The Orpheus Plot

by Christopher Swiedler

  “No. I’m just a fast learner.” She spoke so matter-of-factly that Lucas couldn’t tell if she was making a joke, bragging, or just telling the truth.

  A line of cadets was already moving along the ladderway toward the back of the ship. Rahul and Elena merged in quickly, but Lucas hung back uncertainly. Several kids gave him odd looks as they passed, and Lucas wondered if word had already gotten around that alpha section had a new Belter cadet.

  He followed behind the last cadet until they got to a large cylindrical area at the center of the ship. Long curving tables pointed toward the center of the room like the spokes of a wheel. Some cadets were already floating at the tables, eating and drinking from pouches. The rest were making their way along rows of handholds set into the walls. He picked out the different colorful insignias for alpha, beta, gamma, and delta sections. The first- and second-year kids mostly seemed to stick to their own sections, but some of the tables at the far end of the room had a mixture of colors.

  Lucas braced his legs and pushed off toward the other end of the room, where Rahul and Elena were settling in. He snagged the end of their table and swung himself into an empty spot.

  “Wow,” Rahul said.

  “I’m going to have to try that next time,” Elena said, which Lucas guessed might be the closest she came to a compliment. He flushed and mumbled a “Thanks.”

  “Ugh,” a short, skinny boy at a nearby table said, looking around with exaggerated concern. “What is that smell?”

  “Oh, god,” a girl next to him said, scrunching up her face dramatically.

  Lucas sank down into his seat. Suddenly he really wished he’d taken the time to shower last night.

  “Don’t listen to them,” Elena said. “That’s just Willem and Katya. A lovely pair of people from Luna.”

  “Oh, hey there, Elena,” Willem said, as if he’d just noticed her. “What do you think? Does your new sectionmate smell awful?”

  Elena clenched her jaw angrily. Rahul slid over so that he was in between her and Willem. “Cut it out,” he said.

  “What?” Willem said in an innocent voice. “I’m just asking her a simple question. Does the new kid smell bad?”

  “Yes,” Elena muttered, staring down at the table.

  “That’s what I thought,” Willem said, turning back to his friends.

  Lucas had never in his life wished for anything more than he wished right now to just disappear. He put his hands on the edge of the table and gathered himself to push off toward the exit. Maybe there was still time to shower before classes started.

  “Wait, Lucas,” Elena said, putting her hand on his arm. “Let me explain.”

  “It’s okay,” Lucas said. “I’ll just go—”

  “No, you don’t understand,” Rahul said. “She had to say it. She grew up in a truth-sayer commune in Argentina. She’s never told a lie in her life.”

  “It was Peru,” Elena said. “But otherwise, yeah.”

  “Mr. Personality there likes to take advantage of it,” Rahul went on, jerking his head toward Willem. “In orientation yesterday, he asked her—”

  “Okay, let’s not,” Elena interrupted. “I think Lucas gets the point.”

  Someone who didn’t lie? Like, ever? Lucas was used to finding out about strange Earther customs, but this had to be the weirdest thing he’d ever heard of. He would have been sure they were just trying to trick him, but the earnestness of her expression made it clear they weren’t making it up.

  “Fortunately they’re in delta section,” Rahul said. “So we can mostly avoid them.”

  “If they’re not careful, they’re not going to make it to second year,” Elena said, in a matter-of-fact tone that was slightly terrifying. “So, Lucas, can I ask you something?”

  “Uh, sure,” he said. Was this a normal Earther thing, asking people whether you could ask them a question? Why not just go ahead and ask it?

  “Do people who grow up in space really have fragile bones?”

  “I guess so,” Lucas said. “I’ve broken my left arm twice and my right arm once. And I fractured two ribs and my collarbone in an ore loader accident last year.”

  “I always thought Belters would be really tall,” she mused. “Growing up in low gravity and all that. But other than your underdeveloped muscles, you look pretty normal.”

  “Search for statistics on Belter physiology,” Rahul said, staring at the back of the room with an unfocused expression.

