Adrift (11 page)

But there wasn’t any glass. Everything was back in order, just like Dr. Geddes was here a few minutes ago, bustling about and setting things right. She gaped
. Tron must have done this. Whitman locked himself in Navigation right away, which meant he was the only one who had time. He must have been working on it while she was in the airlock. That was the only time they were alone. It was so messy, so bad. He must have worked so hard to put things right. Now everything was back where it belonged. Hope burst on her like a breath of fresh air. If he could do that here, she knew he could get better. He knew how to put things right.

She had to strain to reach the cupboards, but she opened each of them. Almost all were empty. Everything that was left had been gathered in the one closest to the door. That was smart. It made sense. That way they wouldn’t have to remember where to look or go hunting. Everything they had would be right on hand. The drawers in the counter beneath it held all kinds of bandages and other medical supplies. That was smart too.

Just like she expected, Kivi didn’t know what anything was. Well, she knew the stuff in the drawers. Those were bandages and cotton swabs and stuff. Everyone knew what those were. It was the medicine she needed, but that was the part she didn’t know anything about. She thought about screaming and throwing things around. That would make her feel a lot better, but it wouldn’t help Tron. So she compromised. She threw one thing.

She didn’t look at what she grabbed, she just reached into one of the drawers and tossed the first thing her fingers wrapped around. It was a tin canister and it bounced off the walls with a clang. The top popped off when it hit the ground, and several small packets spilled out over the floor. Kivi sighed. She wanted to just leave them there, whatever they were, but she knew she couldn’t. Not just because she didn’t like when things were in places they weren’t supposed to be. Tron
must have worked really hard to straighten this place. She couldn’t mess it up. So she reached down and scooped up the white packets.

They were filled with crushed tea leaves. Kivi didn’t like tea, but her momma did. There wasn’t much to be had on Lucy. No one grew tea in
hydroponics. Kivi’s momma only had one canister, kind of like the one she’d just thrown. Every year on momma and papa’s anniversary, they shared a cup. She was allowed to sip some if she wanted to, but she rarely did. It mostly just tasted like contaminated water. Finding it here was not what she expected. It made her think of her momma and her eyes started to water.

Kivi blinked the tears away and finished cleaning the packets of tea. As she scooped the last one up and deposited it in the tin, she noticed the writing for the first time:
Fever Relief
.

She laughed out loud. Nothing was ever that easy. If someone was telling her a story where the solution appeared like that, Kivi would have rolled her eyes and written it off as silly. But there it was, her answer. Maybe Dr. Geddes’s spirit was watching over her or something. She didn’t believe in ghosts, but her papa was always going on about good spirits, and here she was with her tin of tea, so maybe there was something to it after all.

A quick search through the other drawers did not magically produce the tea to fix the flu, but she did find quite a few others. Among them was one to help with sleep and another to boost immunity. Kivi grabbed both of them, then headed back to Tron’s room. It wasn’t medicine, not exactly. And she knew it wouldn’t work as well as pills or shots. After all, if tea was as effective as those who would ever get shots or take pills? But it was so much safer than guessing about the bottles in the first cabinet, and she figured it had to be better than nothing.

Tron was asleep when she got back, which was probably good. Everyone knew that you were supposed to get a lot of sleep when you were sick. Unless you hurt your head, of course. Then the doctor was supposed to look at you first. Kivi was worried for a minute, remembering Tron’s fall. But since she couldn’t tell if he’
d hurt his head and they didn’t have a doctor to look at him anyway, she put it out of her mind. After all, he definitely had a fever. Worrying about things that she couldn’t control was unavoidable, but she wasn’t going to let it get in the way of things she could. Not this time.

It took a little while to make a cup of tea using the torch. It would be better to go to the kitchen and boil water in a pot or something, but Kivi was never going back into the Mess Hall. So she made do with what she had. She started with the stuff for the fever,
deciding that it was the most important of their problems. Once it was good and hot, she woke Tron. When he opened his eyes, he didn’t seem to see her at all. “What’s that smell?”

She sniffed the air. Her momma’s tea always had a distinct, spicy odor to it, but this tea didn’t seem to smell like anything at all. Maybe a leaf, when she stuck her nose right over it, but that was it. “What smell?”

