by J.S. Clark
Whole wheat berries —Wow, I didn't know wheat had berries, too. I wonder what they taste like?
Down the way, she found crates of seed and assorted hand tools. The frigate must have been on its way to supply a store on a new colony or something. Strange that all this stuff would be left behind, she thought. It's not flashy but there's enough food here to buy a ship. She had started to head back when she saw an open crate, more specifically, an opened crate.
It was labeled “canned meats” and one of the side panels had been opened with a diamond grid of slash marks. Cans had spilled onto the floor. They had been opened too, as if by a berserker with a can opener and two left thumbs. “Oh. Yeah.” Apparently, the respirator didn’t filter everything out. The smell in the air had changed since she’d opened the hatch. It was more pungent and tangy, the rotting contents were definitely part of the source. The cans must have been sitting for days or weeks.
On a hunch she stopped at the galley while heading to the bridge. Whoever had been at the crates had been at the galley first. Cans overflowed from the trash receptacle, a nice refrigerator unit was cracked open, picked clean except for some vegetables. Vegetables? Aiyela examined the remains around the trash; tuna, corned beef hash, sardines, beef stew in gravy. It looked like the last person aboard had been a six-year-old boy without a mommy.
She headed to the bridge hoping for some answers, as her dear Charlotte Emil would say, noting along the way that these corridors hinted more strongly of the aroma de bathroom. As with the heroine of the novels, Aiyela found fewer answers than she wanted. In addition to the nav being wiped, the only logs that were still on file had proprietary encryption. With all dead ends and a missing crew, she physically removed the recorder unit containing the encrypted logs and headed back to the Mi-Kalat.
Never had it smelled so good. Aiyela sealed the hatch and made a beeline for the engine room and that bucket of precious clean water. By this point she really didn't care how long it would be before she could re-supply. Now was all that mattered. A now without a sewer in smelling distance. She even made her bath desperately luxuriant by adding lavender dish detergent instead of the straight sodium bicarbonate powder.
It was a meager reward, but as she slipped into her Sabbath-best jumpsuit, it felt like pajamas, and she was ready for a long sleep. Was it possible for a smell to wear you out?
She headed back to her cockpit and sat down with her blanket to remotely reconfigure the derelict frigate's distress beacon, explaining that the ship had been checked and that their recorder was being turned into the nearest authorities. “Set course,” she narrated while checking her charts, “hmmm . . . Pandanmere, not too far.” She laid in the coordinates, feeling much safer back in shifted space, and fell asleep.
Her sleep was plagued by a dream, where she was lost in deep space in only a space suit. Behind her, a great red nebula chased her with clouds like the cragged teeth of a huge maul. Aiyela had nothing to push off of so the nebula over took her and she was lost in it. At the end of her oxygen tank, she committed herself to her demise and opened her helmet. It was worse than the vacuum of space, it was the stench of the abandoned ship.
“AAAAAGGGHHHHH!” Aiyela sat upright like a switched circuit. “It's OK.” She put a hand to her chest hoping to steady her misfiring engine. “Just a . . . dream . . . ?” A dream so real she could still smell it. “Oh no.” It wasn't her imagination. The smell had come back. Snuck up on her like a jungle predator. It was alive.
She smelled herself. Yep. “No more water.” Her lip began to quiver. Maybe she could put a suction tube down into the waste containment tank and see if it could salvage a few cups? No, even if she trusted the filtration system that much —being the mechanic, she didn't —the ship had enough recovery steps that the containment was pretty much bone dry. “No more water.” Maybe, I could rub the rest of the detergent on me like lotion? She imagined herself as a girl waxed in soap with hair that held shape like plastic. “No more . . . ” The tears started to flow . . . but not nearly enough to wash with.
Out of desperation, she headed to the galley for drinking water. It would be an outrageous waste, but she couldn't live this way.
It was strange, but as soon as she made the decision the smell bothered her less. Then it got even less. And less. Wait a second? The smell wasn't coming from her! She turned back towards the cockpit —apparently the Being of Pure Stench had taken up residence in her cockpit.
Aiyela bunched up her sleeves and marched back to face the unholy terror. She crossed the threshold, and there, caught by surprise, climbing over the instrument panel was a black and gray thing that her nose and half-woman-sized intuition told her was the source of the smell. Apparently it had grown so strong it could take on physical form.
