by Scott Rhine
“Insomnia . . . Is that what the doc gave me?”
“We can’t access the medical log due to confidentiality.”
“I can look it up.”
“No, Toby blocked your access rights temporarily when you had to be sedated.”
“I’ll do an inventory first thing, with any witness you choose. I have nothing to hide.”
“Then why did you insist that Mira leave?”
“Because I didn’t want to hurt her feelings when you ask me the question you’ve been avoiding, professor. Are you really going to whitewash this?”
“Pause recording.” Zeiss ordered the computer. “Are you sure you want this on the record?”
Mercy bit her lip. “Technically, it’s hearsay. I didn’t analyze the bulb myself.”
“But?”
“It was empty and smelled of alcohol.”
“Did you assist Dr. Baatjies in the analysis of the pilot’s blood-alcohol level?”
“No, sir.”
“So you don’t know for certain.”
“No.”
“Resume recording. We’ll address the last charge—insubordination.”
“What?” she asked, rising.
“Red repeatedly ordered you to send down the dominoes, and you kept doing whatever the hell you wanted.”
For the first time in the interview, she raised her voice. “Not whatever. I wanted to find Yvette alive. I wanted to be clean and rest. I did what the senior officer told me to. Toby was in command at that moment. Red was off duty.”
“Technically—”
“Bullshit. In a court-martial, only the letter counts. He ordered me to assist him in saving Yuki’s life, and I did that with everything I had. It’s his fault you didn’t hear the order—he didn’t have his headset on in the shower. Can I speak to my lawyer?”
“You know we don’t have any here since we lost Yvette.”
“Then, with all due respect, sir, slap me in irons, or let me get on with the job of cleaning up this mess.”
“Dismissed.”
****
After the brain scan showed that his condition would never heal, Lou snapped at everyone who came into his room, everyone except Mercy. She would poke her head in and ask cheerfully, “Is there anything I can do for you? I’d be happy to help.”
The jagged pain inside him growled, but he wasn’t mean to Mercy. Blanket parties had been arranged for less. She was sincere, and they all knew it. Being rude to her would’ve been like slapping his own mother in the face. Worse, she might cry. Mercy had done that once, when he made a crude joke, and he’d never forgotten the feeling of the group’s disappointment or his own shame.
When Mercy asked him to accompany her to Yvette’s funeral on Strawberry Hill, he asked, “So you can lead the blind man?”
“Because my best friend just died, and if I don’t have a reason to come back to Olympus afterward, I’ll curl up on the site and stay. I’m going to ask ‘why’ until someone answers me. Yuki is refusing to attend because we’re burying her arm, too. Sojiro insisted. He said he wished someone would’ve found his finger and provided a chance for closure.”
Lou had done a lot of callous things in his life, but couldn’t let Mercy face the ceremony alone. He fell back on his ballroom training. “I would be honored if you would accept this dance, Miss.”
He could hear the change in her tone. The almost-smile sculpted her voice as she asked, “Did you have to take those lessons, too?”
It seemed impolitic to brag that he’d slept with the woman instructing the class. Instead, he responded, “Doesn’t everybody? Um . . . I didn’t know Yvette well. What religion was she?”
“She referred to herself as a recovering Catholic. She was trying to get me to join the twelve-step program, but I know the statistics. My mother was Catholic, so I’ll probably be one for life.”
“I’m Anglican. We’re social church-goers—baptisms, weddings, funerals, and the odd Easter when your sister-in-law buys a new dress for your niece. I appreciate a good John Wesley hymn because he stole most of them from English drinking songs. It sounds so much better when everyone knows the tune.” His accent peeked through as his mind drifted.
Sightless, he longed to see Mercy’s face light up as she talked about family. Even tinged with sadness, her profile was a contemplative work of art, like a Botticelli. In the Academy, Red had carried a textbook around for a class on Computational Complexity with a picture of the Botticelli Venus on the cover, hair curling in the breeze. Inside, the book was filled with puzzles he could never hope to fathom—that was Mercy. She had no reason to be nice to him, except her nature. Someone who could do that after losing everything had to be encouraged. Closing his eyes out of habit, he imagined that last time in the meadow when her body had purred under his hands. Correction, her marvelous body.
