Voyage

by E M Gale

  “I thought you grew up in the city?”

  I was confused. “Well, yes. That’s why I like parks.”

  The plants were weird, a deep bluey-green, but I saw some silvery trees that reminded me of ash trees. I spotted a lake, we headed over to it and Rob sat down on a bench. There were all sorts of bird-things on the lake, I watched them for a bit. They could fly, like birds, but looked like they were furry like mammals.

  “This reminds me of Kensington Gardens,” said Rob. “The round pond, you know, with the swans.”

  “Yeah, smells less though.”

  He laughed.

  “It took me three washes to get that smell out of my hair.”

  “Eh? You’re supposed to swim in the Serpentine, Clarke, not the Round Pond!”

  “Ha ha. I wasn’t swimming, I got round-ponded.”

  Rob raised his eyebrows, but I was distracted as a bird-thing walked past us.

  ‘Ah, not fur, just really weirdly-shaped feather things.’

  “If you win a position in the Union the tradition is that you must down a pint of beer then get round-ponded, i.e. chucked in the damn pond.”

  “Fun,” he said, shaking his head. “What a stupid tradition.” Then he grinned at me.

  I shrugged. “Most traditions are. Still, it was better to be dunked in when it was warm and smelly rather than on a day like today.”

  He nodded, then he idly regarded me out of the corner of his eye whilst his head was turned towards the frigid lake.

  “So…” started Rob. He had his long legs stretched out, feet crossed over each other and his hands shoved into the pockets of his black wool coat. “Did you look then?”

  ‘Eh?’

  “At what?”

  He turned his head to look at me. “The historical records you picked up,” he said as if it were obvious, and I guess it was.

  ‘Oh… those.’

  “Ah.”

  ‘What to say? Is he going to want to know his future? What the hell should I say?’

  “Well?” he asked. I felt cold now we were sitting down, so I pulled my coat around myself, did it up and shoved my hands into my pockets.

  “Ah,” I said again.

  He stared at me, waiting.

  “Rob… would you look?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I didn’t want to look. I was… mega-scared actually.”

  “You? Scared?”

  ‘Well, whatever.’

  I just nodded slowly. “And… if I read it, I thought I would be constantly asking myself questions like, is this what I should be doing to get this future? And… you can’t trust the articles to be correct…”

  “So… you did look?”

  He was looking curious.

  ‘Oh, God, Rob, I know how you die! Are you asking me to tell you?’

  “A… bit. Then I freaked out and decided not to look any more.”

  “And… what happens?” he asked urgently.

  I laughed nervously and smiled. “Don’t you want to wait and find out? More interesting that way. Things are only exciting the first time. They’re less exciting when you know what’s going to happen.”

  “Nah,” he said, “surely it’s interesting to see how things happen?” I started chewing on my lip.

  “Huh. Anyway, I can never remember anything. I’m bad at memorising words or remembering facts. I couldn’t rely on that sort of thing.”

  He nodded, but his eyes betrayed his eagerness.

  “So, tell me, what do you know?”

  ‘Ah.’

  “You, er, want to know the future?” I was stalling.

  ‘Should I tell him about his death? Surely he wouldn’t want to know that? No one would want to know that, right?’

  “Well, technically the past,” he said.

  “No, technically our future in the past.”

  “Eh?”

  “I’ve been working on coming up with a new grammar to explain it. Basically, to pinpoint when something happens, you need two tenses and you gotta combine them.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, you need the tense for the event on the normal timeline, the one that a non-time traveller would experience. In this case, the past. Then you need a tense for the event for a time traveller, i.e. us. And for us, the events happen in the future. So it’s our future, in the past.”

  He nodded. “That makes sense.”

  I smiled. “Thanks, took me ages to think of that as a way of explaining to myself what was going on.”

  “So… we go back then.” He grinned at having gotten that much out of me.

  ‘Ah, oops. I haven’t decided what I’m going to tell him yet.’

  “OK, well, let me tell you what I think.”

