"I've fucking seen him," Erin Tan snapped, "And don't you go saying I haven't!"
Helmi Alpassi didn't sigh or roll her eyes, although it took fairly heroic self-restraint. Ancestors spare me.
Not that they ever did, in Helmi's experience.
"Erin," she said reasonably, scraping the last forkful of beef-flavored protein off her plate. "You saw your grand-dad in the engine room and some woman made of fire down by cargo. Maybe - "
Erin turned sharply enough to set her sleek black hair swirling out around her shoulders. "Yes! I did see them. And I saw the Chief too! Clear as I see you, Helmi, clear as I see you right now!"
"All right." Helmi leaned forward and rested her elbows on the mess table. "Say you did see the Chief. What was he doing?"
"He was adjusting the enviro controls."
Helmi grinned. "Well, that explains why it's been so spirits-damned cold around here lately, anyway."
"No!" Erin dropped onto the bench opposite Helmi and leaned forward. "He was turning them up. You know, it's cold because Pilot's always telling us to set them down further. And the Chief was putting them back to normal!"
Helmi pushed her plate away. "Uh-huh. So ghosts can change the settings on things?"
"Sure! Like, there was that one on that ship, the frigate, that kept setting the autopilot to the old pilot's home world? And the one that - "
"Erin." Helmi rubbed her forehead. Ancestors and spirits spare me from superstitious fools, if you would be so fucking kind. For once in your afterlife. "Those are just bar stories."
Erin folded her arms and set her chin. "You don't believe me."
"I've never seen a ghost, I've never seen any proof of a ghost, I - "
"What about the ghost ships, the - "
"It's a big black Deep out there, Erin. You don't need ghosts to have a reason for strange stuff happening."
"You believe in spirits, though, don't you?" Erin asked. "Dead people, protecting you?"
"It's not exactly the same thing," Helmi said.
"Well, why not? If your ancestors can watch over you, why can't the Chief be watching over the ship?"
"Well, they don't follow me around fiddling with enviro controls, for one thing!"
"Then what do they do?"
Helmi thought about the low table in her quarters, the little figurines worn featureless and smooth with years of handling. "You know what? I'm not going to get into it. Religion is religion, and it's private."
"Well," Erin said stubbornly, "What I believe is private too."
Helmi shook her head. "No, not so much. Not when you're going around telling people that dead people are hanging around. Then it's ship's business. And - " Helmi held up her hand as Erin drew an angry breath to reply "And, if you think I'm wrong about that, then just think about what the XO would say if she heard about it."
"I'm not going to pretend that - "
"Don't be a fucking fool!" Helmi snapped, and got wide-eyed silence from the engineering ensign at last. "You can't be stupid enough not to realize what's happening to this crew! Sarge is gone. The Doc's gone. The Chief's dead. Pilot's in medical every day and she never was exactly proactive, was she?"
"So?"
Helmi sighed. "Ship's more than steel and engines, Erin. Maybe being engineering makes that hard to see? But look around. Hear what people are saying. Place is coming apart at the seams. You think telling ghost stories is going to help that?"
"Um ..."
"Um is fucking right." Helmi picked up her empty plate and stood up. "So do us all a favor, okay?"
"What?"
Helmi tossed her plate in the 'cycler and turned to the door. "Keep what you see to yourself."
"Don't you think it would help?" Erin asked. "People knowing ... that the Chief was still looking out for us?"
Helmi stopped at the door. "The dead don't look out for us, Erin."
The dead look out for themselves.
In that way, at least, they're just like everybody else.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Four Bells
Luisa shuffles the cards.
She can't send them shooting from hand to hand in a flashy waterfall like Nerila, can't cut them one-handed or flip them over her fingers. Can't palm an ace the way Nerila did.
Wouldn't if I could.
She shuffles, unfancy, precise, no Spirits-lost Gallente foolishness.
Deals in a circuit, two cards, one, two more.
Five cards face down in front of her.
Five face down at each of the three empty places around the table.
You're a stupid, sentimental old woman, Lulu Kamajeck.
Fisk Hurun wasn't about to pick up the cards at the place to her left, his big hands dwarfing them, handling the squares of pasteboard with the exaggerated care of a man whose augmented strength could rip a door from its hinges in a moment of inattention.
No, he's off somewhere in that fancy battleship he flies these days, or living the highlife with that little Vherry girl he's taken up with.
Nerila Janianial wasn't reaching for the cards to Luisa's right, either, long dark fingers deftly rearranging them and maybe slipping in a high card as she did it. Gone, without a word. I told Pilot not to hire a fucking junkie, but no. 'Everyone deserves a second chance, Luisa.'
Well, shit. Only people asking for second chances are those already proved themselves untrustworthy.
As turned out to be true.
And Michael Mitcheson wasn't sitting across from her, playing footsie with his wife as if none of us noticed and watching the bottle go around the table with just a little bit too much interest.
And one thing you can say for that over-sexed, over-charming Gallente son-of-a-bitch, he's the only one of 'em hasn't left the ship.
