by Lena Nguyen
God, Park thought. Her blood thumped hard once in her throat. She said, “It was just a dream.”
“But it was so real.”
“It wasn’t.” She brushed Elly’s brow dry with a cloth. “It was only a dream, Elly. Do you understand?”
She attached another sedation tab to the woman’s neck. Elly shook her head. “No . . .” she murmured. “No . . . I think that it was really happening. It is really happening. I’m going to turn into that. I’m going to die!” She pressed her palms to her temples. Then, in a sudden cry: “Don’t put me to sleep again!”
She went limp.
Elly Ma is sick, Park thought. Her heart felt like a burnt walnut; she was cold with a dreadful, unfeeling clarity. Holt and Reimi are sick. I don’t know how to help them. How can I? I’m too different. Apart. I’m nebulosa.
She glanced at the wound on Elly’s arm. Nightmares, she thought, just like Holt. Or at least similar. He hadn’t self-harmed. There had to be a connection—but how? Had Holt told Elly about his dream before he’d been sent to the infirmary? Had she simply been affected by the horrible things he had to say? Or was his delusion being transmitted, plague-like, from person to person? Infecting Elly?
No, Park thought. That was irrational. But it was best to quarantine it, whatever it was—keep it in isolation. She would tell no one besides Keller and Wick that Holt and Ma had shared nightmares. Once the idea was planted in a susceptible mind, someone else might manifest it, especially under heightened anxiety. They would have to keep the whole thing hidden until they could find out the cause.
Hunter left the room to fetch Dr. Chanur. Natalya, the only other person left, said: “Have you ever seen anything like this?”
Park shook her head. “Not exactly.” She moved Elly’s damp, heavy hair from her face; she could feel the heat rising from the woman’s skin. A fever, Park thought, which was impossible—space lacked microbes, and it had been far too long since leaving Earth for Elly to get sick from something she’d already had in her system. How could she have a fever?
Psychosomatic, she concluded, just as Natalya said, “She dug into her own arm. Made herself bleed.”
“Yes,” Park said, because she didn’t know what else to say.
Natalya glared. “What are you going to do about this?”
She wants reassurance, Park told herself, because she’s scared. Or—more likely—Natalya was using the opportunity to challenge her. Question her abilities. She’d been doing it since Antarctica, just as she’d been refusing counseling sessions with Park in the room since Antarctica. Park wanted to feel weariness, impatience, even anger towards the surveyor, but instead felt nothing except a cool disconnected bafflement. As if she were staring at a painting in a museum that she couldn’t make sense of. She straightened and said, “Try to get some rest, Severov. You’re due to go out tomorrow.”
Natalya looked at her as if Park had suggested she launch herself into space. “And how do you expect me to sleep, Doctor, under the circumstances?”
“I can offer you sedatives,” Park told her woodenly. “Or the MAD.”
Natalya scoffed. “Of course. Your given solutions.”
Yes, Park thought, it was a challenge. Natalya was trying to pick a fight with her. And at a time like this, when they had much bigger things to worry about! Where had the surveyor gotten all of this hardness, this poisonous hostility, as if everyone in the world had wronged her? She was an orphan, Park knew that. Her file stated that her parents had been killed during the Comeback. But whose hadn’t?
Then Park reminded herself that Natalya had raised her six younger siblings in the wildernesses of southern Russia before picking up an ISF contract to get them all to the colony on Luxue. That was impressive. The hardships of her life must have forged her into this . . . unyielding, unforgiving creature. In any other situation Park might have admired her steeliness. But because they clashed so much, she could only view the other woman as a nuisance. A wounding presence—like a dagger in her side.
“You’re useless,” Natalya declared finally, shaking her head and folding herself into her bunk. Park didn’t answer; she turned instead to tend to Elly’s unconscious figure. After a few moments she heard someone’s footsteps in the corridor. When she looked up, she saw Hunter stepping through the threshold again—and Chanur following expressionlessly behind her.