  He raised his eyebrows and leaned in closer.

  “I don’t want to go back. I’ve never really wanted to go back.”

  “What?”

  “I mean what the hell would I have to go back for?”

  He frowned. “So… the whole ‘let’s go to Earth and figure out how to get back’ thing was a lie?”

  “Oh, no. I didn’t lie to you guys. All the universities are on Earth. We needed money anyway. If you guys want to go back, well, I’ll do everything I can–”

  ‘–be bothered with, that is.’

  I sighed.

  “Nothing to go back for?” asked Rob, rolling the idea around his brain.

  “Um… yes.”

  “Oh, come on, you must want to go back?”

  “Er… why?”

  “To be a scientist, of course,” he stated as if it were obvious. I smiled a rueful half-smile.

  ‘That, Rob, is why you want to go back.’

  “I’m being a scientist here. I’m learning all about the galaxy,” I commented.

  He looked thoughtful.

  “It’s more interesting here. More planets, more species, more spaceships.”

  “But surely you have to go back?” he asked, running his hand through his hair.

  “Why?”

  He looked around us conspiratorially. There was no one anywhere near us. It really was too cold to be literally chilling out on a park bench.

  “Because we’re not from this time… and if the record says we go back, then you’ll have to. Does it?”

  I nodded slowly. “Apparently, I go back… and get my PhD,” I said sadly.

  He grinned at me. “And me?”

  ‘Ah. You die, Rob! OK, I’m not telling him. Just don’t think about it, Clarke.’

  I put some effort into hiding the sadness and making my face into a smile.

  “You get a hell of a lot of papers.”

  “And?” he asked, his eyes wide, leaning forward, his hands clenched. He was looking hopeful.

  I smiled. “You do get the Nobel Prize, Rob.”

  ‘More than once. But hey. You don’t need to know that.’

  “Really?” He jumped up and grinned like a loon. “Yes!” he shouted, punching the air. He pulled me to my feet, hugged me then kissed me on the lips. “Wow!” he said, beaming. I couldn’t help but grin at him.

  ‘I can’t get him to give up science, not when it makes him this happy.’

  I tried to feel happy for him and not think about lost spaceships.

  “I get the Nobel Prize,” he repeated with awe in his voice. I laughed.

  “You not going to dance, then?”

  “What do I get it for?”

  I grinned and waggled my finger at him, copying one of Anna’s favourite gestures. “I can’t tell you.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cos. I know what you’re like. If you knew, you wouldn’t be interested in it enough to work on it and get the damned Nobel Prize.”

  “Huh!” He frowned at me, offended. “I would too!”

  “Oh, come on! Leave some stuff to find out later.”

  “I’ll ask you the rest later then,” he said with a cheeky grin. “And you?” he added after a pause.

  ‘Ah. Well.’
<
br />   “And me what?” I said innocently, looking away to watch the bird’s feet tapping the lake’s surface as it took off.

  “Do you get one?”

  I stared at him in shock. “Uh… wow, Rob.”

  He gave me an odd look.

  “I’m flattered that you would even consider me to be good enough for a moment. I, uh, wow.”

  “I don’t see why not.” He looked like he was going to compliment me more so I cut him off.

  “I don’t.”

  “Oh.” He looked thoughtful. “So what do you do?”

  ‘Ah… about that…’

  “You must do something… great.” He was looking serious and intense. “You’re that kind of person.”

  ‘Eh? What’s that supposed to mean?’

  “I didn’t look,” I lied, looking right at him as I did so.

  “Really?”

  “Uh-huh.” I nodded. “I’m a researcher up until the start of the Orc-Vampire War. I didn’t look at anything after that.”

  ‘That was a half truth, really.’

  “The what?”

  “The Orc-Vampire War.”

  He looked blank.

  “You haven’t heard about that?”

  ‘Huh, everyone keeps mentioning it to me. But then, I guess I did win it.’

  “Oh, OK. There was one,” I explained. He nodded.

