Six Wakes

by Mur Lafferty

  Maria continued down the hall. “Sure thing,” she said. “I’m fairly sure I have nothing to hide. Well. I don’t have anything to hide. I don’t know about the other me.”

  They entered Maria’s room, and she pointed to her small bath. “Why don’t you grab my toothbrush and anything else you want? I can get another from the supply.”

  Joanna nodded and turned toward the bathroom. When Maria was sure she was out of sight, she knelt below her bed and pulled out a small safe with a mechanical lock. She ran through the combination.

  “Maria, why do you have a mechanical safe?” IAN said. “A digital safe is much harder to crack.”

  Yeah, for a human. Maria grimaced. She’d forgotten the AI was back. “A woman has her secrets, IAN.”

  “Not aboard the Dormire,” IAN said. “What are you retrieving?”

  Maria realized the camera couldn’t see into the safe. She glanced at the interior quickly and pulled out a blue backup drive, ignoring the several other drives of various sizes stored within. She shut the safe and then held the drive up to the camera. “It’s just a backup drive.”

  “I would have kept all of those logs,” IAN said. “You didn’t need a redundancy.”

  “Clearly I did; you lost the logs,” Maria said.

  “Kick a man while he’s down,” IAN said, sounding wounded. “How do you know those hold the data you want? You could have overwritten it in twenty-five years.”

  Maria shrugged and pocketed the drive. “Digital pack rat. It’s what I always do. It’s just good sense to back up the data important to your job. And you’re not a man.”

  “I will have to report to the captain,” IAN said.

  “I’m about to go tell her myself in the kitchen!” Maria said. “And Dr. Glass is right here to see me do it!”

  This wasn’t entirely true. The doctor was still in the bathroom, rummaging through her stuff. Then she backed out slowly. The non-accessible bathrooms weren’t large enough for a wheelchair to turn around in, and it had been a tight fit for her.

  “I’ve got what we need for the printer,” Maria said. “IAN is shitting himself that I have a backup he doesn’t. Do you need anything else?”

  “I need a shower and to get my legs back on. Otherwise, no. I took your toothbrush, your floss, and a towel. That should be enough.”

  “Then I will definitely be a new toothbrush and towel, unless you want to be around a stinky cook.”

  Joanna smiled. “I expect you can trust yourself not to squander our supply cache. I’ll get these tested. I want to know how far the attempt to poison you went.”

  “I have brushed my teeth and showered since yesterday. Do you think that’s okay?” Maria asked.

  Joanna frowned. “I should have told you not to do that. Too much chaos yesterday. But if you’re okay now, you’ll probably be fine. Let me know if you start to feel sick. Until then I’ll be in the medbay. Tell Wolfgang to meet me there in half an hour.”

  “I can do that!” IAN said.

  “I’m playing Russian roulette with hemlock? Great,” Maria said.

  Joanna followed her out of her room, and Maria stopped to key in the lock code.

  “Did you really keep a copy of all of our food preferences?” Joanna asked, pointing at the drive.

  “Of course. Backups are important. Just ask Paul and IAN how they’re doing without a backup.”

  “I resent that,” IAN said, his voice less chirpy.

  “Fair enough,” Joanna said. “I’ll let you know.”

  They parted in the hallway, and Maria hurried back to the kitchen to try to recalibrate the food printer. Her nemesis. Bebe.

  So much for the “just a sip” of whiskey.

  Wolfgang, Katrina, Paul, and Hiro had been trading shots for an hour and getting more and more relaxed while Maria finished calibrating the food printer.

  Joanna stormed into the kitchen, slightly damp and upright wearing her prosthetic legs. “Please tell me the printer is up and going,” she said. “I’m losing the ability to concentrate.”

  “Almost there,” Maria said, watching Bebe work on printing its last test, a simple slab of tofu. “Did you find your spare legs?”

  Joanna nodded. “Found them in my closet, while you all apparently got drunk.” She collapsed at the table with the waiting crew and looked accusingly at the bottle. “That was a great idea. Did you know they tested—rather unethically—how long a clone can live without food after waking up? They did some tests on sleep deprivation as well.”

