World Enough (And Time)

by Edmund Jorgensen

  * * *

  Back in the suite, Jeremiah found a bottle of vodka sitting on the sofa. He was still deciding if it was meant for him when Katherine came out of her room.

  “I didn’t expect you so soon,” she said. “I was going to write a note.”

  “Saying what?”

  “I was still working it out,” said Katherine. She fidgeted and looked away, as if she would rather have been writing than speaking. “Something about what was and wasn’t your fault, and not wanting to live in open hostility for the next week. And that Alfred told me what happened this morning, and so the vodka was for you, because it sounded pretty rough.”

  “You get the glasses, I’ll pour?” said Jeremiah.

  Katherine looked at the clock, then at Jeremiah, then at the bottle, which Jeremiah shook temptingly.

  “Come on,” he said, “let’s drink to the cessation of open hostilities. You don’t work breakfast today. And it’s 6 p.m. somewhere. Does that argument even need to be made in space?”

  “All right, one drink. One quick drink,” said Katherine.

  She took two small glasses from the bathroom while Jeremiah dragged the coffee table back into place.

  “Say when.”

  “When,” said Katherine. “Whoa, whoa, when!”

  “Sorry,” Jeremiah said, handing her the brimming glass, “it poured so fast we got some time dilation. Cheers.”

  Jeremiah drained his glass, while Katherine only took a sip, but both of them made a face.

  “That vodka is—not good,” said Jeremiah. “I mean, thank you—it’s infinitely better than no vodka, but: wow.”

  “Thank you for your honesty, I guess?”

  “Honesty is what I’m down to today,” said Jeremiah as he poured another glass. “Which means we won’t be drinking to Boyle’s memory, because honestly I think he was a miserable human being, in every sense of the word. But we should say something.”

  “May he rest in peace?” Katherine said.

  “That’s good. May he rest in peace.”

  They clinked glasses and drank again. This time Jeremiah sipped with more caution.

  “He killed himself?” said Katherine.

  Jeremiah nodded.

  “That’s terrible,” she said. “Extra terrible, I mean. When the place you work is basically a deep space nursing home, you don’t expect everyone to make it through every cruise. But even the ‘regular’ deaths feel unfair—like this voyage is a time out from sickness and mortality, and death is violating the treaty. I wonder if that’s why Golden Worldlines chose the period theme? To make the passengers feel like the clock had stopped for a while, or even run backwards? That they had some breathing space, some extra time?”

  She looked down at her glass of vodka, which was almost as full as it had been to begin with.

  “It doesn’t take much,” she said. “I’m getting all fanciful.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever heard plainer speech,” Jeremiah said. “I think you’re right about it all. It didn’t seem to bother Reynolds, though. There is one cold fish.”

  “Once you get to know him, he’s the biggest softie in the world.”

  “I don’t think you know him like I do,” said Jeremiah.

  “Because you’ve worked with him for three whole days?”

  “I’m sure you’re going to remind me that you’ve worked with him for years,” said Jeremiah, “but there’s a quantity vs. quality factor. Have you ever seen how he reacts to death? Because that is a defining moment when judging a man’s—”

  “He’s my father.”

  “—character.”

  Jeremiah took a sip of vodka, chose to extend that sip, and then extend it further, until the glass was empty and he had no excuse not to answer.

  “In case you’re wondering,” he said, “even vodka this bad cannot remove the taste of foot from mouth. You’re really Katherine Reynolds? Alfred Reynolds is really your father?”

  “I’m Katherine Mornay, but Alfred Reynolds is really my father. My adopted father.”

  “So there’s a story.”

  “There is.”

  “Not a completely happy story, I’m guessing.”

  “People in completely happy stories usually don’t have adopted fathers, or end up working on the Einstein IV.”

  “Is it a story you’re tired to death of telling to nosy, interested people, or?”

  “No, no. It is what it is. My grandmother used to say that: it is what it is. I never really liked the saying, but somehow I picked it up—like some piece of her jewelry that I wear just because it was hers. But we’re going to do the short version, ok? And if at any point you say how sorry you are, the story stops. Deal?”

