“There were nurses who were gentle during our training. The best of us got rewards early . . . commendations and gains in the rankings. That was a sort of approval, I suppose.” He swallows the last half of the word, his face flushing. “We were trained early to be—”
“—self-sufficient, I know. I just think that self-sufficiency isn’t really possible. Not for humans. I mean, I guess a turtle could manage it. Or an AI. Or maybe my sister.”
Kodiak doesn’t move, just stares at the tops of his bare feet. “That was a joke,” I mumble. “The sister part.”
Suddenly his eyes are fixed on mine. The pouch of water, forgotten, jostles in his hand. Blood rises hot to my cheeks. The water in the pouch flows back and forth, back and forth, firmly in his grip.
I ramble. “I guess I’m just saying thanks for coming over. I’m glad I don’t have to pretend I’m self-sufficient tonight.”
“I am excited about this old mummy reel,” Kodiak says huskily, tugging on his fingers. “Dimokratía did not send me with any entertainment on board, except for some classic Dimokratía literature. Abridged.”
“Really? That’s too bad. I don’t know what I’d have done without my old reels to watch.”
Kodiak shrugs. “I work out.”
I roll my eyes. “I noticed.”
“I noticed you noticing,” he says, his eyes suddenly back on mine.
I can’t help raising my fingers to my mouth.
He shrugs. “I do not mind. It is nice to be noticed.”
“Awesome. Okay. Well, um, happy to oblige.”
“I do ask myself sometimes, who am I working out for? I will return a hero, if I return. But that is very far away. I could let myself go to fat first, then worry about my health only for the last part of the journey. Maybe some padding will help absorb radiation and make me survive.”
“For the mission, Kodiak. You keep in shape for the mission.”
This conversation is getting decidedly weird. I’m not sure what to do with a Kodiak who actually speaks to me. I take his manicotti pouch out and shake it. It scalds the pads of my hand, but I keep it in my grip. “With the number of calories you must burn, you’d have to eat quite a few of these to put any real weight on.”
“Yes, that is true,” he says, getting into his pouch a little easier this time around. He savors his first mouthful. “This is tasty even by Earth standards. I would order this food in a restaurant. Really I would.”
“That makes me pretty concerned about your Aurora dining options.”
“Someday I will invite you to my half of the ship for gruel and you will know how well you have it here.”
“Don’t tempt me,” I say. Invite you to my half of the ship. The idea catches my breath.
“It is not actually gruel I eat,” Kodiak says. “But I thought I would play into your elitist assumptions.” He points to the ceiling window, where we can see his empty treadmill across empty space. “I think you see plenty of what happens on my side.”
I pull my own pea slurry out of the heater. “Are you going to keep aiming right into the discomfort zone? Is that your goal tonight?”
Kodiak chuckles, clearly pleased with himself. “It’s just a treat to see a pretty boy squirm.” He rolls up a sleeve and flexes. “You like that?”
“Enough,” I say. My voice comes out unexpectedly sharp.
Kodiak flexes the other arm. “What, you want to see some more, poly?”
I’m not even sure what he means by “poly,” but I don’t like his tone at all. I ignore him. Having to avoid Kodiak’s eyes now brings a feeling close to embarrassment. I hate that he’s made me feel this way. All the same, I realize this is mostly about his discomfort. He probably doesn’t allow himself to enjoy being attractive. A waste of a perfectly good source of self-esteem.
Kodiak watches my face. “So. Are you gay or bisexual or what?”
I can’t help but laugh. It’s like we’re in some historical fiction. “Those terms,” I tell Kodiak. “Just stop. You’re embarrassing yourself, Mr. Dimokratía.”
“Oh my God, so sensitive,” he grumbles, letting his sleeves fall. “You are all the stereotypes of Fédération in one.”
I have no doubt anymore that he’s goading me. But I refuse to be goaded. “Please do call me sensitive, since it’s the insensitive who deserve criticism,” I say primly as I prepare myself a tea. I close the cabinet without offering Kodiak one. “It’s my sensitivity that’s tasked with keeping us alive, that puts me in point position once we do make contact with Minerva.”