No. Downstairs, is where Mitch is. Cold and stiff in one of his wife's morgue drawers, waiting for someone to track down his junkie bride so the decencies could be done.
Luisa sweeps up her own hand and tosses it face up. Two acorns, four leaves, six and seven of hearts, ten bells.
Handful of trash, is what I got.
Handful of trash.
There's still an inch left in the bottle of Invelen's fine Pator vodka. Luisa hooks it out of the cupboard and pours herself a careful quarter of that last inch, caps it and puts it back.
Better than I'll ever afford, that's certain.
And when it's gone, that'll be that.
Gone.
She toasts the empty chairs around the table and tosses the vodka back. The burn makes her eyes water and she blinks hard as she sweeps up the cards and begins to deal them out again, seven stacks in front of her this time, one, one two, one two three.
Five of acorns on the six of bells. Nine hearts on ten leaves. Turn over eight acorns and move it over.
You can fool yourself into thinking poker's your game, Lulu. But in the end ...
In the end, it's always solitaire.
She can't send them shooting from hand to hand in a flashy waterfall like Nerila, can't cut them one-handed or flip them over her fingers. Can't palm an ace the way Nerila did.
Wouldn't if I could.
She shuffles, unfancy, precise, no Spirits-lost Gallente foolishness.
Deals in a circuit, two cards, one, two more.
Five cards face down in front of her.
Five face down at each of the three empty places around the table.
You're a stupid, sentimental old woman, Lulu Kamajeck.
Fisk Hurun wasn't about to pick up the cards at the place to her left, his big hands dwarfing them, handling the squares of pasteboard with the exaggerated care of a man whose augmented strength could rip a door from its hinges in a moment of inattention.
No, he's off somewhere in that fancy battleship he flies these days, or living the highlife with that little Vherry girl he's taken up with.
Nerila Janianial wasn't reaching for the cards to Luisa's right, either, long dark fingers deftly rearranging them and maybe slipping in a high card as she did it. Gone, without a word. I told Pilot not to hire a fucking junkie, but no. 'Everyone deserves a second chance, Luisa.'
Well, shit. Only people asking for second chances are those already proved themselves untrustworthy.
As turned out to be true.
And Michael Mitcheson wasn't sitting across from her, playing footsie with his wife as if none of us noticed and watching the bottle go around the table with just a little bit too much interest.
And one thing you can say for that over-sexed, over-charming Gallente son-of-a-bitch, he's the only one of 'em hasn't left the ship.
No. Downstairs, is where Mitch is. Cold and stiff in one of his wife's morgue drawers, waiting for someone to track down his junkie bride so the decencies could be done.
Luisa sweeps up her own hand and tosses it face up. Two acorns, four leaves, six and seven of hearts, ten bells.
Handful of trash, is what I got.
Handful of trash.
There's still an inch left in the bottle of Invelen's fine Pator vodka. Luisa hooks it out of the cupboard and pours herself a careful quarter of that last inch, caps it and puts it back.
Better than I'll ever afford, that's certain.
And when it's gone, that'll be that.
Gone.
She toasts the empty chairs around the table and tosses the vodka back. The burn makes her eyes water and she blinks hard as she sweeps up the cards and begins to deal them out again, seven stacks in front of her this time, one, one two, one two three.
Five of acorns on the six of bells. Nine hearts on ten leaves. Turn over eight acorns and move it over.
You can fool yourself into thinking poker's your game, Lulu. But in the end ...
In the end, it's always solitaire.
Friday, December 18, 2009
The Lighthouse
In the months they were together she mapped his body with a surgeon's knowledge and a lover's touch.
The serratus anterior originates on the surface of the upper eight ribs at the side of the chest and inserts along the entire anterior length of the medial border of the scapula.
The serratus anterior originates on the surface of the upper eight ribs at the side of the chest and inserts along the entire anterior length of the medial border of the scapula.
Bones, muscles, ligaments ... the machinery of the human body, her expertise, her specialty, the one thing she can always rely on. She knew every joint and every hollow of his body, from textbooks, from a thousand operations, before the first time she lay down beside him.
Discovered them anew, in the miracle of Michael Mitcheson stretched out beside her.
Discovered them anew, in the miracle of Michael Mitcheson stretched out beside her.
The levator scapulae arises from the transverse processes of the first four cervical vertebrae and inserts into the vertebral border of the scapula.
"You have a beautiful sternocleido mastoid."
"A what-which-now?" Mitch asked, grinning.
"Here." Nerila ran her fingers along the muscle. "From the medial portion of your clavicle to the mastoid process of your temporal bone."
"That's a fancy way of saying neck, then?" He wrapped his arms around her and rolled them over, bent his head to kiss her throat. "You have a beautiful stern-cled-mast-thingie too, sweetheart."
She giggled. "That's my hyoid bone."
"And a very pretty hyoid bone it is."
"Like you care what it's called!" She tangled her fingers in his hair, her other hand flat against the smooth plane of his left latissimus dorsi.
