A. K. A. The Alien: series 3

by Lindsay Tomlinson

picked his victims, but I was currently engaged in mapping the attitude of the entire crew to him. There were those who thought him actively helpful, those who thought him a jolly chap, those who saw him as an irritating clown, those who considered him an unpleasant pest, and a few, whom he had reduced to tears, who considered him an out-and-out monster. I was planning on having a nice little pie-chart and perhaps a chart or two by the end of my project.

  The death of the fish was the first topic of conversation at the evening meal. Dr Howard, who was sitting beside me, turned to me and said: “I’m sorry about the fish. I know you liked them.”

  “I did,” I said. I added a little shake of the head, to indicate disbelief, with just a touch of sorrow. After a suitable pause I added: “But we can always get more fish when we return to Camp Munro. I was thinking maybe we could get some foxfaces. They have beautiful colouring.”

  Dr Howard shook her head in turn, but there was rather more disbelief than sorrow in hers. “You are going to have to learn how to care, Ben,” she said.

  “I do care,” I replied, surprised.

  “No, you just say the words. You don’t actually feel anything.”

  “I do feel.”

  “Maybe you do,” Dr Howard allowed on reflection. She drank some water. “Maybe you just don’t feel ... very much.”

  I considered this. “That makes sense,” I agreed. “I feel, only not very much.”

  She did not seem at all happy with my response. I thought better of asking her what type of fish she would like when we restocked the aquarium, in case she did not feel I was caring enough. I also scratched the question on how exactly they would dispose of the fish seeing as there were no pet crematoria conveniently to hand, and the one on what they were going to do with the empty tank for the next five months. Also the one on whether I could carry out an autopsy on one of the fish. In her hospital.

  “So how was your day?” I asked instead. Caringly.

  3.16. Economic Policy in France

  “I’ve had an idea,” I said.

  “Another one?”

  “I’m thinking about starting my own religion.”

  “You can stop thinking about that right now.”

  “I get to create my own moral code, and write a religious text to go with it, and I can invent all sorts of ceremonies and rituals.”

  “That should be interesting,” Lieutenant Shue said. “But still, on balance ... no.”

  “I wouldn’t annoy the religious people by asking questions they couldn’t answer, they wouldn’t think I was attacking their beliefs, and I wouldn’t cause any problems by choosing one religion over the others. This way I wouldn’t upset any of them.”

  “Yes you would. You’d upset the lot.” He bent down and rummaged in the bag at his feet and placed a matt-black stick on the table. “If you’re looking for a new hobby, how about taking up photography? When we get to 13C we need some-one to produce a photographic record of our activities. Learn photography and you can make yourself useful.”

  I had the feeling he had been holding onto the camera for just such an emergency distraction, but I did not care. I had not so far engaged much with photography. I was still working on my fingerprint illustrations, and had been wondering whether to use them as the basis for the next portrait series of the ship’s crew, although currently I had just been lifting random fingerprints from shiny surfaces throughout the ship. Photographic portraits of the entire crew would give me much more interesting options.

  “I could do that,” I allowed. I picked up the camera. “The Tenton LR-5. It has D-MOS sensor filtering, conversion capability and seven image processing modes.” I unfolded it and began to programme it. “It also has 17 different photographic styles as standard.”

  “Do you know everything about everything?”

  “The manual is on the network.”

  I took a photo of Lieutenant Shue and showed it to him. “Late twentieth-century mobile phone photo style.”

  “You know everything’s that’s on the ship’s network?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I set the crystal clarity mode and deepened the shadows reading and took another photo. I looked at the result and then changed the settings to black and white and retook it. Much better.

  “What about the slipstream?” he asked. “Do you know everything that’s out there?”

  This was Lieutenant Shue trying to get proof I had access to the slip, but I decided to allow it. I was in a good mood.

  “Too much information out there. I just take what interests me.”

  I moved his coffee cup closer to my nexus, and went for a still-life shot.

  “What interests you at the moment?”

  The composition was dull. I wrote ‘kill the butterfly’ on the nexus and laid the stylus at an angle across it, and then tipped a line of drops of coffee onto the table surface.