  “I will insist on brevity,” said Jeremiah, toasting the air in agreement, “and if I make any comments they’ll range from somewhat insensitive to completely callous.”

  “My parents died in a car crash when I was eight years old.”

  “Oh hell,” said Jeremiah, “I’m—”

  Katherine stared him down.

  “—going to pour myself another drink. Not sorry. I mean, my parents dropped me off with my uncle while I was still in diapers and never came back, so compared to me you had an idyllic and coddled childhood. Please continue.”

  “Really?” asked Katherine.

  “Yes my parents really dumped me on my uncle, and yes I really want you to continue.”

  “But maybe I want to hear your story now,” said Katherine.

  “All right,” he said, when Katherine refused to go on, “the quick version: one day my Uncle Leo realized he could use advanced synthesizers not to make food, but to make knock-off synthesizers. They cost a quarter of what a good synthesizer did, and made food one tenth as good, and he made a pile of credit. My parents left me with him while they went to seek fame and fortune in the waves, which they never found. Uncle Leo reluctantly funded my progress through an aimless life. The rest you know: inheritance, ferrets, indentured servitude. Now it’s your turn.”

  “All right,” she said. “But later we’re going to fill in the middle part. Where were we?”

  “Veecar crash, eight years old,” said Jeremiah.

  “The car crash happened two days before my grandmother—Felicity—was set to embark on the Einstein.”

  “Wow, your roots on the Einstein IV go deep.”

  “I don’t mean the Einstein IV,” said Katherine. “I mean the Einstein.”

  “I’m confused—what year was this?”

  “Is that polite to ask a woman? My grandmother was the bread-and-butter Golden Worldlines passenger—hoping to buy some time for medicine to catch up with her particular disease. Canceling the voyage wasn’t an option. So she spent what was left of the family fortune and bought me a ticket, too.”

  “Why not just leave you with other family members?” asked Jeremiah.

  “There wasn’t anyone else,” said Katherine.

  “She couldn’t have found you a nice foster family and left you a bunch of credit, instead of buying you a ticket?”

  “She believe the whole ‘cruise to the future’ thing was going to work—that she was going to get back and be cured and have 20 more years to raise me herself. And I’d rather have my grandmother than any amount of credit.”

  “Of course,” said Jeremiah. “I didn’t mean—anyway, I’m guessing that’s not how it worked out.”

  “No. She died a few months into the red leg of the cruise. I’m the reason children aren’t allowed on board anymore. The crew was all very nice, and everyone felt very sorry for me, but none of them had the first idea what to do with a grieving eight-year-old. Except Alfred. He took me with him everywhere, and he put me to work—at the time he was assistant manager of the dining room. I’d do settings and carry plates and wash dishes. Then he’d read with me before I went to bed at night and be there the next morning when I woke up. He didn’t even make me go into suspension during the turn—this was before they developed the Inertia
l Dampers. I got to float around the ship while we were still at zero G.

  “That was chaos, by the way, the first time they tried that maneuver. They tied down everything, every table and machine and knick-knack, but they’d completely forgotten about the water in the pool.

  “Anyway, when we got back to Earth, Alfred asked me if I wanted to adopt him as my father. That’s exactly how he said it—if I would adopt him. I didn’t have to think very long. And that’s how I know Alfred Reynolds.”

  “I stand corrected,” said Jeremiah. “Alfred Reynolds is a huge softie and a noble human being, and you know him a little better than I do. Where did you go then?”

  “What do you mean?” asked Katherine.

  “Where did the two of you live? What did you do, where did you go, when did you take the job on the Einstein IV?”

  Katherine laughed.

  “You’re not getting it. My grandmother took me on the maiden voyage of the Einstein—the Einstein I, as I guess we call it now. I’ve been on Golden Worldlines ships ever since. This is my tenth cruise. I’ve been on every Einstein but the III—the timing just never worked out.”

  “But Katherine, that means you’re—”

  “Old, yes.”

  “But I mean—”

  “Really old, yes.”

  “What year were you born?”