“If we make contact with Minerva,” Kodiak says as he hunkers into his food.
Now I can’t hold back. “I guess sensitivity isn’t required for manual labor,” I say, watching him so I don’t miss any bit of his reaction.
Not even a pause in his eating. A monologue runs in my mind: I’m one of the most famous people in the world. My classmates fell over one another to get a taste of me. Maybe he isn’t impressed by my status. Maybe I don’t need it with him. Maybe he won’t be disappointed if I turn out to be ordinary after all, despite everything he’s heard.
“There is only virtue in bodily toil,” he finally says, swallowing. “. . . and you’re watching me again.”
“Look, you’re pretty much the only game in town, if you’re the sort who’s even remotely into human contact,” I say. “So yes, I’m looking at you. Looking at one another is what humans do. You’re allowed to look at me, too.”
“Thank you, that is most kind,” he says into his food, with a terrible imitation of the poshest sort of Fédération accent. The way I and Minerva and the OS talk.
As he gets meaner, I get touchier: this feedback loop will eventually lead to open conflict, so I decide to break it. “What happened to your arm?”
“My arm?” Kodiak asks, tugging his sleeve farther down so it covers his triceps. “What do you mean?”
“While you were mocking me by flexing. I saw a scar.”
“No,” Kodiak says, “you saw no scar.”
“Who do you think you’re kidding right now?” I ask.
He shakes his head, placing his dinner back on the table.
Heart racing, I raise Kodiak’s sleeve to expose the soft inside of his upper arm, tracing my finger along the valley between his muscles. I track the scar until it reaches his elbow.
Kodiak gently removes my finger, cups it into my palm, and places my hand on the center of the table. “That. It is a scar, you are right. It is so small that I barely notice it.”
I shake my head. That scar is not small. “Maybe you’re the computer program. You are the most closed-off human being I’ve ever met.”
“Born and bred that way,” he says proudly. “I would like a tea too, please.”
At least Kodiak said “please.” I reach into the cabinet. The good-host urge is hardwired into us Cusk children. A bunch of us in each generation wind up diplomats.
Kodiak strains, and I imagine that he wants to make more conversation but is grasping for words and sentences. “I have had this mark for so long that it’s easy for me to forget. No one has ever asked me about it, but no one asks anyone about anything in training.”
“It’s all men, in your training?”
“Yes, of course. It has always been that way. Not for you?”
“Of course not. We sent Minerva Cusk to settle Titan, right? My class was mostly women. It was a bit controversial that I was chosen for this mission, actually.”
Kodiak looks me up and down. Then he shrugs. “You are a Cusk. Of course you got the position. And if Dimokratía is going to send a male, Fédération has to send one too, so there are no little space babies.”
My face burns. I really don’t want to fight right now, but he’s making it hard. “So your scar . . . ,” I prompt, setting Kodiak’s tea down before him. He goes to sip it. “It’s not properly steeped yet,” I tell him. “I’ll let you know when it’s time.”
He places his hands in his lap obediently, like a chast
ised kid. This might be the first tea he’s ever had. It makes me want to ruffle his hair. “The story of my scar,” he says. “It was after a pool bash, and we were down to two, so you know, that’s what happened.”
“I understood precisely nothing that you just said,” I tell him, cupping my tea and curling my legs up under me. “Start with the ‘pool bash.’ What’s that?”
“You do not know what a pool bash is? Clearly we are much better at collecting information on Fédération training than you are at learning about Dimokratía.”
“You’re avoiding my question.”
He drums his fingers. “Yes, I noticed that I was doing that, too. I will work on being more direct so we can be friends.”
That sets my shoulders tensing up, but then I see he’s serious, and my body softens. I wave him on.
“The pool bash. As you know, we start training at age four, leaving the orphanages to live in the cosmology academies.” He chuckles, I’m not sure what for. “For the next eight years, we are all built into the best little spacefarer soldiers we can be, learning gymnastics, science, engineering, combat. We practice in zero g, orbiting often so that movements in space will be second nature.”
