Six Wakes

by Mur Lafferty

  “I think we can arrange that,” Katrina said.

  Because of their budding business relationship, Katrina killed Mignon swiftly and painlessly, using a clear and tasteless poison in her sparkling rum and cola. Mignon even made sure to drink it next to the fountain so she would crumple and fall into the water, making a terrific scene.

  Job done, Katrina decided to enjoy the party and see what information she could gather about this starship project. It was difficult, as some people shut up when a corporate assassin dropped into a conversation, but it turned out people felt very strongly about the project and several arguments peppered the party.

  Most of the humans and clones she encountered were in favor of the trip, but had some hesitations. It was a good thing for someone else to do. A few were determined to stay here and enjoy the extra breathing room.

  “I heard they’re going to employ criminals to drive the ship,” one clone executive, Pablo Hernandez, said in a hushed conversation. “I’m not putting my faith in that.”

  “You wear diamonds mined by slaves and hire assassins to work in marketing. Why are you suddenly too good to ride on a spaceship driven by criminals?” huffed one of the women in the group, and they fell into peals of laughter.

  “First on a planet, having to build civilization from the ground up?” Pablo scoffed. “Latrine trenches? No, thank you.”

  The woman who had spoken tossed her black hair and said, “Oh, please. They’ll bring a whole server’s worth of servants to build it. They won’t wake up the people till something is already built. Some years, and lives, are expendable.”

  A few hours later, Pablo was killed in a corporate assassination. Second of the night: that made it a very good party indeed. The party changed tune after that, as more alcohol flowed and no one else was around to disapprove of the possible crew in charge of the Dormire.

  Katrina never found out who killed Pablo. She supposed it was a moot point anyway.

  The next day, she called Sallie, who had just woken up in her new cloned body.

  “I’m in,” she said.

  Bebe

  Day 2

  July 26, 2493

  Maria hadn’t gone back to the kitchen the previous night. After her rest, she had pinged Hiro via tablet and he had answered, swearing loudly, and told her they would do it in the morning.

  Normally, after such abuse, Maria wouldn’t have waited for him. She decided to write off Hiro and his messed-up mood swings and deal with the printer herself. Unfortunately, she found out the manual to set the machine up was on a drive inside the box, and only in Japanese.

  “We have traveled to the dark ages,” she muttered, flipping through for Spanish or English directions.

  She tried pinging Hiro again and got a sleepy “Go the fuck away” on his answer.

  “I need you for translation, the manual is only in Japanese,” she said.

  “Then that’s your fucking fault for not buying the right version. I will help you in the morning, leave me the fuck alone.” He severed the connection.

  There is no backup, she reminded herself, and shivered. If someone attacked her now, it would be the end. She hurried down the silent halls of the ship and entered her rooms, checked the lock on her door, and collapsed on the bed. She slept for the next seven hours.

  The next morning, Wolfgang and Joanna were in the kitchen before Maria got there, messing with her food printer, which put Maria in a worse mood than she already was in.

  She hadn’t slept well, wondering about the circumstances of the day and the crew, running through her conversation with Hiro in her mind. And she had yet to eat, which was very bad for a clone. New clones were like newborn babies, needing considerable sustenance to start their new lives.

  The new food printer lurked in the box that they’d brought from the storage room the night before.

  “Where have you been?” Wolfgang demanded. “You were supposed to work through the night.”

  “Ask my translator,” Maria said. “Hiro wouldn’t talk to me once he got back to his rooms. And I needed him because for some reason we’re in the world before translated manuals. This”—she slammed her hand on the food printer box—“only comes with Japanese instructions. Did you two sleep at all?”

  “A bit,” Joanna said. “But we figured if we were going to eat anything, we needed to test and clear the printer.” They were handling the old food printer with plastic gloves, taking samples from both the intake valves and the delivery nozzles. Maria no longer thought of it as the food printer, but as a great monster that vomited forth poison. With its one baleful round light that turned from red to green when the deadly meal was done, it clearly was the Cyclops.

