by Mur Lafferty
“We had our political problems, sure. But we’re also carrying thousands of humans aboard. What kind of fanatic would endanger so many?”
“Almost as if there was more than one person at work here,” Paul said. “It sounds like there was more conflict than just fighting. Mind games and the like.”
She rubbed her chin. “Like a game of cat and mouse. Interesting.”
Bebe Makes a Pig
Later that morning, Maria took a shower and a break from biohazard cleanup to program pig-making into Bebe.
The problems many world religions had with cloning didn’t even compare with the issues they had with synthesized food. They simply didn’t know what to do with it. Most of the reformed religions had already accepted the meat from previously “forbidden” animals, but many old-school religions still avoided shellfish, pork, or beef on principle. Science couldn’t override the will of God, or gods, they argued. And besides, why would they suddenly start eating something they had never eaten before? They had been doing just fine for millennia not eating pork, no reason to start now.
But that was all moot, considering few clones followed organized religions. It was with pure secular horror that Maria watched the Behemoth knit together the strands of protein to create a pig before her very eyes.
Hiro walked into the kitchen and stood beside her, watching the masterpiece of modern performance art through the window.
“If the food printer is busy, what are we going to do for lunch?” he asked, his wide eyes fixed upon the growing beast.
“Is that all you can think about? You ate a few hours ago!” Maria said.
“Well, yeah. I’m still hungry.”
“I made some sandwich stuff beforehand so you can eat what you like whenever you like today,” Maria said, pointing at the counter where sat a loaf of bread, a variety of meats and cheeses, and some slices of synth-veg. Protein was somewhat easier than vegetables for the food printer to create.
“You’re really making a pig? Why?” he asked.
“Because the instructions say I can. At least according to IAN, who was kind enough to translate it for me.” She held up her tablet, where she had Spanish and English food printer instructions at last.
“It seems to be working fine. Uh, if that’s fine.” He made a face. Maria didn’t blame him; not every aspect of food printing was entirely comforting to watch, especially if you hadn’t watched it closely before.
“I don’t know, but I’m going to have a big thing to throw into the recycler after this if I don’t make it right,” she said.
“I can’t watch a pig’s innards knitted together,” he mumbled, pulling out his tablet. “I have to see what the Japanese instructions said about making a pig. This isn’t natural.”
“Well, no, it’s synthetic,” Maria pointed out.
Hiro called up the instructions and paused to read. He held it close to his face, reading the Japanese aloud in a whispered tone.
“Hey, can I borrow your tablet?” he asked. “I want to see the English version of the instructions. To compare IAN’s translation.”
She handed it over while still staring at Bebe. “Sure. I’ve been reading the Spanish, but scroll down and you’ll get the English.”
He scrolled around for a moment, and then compared the tablets. His face drained of color, and he handed her tablet back. “Yes, you have it right.”
Maria took it, alarmed. She put her hand on Hiro’s arm. “Wait a second, are you all right? You look like you’re next to be cooked.”
Hiro went slightly paler, but he stammered to regain his conversational footing. “No—no, that’s not it. It just uses phrasing I haven’t seen in several decades. Seems strange that the language evolves as technology improves, but the instructions are still as dry as ever. Right?”
Maria didn’t believe it for a moment. “Sure, Hiro. Whatever.”
“Really. I’m fine.” He glanced down at his tablet again. “Actually I think I need some rest. Call me when the pig is done.”
She watched him go, anxiety beginning to twist in her gut. Her tablet pinged and she answered. “Yeah?”
“Maria, are you alone?” Joanna asked.
“Aside from IAN, yeah,” she said.
Joanna paused. “How did cleaning go today?”
“I’m not even a quarter done. The room is a nightmare mess. I’m taking a break to program some food into Bebe and then I’ll get back to it.”
“I see. Well, it’s a dangerous situation to be in, you can get an infection very easily, so if anything happens I want you to find me immediately, understand?”
“Crystal clear, Doc,” Maria said.
