Spindown

by Andy Crawford

  “No, that’s okay,” the tech answered Konami. “Let me think for a minute… Sewage, right? Yeah, I have to stand Sewage every quarter-cycle, I think, for proficiency — yeah, I remember. Purifier clean and inspect — a bi-cyclical, or tri-cyclical, or something. Big pain in the ass — nearly took all watch… the offgoing should’ve started it, but—”

  “Please, Second, the breather?” interrupted Mattoso. She chided herself for checking to see if Konami approved. Doesn’t matter, Bea. It’s not like he’s your boss.

  “Yeah, the breather. What’s to tell? I followed procedure, donned the thinsuit and breather, scrubbed down the crap on the purifier, and doffed it.”

  “Can you remember donning it?” asked Konami.

  “I don’t know, I just put it on.”

  “Do you remember any problems with the breather?”

  “No, it worked fine.”

  “How about doffing it?”

  The second just grunted. “I just took it off. What’s—”

  Konami scrolled down a projection. “Did you replace the filter?”

  “Uh… yeah, of course. That’s procedure.”

  “And then…?”

  “Then? Oh, then I put on a new seal. No wait — the seal is last. I recharged the tank, then the new seal. Then I thumbsigned the logs, of course.”

  Mattoso was impressed — she wasn’t sure if she could recite the procedure from memory without consulting the posted info plate. But then, I don’t have to stand Sewage watch. As an Operational officer, the closest she might come would be the Machinery Control watch, supervising all of the various non-vital machinery systems watches onboard from the Machinery Control Room.

  “Okay, Second. Thank you for your cooperation.” He turned to her, but she didn’t have any more questions. “We’ll let you know if we have any more questions, Mr. Gustafson. Don’t leave town.”

  They left the young tech with a confused look on his face.

  “‘Don’t leave town’?” she asked Konami.

  “Sorry,” he chuckled. “Earth joke.”

  They made their way to the Central Ring in silence. “Do you miss it?” she asked while they waited for the Ring. “Earth?”

  Konami looked at the deck. “I miss the sky. I miss seeing… nothing.” He pointed upwards. “You look up on Aotea, you just see the other side of the Can. On earth, you look up — you might see clouds, or the moon, or the sun… But every so often, and especially at night, you see nothing. Emptiness. Not even stars, unless you’re outside the city, though I miss those too. In Lagos, it was like a grey blanket over the city.” He laughed. “A warm, grey, reeking blanket.” Doesn’t sound like something worth missing.

  Mattoso considered this. “I’ve never seen sky before, except through a window.” She honestly wasn’t even sure if the empty black vacuum of Ceres’ surface counted as “sky.”

  Konami raised his eyebrows. “Really? Where are you from?”

  “Ceres City. One of the exurbs, actually. We took a tube into town for school.”

  “Exurbs?” chuckled Konami. “I thought Ceres City was all there was.”

  She was too far from home to be offended. Few that hadn’t grown up in the asteroid belt knew much about the solar system’s largest asteroid. “There’s New Hawking, on the south pole, and Mahatma, on the equator, and—” She stopped herself as felt a twinge of homesickness. “It’s as big as India, you know. Ceres, I mean. It’s not so small.” She knew nothing about India aside from its status as a large land region on Earth, but ever Cerean student learned that their home was approximately the same size. “So just the sky? Anything else?”

  “The dogs. Maybe I miss the dogs.”

  “The dogs?”

  “Yeah. On Aotea all the dogs look alike. Jenji dogs and cats are all the same, except for the colors, and they all have the same personality. They’re great, but in Lagos there were dogs that looked like wolves, and dogs that looked like rats, and everything in between. My neighbor had a big yard and a dozen dogs, and I used to watch them play with her children. And not just dogs — monkeys, antelope, squirrels, and birds — oh, the birds are beautiful—”

  They were interrupted by a chirp from Konami’s wearable as they stepped onto the Ring. With effort, Mattoso managed to refrain from eavesdropping. The conversation was short.

  “They found the hatch malfunction,” said Konami.

  “Really? What was it.”

