by Jay Allan
I tried to stammer something apologetic but didn’t know what the appropriate comment might be. “C-c-c-call me Ishmael.”
She propped herself on an elbow and squinted at me. “You’re kidding, right?”
I shook my head, unable to think of anything else to say.
Pip, wet from the san and struggling into a fresh shipsuit, rescued me. “Beverly, stop scaring the help. Ish, get your butt in the san. We don’t have much time to get to the mess deck.”
The woman held up a slender hand to shake. “Beverly Arith, pleased to meet ya. Wake me for afternoon watch?”
I shook the offered hand, mumbling, “Ishmael Wang,” before retreating to the san.
Pip gave me grief all morning. “You’ve never seen a girl before, Ish?”
“She startled me. I didn’t realize anybody was there until she spoke.”
I’d known there were women in the berthing area. Tabitha Rondita slept on the other side of the partition from me, a nice woman and I didn’t mind her little snorty-snores through the wall. We all shared the san and that didn’t bother me. Bathing is bathing and everyone likes a little privacy when pooping. The shower and toilet stalls all had doors. I’d lived with my mom and she was not shy so seeing women in various states of undress was no big deal. All told, it felt like summer camp except we were adults and not giggly kids—supposedly.
When Beverly came through the serving line at lunch, Pip nudged me.
For her part, Bev just smiled, nodded, and moved on.
“NOW HEAR THIS. SECURE ALL LOCKS. STOW ALL GEAR FOR DEPARTURE. DEPARTMENT HEADS REPORT TO THE CAPTAIN’S READY ROOM.” A countdown timer ticked on my tablet showing the time until we would get underway. Remembering the size, and assuming the mass of the ship, I found it difficult to believe that we’d be moving at all, let alone sailing out of the system on nothing more than pressure from the sun on an electronically generated field.
Cookie had served a particularly robust lunch that day and many people sat around afterward to catch up with each other. After the sparsely attended meals I’d grown accustomed to while docked, it seemed crowded and noisy. Even some of the officers stayed for a bit, chatting.
After the lunch cleanup, Cookie took Pip and me aside. “Gentlemen, we’ll be doing dinner differently today because of departure. The captain has scheduled pull out at 1600 and we’ll still be maneuvering at 1800. We’ll be doing bento-boxes for the evening meal. Mr. Carstairs, you know the drill. Mr. Wang, it’s important that we have plenty of coffee, but make certain the urns are secured. We may get bumped a bit and I want to keep things under control.”
I nodded my understanding. Each of the urns had a lid that made them spill-proof once locked. A simple system of curved pipes kept the pressure normalized inside without violating liquid integrity. “Two urns or three, Cookie?”
He thought about it before replying. “Load and prep all three, but only brew two. We can hit the button on the last when needed.” Obvious and logical, I should have thought of it myself and I made a tally on my personal mental midget list.
All the preparation talk made me a bit nervous and Pip noticed. “It’ll be fine, Ish. We might get a little bump, but usually it’s nothing. We just don’t want hot stuff splattered around if we happen to get a rough tug skipper. Once we get pulled back and the sails are up, it’ll be smooth again. You’ll think we’re docked.”
There was nothing I could do about what was going to happen to the ship. The professionals would be working that end of things. To distract myself, I obsessed over the minutiae of keeping the urns full. I ground enough coffee for six full batches, throwing the extra into an air-tight and dropping it in a chiller to keep it as fresh as possible. The trick was in the timing. With everybody on board again, I assumed they would consume an amazing amount. The Handbook told me that everybody should be at their duty stations about a half-stan before the actual departure, so I figured we needed to have the most brewed about a stan before. Accordingly, I timed the urns to be full at 1500. I needn’t have worried so much, but it kept my mind occupied.
