Temporary Duty (3 page)

"This is not reassuring," said Todd, gesturing at the clutter.

"You got that right," Peters agreed with some force. "If the rest of the boat’s as sloppy as this is, we may not live to regret comin’ along."

"Pretty out the door, though," Todd observed.

"Shit, I been tryin’ not to look." The hole they had entered through was still open, a crescent of the Earth intruding on the upper left-hand corner, stars shining elsewhere.

"Isn’t the air supposed to be kinda thin out there?" Todd persisted.

Peters shrugged. "Magic, I reckon. Look alive, here they come."

The two Grallt had finished their talk, body language making them a pair but not a couple. Peters and Todd hefted their bags and stepped down off the wing, finding the deck a bit slippery, as if the nonskid was too worn to be effective any more.

Dreelig gestured toward the newcomer. "I introduce you to Dee. She will show you to your quarters and tell you something about the ship."

"Hello, Dee," said Peters, looking her over. The female Grallt was wearing a tunic and trousers of something satiny, blue above and yellow below; she was about Todd’s height, slender, and very nicely shaped, at least below the neck.

"Pleasant greetings, Peters," she said, her voice much deeper than expected, a musical baritone. "Welcome aboard
Llapaaloapalla
. You are Todd?" When Todd nodded, she continued, "Welcome aboard also. Please follow me."

"Sure," said Peters. "Thanks for the guidance," he said to Dreelig. "See you again."

"That will probably happen," Dreelig agreed with a nod. He walked away toward the entrance of the bay, aft they supposed, and Peters turned back to Dee. "Lead on, lady."

"This way." Dee led them to starboard, or at least away from the big hatches, to a people-sized hatch with an oval porthole at eye level. She worked the latch, a big handle that swung thirty degrees with a squeal and clank, and stepped aside to let them through.

Light came from glowing bare tubes supported by the ends in pairs, a little thicker than standard fluorescents, and a stairway, more like the ones in an office building than a ship’s ladder, led upward. The Grallt pushed past them, gestured at the stairs, and led in that direction, and the sailors followed, grunting under the weight of their seabags.

Two decks up they entered a corridor running lengthwise in the ship. Doors, all closed, interrupted the walls at about four meter intervals. Dee opened the first of these on the right, to reveal a small room or suite whose most outstanding feature was a window with rounded corners, now displaying stars. "These will be your quarters if you find them satisfactory," she said.

Windows on a ship? In enlisted berthing?
Peters forced himself to look away. The room was about four meters by three, dusty from disuse, with low bunks to left and right, metal wall lockers, and a desk with reading lamp and chair. The bunks weren’t made. To the left, by the head of the bunk, was another door. "This is great," he said. "We don’t live like this on our ships, except maybe officers."

"Yes, I know," said Dee. "They described your normal living quarters to us in detail, and took us on a tour.
Ssth
. We have nothing like that here, and we see no need to do so much work to make life less comfortable for you."

"One problem," Peters observed. When Dee didn’t respond except to shift position slightly, he continued, "It’s in the wrong place. This passage is all for us, right? When the rest of the unit comes aboard?"

"Yes. There are a sixty-four of rooms on each floor, and you will have two floors. There will be an eight and three sailors–"

"Two hundred, I thought."

"I mean an eight and three sixty-fours, of course." Dee drew with her finger in the dust on the wall: dash, vertical line, lightning bolt. "So there is enough space for everyone, and many can have individual rooms."

Peters eyed the scrawl. If those were numbers, it looked awkward, backwards, and too big. "Well, we gotta do it according to our, ah, the word Dreelig used was ‘hierarchy.’ Chiefs and First Class close to the hatch, in individual compartments. The rest of us down the passageway, OK?"

Dee turned away, her attitude suggesting thought. "Will some, ah, Chiefs and–"

"First Class," Peters supplied.

"Ah. Chiefs and First Class. Will some of them want to be at the other end? Beside those stairs?"

"Yeah, sure. Look, we can’t set it all up now. Just give us a room a little closer to the middle." Peters looked around; being first on the scene had some privileges. "One with a window."