Hiro lay on his back in the dark, sure that he was suffering from paranoia. That was all there was to it.
He couldn’t confirm what he’d read. No one else read Japanese. Except for IAN, and Hiro didn’t want to show him the instructions.
The realization came crashing down on him, and he sat up abruptly. IAN had read it already; he’d translated for Maria. But he hadn’t translated the part that Hiro had seen. That just doubled his paranoia. He should talk to the doctor.
“IAN, are you in here?” he asked.
“Yes, but I can’t see you well. I can see your heat signature. Why are you in the dark, Hiro?”
“Just thinking. Thanks for translating the instructions for Maria.”
“It’s one of my many jobs,” IAN said.
“I noticed you didn’t translate everything,” he said casually. “Like in the how-to-use section?”
“That’s unlikely, I translated everything I found,” IAN said, a troubled tone coloring his voice. He was sounding more and more human as he repaired himself. He paused. “There was some garbage code in there. I overlooked it.”
“You didn’t see my name in there? Specifically?”
“Well, now that you mention it, your name was by the garbage code. I must have seen your name and assumed it was a private message.”
Hiro frowned. “What’s your percentage of recovery right now?”
“Around fifty-seven percent.”
He flopped back onto his bed and stared into the darkness. “Well, I guess we should talk about this when you’re feeling more like yourself.”
“I’d like that. I’m going to update Maria’s instructions to include the garbage code in case she needs it.”
“No, don’t, please,” Hiro said frantically. “It’s not food printer information, I’m fairly sure. I’ll tell her about it after I understand it better. I promise.”
IAN was silent for a minute, and Hiro was afraid he was updating Maria’s instructions right then.
“All. Right.” He sounded pained. “I’m uncertain of the wisdom of this.”
Hiro sent a prayer of thanks to the gods that IAN was not at a capacity to argue with him. Not yet, anyway.
The pig was delicious; those who ate it were very complimentary. Wolfgang surprisingly ate a great deal. Maria had assumed if anyone would refuse it, it would be the uptight security head. But it was Joanna who abstained, eating a bowl of tomato soup instead.
“I’ve handled enough meat today, thanks,” she said, frowning with distaste.
“Any word on the time line?” Katrina asked, drinking a glass of milk.
“Not quite yet,” Joanna said, glancing quickly at Maria, then back to the captain. “I mean, we are able to tell that the more mysterious attacks happened around the same time. We assume your attack came before Maria’s poisoning and Hiro’s hanging, and then the rest of us died.”
“This does not mean you are all absolved of the crimes,” Wolfgang said. “We reason that the captain could have had someone working with her who carried out the attacks on her order. It’s possible Hiro could have hanged himself after all of the attacks. And Maria, you also could have been poisoned by someone and then attacked everyone yourself.”
“You’re reaching,” Maria protested.
“That’s why I said we’re still working on it.”
“Sounds like the biggest suspects here are Wolfgang, Joanna, and Paul,” said Hiro.
“This is why we’re still working on the time line,” Wolfgang repeated forcefully. “As for now, let’s just eat.”
“I didn’t do it,” Paul said to his plate.
“No one said you did, Paul,” Joanna reminded him. “But none of us knows for sure if we did it or not. Including Wolfgang and myself.”
He didn’t look at her. Then he abruptly stood. “I’ve got a headache from staring at the server UI for too long. I’m going to my room.”
The remaining crew sat uncomfortably for about a minute, eating the roast pork, sauce, bread, and synth-veg Maria had presented to them. Then Hiro broke the silence.
“So we’re all the same; all of our memories end at our first ship mindmap, right?”
Katrina nodded. “The first mindmap, after the cocktail party, before we launched.”
“Is it possible we had a stowaway? We have no idea who could have snuck onto the ship, and we have no memories to go off of. Are we looking for indications of other people living here?”
“IAN, is there a stowaway on board, or an unauthorized clone?” Wolfgang asked loudly, making everyone jump.