Bento-boxes turned out to be the shipboard equivalent of takeout, finger food that wouldn’t make a mess while eating. Cookie drew on his ancestral heritage and made up a couple of variations of spicy fillings. We spread the mixture over flat bread rounds, folded, rolled, and then wrapped them in clingfilm. Pip, Cookie, and I set up a production line. Forty-five crew needed a hundred and twenty of these little buggers. I thought it would take a long time, but it took less than a stan once we had a rhythm going. We’d done them at a rate better than three a tick. I guess I shouldn’t have been that surprised considering Cookie did two for every one that Pip and I completed. Spread, roll, wrap, stack—a mindless, but oddly social task. The three of us gathered around the prep table and worked side-by-side to prepare for the evening meal.
I thought we’d put them in paper bags for easy carrying but Cookie had a better idea. He pulled out a stack of stamped, creased cardboard sheets and quickly formed one into a box with a clever folding lid. He repeated the action slowly for me to watch. I mimicked his moves and produced an identical box. It was as if I’d been born folding them. Even Cookie seemed impressed by how rapidly I caught on and he left the folding to me while he and Pip filled the boxes: two rolls, one piece of fruit, a cookie, a package of sliced vegetables, and small cups of dressing for dipping. The condiment was the only thing that might have spilled, but each container held only a few milliliters. With the lids closed, the boxes stacked on each other and I noticed small indents that kept them from sliding apart—clever and then some.
“What about drinks?” I asked. “I assume people can’t come down for coffee, can they?”
Cookie pointed to large insulated containers under one of the counters. “You’ll be delivering. Fill one with black coffee and the other with light and take a pocket full of sweetener packets.”
As the clock ticked down to pull out, the mess deck crowd thinned. I was able to prep and secure the urns with two fresh and full, and one on standby. We stacked the boxes on trays and placed them in the coolers. Cookie had it down to a science. While Pip certainly had been through it before, I marveled at Cookie’s expertise.
“We run a restaurant, gentlemen,” he reminded us regularly. “The customers don’t have any other choice, but we owe them our best just the same.” Finally, we completed the preparations and Cookie declared us ready. Pip and I collapsed into chairs at one of the mess tables to wait.
A few minutes later, the speakers announced, “PULLOUT IN THIRTY TICKS. ALL CREW TO DUTY STATIONS. SET NAVIGATION DETAIL. SECURE FOR PULLOUT. SET READINESS LEVEL YELLOW.” For Pip, Cookie, and myself the mess deck and galley were our duty stations. We just sat and looked at each other.
“Do we need to strap in or anything?” I looked from one to the other.
Cookie smiled but Pip guffawed.
Our boss cuffed him playfully. “It is a fair question, jackanapes. Have you been around so long that you forgot your first pull back?”
Pip had the decency to look abashed. “Actually, no. My first time was on the Marcel Duchamp. I was a wiper in the environmental section and they strapped me into the scrubber.” He looked both angry and embarrassed. “Bastards left me in there for three stans.”
Cookie winked at me.
Pip just groaned. “It took me all trip to get the stench out of my hair. And I never did live it down. That’s why I took the transfer to here.”
This was the first time Pip had offered any information about himself. Thinking back, I realized I’d known him less than a week but it seemed like a lifetime. I already had trouble remembering what life had been like before the ship. “When was this?” I asked.
“Last stanyer. I’m into my second year at quarter share. Don’t laugh.”
“Why would I laugh? Isn’t that good?”
Cookie chimed in, “Yes, it’s very good, young Ishmael. Considering the alternative is to strand Mr. Carstairs on a company pl
anet in the middle of nowhere.”
I thought of the hapless attendant whose berth I’d taken on Neris and wondered if he had found another position.
“Well, I should have moved up to a half share by now.” Pip’s tone betrayed an undercurrent of bitterness.
Cookie tried to soothe his pique. “And you shall. But all in good time.”
“ALL HANDS, BRACE FOR PULL BACK. ALL HANDS, BRACE FOR PULL BACK.” The squawk box in the overhead made me jump with the sudden announcement.
Unconsciously I held my breath. My knuckles turned white as I gripped the edge of the table. Cookie smiled and Pip just lifted his coffee cup off the table. Somewhere I felt, rather than heard, a thump from the front of the ship, and my inner ear told me something had happened.
