Here, she crossed the street and waited for the Argos’ dully competent mass transit system to arrive. Trolleys ran down tracks mounted in the center of the major streets and avenues of the third level, allowing people to move about the ship with some semblance of rapidity. The trolleys themselves were autonomous, and didn’t actually require the tracks to operate. They had managed just fine without them until a hundred years earlier, when a lunatic managed to hijack one, crash it into every damned thing on the third level, and only just fail a spectacular attempt to move it down to the second level. In response, the government of that era decided to mount the cars securely to tracks running the length of their dedicated routes. It was the greatest public works project Argosians had ever initiated themselves, a feat which had inadvertently made that lunatic the most influential person in the ship’s history. There had been some talk of putting up a small statue of him. Stein was relieved — and a little surprised — that it had yet to happen.
One of the leashed and humbled trolleys arrived in front of Stein, which she boarded by the rear doors, glad to see it was mostly empty for the trip around the ship. She was going to the Prairie to meet Ellen, or — she glanced at the time on her terminal — to try and catch up on the head start Ellen had established.
Stein sat, observing the world as it passed by. Another ladder crew busied themselves repairing the ceiling handholds that had served as monkey bars for generations of daring children. It had been easy to ignore for a while, but that certainly drove the point home: the ship was stopping, and soon. The ladders would be a necessary element of navigation once deceleration began. When the engines fired up again in a little over six months, the concept of down was going to get a little confusing. And dangerous. She hadn’t seen them install any net riggings yet, harnesses that would string across the massive north–south streets that would become well shafts when the ship started decelerating. She decided that the nets probably wouldn’t come until the last minute. The ladders at least were vandal resistant. Once strung, a net was likely to get shredded and turned into some sort of distressing male lingerie within minutes.
She loathed them, her fellow travelers, and had long since given up feeling guilty about it. The majority of people who shared this space with her were colossally, flagrantly, mouths–hanging–open–while–they–read stupid. Worse, stupid with nothing to do. A variety of different ways to close the gap between the amount of work that actually had to be done and the number of man–hours available to do it had been invented over the past centuries, each one championed by a different species of moron. Video game addicts, body modifiers, roaming dance troupes, anarchists, bearded anarchists (they did not get along), and a panoply of sexual fetishists were amongst the most visible, but there were hundreds of other overlapping groups and clubs and sects active at any given time.
On a street corner, a crowd of people surrounded two grown men dressed as babies, who had evidently agreed to meet there to wrestle. The crowd surged and pulsed, exchanging wagers and hurling advice at their chosen champion. The trolley crept past before the fight began, but judging by the roar that went up a few seconds later, Stein could tell that something stupid had happened.
She set her jaw and turned away from the window. She used to be worse. She’d hated everybody when she was younger, though had granted a half–dozen or so exceptions as she mellowed with age. Perhaps by the time she died she might genuinely like someone.
“Would you like me to tell you about the cutting?” a voice above her asked, jolting her out of her thoughts. Standing over her, a man with wild hair and strained eyes peered at her, smacking his wet and chafed lips. Scars lined his hands and arms, and were it not for the blessed presence of his clothes, she knew she’d see scars on every other part of his body as well. A Cutter. Worse, a proselytizing Cutter.
“Please, don’t,” she said through gritted teeth. She had heard the Truth of Pain before, even dated one of its prophets briefly. Once he had gotten his hooks sunk in, he’d been impossible to get rid of. Anything she did to get him to go away caused him pain, which only delighted him. Reverse psychology worked, but only until he realized what she was doing. She had needed Bruce’s help to finally get rid of him, and even he had to set the guy on fire a little bit.
“But you look like you know something of the Pain yourself, young lady. You deserve to know the truth of it,” the Cutter rasped, leering down over her.