  Katherine swigged the rest of her Russian courage and set the glass loudly on the coffee table.

  “2100,” she said. “December 31st, in Boston. At the time, the hottest New Year’s Eve on record.”

  “But that’s—”

  “Over 200 years ago in Earth time.”

  “You’re almost from the 21st Century!” said Jeremiah.

  “Technically, I am from the 21st Century. The 22nd started in 2101.”

  “And you’ve never been back?”

  Katherine shook her head.

  “But that’s—”

  “No, no: it is,” said Katherine, waving her hand across her collarbone as if showing off a necklace, “what it is. But yes, I believe that technically you are drinking vodka with the second oldest human being alive—in Earth’s frame of reference. And you work for the oldest.”

  “I’m not feeling well,” Jeremiah said. “Maybe I’m done with vodka for the moment.”

  “This is why I don’t like to tell people,” Katherine said. “They either get weirded out or they feel sorry for me.”

  “I’m not feeling sorry for you.”

  “So you’re weirded out. Which is preferable—but still.”

  “Are you ever going to go back?”

  “Maybe,” said Katherine, squirming a little. “I’ve been pinching and scraping together everything I could over the last 20 years—subjective years, I mean. It’s not much. By the time you finish a single 2/20 cruise you haven’t had a raise in two Earth decades. Plus they rake back half of it in entertainment charges if you’re not careful, and inflation is on their side. By the time the cruise is ending you’re paying a small fortune just to watch a wave. But I like books more than waves—sometimes guests pass me some from the library—and I’ve been careful with my credit. It’s all in Golden Worldlines stock, which has done well.”

  “I owe my soul to the company store.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Sorry, it’s a line from an ancient song,” said Jeremiah.

  “I know that song! My grandfather used to play it for me. I just didn’t know anyone else still knew it, too.”

  “I have—or had—a thing for ancient music,” said Jeremiah. “Sorry, maybe ‘ancient’ isn’t the best word to use in the present company.”

  “That was already an oldie in my time. An oldie but goodie, we used to say.”

  “I’ve never heard that phrase.”

  “Welcome to my life,” said Katherine.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Sometimes the passengers use words I don’t understand, and I have to just nod and smile.”

  “Like what? I can translate for you.”

  “How about ‘larky’?” said Katherine.

  “That’s an easy one,” Jeremiah said. “For example, when Mrs. Chapin had everyone pretend to forget Mr. Chapin’s birthday and then threw the surprise party for him, that was larky.”

  “So larky means ‘like a practical joke’?”

  “Yeah, lighthearted and fun.”

  “Can salmon smell lighthearted and fun?” asked Katherine.

  Jeremiah considered briefly.

  “Not any salmon I’ve tried,” he said, “but there are some Northern European cuisines I’m still a stranger to.”

  “Then why did Mr. Drinkwater once say that his salmon smelled ‘larky’?”

  “Well, if the salmon had gone off a bit, it could definitely smell larky.”

  “So it could smell lighthearted and fun?” said Katherine.

  “No, it would smell—you know, strange. Larky.”

  “So what did Mr. Porter mean when he yelled at Mr. Wendstrom ‘Don’t get larky with me!’ while they were playing backgammon?”

  “Ah,” Jeremiah said. “Well that just means snide, or mocking.”

  “And how about when Mrs. Chapin said trying to get Mr. Chapin to eat vegetables was ‘larky’?”

  “That just means it’s a lost cause.”

  “So you’re saying,” said Katherine, “that ‘larky’ can mean pretty much whatever you want it to mean?”

  “Maybe we should start with an easier one.”

  “The many shades of ‘larky’ aside,” said Katherine, “what goes on in that dining room is a whole different world from the one I knew. I worry about going back and not having the first clue what anyone is saying or how anything works.”

  “I wouldn’t worry too much about that,” said Jeremiah. “The world you’re going back to looks nothing like that dining room—it’s much closer to the employee cafeteria. Or it was 20 years ago, and I suspect it’s only more so now.”