  “Today? Economic policy in France between 1918 and 1968.”

  I took the picture and then studied it.

  “That’s interesting?”

  “Everything’s interesting.”

  I changed the settings to extreme close-up and took some shots of the coffee drops.

  “And what interested you yesterday?”

  “Yesterday was Indonesian prehistory.”

  “And the day before that?”

  “I was too busy doing other things to bother with the slip.” It was difficult to get an interesting image of the coffee drops. “And it appears you are asking me questions.”

  “It’s this little thing humans do. Ask questions. You’re not the only one to find things interesting.”

  “If you like I can tell you all I know about economic policy in France between 1918 and 1968,” I offered.

  “How far have you got?”

  I took another photo of a coffee drop with two filters and a starlight special effect, and looked at the result. I couldn’t decide if it was great art or just an over-jazzed mess.

  “Oh, I’ve done the lot.”

  “How long did that take?”

  “Well, it took me 1.7 seconds to strip the slip of everything on the topic. But then I went over it in greater detail.”

  “And how long did that take?”

  “Oh, over five seconds.” I showed him the photo. “Is this artistic?”

  “No.”

  “Hmm.”

  “How can you absorb so much information so quickly?”

  “I think I will talk to you about the economic policy speaking French,” I decided. “Unless, of course, you would prefer it in Finnish.”

  “OK,” he said, sitting back. “I’ll stop asking questions.”

  “Or Indonesian. I’m into Indonesian at the moment.”

  3.17. The day of the Defiance

  The Captain of the Defiance invited me across for a full-day visit, with a tour of her ship and a meal with her senior staff. She also invited Captain Southey over for the meal because it meant arranging for the two ships to draw close together and to have a shuttle travel between them.

  I declined the invitation.

  “You asked to go,” Lieutenant Shue pointed out, with some exasperation. “You have asked to go numerous times.”

  “That was before I realised every-one would stare at me and constantly take photos and ask me endless questions.”

  The Defiance had simply been assigned to accompany the Bonaventure, so its crew was not made up of volunteers even though logically - based purely on past experience - their ship was more at danger from me than the Bonaventure. But even if not volunteers, I knew they would still be unpleasantly interested in me.

  “If you don’t like attention, maybe it’s a good thing you’re not a god after all then, isn’t it?” he said.

  I ignored him.

  “We’ve talked about this before,” he said, “about you having to do things you don’t really want to do. Captain Bak has gone to a lot of trouble to organize this, just because you demanded it. You are going to go, you are going to sm
ile, you are going to be polite, and you are going to look interested.”

  “Am I?”

  “Take the camera with you. Think of it as a safari. You can practice your photography.” He was not too impressed with my photography so far. He wanted me to practise taking shots of people at work without distracting them, while I was rather more interested in artistic shots of the empty aquarium or a fallen pepper pot. “.... and people will keep their distance if you have a camera.”

  So the following day I took myself and the camera across to the Defiance, where I was shown round by the XO. I started taking photos, but Lieutenant Shue had clearly talked to Captain Bak, and Captain Bak had talked to her crew, because it turned out that the crew hardly dare look at me, let alone make eye-contact. The XO was also happy for me look anywhere I wanted, which was more than they let me do on the Bonaventure.

  We spent the whole day peering into cupboards and lifting floor hatches while I investigated every off-spec modification they had made to the old ship.

  After we had seen everything, the XO took me back to the Captain, who was so proud of her ship we went back over almost the whole tour verbally while she checked that I had seen everything she thought might interest me. We got on so well we were still chatting as we walked into the dining room and would have continued through the meal, had she not had to turn her attention to Captain Southey instead. As it turned out the rest of the guests were also well primed, and we talked about the ship and our mission, and not once about me.

  Lieutenant Shue asked to look at my photos when I got back. He looked at the 17 shots I had taken of my reception and the first seven minutes of my tour round the ship.

  “Where are the rest?” he asked.

  “I got interested after that.”

  “You didn’t take any others?”

  “I was too busy.”