"Like you care if I care..."
"Like you care what it's called!" She tangled her fingers in his hair, her other hand flat against the smooth plane of his left latissimus dorsi.
"Like you care if I care..."
The pectoralis minor arises from the third, fourth, and fifth ribs, near their cartilage and inserts into the medial border and upper surface of the coracoid process of the scapula.
"From the pectoralis minor to the biceps brachii ... " Her fingers found the small nub of bone on the hollow of his shoulder. "That's your coracoid process. We call it the Surgeon's Lighthouse."
"Why?" He turned his head to grin at her. "It flashes on and off in the dark?"
She smiled back. "A lot of nerves and blood vessels in there. This little bone tells us where they are, if there isn't time for a scan. Shows us where to cut, to be safe."
"Keeps you off the rocks?"
"Exactly." Nerila traced the fragile wing of his clavicle with one finger. For whole moments of time she could forget that body beside her, warm and strong and by a process no science could explain containing a mind and soul unlike any other, was as fragile and as vulnerable to steel and blast-caps as any other bleeding on her table. "Exactly."
On the lateral angle of the scapula is a shallow pyriform, articular surface, the glenoid cavity, which is directed lateral and forward and articulates with the head of the humerus.
She is up to her elbows in blood, which makes it an ordinary day for her, now.
No scans, no fancy equipment. Those who can, go to station medical. Even here, in the heart of the Syndicate, there's quality medical care - for those who can afford it.
Who can afford to answer the questions that come with it.
Who want doctors who can afford to answer questions themselves.
Nerila has no scans, no machines. She has scalpels and sutures and bandages. She has a table scrubbed with disinfectant in a dingy back-room that's as clean as she can make it.
She has two steady hands and a knowledge of the human body that no scanner could match.
There is blood everywhere, sharp red arterial blood pumping from the jagged hole in the shoulder of the man sprawled on her table. His friends are standing by the door, big men with hard faces, and Nerila is under no illusion that her life depends on how well she does here.
There's too much blood to see the bleeder, and she has no med-tech to suction out the wound. She feels for it with fingers slippery with blood, knowing where it has to be, the dorsal scapular artery just where it emerges from the superior angle of the scapula ... there.
She pinches with two fingers, follows along them with a clamp.
The bleeding stops.
Now her time is measured in seconds, before she has to choose between saving this man's life and saving his arm. The round is still in the wound, she can tell. No way to get a grip on it with forceps - she'll have to cut.
There's a lot that can go wrong for her patient, if she cuts into the mess of nerves and blood vessels in his shoulder, without a scan to guide the knife.
There's a lot that can go wrong for her personally, right now, if she doesn't do what the men by the door want and fix him up, fast.
Nerila puts her thumb in the hollow of his shoulder, by the wound, finds the hook of bone that she knows will be there, measures by eye from the Surgeon's Lighthouse.
Cuts.
No scans, no fancy equipment. Those who can, go to station medical. Even here, in the heart of the Syndicate, there's quality medical care - for those who can afford it.
Who can afford to answer the questions that come with it.
Who want doctors who can afford to answer questions themselves.
Nerila has no scans, no machines. She has scalpels and sutures and bandages. She has a table scrubbed with disinfectant in a dingy back-room that's as clean as she can make it.
She has two steady hands and a knowledge of the human body that no scanner could match.
There is blood everywhere, sharp red arterial blood pumping from the jagged hole in the shoulder of the man sprawled on her table. His friends are standing by the door, big men with hard faces, and Nerila is under no illusion that her life depends on how well she does here.
There's too much blood to see the bleeder, and she has no med-tech to suction out the wound. She feels for it with fingers slippery with blood, knowing where it has to be, the dorsal scapular artery just where it emerges from the superior angle of the scapula ... there.
She pinches with two fingers, follows along them with a clamp.
The bleeding stops.
Now her time is measured in seconds, before she has to choose between saving this man's life and saving his arm. The round is still in the wound, she can tell. No way to get a grip on it with forceps - she'll have to cut.
There's a lot that can go wrong for her patient, if she cuts into the mess of nerves and blood vessels in his shoulder, without a scan to guide the knife.
There's a lot that can go wrong for her personally, right now, if she doesn't do what the men by the door want and fix him up, fast.
Nerila puts her thumb in the hollow of his shoulder, by the wound, finds the hook of bone that she knows will be there, measures by eye from the Surgeon's Lighthouse.
Cuts.
The flesh parts beneath her blade.
Her hands are steady, and fast, but her eyes don't see a bloody wound, ragged flesh, clean incisions.
She has relearned her anatomy, and every body on her table is the same body, now.
Nerila cuts, stitches, bandages. Takes the money and the threats designed to keep her mouth shut. Scrubs blood from the table and from beneath her nails.
Afterimages linger on the inside of her eyelids, even though she knows the table is as empty as her bed.
