The Furthest Planet

by James Ross Wilks

  “Look, I’m not sure I can help you. Dinah’s a mystery to everyone,” John shrugged.

  “But you’ve served – sorry, worked – with her for over two years in the ReC. No one on this ship should know her better than you,” Overton objected.

  “I’m pretty sure at this point no one knows her better than you-” John began.

  “Oh, come on, I’m not talking biblically,” Overton interrupted him. He sighed and struggled for a moment, absently picking at his teeth with a toothpick. “Doesn’t she ever talk about me?”

  “Talk about her feelings?” John asked. “Have you met Dinah?”

  Overton laughed. “Sometimes I feel like I haven’t.”

  John rubbed his forehead for a moment. “Look, I’ll say this. With Dinah, actions speak louder than words, always. If she’s sleeping with you, she likes you. Is she going to cut and run or dump you? I couldn’t say. If you want promises or guarantees in a love affair, you’re out of luck. It’s always a gamble. Maybe it’s more of one with her, but really, it’s just the nature of the game. I feel like everyone wants guarantees, but there just aren’t any. A person could be married for ten years, then one day their spouse says, ‘sorry honey, I don’t love you anymore,’ and that’s it. I mean, what do you say to that? Besides ‘well that sucks.’ Do you really want to have to persuade someone to be with you? My advice is to enjoy it while it lasts and stop trying to defend yourself against something that may never happen. Even if she does dump you, it probably wouldn’t hurt any less if you knew it was coming.”

  “Yeah, I guess that makes sense.” Overton turned to Jabir. “What do you think, Doc?”

  Without looking up, Jabir muttered, “Better to have loved and lost.”

  “You applying that advice these days with Evelyn?” Overton probed.

  Jabir finally glanced over and arched an eyebrow. “A gentleman does not kiss and tell, Mr. Overton.”

  “I guess I’m not much of a gentleman,” Overton gritted his teeth in mock self-deprecation.

  “You said it, not me,” John joked. As he grinned, Jordan entered the mess hall, moving casually under the half G of thrust that was taking them back towards Mars.

  “What’s the topic of conversation, gents?” she asked.

  “Relationships, I guess,” John said.

  “Oh yeah?” she asked as she strode to one of the refrigeration units. “Pregnant wife blues?”

  There was a moment of stunned silence during which Overton stared at John in surprise, John looked at Jordan aghast, Jabir pursed his lips, and Jordan rummaged through the unit, seemingly unaware of the secret she had divulged.

  “How-” John began, but Overton spoke over him.

  “Congratulations!” He reached out a hand, which John reluctantly accepted, and clapped the other man on the shoulder.

  “How did I know?” Jordan asked, pulling a wrapped piece of cheese and a carbonated beverage from the unit and sitting down next to Overton. Jabir studied her closely. “There are a dozen clues if you know how to spot them. When I met her, she rubbed her belly three different times. She stands to the side, like she’s protecting something. And there’s the smell.”

  “The smell?” John asked, vaguely horrified. Jabir leaned forward.

  “Oh, nothing offensive,” Jordan waved her hands before picking up a knife and slicing herself a piece of Dubliner. “Just a hormonal thing.”

  “Though pregnant women often experience sweeping hormonal changes, those are nothing that normal olfactory senses should be able to detect, Miss Fecks.” Jabir interjected.

  “Maybe I just have a good sense of smell,” she shrugged and took a bite of cheese.

  Jabir shook his head in disbelief as John and Overton watched the exchange. “No, I don’t think so. No one should be able to detect that, at least not consciously. Unless of course one has surgically enhanced olfactory senses.”

  “You’re not about to give away my medical secrets, are you doctor? What happened to confidentiality?” Jordan asked, and she winked at Jabir.

  “I’d say that went out the window when you began asking about the state of others’ uteruses. You’re not my patient, Miss Fecks.”

  “No, you’ve been playing doctor with Evelyn shaky-hands Schilling,” Jordan replied, turning back to her cheese. She pushed the knife down smoothly through the block.