  “I wouldn’t have wanted to be in that experiment,” Hiro said.

  Joanna pointed at him. “You’re in it. Now. That’s what you’re going through. And it’s not pretty.”

  “But what kind of asshole would volunteer for that?” Hiro asked.

  “The kind of assholes who will think it’s a great idea to drink on a stomach that’s never had food before?” Maria called from her station at the mouth of Bebe.

  She was ready. She programmed in some bread that everyone could share while the printer dealt with several meals at once.

  “Or like the kind of person who will call everyone who outranks her an asshole when she hasn’t been eating,” Joanna said. “Exactly.”

  “So these unethical experiments,” Wolfgang said. “What else did they test?”

  “Physical dexterity, emotional durability, mental endurance. Twenty-four hours without food and the clones are next to useless,” IAN said. “This puts you on hour eighteen.”

  Wolfgang looked at Paul. Pale by Earth standards, Paul was positively ruddy compared with Wolfgang. He returned the stare and didn’t flinch when the much taller Wolfgang stood up. He reached out and grasped the Paul’s shoulders, pulling him to his feet. He ran his hands down Paul’s arms in an oddly intimate gesture.

  Paul stepped back out of his reach. “What are you doing?” His voice was slightly slurred.

  “I want to run our own tests,” Wolfgang said at last.

  “What are you talking about?” Katrina asked. “You’re pretty much breaking down in front of us, but you want to take it further? By feeling him up?” She paused to drain her shot glass. “That’s not the way to do security.”

  “I need to blow off steam,” he said. “Sweat out the alcohol. I need a workout. Paul’s coming with me.”

  “I don’t think—” Paul began.

  “Dinner officially in one half hour,” Maria called. “The new printer is off and running!”

  The crew cheered, and Joanna sagged in her chair.

  Wolfgang looked at Paul. “So we have half an hour. Let’s go.”

  “An empty stomach, plus alcohol, plus the stress of our current situation, means the odds of exhausting your new bodies are very high,” IAN said. “Scientifically speaking, it’s a really stupid idea.”

  Maria paused and looked thoughtfully at the room’s camera. IAN was getting more of a personality. She wasn’t sure if that was good or not.

  “Come on. It’ll let Maria work without distraction. It will be fun.” Wolfgang’s teeth were slightly bared and his eyes were wide. This looked like anything but fun. Maria was caught between pitying Paul and being grateful it wasn’t her.

  “You’re getting delusions of immortality,” Katrina said. “Right at the moment you’re not immortal.”

  “I’m a clone. I am immortal,” he said, and laughed. He grabbed Paul’s shoulder in a viselike grip and pulled him toward the kitchen. “Paul, go and lift that food printer in there.”

  “Hey, wait a minute! I just got this hooked up!” Maria said, stepping in front of the printer. “Go to the fitness room to do whatever testosterone war you’re about to start.”

  Wolfgang turned his icy stare onto Maria, but she stood her ground.

  “I’m serious,” she said.

  “Come on,” Wolfgang said, and he led Paul from the kitchen. The doctor followed them.

  “That crisis just took my drinking buddy,” Hiro complained. Then he blinked as if realizing somethi
ng. “Hey, they didn’t invite me. Aren’t I testosteroned enough?”

  Maria thought that Hiro feeling left out of a macho war was less alarming than his referring to Wolfgang as a “buddy.” We’re getting loopy without food.

  “You are totally testosteroned, Hiro. You’re the testosteronedest,” she said. “Now let me work.” She focused back on the printer. She checked the calibrations and the memory and turned it on. “Meals and beverages for the whole crew, please.”

  “Do you have to say please? Why be nice to these machines?” asked Katrina, still seated at the table.

  “Habit,” Maria said. “I had a strict aunt.” She held her breath as the machine whirred to life and began clicking to itself.

  “What do you think we should do with the other printer?” Hiro asked. “I think I might use it to set up a black-market café in my room. In fact, that sounds like a cool idea. Maria, tyrant of the kitchen, won’t let us have our sweets, so we all go to Hiro’s Speakeasy for dark chocolate made from the finest Lyfe that can be found on the ship.”

