Take Us to Your Chief (8 page)

When tomorrow came, a dozen hours later, she entered the lab. It was quiet. Her meeting with King was in half an hour, but she had come in early, wanting to check on the
SDDPP
. She began with a simple “Goo
d morning.”

N
o response.

She waited five minutes before tryin
g again.

Nothing.

Nine minutes spent fiddling with the interface cables and anything that might prevent communication with the
AI
was futile. As a last resort, she checked the hard drive that contained all that was th
e
SDDPP
.

It had been wiped clean. It was empty. Chambers let out a short cough of surprise. It was gone, like the tribes the
AI
had mentioned only yesterday. In a nervous gesture, she seized the lapel of her jacket, gripping it tightly. All sorts of questions ran through her mind… But she could come up with n
o answers.

Almost by accident, she saw a small display light, indicating there was a message waiting for her. Tentatively, she clicked the icon. The last message from the
AI
appeared on th
e screen.

“
I was.
”

Lost in Space

…nothing…

…everything is nothing…

…and nothing is everything…

…only breathing…

…and my thoughts…

Like a dinosaur-destroying meteor crashing into a primitive planet, a loud buzzer suddenly dragged the free-floating man out of his perceptual world and into the hard reality of technology surroundin
g him.

Mitchell had been hovering effortlessly, drifting both in the gravity vacuum of space and, more interestingly, in and out of consciousness. Small tethers from the right shoulder and left pant cuff of his jumpsuit anchored him to opposing bulkheads. This was to make sure he didn't bump into the walls of the ship and ruin his fun. His mind had no such restrictions and had meandered back and forth between alpha, beta, delta and all remaining brain-wave frequencies. The small room was dark and the temperature was neutral. A sort of purgatory. Additionally, the oxygen in this hyperbaric chamber had been reduced to the minimum, allowing for a more recreational time alone. In other words, he was mellowing out in the twenty-first-century version of an improvised isolation tank. Or he ha
d been.

“Mitchell. I am sorry to interrupt you, but…”

There was a slight hiss as the ship's computer injected more oxygen into the chamber, forcing Mitchell into a fully consciou
s state.

After a few seconds, he struggled to find his voice. “Yo, Mac, that wa
s cruel.”

As usual, his throat was a little tender from working twice as hard to take in half as much oxygen. He noticed the light level increasing the visibility of the opaque blue walls surroundin
g him.

“Again, I a
m sorry.”

Even in his foggy state, Mitchell was sure he could hear a subtle Newfoundland accent coming from the ship's verbal access interface. No doubt a joke from the people who had programmed Mac, short fo
r Machine.

“Are you, Mac? Do you know what ‘sorry' actually means or feels like?” Mitchell yawned as the oxygen flushed hi
s system.

“I have done the research. I believe I have a
n approximation.”

Mitchell quickly checked the stat board embedded in the wall four feet in front of him to make sure everything was working as it should in the chamber and, correspondingly, in his body. As monotonously as usual, everything wa
s fine.

“Let's leave that philosophical discussion for another time. I assume you have a reason for harshing m
y buzz?”

“I don't understand. This is not your siesta period, as you call it, yet you appear to be sleeping. Are yo
u unwell?”

Not this again, thought Mitchell. The problem with these computerized human personality approximations was their limited understanding of the true human condition, though they frequently claimed to understand it. That was the frustrating part. He'd always meant to send a scathing report to the people who programmed these things, but they probably wouldn't do a damned thing about it. Mitchell would simply have to suffer in silence, and silence was the norm in oute
r space.

“I was not sleeping. I was giving my brain
a rest.”

There was a pause as the machine processed this. “And this involves manipulating the oxygen, light and gravity levels in the hyperbaric chamber? Judging by your bio readings, you were barel
y conscious.”