“Body?” she asked.
Bugger, I said that out loud. Lou cleared his throat. “I was only wondering: with no body, how is the funeral going to work?”
“Dr. Auckland insisted on digging the hole. The flight suit is too valuable to bury, but Red will lay out Yvette’s favorite shorts and her safari photographer’s vest. I found enough of Yvette’s hair from her brush to make a keepsake.” Mercy pressed a lock of hair into his hands, bound with a thin ribbon.
He pictured it as dirty blonde from memory, but even those colors seemed to be fading from his mind’s eye, washed out by the flashbulb of God. “Not much to show for a life.”
“Things aren’t important.” He could hear one of her tears as it fell on the exam table, like the first raindrop of a May shower. “It’s what we stir in the people who come to our service that matters.”
This, more than the loss of his eyes, made Lou weep. If he had died in the accident, only Red and Mercy would have attended his ceremony, and Red would have been too tough to cry. He accompanied Mercy because he felt compelled to be nice to the only mourner he was likely to have. More than that, he needed to feel worthy of her tears.
Chapter 29 – Paradise Lost
About four workers came in for each repair shift while Auckland stayed at camp. As soon as Yuki was back on her feet, she asked Mercy about the investigation. Yuki seemed most interested in Toby’s health. “His symptoms mimic drug withdrawal. Are you sure he hasn’t been tapping the narcotics?”
“Toby moved around a lot of drugs, but it’s all recorded on the charts, signed out to his black bag, or in the cabinet I locked in the luggage room. He was positively anal about that. The only medicine not recorded on the sign-out sheet is a little Viagra-analogue, but anyone with a paperclip could’ve swiped that. Because the last injury Toby examined was Yvette’s knee, his bag was in the luggage room, and that’s toast. We don’t know everything we lost, but Toby seemed lucid to me when we spoke. In fact, I can’t think of any conversation with the man where I’d describe him as mellow.”
Yuki smiled at her mild attempt at an insult, struggling to broach the next subject. “I know I said you could have Toby, but—”
“You think you can save him? I won’t get in the way, and I can guarantee no other man or woman on this mission will either.”
“Thanks. You dated him a couple times. What does he like?”
“Order, precision, bugs, chickens, and feet.”
“Really?”
Mercy described his reaction to any sort of bare legs and unshod feet. “But I’m not sure it will work. Pair-bonds are monogamous.”
“Maybe his short exposure to Yvette leaves me a window of opportunity.” Then Yuki said, “Do you want to hear what Lou likes?”
First, Mercy blushed. Then, she stammered, “Wh-why would . . .” Finally, biting her lip, she nodded meekly. In explicit detail, Yuki proceeded to list every one of the techniques the former pilot had responded well to.
The poor girl had to sit down for some of the more graphic parts. “You can do that?”
“Even after the other thing, he’ll still have some left. A little wiggle .
. .”
Mercy’s eyes kept growing wider, but she couldn’t bring herself to stop listening. No one had ever explained the mechanics to her in such blatant terms. “And that feels good?”
Eventually, she reached overload and had to stagger from the room to perform other duties.
Yuki had to laugh when she overheard Red chide her friend in the control room.
“You look pale, Mercy,” Red noted. “Are you going to pass out again?”
“I’ll be fine. I just need some . . . air.”
“Sure. Lou’s refusing to eat again. I need you to get nutrition into him, by whatever means necessary. Then he needs a sponge bath.”
“Do I h-have to?”
“Unless you can walk him into the shower. The way he’s pouting right now, I wouldn’t count on that. He thinks that he’s useless to the crew, and we shouldn’t even waste food on him.”
“That’s not true. He has a lot to offer.”