The coracoid process, a small hook-like structure on the lateral edge of the superior anterior portion of the scapula ... serves to stabilize the shoulder joint ... palpable in the deltopectoral groove between the deltoid and pectoralis major muscles.
In her dreams, she traces the spot, leans over to press her lips to it.
The lighthouse that used to keep her from the rocks.
Her hands are steady, and fast, but her eyes don't see a bloody wound, ragged flesh, clean incisions.
She has relearned her anatomy, and every body on her table is the same body, now.
Nerila cuts, stitches, bandages. Takes the money and the threats designed to keep her mouth shut. Scrubs blood from the table and from beneath her nails.
Afterimages linger on the inside of her eyelids, even though she knows the table is as empty as her bed.
The coracoid process, a small hook-like structure on the lateral edge of the superior anterior portion of the scapula ... serves to stabilize the shoulder joint ... palpable in the deltopectoral groove between the deltoid and pectoralis major muscles.
In her dreams, she traces the spot, leans over to press her lips to it.
The lighthouse that used to keep her from the rocks.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
The Stone Dancer
She is
between the earth
and the sky.
The drums roll endlessly through the low hollow of the earth.
She stands
for the people
and their place.
Hiri waits.
Everything she sees is very sharp and small. The last food she had was two days ago, on the evening she arrived here, in this place, this sacred place. Three days of walking beneath the sky, three nights of sleeping on the earth, made her ready. She rose the next morning and began to prepare.
See her
she is dancing
on the edge of the world.
For two days she has been sweeping the dancing ground, mixing the mud, chipping flakes of flint to make the knife. She coated her body with mud, pouring handfuls of it over her head until her hair was plastered back with it, until there is not the slightest fleck of her skin that shows brown through the pale grey mud. All the while she chewed the dulai leaf, and now her lips and tongue and throat are slightly numb and tingle.
Watch her
dancing.
Watch her!
Back in the city, Hiri knows that the dulai leaf has mildly narcotic properties, that it contains a compound used in pain medication. Back in the city she thinks of the people here today as the Salaajo Clan.
She is dancing
beneath the sky.
Here, she has no words except those spoken by her mother's mother's mother. She chews dulai because it is the dancer's plant. The people around her don't have a name given to them by their neighbours out of the need to diferentiate one group of people from another, salaajo, the grass-burners. They are only the People.
She is dancing
upon the earth.
The other dancers have started. This dance is too important for one dancer, even one older and more experienced than Hiri. The man they are dancing for is very sick. He killed a man, in a fight, when they were both drunk. It will take all their strength to bring him back to the dance.
Between sky and earth
she is dancing
in the wind.
Hiri is neither waiting nor expectant, but when the moment comes, she knows. Without thinking, she moves. The lines of dancers open for her and close around her.
Dancing
on the earth
beneath the sky.
The drums grow louder. They drown out the sound of the dancers' bare feet on the bare earth, but Hiri can hear it anyway, hear it through the soles of her feet as they strike the ground in unison with the the other dancers. They are twenty dancers. They are one dance.
In the wind
dancing
below the sky
dancing.
Sweat washes the mud from their bodies, acrid with the dulai they have all been chewing. Dust rises from their pounding feet, clinging to their skin. They look like they have been carved out of the ground, rocks given life, stone, dancing.
Between the people
and their past
stone dancing.
One by one the other dancers whirl to a stop, sink to their knees, panting. The drums fade. Hiri leaps and turns alone, the knife held high. Each circuit brings her closer and closer to the reason they are all here today. The sick man stands still, waiting. He is afraid, Hiri knows. He said so, in the long hours he spent with Hiri and the other shamen as they prepared him for this day. He is afraid, but he wants to be well. Wants, again, to be part of the People and their dance.
After the future
behind the dawn
the dance.
Hiri reaches him, and he meets her gaze. She can see in his face that in this moment they want the same thing: that he be made well, and that he live through the healing.
She takes a deep breath, and raises the knife.
between the earth
and the sky.
The drums roll endlessly through the low hollow of the earth.
She stands
for the people
and their place.
Hiri waits.
Everything she sees is very sharp and small. The last food she had was two days ago, on the evening she arrived here, in this place, this sacred place. Three days of walking beneath the sky, three nights of sleeping on the earth, made her ready. She rose the next morning and began to prepare.
See her
she is dancing
on the edge of the world.
For two days she has been sweeping the dancing ground, mixing the mud, chipping flakes of flint to make the knife. She coated her body with mud, pouring handfuls of it over her head until her hair was plastered back with it, until there is not the slightest fleck of her skin that shows brown through the pale grey mud. All the while she chewed the dulai leaf, and now her lips and tongue and throat are slightly numb and tingle.
Watch her
dancing.
Watch her!
Back in the city, Hiri knows that the dulai leaf has mildly narcotic properties, that it contains a compound used in pain medication. Back in the city she thinks of the people here today as the Salaajo Clan.
She is dancing
beneath the sky.