“She’s scratched her left arm heavily, but no other injuries,” Park said as Chanur brushed past her. “I’ve given her three sedation tabs. Could you keep her separate from Eric Holt?”
“Holt is gone,” Chanur said as she bent over Elly’s supine body. “Somehow he left the ward, despite being sedated and watched by one of the bots. I’ve informed Wick and Captain Sagara. They’re searching for him now.”
That explained why Sagara hadn’t shown up when Elly started screaming, Park thought. The way she was going on, he’d think she was being murdered. Then Chanur’s words registered. “Wait, Holt is gone? What do you mean? Where could he even go?”
Chanur gave her a venomous look. “If I knew that, then he wouldn’t be missing, would he?”
Missing, Park thought as Hunter drew her aside. Of course. Of course Elly’s episode would somehow trigger an episode of Holt’s, from the other side of the ship. Of course Holt would somehow vanish into thin air. That would all make sense, considering how this day was going.
She shook her head. Hunter was saying, “Someone had better inform ISF.”
“I don’t think there’s any need for that,” Chanur said from the ground, where she was reading Elly’s vitals with a bioscanner.
“Bullshit there isn’t,” Hunter rapped out. “People are going to pieces. We can’t locate a crewmember. They need to know.”
“Yes,” Park said, trying to shake off the out-of-body giddiness that was threatening to take hold. There was that swaying feeling in her head again, as if she might be space-sick—even though they’d already landed. “Yes, I agree with Hunter. I’ll go tell them now.”
Chanur just shook her head and shrugged. Suddenly Park noticed that there were still people lingering in the hallway, looking into their narrow room. Conscious of the gummy soap in her hair, of her towel hanging around her body like a soggy tortilla, she nodded her goodbye to Hunter and marched past the onlookers, back to the showers. She hadn’t even had time to turn the water off; the steam was almost suffocating. She rinsed off quickly and slipped into her thermal sleeping suit. Her feet were still bare.
Shared psychosis was a possibility, she thought. In the past it had been called folie a deux. Madness of two. Two individuals with latent psychosis, living in close proximity, could mutually trigger delusions in each other—could influence each other’s delusions so that they became identical. But she’d have to establish that Holt and Ma had had extensive contact—and she found it hard to believe that two separate people with psychotic disorders had been allowed aboard the Deucalion. Even with the fast-tracked assembly. She and Keller had thoroughly vetted each crewmember, had conducted all the rigorous tests and simulations. They’d found no trace of anything like this.
Or her infrasound theory was correct. Maybe it wasn’t even the sound of the new planet’s rotation; things like this happened on Earth, too. Mountain ranges could form shapes that repetitive wind events blasted through at certain velocities, creating sound waves too low to hear. Those sound waves could subtly affect the human mind, causing the same irrational feelings of panic and terror that animals felt before earthquakes. Expeditions had gone mad because of those sound waves. People inexplicably ran out into the cold, stripping their clothes off. Clawing at invisible enemies. Dying with their eyes and tongues missing.
Or, she thought. Or Elly had simply been having a bad dream. People did scratch themselves in their sleep. It wasn’t uncommon. The similarities between the dreams could be a coincidence, or otherwise influenced by some innocent extern
al source: a filmstream they had both watched, a book. Park could be overreacting.
She went to discuss it with Commander Wick. It was her way of paying respect; she thought he should be informed before she went to ISF. He shouldn’t have to find out about it from the higher-ups. But around the corner from his sleeping quarters, shivering despite her thermal gear, she remembered suddenly that he wouldn’t be in his bunk: he had to be out looking for Holt. She listened carefully. There were no alerts sounding, no blaring awoogas from the far-off bridge. They obviously didn’t view this as some sort of immediate danger. At least not yet.
Then she noticed that someone was talking in front of Wick’s bunk. Someone male—and angry. Park peeked around the corner and felt a little jolt in the back of her neck. Boone was standing there, gesturing and snarling at . . . Jimex?
“I told you to leave me the fuck alone,” Boone growled in a low, furious voice. Jimex looked amazed by his anger; he wore a look of blank astonishment, as if he were a baby watching someone make faces.