  “What?” Lucas asked, confused. “Are you asking me to—”

  “He’s talking to his AI,” Elena said. She sighed. “He does this.”

  “Oh,” Lucas said. Curious, he watched the tiny lights flickering in Rahul’s eyes as his AI displayed the results of his search. He’d never met someone who had corneal implants.

  “The best thing about it,” Rahul said, abruptly shifting his attention back to Lucas and Elena, “is that I never have to remember people’s names. Like, they’re hovering right above everyone’s heads right now. I can tell you the name, rank, and blood type of every person in this room.”

  “Blood type?” Elena said. “You must be a hit at parties.”

  “It can come in handy,” Rahul insisted. “Also, the implants help with astral vertigo. I wouldn’t have passed the physical without them.”

  “Wait,” Lucas said. “You really have astral vertigo?”

  Rahul clamped his mouth shut suddenly as if he wished he hadn’t said anything. “I mean, it’s not really vertigo. Just a little dizziness.”

  Lucas had heard of people who became disoriented in space. Low gravity or weightlessness and a lack of visual cues confused their brain and made them dizzy or nauseated. Sometimes it was bad enough to make people vomit in their suit, and that was bad news. But like claustrophobia, it was a problem that didn’t affect Belters. At least, not the ones who stayed sane.

  He had a thousand questions for his sectionmates, about everything from truth-sayers and astral vertigo to AI implants and growing up on Earth, but at that moment Captain Sanchez called out from the officers’ table at the back of the room. “Your attention, please.”

  Her voice carried a note of authority that made all the cadets fall silent immediately. “Welcome to the Orpheus. Each one of you is part of a proud tradition of teaching ships that stretches back hundreds of years. I trust that all of you will do your best to live up to that tradition.

  “Whatever specialty of the Navy you’re interested in, you’ll learn it here better than anywhere. Wherever you come from—Earth, Luna, Mars, or somewhere else—you’re a part of this school now.”

  At the words “somewhere else,” a dozen pairs of curious eyes flicked toward Lucas. He hunched his shoulders and sank down a few centimeters, trying to keep himself as inconspicuous as possible.

  “If you do your job, I promise we will do ours,” Sanchez said. “That is all.”

  Everyone immediately began chattering and eating again. Rahul elbowed Lucas and pointed to a dispenser at the center of the table. “The French toast isn’t French and it isn’t toast, but it tastes okay. There’s also oatmeal. I strongly suggest you stay away from the one marked ‘breakfast protein.’”

  “Don’t listen to him,” Elena said, handing him one of the protein pouches. “You need to put some muscle on your bones.”

  Lucas opened the pouch and took a sip. It wasn’t bad, at least compared with the standard meal pouches on the Josey Wales. Looking around at the other cadets, he decided that Elena was right—he did need to build some more muscle. It was easy to pick out the kids who had grown up under Earth gravity just by the size of their shoulders and thighs. Even the Mars and Luna cadets were in better physical condition than he was. He swallowed the rest of the pouch quickly and looked down at his skinny arms and legs. How many protein pouches would it take before he didn’t look like a stick figure compared with the other cadets?

  “So is this all normal to you?” Lucas asked, waving his hand to indicate the cadets and officers.


  “Normal?” Rahul said, blinking his eyes. “Well, no. We’re floating in a spaceship somewhere out in the asteroid belt, eating food out of pouches, so I wouldn’t call it normal.”

  Lucas nodded as if this made sense—although to him, the only things that felt normal were the parts Rahul had just described.

  “I grew up on a communal farm,” Elena said. “We had chores, classes, martial arts training. Stuff like that.”

  “Okay, for the record, that’s not normal, even for Earthers,” Rahul said.

  “Yeah? Look who’s talking. You went to a virtual school with the smartest kids on the planet. Your chemistry teacher won a Nobel prize.”

  “It was physics, but whatever,” Rahul said. “I guess the point is that if we were boring and normal, we probably wouldn’t be here in the first place. Though to be honest, I think Lucas takes the cake in the weird-background department.”

