The Voyage of the White Cloud

by M. Darusha Wehm

  “It’s not for me,” Gina had answered, knowing that this would be a battle.

  “How do you know?” her mother had asked. “You would love the Academy, I’m sure of it. You always have your eyes on your tablet, I know you are smart enough. Why would you throw your future away like this?”

  Gina had trained herself to never show her true feelings, or she would have laughed then. Throw away the future? How could that even be possible? The future is here, now, has always been here. There is no river, no arrow. Time cannot be constrained by a metaphor. Those forbidden thoughts filled her with resolve and she just shook her head. “This is what I want,” she said with finality. “I’ll be able to move into my own quarters once the probationary period is over, so I won’t be here to embarrass you any more. If you can’t wait, the placement officer said that I can find a room to share between now and then.”

  Her mother looked at Gina, a stunned expression on the older woman’s face. Gina wondered if she had gone too far, if her mother would call the medics now in the face of her rebellion. But instead her mother turned away, a sob choking her, and retreated to her own bedroom. Gina realized then that her mother had completely forgotten about the nanny with her backward ideas, that it was just a minor inconvenience in her past. She realized that she had succeeded in fooling her mother completely, that she had truly believed that Gina was the studious, literate and unquestioning automaton she herself had been at that age.

  In her room she sent a message to the placement officer at the water reclamation plant asking for temporary quarters and began to pack her things. For the first time in her life, she felt sorry for her mother, but it was too late.

  After half a year, her mother had sent her a message asking if she was still happy in her job, along with the transfer of several thousand credits to “help get her on her feet.” Gina knew it was just her mother’s way of trying to reopen the door to convince her to abandon her own decision and returned the money with no return note.

  Gina was happy then, content to do her menial work in exchange for being left alone to pursue her secret meditations. She wished she could start another group like the Reverend Sproule had begun, but she was still afraid of being caught. She had spent so long hiding her beliefs that didn’t know how to talk to anyone about them. She was certain she would live and die alone and had come to almost cherish the idea. Then she met Devon.

  He was in the most out of the way corner of the market. Gina had only stumbled across him and his small paintings by accident—a wrong turn after grocery shopping while her thoughts were elsewhere and then knocking into an easel. A frightened voice drew her out of her thoughts and she caught the painting before it fell to the ground. “I’m so sorry,” she said, straightening the painting then stopping mid-thought as she took in its subject. It was a space scene, not uncommon among the ship’s artists, but there was something about it that captivated her. Planets, satellites, comets, stars, nebulae—they were realistically depicted, but in a jumble, as if they were concentrated in space—or in time. She gasped. This man had painted a representation of the One Time. Could he possibly know?

  “Whew,” he said as she stepped back out of the thrall of the painting. “Thanks for catching that. It took me almost two years to finish.”

  “Wow,” Gina said, “that’s a lot of painting.” She smiled and noticed that he smiled back at her. She rarely noticed other people, but he was lovely. His long, dark hair shone in the dim light of the market and his smile reminded her of Zola’s. It made her sad and lonely, and she rarely acknowledged those feelings any more. “It’s breathtaking,” she said, jerking her head back in the direction of the painting, her breath quickening as he smiled again.

  “Thank you,” he said. “You’re the first person who’s actually made it all the way back here to see them,” he admitted.

  Gina remembered something Zola used to say—when it’s right, time will tell. This is what she meant, Gina thought.

  “It must just be the right time,” she said.

  Chapter 9

  Knowledge Transfer

  “It was all a lie!” Kieran’s mother shouted. At least it seemed like a shout to him; he realized later that she probably was trying to be quiet. Doubtlessly, she didn’t want him asking inconvenient questions and she surely wouldn’t want to have been heard by anyone else in the passageway outside their quarters. He’d probably only heard her because he’d opened the door to his room. He sat down next to the open door, as quietly as possible, and tried to hear the rest of the conversation.

  “You can’t know that, Lynn,” his mother’s friend Rachel said. “There’s no reason to think that it’s anything other that what we’ve been told. I mean, what would be the point of a lie?”