“I am sorry,” Jimex said. His silver eyes seemed fixed on a point past Boone’s left shoulder. “I meant to assist you.”
“I don’t need your help,” Boone said roughly. “If I did, I would have asked for it. Didn’t anyone ever tell you to mind your damn business?”
“No,” Jimex answered, with bland politeness.
The military specialist gave him a hard shove. Despite the fact that she knew better, Park found herself stepping out from behind the wall that obscured her from Boone’s point of view. Jimex staggered back against the wall behind him, then shot upright again, as if he were a weighted bowling pin.
“Boone,” Park said. “What’s going on?”
He saw her standing there and rolled his eyes. “Oh, boy,” he said, as if he were speaking to some invisible audience. “Here we go.” He gave Jimex a contemptuous gesture. “Call off your little clunk, Park. The damn thing won’t leave me alone.”
She looked at Jimex. “Sergeant Boone was told by Commander Wick to look for Dr. Holt,” the android said, in answer to her unspoken question. He didn’t look surprised to find her coming to his rescue—but then again, he rarely did. “Dr. Holt is missing.”
“What does that have to do with you following Boone?” Park asked.
Jimex’s eyes moved from Boone to Wick’s door. His head gave a little buzz. “I did not know why it was necessary for him to return to his room,” he answered. “Dr. Holt is not there. I thought he might be disobeying his directive.”
“That’s not your business, even if he is,” she told him, signaling him to come stand by her. She was aware of how her body slid in front of his, shielding him from Boone’s gaze—as if the custodian android, one head taller than her, was a child for her to protect. Boone watched Jimex retreat behind her with disgust.
“Why are you over here?” Park asked him.
“This is my bunk, too,” Boone answered, sniffing. “Not just Wick’s. Why are you here?”
“I needed to talk to Wick. Shouldn’t you be looking for Holt?”
Boone sneered. “That’s why I came back to my locker. I wasn’t going to start the search without this.”
He showed her his hip. Affixed to his belt was something that looked like a black pistol with a green sparking light at its top. For a moment Park’s vision went dark. It was an ELG—an electrolaser gun—a device that fired such a powerful ionized track of plasma that it could immobilize entire rooms, or melt the teeth of a single assailant. It was like shooting a stream of lightning at a body. Regular guns had been banned off-Earth: the hulls of ships were bulletproof, but that meant the ricochet from one projectile could be devastating to whoever was trapped inside, especially with unpredictable gravity. Electrolaser guns were the next deadliest thing. The ISF claimed that they were non-lethal even in the wrong hands, but—that was just it. They were only claims.
“I don’t think that’s necessary,” Park said, stiff with fear. She meant for Holt, but she also couldn’t see why Boone needed a weapon at all. The thought of him using it on a crewmember—or on her—made her stomach lurch. Why did he have such a thing? Had he had it the entire time they’d been on the ship? Did ISF know?
“Then it’s a good thing it’s not your call, isn’t it?” drawled Boone. He sniffed again, rubbed a finger under his nose. “Word has it that Holt’s gone crazy. He might be dangerous. We need some way to immobilize him.”
“He’s not an escaped mental patient. There are other ways.”
“Like what? You got a tranquilizer gun?”
She glanced sidelong at Jimex. “The androids could restrain him. He can’t hurt them.”
“I wouldn’t trust a clunker to know Holt from a handgun,” Boone said, derisive. “Speaking of, I don’t much appreciate you letting this one run wild. It watches everybody.”
“I’m not responsible for that.”
“Sure you’re not. Just like you’re not responsible for spying on me and Natalya today at lunch.”
Park pressed her lips together. “You seem to have the misconception that I’m unduly interested in what you do, Boone,” she said. “That I would go out of my way to watch you, through the androids or other means. I don’t have the time or energy for that.”
“So I imagined you eavesdropping on me earlier?”