Stein glanced to her side, looking out the window. “Perhaps,” she said. “Perhaps, indeeeeeeeeeeeed…” she held the last syllable, stalling, while the trolley pulled to a stop. Leaning back in her seat, she raised a leg, and planted her foot in the Cutter’s chest. She pushed, sending the man backwards out the just–opened trolley door. Seeing the shocked looks on the other passengers, she growled. “What? I waited till we stopped.”
The trolley continued on its way, though by now Stein wished she had simply just gone up to the garden well and walked. The trolley seemed to bring out the worst in people, a symptom of mass transit systems which had survived the trip to the stars. A mass transit system within a mass transit system: Russian nesting dolls stuffed with awful, awful people. She shook her head and looked out the window as they pulled into another stop with another confrontation, this one more one–sided.
A man pushed down to the street was being kicked by three others, one of whom she recognized as Sebastian Krol, the alpha–Marker whose living room carpet she had befouled. Which would make the sorry figure having the piss kicked out of him poor Gerald. As the trolley pulled away, her smile faded as the attackers began urinating on the defenseless man on the ground, streams of piss trailing away into cracks on the grated floor. She flinched and looked away. “Well, of course that’s what they were going to do. And I guarantee there’s something underneath there that I’m going to have to fix.” She shuddered. “You dummy.”
§
The Argos sunset entered its most attractive stage, the banks of lights in the enormous light towers dimming, the yellow light fading to orange, bathing the entire garden well in a warm glow. In the park, everyone’s skin took on an orangish hue as they laughed and chatted in the evening breeze. Stein sat on the grassy area outside the back deck of the Prairie, her preferred watering hole. Of all the places on board the ship with other people in it, this was by far the most tolerable. Here, the edge to everyone’s manic behavior felt duller, and Stein’s general loathing of humanity waned.
The Prairie was located in the garden well, the large open–air cylinder in the center of the Argos. The well’s outer surface, covered in parks and boulevards, took up most of the fourth level, aside from a few blocks near the bow and aft of the ship. A handful of apartments, stores, and other low–rise buildings lined the streets within the well, forming the ship’s high–rent neighborhood. Stein had mixed feelings for the people who lived amongst the tree–lined streets here. They were substantially more sane than the bulk of the population, due to some ancient instinct for wanting to appear more proper than ones lesser, but this in itself irritated Stein. She found it awkward, feeling better than someone who in turn was clearly confident that they were better than her.
“Hey, buddy.” Ellen appeared behind her, interrupting her thoughts. Short and loud, Ellen Katsushiro wore her adjectives proudly. To her side and a little behind her stood a young man. “I want you to meet a friend of mine. Kasey, this is Laura. Laura, Kasey.”
“Hello, Kasey.” Stein stared blankly at the young man. Seeing Ellen’s pained expression, she forced a thin smile on her face.
“Hi,” he replied.
“Kasey here is thinking of applying for a job with the navy.” Ellen sat down in the grass beside Stein, gesturing for Kasey to do the same. “I told him you had done a bit of that yourself.”
Stein half opened her mouth, managing to fight off an urge to moan. “Not quite.” She stared at Ellen. “You know that.”
“It’s all the same to me,” Ellen said. “Plasma and robots and such.”
“So, uh, what do you do?” Kasey asked.
“I’m an assistant engineer in the maintenance department.” Seeing Kasey’s expression, she added. “I fix the heat.”
Stein watched the drive train in Kasey’s brain slipping gears. “So, like a plumber?”
“Sure.”
“Huh. I was thinking of applying to be a naval engineer.”
Stein looked at the ground, suddenly fascinated with the grass. In anticipation of their arrival at Tau Prius, for the last two decades kids had been encouraged to take up skills that would be useful on the ground. And, as was their custom, the kids had done anything but.
“So, you don’t want to land either?” Ellen asked.
“I dunno. What’s the rush, right? The planet’s not going anywhere.”