“Don’t waste the air on me; tell him.”
“Yes, sir. I think he’s taking the tribunal results too hard.”
“But we didn’t punish him for the infraction. He’s paid enough already.”
“That’s just it. Our pity reinforces his worldview. If he were in charge, he’d cut himself from the team. He thinks others should do the same.”
Red grunted. “Tell Lou I gave you permission to pick on losers who don’t try.”
Yuki looked at the mottled stump on her aching side. Because of the ship’s repairs, her prosthetic would be delayed, but she could still use her recovery time to secure the doctor’s devotion. Her weakness had been a gift, as it would ensure access to the doctor at any hour. When she returned to Tokyo with control over the alien technology, Mori-san would give her the best arm human-alien-hybrid science could fashion and grant her enough power that no man would give it a second glance.
****
While others came and went, Yuki and Toby became a constant fixture in Olympus. The doctor recovered enough to feed himself and walk around like a mummy from a fifties movie. He often floated out to the control room to stare at the only planet in the system as it grew closer each day. Midway-A was barely in the habitable zone. Hot, with a weak atmosphere, planet A reminded viewers of a yellower Mars. After a week of intensive repairs, the planet filled their windows like the moon.
Every time Mercy took a break from her nursing duties, she would make a tour around the deck as self-appointed safety officer. Several people bridled at maintaining two tethers, spurring someone to sew the label ‘Mother Hen’ to the pocket of her lab coat.
The laughter stopped the night Risa was so tired that her laser cutter sliced through both her glove finger and one of her safety lines. If it weren’t for the constant nagging, she might have drifted off. Mercy kept the label, but now as a badge of honor that screamed, “I told you so.” Accepting her warnings about fatigue, Zeiss declared a holiday to celebrate their arrival at the planet. Pratibha decided to scale down to only two shifts, five days a week, in order to prevent burnout.
As master of ceremonies, Sojiro opened the naming contest for the planet, suggesting the planet names “Mugu Point,” “Pensacola,” and “Terminal Island” because they were actual filming locations for the movie Midway.
Zeiss put forward “Alistair” in honor of the man who held L1 for them.
Red wanted “Castaway Cay,” the name of her favorite island as a child.
Lastly, Lou trumped the others with “Alcantara,” the name of the spaceport they’d lost in the war. “It represents all the loved ones we lost, who were sacrificed so we could reach this place.”
Mercy rewarded him with a brief peck on the cheek for the thoughtful tribute.
“Amen,” Zeiss said. The vote was unanimous, with only the mute Toby abstaining.
In the Midway theme, Sojiro also organized a Toshiro Mifune film festival. The biggest hit was Seven Samurai. Yuki corrected the subtitles in several areas while Toby sat by her side, munching on puffed corn. Saturday night everyone but Toby and Yuki went down to the camp for a feast.
When the last person left Olympus, and the door slid shut, Toby whispered, “Thank God it’s finally quiet in here.”
“You can talk!” Yuki said. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
“I don’t want to answer questions. It hurts.”
Softening, she said, “I understand.”
“How is the vote count for jumping forward or back?”
“Postponed until we’re able to do either.”
“Did I miss anything while I was gone this week?”
“Lou considering jumping off the balcony to end his misery. Mercy talked him out of it, claiming he’d break the charter, stranding us all. I feel so bad for abandoning him in his hour of need.”
He snorted disdainfully. “Don’t. He abandoned you the moment we determined you needed an amputation. He said you made him want to vomit.”
Her face went rigid at the insult. “He’d never tell you anything that personal.”
“I have the tape—” Suddenly, he stopped talking, concentrating on his remaining popcorn.
“Who was he talking to?”
“Mercy.”
“Did she say anything rude?”
“No. I lied about her to make you like me more. She crawled out from under him and left the moment he said that.”
“You were watching them have sex? How?”
His face twitched as he tried to hold the information in. “Don’t do this, please! It hurts.”
