by Rob Grant
The hair is scooped back and tucked into some curious headwear, made up of four triangles: one at the back, two at either side, and one on top, like an anti-glare screen on a computer monitor. The hat is also black, as are the uncomfortably heavy woollen robes draped loosely around her. The only colour on her is a hint, in the shadows of the headpiece, of some kind of white skullcap. To Eddie, she looks like a widow from Renaissance Venice. Or a nun.
Eddie offers her a fulsome smile.
The smile is not reflected.
Peck's eyebrows raise themselves to full condemnation height, making cruel slits of her nostrils and eyes. She speaks rapidly, with a breathy passion. 'I want you to know from the outset that I am one hundred per cent opposed to reviving you in this way. You, sir, are the walking dead, an abomination in the sight of God, and the demon spawn of Satan. And this isn't just my opinion -- I have full papal authority to hate you.'
Well, the old Peck charm's still alive and kicking. Eddie's ludicrous hopes, barely flimsy in the first place, of kindling some kind of carbolic relationship with this woman seem even less robust. An abomination in the sight of God? Demon spawn of Satan? It seems a long way from there to 'boyfriend'. He looks to Father Lewis, who replies with an amused facial shrug. He looks back at Peck, who is clutching a rosary and silently incanting some kind of prayer, presumably, in his direction. Perhaps the overture to some kind of exorcism. This woman is the Science Officer? Hard to believe the ship is in trouble.
Lewis leads him up the table. 'And I think you've already met some copies of our Security Leader. Apton Styx.'
Another of the Styx drones rises to greet him. This one has an A burned into his forehead. Perhaps it's Eddie's imagination, but he thinks he sees a glint in this one's eye. A spark of some quiet, inner intelligence. Styx holds out his hand and says: 'Pleased to meet you, Apton.'
No. It was Eddie's imagination. 'No, your name's Apton.'
'Really? That's my name, too.'
The drone's smile is so warm and genuine, and the collective disdain for him around the room is so palpable, Eddie feels he should make some kind of friendly, comradely gesture. Without sufficient concentration, he reaches out to shake the proffered hand, engages the wrong impulses and unwittingly wills his powerful arm to slap the hapless Styx with astonishing sudden violence, sending him careening across the table over the shoulders of a pair of gawking committee members opposite, to crash, unconscious, into a group of empty chairs stacked up against the wall.
'I... "Sorry" doesn't even begin to... That was an involuntary response. I haven't quite got on top of my neural reconnections.' Styx groans, and makes an incompetent attempt to pull himself clear of the shattered furniture, which only brings more of the sturdy leather-backed chairs crashing down on top of him, further thwarting his revival. 'Isn't anybody going to help him?'
But nobody even tries. He's a drone. Less than human.
'Don't worry about it,' Lewis consoles him. 'It's good training for him. Might sharpen his reflexes. Now. Our Community Director. Captain Gwent.'
At the head of the table is a young adolescent: unkempt, unwashed, with a thick fringe of greasy hair obscuring the right three-quarters of his otherwise pimple-patterned face. His filthy sneakers are crossed on the table, and he's peeling away bits of rubber from the toecaps. Surely Lewis can't be introducing this specimen as the leader of the mission? Yet he looks up at the epithet 'Captain'. He forms his right hand into a mock gun, and mimics firing it at Eddie, accompanying the action with a 'tkunk!' sound made with his cheek. 'Blown away, pilgrim. But let's DFI the whole handshake scenario, okayovich? Just until you can, say, do it without going on a gorefest death rampage?'
'You're the Captain?' Eddie tries to cover his squeal of disbelieving astonishment with a last-minute twist in his inflection he hopes will imply a more surprised-yet-impressed reaction, but his electronic larynx just makes him sound like a loon.
The youth grins, dental braces glaring. 'Yes indeedy peedy,' and then giggles with his tongue protruding through his teeth for around three hours.
The lad is, what? Thirteen? Fourteen? 'I don't mean to be rude, but aren't you a little... young for a mission commander?'