“Of course not,” IAN said. “I would have informed you of that immediately.”
Hiro leaned next to Maria. “That means plan Z,” he said.
She rubbed her eyes. “Tomorrow. I’m exhausted.”
Hiro and Katrina remained in the kitchen after dinner that night, going into the whiskey again while Maria cleaned up.
“Mr. Sato,” Katrina said slowly, as if needing to think of each word separately. “I will need a channel to Earth.”
“Earth?” Hiro said, eyeing the whiskey bottle, which was half empty. He splashed some into his mug. “You mean that place we just left, the place that would likely put us to death for failing this very expensive mission? That Earth?”
“Yes, Mr. Sato. A channel to Earth, with no creative commentary. Is that a problem?” Even tipsy, Katrina’s voice was commanding, with a no-nonsense tone.
This woman expects no pushback.
“Well, sure, we can send a message back, but it will take years to get there. And then if they have anything to say to us, it will take even longer to get back to us. If we go home that’s another quarter century on top of that. We’re not under their jurisdiction anymore. We’re our own moms and dads here.” He struggled drunkenly to get through jurisdiction but finished the sentence like a champ.
Katrina held up her hands to stop his various metaphors. “I get it, I get it. But don’t you think they should be forewarned that we’re heading back?”
“Only if we’re sure we can’t get IAN to listen to us,” Hiro said, looking thoughtful.
Maria checked the bowl inside Bebe—after the pig success, she felt they had reached a rapport—which had been programmed to make the captain’s favorite dessert. Which, according to Bebe, was currently fruit and ice cream. This surprised Maria, but the machine knew best. Bebe dinged and Maria retrieved the bowl.
“Do it anyway,” Katrina told Hiro, and got up from the table, a little unsteadily. She took the offered bowl from Maria wordlessly. “If Wolfgang comes sniffing around for someone else to accuse of something, tell him I’ll be in my room.”
“Wolfgang didn’t accuse anyone, not yet,” Maria said, then choked back a nervous laugh at the dirty look the captain gave her.
Katrina left the kitchen without another word.
“She didn’t even say thank you for the huge pig and ice cream,” Hiro said. “How rude.”
“Are you really going to try to get in touch with the Earth?”
He shook his head. “No, it’s wasted time. I will talk to her tomorrow when she’s sober.” He frowned. “And I’m sober.”
“Can I ask you a question?” Maria asked, sitting across the table from him.
He nodded, pouring her a drink and sliding it over to her.
“Why were you picked for pilot?” Maria asked. She held up her hands hastily. “I’m not asking for your rap sheet, just curious why you wanted to fly this thing.”
He looked into his empty cup as if he were seeing something else. He filled it, but frowned as if it hadn’t produced what he’d wanted. “There was nothing else for me on Earth. Sometimes even death doesn’t give you the do-over you need. I’ve tried an awful lot of things to make things better in my lives, but this was something new.”
“Yeah, I know that first part,” Maria said. “Too well.”
“Anyway, I had a friend who knew about the Dormire and suggested I start studying for the pilot job.”
“So you didn’t have a history of flying or military? Why didn’t it go to a clone that had studied that for years? Someone from the Luna space program or something?”
“My friend had connections. She introduced me and another guy I knew in prison to a patron when the Dormire was announced. We still had decades before launch, so I did study for years. Not much else to do in prison.”
“What, did your friend know Sallie Mignon or something?” Maria asked, smiling as she invoked the famous and powerful clone.
“Actually, yeah. She knew a lot of people.”
Maria caught a note in his voice. “Was this someone you were very close to? An old lover?”
Hiro didn’t answer, not for a long time. “I’m not sure. I don’t think we were. Do you remember all your lovers?”
She got up and started programming the breakfasts into Bebe. “Well, no, not really. It has been hundreds of years. But if she got you your job, you’d think she would stand out in other ways too. What was her name?”