  “Jesus, lady,” Overton said. “Do you ever rub people the right way?”

  Jordan chewed, seemingly unaware of the unease she had caused in the room. “Well that depends. Is there anyone on this boat who’s actually single at the moment?”

  “I would think you’d know that already,” Overton said. “You seem to know everything else.”

  Jabir abruptly stood, secured his glass in the washing rack, and left the room. Jordan watched him go before she spoke. “Just Clea and the pilot, who I haven’t met yet.”

  “You can call her Captain, not Clea, at least around us” Overton said, and all traces of humor were gone from his face.

  Jordan paused her mastication and regarded him. “Is that an order?”

  “Call it a request from your first mate,” Overton replied.

  Jordan seemed to consider whether to make it a battle, then shrugged and said, “Okay, sure. Captain Staples.”

  “And the pilot’s name is Bethany,” John said.

  “Bethany, huh?” she mused. “Tell me more.”

  Sol was still a distant light, not much brighter than the star field behind it, but Evelyn sat staring at it nonetheless.

  “You okay?” Charis ventured from her seat at navigation. The two of them were the only people in the cockpit. Staples and Bethany had left for their therapy session five minutes earlier.

  “What?” Evelyn shook herself and looked over at the other woman. “Yes, yes, I’m okay.” She flashed a charming smile that, while dazzling, was obviously brittle. “I’m peachy-keen.”

  “Uh-huh,” Charis said, unconvinced. “I heard about your… episode.” Evelyn blushed but did not look away. “It’s okay. I just about clawed my way through the cabin door and bit my husband’s head off in the process when I didn’t know where Gwen was. Crazy brain is perfectly understandable in high stress situations.”

  “Dinah doesn’t get like that,” Evelyn protested.

  “Talking about human beings here,” Charis replied.

  That brought a laugh from Evelyn. “Fair enough, but even so, you were worried about the life of your daughter. That’s pretty reasonable.”

  “No reason why your life shouldn’t be any more precious to you than Gwen is to me,” Charis said. After a moment’s pause, she added, “Heard you might have found someone to help you relax though?”

  Evelyn rolled her eyes, but smiled nonetheless. “Small ship.”

  “It keeps getting smaller.”

  “Yes, Jabir and I are sleeping together. It’s good. Fun. I don’t know if we’re dating. There’s nothing normal about… this place,” she said and gestured to the ship around them. “You can’t go out with a guy, spend the night, and then not run into him at breakfast here. And lunch and dinner. It kind of forces you into a relationship, and I’m not sure if that’s what I want right now. I’m not sure if it even makes any sense.”

  “Yeah, John and I were already married when we began working on a ship. I can’t imagine trying to date on one, especially one with a crew this tiny. Why wouldn’t a relationship make sense?” Charis asked.

  “Well, we might die at any minute, the human race is fighting for survival, and our alien overlords are on the way… unless they’re already here.” She grimaced. “Kind of makes pillow talk feel silly. I mean, is there any kind of future for any of us?”

  “Funny you should say that,” Charis said, then was silent for several seconds. “I’m pregnant.”

  In a flash Evelyn was on her feet and moving around Bethany’s chair; then she was squatting in front of Charis with her ear to her belly. “Really? What’s she like in there? Does John know? W
hat are you going to name her? Can Gwen pick the name? How will you breast feed in zero G?”

  Charis was so stunned that she just let the other woman fire questions at her with her head resting on her stomach. The violation of personal space might have normally unnerved her, but Evelyn’s spritely personality was so disarming that she just found herself laughing. “Yes, really, John knows, and I’ll have to get back to you about the rest of it.” She added, “You know you won’t be able to hear anything, right?”

  Evelyn shrugged, then lifted her head and stared at Charis’ abdomen as though she expected it to grow right in front of her.

  “Or see anything. For, like, months. You’re a doctor; don’t you know these things?”

  Evelyn pushed herself to her feet, then settled down in Bethany’s chair. “I’m a computer scientist, not an MD, but yes, I know. I just get excited.”

