The Seeds of Time (47 page)

She pulled back. “Hey. That’s all right,” she said. “Catch you some other time, maybe.”

“Clio …” he began.

“Look, Ashe,” she said. “How many missions you been
on? You got to know how bedding down works on a ship like this. Don’t take it too seriously, just take your pleasure real easy, and nobody makes a big deal out of it.” She swung her legs off the bunk.

“You’re
making a big deal out of it,” he said quietly.

Clio stared at him.

“Yes, you are. You’re hurt, and trying to toss it off. At least be straight with me.”

“Well, son of a bitch. You be straight with
me
. You like me or not?”

“Sure I like you. Doesn’t mean I have to use sex to prove it.”

“OK, fine.” Clio called up a gentle smile, one that wouldn’t look too obvious. “I got it. You don’t have to prove anything. OK, fine.” She sprang up, headed for the sink. Ran the cold spigot and washed the sleep and frustration off her face.

Water running, she heard Ashe say, “Talking with you is like a tennis match, Clio. Why don’t you say what you goddamn mean?”

That one set her off. She grabbed a towel, furiously drying her face. “You know, Ashe, you been reading too much pop psychology. You want to practice psychology, try asking yourself why sex is a number-one huge production for you. Ask yourself why you got some unnatural curiosity about my personal feelings, my past, my brother, things I don’t tell
anybody
, much less some guy who doesn’t tell me null about himself and who holes up in a botany lab all day reading paperbacks and playing vids and criticizing who my friends are. Ask yourself why you come in here while I’m sleeping and wait on me hand and foot, and rub my back, and then when I try to say thank you, back off double time.”

“That’s your way of thanking me?”

He was sitting there looking very serious, even a little sad, if that was possible under the circumstances. But with Ashe, any reaction seemed possible.

“Ashe,” she said. “Just get the hell out of my quarters.”

“You know,” he said, standing up, “so far you seem to
have two emotions, Clio. Wary and hostile. If you have trouble getting men into your bed, you might try on a different mood.”

“Get the bloody hell out of here.”

But he was already on his way.

It was eleven days out in shiptime when the
Galactique
began to stink.

Army used barracks jokes to cover their nervousness, but the crew didn’t laugh. In truth, bad smells were no laughing matter aboard a spacecraft. It meant that the lithium hydroxide canisters in the air-circulation system were failing to filter not only bad smells, but carbon dioxide. Thus, while army told their potty jokes, edgy Biotime crew checked each canister, pulling up floor sections on the crew and mid-decks, and replacing each unit with a fresh canister.

Still, something wasn’t working.

This shift the captain sent Clio to assist with air-circulation checks, his way of underscoring his authority and her dubious status: a pilot, but no rank. Dive pilot, by God, but no
Lieutenant
Finn. She took time to fetch Petya from botany lab and then reported to Susan Imanishi, chief engineer, in front of the access hatch to lower deck. She nodded to Imanishi. “OK. Let’s go.”

Imanishi looked dubiously up at Petya.

At that moment the hatch opened and Corporal Lewis of the galley wars climbed through from lower deck. Behind him, maintenance crew handing up a foot-wide electronics panel for servicing. Imanishi made way for them.

Lewis wore a head bandage.

“Nice hat,” Clio said. Took Petya by the hand and shouldered past Lewis.

“You dirtbag bitch,” he said, behind her.

“He called you a bad name,” Petya said as they clambered through the hatch.

“Yeah, guess he doesn’t like me very much.”

“That’s OK. He doesn’t like me either.”

God. Clio stopped, halfway through the hatch. “He been bothering you?”

Petya looked sideways. “Not really.”

Lower deck embraced them with its snaking pipes and muttering of ship systems. Here, in ship’s bowels, all pretense of human quarters dropped away and you knew for sure you were just in a metal tube with a bit of air and heat, while outside lay space, inimical space.

Imanishi’s voice came in a rain-barrel fullness from further into lower deck: “Make sure he doesn’t bang anything with his head.”

