Administrators
4
Agricultural Engineers
6
Biologists
4
Botanists
3
Cooks
8
Commander
1
Cosmologists
6
Entertainment Managers
2
Fitness Instructors
8
General Physicians
4
Instrument Engineers
8
IT Engineers
16
Maintenance Engineers
12
Mathematicians
2
Military contingent
30
Navigational Analysts
8
Nutrition Physicians
2
Paramedics
6
Physicists
2
Pilots
4
Propulsion Engineers
8
Psychiatrists
2
Psychologists
8
Total
153
Women
81
Men
72
4-shift configuration, 1G induced gravity
Arlette was being offered two alternative nominees for each role. She moved swiftly through the lists, applying her own knowledge of many of the candidates. By the time the shuttle touched down in Acapulco, she had 129 of the crew selected and had sent 36 messages asking for advice from colleagues on the remainder. She would settle the list at breakfast tomorrow and notify Command HQ. Then she would switch off until she was picked up for relocation to Shanghai next Wednesday.
As the door of the shuttle slid open and the scents of hibiscus and sea water wafted in, Arlette was thinking of a swim, a cocktail and a lounge in the late afternoon sun before she called Henri.
She slipped on her newly decorated jacket, stepped onto the grass, and walked back across the lawn which she had crossed almost exactly eight hours earlier with the same elegant, confident stride.
A little while later her supple body hit the tepid surface of the pool, rousing her enough to slide her hands gracefully and unhurriedly through the water. She swam for barely fifteen minutes, eased herself out, shook her long, dark hair and raised her hand to the waiter as she settled into the nearest lounger.
“Si, Señora?”
The waiter was an absurdly handsome young man who looked as if he had just stepped off a film set. She regarded him with the appreciation of a sculptor for a nice block of marble.
“Mmmm – Mai Tai,” she said, eyes hooded. Then, opening them wide, “Please.”
“Si, Señora” he said, and slid his eyes a little too slowly over her body before turning away.
Arlette savoured this harmless little flirtation and briefly fantasised about doing something quite disgraceful with him behind the bar.
Then a hideous thought struck her – ‘Holy fuck, no sex for a year!’ Almost panic-stricken, she wondered how she could have accepted this command without the slightest thought of her personal well-being. She could have asked the General … No, she couldn’t.
Oh, really? Would it not have been entirely appropriate to discuss the management of the sexual needs of the crew over this extended period? Perhaps not at this stage; perhaps indeed this was an issue to be discussed calmly and professionally with her psychological staff. Yes, yes, relax, all in good time. But none of the crew were in any permanent relationship with any other crew members as far as she could tell from their personal files, and they were all of reproductive age. There was going to be an awful lot of clandestine sex, and, if she was not extremely careful, not-so-clandestine sex, which could put crew discipline seriously at risk. Phew!
She sipped her Mai Tai.
This would all be managed proactively with the informed and open support of her specialist crew. Everybody would fully understand the issues and risks up front and would conduct themselves with the utmost responsibility and restraint. This issue would have been addressed before in other extended missions, and there was no need to re-invent any wheels. OK, now switch off and enjoy!
A shadow fell across her face.
“Arlette, ma belle, ’ow could you deprive me of a single minute of your irresistible personage?” He pronounced the final word ‘personnarge’, and it sounded like profiteroles and cream. She half opened her eyes and gazed up at his gentle face, atop his rather splendid torso.
“Henri, you soulless brute, I am still recovering from your assault on my person last night, which may well have damaged several of my vital organs as well as my self-esteem.”
“Ah,” said Henri, dropping to his knees and bringing his lovely smiling face right up to hers. “I ’ave come to restore your self-esteem by returning your knickers, which you left hanging on a palm tree…”
She slapped his face with all the force she could muster, and then immediately regretted it. She pulled his head against her breast and said softly, “Oh you pig, you lovely, adorable pig.”
Henri grunted and stroked his cheek. “Alors, ma belle, can I tempt you to a romantic dinner…?”
“Absolutely not. I want to go dancing until dawn. I want to lie on the beach and watch the sun rise. I want hot fresh croissants and coffee right there. I want to be utterly spoiled and pampered and then, and only then, made love to.”
“Mais, comme tu veux, ma belle,” said Henri with his lovely smile.
And indeed it was so. She spent the next few days in hedonistic revelry, enjoying every sensation and experience permitted by the law, and some which probably were not, and she paid due respect to whoever was supposedly the custodian of wanton personal behaviour.
Henri obliged her tirelessly with charm, wit, sympathy, lovely surprises and sex in the most unexpected places. As Wednesday drew closer, she started to prepare herself mentally to impose the self-discipline on herself which she knew would be central to her command, and on Tuesday night at 10 p.m. she kissed Henri on the cheek, wished him goodnight, goodbye and good luck, and left him standing there, looking utterly perplexed.