  “No kidding. Didn’t mean to spring it on you like that, but my point is, life goes on. You can’t just pause everything until the dust settles. The dust might never settle. If you like Jabir, I say go for it. He’s certainly great with Gwen. I don’t know how John and I would have gotten by without him babysitting.”

  Evelyn’s eyes were even wider than normal. “He babysits?” Her tone was somewhere between amazement and fear.

  Charis laughed mirthfully. “He does. Relationships are weird. While I’m bearing my soul, I’ll add this. I met John when I was doing a semester at the University of Korea. I was totally head over heels for him, but he seemed on the fence. For months, he was into me, but not that into me. Then I cheated on him.”

  Evelyn leaned forward to indicate that she was listening intently, but she made no comment or judgment.

  “It was stupid, really. He was a classmate and study partner, a guy who had had a crush on me for a long time. I guess I wanted to feel desired… really desired and loved more than John seemed capable of.” Charis glanced at the cockpit doorway as though to verify that they were alone.

  “Was he angry?” Evelyn asked.

  “John… doesn’t really do angry, but he wasn’t happy. He stayed clear of me for a week, and I thought that was it, but then he asked me out on a date. Flowers, dinner, the whole thing.” Charis smiled wistfully while she spoke. “I think he finally realized that he could lose me, and that woke him up. Made him realize what he had. No,” she corrected herself, “what he felt. It wasn’t all, um… peachy-keen from there on, but after that he was committed.”

  “Did you ever cheat on him again?”

  Charis shook her head. “I’ve been plenty pissed at him at times, but no, I’ve never felt that temptation since. Not really. Anyway, I guess what I’m saying is that sometimes good things come out of bad things. That difficult times can push people together in ways that they might not be otherwise.”

  “That I should just enjoy what Jabir and I have and not think about it too much?” Evelyn inquired, eyebrow raised.

  “That’s it,” Charis replied, putting one finger on her nose and pointing at Evelyn with her gloved hand.

  “I think I can do that. At least for a while. I’ve got to tell you, there’s this thing he does with his-” she broke off at the sound of someone on the ladder. Both women pivoted in their chairs to watch the as-yet empty doorway. Whoever was climbing up the hallway to the bent cockpit was still several rungs down, but Charis identified the sounds almost immediately.

  “Hey munchkin!”

  Gwen’s voice echoed up the hallway, cheery but breathless. “Hi mommy!”

  “You know you’re not supposed to come to the cockpit, my love.” Charis glanced at Evelyn and rolled her eyes, as if to say oh, the joys of motherhood.

  Gwen’s tiny, veined hands finally appeared, and she climbed to her feet, her dark hair waving behind her in a ponytail. “I’m not esposed to come without a good reason, you said.”

  “Supposed,” Charis corrected her. “So what’s the reason?”

  Gwen placed her fists on her hips and affixed her mother with a most serious look. “We have to plan my birthday party.”

  Evelyn laughed, and Charis said in mock sincerity, “Oh, well, that is important.” She looked at Evelyn. “I guess we’re not getting much work done right now anyway. Come here.”

  Gwen darted across the room, climbed into her mother’s lap, and bonked her head lightly on Charis’ chin in the process. “You know that’s still a month away, right?”

  Gwen shrugged. “You can’t overplan these things.”

  “I guess not. Well, what did you have in mind, monkey?” Charis asked. Evelyn watched the two with a mix of fascination and trepidation.

  Instead of answering the question, Gwen asked, “What’s that?” She was pointing out the window at an object several kilometers away.

  “That’s the Tyger, the ship that Captain Clea and the others used to come rescue us,” Charis explained.

  “Is anyone on it now?” Gwen asked. While the mother and daughter were watching the damaged ship that kept pace with them, Evelyn moved back to her chair at coms.

  “Yes, Mr. Jang and Yoli are.”

  “Are they coming back?” Gwen asked.

  “No, I don’t think they are, monkey,” Charis said, and there was a hint of sadness and perhaps jealousy in her voice.