Petya had to crouch slightly, to avoid the pipes coiling along the ceiling. He touched one of the sweaty tubes, and a slipstream of water slinked down his arm. He pulled back, shaking his hand.

“Don’t touch anything,” Imanishi said.

“This isn’t a china shop, ease up,” Clio said to her.

The hiss and sigh of hydraulics surrounded them, along with the acrid smell of oil and metal. A faint, almost imperceptible glow underlaid the dim fluorescent light peeking out from the mass of coated wires and threading pipes.

Imanishi made her way to the back floor panels, and knelt to pull them up.

“There are slug trails down here,” Petya said, running his hands along the stowage panels on the outside bulkhead. He crouched down, leaning into the exposed stowage locker, throwing a shadow into Imanishi’s way. She glared at him. She pressed a finger against his shoulder, pushing him away with the least possible contact. Petya sat back on his haunches while she pulled out the lithium hydroxide canisters.

The lights pulsed down and then back up. All three of them looked up from the canisters toward the ceiling where the wire-covered bulbs burned. Pulses like that weren’t good, meant a power surge, and that shouldn’t be
happening. During the half-second of gloom, Clio saw an orangish phosphorescence streaking over the panels around her. Afterimage on her retina? Then, with the lights back up, she saw the canister indicator light blinking red, flashing against the wet pipes and the sheen on their faces.

“These are the major CO
₂
filters. They shouldn’t be anywhere near depleted,” Imanishi said.

“CO
₂
filters are broken?” Petya asked.

“What’s it goddamn look like?” Imanishi said. She opened the readout panel on the first canister and pushed Reset, with no result.

“Reset button doesn’t work?”

Imanishi looked up at Petya with a snarl in her eyes.

“Broken?” he pressed on.

Imanishi switched her glare to Clio.

Clio smiled a whatcha-gonna-do smile.

“Help me haul these things upstairs,” the engineer said. “We’re going to open these babies up and see what’s the trouble.”

Petya nodded, and hoisted both canisters on his shoulders.

“I can help fix these?” Petya asked.

“And pigs can fly?” Imanishi responded in cruel imitation.

As Petya grabbed for a ladder rung, the lights dipped again. On the canister closest to Clio, a lambent orange fingerprint winked at her briefly before the lights surged back.

Petya helped Imanishi get the canisters down to science deck, then rejoined Clio outside the galley. Here the regular crew played poker, Lewis dealing again, poor bastard. Petya wandered in to watch, while Clio headed up to crew deck, taking the ladder two at a time. She sauntered down crew deck toward Lewis’ cabin, waiting for a moment when it might be clear of people. The moment came. She slipped into his cabin, slapping the cabin lights off, and stood there a moment. Blackness and nothingness. Nothing but the amoebas on her retinas. No strange glow, no orange filaments left their marks here. She moved carefully toward the cabin drawers, opened one at a time, stirred up the contents
slightly, finding nothing but the dark room with its darker shadows. In a bottom drawer under some clothes, a few magazines: girlie stuff, she imagined. She slipped back out, with the hallway full of crew, and no one seeming to notice her coming out of the wrong cabin. Lewis was just a hunch. Wrong hunch, it seemed.

Meg Voris was waiting outside Clio’s cabin. “What took you so long, Clio?”

“Captain wanted me to swab out the latrine.”

Voris cocked her head, followed Clio into her cabin.

Clio disappeared into the hygiene station, taking the last pee she’d get until the lander run-through was executed. Ran the cold water and splashed her face and head, now with a two-week growth of hair. Looked better bald, by God. But cheeks filling in a bit, maybe not so cadaverous, as she force-fed herself on the tuby glue that Biotime called food.

From the main cabin, she heard Voris say, “Just saw Licht bullying Petya down in the galley, Clio.”

Clio appeared in the doorway of the head. “Son of a bitch,” she said.

Voris winced.

Clio strode to the door.

“Where you going?”

“To rescue Petya. Think you can handle that?”

