. “For now.”

  “Wise choice,” Kelly said, trying to break the tension.

  “Larry,” Thompson said, refocusing his attention. “Is there anything to indicate that you programmed Ixodes to return before the time I specified—twenty-two hundred hours? I’ll phrase that a different way: Will the AI log show she was at any time programmed to enter into quiet mode?”

  “No.”

  “Without such proof, I’m forced to conclude you deliberately disobeyed my explicit instructions. Do you wish to explain or argue the point?”

  “There’s no point.”

  “My expedition log,” Thompson said, looking troubled, “will have to reflect that fact.”

  Straightforward, and, on the face of it, not excessively punitive. Except Melhaus knew otherwise. Weighing the consequences of the action, his shoulders drooped and a dark expression seeped into his face. Of all of us, he had the gravest sense, perhaps overly so, of exactly what those consequences were likely to be: The expedition record eventually being made public; the public and, more important, the scientific community, being apprised of his error in judgment; his having to bear the humiliating insult of explaining the loss of Ixodes to those he considered intellectual inferiors. In the final analysis, the illustrious Doctor Melhaus would be forced to contend with a stain besmirching an otherwise spotless career.

  “I’m pushing back the morning meeting an hour,” Thompson said, addressing us all. “Doctor Melhaus. Ten minutes. My cabin. You and I shall use part of the time to reexamine Ixodes’ operational records.”

  I grabbed Diana by the arm, indicating that we should speak in private. As I did so Thompson gave me a quick nod to indicate that was exactly what he wanted me to do. At the same time I noticed Paul initiating a conversation with Melhaus. Good, I thought. If you can’t calm him down, nobody can. For the moment, he and Kelly were the only crewmembers that Doctor Melhaus had not engaged in some type of verbal altercation.

  “The arrogance of the man,” Diana said to me when I had her alone, her voice equal measures of accusation and contrition. “Keeping Ixodes in search mode hours past when Thompson ordered, then compounding his fault by falling asleep.”

  “You have a right to be very upset,” I said.

  “Two days ago I was so excited about the potential here,” Diana lamented. “Now….” Her voice trailed off as she tried to come to terms with her rapidly diminishing expectations.

  “I can’t imagine how you feel, but I can say you’ve done your best.”

  “I wish I believed that,” she said.

  “If you don’t believe me, ask any member of the crew … OK, maybe you shouldn’t ask Larry right now.” If I knew anything with certainty, it was that Diana was more susceptible to laughter than self-pity: She would take my approach lightheartedly.

  “Thompson was right,” she volunteered. “I didn’t handle the situation very well.”

  “Could have been a tad better. But listen, considering what you were reacting to, it’s hard for anyone to fault your language. I can tell you about my recent skill in the verbal arena. Between Kelly and me.”

  “Kelly did tell me she was a little disappointed with herself. That she made you unhappy.”

  “What?!” I said, wondering if I heard correctly. “Is that what she told you?!”

  “Yes,” Diana answered, the faintest of smiles breaking through. “You seem disconcerted. Isn’t it true?”

  “It’s a very charitable way of Kelly looking at my having been a complete ass. In a space of thirty seconds I was able to unload on her a lifetime of insensitivity. That’s how it was. And it’s my extensive résumé of dealing with my own callousness which qualifies me to offer this advice: If you think you overstepped with Larry, the sooner you try to apologize, the better.”

  “And what about the remark he made to me when we first set foot here, doesn’t that deserve an apology?”

  “Yes, of course, but maybe, for us, Kelly’s example is far better to follow.”

  “He’s a difficult person to apologize to.”

  “I did say try. If he doesn’t accept graciously, well … well, I guess you can stake claim to the moral high ground.”

  Diana reflected, and then said, “Let me ask you. Do you think Melhaus is on thin ice?”

  “Just enough to support him, but the ice does seem to be cracking.”

  “Puts Thompson in a very difficult position,” she said.

