Starship to Demeter (Starship Portals Book 1)

by K. D. Lovgren

  “I’m an ethicist,” Sif said. She didn’t elaborate.

  “Have you been commissioned to help create a government?”

  “I don’t think that relates to the matter at hand.”

  “I’ll have to determine that, Sif.” Kal felt some of her old interview skill, her steely precision, flair up for a moment, a reminder of what had been. This should maybe have not been her first interview. In her job she had always spoken to the first witness first, and habit died hard.

  Sif wasn’t ruffled. “Then I suggest you speak to your captain. For some things are not meant for every ear.”

  “What, it’s secret?” Kal raised her eyebrows, but kept her expression friendly.

  Sif did not take the bait. “I have my own concerns, as you have yours.”

  “All right. We’ll come back to it, if necessary. Anything else, when you were in the park with him? Was anyone else there?”

  “Like I told you, the park is usually empty at that hour. No one comes there then. It was strange to see him.”

  Sif’s expression conveyed a mild puzzlement. Kal wanted to shift in her seat but didn’t, trying not to let Sif’s detachment get to her, instead mimicking it to mirror the witness.

  “Any further conversation?”

  “I told him we should speak Icelandic on the new world.”

  “What did he say to that?”

  “Nothing. I said it in Icelandic.”

  Kal contained her desire to smile. Did Sif have a sense of humor, after all? “Was that all?”

  “Yes. I left.”

  “Did you see him again?”

  “No.”

  “Did anyone else enter the park at any time?”

  “No.” Now Sif shifted in her seat.

  Kal did too.

  “Why don’t you ask Rai?” Sif said.

  “I will. Now I’m asking you.”

  “No one else entered the part that I could see.”

  “Did anyone see you leave the park?”

  “Only Rai.”

  “Let’s leave Rai out of this for now. I’m only asking you about humans.” Kal wondered if every interview was going to be this fiddly, as she tried to pin the interviewee down.

  “No humans.”

  Kal plunged ahead. “What was your relationship to Yarick? Taking into account you didn’t know him well.”

  “Relationship? There was no relationship.”

  “A lot of people on board didn’t like him.”

  Sif pushed her thin lips together into a cupid’s bow. “So I heard.”

  “You had no problem with him?”

  “No problem that any sensible person wouldn’t have.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Sif stared at her for a while, as if determining whether she were worthy of an answer. Kal looked back. Sif blinked.

  “It means I’m aware of the ethical dilemmas a person in power can create for all the people around him. Or her. If he chooses to abuse his power, as so many do, then he can have an endless circle of casualties rippling outward; a stone dropped in a pond. Yarick affected all of us, because he had power and he liked to manipulate people with it. He wasn’t unique or as special as he thought.”

  Kal found this sudden forthcomingness interesting. “You think someone put an end to him because of that?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he had a heart attack.”

  “What did you do after you left the park?”

  “I wanted some time alone, where I wouldn’t be bothered. The Tube was right there, so since I hadn’t had my time alone in the park, I went there.”

  “What did you do in the Tube?”

  “I pleasured myself. After, I worked on my presentation about Icelandic culture.”

  “What is that?”

  “For the club. My presentation is in two days.”

  “Oh, yes.” Kal had forgot about the small club Chyron had started for passengers to share stories of where they came from.

  “After about an hour I came out of the Tube and went up to the mess. Then Sasha asked me to go find Yarick when he didn’t appear for lunch.”

  “So you were in the Tube during the time he died.”

  “Presumably so.”

  “Did you hear anything?” Kal asked.

  “No. You know the Tube is soundproof.”

  “Tell me about finding him.”

  “Naturally I looked first in the last place I’d seen him. And there he was.”

  “Did you notice anything when you walked from the mess to the park? Any small change, something different, or out-of-the-ordinary?”

  “No. Everything looked just as it did when I’d been there earlier. Only he was dead.”

  “What do you think happened?”

  “I think he had a heart attack. It’s what it looked like to me.”

  “If you think of anything else, please let me know right away. You can go, Sif. Would you mind telling Wei to come down next?”

