Becalmed (5 page)

Just because there are five
hundred of us on the ship doesn’t mean we all know each other. Some of us
apprenticed on other ships. Some of us grew up elsewhere in the Fleet. I met
Coop on the
Brazza,
when we were going to school. That we both ended up
on the senior staff of the
Ivoire
had less to do with our designs than
with our abilities, and a gap in leadership at the
Ivoire
at the time.

Back then I was young enough not
to realize that I profited from other people’s failures. I notice now.

Just like I’m being noticed, even
though people are looking away. They see a crazed woman, hair down, so
distracted she forgot to put on shoes before she told the guards she wanted to
go to the medical unit. I’m walking through the cold corridors with bare feet,
wearing a knee-length white shirt and matching pants—my comfort clothes—in a
place where almost everyone else is in uniform.

The medical evaluation unit is on
the fifth level of the medical wing. Everything here is as white as my
clothing, with nanobits that keep the walls and floors clean. My bare feet
leave footprints that get erased by the nanobits after just a moment. The dirt
from the guards’ shoes evaporates as quickly as well.

The staff working in the medical
unit must work one week in other parts of the ship. This area is too sterile
for good human health, and the medical personnel who do not leave find
themselves developing allergies and sensitivities to the most normal
things—like skin cells and cooking oils.

I’ve put in time in the medical
unit as well—all of the linguists do as part of our training. We program the
medical database with medical terms from any new language we’ve learned. We
also train the staff to speak the most rudimentary forms of many
languages—enough to ask after another person’s health— and to understand the
answers.

The guards lead me to the fifth
level. There a woman waits for me. She’s not the woman who invaded my
apartment. Nor is she anyone I know.

She’s tiny, with raven-black
hair, black eyes, and a straight line for a mouth. She extends her hand.

“I’m Jill Bannerman,” she says. “I’ll
help you through the evaluation.”

“I can’t do anything until my
advocate gets here,” I say. The words come out awkward and ungracious. I’m
excellent at being accommodating, at saying the right thing at the right
time—or I used to be.

“I know,” Bannerman says. “I’ll
get you ready, and then we’ll wait for her. She should be here shortly.”

I don’t know what ready means. It
makes me nervous. I shake my head. “I’d like to wait.”

“All right,” she says, as if she
expected that. “Sit here. We’ll get started as soon as she arrives.”

She leads me to an orange chair
that curves around my body as I sit. I’m so paranoid that I wonder if it’s
taking readings from me.

But the
Ivoire
—the Fleet,
actually—has privacy laws. Even if this chair records information off me, no
one can use the information without my permission.

Have I given permission by
agreeing to the evaluation? I have no idea. I should have checked with Leona
first.

That’s what she’ll say.

Jill Bannerman speaks softly to
my guards, then she leaves the room. The guards move out of the main area and
back outside the doors. I’m alone in a room with half a dozen chairs, with
walls that reset themselves, and furniture that changes color every ten
minutes. First orange, then red, then mauve, then purple, then blue. I watch
the furniture, a bit unnerved by it all.

There is nothing else to watch,
no entertainment, no open portals, no other people. Just me and the constantly
changing furniture.

I tuck my cold feet underneath my
legs and make myself breathe deeply. I want to tap my fingertips on the chair,
but someone will read that as nervousness, I’m sure. I don’t know why I’m
worried that they will notice—it’s hard to miss, and if the system is recording
my vital signs, the nervousness will show in my elevated heart rate, my slightly
higher-than-normal blood pressure, and even in my breathing.

The only thing I’m not doing
right now is regretting my decision. I’m suddenly quite happy to be out of my
apartment. I hadn’t realized how claustrophobic I felt in it, how shut down I
had been.

How terrified.

The doors slide open and Leona
sweeps in. Her green tunic changes the color scheme in the room. Now the chairs
float through forest colors—green, dark green, blue-green, blue. She slides
into a chair across from me.

“We can still leave,” she says.

I shake my head.

“We need a consult, and we can’t
have it here,” she says.

So I
am
being monitored. “I’m
doing this,” I say.

“You made that clear,” she says. “Now
we determine how to do it best for you.”

Whatever that means.

“There’s a privacy room just over
there,” she says. “We’re using it.”

I’ve read up on advocacy. She’s
not supposed to give me orders. She’s supposed to follow mine. But she’s
worried and I’m not strong enough to fight her. Besides, I’m not leaving the
medical evaluation unit. I’m just stepping into a private room for a few
minutes to consult with my advocate.

I don’t have to take her advice.

She touches the wall and a door
slides open. I hadn’t noticed it while I was waiting, distracted (apparently)
by the constantly changing furniture.