Dee shrugged, a very humanlike gesture. "Certainly." She led them down the corridor a few meters, selected a door, and pushed it open, revealing a compartment that was a mirror image of the first. "Will this be satisfactory? Would you prefer individual rooms?"

"Why not?" Todd suggested. When Peters looked at him, he shrugged. "First come, and all that."

"Does the next room connect to this one?" Peters asked.

"Yes, it does. Let me show you." Dee went to the interior door, to the right this time, and opened it. "Here are sanitary facilities. The door at the other end leads to the next room." The head was both ordinary and strange, a pair of sinks with mirrors and lockers to the left, a toilet and shower stall to the right, familiar in overall design but different in details to the ones they were used to.

"This here’s perfect," said Peters. "Todd, how about I take this’un and you get the other?"

"Sure." Todd went back to get his seabag.

Dee began showing Peters the details, and Todd joined them a few minutes later. The door to the corridor had a latch, but no lock. Light switches went left for on and right for off. Water valves opened to the right, hot and cold both. Linens were in lockers over the bunks, pale tan sheets of something soft and bulky gray blankets that didn’t scratch. "No pillows," Todd observed, and Dee assumed her "puzzled attention" position, head back and tilted a bit to one side.

"We need pillows," Peters explained. "Uh, little sacks of somethin’ soft, about so–" he sketched the size in the air with his hands "–for supportin’ the head while sleeping."

"We don’t use anything like that," Dee declared. Now that they looked, that made sense; her shoulders weren’t as wide as a human’s, and looked flexible somehow. "The, ah, suppliers can make something."

"It isn’t anything major," Todd put in. When the others looked at him he flushed and continued, "We can bring our own along, as long as we know about it."

"That is acceptable."

There was nothing like a phone or com screen, but a grille over the desk was a speaker for the 1MC system, the shipwide PA. "You will need to learn the emergency calls," Dee said seriously. "If something goes wrong, you must know what is happening and take appropriate action." She gestured at the grille. "Unfortunately this has not worked in a long time."

"Do you have tapes?" Todd asked.

"Tapes?"

"You know, recordings. Mechanical examples."

Dee thought for a moment. "I don’t know what you mean," she said finally. "I can pronounce the warnings and explain what they mean. Anyone on the ship can do that."

Peters and Todd shared a look. "We need to start makin’ a list," Peters said after a moment. "There’s gonna be a lot of things we need to bring. Hang on a minute." He unzipped the side pocket of his seabag, brought out a handheld. "Let’s see. Pillows. Sound recorders. There’ll be more, we just ain’t got to it yet. Anything else here?"

"I don’t think so. Perhaps you would like a little time to unpack your things and get comfortable?" Dee made a gesture, a palm-up sweep. "I can return after a short time."

"That’s a good idea," Todd observed.

"Very good." Dee consulted an instrument strapped to her right wrist. "It is now nearly the end of the first
ande
, you would probably say ‘watch.’ I will return in a little more than a
tle
, perhaps three-quarters of one of your hours, I think. We will take a meal then. Will that be satisfactory?"

"Plenty of time," said Peters.

Dee nodded. "Good. I will return." She slipped out the door, swinging it to behind her.

Peters and Todd looked at one another for a long moment. "Me for a shower, and change into undress, I think," Peters suggested. "We don’t know what we’re gonna be doin’ the next few hours."

"Right," said Todd. "Head call for me, too." He went through the toilet room door, closing it behind him. Peters unzipped his seabag and started picking spots for his stuff, and after a little time Todd opened the door and stuck his head through. "Hey, did Dee show you how to flush this thing?"

"Shit, Todd, it shouldn’t be that tough." Between the two of them they figured it out, a square pushplate at about shoulder level above the seat. Then they both went back to unpacking, finding that, even with everything spread out for maximum convenience, their belongings didn’t fill half the space intended for one person, let alone that for both.

Peters went first for a shower, taking his own soap and finding a recess at waist level to stow it. When he was finished he took a towel from the locker between the sinks, and was back in his room before he realized that he hadn’t even thought about where the towel would be, had simply grabbed one from the logical place. "It ain’t so strange," he breathed to himself, the view out the window giving him the lie as he said it.

