going to miss attending my first memorial service.
The third day the Bonaventure left.
Sundae Lelaurie came down to my new cabin to tell me the news.
“You need to get over to the Bonaventure immediately if you want to say good-bye to the others before they leave. You haven’t got much time,” she said.
I was in the middle of a large-scale pen and ink portrait of the John of Dublin. I had perhaps picked a style with an unnecessary level of detail, but as I was now half-way through it was a bit too late to change.
“I’m a bit busy,” I replied. I thought she might have already noticed.
“Um, I think they’re waiting for you.”
I was caught up in a rather tricky part where the beam of one crane crossed the beams of another at an angle, with cross-bracing, wires and hand-rails in abundance, so I did not bother to reply.
“You don’t want to say good-bye to them?” she asked.
“No.”
“I think they would like to say good-bye to you,” she ventured.
I thought they were probably lined up waiting to make sure I had left their ship.
“I need to get this finished,” I said. She was remarkably determined that I should say good-bye to the crew of the Bonaventure, but I think she finally got the message after I had ignored her fourth reminder.
When I had finished the drawing I went in search of her. By the time I found her the Bonaventure was so far away it was no longer visible from the observation deck, although this did not stop her spending ten minutes trying to pinpoint its exact position for me. I left her trying to convince herself that the star they called TU-3019-2 was in fact the departing ship. It had occurred to me, while Sundae was repeating the fictional farewell messages she assured me the crew of the Bonaventure has asked her to pass on to me, that the problem with my drawing of the John of Dublin was not the level of detail in it, but rather the lack of it.
I really needed to add a lot more rivets.
1.20. The sound of movement
I had data-stripped the John of Dublin long before I stepped on board her, only I had done it slowly and carefully so that no-one would notice. I had no desire to hear the alarms yet again. Much of the information was exactly the same as I had got from the Bonaventure but the new material included the up-to-date crew list of the salvage ship. I had known from the start that as well as the usual salvage crew, there were fifteen scientists on board whose only interest was me.
I had expected that they would give me a few days’ grace to settle in and get comfortable before they started, but almost immediately Sundae Lelaurie started up with the questions. She had shown me all over the ship, as per her detailed timetable, even though (as I told her) it was really not necessary because (as I had not told her) I had already seen it all. Next on her list was a week of working in the kitchen.
“Perhaps, before we organize this, you could tell me a little bit more about yourself,” she said. “Jonathan said you told him your true name - can I hear it?”
“No.”
“You can write it down, if you prefer. I’d like to see that.”
“No.”
“Surely you can do that for me.”
“Nope.”
“Then how about telling me a bit more about your people, your race?”
“No.”
“What is your race called?”
So it had started: they would do something for me, but only if I did something for them first. But I was here to learn more about humans, not to let them learn more about me. This is where being a god would have been useful: no-one interrogated vengeful gods.
It would start with simple questions, but there would soon be requests for the scientists to inspect me, followed by demands for me to do things like ‘dematerialize’ in front of them. And then there would be imprisonment, attempted exploitation by the military and perhaps a little light vivisection. I had seen the films.
I had looked round the John of Dublin, I had data-stripped her, I had attended a memorial service, I had gate-crashed (unseen) an autopsy or two, I had assisted at the winching in of one of the smaller fragments of the Invincible, and I had played gin rummy for money with Technician Edward Dolan, who had been rather hopeful I wasn’t capable of understanding a rule book. I had got as much as I was likely to get from the John of Dublin. It was time to return to the Bonaventure.
The crew of the Bonaventure might not much like me, but we shared a name and were therefore family. You could not, according to human custom, just abandon your family because a better family, a more friendly and cheerful family, a family with better quality gifts, came along. You had to put up with your original family. And that was the Bonaventure.
So I converted my Ben-body into a box and left in a store-room where no-one would worry about it and I returned to the Bonaventure, where I made a new body out of bits and pieces that (almost certainly) no-one would miss. The ship felt different the moment I stepped into the corridor, and I realised it was because she was on the move. There was the sound of her engines, and the rattle of fittings, and vibrations than ran through the whole fabric of the ship. I went in search of Lieutenant Shue and found him sitting at his desk in his cabin, scribbling away furiously on his nexus.
“Hello,” I said.
He jumped, but he did not appear to be either surprised or shocked to see me standing there. Nor, as it happened, particularly happy. He studied me for a moment, put his nexus down and sighed as he folded his hands over it.
“Hello, Ben.”
~~~~
Connect with Lindsay Tomlinson
For Ben of the Bonaventure’s on-going stories go to:
https://www.greendiamaundfloor.blogspot.com
Website: https://www.lindsaytomlinson.com
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Novels
See me with my soul divided
The empty part of the grave
Spirits dancing
Sleeping fleshless
A.K.A. The Alien Page 6