  Sif got up with a flourish and stood looking down at Kal with a pitying expression. “You really think this was murder?”

  “It’s a necessary investigation. It’s too early to have thoughts.”

  “If somebody did kill him, you might never find out.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “It’s a ship full of geniuses. If a genius decides to kill a genius you probably won’t know.”

  “Thanks for your observations, Sif. I’ll keep it in mind.”

  “Any time,” Sif said. She floated off, sufficient unto herself as always.

  Kal made notes about their interview, adding addenda to the transcription of their words.

  In the mess, tempers had risen.

  “He wasn’t a team player, he wasn’t a nice man, and I won’t say I’m sorry to see the end of him. Clearly he didn’t have anyone at home who would miss him or he wouldn’t be here.” Davena’s words did not fall on a friendly audience.

  However much the listeners might have agreed with the first part of the sentiment, they were all in the same boat as far as the last, and it proved to be a little too close to home to be pleasant to hear.

  “Davena, I don’t think we need to shout that to the rooftops on the same day the man died, do you? We may be in another star system but surely decency doesn’t only belong to our old one.” Gwendy’s quiet words were a balm to the group on most occasions. This was sharper than her usual tone. They all stared at her.

  “It’s true, though,” Tafari said, in the silence that followed. “He wasn’t a very nice man.”

  Tafari had seldom spoken. The others were silent for a time in respect of it. Gwendy lifted her chin. She and Chyron exchanged glances.

  Sif had come to get Wei, who left with an expression of martyrdom, her cockscomb of black hair ruffled up in defiance. After settling herself in a darker corner of one of the banquettes, Sif sat surveying them all.

  “Don’t you agree, Chyron?” Davena said, not to be shut down. Chyron and Gwendy were often used as moral arbiters, even though Sif was the official ethicist.

  “I really can’t say, Davena,” Chyron said. “Whatever else he was, he was a patient of mine, as you all are. You all have the same right to privacy from me.”

  Chyron was listened to, whether because she had natural authority, knew some of their secrets, or the luck of her appearance. She had a profile that could have been minted on an ancient coin, with a broad, rounded forehead, gently curving line from forehead to the wide bridge of her nose, a night-like depth to her cool umber skin.

  If there were a human personification of serenity, she resembled it.

  “Your job’s done you out of the right to be human,” Davena said.

  “Many of our jobs do that at times,” Chyron said, her voice mild, her meaning pointed.

  “What do you think, Rai?” Davena raised her voice, as if Rai needed it to hear her. “Was Yarick Cole a nice man? Or doesn’t your circuit neurology allow for criticism and opinion?”

  Rai’s cle
ar voice responded. “Yarick Cole was an early developer of the system architecture and metaphors used for the creation of my forebear. Yarick Cole made people angry sometimes.”

  Davena chortled as if she’d scored a point. “Oh-ho, is that so, Rai? Do tell! Who did he make angry?”

  “I can’t say,” Rai said. “People like to tell their own stories.” Apparently, the conversations with Ogechi had already borne fruit in Rai’s outlook.

  “Sounds like a whiff of blackmail, if you ask me,” Davena said, with an air of relish.

  “Come on now,” Gwendy said.

  Davena went on.

  “I think it sounds exactly like something Yarick would get up to. He knows an awful lot about a lot of us. Likes to sort of dangle it over you. ‘Oh, I was on your grant committee. Oh, I was an investor in that business. Oh, I handed you your diploma and made you into what you are today.’” She did a wicked imitation of Yarick’s most pompous tone. They’d all heard him wax on, and the group tittered despite, or perhaps because of, the tension in the room.

  “I never heard Noor complain about him,” Gwendy said. She’d spoken without thinking how this only reinforced what Davena was saying. Two of the situations Davena had mentioned regarded people who weren’t there to hear it: Noor and Wei. Wei’s grant, Noor’s PhD and their connection to Yarick had somehow become common knowledge on board.

  “Whose business did he invest in?” Haven asked.

