Temporary Duty

by Ric Locke

  “Will most of the folks we meet on this trip be kree?” Peters asked.

  “All of them, or so I understand. I do not know all the plans.”

  “What about you?” Todd asked. “Do you find the others of the kree attractive?”

  “No, I am quite conservative,” said Dee. “Not all of my friends are so. If you wish a companion, you should ask. If someone doesn’t care for it, she will simply say no. Some may ask you. You should respond the same way.”

  “We’ll probably wait until we know more before we ask anyone,” Todd said after a pause.

  “That is a sensible policy.”

  * * *

  “So what’s next?” Todd wanted to know when they’d finished eating.

  “‘Next’ is whatever you like,” Dee said, still “amused.” “The work for this llor is finished. Someone, I think Dreelig, will meet you in your quarters at the first ande.”

  “When’s that?” Peters asked.

  “Ah. You do not know our time system. Here. You may borrow this.” She pulled the watch off her wrist and handed it to Peters. “When the larger pointer is here—” she pointed “—then it is the beginning of the first watch.” She stood, clearly ready to be done with sailors for a while. “Can you find your way back to your quarters?”

  “I reckon it ain’t that hard,” Peters told her.

  “That is good. I will see you sometime tomorrow.”

  They waited until they got back to their quarters to examine the watch more closely. Peters was a little puzzled when he thought he heard a noise. Sure enough, when he held it to his ear it made a rhythmic sound, like some kind of tiny, delicate machinery.

  There were two scales: an outer one with six marks, and an inner with eight big marks, each interval broken into eight smaller ones. Three needles turned at graduated rates in the direction they thought of as “left-handed.” One small mark of the inner scale seemed to be worth about half a second, so a full turn of the smallest needle would be a little over half an hour.

  If the ratio was one big mark per turn of the next needle in, the next division was five hours or so, and a revolution of the biggest needle took thirty hours. “Long day,” Peters observed.

  Todd was fiddling around by the window. “It’s been a long day for me, too, but I gather that’s not what you’re talking about.”

  “Yeah, well, it looks like the big needle goes around in about thirty hours.”

  “That’s pretty long, all right.” Todd was still fiddling with the window frame. “Come here, I think I figured something out.”

  “Hey, don’t fuck with that, you might—” The mechanism snicked and the window swung open around a point about a quarter of the way from the left, so the biggest part swung into the room. “Break something. Oh, shit.”

  There wasn’t even a breeze. Peters dropped the watch on the bunk, grabbed the frame, and pushed gently; the window rotated back into place, seating with an authoritative click. “Wal, ah reckon they gotta worsh th’ windas sometimes,” he said mildly. “Todd, I’d take it right kindly if you didn’ do no more of that shit. Ain’t neither one of us too young t’ have a heart attack. If you don’ know what it does, don’ fuck with it.”

  Todd hunched his shoulders, shivering. “Haah. This place slips up on you, you know? One minute it’s swabbing the deck like back on the carrier, next thing you know it’s outer fucking space.”

  “Yeah.” Peters stared for a moment, then shook his head. “All right, I’m gonna time this watch out a little more and set the alarm for what, an hour before we’re supposed to meet somebody?”

  “Fine by me. Uh, just out of curiosity, what time is it now? Back home, I mean.”

  Peters flipped his handheld open. “2047. Day’s over with, almost.”

  “No chow till morning.”

  Peters considered. “They probably have midrats at the next big mark, if you want. Once I get in the rack I probably won’t need anything else.”

  “You say it.”

  “Yeah. Catch you later.”

  “Later.” Todd headed for the toilet and his own room. Alone, Peters looked around. First order of business: make the bunk. He did that, then programmed the handheld for a wakeup at his best guess of the right time.

  He was asleep before he realized it. If he dreamed he didn’t remember them.

  Chapter Four

  weet weet… Peters rolled over, tried to fluff a pillow that wasn’t there. Weet weet… He never had trouble waking up, always came awake on time even without a clock. Weet weet… Of course he hadn’t slept this long in years. Weet weet… Then everything snapped into focus—bunk and lockers, desk with reading lamp, the window.