  “In other words you enjoyed yourself.” I took the camera back to review the 17 images. “Admit it, you enjoyed yourself.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You enjoyed yourself.”

  “Maybe a little.”

  “Maybe a lot.”

  I held up the camera so that he could see the screen. “Is this artistic?”

  “It’s out of focus.”

  “But it’s deliberately out of focus.”

  “It’s out of focus,” he repeated. “And you enjoyed yourself.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe.”

  3.18. The table lamp

  As a thank-you present for Captain Bak I produced a framed picture that included a caricature of every member of the crew of her ship. Remembering Lieutenant Shue’s sensibilities over the depiction of ship’s captains, at our next daily meeting in the conference room I showed it to him first to vet it. He checked each face in turn and passed it as acceptable. He slid the paper back across the table to me.

  “So tell me about the table lamp,” he said.

  We both turned to look at the lamp sitting on the table near us. It had a fluted black and gold base and a tapered red brocade shade with red and black trimming. It was rather large.

  “I didn’t have enough room in my cabin for it.”

  “OK,” he said, “... but why a table lamp?”

  “Bobbles.”

  “Bobbles?”

  “Bobbles.”

  We studied the red and black bobbles trembling slightly with the vibrations of the ship.

  “OK,” he said. “What about bobbles?”

  “I am investigating the use of bobbles in soft furnishings. Frankly they seem extremely silly to me, so I thought they might look better in the flesh.” I explained. “So to speak.”

  We contemplated the bobbles.

  “I’ve also made a table-cloth with bobbles,” I said. “Do you want to see it?”

  “No.”

  I got it out of my bag anyway and unfolded it. It was blue and red and black chenille, with red bobbles, loops and corner tassels. I spread it over our part of the table and placed the lamp down on it.

  We observed the effect.

  “Maybe I should have made the table-cloth big enough to cover the whole table.”

  “I’m not sure it would make much difference.”

  “Maybe a different colour scheme?”

  “Not convinced.”

  “Smaller bobbles?”

  He shook his head.

  “Bigger bobbles?”

  “Maybe you could hold back on the furnishings experimentation until we get back to Camp Munro.”

  “Maybe.”

  We watched the shaking bobbles hanging over the edge of the table. “I think I’ll recycle the table-cloth,” I decided.

  “Good decision.”

  I looked at the lamp.

  “And the lamp.”

  “Even better decision.”

  3.19. The fish-killer

  Because I was a socially responsible member of the crew, the time soon came to report Recovery Technician Stashower as a bully. The timing may possibly have had just a little to do with the fact that I had grown bored of observing him, as he was predictable, unimaginative and repetitive in his bullying.

  I told Lieutenant Shue in our daily briefing and explained I had pictures and a partial diary of bullying incidents from over a period of six weeks. I also expounded my theory that Stashower had been the fish-killer, but admitted I had no proof. Lieutenant Shue duly passed on the information and Captain Southey promptly summoned us both to his cabin. This seemed to be because the fish were involved.

  Captain Southey did not waste any of his charisma on us. He was jealous of Lieutenant Shue because he reminded him of himself when he was younger, when he too had been picked out for special jobs and had been considered special, and he disliked me because half of all his contact with his bosses revolved round them checking up on me.

  I went over the images and the diary of events for him, listing date, time, location, victim and type of bullying involved. Captain Southey grabbed the pictures and flicked through them. There was one of Stashower stealing a bowl of sponge pudding and custard from Food Technician Bonden, another of him with Engineer Spalling up against a wall, one hand twisted into his overalls under his chin, Spalling trying to turn his head away as Stashower leant in too close to him, and one of Stashower taking the headset of an immersive game off a fellow maintenance crew member called Greenhead. I liked the way I had caught Greenhead’s hopeless blank face. There were seven pictures in all, but I liked that one the best.

  “He let you take photos?” the Captain asked, as he tossed them back onto the table.

  “They’re not photos, sir,” Lieutenant Shue said. “Ben painted them. Hyper-realism, sir.”