  “Not too many viable options considering where we are, what we’re supposed to accomplish here, and how we rely on each other.”

  “No.” Diana’s eyes briefly took on a faraway look of contemplation while she played out possible scenarios. “I’ll apologize. If, for no other reason, keeping the peace makes Thompson’s job easier.”

  “Can’t hurt,” I said “I’ll let you in on a little secret. On at least one occasion, and there’ll probably be several more, I’ve resisted the urge to tell the esteemed Doctor Melhaus to go drown himself in the nearest ocean.”

  “Very funny.”

  We climbed the steps into Desio, heading for our respective cabins. As I was about to enter mine, Diana stopped me.

  “Oh, Kyle, by the way, I know a little secret, too.” She flashed me an evil little grin. “About you and Kelly. Yesterday. At the cove.”

  “Oh you do, do you?” I said, feigning ignorance.

  “Of course.” And to prove to me she really did know, she childishly hugged herself and puckered her lips to mimic two persons kissing.

  “Well, since you know all my little secrets, I’ll have to come up with another.” This said as I closed my cabin door on her while she stood there smirking.

  Flopping on the bed, I put my hands behind my head and stared up at the metal alloy ceiling.

  I felt good about the conversation with Diana. I had intended to help her out of her melancholy mood, and perhaps I did. Her willingness to apologize to Melhaus was a bonus.

  In retrospect, however, I wondered if I walked away from the conversation getting more than I gave. I only alluded to my screwup with Kelly to help make a point, but Diana seized upon it. What were her exact words? “Kelly was disappointed with herself for making me unhappy?” That amazed me, and Diana took notice. “Isn’t it true?” were her words, and said with a repressed smile, no less. OK, Diana, I get it, and it’s worth getting: You wanted me to realize that Kelly was putting my feelings ahead of her own.

  I heard Angie barking in the distance. At what? Presumably there’s nothing on this planet to bark at. With the submersible gone, if there was anything residing in that bottomless ocean it had seven days to come slithering up to us and extend a dripping tentacle. I can imagine far stranger scenarios, enough to fill a book. The scenarios I can’t imagine, however, would fill an infinite n
umber of books, and for that reason—and for what I almost saw the other day, I hadn’t given up hope.

  I exited Desio and walked over to where Angie was romping at the shoreline.

  “What are you up to my inquisitive little friend?” Bending down to pet her, I glanced out toward where she had been barking, discovering only an endless expanse of ocean. “You’re no longer talking, eh? Perhaps that is for the better. Talking to people can get you in trouble.”

  She stared back at me, eyes glistening, tail vibrating. Not wagging. Her tail is too short and moves too rapidly to say it wags. We left the shoreline to join Paul, seated at the table that had been placed on the hard rock immediately adjacent to Desio.

  “And?” I asked Paul, as I sat down.

  “Cloudy, with a chance of light showers,” he said, correctly inferring that I was inquiring about the tone of his conversation with Melhaus. “And you?”

  “You have a smart mate.”

  “Please don’t let her hear you say that.”

  “Never,” I said, returning his smile, as Diana slipped into the chair across from us.

  “You two talking about me?” she asked.

  “Never,” Paul and I answered in unison, and much too quickly.

  “Liars,” Diana said, reaching over the table to punch each of us hard in the shoulder.

  Considering recent events, both Paul and Diana appeared to be in fine spirits.

  Thompson sat down. He was unreadable. He’d probably say the same about me if I gave him half a chance.

  Kelly and Melhaus exited Desio to join us. Kelly took a seat next to me, a long leg casually brushing against me under the table. I was going to have trouble concentrating. Melhaus, looking stern, assumed his usual place at the table’s far end.

  Thompson deliberately made eye contact with each of us before speaking.

  “Did any of you expect this to be easy?”

  Nobody was foolish enough to answer in the affirmative.

  “I didn’t think so. But, for whatever reason, we do seem intent on making it harder. So let’s retrace a bit and consider the problem of Ixodes.