Here, she has no words except those spoken by her mother's mother's mother. She chews dulai because it is the dancer's plant. The people around her don't have a name given to them by their neighbours out of the need to diferentiate one group of people from another, salaajo, the grass-burners. They are only the People.
She is dancing
upon the earth.
The other dancers have started. This dance is too important for one dancer, even one older and more experienced than Hiri. The man they are dancing for is very sick. He killed a man, in a fight, when they were both drunk. It will take all their strength to bring him back to the dance.
Between sky and earth
she is dancing
in the wind.
Hiri is neither waiting nor expectant, but when the moment comes, she knows. Without thinking, she moves. The lines of dancers open for her and close around her.
Dancing
on the earth
beneath the sky.
The drums grow louder. They drown out the sound of the dancers' bare feet on the bare earth, but Hiri can hear it anyway, hear it through the soles of her feet as they strike the ground in unison with the the other dancers. They are twenty dancers. They are one dance.
In the wind
dancing
below the sky
dancing.
Sweat washes the mud from their bodies, acrid with the dulai they have all been chewing. Dust rises from their pounding feet, clinging to their skin. They look like they have been carved out of the ground, rocks given life, stone, dancing.
Between the people
and their past
stone dancing.
One by one the other dancers whirl to a stop, sink to their knees, panting. The drums fade. Hiri leaps and turns alone, the knife held high. Each circuit brings her closer and closer to the reason they are all here today. The sick man stands still, waiting. He is afraid, Hiri knows. He said so, in the long hours he spent with Hiri and the other shamen as they prepared him for this day. He is afraid, but he wants to be well. Wants, again, to be part of the People and their dance.
After the future
behind the dawn
the dance.
Hiri reaches him, and he meets her gaze. She can see in his face that in this moment they want the same thing: that he be made well, and that he live through the healing.
She takes a deep breath, and raises the knife.
Impossible
Hurts.
She needs to think.
Think.
But she can't. There's pain, pain of a kind she's never felt before. There's the knife.
She's pretty sure she's in shock.
Knowing doesn't help.
She stares at the knife. It's a big one. Her mother gave it to her when she moved here to Urbald for college. Every kitchen needs a good knife, Hiri. Now give me a zat. A knife can never be a gift. Give a knife as a gift and it cuts love.
Hiri thinks that maybe she didn't give her mother enough money. Maybe if she'd given a difar instead of a zat ...
She knows every contour, every flaw, of the handle. She's seen that knife every day for a year and a half.
Hiri thinks that maybe she didn't give her mother enough money. Maybe if she'd given a difar instead of a zat ...
She knows every contour, every flaw, of the handle. She's seen that knife every day for a year and a half.
She's never seen it before.
Have to think.
It's not possible. It is, quite simply, impossible. The knife her mother gave her is stuck upright, tip wedged firmly into the top of the kitchen table.
Between the hilt of the knife and the tip is her hand.
The knife is going through my hand.
It's impossible.
It's even less possible that Jemadar put it there.
Not by accident.
I had to tell him I was leaving. I needed my ID, my bankchip.
The keys to unlock the front door.
All those things are lying an inch from her fingers, just where he put them, just where they were when she reached for them and Jemadar picked up the knife ...
Not possible.
And yet.
There is the knife. There is her hand.
Have to think.
Thinking is something else that is impossible.
She can sense an idea looming at the edge of her mind, an idea that she can't bear to have, an idea she pushes away as hard as she can.
The only way I'm getting out of here is if I pull out the knife.
The thought makes her retch. She can't, she won't, she can't touch the knife. Pull it out of her hand?
Impossible.
Hiri is still staring at the knife when Jemadar comes back.
There isn't a single word inside her that she can speak to him.
He doesn't say a thing.
Not by accident.
I had to tell him I was leaving. I needed my ID, my bankchip.
The keys to unlock the front door.
All those things are lying an inch from her fingers, just where he put them, just where they were when she reached for them and Jemadar picked up the knife ...
Not possible.
And yet.
There is the knife. There is her hand.
Have to think.
Thinking is something else that is impossible.
She can sense an idea looming at the edge of her mind, an idea that she can't bear to have, an idea she pushes away as hard as she can.
The only way I'm getting out of here is if I pull out the knife.
The thought makes her retch. She can't, she won't, she can't touch the knife. Pull it out of her hand?
Impossible.
Hiri is still staring at the knife when Jemadar comes back.
There isn't a single word inside her that she can speak to him.
He doesn't say a thing.
He spills something on the floor. It smells tangy, ozoney, like the fumes from the shuttlebus.
He has a match.
It's not possible. Impossible.
Unpossible.
She wonders why there's no such word as unpossible. There should be. It's a good word.
It's unpossible that the floor is in fire. It's unpossible that he's leaving.It's unpossible that she can hear the key turn in the lock as he closes the door behind him.
Her keys are still on the table.
The knife is still in her hand.
Impossible.
There's a new smell, along with the mechanical odor of whatever is running in rivers of fire around her. It smells like the smoke that drifts from the roasting pits in the camps after the dances.