  Weet weet… Window with stars outside, no horizon. Weet weet… He stroked his hand across the face of the handheld to shut it up. Light streamed through the window, not sunlight but brighter than moonlight. Earthlight. “Shit,” he summarized, and shambled into the head.

  The sideways light switch took a bit of fumbling, but things were coming back. Cold water to wake up, then warm for washing, shaving tackle where he’d put it last night, on the shelf below the towels. As he stroked his face with the razor he thought, not for the first time, that shaving might not have anything to do with sanitation at all. It was something familiar. No matter where you were or what was going on, hot water and soap and razor and the familiar curves and hollows of your own face centered you, started the day off with something solid, something you could handle, a minor success to serve as omen for the rest of the day. Maybe that was why women used makeup.

  He sluiced the soap off, then went over to the door to Todd’s room and pounded on it a few times. Then he collected his shaving gear and put it away, noticing for the first time that Todd’s was next to his on the shelf. It made sense, he just hadn’t seen it before.

  Making the bunk was pure reflex, another ritual like shaving, maybe. The job wasn’t tough, but doing it precisely was military, and doing it right was another good omen for the day. Uniform of the day, well, it looked like that would be the kathir suit until further notice.

  Todd was in the toilet room, making blowing noises over the running water. That was familiar, morning in the head, some people noisy, others quiet. Part of what was disorienting about this experience was the aloneness. Todd was just the other side of the bulkhead, but it had been a long time since he hadn’t had three or four others nearby while he was getting the day started.

  He’d left almost an hour for getting ready, and here it was, fifteen minutes or so, and he was almost done. On the carrier he’d have had something to do, go get chow, make sure the others were stirring, go collect the Orders of the Day. Here they could only wait. He checked Dee’s watch. It looked like they had almost a full round of the second-biggest needle before the biggest needle came to the mark. Half an hour? Something like that.

  He’d been avoiding the window, but now he turned to it deliberately. The Earth was huge in the lower left-hand corner; he couldn’t make out anything but blue, with a few white clouds. There was something funny about the stars. There was Orion’s belt, sitting at an odd angle, and then the rest of it fell into place, Orion’s head and shoulders sticking out below the Earth. You couldn’t see it from that angle anywhere on the surface, at least not anywhere he’d been.

  Todd came in, dressed in his own kathir suit. “Checking out the view?” he asked quietly.

  “Why ain’t they bright?” Peters gestured at the window. “This here’s outer space, ain’t no air outside, right?”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Hah.” It was a snort. “Look, on the ground you gotta look through the air to see stars, right? Here there ain’t no air. They ought to be brighter’n they are from the deck of the ship.”

  “Hadn’t thought about it.” Todd leaned forward, as if to inspect the stars more closely. “You’re right, though. Wonder why that is.”

  “You’re a big help, you are.” Peters gestured at the bunk. “Have a seat. We
still got a while to wait.”

  It wasn’t as long as he’d expected, maybe fifteen minutes before there was a tap on the door. “Mornin’, Dreelig,” Peters said, and then wondered how he’d recognized him.

  “Pleasant greetings, Peters. Would you like to eat?”

  “Oh, shit, yes.” He’d been concentrating on not thinking about it, but now that food was mentioned his belly growled.

  “Good. Do you remember the way?”

  “Yeah, we been there a few times, but you still better lead,” said Peters. “This here’s a big place.”

  Dreelig nodded. “That is probably a good decision,” he observed. “Pleasant greetings, Todd. Please come with me.”

  There were Grallt messing around in the bay, fussing over dlis, working with the machinery in the alcoves. None of them seemed to be doing anything about the mess. The bay doors were open, and Peters was a little confused until he realized that it wasn’t the same set as before. Those had been to the left as they went out into the bay, and now the ones to the right were open; the bow, he’d decided to call it until somebody explained different.