The speakers squawked again. “ALL HANDS, PULL BACK COMPLETE. TUGS CAST OFF IN THREE STANS.”
“That’s it?” I asked.
“We’re underway, Mr. Wang,” Cookie said with a smile. “Rather uninspiring, isn’t it?”
It was definitely anticlimactic, but it cast a new light on Pip’s story. Based on his reaction, he’d been quarter share for a long time and perhaps he had transferred out of embarrassment. I planned to have a heart-to-heart with my new friend because there was more there than he was saying. My speculation must have shown because he suddenly became very interested in examining his coffee mug.
Cookie told stories of pull backs where the tug captain hadn’t had so deft a touch. He showed me a scar where he’d been thrown against a steam pipe stanyers before. “Usually, though, they’re like this,” he said.
Over the next three stans the speakers gave periodic status reports until finally all tugs released us and we were on course out of the system. As I had suspected, we had a lot of mass to get moving. The kicker engines, all the way aft, pushed us for only the first few klicks, and after that, they were secured. Once we’d gotten clear of the orbital, we ran up the field generators deploying the huge sails and the gravity keel. The ship picked up the solar winds which pulled us out of Neris’ gravity well. The outbound leg was scheduled to last twenty-two days before we hit the gravity threshold and jumped into the Darbat system.
At 1800, the usual dinnertime, the captain called down and gave Cookie the go ahead to distribute dinner. A few crew, who had no navigational duties, came to the mess deck and sat together over their bento-boxes, talking quietly among themselves. Meanwhile, Cookie, Pip, and I set off to feed the other thirty odd people scattered around the ship. By 1830 we had completed our rounds and returned to the galley to clean up.
At 2000 the speakers came on one last time. “SECURE FROM NAVIGATION DETAIL. SET THE WATCH FOR NORMAL OPERATIONS. SET CONDITION GREEN THROUGHOUT THE SHIP. SECOND SECTION HAS THE CONN.”
I punched the button to start the last urn brewing and drained away the oldest pot. By the time the captain and bridge crew showed up, they had fresh coffee and Cookie had put out a tray of pastries.
Chapter Five
Neris: 2351-September-15
Eight days out of Neris I began to synchronize with the rhythm of being underway. My days while in port had not prepared me for life with a full crew and the leisurely pace I had become accustomed to evaporated. Meals became more elaborate, serving lines grew, and cleanup took exponentially longer. In addition, sandwiches and snacks in the self-service coolers disappeared at an alarming rate now that more than just late watch standers came to the galley throughout the night.
Mornings were the hardest because we started early. Pip and I now woke at 0430 to prepare breakfast and help with bread preparations. We managed the biscuits and even did some of the batches of tortillas, pitas, and other flat breads for lunch. But Cookie was responsible for all the yeast varieties. We had a wide selection, made fresh daily. We usually had rolls or crusty loaves for dinner and long, square loaves for sandwiches.
Breakfast cleanup often took until mid morning and segued smoothly into lunch. Most days, we got a couple of stans off in the afternoon before setting up for dinner. Pip and I alternated evening cleanup so every other night one of us had a short shift. I found myself looking forward to these quiet times when I had the galley to myself.
I learned a great deal from watching Cookie, and became fascinated with how he took the same basic ingredients and yet made something different time and time again. While Pip might have seen Cookie as a taskmaster, I began to admire him as an artist—the unquestioned maestro of the galley.
My own skill with the coffee turned me into a kind of celebrity. After seeing just how much of the brew the crew consumed when everyone was aboard, it made Cookie’s words about it being the lifeblood of the ship make more sense. Still, I knew most people only from seeing them in serving lines. A mess deck attendant is not particularly high on anybody’s radar—even ones who knew how to brew coffee. Bev, however, turned out to be a good bunkie. After recovering from my initial embarrassment, I discovered she had a wicked sense of humor, which I appreciated most when it wasn’t directed at me.
