Ensign Ronaldo Aldo,
HR accepted our unanimous recommendation.
A malfunctioning drone caused a microfracture at a bad spot on the inner hull. The quartermaster is in charge of maintaining the drones, and he has taken full responsibility for the corporal’s death. You are commended for following procedure under difficult circumstances, and getting your vessel back for repair with the body.
You are cleared for duty, in full.
Regards,
Admiral Antonio Diego
* * *
Released from the bondage of fear, of a blemish on my record, I did not intuit the temptation of sin, and my own responsibility at the time, taking instead the judgment of the official reports as a kind of truth. In time, and upon reflection, it was my pride that pushed the whole situation. An experienced space pilot, like Sergeant Anderson, might not have touched the controls at all, if he didn’t know what was happening and all the dials were green. The very odd, rare instance of damage from the interior opposed to the exterior, and the very specific place where that damage occurred on the old, refurbished hull, made procedure foolish. Perhaps he would have intuited that.
A new tech was ordered from the network of ansibles; a new recruit from Earth would be called to this miserable station.
Sergeant Anderson’s wife, the beautiful Corporal Adebayo Anderson, sat with me at dinner, after the funeral service.
“Piloting is dangerous,” she said. “My husband tells me all the time that every voyage could turn so quickly into disaster. Bad luck happened to you, and poor Corporal Xavier, and that is all.”
“I appreciate your faith, Corporal,” I said. I didn’t believe my own words.
She didn’t let me get away from them. “If you hadn’t swallowed this bad luck, my husband would have been there, and maybe he wouldn’t have come home from it. I am grateful to you for swallowing his bad luck. Thank you.”
I had no way to escape the conversation, then. “I don’t like to think about what might have happened,” I said. “I only know what happened, and it was bad enough. Did you know Corporal Xavier well?”
“We were very good friends. I miss her already very much. She did not like you one bit, I am sorry to say.”
“She and I barely knew each other. She seemed diligent in her duties. Beyond this, I cannot say anything else about her. I am putting a letter together for her people, to let them know about her. If you can tell me anything good to say, I’d love to hear it.”
She patted my hands. “We shall pray for her together. We will be faithful to some mysterious God for just this moment, regardless of what may come in others. Death is a time for faith, not philosophy. Philosophy is for living, not dying. Give me your hand, Ensign.”
At the time, I had little faith to pray, but it seemed wrong to deny Mrs. Anderson this. We bowed our heads together, and I felt the pressure of her strength, the depth of feeling carried in her hard hands.
When she finished, she took a deep breath and held back the darkness inside of her. I saw the tears welling up. She made a smile, like a thin veil over her face, and left.
Oh, time creeped along. I waited, dreading what would happen next. The admiral left on his patrol, at last. I watched the passage from the top floor of the station, up at the upper observation deck, along the axis of the spin, and on the side opposite the passage to the warship’s dock. There was a bubble of see-through materials, wrapped one on top of another, and the ribbons of stars and darkness enveloped the slowly winding engines of the sleek machine. It cut through the darkness with a deadly beauty. I still wish to fly one, even now. I imagined being alone on the station, in charge while the enemy came in their terrible ships. I could ride an emergency signal, then, if the station was doomed to fall. I could push the emergency button and leave this whole world behind to die, my second self with it, and clone out to deliver intel on the fatal attack.
I was not alone. Obasanjo arrived soon after I did. He brought the sticky red jujube dates that passed as dessert, and something that quite nearly resembled a flat, herbal root beer. We drank it from bags with straws while floating weightless, tied to the floor with long ropes that we could climb when we were ready to return to the station.
“The air itself, is different when the admiral is on patrol,” said Obasanjo. “As if a hundred voices sigh and a knot leaves all our backs at once.”
“I didn’t expect to be alone up here,” I said. “Considering how well the back of him is liked, I am surprised it’s only you and me.”