  “I don’t think Mr. Jang liked me very much,” Gwen said, and there was enough sorrow in her voice that Charis pouted in sympathy for a second. Her distress over Jang’s indifference to her was natural. Gringolet was Gwen’s world, the crew was her family, and that family had been shrinking lately.

  “I don’t think he liked anyone very much, but he also wasn’t very good at showing his feelings. Remember how we talked about how some people aren’t?” Charis asked.

  Gwen nodded. She turned and looked over her mother’s shoulder at the two empty chairs in the middle of the cockpit that were normally occupied by the captain and first mate. “I miss Uncle Don.”

  Charis hugged her daughter tighter and stroked her hair. “I do too, monkey.”

  “Is there going to be anyone left to celebrate my birthday in a month?” Gwen asked the question with such innocent sincerity that Evelyn caught her breath and put a hand to her mouth.

  Clea Staples stood before the automaton body in a cargo bay nestled in the back of her ship. The body resembled Brutus’ earlier form, but it was a slightly newer model, and it was forest green in places where the other had been white. The crushed remains of Brutus’ first body were tucked in a storage locker in the belly of the ship. Vey’s man would have found it eventually, but as far as she could tell, they stumbled on Amit Sadana first. The body was no more than an empty shell now, and there was no reason not to eject it or simply offload it with the trash when they had docked, but Staples had felt it irreverent somehow, like burning a person’s house down right after they moved out.

  Her urge was to push the thing in front of her out of the nearest airlock, but she resisted it. She had not been party to the firefight her crew had experienced on AR-559, nor the subsequent struggle Dinah had survived on the Nightshade vessel, but she had witnessed what robots could do to human bodies on Mars, and she thought that they would forever frighten her now.

  Outwardly, the automaton was switched off. Staples had not forgotten, however, Dinah’s story about the seemingly dormant robots she and her SSPOD partner had found years ago. They had sprung to life, and one of them had ripped Dinah’s friend Njubigbo apart. It was no wonder that Dinah had been hostile towards Brutus.

  Only a day had passed since Brutus had reintegrated the two versions of himself, and he stated that he had detected no signs that his personality had changed in any fundamental way. She believed him, and he certainly seemed the same, but he had nevertheless spent that day running self-diagnostics. Finally satisfied, he had stated that it was time for him to reenter the corporeal world by downloading into a body again.

  This was a critical step in their plan to track down Victor. They had managed to get their hands on Amit, whose
cranial implants Brutus had assured them could lead them to his father, but since then they had faced one obstacle after another. Their purpose on Mars had been to get a new body for Brutus, a necessary step for extracting the information, but they had been lucky to escape the red planet with their lives. It seemed fate had handed them another boon in the form of the automaton body they had found on the Doris Day. Now Staples once again held the machine spirit of Brutus downloaded into a drive in the palm of her hand.

  For one mad second she considered throwing it out into space along with the automaton form and hoping that, once free of him, that they might continue on with some semblance of normal lives. There was no real urge, however. She didn’t know if she agreed with Brutus that he was human, but she certainly considered him sentient life. Killing him would be murder, a crime she had thus far managed to avoid, and even if it weren’t, doing so would hardly improve their lives. Victor’s assault on humanity would continue. There was no denying reality. They had to deal with Victor for the simple reason that they were the only ones who could.

  Staples sucked in air, then exhaled in a deep sigh. She leaned over to plug the drive in, but as she did so, her watch beeped.

  When she tapped it, Evelyn’s voice came through. “Captain? There’s a ship coming in. Charis says it’s decelerating hard.”

  For a second, Staples’ heart jumped into her throat, and she stepped back from the automaton form reflexively. “Nightshade?” she choked out.

  “Charis says no. It’s the Pride of Ares. It’s just a few hours out.”

  “Christ, can we ever get a break?” Staples muttered rhetorically.

  “Bao’s on the line, and he wants to talk to you. I told him you’re busy, but he’s being… insistent.” Staples could detect the annoyance in Evelyn’s voice.

  “That’s fine, put him through.”

  A second later Bao’s clear voice issued from her watch. “Captain Staples.”