Chains of Destruction (14 page)

Everyone but David had been on the bridge strapped in just in case there were any problems. David had been strapped to his bed. RJ unbuckled her own belt and stood up. She stretched as if she had just woken up from a nap. "I'm going to go un-strap David."

She left the bridge and started down the hall for David's room. When she walked in the door she took a double take. The straps were broken, the IV was dripping on the floor, and David was gone.

"Oh shit!" she trumpeted, and within seconds the others were at her side.

Topaz looked in the room and visibly shrank. "Oops," he said.

"Oops!" RJ slapped a hand to her forehead. "Freaking oops! He had advanced space sickness, you forgot to sedate him, and you're saying
oops
!"

"Sorry?" Topaz added with a shrug.

"Great!" Levits looked at RJ. "What now, Great Leader?"
RJ temporarily forgot about the task at hand. "Why are you so pissy with me lately? If you didn't want to go this badly, you should have stayed on earth. I told you I didn't want you here
 . . .
"

"And I told you why that wasn't an option, but you weren't listening. You never listen to anyone unless they're saying what you want to hear!" Levits screamed back. "We all had to come because – like it or not – you
need
us. You couldn't do it on your own. You'd screw it up, and we'd have the Reliance breathing down our throats again."

RJ shoved him, and he hit the wall.

"You know what you are? You're a freaking bully!" Levits pushed away from the wall and got right in her face. "Pushing everyone around. Knowing they can't push back."

RJ looked like she was close to shoving him through a wall. The truth really did hurt, and as a general rule if you hurt RJ, she hurt you.

"Wow!" Topaz screamed holding up his hands. "If you two could just put this pissing contest on hold, one of our crew is wandering around the ship in a psychotic daze."

RJ took a deep breath and glared at Levits who glared right back. "All right." RJ said taking a deep breath. "Topaz, you and Poley and the girl
 . . .
"

"I have a name," Janad protested.

RJ gritted her teeth. "You guys go that way. Levits and I will go this way."

Topaz gave her a strange look, which she ignored. She was not going to try to explain the logic behind this division. It should be obvious.

Just then a crashing and banging began in the direction of the mess hall, so the splitting up became irrelevant and they all ran to the mess hall instead. They followed a trail of David's torn clothing down the hallway. When they reached the room they found David standing buck naked in the middle of one of the tables with a stack of pans in his hands. When he saw them he started laughing, and then he started hurling pans at them. One of his arms hung funny. No doubt it had been pulled out of socket when he'd broken his restraints.

"Ow! That's got tah hurt," Levits said making a face as he looked at the arm. He jumped out of the way of a flying pot just in the nick of time.

"Go away! All of you go away! You're trying to kill me!" he screamed. Drool ran down his face and dripped off his chin. "Doesn't matter. We're all going to die anyway, but I'm going to kill all of you first. Take this and this." He started throwing pans again. When he ran out of pans he squatted and literally shit in the middle of the table.

"God!" Levits said pulling a face. "So much for worrying about an impaction."

Then David reached down and grabbed the fresh turd.

"Oh no!" RJ yelled as she realized what he was about to do. She ran forward and jumped through the air grabbing him. They both landed on the floor, but unfortunately, that just seemed to help David to sling crap all over all of them and the room.

"Shit!" Levits screamed, unable to do anything but stand with his hands out looking down at himself.

"Precisely," Poley agreed.

Topaz ran up and gave the squirming man a shot with the pocket medic. RJ got off of David only when he was still. She put her foot on his shoulder, grabbed his filthy hand and pulled his arm back into socket. She looked down at her shirt and chain, which were covered in shit, and then turned to glare at Topaz.

"Sorry," Topaz said again. "Guess this gives an all new meaning to 'mess hall'."

"I'm fucking covered in shit!" Levits stated the obvious at his usual high decimal range. "God! This just gets better and better." He stomped off in the direction of the showers. RJ picked David up and followed Levits.

"He's more trouble than he's worth," Levits said to RJ over his shoulder.

Right then RJ was inclined to agree with him. She knew that David couldn't control what he was doing, but there was something about having human feces slung all over you that just made it impossible to look at the big picture. It was funny; blood didn't bother her, but shit was another matter completely.

The showers were communal. She cleaned David off then lay him down on a bench and covered him with some towels. She went back to the showers and stepped in with all her clothes on, trying to rinse as much off them as she could.

"If I didn't already hate the bastard I'd hate him now," Levits said standing beside her in the shower rubbing the soap against his nude body hard and fast working up a huge amount of lather.

RJ was silent. She stripped her chain and clothes off and stepped into the shower stream. She held her hand out to Levits, and he handed her the soap grudgingly. He watched as she lathered up. He smiled in spite of himself. Looking at her he almost forgot all about the whole shit slinging incident. He noticed she was scrubbing herself every bit as hard as he was, so obviously she was just as creeped out.

She handed the soap back to him and their hands touched. Their eyes met. He quickly took the soap and looked away. "I had a dream the other day – or night – or whatever it was."

"You did?" RJ asked conversationally.

There was something about being in a shower naked with someone after having turds thrown all over you that sort of washed all other inhibitions aside. "Yes," Levits continued, "I dreamt that you and I were making love."

RJ laughed. "Really? Was I any good?"
"Very good, right up until you pulled my penis off," he said.

"Well, that's a hell of a finale," RJ laughed.

"Remember the other day when I brought up that thing you and I said we were never going to talk about again?" Levits asked.