“One can watch from the monitors, if so inclined, but there is work and there is sleep and there is the time between. Believe it or not, my little circle of atheists is going to be meeting here, soon, and I only came a little early to watch the bastard go. If I didn’t have the meeting, I’d have never come. I have to get the schedule ready for tri-annual performance reviews.”
“Will you be handling tri-annuals instead of him?”
“No. The admiral hoards that power like a black hole craves starlight.”
“I don’t expect to get a good tri-annual. A crewmember died under my command.”
He did not let me sit with that attitude for very long. “It’s kind of awful to frame someone’s death with how it relates to your performance review, though.”
“Don’t do that,” I said. “For a moment, I thought we were friends. I should stay for your group, shouldn’t I? I should learn to be more philosophical?”
“Yes. And I can be a good friend. Ask me for something realistic, and I’ll see what I can do before the admiral returns. Since the admiral came to power, no one has merited transcendence. It’s been a long time. I think he was the last one, in fact. It’s not common out here, as it is at other colonies. I don’t know why. At least, I have my suspicions.”
I chewed the red date. It was thick, like a kind of dry, semisweet taffy. I watched the engines gently fading into the darkness. Once momentum was built, the engines would be shut off, and the gravities of space itself would carry the momentum to the correct destinations. It was all so carefully planned. As the different probes drifted off, the mass of the ship would change, and the pilot would have to adjust power output of the engines, and restabilize the mission trajectory each time, resetting and checking computer models against the known and unknown gravitational influences, pushing up momentum to near lightspeed.
Obsanjo gazed up and kept sipping his sweetened drink. “So, do you know what Wong does when the admiral’s away?”
“Trains for war?”
“Nothing. All his stupid training stops. He cancels everything, even daily calisthenics. He calls in sick. He spends the whole time trying to convince me to sign reports that I know are bullshit with the admiral’s rubber stamp. He hides out in his room.”
“No way.”
“The only thing he cares about is leverage with the enlisted. He has that, and he has them by the balls, and he takes their money for it.”
“Do you take their money? You have leverage.”
“Sometimes I do. It depends. Money doesn’t seem worth the trouble when we’re going to the same damn rock with the same damn food.”
“The admiral will not recommend anyone for transcendence if they are caught taking bribes. Maybe if we did a better job, and we were better leaders . . .”
Obasanjo laughed. “As if he would recommend me if I didn’t. Good luck in your review. Maybe you’re right. Fortunately you have until he gets back. He can’t review you if he’s not here. Make good numbers with your work and your assignments and you might see some real positive outcomes. Or not. I’ve noticed that it doesn’t seem to make any real difference, either way. Tomorrow would be a good day for it. Nobody does anything tomorrow if they don’t have to. You’d really stand out on the daily sheets.”
“The biotic techs must hate us all.”
“Q doesn’t care for us either. He is still trying to repair the transport you broke. Anderson comes back tomorrow, and that vessel will need to be che
cked, also.”
“I would like to fly again,” I said. “Is that a realistic request?”
“I cannot make that happen for you in any official capacity without the admiral’s approval. His orders. Sorry, Ensign. I do have an idea. Do you prefer men or women?”
“Women.”
“Ah. Too bad,” he said, quickly, then: “Well, there aren’t many women here or there. Strict population controls are in place. Most women on the surface have more than one husband, or some other interesting arrangement. The monastery does not approve, but . . . It does mean that upon the surface, beyond the monastery, customs are a little more relaxed. I will put you in touch with someone who is always looking for a handsome-enough young man. You aren’t as pretty as Wong, and you certainly aren’t as pretty as me, but you’ll not be charged very much, regardless.”
“I have never been interested in prostitution, Captain.”
“You are not a moralist like Q, I hope? Look, desperate times, as they say. I will give you the contact. What you do with it is up to you. This is a very long, dull posting. You may need it someday.”