  “Damn it, Rach,” his mother said, and Kieran strained to hear her, “what would be the point? To keep us cooped up in here, agreeing to whatever they want us to do. Work in the refining plants, do our duty, get pregnant. Everything we do, it’s because they tell us we have to. But how do we really know that any of it is real? They say we’re on a ship, but I’ve never seen an engine, have you? They say we’re going to a new planet, but how can we be sure? They say we have to live like this, but how can we know? No one knows what the crew quarters are like; they could be living like kings while we serve them like slaves.”

  “Lynn,” Rachel said, her voice taking on the tone that Kieran always associated with the way teachers talk to the dumb kid in class. “Do you realize what you sound like? Paranoid. Crazy. You can’t talk like this.”

  “I know,” Kieran heard his mother say, and it sounded like her voice was muffled by something. He imagined her with her face in her hands—it was a pose she adopted often enough. “I just can’t stop wondering…”

  “Don’t do anything… rash,” Rachel said. “There has to be some way of knowing for sure.”

  Kieran frowned. Rachel was right; his mother did sound paranoid. Of course they were on a ship, he’d been to the observation room more times than he could count. It was obviously space out there. What did she think, that it was some elaborate hoax? For what purpose? Kieran shook his head. It was a good thing he was just about finished his welding apprenticeship. If she kept up like this, his mother would be landing in the medclinic for sure. And then he’d be on his own.

  “You ever wonder what’s going on up on the command deck?” Kieran asked Marta. She was about his mother’s age but the similarities ended there. Marta had been a master welder for more years than Kieran had been alive and it showed. Her seams were nearly invisible, her hand as steady as a beam. Kieran didn’t know if he wanted to be with her or to be her. Either way, he thought about her a great deal more than an apprentice should rightfully think about his master.

  “Sure,” Marta said, her eyes narrowing as she watched Kieran’s work carefully. “I mean, everyone is curious. It’s natural to wonder about the way things work, the meaning of it all. Why do you ask?”

  “No reason,” Kieran said, his hand trembling as he thought of his mother’s tirade.

  “Watch it, now,” Marta said, her vigilant gaze catching his unsteadiness.

  “Sorry,” he said and tried to focus. He finished the weld and clicked the switch to shut off the safety field. He wiped his forehead and sat back, looking at his teacher.

  “Not bad,” Marta said, inspecting his work. “With several more years of practice, you’ll be decent welder.” Kieran tried not to smile—he knew this was as good a compliment as he could expect to receive from her. She picked up her tablet, poked and flipped pages, then paused and pressed her palm to the face of the machine. Kieran let the smile out now, knowing she’d just signed off on his apprenticeship.

  “You’re a good kid,” she said, “but I can’t do any more for you. You’re on your own now, buddy. I’ve put your name on the active duty roster. In a few days you’ll start getting job assignments.” She looked at him squarely and Kieran almost thought he could see the corners of her mouth twitch
. “Don’t screw this up, boy. I don’t want you making me look bad, got it?”

  “Yes’m,” Kieran said.

  “All right,” Marta said, then slapped him on his back. He momentarily couldn’t breathe, she’d packed such a wallop. She began packing up the equipment and said, “Let’s go get a beer.”

  They sat at a table in the middle of Scutter’s, the Green Sector bar that catered to the trades. Kieran recognized a couple of other welding masters and a good half dozen of his fellow apprentices—correction, tradies. He hoisted his glass over to a knot of his peers and drank. He was on to his third pint and he hadn’t eaten since lunch. It was a celebration, indeed.

  “So, you’ve never been to the command deck?” he asked Marta, his drink sloshing on the already sticky tabletop.

  “Hell no,” she answered. “Far as I know, even the Chief hasn’t been up there. Just gets messages through the usual channels.”

  Kieran thought about it. He knew Marta had met the Chief Engineer once, the legendary woman shook her hand. Almost crushed her with an iron grip, Marta’d said. “Don’t they need welders?” he asked.