Stein plucked some of the grass, twisting it in her fingers. The whole ship had a case of separation anxiety. The psychologists on the feeds all had excellent explanations for this. Agoraphobia. Santiago Syndrome. Big Scared Baby Condition. Whatever it was called, with less than a year to go until the most fundamental change of address possible, every person on the ship still went serenely about their lives, pretending that nothing was about to change.
And she couldn’t admit to feeling much different herself. She too had had a hard time wrapping her head around the idea of living on a spinning ball. Topography, for example, was pretty fucking crazy. And the sky? She could never visualize the geometry of it. When she closed her eyes to try, more than once she felt an enormous sense of panic, eyes opening wide, heart pounding at the vision of the ground curving away from her. Easier to just not think about it.
Kasey continued, “Besides, they’ll need people to keep the ship running. I think it’d be cool to work with the engines. You know. Vrooooooom.”
Stein continued fidgeting with the grass, not looking at him. “You should definitely do that.”
“I heard it’s tough, though.”
“Oh, it is.”
“I heard they only take the best. I wouldn’t want to waste my time.”
Stein examined the little braided loop of grass she’d made, before crushing it into a ball. “I wouldn’t worry about that. That kind of consideration hinges heavily on how valuable your time is.”
An exasperated look descended on Ellen’s face. Kasey smiled tightly, his eyes casting around the rest of the park. Seeing something behind Stein, or maybe just pretending to, he stood up. “I’m going to go get a drink. I’ll catch up with you later, Ellen. Nice meeting you,” he said to Stein, doing a passable job of faking it. He walked back into the crowd.
The two women sat there in silence for a while. Finally, Ellen said, “I think he’s in love with you.”
“Ha.” Stein shook her head. “Where did you find him? You wearing those short shorts around playgrounds again?”
Ellen scoffed. “I’ll have you know I’m a happily married woman, Laura. And as a happily married woman, I’m perfectly entitled to let a young man buy me a drink, provided I have no intention of doing anything other than drink that drink and make polite chit chat and maybe make him buy me another drink. Thanks for your help with the polite chit chat, by the way. I think you’re really starting to get the hang of it.”
Stein snorted. Ellen leaned back, staring up at the far side of the well hanging overhead. “So, what’s your beef, anyways?” she finally asked.
Stein tilted her head. “No beef.”
“You’re acting beefy. I can see the beef on your face.”
Stein smiled but offered no reply.
After a few seconds of waiting, Ellen finally asked, “So, how’s what’s–his–face? Does he still want to make you incredibly happy?”
Stein knew it was coming but groaned anyways. “I don’t want to talk about it.” A pause, before she ignored her own protest, saying, “And I didn’t think you approved of Sergei.”
“Based on his clothes, yeah, I think he’s a son of a bitch,” Ellen agreed. Most of Stein’s friends had well–founded reasons for disliking the ship’s security department. Stein held no great love for them either, but she and they had managed to stay out of each other’s hair for quite some time. “But, if he likes you, that makes him a rare breed, an improbable genetic mutation, a gift not to be turned away casually. And besides, if you’re willing to date a guy in uniform, he must be well armed,” Ellen concluded, patting her crotch. Stein grinned. Ellen cackled.
Across the lawn, Griese appeared through the crowd, spotted the pair, and crossed over to meet them. Griese was about the same height as Ellen, and possessing a similar haircut and fashion sense, it was sometimes difficult to tell the pair apart from a distance. Jokes about narcissism had dogged the pair their whole married lives.
“My old lady hassling you again?” Griese asked after sitting down.
“Yes, but she also appears to be employing some sort of outsourcing agency now, judging by the young man she brought by earlier.”
“Oh, yeah?” Griese asked, nodding. He turned to Ellen. “You get a drink out of him?”
She held her glass up like a trophy.
“Atta girl.”