This room is also white with a
black conference table that has grown out of the floor. Two chairs sit side by
side. I suppose if more people walk in, more chairs will grow out of their
storage spots on the floor.

The overhead lights spotlight the
chairs and nearby, coffee brews as if someone set it up for us.

Leona ignores it, but I help
myself. As I touch the coffee pot, pastries slide in from the far wall.
Pastries and an entire plate of fruit, some of it exotic.

“I thought we’re on rations,” I
say to her.

“We are, but maybe the medical
wing is exempt.”

The food gets her up and she
stacks a plate with strudels and Danishes and things I don’t even have a name
for. I grab a banana that looks like it came from one of the hydroponics bays,
and something with lots of frosting and raisins.

My stomach actually growls. I’m
not sure when the last time I ate was.

We sit down with our food and our
coffees, suddenly so civilized.

She picks up one of the Danishes,
but doesn’t take a bite. “I know I can’t change your mind, but I want you to
know what’s at risk.”

I eat the banana first. It’s
green and chewy, not really ripe, almost sour. I don’t care. It feels like the
first food I’ve eaten in years, even though it’s not.

“I found out why they brought you
back to the ship,” Leona says.

That, of all things, catches my
attention. It sounds ominous.

“Why?”

“They need to know what happened
planetside. They need to know if it’s our fault.”

A shiver runs down my back. If it’s
our fault. Of course it’s our fault. The Fleet meddles. That’s what we do.

“What do the other two survivors
say?” I ask.

She doesn’t look at me. Instead
she takes a bite of that Danish and eats slowly. I want to push her on this. I
want her to tell me everything right now.

But some vestiges of my training
remain. I sit and watch, counting silently to myself because it’s the only way
I can keep still.

Stillness used to be my best
weapon. I could wait for anyone. I could listen forever, and learn, without
making a move.

But I seem to have lost that
ability. I’m restless now, and time feels like it has sped up. Even though I
know it has only taken a moment for her to eat that small bite of pastry, it
feels as if she has taken an hour.

“What do they say?” I ask because
I can’t wait any longer. So much for stillness.

“I don’t know,” she says. “I
haven’t spoken to them directly.”

“But you know,” I press.

She shrugs a shoulder—a
sorry-said-all-I-can shrug.

Then she sets the pastry down and
wipes her hand on a small napkin. “Look,” she says. “If that mess turns out to
be our fault, then you’ll probably be executed. Now do you see why I don’t want
you to do this?”

“I need to do this,” I say
softly.

“Why?” she asks.

“The memories are coming back. I
can’t experience them on my own. It’s better if they all come back at once.”

She stares at me, and then sighs.
“I’ll see what I can do,” she says, and leaves.

~ * ~

I
sit in that room for what feels like forever, but really is only about an hour.
There is a bathroom next to the service area, and I’m able to use that, but I’m
not able to leave the room itself. I pace. I count to ten in fifteen languages.
Then in six more. And then I start over because I can’t remember all the
languages I just tried.

I’ve just started counting to one
hundred when Leona returns.

“Jill Bannerman is outside,”
Leona says. “When she comes in here, you tell her what you told me about not
being able to cope. Be dramatic. The more threatened you feel the better.”

“I won’t be lying,” I say. “I can’t
do this alone.”

Those words are so inadequate. If
I close my eyes, I can feel the heat, the blood drying on my skin, the bodies
rolling beneath my hands. I can’t sit still with that. I have to move. And the
more of it that comes back to me, the more movement I need to make.

“You tell her that,” Leona says. “Make
it very clear that this is a medical issue.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Because that gives you legal
protection. You’ll be considered a patient, not a criminal. If they had taken
you that afternoon when you called me, you’d’ve been a criminal. Just like you
would have been if you hadn’t waited for me today. This way, you’ll be able to
say anything, do anything, and it won’t come out in a legal proceeding. At
least not in detail. The ship’s staff can have an advocate in the room, and he
can testify to what you say, but it won’t have the force of your testimony. It
can only be used to start an investigation, which they’re already running.”

I stare at her. She thinks I’ve
done something wrong. They all seem to think I’ve done something wrong.

Is that why I can’t remember?

“Before you decide,” she says, “this
is your last chance to go back to your apartment. You can do this on your own
and no one will ever have to know.”

My stomach clenches. “And then
what?”

“What do you mean?”

“Will I ever be able to leave my
apartment? Will I be able to return to my duties?”

She shakes her head. “You’ll be
alive. Isn’t that enough?”

I think about the view from my
portal. Stuck in foldspace with nothing to see. The same walls, a different
view, if we’re lucky, but the same walls for the rest of my life. No more
languages. No more work.

No more friends or family.