“You were talking very loudly.” Then she looked again at the EL gun at his hip and thought twice about antagonizing him further. Boone saw her look and laughed.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” Park asked him, self-correcting. She cleared her throat. “Anything you need for Holt?”
“No,” Boone said, flexing his hands a little. “He’s somewhere on this ship. It’s only a matter of time until we find him. In the meantime I’d suggest that you hole up somewhere and write your incident report.”
That was the soldier’s politest way of telling her to fuck off. Park wanted to resist it, to stand up to him. But she scanned his face and saw the sullen gray eyes, the tightly-curled hair, the blocky head scraped clean of fat and kindness. And she knew that it was not a conflict worth winning. He’d find some way to retaliate in the future. “Come,” she said softly to Jimex.
The android hesitated, then nodded. “Good night, Sergeant Boone,” he said.
Boone was watching Jimex with a grin on his face. “You see that, clunker?” he said, lowering his tone to a horror-story-teller’s sotto voce. “Your master knows when to leave well enough alone. Follow her example, or I might just zap you with this!”
He pulled out the gun and pointed it at Jimex’s face. Jimex looked at Park as if expecting her to tell him when to flinch. Park was speechless with horror. She felt her heel turn, felt her body hurrying itself away from the threat. There was a hot prickling between her shoulders, as if her system expected the shot at any moment; as if it was already anticipating the crackling, blood-boiling blow. Her heart thundered in her ears. Boone saw her fear, and he chuckled softly to himself as she left. Park fled down the corridor with his laugh following her, nipping at her heels like a hound.
* * *
—
“I want you to stay away from him,” she told Jimex later, after he had escorted her to her office. “In fact, tell all the androids to, if they can help it. He’s—volatile. If he does decide to shoot you with that thing, it’s game over for you.”
“I didn’t know we were playing a game,” Jimex intoned. He seemed unaffected by their encounter with Boone.
Park wanted to shake him. God damn these lower-tier models, she thought. Sometimes they were so stupid. He made her miss Glenn, and she hated that; resented it even more than the danger he kept putting himself in.
“I’ve been told by the other crewmembers that you keep bothering them,” she said aloud. “Why can’t you just clean the ship?”
“I have,” Jimex said, blinking. “Deck A is ninety-n
ine point nine nine nine percent—”
“Then at least stay silent when you’re done,” Park said, exasperated. “Don’t talk to anyone except me, unless you absolutely need to. It’s for your own good.”
Jimex took a while to process this. “I understand,” he said finally. His pupils focused and unfocused as his brain adapted to the new directives.
“Good,” Park said. She could feel a headache coming on. “Now, just—go somewhere, and enter sleep mode. Don’t come out of it until morning. Or unless you see Holt.”
“Understood,” Jimex said. He stood up and regarded her for a long moment, expressionless. “Thank you, Dr. Park.”
“Good night,” she said, weary. Then she closed her eyes as she listened to him leave the room, his heavy tread thumping away into the darkness. As frustrated with him as she was, she was a little glad that he had accompanied her into her office. The ship was still on lockdown—it was still technically lights-out hours for the crew—and she had half-expected to find Holt sitting in the shadows when she came in, his features glowing with the MAD greenness. The thought made her heart beat just a little more quickly.
She turned on her console in a rush and recorded a message for the ISF outpost on Corvus. She told them about Elly’s nightmares, her symptoms, the similarities to Holt, whose session transcript she had already sent earlier in the day. She mentioned her suspicions of shared psychosis. Holt’s escape from the medical bay. She confessed that she wasn’t sure what to do.
And then, hesitating, she brought up the fact that Boone was carrying a weapon that could incapacitate the entire crew. She asked, in more diplomatic terms, if the ISF Eos Committee really thought that this was wise.
“I’m standing by for directives,” Park said, rounding off the video. She added, unable to stop herself: “Please respond ASAP.”
She tapped the button; sent the video rushing off into space. Then she sat back and closed her eyes. It would take eighteen hours for the message to transmit to its destination, another eighteen hours for her to receive an answer. So she had a day and a half to operate on her own before receiving any form of guidance.