  The elevator was as before. Peters worked the door handle, wincing a little at the squeak and clank. Todd pushed the proper button with a satisfied grin, and the thing groaned and shook and made noises, eventually opening on the blue-painted corridor.

  The mess deck, or restaurant, was fuller this time, the same assortment of people except that a slightly larger proportion was in the skintight kathir suits rather than loose two-piece outfits. A waiter showed up and Dreelig gave him an order, indicating the sailors with a wave. The waiter nodded and grunted, wrote something on his pad, and took himself off.

  “What do we get to eat today?” Todd asked. “The stuff yesterday wasn’t bad.”

  Dreelig shook himself and looked at Todd. “I should apologize,” he said. “I have not been, ah, gracious today. There are several choices, but I have asked for eggs and flatcakes.”

  “What sort of eggs?”

  “I don’t know what type of eggs it will be,” Dreelig said. “We have eggs from, ah, is it Mechico? A bird they have there.”

  “You get food from Earth?” Peters asked.

  “Of course.” Dreelig waved at the room. “There are more than two to the twelfth people on this ship. All of them eat. We have to buy food at every stop. There isn’t enough storage space.”

  “Why Mexico? The United States produces food,” Todd asked.

  “Ssth. We haven’t been able to buy anything from the United States,” said Dreelig.

  Todd and Peters shared a look. “Nothing?” Peters asked. “I’d've thought we had lots of stuff you’d want.”

  “You do. Ssth. It is always like yesterday, when we came to pick you up,” Dreelig replied, his face as always unreadable, his tone and body language disgusted. “Any time we land there are discussions. Ask to buy a loaf of bread or two eights of eggs, and there are discussions. Ask to buy a load of food, and there are big discussions. Finally we gave up. It is a planet, with many people on it, and not everybody on it has to discuss things always.”

  “What did our people want to discuss?” asked Todd.

  “Ssth. They want a treaty.” Dreelig leaned back in his chair. “We don’t do that, we are only a ship full of traders and—” He interrupted himself, looked at them, waved to indicate the room full of Grallt. “We want to buy some things, sell some things, learn something new, make a little money. Simple, but not in the United States.”

  “Did you try to go directly to the sellers?” Todd asked. “I’d think some people would just want to do the same thing, buy and sell, maybe trade a little.”

  “Of course. I think your management, ah, government you say isn’t it? Your government told them not to. When we tried that we got nothing for a while, then more discussions.” Dreelig pushed back from the table to let the waiter approach. “Here is our food. Tell me if you think it is correct.”

  The eggs were eggs, sunny side up. With them came a brown jumble with green and white bits and crispy chips in it, some kind of chili or spicy meat. “Hey, great,” said Todd, and Peters looked to see him with a forkful of brown paste and a grin. “Chilaquiles. They’ve been buying food in Mexico, all right. Avocados next, maybe?” Then he had to explain what an avocado was. Dreelig paid close attention.

  “Flatcakes” were pancakes, very slightly burned; there was butter or something near to it, and syrup, clear with a bluish cast and extremely sweet. The waiter deposited all that, left, and came back with a carafe and cups, which he filled with hot brown liquid. Peters tasted it cautiously, then took a long sip. “Coffee!” he said with surprise. “Damn good, too. Dreelig, you may get some work out of me today after all.”

  “Kh kh kh.” They were getting used to the Grallt laugh; it didn’t sound so much like choking any more. “We like coffee, it is probably our favorite Earth food, and it should be excellent trade goods. We are buying all of it we can store, from a place called Colomba, I think. To the south of Mexico.” Dreelig talked to the waiter again, listened to the response. “Zeef says this is special coffee, for today only. It is called Blue Hills, or something similar. From Zhamaka, is that correct? An island. There is not very much of it, so we probably won’t get it again, because it is valuable for trading.”

  “Tell him it’s real good,” said Peters. “Fixed right, too.”