“That buzzing, angry smell.”

Her brows knit. His fever must be getting worse again. Kivi was so sure she’d done right, putting him in the water, but clearly he was delusional again. It was all her fault. If she’d ever bothered to learn something about the way people worked, instead of spending all her time investigating machines, she’d be able to help him for real. “I have some tea,” she said weakly, holding it out to him with the dwindling hope it would make things better.

“Bee fumes!”

She blinked. What were those? Did bees make fumes? “There aren’t any bees in
hydroponics.”

“Oh dear god! Space bees!
” While she gaped and tried not to cry again, Tron blinked and shook his head. “Oh, is that tea?”

Kivi glanced down at the cup still in her hand. “Yes.”

He smiled widely, took the cup from her hand, drained it all in two great swallows, then dropped back down to his pillow and curled up with his back to her. Kivi felt like she’d just been caught up in a tornado like the one back in hydroponics.

Water

Tron woke feeling gummy. He didn’t know that was a state of being before, but he was pretty certain of it now. All of his limbs felt weak and lifeless, his skin a sticky mess, and the synapses in his brain were utterly against the idea of firing properly. He was pretty sure he’d be better off closing his eyes and going back to sleep, but his bladder was demanding immediate attention. Even with that looming disaster, he still laid there as long as possible, debating the merits of dragging himself out of bed. Bed felt… well, not good. But better than not bed was going to feel.

It was only the knowledge that pissing himself would mean he’d have to get out of bed anyway that finally got him moving. It wasn’t particularly fast movement, but it did get his feet on the floor which he decided to count as a personal victory. Especially since his legs tried to collapse out from under him, but he managed to keep himself upright.

He didn’t go even a step toward the bathroom when he tripped. He glared down at the lump on his floor, prepared to let out a barrage of curses. Or, more likely, think them. His throat hurt and Tron was pretty sure he’d need to drink a small pond before he’d be up to the shouting that he felt the offending mass deserved. It wasn’t the pile of clothing or blankets he expected, though. It was Kivi.

She was curled up near his bed, beneath a blanket she must have dragged down from the habitation deck. With her legs tucked up against her chest, she looked almost like a doll, too cute to be a real person. Her light brown hair was splayed out over a pillow in the exact way they always showed in vids, and her face was too pale and peaceful for the girl he knew. It didn’t take a fully working brain to figure out what she was doing.

Tron knew he’d been sick. His whole body was screaming that at him. Kivi must have taken care of him. He had a dim recollection of something to that effect, her handing him a cup of water or something. Which meant her being on the floor was his fault, and he couldn’t be mad at her for it. That was a pain. His leg hurt from the way he had to strain to catch himself on his weakened limbs and he really wanted to be angry with someone about it.

He could think about it later. He still needed to pee.

For about three minutes, Tron didn’t think at all. He just enjoyed the relief at the dwindling pressure. Since he was already up, he decided he might as well solve a couple other problems as well. So he clicked on the shower and stepped in.

And shouted at the blast of cold water that sprayed against his skin.

All his muscles bunched into an immediate and painful reaction. It took him another minute or two to sort them out and jam the hot button. He couldn’t figure out why his shower was so cold. -2 wasn’t freezing, he supposed, but it sure as hell wasn’t acceptable for human bathing. Tron always left his set at +3. He was a firm believer in the relaxation the hot blast and accompanying steam always created. Maybe there were shower gremlins. Everything else was going wrong, why not gremlins?

Once the water was the right temp, Tron leaned back against the wall and let it do its work on his aching body. One good thing about the cold blast was that it got his mind working a bit. He couldn’t remember how he got to his room. He tried to pin down the last thing he could remember, but it was a lot of haziness. There was definitely a fire. He glanced down at his leg and saw an angry red mark where his pants had burned. But everything else was unfocused. He thought they were attacked. He had a recollection of the ship lurching beneath his feet. But after that? Nothing.