"You mean about us almost having sex," RJ said.

"That would be it," Levits answered.

Before he could finish what he wanted to say, RJ said, "I once did body detail. The bodies had been left to sit in the rain and then the sun for about a week. The flesh was swollen, putrid, and full of fluids. It slipped when you tried to grab a body. Some of the bodies would just come apart when you went to pick them up. I don't think I felt as dirty then as I do right now," RJ said.

"Nothing quite like human excrement, is there? I realize he has space sickness and all, but of all the things to do,
Gee
 . . .
od
! this has got to be tops
 . . .
" He realized then what she had done. Once again she had successfully changed the subject. He looked over at her and smiled. "You almost succeeded."

"Not quite though, huh?" she said. She held her hand out and he handed her the soap again. "I'd rather not talk about it, Levits. That's usually what someone means when they say, let us make a pact to never speak of this again."

"Ah, but see, I'd rather we did, and since this wasn't something you did by yourself I think I have just as much right to talk about it as you have not to talk about it." he said. "Ever since it happened we have been at each other's throats, and since I had this dream I think I know why
 . . .
"

"Because you're afraid I'll defrock you?" RJ asked with a crooked smile.

"Try not to make a joke for a few minutes. Please try to talk to me seriously and without getting angry," Levits said heavily.

"That's asking an awful lot," RJ said with a grin.

Levits shot her an angry look

"All right," RJ said reluctantly. "I guess we do need to talk, but do me this one little favor. Let's not have this conversation when we're in the shower naked washing dung off our bodies. Let me get clean, take care of David, and I'll meet you in your quarters."

Levits nodded silently, hoping that he didn't lose his nerve between now and then.

Janad and Poley had helped him clean the crap up out of the mess hall, and then they had headed for the showers. From the ease with which the girl stripped in front of them Topaz surmised that she, like his military friends Levits and RJ, was used to public bathing. While Poley had a fear of being immersed in water, he was used to showering to get clean. It was obvious from the way the girl was looking at Poley that she either didn't understand what he was or simply didn't care. Stewart had been living vicariously through the robot, and he had not only made him fully functional but had given him an inhumanly large
shlong
.

Topaz still didn't feel completely comfortable showering with other people, but he wanted the shit off, and he wanted it off now. The girl was beautiful, well muscled, and perfectly proportioned. Topaz didn't even try to act like he wasn't watching her. She looked up at him caught his eye and smiled.

"It doesn't bother you that I'm watching?" Topaz said.

"It would only bother me if you seemed displeased with what you saw," she said with a grin. "You have a pleasant body."

"Thanks." Topaz realized, not without embarrassment, that he had an erection. He hung a washcloth on it, and the girl laughed.

He deduced from her reaction that bathing was a time of playful interaction for her people.

"I can do that," Poley said proudly. He immediately got an erection and hung a bath towel on it.

"Show off," Topaz grunted.

Levits didn't know how she had managed it, but she was in his room before he was. She was dressed, but he was so used to seeing her in the chain that she might as well have been naked without it. She was just standing there waiting for him. Her arms were crossed across her chest; there was a cool expressionless look on her face. Obviously she wasn't going to make this easy.

Levits was instantly pissed off. "You haven't come here to talk," he accused. "You've come here to shut me up."

RJ glared at him and for a minute he was sure she was going to stomp out of the room. Then she uncrossed her arms and tried to look less severe, which judging from the look on her face must have caused her some sort of physical pain.

After a moment she gave up and just started yelling, "God damn it, Levits! How the hell would you like me to look? Would you like for me to look as uncomfortable as I feel right now? I don't want to talk about it. I thought I made that clear months ago."

"And so we haven't talked about it, and has that helped? No. In fact it has turned us into what we are today; two people who can't be in the same room without fighting. The tension between us has escalated to the point that everyone knows it's there. Even that alien girl knows that there is something between us. We act like people who hate each other, and I don't hate you, RJ. I never could."

"And I could never hate you, but how am I supposed to react when everything I say pisses you off?"

"Have you listened to the way you talk to me, RJ? Are you even aware of how you have been treating me? Like I'm your subordinate, like I'm completely inconsequential."

RJ thought about that for a minute. "I wouldn't talk to you that way if you'd quit contradicting me every time I open my mouth. You disagree with me before I've even had a chance to finish what I'm saying. If I say I'm hungry you jump up and yell, that you can't hear my stomach growling," she defended.

"I wouldn't disagree with you if you weren't such an arrogant bitch!"

"I wouldn't be such an arrogant bitch if you weren't such an ignorant asshole
 . . .
Wait a minute!" RJ took a deep breath. "We're doing it again. Arguing over who's more to blame isn't going to fix anything."

Levits nodded his head in agreement, took a deep breath and tried to continue in a calmer manner. "This all started when you pulled away from me."

RJ sighed. "You see, now that's a big problem, because the way I see it you pulled away from me first."

Levits started to disagree loudly and then remembered his dream. In the dream he admitted that he had pulled away from her, too. He quickly analyzed his dream. When he realized what the dream really meant he admitted, although only to himself, that he was in fact the aggressor in their confrontations.

"Only in my head, RJ. I had a doubt, a doubt I would have overcome if you hadn't physically pulled away from me," Levits said. Then added, "So it was your fault."

"My fault! How is it my fault?" RJ said. "For me pulling away in your mind is the same as physical removal; it feels the same to me, maybe even worse."