  The Cyclops sat atop the silver counter like a tall oven. It looked out of place, sitting beside a larger cavity as if the kitchen had been built for a larger appliance.

  Watching them take samples from the printer, Maria felt a sudden sense of violation, even though she knew it was a good idea to clear the kitchen as soon as possible. “Just take the whole thing. I can’t put this one together with you two in the way, and if that one is making hemlock, then we need to trash it regardless. I’m going to go ahead and get the new printer going.”

  “I thought you had to wait for Hiro?” Wolfgang said.

  “I can get it out of the box without instructions,” Maria snapped. She filled the kettle and put it on the heating element.

  While the water heated, she went to a storage closet in the far corner of the kitchen, beside the pantry. Inside were several replacement parts, spare kitchen tools, and a toolbox. The entire thing was in disarray due to the grav drive mishap, but at least the toolbox had remained shut where it had fallen among spare smaller appliances. She put “sort all kitchen items” on her mental list, but at a very low priority.

  “Any word on the cloning bay fixes?” she asked, coming out of the storage room.

  “Not yet,” Joanna said from her position in front of the sink. “But I won’t relax until I know we have new bodies growing.”

  “If whoever did this was dedicated, right now is the perfect time to start killing again,” Maria said.

  Wolfgang grunted. “We should have guards at the cloning bay to prevent further sabotage.”

  Joanna sighed. “Guard the cloning bay. Fix the nav system. Investigate the murder. Wake up the captain’s clone. And do our everyday jobs to keep the ship moving. There are only six of us, Wolfgang. How do you figure this working out?”

  “Don’t forget fix IAN,” Maria said.

  “I’m functioning, Ms. Arena,” said a voice from the speakers. “Admittedly at about forty percent, but improving all the while.”

  Wolfgang swore as Maria laughed aloud in relief. “IAN, welcome back. When did you come online?”

  “And why didn’t anyone tell us?” Wolfgang demanded.

  “Mr. Seurat and Captain de la Cruz woke me up last night. I’ve been working on repairing my own functions and recovering any data I can in the meantime.”

  “What have you recovered?” Joanna asked eagerly. “Any recordings of the cloning bay? Any medical logs?”

  “Nothing yet,” IAN said, still sounding optimistic and friendly. “But I’m still working.”

  “Can you do anything for us in the kitchen this morning? Clear the printer of hemlock? Recover the food logs?” Maria said.

  “No, I can’t,” IAN said. “But I can tell you that your metabolisms are running low and you need food very soon.”

  “For this we need the most sophisticated AI in the world,” Hiro said, walking into the kitchen. He nodded hello to them all.

  “Hiro, IAN is awake—” Wolfgang said, but Hiro cut him off.

  “I know,” he said, waving his hand. “He woke me at four this morning and had me working on the navigation system. Turns out that when he got back online we started going back off course. I can’t figure it out, but I figured I’d help out with the food problem, ’cause I’m about to faint or eat Wolfgang, I can’t deci
de which.” He stopped when he saw Maria staring at him. “What?”

  “So you’re going to let what you said to me last night just go unmentioned?” she asked.

  Hiro rubbed the back of his head. “Ah, what did I say?”

  “You refused to follow orders, that’s what you did,” said Wolfgang. “And we’re hungrier now because of it.”

  “You aggressively refused to follow orders,” Maria said. “You were a dick. And frankly kind of scary.”

  Wolfgang crossed his arms. “Did he threaten you?”

  “He didn’t go that far,” Maria said. “But he definitely scared me.”

  “I’m sorry. I am useless when I’m exhausted, and I can get a little testy,” Hiro said, not meeting her eyes.

  “So saying, ‘Go eat vacuum, you worthless piece of space janitor shit’—and then something in Japanese I can only assume was unflattering—is ‘a little testy’?”

  He looked genuinely horrified. “Oh no, Maria, I’m so sorry. I don’t really think that. Like I said, I just lost my head for a moment.”