Confessor, I received the contact, for a middle-aged woman with very sad eyes who lived with three husbands in an underground bunker that was far from the monastery, but not far enough to be an inconvenient flyer ride. I never indulged. Paying for it seemed, somehow, more pathetic than going without. So, regarding this indulgence, I have nothing further to confess.
“I wish I could fly out into that darkness, Captain. I wish I could go beyond the known particulate pathways, in the warship that flies into the black of the Greater Laika, toward the Magellanic or Andromeda.”
“The admiral is supposed to cede that duty to you, and remain here. After performance reviews, we are all to be scheduled for a planetary vacation. We’re on a three-year cycle, and you’ll be last in line, I’m afraid, but I can pull some procedural strings as a personal favor. You can be last in line for this cycle, which means you are due for your vacation now. It is critical for everyone to go down planetside, get some fresh air, and feel the heat on our backs. My advice is to focus on that. Honestly, this was the admiral’s idea. He thinks you should see the surface before he does your tri-annual. He thinks you need some perspective. It’s not even a favor. It’s almost the admiral’s orders.”
“I appreciate it,” I said. “You don’t think I’ll ever fly again?”
“No. The next admiral, perhaps, might indulge you, but not this one.”
“It wasn’t my fault.”
“No, none of us believe it was, not even the admiral. He insists that it was your bad luck, though, even if it wasn’t your fault. He bent the rules for you once, and that’s enough for him. He is kind enough to downcycle you, and that’s the limit of his mercy. Take it, with my blessing, as well. Sergeant Anderson’s next voyage down will have you on board.”
Outside, in the darkness, the warship was a speck in the black, a tiny, dwindling star. I thought, for just a moment, I might have seen the first of the deep probes launched, but I wasn’t sure if it was that or a side thruster adjusting the angle of flight. I squinted and used my tablet to zoom in on the darkness, but the probes were not lit, and the reflection of the starlights on the solar hull of the warship were so slight, I could not be certain I was seeing anything at all, or just willing it upon the void.
Scouting missions did not go deep. They extended with haste beyond the Oort cloud and out a few light years, moving at blistering speeds. The people on board the ship experience only a week or two, but it is a month or more when they return.
I was thinking about the thrill of near lightspeed, and how it would quicken my assignment. I would gain days and weeks upon my posting, and be even younger when I reached the end of my assignment. It was no wonder that the admiral reserved that duty for himself, alone.
Obasanjo’s philosophy group arrived one at a time. I greeted them each, and was pleased to see Corporal Adebayo Anderson. She pulled herself up into the observation deck and smiled.
“You will be joining us tonight, Ensign?”
I opened my mouth. “Uh, sure. I cannot promise I will have time to return, but I have time tonight.”
“Very good, Ensign. Very, very good. You are a clever man, and an AstroNav. You can help us by investigating the data that comes in from the probes, and the maps.”
“Investigate them for what?” I said.
“Inconsistencies,” said Obasanjo. “Convenient coincidences. Things like that. My thesis, if you will, and our course of investigation, is that the universe is not real. We are shadows, nothing more. We are some grand experiment in the dark. We investigate this possibility.”
“My thesis is that, with respect, Captain Obasanjo is wrong,” said Corporal Anderson, “but we are still not allowed full access to what is happening in the universe. The god men tell us to pray and focus on our duties, but I prefer to question at the devils what is happening.”
Private Farhouk, a grumpy-looking network tech, pointed up at the glass. “Did you see the bastard go?”
“Only for a moment,” said Obasanjo.
“I have been reading some old Margalit texts, and I wonder what relationship our little hobby has to our duties. Does undermining our duties with doubt impact them? Do we do as well as if we had no doubts? I want you to check the statistics of completion, Captain. I want to see how the quartermaster’s prayer group does in their daily tasks compared to us.”
“What is your theory?”
He grunted. “I’ll wait to see numbers before I have a theory.”
“Everyone is equally bad,” said Obasanjo. “I assure you that much. We are such a disappointment in our leaky hull. How did your insight into the genetic history of our oldest O/S bugs go? Any interesting discoveries?”