Clearly the attack wasn’t bad, or Whitman and Kivi got them away. Otherwise he wouldn’t be in his room.
And the fire was out. He didn’t need a deep insight into Kivi’s mind to know she would never leave Lucy burning. Something like that would kill them just as fast as the invaders. So it seemed a safe assumption that, at the moment, they were safe. Safe-ish. They were still flying blind, trusting some strange man who locked himself in nav to take them somewhere with food and atmo. Or they were last he knew. So not exactly safe, but in no immediate threat.

He wondered what happened to his clothes. Tron clearly remembered having some. He was certain he hadn’t been wandering around Lucy naked. Had Kivi taken them off? Even if she hadn’t, she was in his room so he had to assume she’d seen him. That was disturbing. He was going to have to go out there and talk to her soon, and now he was going to have to wonder what she was thinking about. She wasn’t a normal girl, which helped. With one of them, he didn’t think he’d be able to handle the embarrassment. Kivi thought differently, so Tron might be able to convince himself that she wasn’t thinking about the parts of him she wasn’t supposed to see.

He darted in and out of the bathroom as fast as he could, grabbing a pair of loose-fitting sweatpants and tugging them on as he went. Tron was certain she was awake – he saw her shoulders shift as the door hissed open – but she didn’t turn to face him and he didn’t stay to talk. Once he was safely back inside he let out a relieved breath and tugged the pants on. Whether she thought about those private parts or not, he wasn’t ready to face her just yet.
Why hadn’t he thought to grab a shirt?

Tron caught a glimpse of himself in the small bathroom mirror and gasped. His face was gaunt and pale – even for someone who lived on a ship – and looked like the face of a homeless man from the vids. Even more shocking was the hair all along his jawline. He couldn’t really grow a beard like some of the men on Lucy. Not yet. His hair still grew in patchy
. He had to shave at least every other day or that patchy growth took over his chin. Like now. He had at least a week’s worth of hair on his face. That meant he’d been out longer than he thought. A lot longer.

With no more thought about his embarrassment or lack of dress, Tron hurried back into his room, nearly colliding with his clothes locker when he misjudged the strength of his legs in his charge. Kivi turned around and smiled at him, the most genuine smile he could ever remember seeing on the girl’s face. It threw him off and he lost track of his urgency in the blink of an eye.

“You’re better!”

He scratched his head absently, suddenly embarrassed for different reasons. “How bad was I?”

“Really bad.” The enormous smile on her face didn’t fit with what she’d just said, and Tron found himself wondering just what ‘really bad’ meant to her. “You had the flu. I didn’t have medicine.”

He shrugged. “Looks like I managed.”

She nodded enthusiastically. “I found tea in the Medical Bay. I think it helped with your fever and made you sleep a lot. I didn’t know what else to do.”

“Tea?” She nodded and Tron shrugged again. Tea. He’d never been fond of tea – not that he had the chance to try it much – but he supposed, after this, he would have to reevaluate his stance on the hot flavored water. “You said I had the flu? Did
I…”

“Throw up?” Her smile went up another notch as she nodded. He started to worry she was going to break her face in half. “All over the place.
It took two scrubbers to get it clean again.”

He felt himself blush,
the embarrassment returning in force. She was the younger one, and tiny to boot, and he was eighteen. Wasn’t it his job to take care of her? “How long?”

Kivi pursed her lips for a second, flicking her eyes up toward the ceiling then back down again. “Nine days, ten hours and twelve minutes.” She paused and gave him an embarrassed look of her own. “That’s how long since you fell. Not how long you were sick.”

“Since I fell?”

She nodded. “In
hydroponics. I should’ve seen it before. I know that. I wasn’t paying attention. I’m sorry.”

“Are you kidding?” Tron could see she wasn’t, but the whole idea was so bizarre. “
Kivi, I didn’t know I was sick. How the hell were you supposed to? Look, you took care of me for nine days, ten hours and twelve minutes. There’s nothing you need to apologize for. You hear me? Nothing.”

She looked up at him from beneath long, dark lashes. He’d never imagined her capable of shyness, but he was looking at it now. It made him smile. “So I fell in
hydroponics? How the hell did you get me down here?”

She giggled. This whole interaction was shaking his impression of Kivi.
“Not easily.”

He sighed dramatically. “I guess I don’t want to know. Just promise me that I’m not going to find some giant bruise the next time I sit down?”