“Why don’t you stay here, Clio. Maybe
I
can talk to Licht. Sometimes all it takes is a third party—a dispassionate outsider.”

Clio’s eyes were flat. “Thanks, but then I wouldn’t get the satisfaction of wiping his ass with his ears.”

Voris let out a sigh. “Clio, you’re not that bad.” She looked at Clio as though part of her hoped Clio
was
that bad, so she’d have someone to work on.

“Or how about this,” Clio said. “You go tell Licht he’s wanted in officer’s mess.”

Voris’ thick eyebrows closed together. “That’d be a lie.”

“No, I’m
telling
you, Licht is wanted for a senior staff meeting in officer’s mess, ASAP.”

Voris flicked her eyes left, calculating.

“Think how Petya’s suffering at the hands of evil, Voris.”

Evil. That was a word she perked up for.

“OK.” Voris shuffled to the door. Turned. “Licht will just end up mad.”

“Well, nothing’s perfect.”

Five minutes later Clio led Petya through the hatchway into launch bay, with Voris behind, protesting.

Clio spun on her. “Look, he’s coming along on maneuvers.”

Voris shook her head. “Captain won’t like that. Petya’s not authorized.”

“This is the launch bay,” Petya said. “Landing pod launches from here?” He put his hand over his mouth as his voice boomed back to him in the vacant, metallic bay.

“Look, Voris. I’m stretching orders a bit. I’m making a point to Hocking, to Tandy and the rest. Licht’s terrorizing a passenger on this ship. That’s wrong, and nobody seems to give a damn. What’s more important here, justice or the rules?”

Voris chewed on that a moment. “The rules,” she answered. “On a starship, it’s the rules.”

“OK, right. Important rules are more important than minor injustices. But this isn’t an important rule.” Clio took Petya by the arm, headed for the lander hatchway.

Voris keyed in the hatch release, and the lander door slowly clanked open. “I don’t know,” she was saying.

Clio urged Petya through the hatch. “Come on, Petya. We’re going for a ride.”

He examined a hatch bolt closely, sliding it in and out. “A ride?”

“Right,” Clio said. A gentle nudge to his back, and he climbed through. “Is that OK?”

“A-OK,” he said, head swiveling to take in the lander interior. He ambled over to the navigation panel, which surged now with electronic life.

“I don’t know about this,” Voris muttered.

“Voris, you ever gonna put your ass on the line for anything?
You ever gonna deal with real people and their problems or you always gonna bore people shitless with your Church philosophy and waste trees by leaving those damn pamphlets everywhere?”

Voris strapped in, mouth clamped thin.

Clio helped Petya buckle up, then found her own chair. She toggled the mike. “This is
Sun Spot
, powering up and prepping for undock, you copy?” Lights popped up amber on the autopilot board, as Clio activated the flight controls.

“Hey.” Voris swept Clio’s hands off the board. “You’re supposed to watch.”

“Copy,
Sun Spot,”
came over comm, “you are cleared for undock. Disengage when ready.”

Voris separated the lander from the
Galactique
and moved them off in a slow burn of the small lander engines. She swung
Sun Spot
’s main thrusters away from the mother ship and throttled up slowly, kicking them safely out of the
Galactique
’s environs. Out the starboard viewport Clio could see Niang, a small green dot the size of a dime glowing bravely against the starry galactic backdrop.

She spun her chair around to smile at Petya. He was watching Voris raptly. Then she opened a channel to the main navigation station. “Commander Singh, this is Finn, over.”

“Yes, Ms. Finn.”

“Can you patch me through to Colonel Tandy? A favor.”

A pause. “I can do this,” he said.

Then: “Colonel Tandy here.”

“This is Finn, Tandy. I got a good mind to call our deal off.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m in the lander on maneuvers with Lieutenant Voris. I just rescued Petya from our favorite sadist. Thought you said you were going to take care of that.”

“I thought I had. I don’t directly control Licht. You know that. I’m not pleased to hear he’s been up to his old tricks.”

“Yeah, he’s just a tricky fellow, all right.”