  The Captain spread out the pictures. “Humpf.” He was not happy at being caught out. “Then they’re not evidence. What do you expect us to do with them?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “They were for illustrative purposes only.”

  “The XO is following up on the list of incidents, sir,” Lieutenant Shue said.

  Captain Southey brushed his statement away with a wave of his hand. He was not interested in a simple case of bullying. “What about the fish?” he asked. “You said he killed the fish. Do you have any evidence - genuine evidence - to back that up?”

  “None,” I replied. “He had access to the cleaning fluid, he was off-duty at the time, and he knew I liked the fish.”

  “He did?”

  “We had talked about them.”

  “Ben, was Stashower trying to bully you?” Lieutenant Shue asked. He seemed astonished at the man’s idiocy.

  “I think he might have been exploring the possibility.”

  “And?”

  “I think he decided against it.”

  “But we have no proof he killed the fish?” Captain Southey asked impatiently.

  “No.”

  He dismissed us soon after that. He was not at all appreciative of my efforts to be socially responsible.

  “Was Captain Southey really fond of the fish?”
I asked Lieutenant Shue as we walked away.

  “He’s unhappy we have some-one who would do such a thing on board.”

  I saw an opportunity to prove I could be caring.

  “Well, if you want me to make sure he never even thinks about doing anything similar ever again, I would be happy to oblige,” I offered.

  I would have to remember to tell Dr Howard about it.

  After Lieutenant Shue had calmed down.

  3.20. Concentrating on the creases

  I was busy on a large-scale drawing of an entire handprint when the alarm started up. I was working on the creases of the palm, and the life-line nearly increased by a decade or two.

  “This is not a drill,” the P.A. said portentously. I sat up. I was hopeful we might have to evacuate the ship, but no, it was only some fault in the environmental control suite, so the relevant response teams were summoned and the rest of us were told to remain where we were. From the faint smell of smoke that came into the cabin despite the shut-down of the ventilation system, I deduced ‘fault’ meant ‘fire’.

  I put up with it for two whole hours. When the thickening smoke and the lesser alarms - we-know-you-know-there’s-an-emergency-but-we’re-just-reminding-you-all-the-same - grew too annoying, I put my Ben-body to bed so no-one would notice it was no longer moving and went off in search of the problem.

  It was not hard to find. At the outer edges were people with nothing to do but look deeply worried and wait for news. Closer in were people in fire-retardant suits, also with nothing to do. Then there were people in suits with breathing equipment to hand, listening intently to sooty, sweaty people who had already done their stint at the front. Where the smoke was thickest there were people wearing their suits and the breathing sets, but standing round doing little because the fire was in an awkward corner of a small room which was only just big enough for two people. Right at the centre were the two people, doing their best to fight the fire.

  The fire itself was in the double skin of the exterior wall of the ship. There were no flames, just thick grey smoke being whipped away by the extractor fans, quite clearly not quickly enough. The teams had already tried gas and foam, and were now hacking away at the inner skin as best they could in the cramped space. The fire was below floor level, protected by junk left behind when the ship was built and ventilated by gaps in all sorts of supposedly solid barriers.

  I went in, used some of the junk and the broken wall panelling as base material and moulded an airtight covering for the fire that would soon kill it dead.

  And then I went back to my drawing.

  Lieutenant Shue came in about half an hour later. He was one of the more sooty and sweaty ones.

  “Did you cap the fire?” he demanded.

  “It was delaying dinner,” I explained. “I was hungry.”

  “It was delaying dinner?”

  “They closed down the kitchens.”

  “Ben, you don’t even get hungry.”

  “Well, no. But I like sitting at the table with the others.”

  “So you just decided to cap the fire.”

  “To speed things up a bit.”

  “You got in there and did it, just like that.”

  “Well, yes.”

  “While we’d been working away for hours and getting nowhere.”

  “Should have had me on a response team.” I was possibly a little bit tart.

  “You just capped the fire.”

  “You’ll probably need to put a patch on the exterior wall. I can do that if you like.”

  He turned away, no doubt going to report back to Captain Southey, but then turned to me again. “Thanks,” he said. “You just saved the