  Marta shrugged. “Who knows? I mean, everything mechanical is down here—for all I know they don’t really have anything but crew quarters and dance halls on C deck. Maybe they have their own welders, maybe machines do it? Who cares, anyway? The command crew might as well be, I dunno, a smart computer program for all we know. We get our orders, we do the jobs, we get paid, the ship keeps flying.” She finished her drink and waved the empty toward the frazzled bartender. “Doesn’t really matter what’s going on up there, does it?”

  “I guess not,” Kieran said, but a small sober voice in the back of his mind told him that it probably mattered a great deal, indeed.

  Kieran’s new quarters were tiny, but they were all his. He could cross the whole space in a single long step but like the prince bound in a nutshell, he found himself king of infinite space. It was intoxicating.

  When he was still living with his mother he had imagined scenarios that he realized now would never happen - parties, lovers, a young man’s fantasy. Now he knew that even if he could find the people he would need to enact these visions he would have neither the time nor the energy. Tradie welders worked long hours.

  But the freedom of being on his own was, as it turned out, enough excitement. The simplest things like visiting the market, preparing his simple meals, figuring out his finances—they were novel enough to keep him amused. For almost a half year, anyway.

  He was visiting his mother for a meal. It was an event he’d first attended to regularly, but as time went on, her grasp of reality weakened and Kieran’s ability to deal with her reduced. He was busy anyway, he told himself. She had given up trying to hide her concerns from him—maybe it was because now that he was on his own she perceived him as an equal, or maybe she just didn’t care who knew what she thought. Regardless, her suspicions were almost all she ever talked about now.

  “How do we know what’s real and what isn’t?” she ranted as Kieran served the stew. He’d hoped that Rachel would join them, but she hadn’t been over for one of their “family meals” in a while. He wondered if she had given up on his mother. “You look out the porthole and you’re supposed to believe it’s the universe out there. But no one really knows. We could be anywhere, trapped inside anything.”

  “Come on, mom,” Kieran said, finally unable to keep quiet. “I’ve seen the fuel synthesizers myself, I worked on them just a few days ago. They’re real, I promise.”

  She shook her head and Kieran knew that reasoning with her was pointless. He cursed himself for bothering, knowing it would lead to a bigger argument. “All you know is what they tell you,” she said, waving her fork for emphasis. “If they told you those machines were cloud generators or waste recyclers, you’d believe that, too. You’ve no way of knowing, no way at all.”

  Kieran sighed and put his head down. He shovelled forkful after forkful into his mouth, hoping just to get to the end of the meal as quickly as possible. He loved his mother, he really did, but there was only so much more of this he could take.

  The worst of it, of course, was that she was right. He really didn’t know what most things he worked on did. And her incessant paranoia was starting to wear on him. What if this really wasn’t a ship? What if something sinister really was going on? And how could he find out without becoming as crazy as his mother?

  Kieran sat on his usual stool at the end of the bar in Scutters, nursing a glass of wine. He was lost in thought when he felt a hand heavy on his shoulder. He started, only barely managing to avoid spilling his drink, and turned to see the smiling face of his old teacher. “Marta,” he said, slipping off his stool to slap her hand with his. “How’ve you been?”

  “Never better,” she said and hopped up to the seat next to Kieran. She waved the bartender over and a pint of ale appeared quickly in front of her. “Heard you got a promotion at the shop this year. Good for you, buddy.”

  Kieran smiled. “Thanks. I’m finally starting to feel like I really know what I’m doing, you know?”

  Marta nodded. “Yeah, takes a while before it all comes naturally.” She took a drink then looked at Kieran thoughtfully. “For most of ‘em, it never happens.” Kieran felt her gaze on him, her exacting master’s expectation making him feel like a green apprentice again. But he knew what she was saying and felt a flush of pride shoot through him. “Won’t be too long before you get a greenie of your own. Then you’ll know frustration, boy, let me tell you.” She laughed and Kieran cocked his head.