  “Really?” Katherine brightened and sat up a little straighter. “Tell me more. Wait,” she said before Jeremiah could reply, “what time is it? Damn, I have to go—I’m meeting someone for an early breakfast.”

  “Oh. Like a date?”

  “Like breakfast,” said Katherine.

  “You told me that you didn’t date co-workers.”

  “I told you I didn’t go to coffee with co-workers. This is breakfast. Not that this is any of your business,” said Katherine.

  “Do you drink coffee at breakfast?” asked Jeremiah.

  “That is also none of your business.”

  “Right,” Jeremiah said. “Well, as you say, it’s none of my business, so I won’t even ask her name.”

  “Goodbye, Jeremiah.”

  “You go on your date that’s not a date—I have a bandora to fix anyway.”

  “Goodbye, Jeremiah,” Katherine said, and started to take her leave.

  “Wait, Katherine!”

  She turned around in the doorway.

  “I’m really sorry,” said Jeremiah.

  “I told you, I don’t want—”

  “No, I’m not sorry you’re an orphan and have been trapped on a spaceship your whole life. I mean I’m sorry about all this.”

  “All what?”

  “Let’s see: garrisoning in your suite, making you break into the storeroom. And so on.”

  “I chose to break into the storeroom,” Katherine said. “And I have to admit, it was the tiniest bit larky. As for the rest: it wasn’t your fault.”

  “It wasn’t totally my fault—but it wasn’t totally not my fault, either.”

  “That’s true,” said Katherine.

  The door hissed closed behind her.

  * * *

  Once he was alone, Jeremiah broke the moratorium on vodka. After a while, heeding some warning signs from his stomach, he paused the vodka and took a half-hearted stab at fixing the bandora, but he was already drunk enough that even gathering the materials and creating a passable m
ise en place was beyond his abilities.

  Abandoning his attempts at woodworking, Jeremiah tried to lie down on the sofa, but each time he approached a horizontal posture he could feel the spin of the ship in the vast universe, and when he tried to close his eyes the memory of those stars seemed to have imprinted itself somewhere this side of his eyelids, and the feeling of Katherine’s shoulder touching his had somehow gotten on this side of his skin.

  She was an odd one, that Katherine. She flew under the radar. For two years Jeremiah had thought her a fine person—pretty, competent, undoubtedly intelligent—but also uncomplicated. Certainly not the owner of the strangest history on a ship full of them. Nor had Jeremiah ever imagined her as the kind of person who could say things like “I’d rather have my grandmother than any amount of credit” so simply and directly, without a hint of reproach—which wasn’t to say that Jeremiah hadn’t felt reproached entirely of his own accord.

  For a while now—since long before the ferrets had weaseled Uncle Leo’s credit out from under him—Jeremiah had regretted coming on the Einstein IV. Not because it was, as Katherine had put it, a “deep space nursing home”—Jeremiah had enjoyed the batty company on the E4, especially before he’d been on the business end of the battiness—but because of the company he’d left behind.

  At the time he’d convinced himself that leaving Appleton was right and proper, as young men had always journeyed far from home to seek their fortune in the wide world. But the young men of fairy tales and bestselling biographies had traveled in space, not time—or at least, no quicker or slower in time than the loved ones they left behind.

  Jeremiah could not escape the feeling that Appleton was spending 20 years for something on which Jeremiah was only spending two—as if Jeremiah were chucking in ten times less for a split lunch check, despite having ordered the more expensive dish. When young men and women traveled they were supposed to become different people. To return home almost unchanged while those tending the home fires had altered so drastically suggested some element of a devil’s bargain.

  And then, speaking of the devil, Jeremiah could not shake the unpleasant images from earlier that morning. The vodka had fuzzed up some of the mental pictures, but also brought certain details into terrible focus. The cast of skin right at the corners of Boyle’s mouth—somehow marine, invertebrate, like the darkest spot on a jellyfish. The stillness of the body under the sheet—like the stillness of a big cat convincing its prey it hadn’t the slightest intention of pouncing. And something else about Boyle’s death bothered him, too—something Jeremiah could not quite put his finger on, until suddenly he did.