“You caught the Ethics page, didn’t you?”
“It’s eating me from the inside,” Toby said, hunching over to hug his midsection.
She stroked his hair. “I can help hide your secrets.”
He gazed at her, pleading. “You will?”
“Can, darling. But first, I want you to share how you spy on your enemies. I won’t tell.”
Sighing, he said, “They’re all inside now, so it won’t do any good. I’ll demonstrate on the planet.” Touching the section of interest, he announced, “Snowflake, enlarge by a factor of twenty.” Canals leapt into high definition on the window.
“Again.” They could see a canyon from end to end.
“A third time.” Individual boulders were visible.
Staring, Yuki asked, “Does anyone else know how to do this?”
“Only Mercy, but she’s only ever used it to watch the chicken run for predators. She doesn’t know about the night-enhancement, follow, or find features.”
Yuki’s voice became sultry as she placed an arm around him. “And how do you listen?”
“I just ask you-know-who for sound. Tapping resets the window to normal.” He demonstrated, returning the image to the moon-sized model.
She leaned in to kiss him, causing him to sigh. “Would you like to make love to me?”
“Yes!”
He didn’t mind that question, she noted.
They adjourned to her bedroom, where they removed all their clothes. At the moment of truth, Toby couldn’t. He wanted to take advantage of this woman, but his body wouldn’t cooperate. He screamed in frustration and pounded his fist into the wall.
“It’s okay,” Yuki encouraged. “You’ve been through a lot of trauma. It happens.”
Gritting his teeth, he said, “I’m going to take a shower.” She stood to join him, and he added, “Alone.”
It was a very long shower, so she activated her bug in that area and listened. Yuki heard the doctor murmuring to his deceased lover, apologizing for hurting her and vowing she was the only one for him. I have my work cut out for me, Yuki thought. She turned off the bug so she wouldn’t disrespect the dead.
When he finally slunk back toward his room, Yuki stood naked in the doorway. “You miss her.”
“We don’t choose who we love,” he mumbled, laying his head on her good shoulder.
“I understand. You can still lay with me if you like.”
“I’d like that.” Moving his gaze ov
er her, he said, “I’m not a good person; she’s making me tell you that.”
“Are you planning to hurt anyone?”
“No. But I did.”
“What?”
“Punished Lou for everything he’s done. I did unnecessary tests to twist the knife after what he did—”
Sensing each word pained him, Yuki put her finger on Toby’s lips. You made the pig suffer—the ingrate who dropped me and took advantage of my roommate before I was cold. If I weren’t already going to seduce you, that would’ve opened the door. “He was responsible for the death of your bond-mate. I’d have done the same.”
He smiled. “Such an awful secret, and you still accept me. You don’t know how good that feels.”
She smiled back. It will feel even better before I’m through. “Let’s go to bed.”
“How can we hide my problem from the others?”
“I’m in electronics. Maybe I’ll fix your earphones to block any person’s voice except mine. To the others, I’ll make up a story about hysterical deafness or something.”
Disappointingly, his body didn’t respond to hers the first night, but she didn’t give up hope. This man could become the leader of their expedition at any moment, and when he did, she would hold his reins.
****
After the party, the Zeisses asked Mercy to their cave.
When she arrived, Red asked, “Where’s Lou?”
Mercy said, “You said not to tell him about the meeting, so I left him to monitor another clutch of eggs. I don’t want to leave him alone too long; he’s been so sad. The doctor suggested I play the Ungame with him. It has cards with personal questions designed to get him to open up.”
“You’ll find some way to snap Lou out of it,” Red replied, patting her hand.
“We found some peanuts, and we’re making him a peanut-butter-and-jam sandwich,” Mercy whispered with excitement.
“You’ve been spending a lot of time with him,” Red noted diplomatically.
“For medical purposes. I read an article that explained how trauma patients with survivable injuries will give up if they have nobody waiting for them at home or visiting. As a nurse I can’t let him give up hope.”
“Uh huh.”