“Natalie Lo,” he said. “Detective Natalie Lo. And I’m pretty sure we weren’t lovers.”
Maria had the feeling she was on the edge of a cliff, looking over. “Did—did you want to be?”
His head snapped up. “Now, Maria, who could take your place in my heart?” he asked, grinning.
“You just met me,” she said, rising from the table and focusing on programming other desserts into Bebe.
“But I feel I’ve known you forever,” he said, his voice low and romantic.
“Right,” Maria said. “You can sit here and drink, I’m going to take another pass at cleaning the medbay before bed.”
He made a disgusted face, and she rolled her eyes and left the kitchen.
“Weird guy,” Maria muttered. She felt uneasy, as if a hurricane had been about to hit her, but changed course at the last minute. Hiro was sweet and intelligent and unpredictable. And unpredictable men were mysterious and romantic when you were in your youth. After a few decades, no matter the physical age of the body, unpredictable men lost their appeal.
In Maria’s experience, unpredictable meant dangerous.
Maria was bone-tired, but Joanna had looked so drawn and worried at dinner that Maria wanted to search once more for the possibly missing syringe.
She donned a biohazard suit and climbed the handholds on the wall to the ceiling. She clipped a carabiner from her belt to a securing ring on the ceiling. The air intake vent was up here, and it had sucked up no small amount of horror. If she weren’t searching for clues, she could just throw out the filter and get a new one, but she had to look closely through all the fluids to make sure nothing was hiding.
Something was hiding.
A tiny syringe was indeed lodged into the air filter. It was stuck in a sticky puddle of stuff she didn’t want to identify, but she plucked it from the sludge with her gloves and put it in a biohazard bag the doctor had given her.
“Best job ever,” she muttered to herself. She put in a new filter with a mental promise to return to sanitize the vent the next day.
Still sticky and filthy, Maria delivered the syringe to Joanna, who was in the medbay watching the captain’s clone.
Maria held the bag out to her, and Joanna accepted it wordlessly, with a nod.
The doctor had machines in her lab that could synt
hesize drugs, and that had obviously been where the ketamine had come from. Could she program a food printer to synthesize hemlock?
Maria mentally shook her head. If Joanna had been behind the hemlock, she would have worked harder to keep it a secret instead of reporting it immediately.
This kind of speculation was Wolfgang’s job, not Maria’s. She had other things to worry about.
“I’ll let you know my findings. You deserve that much,” Joanna said. “Thank you for your discretion.”
Maria shrugged. “Good luck. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”
On the way back from dumping Maria’s biohazard suit into the cleaning tube, her tablet pinged. She saw with alarm that it was Bebe, letting her know the desserts were ready.
“IAN, did you know Bebe could message me?” she asked.
“Of course. I helped it connect to you.”
Maria wasn’t sure how much she liked that. Still, it was helpful. She told IAN to inform the crew that if they wanted dessert, it was in the kitchen.
“That was fast,” Hiro said when she got back in.
“I just didn’t have the energy to do it, I guess,” Maria said, walking over to Bebe. She retrieved Hiro’s green tea ice cream and placed it in front of him.
“Wow, how did you know that’s what I was craving?” Hiro asked.
Maria shrugged. “Everyone craves comfort food after waking up. It’s pretty easy to please them. And Bebe seems to always know.”
Maria returned to the printer and retrieved her dessert, a sweet treat that always put her in mind of her aunt.
The food that came out of the printer wasn’t exactly the same as they had been used to on Earth. Technology had perfected the ability to clone humans, copy and modify their DNA, and even copy and modify their very personalities. All of that was possible, but it was difficult to replicate a good clotted cream. Or proper stinky Limburger. Or the heat of a habanero. But the printer did its best and the crew didn’t complain.
But Maria secretly mourned the perfect flavor of a good coquito acaramelado, and the knowledge that she wouldn’t get another authentic treat like it for over four hundred years—maybe never, considering they didn’t know what plants would propagate on the new planet—was slightly depressing.