  “A speakeasy that serves only hemlock? Be my guest,” Maria said.

  “It’s a fucking carnival in here,” Katrina said, and tried to get to her feet. She staggered and sat back down.

  Maria turned back to the printer, which was busy printing black coffee all over the interior of its chamber. She swore and went scrambling for a mug. When she had retrieved one, she caught the last of the coffee. She pulled out the mug as the printer got working on something else.

  “Taste this,” she said to Hiro, handing it to him while she looked for a rag to mop up the coffee.

  “Heck no, are you mad?” Hiro asked. “You taste it.”

  Maria looked at him in surprise.

  “Could be poisoned,” he said, shrugging.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, you know this printer just came out of the box!” She gulped the coffee down, scalding her tongue. It was black coffee all right.

  The printer made beverages for all of them, and Maria brought Katrina her black coffee.

  Katrina was staring at the table, tracing the metal designs with her finger. “I should kill her. The previous clone. This life is mine now.”

  “Captain, the inability to murder someone on the ship is pretty far down the list of problems we have,” Hiro said mildly, gently pushing the coffee toward her. “It’s possible she’ll never wake up. It’s possible we could find out she did everything and we can punish her.”

  The captain gave him a sharp look, and Hiro sat back in his chair as if stung. “Of course, that implies you killed us, and that you should be punished too, which I am not implying at all. You’re clearly delightfully innocent.”

  “Captain, you will feel better after a meal and some sleep. I promise. Apparently Joanna says it’s scientifically proven,” Maria said.

  “People need eggs at a time like this,” Hiro agreed.

  A Missing Piece

  I don’t get it, why are you picking on me?” Paul said nervously as they entered the gym.

  “This is exercise. It’s bonding,” Wolfgang said.

  “I’d think the captain would be a more appropriate sparring partner for you, Wolfgang,” Joanna suggested.

  “She’s not someone I would ever spar with. Not with punches pulled,” he said. “Paul and I need to blow off steam.”

  Like everywhere else on the ship, the gym was an excellent use of limited space: state of the art, a perfect room for weights, cardio, and stretching. In the middle of the gym were a number of obstacles with rings, poles for balance and jumping, and bars.

  Joanna had heard Hiro had lobbied for a swimming pool, but had been denied.

  Wolfgang unzipped his jumpsuit to his waist and slipped his arms out of it, revealing a black T-shirt and arms with long, wiry muscles. He motioned for Paul to do the same. Paul struggled out of his own jumpsuit with much less grace than Wolfgang. While Paul was, like all clones, a prime example of a fit young man, Joanna saw with distaste the telltale signs of the synth-amneo fluid caking in his elbow joints, indicating that he hadn’t showered yet. She suppressed a shudder.

  “You’re going to follow me. I want to know what you’re capable of, since you’ve been essentially in a fetal position for the past day,” he said, then bounded off to the obstacles.

  “You don’t have to do any of this,” Joanna said to Paul, but he didn’t respond. His face flushed and his fists balled up as he watched Wolfgang.

  Joanna forgot her irritation briefly as Wolfgang swung easily from bar to bar, landed on a balance beam, and walked across with fluid beauty. He attacked every obstacle, from pulling tension strands out of the wall (the total weight estimation came up on a readout on the wall in both Earth and Luna gravities) to holding a handstand for three minutes.

  Paul watched this silently, looking like a boiling pot of rage. He glanced at Joanna, and then went to the bars to follow Wolfgang’s example. He slipped from the bars twice, having to struggle to jump back up to get them, and then fell off the balance beam. His turn at the tension strands totaled less than half what Wolfgang could pull, and he couldn’t even kick his legs up to a handstand, much less hold one for three minutes.

  It always amazed Joanna how muscle memory was retained through different cloning lives. While Paul was technically fit, he was no athlete like Wolfgang had apparently been in previous lives.

  Wolfgang walked over to Paul and pulled him roughly to his feet. “That was pathetic. Next time will be better.” He motioned for Joanna. “Your turn, Doctor.”

  Joanna quirked an eyebrow at him. “I’m not taking your challenge until I get some food in me.”

