Jude Washington slid a beer down the line, and Nathan Philips, a tram operator, caught it and nodded, waving his link over a tip meter that accepted the transfer of funds.
"Hey, Jude," Nathan said. "Would you turn that off? No one cares about that shit."
Jude nodded, turned off the news, and turned to Stellan. "Looking for someone, Chief?" Jude removed a towel from his square shoulder and set to work drying a pint glass.
Stellan leaned in to ensure Jude could hear him over the noise. "You see a strange woman around lately?"
"I see lots of strange women," he said. "That's why they come here, to let the strange out." Jude tipped the clean glass toward Stellan, offering him a drink. Stellan shook his head.
"This one you would have never seen before this run. She isn't wearing a link, and she's carrying a weapon."
"You're talking about that Council agent," Jude said. "Haven't seen her tonight, but I've been pretty busy. You could ask Suze." Jude pointed toward the other end of the bar to Susanna Barton, the bartender who made her tips with a low-cut tank top and plenty of cleavage. As usual, the concentration of patrons was a little heavier down at her end of the bar.
"What do you know about her?"
"That she's okay with people looking but won't have any touching."
"No," Stellan said. "The agent."
"Just what people say. People seem to think there's something wrong with this run because she's here."
Those people are perceptive, Stellan thought. He found it encouraging that, even without his experiences, she made the crew uncomfortable. Most people didn't know what he knew about how agents really worked. They only knew what they saw in movies, but another face lay beneath that mask. It took Stellan years to see it, but once he had, it was all he could see.
"Is something wrong?" Jude asked.
"No," he said. "Officially, she's just here to ensure everything goes smoothly, since this is such a deep run."
"Hogwash," a drunken man called. Stellan thought he really needed to become a better liar. Down the bar, Thomas Foster slouched over an empty glass, his belly harboring a wet stain that was either spilled beer or drool. His intense eyes wobbled in his skull under the brim of a grease and sweat stained baseball cap.
"This run is fucked," Tom said. "He knows it." Tom's finger wavered at Stellan. He tried to stand, and Nathan Philips grabbed Tom's shoulder and pulled him back down.
"Get off me!" Tom pushed Nathan off his stool with surprising strength. Nathan hit the deck along with some half-full glasses.
The crowd fell silent, and someone stopped the music on the stereo.
Stellan felt all the eyes in the bar, wondering what he was going to do. Tom was a regular at the bar, very regular. He was also a regular in Stellan's holding cell, and the people on the Atlas had gotten used to seeing Stellan haul Tom away. This time felt different. Their gaze weighed heavier. Stellan wondered if this was a routine instance of Tom having too much or an exercise in communication, a demonstration.
"I want to hear you say it," Tom slurred. "I want to hear you admit you know something is wrong with this run, and I want to hear what you intend to do about it."
"Everything's under control," Stellan said.
With a belch, Tom smashed his glass on the deck and gazed silently into the shards.
"Except for you," Stellan said, reaching for Tom's shoulder. "Let's go sleep it off."
"Don't touch me!" Tom yelled and lunged at Stellan with a cage of fingers. Stellan deftly twisted Tom's arm, feeling the soft pop of strained tendons.
In a moment of frustration, he followed the submission maneuver with a punch to Tom's nose, splitting the skin at the bridge. To everyone else in the bar, the movement appeared so fluid and natural, all part of a single defensive maneuver, that no one thought twice about the strike. But Stellan knew it was excessive.
"You hit me, you son of a bitch!"
From his belt, Stellan removed a pair of black handcuffs and restrained Tom's hands behind his back. Between groans, Tom continued to curse at Stellan. He slapped Tom on his back like a gentle whip with the reins of a horse.
"All right, everyone!" Jude said from behind the bar. "Show's over. We're closing up for the night."
A moment later, the stereo filled the bar with Paul McCartney's voice, singing "Hey Jude." Some of the bar patrons gleefully sang along to the opening lines, pleading with their bartender to stay open, already forgetting Tom and Stellan as they disappeared into the crowd on their way out the door.