  Maria looked to Wolfgang. “Being a dick doesn’t make him a murderer.”

  “Being aggressive and verbally assaulting a crewmember does put him under suspicion,” he said.

  “I’m right here, you can talk to me, you know!” Hiro said. “And we’re all under suspicion! Even—” He closed his mouth abruptly, looking at Wolfgang.

  Wolfgang crossed his arms, looking like he was anticipating something. Hiro didn’t say anything else.

  “I don’t think he’s lying,” IAN said. “All of his body language is sincere. He really doesn’t remember saying those things.”

  “That’s not entirely comforting,” Maria said. “But we have a food printer to put together.” She looked at Hiro and pointed to her tablet on the kitchen counter. “The instructions are there. And don’t speak to me that way again.”

  He practically sprinted to get the tablet. The tension in the room broke and the kettle began to sing.

  Maria made the tea, getting mugs for everyone while it steeped. “I thought you two were working on autopsies? Did you find any proof of anything?”

  “No proof, not yet,” Joanna said. “You were poisoned first, but the others had trace amounts of poison in their system. If they’d stayed alive longer, they would have gotten sick and possibly died. You got the largest amount.”

  “Weird,” Maria said.

  “Don’t worry about the murder investigation,” Wolfgang said. “Your main concern should be making sure we have a food supply.”

  “I’m not sure the captain will agree that testing the food printer when we already know it spits out hemlock is the best use of your time,” she said. “Isn’t this mutiny or something?”

  “Mutiny in the kitchens,” Joanna said. “I thought mutiny was a stronger rebellion than testing a food printer.”

  “Mutiny would be a direct threat to the captain’s authority,” IAN said. “This doesn’t qualify.”

  “I seem to remember hearing that the AI would be better at understanding humor,” Maria said. “Why is he so literal?”

  “Forty percent, remember?” Joanna said. “I expect he’ll be better as the day goes on.”

  “We are disobeying orders by taking a moment to check on the food printer, but that’s about it,” Wolfgang said, addressing the earlier question and grunting slightly as he helped Maria get the new food printer out of its box. Even in the lower gravity the thing was a monster, but together they managed to get it free of all packing material. Wolfgang returned to the Cyclops and inspected it to see if he had missed unpinning any of the connections.

  “But you would have to remove the faulty printer to bring to the medbay for testing anyway,” Joanna said, putting the swabs into a plastic box on her lap. “So we’re cutting out the middleman and letting you do your real job.”

  “Okay, you both outrank me, so I’m not going to argue. Besides, I could eat one of you at this point. But I’d probably start with Hiro. He deserves it.”

  She ignored his indignant look as she surveyed the printer. She’d never hooked up a printer before.

  It was a newer, larger model than the Cyclops. Maybe the upgrade was supposed to be a reward for lasting two hundred years in space or something. It looked large enough to print a farm animal.

  “This is gargantuan,” she said, shaking her head. “When would we ever need to print a whole pig?”

  “I think we should test it with a pig,” Hiro said. “Put that baby through its paces.”

  Together Wolfgang and Maria strained and pushed to edge the printer to the space in the countertop beside where the previous printer had sat. It filled the cavity perfectly, as if they designed the kitchen for the better printer, but then decided at the last minute to give them the smaller Cyclops instead.

  “Maria, once you get the printer working, you need to clean out the cloning bay,” Joanna said. “It’s gone from murder scene to biohazard.”

  Maria grimaced but didn’t object. It was her job, after all.

  Wolfgang tested the old food printer to see if he could carry it himself. He strained and staggered, but then hefted it and trudged out of the kitchen.

  “How many more years do we have to travel with that guy?” Maria asked. “I swear I can see myself wanting to start over with zero memories of this trip if he’s like that.”