  Dreelig relayed that, translated the response: “He says thank you for the compliment. He is glad that a human finds it prepared correctly.”

  Peters raised his left hand, nodded; the waiter responded in kind, with a sharper nod, and took himself off. “Jamaica, that’s the name,” he said. “Where the coffee’s from.”

  “I believe you are correct,” said Dreelig. “The second vowel is difficult for us, we don’t use that sound. Please eat. It will cool quickly, and we have much to do.”

  Peters finished everything but the chili, which he found a bit too spicy; Todd cleaned his plate. When they were done they got up and left, piling napkins on top of the plates, the sailors looking back, still not accustomed to just walking off without taking the dirties to the scullery.

  “What now?” Todd asked.

  “I am taking you to Znereda, the language instructor,” Dreelig said.

  “Language lessons,” Peters drawled disgustedly. When Dreelig started to say something he waved it off. “Yeah, I know, we gotta be able to order lunch,” he said. “I just ain’t lookin’ forward to it, y’know? Languages ain’t my thing.”

  “It should not be difficult,” Dreelig said. “The language is very simple.”

  Peters snorted. “It better be. There’s places in the United States I need an interpreter.” Todd’s laugh earned a scowl.

  The language teacher had his establishment farther forward than they had yet been, off a pale-pink corridor two decks up from the dining hall. The deck wasn’t so much carpeted as padded, with something dark maroon that was soft underfoot and deadened sound. Dreelig gave them the salute and nod. “Znereda is waiting, and I will leave you now. Dee will meet you at the dining hall at the next meal.”

  Peters returned the salute gravely. “We’ll be there,” he said, and watched as the Grallt turned on his heel and shambled off.

  At that point the door opened and a voice said, “Good morning, gentlemen. Won’t you come in?”

  The speaker was the first old Grallt they’d seen, if white hair and lined face was any indication. He was short and slight, dressed in the loose jumper and trousers combination, white above and dark blue below. He regarded them with head cocked to the side and bright eyes half closed, like a lurking tomcat.

  “Good morning,” Peters said. “Are you Znereda?”

  “Oh, yes,” said the Grallt. “And you must be Mr. Peters and Mr. Todd. Come in, come in, I’ve been waiting for you.” He backed away from the door and waved them through into a room with more of the maroon padding on the floor. Comfortable chairs faced a desk and a blank wall, painted d
ark green, with scrawls across it. Graffiti? Here? Peters thought, before he realized that here was a genuine antique. He’d had chalkboards in the country school he’d gone to as a kid, but hadn’t seen one since.

  “Not ‘mister,’ Todd corrected. “Just ‘Peters’ and ‘Todd’. Only officers are ‘mister,’ and that’s only until they make commander.”

  Znereda chuckled, human style instead of Grallt choking; it sounded artificial. “We’ll discuss that at another time,” he declared. “Today I’m the teacher, and you are students.” He gestured at the chairs. “If you’ll please sit down, we’ll begin.”

  By the time Znereda let them go it was almost time for the second meal, and they knew that that was the beginning of the second ande. They knew that there were six ande per llor or watch cycle, eight utle per ande, sixty-four tle per utle, and sixty-four antle per tle. They could count to “ten”—actually eight—in the Grallt numbering system, and say the number-names to a “hundred,” actually sixty-four. They knew the names of a few common foods, and how to say “yes,” “no,” “please,” and “thank you.” They were also exhausted from the mental effort.

  Dee wasn’t in the mess hall when they got there. Peters looked at the watch; it was still half an utle before the second ande, and people would be drifting in over the next half hour—utle!—or so. The waiter came up; they struggled through the food names they thought they knew, and earned a deeper nod than before when they got it out comprehensibly. What they got was what they’d expected, which was quite a little triumph when they thought about it, and they fell to.

  When Dee came in a little while later they were almost finished. “I see you have learned a little of the Trade language,” she commented. “That will be a great relief for me.”

  “Gettin’ tired of dealin’ with sailors already, are you?” Peters asked.