“Like riding a bike,” I say.
“Functioning in zero gravity is not at all like riding a bike.”
“No, that’s an expression. Never mind. Please continue.”
“Thank you. Once we are twelve, the culling begins. The class must go from one hundred fifty down to twenty or so. There are many ways to fail out and be placed in military or civil service instead, but the most frequent is the ‘pool bash.’ We are strapped into a mock spacecraft that is suspended a hundred feet over a pool with wave generators. The lights go out, and the craft is dropped into the pool. We have to get out of the underwater wreckage in the dark and make it to the edge, all with twenty-foot swells.”
“Some cadets drown?” I ask, putting my forkful of pea slurry down.
“We are well-trained survivalists by this point. It is rare that someone drowns. No, before the exercise begins, the instructors throw iron keys into the black water, and you must have one to be permitted to leave the pool. There is always one fewer key than there are cadets.”
“So someone gets eliminated each time.”
“Yes, and sometimes a student gets so tired that they give themselves up so they don’t drown. Then they must leave the program, too, and the game ends for the rest of us. Do we watch The Mummy now?”
“Not yet. You haven’t gotten to the part about your scar.”
“Right. Okay, I will tell you now. I was usually one of the first out with my key.” I don’t find that hard to imagine. “But one day I was unlucky. My biggest rival kept pushing me away, and I fought with him over a key, but he got out with it, and when I turned around there were two of us in the pool, and only one key left. We fought for it, in the underwater wreckage. I don’t remember the fight very well. By the end my arm was broken, but the hand at the end of that broken arm still held the key.”
“You fought hard enough to break your arm?”
He supports his upper arm in his other hand so he can get a better look at the scar. “I think it was technically the wreckage that broke it, but I fell into that wreckage because Celius Li Qiang had me in a headlock and was drowning me, so yes, you can say it got broken in the fight.”
I cough. “I want you to know that even though my exams in my training were mostly essays, some of them were very hard.”
Kodiak chuckles. “You are joking, but I am sure that I would have found them hard. I might not have survived so long if our exams had been essays instead of fights for survival.”
Kodiak is insecure about his intellect. I’ve already suspected as much, but it feels strangely good to have confirmation. I’ll have to step carefully around this insecurity—or manipulate it full throttle if we come to open conflict. He’s looking at me, a slight smile on his lips. I realize he could be deploying this “insecurity” to his advantage.
I want to share with him that maybe we’re not that different, he and I. That we both have our strength, and our fear. I want to tell him that I grew up in my own sea of Cusk, that I had to fight thirty siblings in a dark pool for my mother’s attention and affection. But I don’t feel safe enough to say that. So I take a different tack. “You said ‘Celius Li Qiang.’ That means he was from your same orphanage?”
“Yes. We grew up together.”
“So he was close to you.”
“Yes. Friend, sometimes my erotiyet, sometimes like a brother. But that ended when he became my competition instead.”
“Erotiyet? What’s that?”
He blushes. “I’m through talking about this today. Let’s watch the reel.”
We watch the 2459 version of The Mummy. It’s much worse than I remember. I’m embarrassed, and offer to turn it off, but Kodiak is totally rapt. My attention keeps wandering to the torrents of stars in the windows around the screen. Afterward, I yawn and stand, but Kodiak makes no move to leave his chair. His eyes are bright, and his face is practically glowing. He’s more excited than I’ve ever seen him. “I have so many questions. Why did the Nubian Snakelords not attack when they had the advantage? Did some part of this reel get censored?”
“I don’t think you’re supposed to read too much into the motives of the Nubian Snakelords,” I say, yawning.
“I think we should watch this movie again, right away. Maybe it will make more sense the second time.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
He thumbs his chest. “Of course I am serious. Kodiak Celius does not kid.”
“See, even right now, I think you’re actually kidding. If we get down to it, what you are, Kodiak Celius, is indirect.”
“I am what?” he says.