  Lucas looked down at the table. As much as it hurt, Rahul was right. Compared to everyone else here, calling him “weird” was an understatement. “I could switch,” he offered.

  “Switch what?” Elena asked, reaching for another pouch.

  “You know—to another section.”

  Rahul paused in mid-swallow. “Wait, what?” he said, looking aghast. “Why would you do that?”

  “Lucas, I think maybe you misunderstood him,” Elena said gently. “When he said you had a weird background, that was a compliment.”

  “Oh, it totally was,” Rahul said, relieved. “Did it not sound like that? I can’t wait to tell my brother I’ve made friends with a Belter. He’s going to be so jealous.”

  Lucas felt the blood rush to his face. They were already friends? He’d only met them last night, and that had been under some iffy circumstances. Not that he was objecting!

  “Okay, cool,” he said, trying to sound as if making friends this easily was completely natural to him. “I, uh, just wanted to check.”

  “We’re going to be like the Three Musketeers, I can already tell,” Rahul said, waving his hand expansively. “Or was it four? I can never keep it straight.”

  Lucas grinned. At least this time he could follow the cultural reference, even though he wasn’t really sure what a musketeer was. He pulled a pouch of oatmeal and another of soy milk from the dispenser. He emptied the oatmeal from the pouch and squirted the milk into it until he had a floating, gooey blob. He dabbed away a few loose drops of milk and then started to eat the oatmeal with a pair of chopsticks.

  Rahul stared at him. “Okay, forget brushing teeth. Teach me how to do that.”

  “Sure,” Lucas said. He wrapped his napkin loosely around his own ball and showed him how to get the milk and oatmeal mixed together into the right consistency.

  “The real trick is not letting the little bits float away,” he explained.

  “Hey—be careful,” Elena said, pointing.

  Lucas turned and saw that he’d let his own ball of food drift toward the table behind him. He reached out to snag it, but another cadet, apparently in the middle of telling some story, swung his arms out wide and smacked the ball of food with his elbow. Chunks of oatmeal and drops of milk splattered everywhere.

  “What the heck?” the cadet said. “Gross!”

  Lucas grabbed some napkins from a dispenser and started cleaning up some of the larger globules that were threatening to float away. “It’s not my fault,” he said. “You should watch where you’re swinging your arms.”

  “My fault?” the cadet said. “Are you kidding? You were the one who left food floating around!”

  “What’s going on?” someone called. “Who made this mess?”

  Lucas looked up and felt a flood of relief as he saw Tali heading quickly toward their table. He was opening his mouth to explain when the other boy pointed at him and spoke up.

  “He did. He made a snowball or something with his food.”

  Tali turned toward Lucas with an angry scowl. “You must be our new cadet.”

  Lucas looked at her, dumbfounded. New cadet? Did she not recognize him in his uniform?

  “I don’t know how you eat out in the Belt, but here we keep food in the pouches.” She turned toward the tables with the older kids. “Hanako, does your section have kitchen patrol today?”

  “Yeah,” replied a girl with long black hair that floated around her like a halo. “Delta third-years.”

  “Well, they’re off the hook,” Tali said. She jerked her head at Lucas’s table. “You three will have the pleasure.”

  Rahul groaned. “We just had KP yesterday!”

  “Do you want it for the rest of the week?” Tali snapped.

  “No, ma’am,” Rahul mumbled.

  Lucas was still struggling to understand what was going on, but he knew that the last thing he needed was to get his own bunkmates mad at him. “They didn’t have anything to do with it. I’ll clean it up myself.”

  “Suit yourself,” Tali said. She pulled a trash bag from the wall and thrust it at him. “I want this room spotless. If I end up with oatmeal in my hair at lunchtime, you’ll be scrubbing waste-disposal tanks for the rest of the term.”

  She pushed off toward the front of the room without waiting for him to reply. Lucas looked down at the trash bag in his hands. How had everything gone so wrong so quickly?

  “That’s so unfair,” Rahul said to Lucas. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “Well, it was his food,” Elena said. “And he did let it float away.” When Rahul shot her an exasperated look, she amended, “. . . but the punishment does seem much harsher than necessary.”