  Davena shook her head, vibrated it almost, in rejection. “I’m not saying that happened. I’m saying it sounds like him. I wouldn’t be surprised. At all. To hear he’d held something over someone. What did he have to do here? He was bored. So he stirred up trouble.”

  “What trouble did he stir with you?” Haven asked.

  Davena leaned back and laughed to herself, cradling her mug in her hands. Her broad, soft shoulders tensed and slumped as she let go of her passing emotion. “Oh, child. Wouldn’t you like to know.”

  Gwendy turned to her with a mock frown. She wouldn’t ask, but her curiosity and puzzlement were clear.

  “You didn’t like him.” Tafari had spoken again. The group swiveled their heads back to him. “He wasn’t very good to your country.”

  Davena’s humorous take seemed to dissolve. She cleared her throat and clicked her tongue. “Yarick was a settler. A colonist at heart. With everything that entailed. The presumption. The droit de seigneur. Oh yes. Yarick was an old school example of the old rule. Or so he liked to style himself, whatever the facts might have been.”

  “Is there something we didn’t know?” Ogechi said. Her deep voice was always a thrill to hear, her entry into the conversation almost as notable as Tafari’s. As fellows of the same continent of origin, they seemed to have acquired a synergy and understanding that left the others a little bit out. Sif and Gunn came from a much smaller, more homogenous place, and their synchronicity was absent, so perhaps it was not their home that connected them, but some other, more esoteric bond.

  Davena humphed. “I’m sure you didn’t think he knew you. We didn’t know him, either.”

  At that moment Sasha swept back into the room, having gone to the infirmary to check on Inger and Noor. Inger was with her. Their arrival put an end to the intimate and gossipy feel to the conversation. Davena took a sip of her drink and looked as if butter wouldn’t melt.

  Always sensitive to the vibrations of the room, even if she didn’t always choose to remark on them, Sasha looked around with a quirk in the corner of her mouth. “Interrupting, are we?”

  Tafari said, “We discuss the man of the hour.”

  Sasha nodded.

  “Would you like a drink, Captain?” Haven said, rising to her feet.

  “That would be nice. How about hot cocoa? Cocoas all around.”

  “Good idea,” Chyron said. Haven soon brought over a tray full of mugs. She had even sprinkled little sugar crystals on the top of the foam, to look like frost.

  Although not everyone drank hot cocoa usually, this began to take on the aura of a ritual, and every person there took a mug, as if to refuse were to forfeit membership of the group. Sasha said, in a quiet but not reverential voice, “To Yarick.”

  They echoed her. “To Yarick.” They sipped.

  If someone didn’t, it wasn’t obvious.

  7

  Restraint

  Inger allowed Sasha and Kal, under strict conditions, to be present as she made the attempt to bring Noor back to consciousness. They were gathered around her infirmary bed, Inger and Kal on one side, Sasha on the other.

  “Keep quiet as she comes to. It can be overwhelming for the patient. Rai, dim lights,” Inger said. The gentle glow of light left from a more directed beam overhead gave the whole endeavor a holy air, Noor’s dark hair crowned by a halo. Kal and Sasha avoided each other’s eyes. Though Inger had told them to stay low-key, the room bristled with unspoken trepidation.

  Inger injected something into Noor’s IV. It worked so quickly Kal couldn’t keep herself from starting at Noor’s sudden turn of head, movement of hand, and flutter of eyelashes. Kal released the breath she’d been holding.

  Inger put a hand on Noor’s shoulder. “Noor?”

  Noor moaned.

  “Noor? It’s Inger. You’re in the infirmary. You’re all right.”

  Noor made an unintelligible sound.

  “You’ve been under for a little while. Does anything hurt?”

  Kal darted a glance at Sasha, who had one hand to her mouth, index finger crooked over her upper lip.

  Eyelids fluttered rapidly, Noor tried to speak.

  “The vacuum burned her throat,” Inger said, so quietly they could barely hear her.

  Noor’s eyes snapped open, wide and alarmed. She looked around at their faces, blinking rapidly as if trying to see through fog. “Wa…” she said, ending in a rough sound at the end.