Kivi shook her head, still laughing. “I only hit your head.”

“Oh, well, nothing in there to worry about.” He paused, forcing himself to quit thinking about the oddness of the conversation and get back to the important things. He
wanted to ask about Whitman. The man was clearly the source of his sickness; the ship was a contained environment. Illness happened but it was so rare, and without the other people breathing and spreading bacteria couldn’t have been something in Lucy. It had to come from without. Tron was sure of it. He wanted to demand to know what Kivi had done about the man. But he knew the answer. She hadn’t done anything. She was taking care of him.

Besides, what was there to do? Neither one of them could get into
Nav with those doors closed. After this long, Tron was sure the man came out to get food at some point – unless he had brought some with him – but even if both of them had been up and active it wouldn’t have been hard for Whitman to avoid her. And if she had caught him, what then? Tron had done well enough fighting the man, but Kivi wouldn’t stand a chance. She was tougher than she looked, and smart, but she still only came up to his chest and probably weighed 80 pounds soaking wet. Whitman could knock her out by blowing on her really hard.

And what would it accomplish, really? Tron was angry at losing more than a week and he didn’t trust the man to spit in a toilet, let alone
take charge of where Lucy was headed. But they needed him. He could make Lucy go, and that was more than either one of them had managed. If Kivi ever told him she knew how to fly the ship, Tron would see to it that Whitman went out an airlock within the hour. Until then, they were stuck. He wasn’t so petty that he would put his irritation above their slender chances of survival.

So Tron decided to think about other things. He didn’t really want to ask about his missing week. He didn’t want to hear how long she’d been sleeping on the floor or feel guilty about how hard she’d had to work to keep him alive. People didn’t lose that much time over small illnesses. He couldn’t even imagine what that was like for her, didn’t want to imagine it. And there wasn’t a thing he could do to repay her
, not unless she got sick too. He prayed to god she didn’t get sick too.

With Whitman and the last nine days off limits, Tron’s thoughts had only a few places to travel. He immediately latched on to one of the last things that had been going through his head before his memories started getting mixed up.

“The water in hydroponics didn’t work. I wasn’t imagining that, was I?”

Kivi shook her head, and instantly all trace of the shy girl vanished. She was back to
the person he knew again. Tron was relieved. She made him nervous, when she was like that. Like maybe she was thinking about how he’d been naked, and how gross he was when he was puking all over the place. With all their problems, it shouldn’t even make the list of things to worry about, but he did and he couldn’t help it when she was giggling and stuff. He was much more comfortable with this Kivi.

“Do we know why?”

She shook her head again. “Water still works here, and in my family’s room. But not in the medical bay.”

He only had to think about the implications for a minute. All of the lessons about their ship came rushing back the second he needed the information. “
Hydroponics and medical both use the secondary water pump. If they’re down, that means the problem is probably there.”

There were three main draws on Lucy’s water supply:
hydroponics, cold storage, and the one that was more than the other two put together, the habitation deck. Because of that, habitation was given its own pump that collected and channeled water to each room. The other two, and everywhere else pulled from the second pump. There was some satisfaction in the thought that Whitman wasn’t getting any water pressure, but it wasn’t enough to undo the dread. They needed that water. Without it, cold storage was down. And, with the hole in the ship costing them all their dried goods and the fire in hydroponics, that was the one good source of food they had left.

There was no discussion. He met Kivi’s eyes, and they both just went. Once again, it was their survival on the line. It should’ve been looked after more than a week ago, and they both knew that it might be too late now.

Cold was a long way from Tron’s room. He’d never thought of it before, but he felt it now. His body was in violent protest to the trip, and there was more than one time when it was only Kivi tugging on his hand that kept him moving. Each step was a debate with himself over the merits of returning to his bed and writing cold off as already gone. They made it, but he thought it was hours later. Tron was humiliated by his weakness. Bad enough she’d had to look after him, now that he was back he should be able to protect her. If the man picked this moment to attack, he the best he could hope to do would be to act as a shield. If Whitman had even a bit of speed and intelligence, he’d be able to kill them both before Tron could even get his arms up.