  “That’s a long way off,” he said. “I’m barely a Senior now.”

  “Time slips by without you looking. Trust me, it won’t feel like too many days before your name’s up on the board. I hardly remember my Senior days—it feels like it was something like two jobs and it was over.” She signalled for another round, gesturing to Kieran’s glass. He thought about it, then nodded. He’d forgotten how much he’d missed Marta’s company.

  “They are some jobs you remember, though,” she went on as the bartender worked out their orders. “When you get up in the ranks you start to get to see parts of this ship you never even imagined.” Their drinks arrived and she turned to face Kieran. He wondered if this bar weren’t her first stop of the evening, but her eyes were sharp and her lips curled up into a grin. “Did you know that there’s a whole room on November deck just for talking to dead people?”

  Wine sputtered out of Kieran’s nose and he grabbed for a nearby cloth. Marta laughed, her voice loud as Kieran began to sneeze. “What?” he finally managed to get out after coughing a few times.

  “It’s true,” Marta said. “Back something like four generations they built this room with a bunch of little built-in tablets. It’s like these private viewing booths, but not for regular stories. You use ‘em to talk to personality constructs of people who were on board way back at the beginning of the voyage.”

  Kieran felt himself get completely sober in a hurry. “Are you serious?” he asked.

  Marta nodded. “Yeah. No one knows about them anymore, I don’t know why. Maybe it was a fad thing, or maybe they don’t work right. They’re probably just really boring. I mean, can you imagine someone five hundred years from now wanting to talk to a saved version of me about fixing a cold weld?” She rolled her eyes. “It’s boring enough in real life.” She took another drink and looked sidelong at Kieran. “Still, it could be a funny way to spend an afternoon. I ought to go down there again sometime. See if I can find someone who can explain why they made those access tubes so damn narrow. Were they all just skinny little runts back then or what?”

  Kieran barely heard her and had to focus on his breathing. He sipped his wine and nodded when it seemed appropriate to the conversation, but his mind was gone. If only his mother had known, he kept thinking. It might have prevented her from…

  “Hey, buddy, you okay?” Marta’s voice broke through his reverie.

  Kieran brought
his focus back on his old teacher and saw a look of concern in her face. “Sure,” he said. “I just… I guess I had one too many. I better get back to my quarters.”

  “Okay,” Marta said. “You want I should make sure you get in okay?”

  Kieran shook his head. “No,” he said, “thanks anyway. I’ll be fine.” He slid off the stool and walked perfectly steadily to the door of Scutters.

  “Hey, mom,” Kieran said, trying to tamp down the guilty feeling which was rising in his chest. It had been a long time since he had last been to visit her. He had no excuse—he’d had enough time; with his new seniority had come not only a pay raise but more time off. No, he had just been avoiding her, there was no way to deny it.

  She didn’t seem to have noticed his absence, though. “Kieran, my boy.” Her voice was thick with drugs. He wondered the last time he had been here if this really was an improvement. The doctors said it was, that his mother was no longer causing herself undue stress, but Kieran wasn’t sure. What kind of a life was this, drugged into a stupor from which her real personality couldn’t escape. It was as if she were in a black hole of enforced sanity. Kieran actually missed his ranting, raving, paranoid mother.

  “Rachel came to see me a few days ago,” she went on, her voice slow and methodical. “She seemed so sad, but she wouldn’t tell me anything.”

  Kieran shook his head, swallowing hard to keep himself in check. “I’m sure Rachel is fine, mom,” he said, finally. “You just worry about getting better.”

  His mother frowned. “I wish I knew what was wrong with me,” she said. “The doctors tell me they can’t explain it to me, but it’s hard to know if I’m getting any better if I don’t know what’s wrong.”

  “I know, mom,” Kieran said, the tightness in his chest threatening to cut off his breathing. As it was, he was beginning to feel lightheaded. “I’d better go,” he said, reaching over to hold his mother’s hand. “I don’t want to tire you out.”