  A bell chimed three times. “First period in five minutes,” a tall woman called from the officer’s table. Her head was shaved clean and her scalp was dyed a shimmering blue.

  “That’s Ensign Weber,” Rahul whispered as everyone began clamoring for the doors. “As far as I can tell, her only job is shouting at us.”

  “Clean up your pouches!” Weber yelled at one of the tables. “This isn’t your kitchen back home!”

  Elena and Rahul stuffed their pouches into the trash bag that Lucas was holding, then headed off after the others with apologetic looks. Despite Weber’s admonishments, napkins and empty food pouches floated all over the room. Weber herded the last few stragglers toward the hallway at the front of the room, and then the door swung closed with an echoing clang.

  Lucas gritted his teeth and stuffed a few napkins in the trash bag. This wasn’t fair. He was supposed to be here learning how to be a pilot, not picking up after Earther cadets’ breakfast. After ten minutes he’d only managed to clean up about a third of the room. Fantastic, he thought. First period would be over before he finished. And nobody had even told him where he was supposed to go after this.

  A door on the side of the room opened up. Tali slipped inside and quickly closed it behind her.

  “Lucas,” she said in a low, furious voice. “What the heck are you doing here?”

  4

  “I TOLD YOU not to come, didn’t I?” Tali said, more to herself than to him. “I told you it would be a mistake. But somehow, here you are.”

  Without waiting for him to respond, she grabbed a second trash bag and started picking up empty pouches. “The autovacs will get anything smaller than your fist. You just have to get the big stuff.”

  “They invited me,” Lucas protested. “And you put in a recommendation!”

  Tali paused for a moment, then tied up her trash bag and slung it into a garbage receptacle on the wall. Something was odd about her expression. . . .

  Realization dawned on him. “You didn’t recommend me, did you?”

  She didn’t respond, but she didn’t need to. He could tell he was right. “How could you lie to me like that?”

  “Because I wanted to protect you,” she said simply.

  “Protect me? From all of this?” he asked, waving his hand to indicate the Orpheus.

  “Yes, actually.”

  “What about how you’re pretending you don’t eve
n know me—is that to ‘protect’ me too? Or is that because you’re too embarrassed to admit that you’re from the Belt, just like me?”

  “Keep your voice down,” she snapped.

  “That’s it, isn’t it? That’s the whole reason you’ve tried to talk me out of coming here? Because you don’t want anyone here to find out your little secret?”

  She was silent for a moment. “It’s more complicated than that, Lucas.”

  “It seems pretty simple to me.”

  “Everything seems simple to you,” she said. “Which is exactly why I wanted you to stay away.”

  “Well, I’m here now,” he said. “So you’re going to have to get used to seeing me.”

  “Just get one thing straight,” she said, tapping him on the chest. “As far as anyone else on this ship is concerned, you and I have never met. Understand?”

  “Whatever,” he said.

  “Promise me, Lucas. It’s important.”

  He snorted. “I promise. But you ought to hope that I’m better at keeping my promises than you are.”

  The door at the front of the room opened, and Maria stuck her head in. “Tali? I’m supposed to take Lucas to his first class. Is he ready?”

  “No,” Tali said with a sigh. “He’s not. But there’s no point in waiting.”

  Lucas glared at her and pushed off toward Maria. He snagged a handhold and followed her into a corridor that ran toward the back of the ship. They passed the airlock and docking connector and turned onto a ladderway that was identical to the one at the front of the ship, except that this one was labeled PARK PLACE instead of BROADWAY. They followed the ladder down to the third deck and stopped outside a closed door.

  “What do I do?” Lucas asked.

  Maria handed him a tablet-sized screen. “You go inside.”

  She launched herself back up the ladderway and out of sight. Lucas looked at the screen, which was displaying a schedule for the day. The first item listed was Introductory Calculus with Commander Novak. He took a deep breath and rapped on the door with his knuckles.

  “Come in,” a faint voice said.