  “Just an interlock short. You know, the inner door can’t open unless the outer door was shut, with both doors failing shut. Truly ancient technology, say the techs.”

  “Tried and true, the engineers often say,” she replied. “The fewer moving parts, the fewer things that can go wrong.”

  “Maybe that wasn’t the best philosophy in this case.”

  Considering the result, she couldn’t argue with that.

  CHAPTER 8

  The funeral was brief and surprisingly moving. DT1 Muahe’s closest friends and colleagues gave speeches, mostly improvised, it seemed, praising his unfailing loyalty and commitment to his duties, as well as his sense of humor. A young data technician, weeping softly, was gently urged by his compatriots to make a speech, but refused. They were gathered at the small park next to the reclamatorium, recorded dutifully by the colony ship’s lone journalist, Elena Conneer.

  The park was overflowing — Konami doubted more than a few dozen of the mourners knew Muahe particularly well, but the shock or novelty of the first funeral onboard since departure proved to be a draw for many Aoteans. His eyes roved the crowd, looking for some sort of unusual reaction or clue, but the only faces without expressions of sadness or shock were those of the Bigwigs. The stout, jovial Wilson Paramis had managed to tamp down his typically broad smile to a tight-lipped grin, occasionally mopping his brow, while Hamad Maltin and Mara Ngayabo were as expressionless as Bots.

  A senior solacer by the name of Lumbee gave a warm eulogy, placing extra emphasis on the importance of a positive attitude for the survivors, and all Aoteans in general. “Mourn well,” she said. “But do not only mourn. Celebrate Theo’s life, and emulate his dutifulness and compassion. And remember that he, or someone with identical DNA, will live again among us someday soon.” Among the many provisions of the Charter was a promise that, should one pass away during the journey by any cause other than genetic illness, one’s DNA will move to the “top of the line” of the reproduction queue. The next time an Aotean couple was authorized to have a child, Muahe’s genetic code would have a high likelihood of being selected over the millions of genetic contributions from people all over the Solar System that were stored in Aotea’s genebanks.

  A genetics technician took a ceremonial last sample — in actuality unnecessary, since the banks already had frozen tissue samples from every Aotean — and Muahe’s remains were placed gently in the reclamator pod. A hymn was sung — something about the peace a New Humanity would bring — and the crowd broke up.

  As he made his way back to his quarters, Konami subvocalized, “News.” He was wearing a lens, so hovering in front of him, the top headline read “HIDDEN SPACES OF AOTEA REVEALED.” He chuckled as he swiped through the latest article on Aotea Today, Conneer’s daily periodical. Her piece was complete with images and vids of empty storage and machinery compartments, with ominously low lighting, as though it wasn’t trivially easy to bring a sack of fist-sized lamps that could illuminate the largest spaces onboard. Poor Conneer. If his job was boring, Conneer had to manufacture something interesting to write about every single day.

  A chirp signaled an incoming call.

  “CI Konami,” he answered.

  There was a pause. “Uh, sorry to bother you sir,” said a wobbly male voice. “It’s MRT2 Gustafson; you were by my place earlier.”

  “What can I do for you, Second?”

  “Um… I’m sending you these texts I got. I, uh, don’t think it’s right. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  Gustafson tersely ended the call and K
onami slid through several screens, idly scratching Kostya’s belly. There were seven messages forwarded from the 2nd class tech, all from anonymous accounts. You’ve failed us. read the first. The second read His death is on you. The other five were all variations on the same sentiment.

  He shook his head. How did this get out so goddamn quick? He thought back to his time in Lagos and Singapore — no one cared about the petty crime of the day, but if a celebrity was involved or if it was a sex-related crime then there was always a leak. People are people everywhere, I guess, on Earth or in interstellar space. And it made sense that, onboard Aotea¸ any possible murderer would be a celebrity.

  But the voice messages… they were so tame to be laughable. On Earth, it would have been death threats. On Aotea, you get shamed. And the funniest, or saddest, part, is that it worked. Shame rolled through the wearable speakers, clear as if the tech had been in the room. Only on Aotea!

  A whine distracted him for a moment — Kostya realized Konami was apparently occupied with other thoughts, and stood by the food tray which remained frustratingly empty.