Oslo snorts and steps in with a hint of glee. 'Actually, he's a little young for solid food. But as you are doubtless aware, our positions are designated on a strictly hereditary basis, thanks to the brilliant goo-brain who planned this operation, and Captain Gwent's father rather selfishly died a couple of weeks ago, before his son and heir was thoroughly toilet trained.'
The Captain makes what is clearly an insulting gesture at Oslo, but Eddie is unfamiliar with it.
'But there were contingencies for this kind of eventuality.' Eddie tries to dredge his memory for those scantly grasped provisions. 'Shouldn't someone take over temporarily? The Chief Community Planner?' Hell, that would be Gordon, wouldn't it? And Eddie is Gordon, of course. The thought strikes him for the first time: where is Eddie's contemporary counterpart? Whoever currently occupies that position would surely be Eddie's own descendant! The fruit of his loins. Or the loins he once had, at least. His seed would have been automatically introduced into the gene pool. Unless whatever mishap befell him to reduce him to his current state was so devastating it rendered his sperm unextractable.
He looks quickly around the table, but spots no family likeness.
'There is no Chief Community Planner, Doctor.' Lewis jumps in a little quickly, doubtless worried Eddie might not keep up his end of the subterfuge. 'There hasn't been one of those, whatever it is, in the lifetime of anyone here.'
Nobody has occupied Eddie's post in living memory? Why? How could that have come about? Clearly, these people are still adhering to the community blueprint set out so long ago. They still observe the regulations with regard to inherited positions, to the point of insanity. When did the strict structure of command break down? And if the post of Chief Planner no longer exists, then what of Eddie's loin-fruit?
'Wait.' Oslo seizes on some possible weaponry here. 'Are you saying the kid shouldn't be in charge? At least until his voice completely breaks? That there are laws against it?'
'Well, as I said, provisions were made. I'm not sure who's next in line after the CCP.'
Oslo stands and thumps the table. 'Can't you find out, for ship's sake!?' She can hardly contain herself. Eddie doubts that anyone around the table is thrilled to be serving under this painfully immature puberty sufferer, but while he's in indisputable charge, it would seem unwise to risk getting on the wrong side of him. Yet Oslo seems to have no qualms about nailing her colours to the mast. 'It must be recorded somewhere. Somewhere in the writings.'
'It'll be in the ship's charter.' Which, of course will be preserved in the central computer. And you don't have to be able to read to communicate with the computer. So why don't they know this? Don't they talk to the computer? Is that skill now derelict? How can Eddie find this out without devaluing his usefulness?
'The ship's charter? Where's the ship's charter?' Oslo's desperation is beginning to look embarrassing. Eddie can't imagine what the young Captain, unsuitable and unpleasant as he unarguably may be, can have done to create this level of unbridled loathing in the woman. Of all the constituents of the committee, she should probably have the fewest objections: she can barely be twenty herself.
'Whoa! Hey!' The lad sweeps his filthy footwear off the table and pivots his body till his elbows rest in their place. 'Take twenty in a soothe booth, lady. If you want to start a mutiny, Oz, you can do it in your, say, leisure time. Capice?'
Doubtless, the feisty Ms Oslo would not enjoy taking orders at the best of times, from the best of superiors. This command falls into neither category, and as she retakes her seat and picks a camouflage smile to wear, it looks to Eddie like she has murder in her eyes.
'Fine. May I ask you one last time not to call me "Oz"?'
'Hey, sorry, Oz. I didn't know it upset you. From now on, I'll call you, say, "Penile Cheese Breath".'
'Thank you, Captain,' she spits pleasantly. 'Now. May I suggest you start this briefing as soon as possible, before your facial pustules burst and spray everyone with yellow bile?'
'I'm going to let that one go, PCB, until I can dream up the most utterly premier put-down style comeback, and watch you squirm and wither like, say, a scuddy dung beetle in a pool of fly spray.' He giggles again -- that same mad thuh-thuh-thuh giggle with his protruding tongue, spraying little drops of spittle on the polished table. 'Okayanovich, I'll launch the pinball on this one: people, you're probably wondering why you're here. I know I am. Over to you, Pecky babe.'
Peck closes her eyes with a grimace of suffering and grasps her rosary beads even tighter. 'Captain. I'd... rather not.'
'Say what? You're the Science dudette, are you notski?'