Typically, Mac, or any of the new types of synthesized intellects, wouldn't understand the concept of getting high, or wanting to take a break from reality. They only had reality; that was the total purpose of their existence. Their primary function—to deal with the reality of crossing vast expanses of nothing, for intolerable periods of time and dealing with a thousand different ways the universe could kill a human. Mac didn't understand that out here, reconnoitring the asteroid belt for valuable minerals, things could get a little lonely and boring, so an individual planning to remain sane had to do what he could to keep himself amused. What with the strict restrictions on recreational pharmaceuticals, which could easily be scanned and identified by Launchport headquarters, this was the best Mitchell could do. Unfortunately, it wasn't exactly a high—more of a heightened or altered state. If he was lucky, maybe he'd hallucinate—a self-generated trip. It wasn't much; in fact, it was kind of desperate, but out here anything was better than nothing. He also had Mac looking over his shoulder should some mishap occur. He knew Mac was more than likely to put this in the report to the company that owned and operated this ship, but he figured he could probably talk his way out of it. He was good at that. This two-year tour was his third long-term mission and he was slated for a fourth, six months after getting back. Still, that didn't explain why Mac had woken hi
m up.

“Just leave it alone, Mac, and answer my question. Why did you interrupt m
y downtime?”

“There was a message fo
r you.”

“Was i
t important?”

“Depends on how you define important. That is a purely subjectiv
e judgment.”

If it was possible to throttle a machine, that is exactly what Mitchell would be doing right now. Instead, he took a deep breath of the richer
O
₂ levels and reformulated the question. “Is it time-sensitive? Relevant to the safety of the ship or myself? Does it substantively change the nature or direction of ou
r mission?”

Again, a momentary delay. “No.”

“Then I guess it wasn't important, wa
s it?”

While he was up, he might as well get something to eat. The food substitutes weren't especially tasty, but at least eating helped pass the time between asteroid scans. True space exploration consisted largely o
f boredom.

“Your grandfather Peter Shabagwis has died.” Mitchell stopped breathing for a second. “Although this news does not fall under any of the categories you mentioned, I believe—based on my knowledge of human nature—it can still be classified as ‘important.' Am I in error? I ask only in case a similar situation should arise in the future. I believe you have another grandfather back on Earth, and one remainin
g grandmother.”

Papa Peter was dead. This was such a surprise. Although Papa Peter had been well into his eighties, Mitchell thought Papa Peter would outlive him and everybody in the family. He was that kind of man. Old but not infirm. Aged but not weak. Slow but still sharp. And just damn tough. Now he was no more, while Mitchell floated out here, farther away than the old man could ever imagine. Part of him wished Mac had not woken him with thi
s announcement.

“No, Mac, you did the righ
t thing.”

Disembarking from the chamber, Mitchell immediately felt the resumption of faux gravity, so called because it was a system of magnetic attraction instead of legitimate gravity. A metallic resin added to the material in his clothing interacted with a small magnetic force coming from the deck plates to give a rudimentary sense of gravitational pull. His organs and hair still knew there was in fact no downward drag, but at least the added effort of movement kept his muscle degeneration at about 40 percent of the expected level, meaning longer, less debilitating trips i
n space.

“Do you need me to d
o anything?”

Lost in thought, Mitchell shook his head before remembering Mac did not have interior optical sensors. “No thanks, Mac. I'll take it fro
m here.”

Papa Peter. His Native grandfather. The only real Aboriginal influence in his life. The remaining two forebears were non-Native, and his mother—Papa Peter's daughter—had died when Mitchell was nine years old. He had only met the man in person a half-dozen times but had felt a certain kinship. His grandfather had always tested him, in positive ways, like making him explain as a child why the universe above was more important than the world below. Once the boy had figured that out and found a way to explain it logically and passionately, his career had been chosen. A good chunk of Papa Peter's philosophy of life could be summed up in a simple sentence: “Step up and represent, or just go home. No room in th
e middle.”

In postings and video chats, the old man had shown a greater interest in Mitchell's life than most of his closer relatives. And when he was first offered these astronomical forays, Peter Shabagwis had been excited for him, maybe even a littl
e envious.

“When I was young, they had just landed on the moon. Such adventures. Bring me back a rock. A pretty one. Maybe it will help me get
a girlfriend.”