  Konami thought back to Earth procedures as he filled Kostya’s tray with kibble. What did we do when a rumor gets out, and someone starts getting threats?

  The ball came in low and Konami just barely caught it on his racket with a backhand swing.

  “What’s the latest?” asked Konami’s deputy chief inspector, making an improbable leap to return the racketball. Kiroshi Gregorian was short, wiry, and a few years older than Konami. He had more experience in law enforcement than the chief inspector, but all of it was in the smaller settlements of Mars. Konami had learned that the captain and mayor both had wanted a big city cop to head up the constabulary, and the only truly big cities were on Earth. The affable deputy CI didn’t seem to mind — a big part of the reason Konami counted him as his best friend onboard. And Konami planned on supporting Gregorian at the six-cycle point for the next department head rotation — per the Charter, departments could rotate their leaders every six cycles between the senior members of each department to balance experience and reward service. Konami figured that by then he would be happy to take a break from leadership. When he really thought about it, he’d happily relinquish his position much sooner than that.

  “What do you care, you damn layabout?” replied Konami, trying to manufacture the camaraderie that seemed so hard to find lately. Just before the recent drill, Gregorian had returned from a week-long respite at the Beach, as the walled-off leisure zone, tucked against the aft Ring, was known.

  The older man chuckled as he hit a winner into the bottom corner of the back wall. “You know the key to vacation on this tub, Cy?” Gregorian’s next serve was a surprise — high and wide.

  “What’s that?” Konami grunted as he backpedaled to return the ball. Even with a less elastic ball, Aotea’s racketball courts had to be a bit longer than on Earth due to the substantially lower gravity.

  “Don’t go very often. There’s not much at the Beach — just the jet-pools, the widescreens, the games, and the top-shelf food and booze. Keep it to once every cycle or two, and it’s a nice break. More often than that, and it’ll bore you out of your skull.”

  Konami took advantage of a gift serve from Gregorian and won the point. He lined up a solid serve to the back corner. “How about the other vacationers?”

  His best friend returned it easily, sending Konami diving to keep the ball in play. “I’ll just say the timing was lucky, my friend. Even though I had to cut it short.”

  “No details?”

  “You know what they say, Cy. What happens at the Beach…”

  …stays at the Beach. Konami realized that he hadn’t actually taken a break for over a year. In fact, if it hadn’t been for Muahe, he might be packing up for a break as soon as Gregorian got back.

  “You gonna serve, boss?”

  “Yeah, sorry.” Konami gave a half-hearted serve which was promptly drilled into the corner. Crap again. He almost never beat Gregorian at racketball — despite Konami’s relative youth and longer reach, his second-in-command had some special sense of where the ball would be at any given moment. Maybe ’cause the gravity on Mars is almost identical to Aotea’s, and I grew up playing racketball on Earth. If he wanted any chance to win now, he’d have to stay more focused. Or maybe I can distract him. “What have you heard so far?”

  “Maria gave me an outline. Dead data tech, hatch malfunction, mask malfunction, etc. An MRT2 screwed up the suit records. What else you got?”

  Cursing, Konami missed an easy shot. “How’d you hear about Gustafson?”

  “The MRT2? Wasn’t he in the report?”

  Konami thought that was in the detailed report that hadn’t been finalized, not the initial bare-bones report, but he couldn’t recall exactly.

  He missed another shot. He needed something to turn the game around, so he told the story of Muahe’s death but kept the details vague at first, timing his shots as he answered Gregorian’s questions. It earned him two points.

  But his opponent caught on quickly, apparently, and stopped before taking the next serve. “Okay, Cy, nice try,” he chuckled. “Two minute break. Just lay it on me.”

  Damn… I was just about to take the lead. He finished the story.

  “Two malfunctions at the same time?” Gregorian shook his head. “Sounds like quite a coincidence.”

  Konami grunted his agreement.

  “So what do you think about Gustafson? Did he botch the procedure?” Gregorian lined up his next serve.

  Konami had been pondering this since the unfortunate Second called him. “I don’t know. Maybe by accident. I don’t get any… you know, squicky feeling from him.” The serve whizzed by his head. My turn to be distracted.