In a far corner, a shadow fell upon a woman who had observed the entire scene with great interest. One of her eyes watched Stellan leave with Tom Foster, and the other followed blindly along.
Two
As Stellan hurled Tom into a holding cell, he couldn't shake the feeling that perhaps Tom provided the best empirical evidence that he'd lost his mind. He couldn't remember how many times he'd brought Tom to this cell to sleep off the terrible mood drinking had put him in, but so far, it hadn't worked. Tom had learned nothing, and Stellan recalled the old saying that doing something the same way over and over again and expecting a different outcome was the definition of insanity. In frustration, Stellan knew he sometimes threw Tom into the cell a bit harder because he hoped, one day, the far wall would knock some sense into him.
The cell door crashed into its frame, and a red holographic panel appeared. Stellan sighed as the locking mechanism latched, and Tom spat blood onto the floor.
"You didn't have to hit me," Tom said, pinching the front of his shirt to examine the new pattern of blood spatter that adorned it. His lip curled into a snarl of disgust. "You owe me a new shirt."
"No," Stellan said. "I think we're pretty even."
"We ain't," Tom said, "not by a long shot."
"Do you know how many times I've brought you here without writing you up?" Stellan said. "I can't remember, and I was sober every time. I don't expect you kept count."
"Write it up," Tom said. "I don't care." Stellan sensed their impasse like an invisible wall, and he thought, perhaps, instead of Tom slamming the steel wall at the back of the cell, it had been him, banging his head all these years.
"I think you do," Stellan said, but what he really meant was he hoped Tom cared. Otherwise, it would all have been for nothing.
Daelen burst through the door to the holding room. She had shed her lab coat, and she moved more freely in her plain and practical pants. Her hair, pulled into a tight ponytail, poured onto her white, long-sleeve shirt. Even as she carried her small black bag filled with medical supplies and instruments with a grip on its handle so tight that blooms of white appeared around the creases of her skin, joints, and knuckles, Stellan thought she looked sweet.
But she didn't look at her husband. Instead, she inspected Tom's injuries from afar, and she feared his nose was broken. That would be harder to gloss over in her report.
"Jesus," Daelen said. "What did you do to him this time?" She spoke plainly, and her demeanor indicated no real concern. But in the way lovers learn to read between the lines in each other’s faces, Stellan knew she was angry, and he knew she would deny it if he asked. He also knew silence would be better than the wrong words.
"Twisted my arm real good," Tom said, rubbing his shoulder. "Then he hit me." Tom looked to Stellan with an accusatory scowl. Stellan wanted to roll his eyes because he knew Tom was playing up his wounds, but he also knew Daelen was watching. He wondered if he would be sleeping on the security deck that night. He already knew the cot in the cell next door was the most comfortable.
"You've got to stop this," Daelen told Stellan.
"He attacked me," Stellan said.
"I wasn't going to hurt nobody," Tom said shrugging.
"If I hadn't been there, you would have picked a fight with someone else!"
"Stop it!" Daelen yelled. "Stop all of this." She swept her arm out in a wide arc.
"Why are you looking at me?" Stellan said. "I'm just doing my job."
Daele
n brushed Stellan's cheek with her fingertips. Her eyes drooped like she was heartbroken, and she walked toward the cell.
"Just open up," she said with a sigh. Stellan waved his link over the holopanel. It chirped and flashed a green light. The door rumbled on its track.
Daelen walked into the cell slowly, almost timidly, but she wasn't afraid. Under other circumstances, she might have even knocked to request permission to enter. She had developed this approach over the years. Every time she had approached a patient, she saw in their eyes a reluctance to open up and let her in. They all understood they would need to allow her to touch them, and while she found the men often didn't mind, except for the shy ones, she considered it respectful to approach them slowly. Other doctors might have considered it professional to simply break through that barrier of awkwardness, but Daelen was more compassionate than that. She understood there was a doorway, and to find it, she had to establish a relationship with each patient. She was a caregiver, the roots of which were in kindness and friendship. Daelen believed those were her best tools, and she considered it a shame that other doctors would readily cast them aside as irrelevant.