The shuttle arrived at 4 a.m. the next morning. By 5.00 she was boarding a military jet that landed in Shanghai just over two and a half hours later. She was met secretly, but with full military honours, escorted to dinner with some of the great, if not the good, of the Chinese national administration, and then to her quarters to meet her immediate personal staff. She retired early, and as her time difference correction medication hit her and her consciousness faded, said to herself, “OK, Omega 16, watch out – here I come.”
3
The Team Comes Together
Arlette woke at 6.00 a.m., rose, brushed her teeth, grimaced at herself in the mirror, switched on her phone, selected a news channel, grabbed a bottle of water and skipped onto the trainer for a warm-up. She worked herself hard for thirty minutes with half an eye on the breaking news on a floor-to-ceiling screen. A murderous drought in Turkey, where soldiers were shooting starving civilians, over two thousand anticyclone fatalities in Japan and another nuclear power station disaster, and a complete collapse of control in the Indian food riots. Arlette stopped and stared at the pictures of devastation and misery. She shrugged. It was going to get worse, she knew; much worse. She stretched, stripped and slid into the shower while her incoming messages were relayed to her over the audio.
There were messages of welcome from most of her closest staff and many of the members of her new crew, to which she responded warmly but briefly, a status briefing from General Lee, a hate message which would have to be referred to security but to which she did not listen once she had detected the tone, half a dozen messages from friends who assumed she was still in Acapulco, and a story from Henri who had no idea where she was but had assumed that it would do her good to be made to laugh.
It did.
Arlette felt the warm water s
tream over her body like the caressing lips of a lover and closed her eyes. She let her fantasies roam a little and then asked herself out loud, “Are you happy, Arlette?” She decided she was. She liked her persona, she liked her body, and she liked the way she was engaging with the new people she was meeting. She reminded herself to make no snap judgements where none were necessary and not to overdo it with the humility. This was fairly low-level stuff for the first few days – familiarisation and data-gathering. Establishing a modus operandi with her senior staff members would only start in three days’ time; situation training was a further two days off.
She walked into the dryer and twirled herself around while the warm air jets coaxed the last drops of water off her body. Finally she attended to her personal toilette and slipped into the silky smooth pale blue jumpsuit which was to be her daily working outfit. There were little pinholes on the chest where the Crimson Star had been removed overnight on her instructions. ‘If there were any members of the crew who have not already been told about my damned medal already’, she thought, ‘they will find out on the grapevine. I am not going to flaunt it, regardless of General Lee’s admonition. This is my show and it will be conducted my way.’
She switched off all communication systems, sat on her bed and looked out over the Yangtze. The morning mist was beginning to clear, a huge watery sun was hanging just above the horizon and China was busy on the river just as it had been for thousands of years. Always the great societal divisions but always great respect for learning and hard work. Egos, jealousies, feuds and competitions – yes, but love and commitment for the great human endeavour could always be invoked. She felt a wave of affection for humanity flood over her and a surge of thrill for what she was about to embark on.
‘Arlette baby, this is your destiny – let’s go and grab it,’ she thought, rising slowly to her feet.
She was joined at breakfast by her three personal assistants: Chang Chao, Chinese, Staff Officer for personal and security issues; Julia Rogers, English, Press and Diplomatic Liaison Officer; and Marcel Rousseau, French, Technical Liaison Officer. The conversation moved quickly and informally through their respective areas of responsibility and an easy, open communication style took hold. Security and the possible significance of the hate message brought the three of them sharply into unison.
“Commander,” (she would have to get used to that) said Chang, “an unresolved security issue can destroy a mission like this with more finality than a serious technical failure. You must understand that there can be no shortcuts or compromises.” Everyone agreed with him. “We will identify the originator of this message, the nature of the threat, and eliminate it,” he said simply.
Arlette recalled General Lee’s comments about ‘no wet operations’ with distaste, but when it came to the safety of her mission and her crew she knew that she could and would not argue against whatever steps the security authorities might decide were necessary. She toyed briefly with the idea of insisting on being informed if any ‘extreme’ measures were to be taken, but realised that she would be far less qualified to make those judgements than in the case of the countless routine but critical technical decisions that she would be delegating to her crew members. She looked at Chang carefully for a minute and then said, “I am counting on you to do so.”
Chang nodded.
As if to break any tension that might be building up, Julia intervened. “This is currently a secret mission,” she stated, “but the tide of speculation is going to start rising any time now. A huge spaceship is nearing completion on the moon. It has obviously been financed for a specific purpose. There are waves of social unrest every time we have another extreme meteorological event. The key political leaders backing this project have agreed to maintain secrecy only up to the point where we decide we have a ‘Go’. Once that happens we will be goldfish in a bowl.”
Arlette winced at the thought.