  “Yeah, yeah,” answered Gregorian. “Simplest answer’s usually the best, right? But I dunno. Shit, it’s like exercising a dormant muscle.”

  Konami chuckled, surprised for a moment that it came naturally. “Maybe we oughta watch those old cop vids — the ones with the murder and the bang-bang and the explosions and the misogyny? They always talked about instinct and gut feeling.”

  Gregorian pursed his lips. “Watch out, Cy. We all signed the Charter.”

  “Of course. Only joking.” And as soon as it came, the amusement was gone. On Earth Konami had never been particularly attached to the sorts of mindless, bloody entertainment that the Society for a New Humanity banned as both a cause and symptom of Earth culture’s inherent violence, but after a few years of nature documentaries and the all-smiles pseudo-propaganda vids the Aotea Players produced, he missed it. “Never liked that crap anyway.”

  Gregorian laughed. “Right, Cy. Right.”

  Konami tried to focus on the game, but it didn’t matter — Gregorian was just a step above him in skill, or at least in familiarity with low-g racketball. He matched Konami’s hardest shots and returned them even harder. Maybe when he was younger, Konami’s athletic ability and long legs would keep him in the game, but not today. With one more serve just out of his reach, it was over.

  “I want you to supervise something a little unusual,” said Konami as they walked to the changing room.

  “What’s that? Punishment for kicking your ass?” Gregorian laughed.

  Ha ha. “Call it that if you like. Activate the reserves — alpha-level — for now.” It was a relief to give the order — like calling in the cavalry. Normally, the Constabulary only had two personnel on watch at any given time — one on patrol, and one at the Emer station. The reserve watchbill consisted of multiple constables that could be at leisure, as long as they were awake and dressed and wearing their wearables. ‘Alpha’ was the lowest activation level, bumping two reserve constables up to the active watchbill. “One more on patrol, and one watching the hab building of Second Gustafson.”

  “Roger, Chief,” replied the Deputy Chief Inspector. “General surveillance?”

  “Yeah. He’s been getting messages. Nothing that serious so far, but
I want to catch any property vandals in the act.”

  “Wow,” said Gregorian as he toweled off. “I’ll get right on it.” The deputy chief inspector changed the subject. “You know what the talk was at the Beach?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Those ghost signals. There was this comms tech — CM1 Dor…” Gregorian cut himself off with a grin. “Well, you don’t need to know her name. But she said these UHF signals were all over the place. They’d be there one second and gone the next, but there were just a few patterns of the burst, all related.”

  Konami recalled the mockery of Lieutenant Commander Olin over the signals at the department head meeting. “Odd stuff. What do they think is causing it?”

  “They have no idea, but a couple of the techs think it’s aliens. That we’re being followed, or shadowed — the signal source vector changes over time.”

  “Have we responded?”

  Gregorian lowered his voice. “She wouldn’t say for sure, but she hinted that the comms techs have free reign to send any signals they want.”

  “Nothing in the Charter about aliens, after all,” answered Konami. His memory of the non-law-enforcement parts of the Charter was less than perfect, but he was confident it didn’t discuss extraterrestrials.

  He was far less confident that it was wise for bored comms techs to be sending signals out to possible non-human lifeforms, however.

  CHAPTER 9

  “It was a one-in-a-million fluke, according to the electronics techs,” Mattoso explained to the executive officer, holding up a small and shiny sliver of metal. Commander Criswell’s office, beneath the command bridge, was Spartan and functional, like the XO himself. He even had his own DustBot clinging magnetically to the wall, programmed to remain in his office and keep it spotless, unlike most of the thousands of little robots that could roam nearly everywhere onboard there might be dirt. In the operational and engineering spaces forward and aft of the ever-rotating Cans, gravity was not quite null due to the constant small acceleration of the Aotea’s propulsion drive, but it was close enough to feel like zero-g. She pushed gently against the fixed desk with her feet to prevent herself from drifting to meet the executive officer, explaining the source of the metallic shard. She handed the XO the culprit. “So that’s quite a coincidence — this shard shorts the circuit at the same time—”