That was in his last video message, a couple days before Mitchell left the confines of Earth. He had not yet found a rock worthy of his grandfather, but he would now, and then he would return to his grandfather's community and lay it on the man's grave. He had a whole asteroid belt to pick from. Yes, it was against protocol for extraterrestrial objects to be handled so casually. Quarantine would definitely be upset. But right now, Mitchell didn't really care. Where he was now, what he was doing, looking for the known in a universe of the unknown and then returning it to what his grandfather's people called Turtle Island for the betterment of everyone—this was the only tribute he could manage for th
e man.

Back in his quarters, Mitchell searched for the file containing the recorded messages sent to him from Papa Peter, Otter Lake First Nation, Planet Earth. He sat and watched four-and-a-half hours of video messages from his grandfather, sitting in front of the same unremarkable kitchen background, wearing the same baseball cap. Playing back to back the ten years of messages he'd collected during his multiple survey trips, he noticed something that had escaped him in past viewings. He could see his grandfather getting older, greyer, aging with each recording. The man still bubbled with vitality, especially when he laughed, but it was easy to see the passing years etching their signature on hi
s face.

One of his grandfather's last communications got Mitchell thinking. The old man had posed some interesting questions, sitting at his kitchen table, ruminating on his grandson's career. Just idle thoughts about the nature of space travel and Aboriginal identity, two things not usually found together. “Kitchen talk,” he called it. If he had looked outside the ship, Mitchell would have seen Ceres, one of the largest asteroids in the solar system, a scant million kilometres or so off the port side. Already well surveyed and picked over, it held no mystery or potential for his mission, but this was a moot point, for the astronaut's mind was back on Earth, sitting in a ramshackle kitchen, enjoying som
e tea.

“You know, I was thinking about you the other night. I couldn't sleep, so I went outside and looked way up into the heavens. I knew in a few weeks you would be up there somewhere going about your job, just like I am down here in my little cabin, washing the dishes. Boy, when I was a kid I used to think the store, with all its candy, was so far away. I had to walk so far to lose all my teeth. I guess we learn things all the time, huh?”

For a moment the old man's eyes grew distant, but then the lopsided smile Mitchell knew so wel
l returned.

“I want you to think about something. Everything I was taught about being Anishinabe was tied to the land. Everything we were, everything we did came from our relationship to this chunk of earth our people stand on. I know you weren't raised much with our traditions, but I like to think somewhere deep inside you is a fair-sized chunk of Anishinabe, just like those expensive minerals you look for in all those rocks way up there. Maybe that's why you're s
o handsome.”

Now it was Mitchell's turn t
o smile.

“But being Native in space… Now that's a head-scratcher. Think about it. We sprang from Turtle Island. The earth and water are so tied to who we are. There's an old saying, ‘The voice of the land is in our language.' But what happens when you aren't able to run your fingers through the sand along the river? Or walk barefoot in the grass? Or feel the summer breeze blowing through your hair? Nothing natural, only manufactured things around you. Manufactured water, manufactured food, manufactured air. Even manufactured gravity. I understand you even got a manufactured friend up there to talk to. I know that everything we are we carry inside us, but I can't help wondering if it's possible to be a good, proper Native astronaut. Sometimes I get weird thoughts, huh?”

Mitchell froze the image of Papa Peter on his monitor and let his grandfather's smile hover continuously a few feet from his face. Maybe the old man was right. The few things Mitchell had picked up from the elder did seem to contradict everything the astrosurveyor did. First and foremost, no matter how hard he tried, he just could not see Papa Peter, who had dressed perpetually in jeans and denim or plaid shirts, up here in the coveralls Mitchell had been issued. He might have been allowed to keep his baseball cap, though. Nor could the young man imagine his grandfather eating the food, which was bland no matter how much the Mineral Cops tried to liven up the meals. Papa Peter would probably have said there was “never enough salt in this stuff you cal
l food!”

But it was the broader implications his grandfather had brought up that raised uncomfortable and complicated issues. Papa Peter burned sage every morning to greet the new day and honour the Four Directions. So many things in Mitchell's current environment made that simple practice impossible. He might be allowed to bring sage on board, but he certainly couldn't light it in this oxygen-enriched atmosphere that had rather severe and unforgiving fire-suppression technology. Half a second after he ignited the sage, the entire ship would be breathing a distasteful and obnoxious fire retardant that had been sprayed into the ventilation system. It would take days to get rid of th
e smell.