He folded his dress blues carefully, wondering how he was going to get them cleaned, and selected undress, the same color and style but without piping or decorations. Satisfied with his appearance, Peters sat down in the chair, finding that it adjusted through a full range like the seat on the
dli
but had no power assists. He started going through the drawers of the desk, finding nothing but dust.

A knock on the door a little later proved to be Dee, still wearing her yellow and blue outfit. "Howdy, Dee," Peters said, raising his left hand in the gesture he had seen.

"Pleasant greetings." Dee returned the salute, adding a little nod of the head. "Are you ready for a meal?"

"Yeah, I could eat. It feels like a little early for lunch, but that’s all right. Our midday meal," he explained.

"It is the third meal for us," said Dee.

Peters shrugged. "Different schedules. We’ll get used to it."

They collected Todd by knocking on his door, and the three of them went back to the stairway and down to the landing bay. On the other side, by one of the big doors, they found a row of people-sized hatches. Dee selected one, led the way into a small cubicle, pulled the hatch closed, and pushed buttons on the wall. There was a loud whine and clanking sounds, and they felt a little acceleration as the elevator started up. After perhaps half a minute the noise died away, and Dee opened the hatch on another corridor, wider and painted pale blue, but with the same fluorescent lights overhead. Peters had been trying to get his bearings, and thought they headed toward the bow, if they had landed through the stern, which seemed to make sense.

A few steps up the corridor was an open archway giving on a room with tables and chairs, occupied by Grallt in a miscellany of costumes, some the same style as Dee’s but more skintight overalls or jumpsuits, in a range of colors, mostly bright. Dee picked a table with four chairs around it, and they took seats. A male Grallt in white tunic and red trousers bustled up. "Table service?" Todd inquired with raised eyebrows.

Dee gave her humanlike shrug and exchanged gabble with the new Grallt for a while, and he moved off, still bustling. "I don’t understand your comment," Dee said to Todd when he was gone.

Todd shrugged himself, and Peters replied, "Is he gonna bring our food to us?"

"Yes, that is his function. Is there a problem?"

"We’re not used to that," Todd explained.

"What about afterwards?" Peters asked.

"I don’t understand."

"Well, afterwards there are empty dishes," Todd said. "On our ship, each person takes the empties to the scullery."

"Scullery?" Dee paused for a moment. "Here, you simply leave the empty, ah, dishes. Someone will take them away to be cleaned."

"Restaurant," said Peters.

"I don’t mind," Todd said with a grin.

"Me neither, but shit, this ain’t what we expected." It was nicer than they’d expected. Peters wasn’t sure why he felt uncomfortable about that.

Todd knew. "Can you imagine Commander Bolton’s face when he sees this? Even the officers don’t have it this good on our ships."

Peters nodded. "Yeah. Dee, what kind of setup do the officers get?"

"They are much the same as yours, except that they are arranged for only one person in each room." She made a gesture, indicating the room and tables. "They will have food service in the same area, and some recreation facilities."

The waiter came up with a tray, and the three leaned back, allowing him to arrange plates and glasses. A patty of something brown occupied the center of the plates, with other things arranged around the periphery. There were small pellets, about half red and half yellow, in a clear gooey sauce. Clockwise from that was a lump of tan paste, then blue leaves with black specks that turned out not to be part of the leaves. At that point Peters’s cognition cut out, and when Dee named the foods he heard nothing but gabble and didn’t remember that.

The liquid was fruit juice, sweet and tart. The red and yellow pellets were something like beans, the tan paste was gooey and didn’t taste like much of anything, and the leaves were crisp and crunchy with a citrus flavor. The patty was some kind of meat, coarse and grainy, fried by the taste and texture. The whole meal was bland but overall not bad. Dee’s food was different, probably the things she liked better; they didn’t ask. Peters and Todd dug in, finding themselves hungrier than they had expected.

They had almost finished when a male Grallt in one of the skin-tight jumpsuits came up. "Hello, Dreelig," Dee greeted him, and when Peters looked closely he thought he could recognize the ambassador, or at least the pattern on his suit.

"Pleasant greetings," Dreelig pronounced. "Have you finished your meal?"