“I’m still developing the virus lines,” he said. “Maybe next week I’ll have something for you. What is the ethics of what we do compared to our little group? Are we undermining our duties?”
My head began to spin while they discussed the question. It seemed circular, honestly. Those who believed that we were, as Obasanjo believed, some distant experiment for the mysterious enemy, felt there was no problem going through the motions of our duties compared to true believers. The whole mission was a farce, so why feel pressure to perform for a farce? The others believed that the only way to prove the mission was a farce, if it was, was to engage with it as if it weren’t. Another faction—if I can call Corporal Anderson, by herself, a faction—was a rejection of both camps in the pointlessness of questioning reality in this angle, when so many other more fruitful lines of inquiry were available. At the end of the meeting, I was bored and confused and I tried to escape without promising to attend another meeting. I believe I said something like, “That was a lot to take in. I’m going to have to sit on that, awhile, and think on it.”
In the morning, transfer procedure began for replacement enlisted, and Obasanjo asked me to sit in as officer on deck during the procedure, to monitor station protocols and signals and paperwork, while he took over the transfer from the ansible. Officer on deck sounded prestigious, but it was just a procedural safety-valve job, where I was ready to push a button and get someone else to do something outside of normal task protocols in an emergency. I sat at Obasanjo’s desk, and stared at his monitors, and if anything came over the transom, I rubber stamped it for the system computer in his absence. I was approving shift changes and work reports from the different sectors of biotic clearance, watching the computer’s steady stream of data about oxygen levels, station energy, and water supply. I felt the role of rubber stamp could be played by an algorithm, not an officer, but the procedure was sacrosanct, and the absence of the admiral meant that everything he hadn’t bothered to approve could finally get done. It was not long before I stopped even reading what I was stamping in any depth. I skimmed it, and as long as the header matched the paragraphs, I approved.
During this time, my first concrete idea of actual sedition arrive
d. I could request anything, now, that was in my power to request. As officer on deck in the admiral’s absence, I was sole arbiter of the approval chain for anything that did not cross the quartermaster’s devastatingly solid queue. I could not approve any new warships, for materials go through the supply chain and the quartermaster. But I could approve time off, medical leave, and any number of personnel shifts that could happen so invisibly. I put in a request, as a joke, to move Mrs. Anderson to flight crew, where she would aid in ship maintenance. I did not approve it. But the realization struck me that this is why Obasanjo was so happy. Whatever was in his power, he could approve. He was as corrupt as Wong, in his way. He would not demand money, but I knew that there would be a price to pay for his sponsorship, someday. I could sense it about him. Everyone demanded something in exchange, even if it was only favors for friendship in this miserable post. I began to think of ways I could use this power to transcend the post. All the scheming seemed so small, to me. Favors for better pieces of a semi-inhabitable rock, and what else? I began to try to mentally connect the dots between the emergency data signal procedure, and this thoughtless rubber stamp.
I also listened into the transfer protocols with the distant ansibles, and the arrival of our new crewmember, replacing the one we lost, and heard a bright, warm woman’s voice announcing herself to Obasanjo.
The guilt that I felt, already, was so high. Here was this beautiful voice and she was here because someone died in my command, and I was glad it would be someone beautiful, but not at this price.
I imagine the better she looked, the kinder she was, the nicer and the more dutiful she was to me, the worse I would feel about Corporal Xavier’s death. The worse I should feel, at least. As time passed, I did not feel worse about anything. I just felt numb.
Tech Private Chet Detkarn was very beautiful, with a body like a slender willow bending in the breeze, and long black hair that she maintained long contrary to regulation for some cultural reason I never had explained to me. I saw her from across the cafeteria when she completed quarantine, and I forced myself not to stare. She was uncomfortable with all the stares, or uncomfortable just being present in this posting on the far edge of time itself, a beautiful woman with only a handful of other women, and all those leering, bored, horny men.
The Fortress at the End of Time Page 9