'I would be compromising my deep-felt beliefs to brief this...' she nods in Eddie's direction without looking at him '... soulless thing.'
Eddie's a thing, now? A soulless thing. This is a bit much, even for Eddie's subterraneanly low self-esteem. 'Science Officer Peck, I have spent the last few centuries pickled in a jar, I wake up not three hours ago to find I am permanently submerged in green bile, I have a central nervous system the average garden slug would sneer at, and I've been inserted into a cumbersome metallic body that would have given Robbie the Robot a crisis of confidence. Do you think I give a long stale garlic fart what you think?' As soon as the words are out of his speaker, Eddie wishes he could suck them back. This atmosphere of childish bickering must be infectious.
There is a small silence, perfectly maximizing Eddie's embarrassment. It's broken by a loud groan from the reviving Styx, and another crash as he pulls another stack of chairs on top of himself.
Peck twists her prayer beads. 'I was merely making a theological point. No need to get personal. Zombie.'
Oslo slaps the table again and rises. 'Oh, for God's sake, I'll do it.'
Peck smiles self-righteously. 'And for His sake, Bernadette, I thank you.'
Oslo puts her knuckles on the table and cranes over. 'Seventeen days ago, there was a major accident -- we assume some kind of asteroid strike -- that ripped away two-thirds of the ship's main engines
Eddie's accountant's mind chips in. 'The ship only had three engines. That would mean there's only one engine left.'
Peck smiles. 'Excellent. Those years of engineering training weren't wasted on you, living deadman.'
'As far as we can tell, at least eighty per cent of the manoeuvring thrusters were destroyed, too. The entire ship seems to be damaged to the point where it's ripping itself apart bit by bit, and we've no way of knowing how long it can maintain a spaceworthy integrity. Given we now have minimal manoeuvrability, our only slim chance of survival is to somehow work our way into the orbit of a vaguely habitable planet in the local region and establish the colony there.'
Oslo passes her hand over the table top, and a detailed, animated three-dimensional display of the local planetary system appears in the air above it.
Apton Styx cranes over the display, clearly fascinated by it. 'Excuse me. May I?' With childlike wonder, he reaches out for one of the colourful spinning orbs. He seems surprised when his hand passes through it.
Oslo barks: 'Stop that, Styx.'
Styx retracts his arm. 'Sorry, Oslo.' He casts his eyes downwards. 'It just looked so...'
'Pretty?'
Styx looks down, ashamed. 'Colourful.'
'Just stop it. All right?'
'It has clouds and everything.'
Oslo takes a breath. 'OK. We have three candidates for settlement. Of which this would be the best option...'
She leans over and points out one of the smaller orbs; a healthily blue, reassuringly Earth-like planet, mostly given to ocean.
'... the planet our good captain has christened, with characteristic maturity...' She breathes in deeply, '"Thrrrppp".'
The Captain snorts his tonguey giggle. 'Superlative nomenclature, I would venture.'
'I'm sorry,' Eddie can't quite believe what he's hearing. 'What did you say the planet was called?'
Oslo narrows her eyes at him. 'You heard. It offers the best prospect of a breathable atmosphere, plentiful water and consumable vegetation, together with moderately survivable temperature ranges. The downside with a...' she blinks very slowly, '... Thrrrppp docking is, our best calculations give us a zero probability of effecting an orbit.'
'Sorry,' Eddie apologizes again. 'Did you say zero probability?'
'That's right,' Ms Peck smiles with savoured loathing. 'For those of us more severely mentally challenged, that would mean "None" or "No Chance". Is that clearer now, you eternally damned incubus?'
Eddie favours her with his slightest nod. 'Thanks for clearing that up.' What is wrong with these people? They're staring in the face of Death, and they're swapping petty snipes like playground prima donnas.
'Our second favourite is this monster...' Oslo indicates a large, unwelcoming globe. Most of its surface is obscured by thick, volatile swirls of black cloud formations, interrupted by occasional, disturbing blasts of bright orange explosions. 'The planet...' She seems to be steeling herself.
The Captain snorts a short tongue giggle. 'Say it, Oz.'