It's not a calf on a spit that she can smell.
It's her.
Impossible.
She reaches for the hilt.
The world is full of flame.
Im -
Possible.
He has a match.
It's not possible. Impossible.
Unpossible.
She wonders why there's no such word as unpossible. There should be. It's a good word.
It's unpossible that the floor is in fire. It's unpossible that he's leaving.It's unpossible that she can hear the key turn in the lock as he closes the door behind him.
Her keys are still on the table.
The knife is still in her hand.
Impossible.
There's a new smell, along with the mechanical odor of whatever is running in rivers of fire around her. It smells like the smoke that drifts from the roasting pits in the camps after the dances.
It's not a calf on a spit that she can smell.
It's her.
Impossible.
She reaches for the hilt.
The world is full of flame.
Im -
Possible.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Conversations on the Fortune's Fist: Fifteen
Nerila didn't hear him the first time.
The thoughts that raced and crowded and tumbled through her head, pushing each other aside before she could bring them in focus, Pilot's tests - Crew - pod maintenance - need to make that bed - hire new medtech - stove needs cleaning - check Alpassi's scans - inventory assessment, drowned out Mitch's voice until he took her by the shoulders and turned her to face him.
"Talk to me. Sweetheart. Please."
Her heart did a little double thump at what she saw in his face, and her thoughts went straight to the glass vial tucked down at the bottom of her pocket. Hidden. Hidden well enough? Safe? "Nothing, nothing's wrong, I'm just distracted. Too much to do, you know?"
"Sweetheart," Mitch said softly. "Don't take me for a fool."
The lie was ready on her lips, rehearsed. Hells, rehearsed. Because she'd been ready for this moment, not knowing who it would be, but knowing it would come. Like it always does. Like it had last time, time and time over. She knew how to handle it, had handled it a dozen times before.
First denial. No, of course not. Perhaps with a touch of outraged anger. How could you think that of me? If that didn't work, carefully calibrated admissions. I did try it. I know it was silly. Or I do occasionally, yes. Not more than once a month.
All of it, tried and true strategies.
She looked into his eyes and realized there was nothing in her that could lie to this man, not this man, not Michael Mitcheson, not her husband.
"I'm sorry," she said, instead. "I'm sorry."
"How much?" he asked. "For how long?"
How much? Enough. Isn't that the only answer? "Too much," she said at last, looking away from him. "Too long."
"Sweetheart." He tightened his grip a little on her shoulders. "You have to deal with it. Get clean. Time off, whatever."
"I know, I know. When I get this last lot of tests through for Pilot, I'll - "
Mitch shook his head. "No. It won't ever be the right time, sweetheart. There'll always be something else. Another reason."
Nerila bit her lip. "I can't, not yet, not right now..."
"You can. You have to." He folded her in his arms, whispered to the top of her head. "I'm here, sweetheart. We'll get through this. We will."
Then she could lie to him, look up and meet his gaze and smile and say "I know. I know."
Because there was no we. In everything else, maybe.
Not in this.
After that, it was easy, so easy it felt inevitable. I'll put in for leave. Today. This is it.
It'll be hard. I'll need you.
She watched him leave for his duty shift.
She packed a bag.
Not with much. A couple of changes of clothes.
She left her wedding ring on the dresser.
The transport hub was crowded. Old men walking with sticks, children clinging to parents' hands and gazing around wide-eyed, sullen teenagers with too much makeup.
Everybody trying to get to somewhere that isn't where they are.
She picked a destination. Pochelympe . Nowhere she'd ever heard of. She liked the name, liked saying it over to herself as she waited in line to buy a ticket. Pochelympe. Pochelympe. Pochelympe.
Pochelympe.
A simple transaction, which she found a little disappointing. Moments like this should have some sort of complicated rigmarole attached. Maybe a ritual.
No ritual. Just pushing her bank chip across the counter and the clerk pushing it back with a ticket, not even looking up from the holonovel he's watching beneath the desk.
And then she's taking the short walk to the Interbus, pushing her way through the mass of people, all trying to be somewhere or someone they aren't.
The crowds close around her.
And she's gone.
The thoughts that raced and crowded and tumbled through her head, pushing each other aside before she could bring them in focus, Pilot's tests - Crew - pod maintenance - need to make that bed - hire new medtech - stove needs cleaning - check Alpassi's scans - inventory assessment, drowned out Mitch's voice until he took her by the shoulders and turned her to face him.
"Talk to me. Sweetheart. Please."
Her heart did a little double thump at what she saw in his face, and her thoughts went straight to the glass vial tucked down at the bottom of her pocket. Hidden. Hidden well enough? Safe? "Nothing, nothing's wrong, I'm just distracted. Too much to do, you know?"
"Sweetheart," Mitch said softly. "Don't take me for a fool."
The lie was ready on her lips, rehearsed. Hells, rehearsed. Because she'd been ready for this moment, not knowing who it would be, but knowing it would come. Like it always does. Like it had last time, time and time over. She knew how to handle it, had handled it a dozen times before.