  He shrugged. “Name the time.”

  “Mr. Wolfgang? Dr. Glass? Mr. Seurat?” IAN asked.

  “Yes, IAN. Are you not seeing your cameras here?” Joanna said.

  “Not yet. Ms. Arena says that we finally have food.”

  Paul shouldered Wolfgang to the ground and ran out of the gym. Joanna watched him get up, grinning. “He just needed the right incentive to move, apparently.”

  “I’m starving,” Wolfgang said, swaying slightly. He caught himself on a wall handle and looked at Joanna. “Lack of food makes people do odd things?”

  She laughed. “Do you have to ask?”

  Joanna led the way to the kitchen. “You didn’t need to challenge him. Are you so dedicated to making Paul an enemy on day one of the journey?”

  “It’s not day one,” Wolfgang said. “And I thought it might make him come out of his shell.”

  “By humiliating him?” she asked. “Is this male bonding?”

  “You didn’t have to be there. He wouldn’t have been embarrassed if you hadn’t been there.”

  She laughed in surprise. “This is my fault? That’s fascinating. Did you really think you could bond by antagonizing him?”

  He took a deep breath and visibly relaxed, as if he had to tell himself to do so. “We’re in trouble. You’re right. I just thought it would be good to focus on something else for a change.”

  Joanna stopped in the hall and looked up at him. “You also showed yourself to be a bully who could be capable of the violence we saw yesterday,” she said seriously. “You could have lost your temper and pushed us all to perform for you in the gym, and gotten mad and killed us all.”

  His icy eyes didn’t flinch from hers. “Even if I somehow did turn into some kind of slave driver, the deaths were too different to be a violent surge of rage. And thanks for assuming I could be capable of that.”

  Long, long ago, in her first bout of college, Joanna had dated a man who was in the habit of threatening her when they argued. When she protested, he would twist her fears into How could you think I would do that? manipulations. She ended up feeling guilty after he threatened her, shook her, or once, hit her. Never again, she’d vowed, and had kept the vow for two hundred plus years.

  She glared at Wolfgang. “No, you don’t get to act hurt. Of course I can think that of you. And your performance
in there didn’t win you any friends on this ship.

  “I’m going to get some food,” she added. “Come with me or don’t, but drop the hurt-puppy act. You’re capable of murder. Just like the rest of us.”

  As Joanna suspected, she and Wolfgang were both in better mind-sets after eating. Wolfgang even apologized to Paul in front of the others. He didn’t accept, flipping Wolfgang a rude hand gesture that was moon-specific (it was what North American cultures called the okay sign, but the small o indicated that the moon was less important than the Earth; it was also meant to insinuate the small girth of a certain masculine body part), but at least Wolfgang made the effort to apologize.

  Joanna hoped that perhaps Paul would lose the low-blood-sugar clone rage and warm to the rest of the crew after food. But he was tearing into his second cheeseburger and not looking up at the rest of them.

  “He’s not doing much better, is he?” she whispered to Hiro.

  Hiro ducked his head. “No. I apparently made things worse by offering to let him beat me up. I told him he could totally take me in a fight, but he only got more offended.”

  Joanna stifled a laugh. “I can’t imagine why he wouldn’t seem open to the idea of beating up a smaller man for his ego.” She stopped and thought about everything she knew about testosterone. “Wait. I can totally see how he would enjoy that. And he didn’t go for it?”

  Hiro shrugged and sipped at his tea. “I try to be a giver, I really do.”

  A tired-looking Maria put a plate of eggs and bacon in front of Joanna, who looked up in surprise. “I didn’t order this.”

  “Everyone has been wanting seconds,” Maria said. “I went with the odds. If you don’t want it, I’m sure we can find someone to take it.”

  Joanna’s stomach grumbled, and she realized that she was still hungry. Wolfgang stood and shot her a look. She sighed. “I’d love to, but we need to get back to the tests. Thanks, but you’ll have to pass it on.” She turned to Paul, who still wouldn’t meet anyone’s eye. “Want my breakfast, Paul?”

  He didn’t answer, but Hiro reached out a hand and snagged the plate.