'... The planet "Penis". Way short of perfect, atmospherically; massive extremes of temperature; evidence of major tectonic shifting and volcanic activity on a stupendous scale. Technically, we just might be able to settle there, though we'd have to erect some form of enormous geodesic shelter during the establishment phase, and commit to a long-term terraforming programme if it's ever going to provide a permanent living environment. On the plus side, we do have a fifty per cent chance of achieving orbit. The outsider...' she gestures towards a much smaller orb, spinning far too fast and far too close to the system star for Eddie's liking, "... is the planet "Panties". This one gives us our best shot of a rendezvous, better than ninety per cent, but there's nothing even approaching a breathable atmosphere, extremes of temperature that would freeze mercury on one side of the planet and melt gold on the other, and a global dust-storm that won't subside for another twenty thousand years. This planet is definitely having a bad hair millennium.'
'So...' Captain Gwent stands and flicks back his hair with a nod of his head. Eddie swears he can hear grease particles collide against the wall behind him. 'To, say, recap; what you're saying, Oslo, is: Thrrrppp's a no-no, you think you've got a fifty-fifty chance of encircling Penis, though it may erupt, but with a good hard thrust, we could almost certainly get into Panties.' He leers a braced-toothed grin in Eddie's direction. 'What think you, Dr Morton?'
What does Eddie think? Eddie thinks he died and went to juvenile Hell.
24
The great ship Willflower hurtles uncontrollably through virgin space. Even if Eddie O'Hare had seen her at the start of the mission, he wouldn't recognize her now. Then, she had represented humankind's proudest achievement: a sleek masterpiece of double efficient design. Now, she's a twisted, warped mess. If you found this shape in your toilet bowl, you'd report immediately to the nearest Emergency Room for radical bowel surgery.
And the only man who can save her is made up of the bits even the most ravenous cannibal would leave on the side of his plate.
Right now, he's travelling in the passenger seat of a corridor kart, trying to work out just exactly what it is everyone's expecting him to do, without actually directly asking anyone what they expect him to do, in case that starts them thinking he probably can't do it, which he thinks is almost certainly true. He asks Oslo: 'So where are we going?'
Even though the kart is self-steering, Oslo has her hands on the drive stick, and she doesn't take her eyes off the corridor ahead to reply. 'Planning Room Seven.' She likes to feel she's in control, young Bernadette. Even when she blatantly isn't. Which Eddie thinks is understandable, under the circumstances.
Still, things have been happening very fast to Eddie, and he'd like a little time, a little space to gather his thoughts. '
Could we stop off at my apartment first?'
'Your apartment?'
'For a few minutes, at least.'
'What apartment?'
'My apartment.'
'You don't have an apartment.'
'I don't have an apartment? Well, can I get an apartment allocated? I mean, there must be one or two spare apartments around the place.' From what Eddie has seen of the current population level of the ship, they must have more spare apartments than tornado season at a time-share estate built on a plague pit next to an active volcano.
'What would you need an apartment for?'
There are discomforting implications in the very fact that that question is askable, but Eddie doesn't choose to address them. 'What would I need an apartment for? To live in. To rest. To refresh myself.'
'Refresh yourself? In what way?'
'I don't like what it sounds like you're saying, Oslo.'
'Come on, Morton. Wake up and sniff the modified caffeine and fructose-based breakfast beverage. You're going to do what? Take a nice, hot bath? An enlivening shower? A shave? Change your underwear? What?'
Eddie falls into a hostile silence. It's true. Horribly true. He won't be doing any of those things, ever again. The nearest he'll get to freshening up is a quick rubdown for his metal suit at the automatic kart wash.
But what about eating? Obviously he no longer enjoys the luxury of a digestive system, but he must have some source of nourishment. 'I still have to eat, don't I?'
'You're not thinking things through, Morton. Which is a worry to me. What do you suppose you're going to eat? And how? So I bring you a big juicy substisteak, I lift up some kind of flap on top of your helmet and drop it in there. By some fluke it floats down through your gloop in the direction of your mouth, you manage, somehow, to suck it in, chew it up and swallow it. Where does it go? How does what's left of your body derive any benefit from it? What was the point of the entire stupid exercise?'