  ‘Well, two actually, but let’s not complicate matters.’

  “You know anything else?”

  “Actually, no. I didn’t want to find out anything else,” I said sadly.

  ‘Too painful. And anyway, foreknowledge would only confuse me.’

  “It would only confuse matters to know what would happen,” I said. He nodded sagely.

  ‘I ought not to ask, this is one of those things I should leave alone, but I’m no good at that.’

  “Do you want to know more?”

  ‘This is dumb.’

  “I could let you read up on it.”

  ‘Except I really, really won’t. So why am I asking him? It’s not really fair, is it?’

  He thought about it for a moment. I looked away to look at the alien birds.

  “I’m sure I’ll find out in time.”

  ‘So I was testing him. For what reason exactly?’

  “And anyway, I know I get the Nobel Prize, what more do I need to know?” It had been his dream since he was about eight. I didn’t think I’d even known what a Nobel Prize was at eight, but he was already reading physics textbooks and biographies of scientists at that age.

  Rob grinned and jumped up. He pulled me to my feet, planted a kiss on my lips and then spun us both round, singing, “La, la, la, a Nobel Prize for me.”

  I laughed. “I knew you had to dance!”

  “Of course,” he said, whilst doing, of all things, a bow. “And anyway your hands are cold, Clarke.”

  I held them against my face.

  ‘Yup, they are.’

  “Shall we walk again, then?” I suggested.

  “Do you want to go to a bar or something?”

  ‘Well, I do love dive bars.’

  “Nah. We’ll have to be back on the Egg in about an hour, so let’s just walk and enjoy being outside.”

  * * *

  With His Teeth, I Guess

  We were back on board ship an hour before it took off. I watched us leave Antigua Nuevo behind from my quarters. Then, even though I thought I ought not to need it, I crawled under my bed again and fell fast asleep.

  I woke up a few hours later, showered, and was thinking about how to enjoy my shift off when there was a knock at the door. I opened it. All five of the orcs were there–Bron and Grom at the front grinning and the other three, Gragle, Logtar and Henry.

  ‘Great. An alien invasion.’

  “Hi,” I said warily.

  “Grogram,” said Bron.

  ‘Ah, great, orcish. They do expect me to know it. I’m pretty sure that means hello. Brilliant. Oh, well, I suppose I need the practice, right?’

  “What’s up?” I asked in orcish. The literal translation was something like, ‘How’s the hunting going’, which sounded an almost vampirish phrase to me.

  Grom grinned. Bron and Grom were obviously the leaders of this little party. The other three were more deferential towards me. I guessed they got less polite after you slept with them.

  “We were after some coffee,” said Bron, grinning.

  ‘Oh? Five orcs have just invited themselves over for a coffee morning? How funny is that?’

  “A nice idea, but unfortunately I haven’t got enough cups,” I said. At this point they all grinned and held up bright yellow mugs they’d nicked from the canteen.

  I laughed at that. There was something so ludicrous about the whole scenario. I threw the door wide.

  “Food and shelter,” I said in orcish, which is the rough equivalent of ‘come in’. I wandered over and put some orcian coffee on.

  ‘If this sort of thing becomes a habit I might need to start buying more on planet leave. And it’s bloody expensive.’

  I watched them come in. They were much taller and wider than me so I was wondering how they would arrange themselves on the low sofa. The coffee machine started to gurgle and bubble, giving off the fantastically pungent aroma that makes it easy to catch orcian coffee drinkers. The orcs didn’t bother with the sofa, but just folded themselves up cross-legged in a rough circle on the floor.

  ‘That’s one way to do it.’

  ‘How do orcs live on their home planet? Do they sit around in cross-legged circles there too, or use chairs? They are a tough, militaristic species, I suspect they aren’t going to go in for soft pink sofas, but you never know.’

  I brought the coffee over and took the empty space in the circle.

  “Good coffee, Clarke,” said Bronwich.

  “Thanks, I smuggled it myself.” I looked at Henry. “So… why are you called Henry?”