Stein had been introduced to the pair a dozen years earlier by Bruce, and had slotted them in as numbers two and three on the slowly growing list of people she didn’t hate. Where some people on board the Argos itched at the boredom of ship life, inventing disgusting hobbies to keep themselves busy, both Ellen and Griese had been born with some specific combination of genes that made extended bouts of directionless leisure time perfectly tolerable to them. ‘French genes,’ Ellen had suggested. Griese, with his five–week–a–year commitment to the dramatic arts, was by far the more industrious of the pair. The rest of the time, they drank and told jokes to each other.
Stein spotted the final member of their foursome, making his way across the patio, the crowds parting around him like the bow wave of a ship. “Where the hell have you been?” she asked as he drew within talking distance.
Bruce stopped, eyes widening. “Work, jerk. A whole bunch of membranes clammed up around the hospital this afternoon, and we were short staffed.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“Didn’t need you. Also, you work too much anyways. I’ll take any chance I can get to keep you out of the office. Also, you smell like piss.”
Stein sniffed the air. “How about that.” Something clicked. “What do you mean, short staffed?”
“Clay dropped a vent cover on his foot. It was awesome; his toe looked like a fucking eggplant. And Gabelman fucked off somewhere. No one’s seen him since this morning, and he wasn’t answering any calls.”
Stein frowned. For all the complaints she had with Curts, he did fairly well at keeping the complete morons out of the maintenance team. Stein herself had a pretty good handle on which of her team members were responsible or not, and although Gabelman was new, he hadn’t given her the impression he would just wander off like that. She groaned, knowing she would have to have a talk with him. “Well, glad you finally made it,” she said, pushing herself off the grass. “Let’s get a drink.”
“Yes, let’s,” Bruce replied. “I seem to have finished this one on the walk here from the bar.”
§
“So, what I’m hearing is that at least some of that piss smell was your own,” Bruce surmised, hunched over his beer.
Stein tipped her chair back, leaning against the wood–like wall behind her. The two sat at one of the tables in the back of the Prairie. On the wall above her, a horned replica of an animal’s head loomed over their conversation. Griese had wheeled Ellen home for the evening, leaving the pair alone to recount the events of the previous night’s expedition. Stein had retold the story from her point of view, explaining everything up through the blinding blue light. She omitted the part about Vlad though, not knowing where to begin with it.
“So, I’m thinking this M. Melson has something in there that he wanted to keep hidden,” she said.
Bruce spun
his glass in his hands. “And has — or had — a booby trap installed to do just that. Yeah, could be.”
“That’s what I was thinking. It sounds like some kind of blinder, right?”
Stein had managed to corner Ellen earlier to ask her what blinder grenades looked like. “Fucking blinding, innit?” was the slurred response. “A pure faschist ray of bullshit photons that violatsh your fucking shkull through the ocular cavity,” Ellen had added. “Why?” Stein had answered her by ordering her another beer, which had gone over well.
Stein watched over Bruce’s shoulder as a group of revelers filled the dance floor. A complicated, synchronized dance started up, people lurching and weaving in unison while the sound system blared a song about a truck. “I guess you could jury–rig one up to be a booby trap,” Bruce finally said. “Any idea what set it off? You said you were swinging your huge ass around like a wrecking ball?”
“I don’t think I phrased it like that, but yes, I think I bumped into something. I can’t recall seeing anything there that looked the slightest bit interesting, but a lot of it was wrapped up, or in boxes.”
“Didn’t even have to be something visible. Your massive and terrifying hindquarters might have jostled a secret compartment behind the shelves or something.”
“Indeed. I could have disturbed M. Melson’s secret collection of…” Stein paused, searching.
“Body grooming products.”
“Locks of hair.”
“Holograms of shirtless nuns boxing.”
Bruce leaned back, contemplative. “Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.”
Stein saw the next bit coming. “You want to go back.”
Bruce waggled his head back and forth. “Maybe. Not tonight. I’m just curious, is all. Might do a bit of research on who exactly this M. Melson is.”
Severance Page 4