First denial. No, of course not. Perhaps with a touch of outraged anger. How could you think that of me? If that didn't work, carefully calibrated admissions. I did try it. I know it was silly. Or I do occasionally, yes. Not more than once a month.
All of it, tried and true strategies.
She looked into his eyes and realized there was nothing in her that could lie to this man, not this man, not Michael Mitcheson, not her husband.
"I'm sorry," she said, instead. "I'm sorry."
"How much?" he asked. "For how long?"
How much? Enough. Isn't that the only answer? "Too much," she said at last, looking away from him. "Too long."
"Sweetheart." He tightened his grip a little on her shoulders. "You have to deal with it. Get clean. Time off, whatever."
"I know, I know. When I get this last lot of tests through for Pilot, I'll - "
Mitch shook his head. "No. It won't ever be the right time, sweetheart. There'll always be something else. Another reason."
Nerila bit her lip. "I can't, not yet, not right now..."
"You can. You have to." He folded her in his arms, whispered to the top of her head. "I'm here, sweetheart. We'll get through this. We will."
Then she could lie to him, look up and meet his gaze and smile and say "I know. I know."
Because there was no we. In everything else, maybe.
Not in this.
After that, it was easy, so easy it felt inevitable. I'll put in for leave. Today. This is it.
It'll be hard. I'll need you.
She watched him leave for his duty shift.
She packed a bag.
Not with much. A couple of changes of clothes.
She left her wedding ring on the dresser.
The transport hub was crowded. Old men walking with sticks, children clinging to parents' hands and gazing around wide-eyed, sullen teenagers with too much makeup.
Everybody trying to get to somewhere that isn't where they are.
She picked a destination. Pochelympe . Nowhere she'd ever heard of. She liked the name, liked saying it over to herself as she waited in line to buy a ticket. Pochelympe. Pochelympe. Pochelympe.
Pochelympe.
A simple transaction, which she found a little disappointing. Moments like this should have some sort of complicated rigmarole attached. Maybe a ritual.
No ritual. Just pushing her bank chip across the counter and the clerk pushing it back with a ticket, not even looking up from the holonovel he's watching beneath the desk.
And then she's taking the short walk to the Interbus, pushing her way through the mass of people, all trying to be somewhere or someone they aren't.
The crowds close around her.
And she's gone.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Ghosts
The Void. The Black. The Deep Beyond.
Every culture has its own term for the infinite darkness out between the stars.
The Big Empty. The Widow-maker. The Endless.
Space isn't all dark, of course, and it isn't all empty. There are stars boiling with furious light, comets streaking their way through long orbits around their suns, planets spinning lazy ellipses with their own followers of moons and ice.
The Vast. The Big Null. The Ship-Eater.
There are the defiant lights of the people of the Cluster, too: stations with their docking beacons and every window shining; the Gates flashing a blaze of color every time a ship jumps through; ships of every shape and size, from shuttle to titans, plying their busy way between the stars.
But space is big, and the lights are small, even the incandescent furnaces of the stars.
In between them is the dark.
And the dark, as any child can tell you, is where the ghosts live.
The Cold Hereafter. The Infinite Sea.The Forever Night.
There are a lot of ghosts in the dark between the stars.
Some pilots say they hear them, half-asleep in the pod, in the blink between here and there of the jumpgate. Voices. Whose voices, well, that's a different question. The dead. The damned. The unborn.
Some engineers say they can hear them in the hum of the engine and the whine of the capacitor: the ghost of the ship, the spirit of the steel around them. Singing. No, I don't know the tune.
There are stories of ships that have particular ghosts: a rifter that always set its own autopilot to the homeworld of the previous captain, who'd died on board but not in pod; a myrmidon with a guardian spirit that appeared as a woman made of flame to lead crew trapped by an explosion safely through corridors choked with smoke.
Some less harmless, like the freighter whose crew, stranded in slow orbit by engine failure, drew lots to see who would survive on the limited life support and the flesh of their colleagues, and which, repainted, renamed and relaunched, was halfway through its next voyage when the ship's cook woke from a strange dream to find herself preparing a fricassee of the first mate.
Ships that cry and ships that bleed, ships that send their crew mad and ships that set course for the sun of their own accord and will not answer to the helm. There are stories about all of those, told in the crew bars along the dockside, late in the evening.
Spend a few weeks on a ship, any ship, and its easy to see where the stories come from. Dopplered static on the comms, signals caught and echoed and distorted by any one of a thousand kinds of interference, voices from the past, half-heard, a quarter-understood. Ships found drifting, empty, ownerless: sometimes with a gaping rent in the hull to show what happened; sometimes with the escape pods missing and all the signs of an orderly evacuation; sometimes with the crew still at their posts, white and stiff and rimed with frost.
Sometimes, most unnerving, ships in perfect working order, with no sign of any emergency - a pot set on a cold stove, spoon still propped across it, as if the cook had stepped away from a moment and would be right back; a coffee cup on the captain's desk and just one bed in the crew quarters unmade. Coming across one of those ships gives the disturbing feeling that the crew have simply, and only seconds ago, vanished.