  “He failed, Maria,” Joanna said gently. “He’s taking all of this personally. What happened yesterday was a clear failure of security on levels that we may never fathom. Try to at least see what he’s like when he’s not dealing with one assault, five deaths—six if you count IAN—one multiplication, and hacking by throwing old backups into us.” She paused, counting off the crimes on her fingers. “What else?”

  Maria sighed, realizing she was right. “Possible suicide?” She frowned at the food printer. “And making me hook up this printer is a crime in itself. I’ll hurry as much as possible but it could take all day. Hope everyone has protein bars.”

  “I found a few in my room, but I wouldn’t eat them unless I had to,” Hiro said.

  “You may have to,” Joanna said.

  “I know. I did. But I didn’t like it,” he said.

  She pointed to Wolfgang’s untouched tea. “You interested?”

  “Yes, please,” Hiro said, smiling gratefully. He took a look at his tablet and frowned, then squinted. “This phrasing is painful; looking at these instructions I’m assuming they were written by the killer. They’re trying to kill me.”

  Maria raised her eyebrows. “That’s a very subtle way to kill someone. And unless you’re being irritating and sarcastic, you just implicated yourself because you’re the only Japanese-speaking person on board, Hiro.”

  “That’s why it’s such a clever trap for just me!” He took a sip, sighing. “Fine. We should get to work, though. If the killer wants us dead again, they might just starve us to death this time around and not have to lift a finger.”

  “You two are pretty gruesome,” Joanna said. “Can you at least have some respect for the situation?”

  Hiro grimaced. “Sorry, Doctor. Just trying to keep from spiraling into screaming, Oh my shit we are really going to die for real and drift in space forever and end all of clonekind and be responsible for killing thousands of people.” His voice remained even throughout this statement, and Maria stifled a laugh.

  “Just trying to lighten the mood, Joanna,” Maria said.

  “Do what you must to get through this, just maybe keep some of it out of my earshot,” Joanna said.

  “I just thought of something,” Hiro said. “Does hooking up the new printer mean we have to reprogram it with all our likes and dislikes and allergies and stuff?”

  “Nah, I have a backup of all that on a drive that’s not attached to IAN,” Maria said. “Our biggest challenge is working on an empty stomach.”

  Joanna cast a sympathetic look toward Maria. “Good luck to you both. I’m off to run tox screens o
n the old food printer.” She secured a plastic top to her mug, set it carefully in a cupholder on the right side of her wheelchair, and headed out of the kitchen.

  “So are we okay?” Hiro asked once they were alone.

  “I barely know you, Hiro,” she said. “I don’t know what to take lightly and what to take seriously. Especially after yesterday. So be careful, and we’ll be okay.”

  “I can’t believe this didn’t come with more languages,” Hiro said. “Only the drive with this info was in the box?”

  “Yeah.” She got up to clean up the detritus and packing material from the box. When she picked up the cardboard, she saw it. Now that they could see the bottom of the box, the ragged cut was obvious.

  “Hiro, look.”

  “I’m guessing you and Wolfgang didn’t do that when unpacking?”

  She held it up to the light. “No.” She turned the cardboard over and saw among the packing material one sheet of an instruction manual stuck on a piece of tape. It was torn, the rest of the manual gone.

  “Why would someone mess with our food printer manual?” Maria asked, pulling the paper free.

  “And paper instructions? Next are we going to be hooking a sled dog up to the ship to regain our momentum?”

  Maria took the different hoses and wires and laid them out neatly on the floor, waiting for Hiro to give her instructions on what to do. He read on the tablet for a bit, his face growing more and more scrunched with annoyance.

  “Why a sled dog?” she finally asked, the question gnawing at her. “Why not a horse pulling the ship?”

  “It’s cold out there. Dogs are better equipped to pull a sled, or a spaceship, in the cold,” he said without looking up. “Now let me read.”

  She got up to start putting the kitchen in order while he read. Most of their appliances were anchored to the floor or walls, so it was only small things like utensils and dirty plates and cups that she had to clean up.

  She found the box of knives that she had brought from home and opened it. “Well, shit.”