She knelt beside Tom and set her bag on the floor. With her hands spread across his face and her thumbs at the bridge of his nose, she gently tilted his head back, unconsciously making an O shape with her mouth. She waved her hand over his face, and a flash of light emanated from her palm. Her link displayed an X-ray image in a 3D window. She pinched her fingers on the center of the window and then expanded them, which blew up the image, and she squinted as she examined it, short strands of her dark hair falling into her eyes.
"Well, it isn't broken," Daelen said, relieved, and closed the window. "Cover your eyes." She demonstrated with two cupped hands. Tom complied. From her bag, she pulled an aerosol can, shook it, and sprayed it into Tom's wound on the bridge of his nose. He breathed sharply between clenched teeth.
"Baby," she said with a smile, placing a small bandage over his wound. "Open up," she said and opened her own mouth wide. Tom complied again, and Daelen popped a pill onto his tongue.
"For the pain," she said. "And the hangover." Her hand grasped his shoulder warmly, a corner of her mouth rising.
She zipped up her bag, stood, and left the cell. Stellan followed her and closed the cell door, the panel flashing back to red. Together, they walked toward the door that led from the holding room.
"Thank you," Tom said to Daelen.
"Get some sleep," Stellan said, and before he turned, Stellan caught a look on Tom's face that was less the indifference and disregard Stellan had so often seen. In Tom's drunken rages, which Stellan had also often seen, Stellan regarded Tom as more of a cartoon than a real threat. And while this look didn't scare Stellan, there was a seriousness in it, as if Tom had suddenly become a real person. The greasy hat and t-shirt with stains of origins unknown disappeared, and Stellan only saw Tom's stone face, stronger than ever, though Stellan was sure the alcohol still coursed through his veins.
Tom turned to his cot, the oldest and most uncomfortable of all the holding cells, the one Stellan purposefully reserved for Tom on occasions just like this. He didn't want to make the experience as bad as possible out of spite. Instead, Stellan hoped Tom would realize he wanted to stop coming to this place and make a positive change in his life. Unfortunately, Tom projected blame, and he held grudges. He faulted no one but Stellan, so tough love taught him nothing. Although, he routinely swore off drinking as he vomited into a bucket in his cell, pleading with Stellan to let him go because he'd learned his lesson.
The door out of the holding room opened, and Stellan's finger ran down a touchscreen slider that dimmed the lights. Stellan and Daelen stood in the doorway, the light from the main security office falling onto them. They had the room to themselves. Stellan's men were either off shift or on rounds. They stepped out of the holding room, leaving Tom to the quiet dark.
"You won't write this up," Daelen said, "but I have to. You know that."
"Yes."
"That will put another mark on your record, and then I feel like the bad guy," she said. "Why can't you just write this up?"
"He'd lose his job."
"Love, what if you lost yours?" Daelen said, placing her hand upon his chest. "Gordon can only cover for you so much. It's your life. It's everything you love. It's our life. And because of your inability to put responsibility on the shoulders on which they belong, you put all of that at risk."
"He'll come around."
"No," Daelen said. "He won't. There are two kinds of alcoholics: ones that quit and ones that self-destruct. Tom's the latter."
"How do you know?"
She looked back at Tom through the porthole window in the door. He rolled on his cot, attempting to get comfortable.
"Because he feels he has someone else to blame."
She buried her head into his chest, and Stellan wrapped his arms around her. She liked how powerful yet gentle they felt. He held her tight because he knew she liked that, and almost absently, she touched her belly. The life that grew there would change everything for them. It raised the stakes, and if he were to be grounded with her after giving birth, she decided it wouldn't be the worst thing. Though, she knew he would be miserable and didn't want him to resent their child.
"I have something I need to tell you," Daelen said, looking up into his ghostly blue eyes. A few locks of her hair hung liberated from her ponytail, and he brushed them behind her ears. She loved that, too.