Marcel interjected in his lightly accented Gallic drawl. “It could be earlier,” he said. “Our illustrious new commander is a global celebrity after all the publicity surrounding her incredible bravery in saving the Dalian and its crew. The whole planet wants to know where she is. Quite a few people know she is in Shanghai and, even though everyone is sworn to secrecy, leaks will happen and questions will be asked.”
“Well, Julia, you will be manning the stone wall,” said Arlette.
“Mmmm,” said Julia. “It’s comforting to think that I have only my dignity to lose. Journalists will be intrusive, deceptive, seductive and abusive and will make up what they can’t find out. We will come under tremendous pressure, I warn you.”
“I can take it as long as they are seductive.” It was Marcel again. He was ignored.
Arlette changed the subject. “Do we have any radically new technology to get our heads around, Marcel?”
“Nothing of mission-critical importance. Almost all the new technology is in the targeted mass transformation that has created the wormhole, and the detection and orientation required to align the ship to enable it to pass through. Since the wormhole is indeed a shortcut, the total distance to be covered is only a few tens of billions of kilometres. Therefore we don’t need to get anywhere close to the speed of light to accomplish the mission. Our tried and tested anti-matter reactor motors will do the job nicely.” He paused.
“However, there is a new feature which will contribute enormously to crew comfort and efficiency. The Ukrainians have done a brilliant job with the targeted mass transformation technology to develop an induced gravitational field – it’s produced in the tubular rings around the fore and aft of the ship – and as a result we shall have artificial gravity, exactly 1G in fact, throughout the crewed areas of the ship. You can imagine what this will do for our comfort, health, fitness levels, fresh food options and mobility.” There was a murmur of appreciation around the table.
Arlette sat back and considered this. With one exception, all her previous spaceflights had been made in zero gravity, which profoundly changed every aspect of your thoughts and actions. The exception had been IP243, a space station which had had its crew quarters in a huge rotating ring. It had failed spectacularly when a shuttle rocket had misfired and hit the space station, leaving the crew to re-invent weightless mode activities in a particularly unsuitable environment. But the induced gravity on this mission was going to enable every crew member to behave in ways unrestrained by their environment. Their emotions and all their other personal characteristics would be much more visible. Gone would be the splendid isolation that a commander on a weightless mission could invoke inside his own life-support cocoon. She would be constantly visible, her fears and failings under scrutiny, like the captain of an ocean liner. She knew that her courage would not let her down when facing danger on her own. She was not so sure how good she would be when she had to inspire many others to perform at the same level, simultaneously. She nursed a terrible foreboding of some sort of catastrophe that would reveal her inadequacies, and she shuddered.
Meanwhile Marcel went on. “When the ship reaches its destination in Omega 16 we shall of course be orbiting bodies of which we have imprecise knowledge, so there will be a fair amount of original navigation work to be done, but we will not be in another universe unless something has gone terribly wrong, so special relativity will be entirely adequate.”
Arlette grinned. She liked Marcel. It was such a pleasure to have someone around who could reduce the technical enormity of the mission to such engaging simplicity. “OK, everyone, we need to go and have a look at the simulator and start to get a feel for our new baby. Let’s go.”
4
Into Virtual Reality
Chang guided them down to the monorail terminal inside the crew quarters building and pointed out the security features. They would not be going to any other part of the building and they would be monitored constantly. The monorail car was driverless, noiseless and anonymous. It whisked them briefly out into the sunshine, from where they had a fleeting view of the
Yangtze, and back into a huge, monolithic building that looked like a purpose-built factory of some kind. The car flashed through three brightly lit stations before arriving in a huge hangar.
“Here we are,” said Marcel, “and there is a full-size mock-up of the command centre of IP262.”
A squat tower stood before them, covered with matt black plates and topped with a shallow dome. There were no visible windows of any kind.
“IP262? Is that the best they can do for a name?” Arlette had expected something a little less prosaic. “You will get to name her,” said Marcel, “once you get to know her. Come and have a look at the model.”
They gathered around a scale model of the ship, some twenty metres long and so complete in detail that it looked as though it could move off at any minute. “This is one-tenth full size,” said Marcel. “It is designed with multiple high-impact skins to avoid any damage being done by stray cosmic matter that gets through its extremely potent laser-guided defence system. The large tubular rings fore and aft are the gravitation field generators I mentioned before. They are also heavily protected. The long tail houses the anti-matter propulsion units – you really don’t want to be anywhere near the stuff that comes out of there – it will go through anything and leave a very unpleasant mess behind.
“Amidships are the two excursion vehicles which will travel piggy-back with us, the launch and retrieval bays, the exploration hardware and the military operation centre. Behind that are the laboratories and foreign matter storage areas. Right in the front of the craft is the farmyard. Vegetable food is grown hydroponically, and animal proteins with a full range of textures and flavours are produced in sterile conditions. Immediately behind the farmyard are the crew quarters and recreation areas – very extensive and comprehensive.”
Omnipotence: Book I: Odyssey Page 2