  With Inger’s adjustment to the bed, Noor’s upper body rose. Her eyes blinked more slowly now.

  Inger brought a water cube with tube to Noor’s lips. “Just a bit,” she said. Noor fitted her mouth around the tube clumsily, but it seemed to revive her. She tried to slurp more as Inger took it away.

  “Ah…” Her attempt to speak seemed to frustrate her. She looked to Inger with a frown, tried to bring her hand to her neck, but her hand was attached to things that prevented her.

  “Stay quiet. Let us get you situated. You’re fine. I’ll answer all your questions.” Inger’s voice was in a tone Kal had never heard it. The impatience and matter-of-factness she wore as a second skin were gone, and a reassuring confidence and soothing air were everything a patient could have hoped for. Kal was impressed, and grateful to see how she treated Noor now, at her most vulnerable.

  Inger put a small pillow in the crook of Noor’s neck, another under her arm. She gave her another sip of water.

  “Wha’ happen?” Noor managed.

  “You had an accident in the airlock. You were without oxygen for a few minutes. Yarick got you out. Your heart was in arrhythmia. I shocked it back into rhythm. Your heart looks good. I put you under for a while to help you heal.”

  Noor nodded, eyes wide. Her body jerking forward, she was wracked with a cough. Inger supported her back until it was over. Noor sank back into her pillows.

  “M’alright?”

  “Your throat will take a bit of healing. Chyron and I will put you through a few tests, make sure the cogs are in gear. If that goes well than that you should be good as new.”

  Noor nodded. Her eyes were damp. She swallowed heavily and tried to clear her throat.

  “Try not to do that. Drink when you need to make your throat feel better.”

  Noor nodded and pushed her chin out, opening her mouth for more water like a baby bird.

  After as long a sip as Inger would give her, she seemed to see Sasha for the first time. “Hi,” she said.

  Sasha’s smile was incandescent. She put her hand over Noor’s. “Enough of this fooling around. Back to work.”


  Noor grinned, her eyes squeezing out some of the water that had collected in the vicinity of her tear ducts.

  Kal had never been in Sasha’s room. She looked around, at the deep blue sheets of her bed, the warm faux bois of the chair and table next to the bed, the image of a snowy mountainous forest on the wall.

  Sasha had disappeared for a while to do either an angry or relieved physio workout, Kal wasn’t sure which, before she asked Kal if she’d meet her in her cabin in fifteen minutes.

  Sasha was changing in the bath compartment. Waiting for her, Kal rubbed the back of the chair aimlessly, leaning on it, hoping for calm and to be, in that moment, more like Sif, self-possessed, never uncomfortable, only concerned with her own interest and not caring about her effect on others.

  Kal had had disappointments, many disappointments in both the way the world worked and in the people she had met in it. Maybe, the thought struck her for the first time, that was why she had left it. Did she really think another planet would proof or save her from that failure of connection on Earth?

  She let go of the chair she had been clutching and sat down in it. Had her disillusionment led her here, one trillion miles and a portal away from Earth? Here, a door away, was Sasha, who was someone she admired. Someone she wanted to be like. Kal wanted to be captain of her own ship, though that was years away. To be looked up to, obeyed, making the decisions and living by them, confident in her own choices and trusting herself enough to live by their consequences.

  Sasha didn’t seem to need anyone. As serious as she was about her missions, she wore it all lightly. To be honest, Kal didn’t know Sasha’s true feelings. Sasha could conceivably be keeping emotions of her own under control in order to maintain protocol, even if she’d felt she had to break it once.

  That was a dangerous avenue for Kal to contemplate, but it was possible. Sasha had instigated the kiss because she thought it would fool Rai. If Sasha hadn’t felt something, couldn’t it be argued it wouldn’t have had a chance of fooling Rai? It was hard to calibrate Rai’s precise ability to differentiate human motive and desire—wasn’t desire the most mysterious of human emotions, and the least calculable to humans themselves?—but Sasha had taken that risk, to save them all, if she really believed Rai could now be divorced from her own directive.