"Anything," he whispered.
Before she could speak, Stellan's link chirped. An alert window with a red flashing border leaped to the front.
"I have to go," Stellan said. "There's a fire in the water plant. Tell me on the way?"
"Oh my God. No, it can wait. Go."
Stellan kissed her on her forehead before running for the tram. Daelen walked out of the security deck and down the hall toward the medical deck. She knew there would be plenty of time to tell him later, when it was right. It should be a special moment. It should be a happy time, and she knew in her heart there would be plenty more happy times ahead.
Three
Edward never liked the tram. There was nothing wrong with it, but he didn't like the feeling of being stuffed into a metal tube with a bunch of people. He preferred to walk the long corridors of the Atlas. It better put into perspective for him the size of the ship and his place on it. It oriented him, and it gave him the opportunity to see familiar faces one at a time rather than all at once.
This time, however, the problem was his memory kept slipping. He couldn't think of a better word for it. Time occasionally jumped forward, and he would be farther down the hall than he last remembered. He was having trouble recalling names that went with those familiar faces.
He kept walking and hoping his mind would clear. A small part of him knew there was something wrong, but a more dominant part pushed down his pessimistic side, thinking maybe he just needed some rest. Perhaps some time alone would fix him up, make his bad dreams go away, and steady his trembling hands. Maybe a nice walk by the water plant, which had always been relaxing to him like the sea, would cure him.
A thin window lined the wall beside him, offering a view into one of the giant tanks. Some part of him wanted to see a pair of dolphins or a school of fish swimming in that deep blue world. He felt like he could dive in, and he thought briefly about smashing that window and bringing the pool to him. The only thing that really stopped him from pounding on it was the knowledge that it was shatterproof glass. It would even hold up in the event the corridor he was in decompressed.
After a while of staring at the water, he decided to take Rick's advice and go to medical, hoping he would feel better by the time he got there. A sudden and unexplainable urge to run away surged in his mind, but he thought it possibly was anxiety over what Dr. Lund would tell him. He steadied his feet, prepared to move on, and some men came running past him in a clatter of boots that sounded like popcorn. He thought about one of
those men exploding like a popcorn kernel and how funny that would be, his insides on the outside, but then he realized that wouldn't be funny at all. It would be terrible. Where had that thought come from?
When he reached medical, he admitted the walk hadn't helped. In fact, he felt worse, and his memory seemed to be slipping more often, like it resisted turning short-term thoughts into long-term memories.
His bald and drooping head sat upon slouching shoulders, which began to shake along with his hands. He fumbled and pressed his palms together, as if tightening his muscles might still them. It didn't.
The medical deck was quiet. The clean smell was like a fresh coat of paint. He looked between some of the empty exam tables, thinking maybe someone was sorting through the storage drawers under them, and he peered through the window into Dr. Lund's office at the rear.
"Hello?" he called. No one answered.
He liked the fact that no other patients were there because he actually felt a little embarrassed. The Stone family wasn't much on doctors. When they were ill, they let their bodies work it out.
That subservient part of his mind had won out over the dominant part because of doubt, and he reasoned it really wouldn't hurt to at least talk to a doctor. Now that he had gone to the medical deck, the dominant part of his mind argued it had fulfilled its end of the deal. He went, and there was no one there. Period. Case closed. Game over. He thought he probably was fine anyway and that he was silly to even come.
But that wasn't true. The truth was he was scared. He'd heard the stories about men losing their minds in space. He'd heard that, when faced with the endlessness of the black, when men actually saw what infinity looked like, their minds couldn't handle it and began to break down. He'd heard that the light drive could sometimes smear minds like butter. He was afraid of this "black madness" the other crew had mentioned, and he was afraid that they might take him and lock him away somewhere. They. Always, you had to look out for them. After all, if black madness was real, they couldn't afford to let that knowledge out. They couldn't let it compromise the mining program. Even more, they couldn't let it compromise space travel as a whole.
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