Of course it was not really a thing, but the smell was clouding her internal vocabulary. It had peaked ears, short fur, and a tail as long as its body was tall, and when it turned its head she saw jade eyes with black slits and a pair of whiskers that exploded out of its face. It was a cat. A flood of conflicting thoughts and emotions ran through her mind.
Ahhh . . . a cat! How cute?
Ugh, putrid death!
Danger, Aiyela, danger: the cat is on the control panel!
“Come here little fella,” she held out a hand. The cat's eyes narrowed and its tail whipped across the panel, disengaging the auto pilot. “No-No-No-No-No!” She rushed forward. And then it happened. The cat missiled from the controls towards her face, but the stench had heightened Aiyela's reflexes. The blanket from the chair was in her hand with only a flashing thought. Like a green net, she spread it, swallowing the cat. “Gotchya!”
Slash, slash, shred! The blanket was disemboweled from the inside and the cat fell out.
“My blanket!” Aiyela's face flushed and her eyes became slits. She snatched down like a striking serpent and grabbed the creature by its scruff, wadding the furry skin in a vein popping fist. She looked the cat in the face but kept far enough away to be out of reach. “That was my good blanket! I don't have a lot of good anything! I read every Charlotte Emil book in that blanket! If I ever have kids of my own, I’m gonna pass on that blanket!”
The cat did not wear comprehension. It seemed more like annoyance.
“Oh! Attitude, huh?” That phrase was inherited from her Mom's genes. “Well —well, I'm going to, uh,” she was beginning to regain some rationality and the number of threats she would actually carry out were growing more and more humane. “I'm going to —” She was also regaining her sense of smell. “Ugh, I'm going to wash you!”
The cat's eyes widened into deep orbs ringed in by frightened green.
“Oh yeah!” She marched, arm out-stretched to her bunkroom. With one hand, she folded down her kitchen, and pulled out her empty bath bucket. “This is going to hurt me more than you,” she grimaced as she uncoiled the hose for the drinking water, but added with a quavering smile, “You're going to smell so pretty.” In went the dish detergent.
Then in went the cat. Or that was the plan, but its legs spread like a crab’s. “Get in there!” She pulled it back up a number of times before finally covering its face with her hand and flopping it in backwards. Despite the danger to her hands she stuck them in, rubbing the cat up and down and sloshing it from side to side.
“Die foul stench! Die!” she cried as she could smell its strength waning.
In an uncontrollable urge she dunked the cat repeatedly, making the ordeal sound like a genuine washing machine, “Reeeoooww! Reeeooww! Reeeoooww!”
It was gone. “Gone, gone, gone!” She lifted the cat up and spun around in hysterical happiness. She had conquered evil and saved the soul of her ship. Aiyela rolled onto her butt and held the cat up where she could smile at him. The true color of his gray underbody had revived to a white as white as a stratus cloud. Oh, and “it” was a him. She should have known by the blunt, wide face, the heavier muscle, and the acquired odor of neglected hygiene. He was not
smiling. “Oh, don't be that way. You'll thank me before too long.” Drooping wet and smelling like a lavender patch she could barely remember why he had made her so angry.
“Now we can cuddle! And I'll give you a name, and you can come with me to Cortess, to find Mom and Dad! It'll be an adventure, and we'll be best buds!”
The cat was not enthused, but once she held him for a bit away from the wash bucket and wrapped him in a towel to dry, he was at least not threatening to kill her. Even if it might have been his plan for later. She kept the towel tight as a straight jacket, in the crook of one arm, while she rummaged through her pantry with the other.
“Hmm, I know you like meat, but the rations aboard this vessel aren't made for two, so we'll have to give you a more balanced meal. Do you like ramen?” She looked into his perturbed green eyes. “Well, you'll have to learn, besides if we're going to coexist, we'll have to keep your kitty-man-odor down to a minimum . . . I suppose I'll have to teach you to use the latrine.” She placed the ramen in a bowl, doused it with boiling water, then headed to the cockpit.
“Now, lets you and me get acquainted. All shipmates must have names, so let’s see . . . You're black and white. Spacey, that would be fitting!” The cat’s ears were out to the sides making a shelf out of his head,