  ‘It’s an odd name for an orc. Doesn’t seem to have enough ’gr’s in it.’

  “My mother’s idea,” he mumbled.

  “You don’t like it then?”

  “Well… it’s OK. It was her father’s name.”

  ‘Eh? Still doesn’t sound orcish.’

  “He was British or something.”

  ‘Really? So… he’s a half-orc? Or maybe a three-quarter orc. Looks orcish to me. He is, well, green. Hold on, does that mean that humans and orcs can have kids then? That someone other than me has discovered humans can sleep with them? I guess it must do. Interesting. Wouldn’t that make orcs and humans the same species then?’

  “Ah, me too,” I commented.

  “I’ve never been there,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  ‘Oops. Hope there’s not some really obvious reason that I ought to know. Way to go, Clarke.’

  “Well, it’s a long way from Bokdraw. I have been to Earth though, just not Britain.”

  ‘Oh, so Britain still exists and I guess the UESF base he’s visited isn’t located there.’

  They then started talking about all the places they had visited. Mostly places where there were UESF bases. They spoke in orcish–they obviously thought I could speak it fluently. I listened hard without making it look like I was listening hard. I managed to follow the general flow of the conversation though. Mostly because I’d worked through the bit of the orcish language course that covered travel.

  “Any of you guys ever been to Tortuga?” I asked.

  “Ah, well,” started Bron. He looked at Gromley, who shrugged.

  ‘What is going on here then?’

  “Of course, we are in disguise as smugglers,” said Bron. “But officially, we don’t know where it is.” Grom and Logtar were nodding.

  “However, since we’re undercover, we’re allowed to dock there,” Logtar said.

  “But we can’t let them know that we’re UESF,” Gragle added. At least that was roughly what I thought they’d said. They were speaking in orcish still so I had to l
ook up about half the words once they’d gone.

  I supposed they thought it was OK for them to admit that they were UESF to me when we were speaking in orcish. Although all the marines knew I knew, none of them ever mentioned it. I suspected that the major still didn’t know I was on to him. Being nice, however, I had dropped all of the ‘retirement’ and ‘illegal’ comments, for now at least. The rest of the conversation was on less useful topics, but it was damn good practice at Standard Orcish.

  The coffee morning over, I turfed the orcs out of my room and headed off down to the sims room. There was nothing like swinging a sword around a few hundred times to make you feel better. I was in the middle of a long convoluted kata I’d made up–it was a mish-mash of a kenjitsu, basic fencing and even a waltz move (those spins can be useful in combat)–when there was a knock on the door.

  ‘Damn.’

  “Clarke?” said Cleckley.

  ‘Damn, I don’t want anyone to know I use the sims room as much as I do.’

  I pulled the door open. He smiled at me.

  “How did you know I’d be here?” I asked.

  “Where else would you be on your day off?” he said with a shrug. “I’d already checked the bars.”

  ‘Huh.’

  “Come in to my office.” I stepped aside to let him in. He smiled at that.

  “No backgrounds?” he remarked, taking a seat on the floor. I crossed one foot over another and dropped down into a crossed-leg sitting posture and placed the sword controller across my lap in one smooth movement. He looked impressed at that. “I was expecting something… green.”

  “Yeah, I like looking at those, but I was practising and they’re too jarring for that.”

  He looked confused.

  “They don’t smell right.”

  “Oh.” He nodded, but said nothing else. So I rearranged my hair whilst waiting him out.

  “So… what did you want to talk about, Cleckley?” I asked eventually, my hair having been re-pinned. “And why not wait until the more salubrious surroundings of the bar? I will be there later of course. As you pointed out, where else would I be on my day off?”

  “Nothing, I just wanted to chat.” But then he said nothing else.

  ‘Right then.’

  “OK,” I said. “Tell me, why did you say orcs and humans are different species when we have a half-orc on-board?”

  He looked confused. “They’re all half-orcs.” He eyed me strangely.