Or that they're still there, unseen, unheard. Waiting.
Ghosts.
Signals skipping across the interface, ending up in places they were never meant to go. Drifting hulls. Ships slipping on and off the registry lists, undocking here and sliding out into the dark to disappear until the crew disembarks there off a different ship with a different name. The Bright Spark; the Sapphire Star; the Magpie.
Ghosts.
Every faction and corporation has its ships that can run silent and lie hidden off the grid, for all intents and purposes just another piece of space-junk until the systems fire up and the guns go live. Not every war is declared.
The Kogaru Io; the Felton May; the Toshkaiska.
Ghost ships fighting ghost wars.
The official response to any question is laughter. Ghosts? You know how superstitious spacers can be! No, we certainly don't employ any 'ghosts'. There's no such thing!
Everyone knows there's no such thing as ghosts.
Except out in the Void, the Vast, the Deep Beyond, at the back of the Big Empty, wrapped up in the Endless, and the mercy of the Infinite Sea.
There's no such thing as ghosts, except where the ghosts live.
In the dark behind the stars.
The Big Empty. The Widow-maker. The Endless.
Space isn't all dark, of course, and it isn't all empty. There are stars boiling with furious light, comets streaking their way through long orbits around their suns, planets spinning lazy ellipses with their own followers of moons and ice.
The Vast. The Big Null. The Ship-Eater.
There are the defiant lights of the people of the Cluster, too: stations with their docking beacons and every window shining; the Gates flashing a blaze of color every time a ship jumps through; ships of every shape and size, from shuttle to titans, plying their busy way between the stars.
But space is big, and the lights are small, even the incandescent furnaces of the stars.
In between them is the dark.
And the dark, as any child can tell you, is where the ghosts live.
The Cold Hereafter. The Infinite Sea.The Forever Night.
There are a lot of ghosts in the dark between the stars.
Some pilots say they hear them, half-asleep in the pod, in the blink between here and there of the jumpgate. Voices. Whose voices, well, that's a different question. The dead. The damned. The unborn.
Some engineers say they can hear them in the hum of the engine and the whine of the capacitor: the ghost of the ship, the spirit of the steel around them. Singing. No, I don't know the tune.
There are stories of ships that have particular ghosts: a rifter that always set its own autopilot to the homeworld of the previous captain, who'd died on board but not in pod; a myrmidon with a guardian spirit that appeared as a woman made of flame to lead crew trapped by an explosion safely through corridors choked with smoke.
Some less harmless, like the freighter whose crew, stranded in slow orbit by engine failure, drew lots to see who would survive on the limited life support and the flesh of their colleagues, and which, repainted, renamed and relaunched, was halfway through its next voyage when the ship's cook woke from a strange dream to find herself preparing a fricassee of the first mate.
Ships that cry and ships that bleed, ships that send their crew mad and ships that set course for the sun of their own accord and will not answer to the helm. There are stories about all of those, told in the crew bars along the dockside, late in the evening.
Spend a few weeks on a ship, any ship, and its easy to see where the stories come from. Dopplered static on the comms, signals caught and echoed and distorted by any one of a thousand kinds of interference, voices from the past, half-heard, a quarter-understood. Ships found drifting, empty, ownerless: sometimes with a gaping rent in the hull to show what happened; sometimes with the escape pods missing and all the signs of an orderly evacuation; sometimes with the crew still at their posts, white and stiff and rimed with frost.
Sometimes, most unnerving, ships in perfect working order, with no sign of any emergency - a pot set on a cold stove, spoon still propped across it, as if the cook had stepped away from a moment and would be right back; a coffee cup on the captain's desk and just one bed in the crew quarters unmade. Coming across one of those ships gives the disturbing feeling that the crew have simply, and only seconds ago, vanished.
Or that they're still there, unseen, unheard. Waiting.
Ghosts.
Signals skipping across the interface, ending up in places they were never meant to go. Drifting hulls. Ships slipping on and off the registry lists, undocking here and sliding out into the dark to disappear until the crew disembarks there off a different ship with a different name. The Bright Spark; the Sapphire Star; the Magpie.
Ghosts.
Every faction and corporation has its ships that can run silent and lie hidden off the grid, for all intents and purposes just another piece of space-junk until the systems fire up and the guns go live. Not every war is declared.
The Kogaru Io; the Felton May; the Toshkaiska.
Ghost ships fighting ghost wars.
The official response to any question is laughter. Ghosts? You know how superstitious spacers can be! No, we certainly don't employ any 'ghosts'. There's no such thing!
Everyone knows there's no such thing as ghosts.
Except out in the Void, the Vast, the Deep Beyond, at the back of the Big Empty, wrapped up in the Endless, and the mercy of the Infinite Sea.
There's no such thing as ghosts, except where the ghosts live.
In the dark behind the stars.
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