“Indirect. I don’t blame you. When people assume there is no one listening who cares, they put up walls. You have many, many walls. Indirectness is one of them. It’s not your fault.”
“Thank you,” he says. His smile is huge, but his eyebrows have knitted. I’m in dangerous territory. But I’ve also come to suspect that dangerous territory might be where Kodiak prefers to be, that if I want to keep in communication with him, it’s where I should keep the both of us. So far all my challenges have been met with respect and excitement. It’s kindness that makes him contemptuous. What a mess of a person. It’ll be months before I get him comfortable enough to stay earnest.
“Do you have a chess set?” Kodiak asks. “I miss the feel of something real under my fingers.”
“You want to play chess? You’re really not tired? I’m exhausted.”
“Ambrose, we are in the middle of space. Ship time is no longer anywhere close to Earth time. At our speed, time itself is warping around us. Are you really worried about getting your beauty sleep, so you can remain gorgeous?”
Gorgeous? Where did that come from? “We could have the portaprinter make us a chess set. But I actually do have a deck of cards,” I collect myself enough to say. “I had a small space allowance for personal items. I brought a pack of cards, the same one my classmates and I used at the academy. I have my violin, too.”
Kodiak sits bolt upright, eyes shining. “You brought a violin?”
“Yes. From the nineteenth century. I guess it’s the oldest thing on this ship. And the only wooden thing.”
“You would show it to me?”
I duck next door and return with the case.
The preparatory motions are automatic: I tighten the bow, position my shoulder rest, pizzicato a few notes, then play a scale.
Kodiak’s eyes are wet. “It is so beautiful,” he says. “May I?”
I feel a pang of disappointment that he’s more interested in the violin itself than my playing. I pass the instrument to him. He shelters its narrow neck in his powerful hands, runs the backside of his fingers up and down the wood that has been warmed by my body, as if worried his fingerprints would mar the surface. I’m not disappointed anymore; I’
m proud. “We had a few days of break each year,” Kodiak says, to the violin more than to me. “Other boys would go to their families if they had them or get drunk in the city, but I would go camping on my own in the woods. I remember the feeling of the old logs I would use for the fire. This feels like that wood, but with this polish, it is the color of a tree once it’s on fire. You were wise to bring this violin to remember Earth. To remember forests.”
He turns his head, so I can’t see the emotion on his face. He doesn’t release the instrument, but holds on to it like it’s supporting his weight. Part of me worries that he’ll break it, but I’m loving his love for the violin. I might never ask for it back. To be honest, I forgot that I’d intended to bring it.
He strokes it in silence, the stars revolving outside as the ship tilts and rotates on its way to Minerva. I don’t play the violin that night—we just go silent and close, passing the wood of a five-hundred-year-old tree back and forth. It grew from the carbon in Earth’s air.
_-* Tasks Remaining: 71 *-_
We don’t get to see Jupiter. I’d known that would happen—it takes Jupiter twelve Earth years to revolve around the sun, and by rotten chance it has spent this whole voyage on the far side of it.
“I’d love to spend a few minutes in Jupiter’s Great Red Spot,” I tell Kodiak while we work on our blind room. “Four-hundred-mile-per-hour winds . . . can you imagine?”
“Those would be the last few minutes you spent anywhere.” He’s slow to smile, but when he does, it lingers. I find him minutes later, his lips curling at the corners while he works.
The next morning I whistle as I head through the Dimokratía quarters but stop as I approach Kodiak’s workshop. Usually there’s the sound of banging, ratcheting, pinging. Today there’s nothing. I quietly approach the doorway. Kodiak’s cross-legged on the floor, headphones over his ears, looking as intent as a kid putting the finishing touches on a masterpiece of blocks.
“What is it—” I start to say, until Kodiak holds up a hand to silence me as he points the other at another pair of headphones beside him. I step over the polycarb lip—printed thick and arcing outward to block Rover, like anti-terrorism guards at a parking garage—and sit beside Kodiak, giving his shoulder a pat of greeting. I place the second pair of headphones over my head. It’s just static.
The Darkness Outside Us Page 9