The coffee urns were an albatross or, perhaps more appropriately, the stone of Sisyphus. Every other stan I had to make more. I learned to grind a full bucket of Arabasti at the start of the shift and measured it into air-tights. That gave me three full pots each morning and seven spares in the chiller. Most days I had to grind a second bucket in the afternoon. While it still wasn’t up to the standard my mother would have insisted on, it was better than that first cup of bitter sludge that Cookie had given me. Just cleaning the containers had made a big difference and I devoted time each day to scrub one of the three urns.
I discovered techniques to minimize clean up time like keeping the steam tables at the right temperature or lining the serving trays with peel-away whenever we served something sticky. This last trick meant items could go right into the upright san unit without having to be scrubbed by hand. Pip and I alternated sweeping and mopping chores and worked together to clear the mess deck after each meal until we had it down to a science. He showed me how to use the protective gloves, first sprinkling a bit of talc in each, and leaving an inch or so of the cuff folded back to prevent water from running up my arms. The insulation saved my fingers from the scalding water we used for dish washing. Something I counted as a good thing.
As Cookie, Pip, and I began to mesh as a team. I found I could tell the time of day just by what the others were doing. Slowly, I found myself adjusting to the schedule and could stay awake for as much as two or three stans after work before nodding off.
Of course, that brought another problem. There didn’t seem to be anywhere to go except my bunk, the galley, or the mess deck. I needed to find things to occupy my mind or I would begin wondering how soon before we got where we were going. With only a third of the passage to the jump behind us, I knew that dwelling on are we there yet would lead to no good end. Given that I had signed on for two stanyers, I really needed to find something to do with my time. Cookie found me in this mindset one evening after dinner.
I was wiping down the counter in the galley and he surprised me since he usually spent his evening playing cards with the other senior crew. “Mr. Wang,” he started, but stopped and smiled at me. “Ishmael, you seem to be taking to life aboard very well.”
I smiled back. “To tell the truth, Cookie, I’m not sure how well I’m really doing, but I’m trying. I really need to make this work. I don’t have a lot of options.”
“Yes, Captain Giggone spoke with me. You seem to be adapting to your recent loss.”
His mention of my mother’s death caught me out of the blue and I turned back to the pot I was scrubbing to give myself a tick to regain control. “Thanks. It’s been…” I paused to think, “over a month now. I spent almost three weeks on Neris trying to figure out what to do.”
He patted me on the back. “You’ve done well and landed on your feet after a terrible blow. I’m sure she’d be proud of you.”
I nodded my thanks, not trusting my voice to remain steady. I worked silently fo
r a time.
“What will you do now?”
“Now? I just got here. You’re not planning to put me ashore in Darbat, are you?”
“No, young Ishmael. You misunderstand me. You’re too good to stay at quarter share. I want you to think about going for half share as soon as you can.”
“Will I be able to remain on the ship?”
He pursed his lips and cocked his head in consideration. “Well, you’d probably have to change vessels. The Lois isn’t rated to carry a food handler, but you could switch to another division and stay aboard if a half share berth opens up.” He folded his arms and leaned against the prep table. “I want you to start thinking about those kinds of possibilities.”
“Wait a minute. I’ve been on this ship, what? Ten days?”
He smiled and nodded.
“Pip is in his second stanyer and he’s still at quarter share.”
“But you are not Mr. Carstairs. For you, staying at your current rating would be a waste. You have done more in your ten days than Pip has done in the seven months he’s been aboard. I gave him the same test I gave you and he failed.”
“You didn’t give me a test—” I started to object, but then remembered. “The coffee?”
“Yes.”
“But that’s not fair. My mother was a snob when it came to coffee. She drilled that stuff into me. How was Pip supposed to know?”
“You continue to misunderstand me, Ishmael. It wasn’t that you knew how to fix it. That, I confess, was a happy serendipity. What you did was take responsibility. You showed pride in a job well done and addressed the problems systematically. When you knew the solution, you acted. When you didn’t, you sought help. Your contributions have made the ship a better place.”