Orb (22 page)

Recording concluded 0810 hours 12-12-2232

“That was pretty intense,” I said. And pretty damn worrisome, I thought.

“The worst I’ve seen him.”

“You handled the situation well.”

“Thompson better. I think he went through the possible scenarios before. Came into the meeting prepared, expecting Melhaus to be confrontational. Only….”

“What? You seem a bit unsure of the outcome.” Leaving the workstation, I went over to the bed and sat down next to her. We leaned back together, Angie coming up to nestle tightly between us.

“Do you believe we pushed Larry even further away?” Kelly asked.

“Only time will tell. Did Thompson have another alternative?”

“Yes. To let him be.”

“Keep in mind the discord among the prior crew. He’d be open to criticism for doing nothing while Larry unraveled. I see why Thompson appeared a little edgy this morning. He was doing what you and I are, looking ahead, trying to anticipate Larry’s behavior going forward. And now he has more to ponder over: What, if anything, to read into Larry’s last statement.”

A confused expression appeared on Kelly’s face.

“What do you mean?”

It was my turn to be confused.

“Larry’s last remark. Responding to Thompson’s demand to be civil. You didn’t hear it?”

“No.”

I moved off the bed. Beginning to understand what happened, I returned to the workstation.

“I assume neither you nor Thompson had the time or inclination to play back the audio?”

She shook her head, concern and confusion, in equal measure, narrowing and darkening her eyes, turning down the corners of her mouth.

Raising the audio volume to full, I replayed the last few seconds of the file I had just finished reading. Melhaus’s final statement was barely audible.

“Come take a look,” I said.

Kelly leaned over me to read the last few sentences of the transcript, then said, “I thought he mumbled something under his breath when exiting Thompson’s cabin.”

“The recording system was sensitive enough to pick up Larry’s voice; the ship’s AI performed an incomplete conversion to text. Question is, how accurately?”

“For confirmation, I’d like to hear you repeat what he said out loud.”

“‘You’ll get what you deserve.’” The words had a chilling effect.

“Yes,” Kelly said with an exasperated sigh. “I was afraid of that.” She returned to the safe harbor of the bed. “I was the one there,” she finally said, the implied threat beginning to sink in. “I should be the one to bring this to Thompson’s attention.”

“A garbled and cryptic statement said in anger. Not much for him to act on.”

“And insufficient to use as proof positive that Larry has become a threat to others. Nevertheless, this makes me increasingly uneasy.”

“Would it help any if I pointed out that Larry continues to have a very ordered and logical mind? He must realize, at least we can hope, that any hostile act adversely affecting the crew would undoubtedly affect him also.” The attempt at optimism was not very convincing. “Perhaps I am better at pessimism?” I quipped, trying to cheer her.

“You can’t change the reality of a situation.”

Kelly laid back and petted Angie, who was happily gnawing a rawhide bone.

“You forget my chosen profession. I can change reality at will.” Angie stopped gnawing, placed her head on her paws, and gave me an inquisitive look. “My two favorites,” I said, joining them on the bed.

“Why did you first major in communications?” Kelly asked.

The change of topic, the question, caught me off-guard.

“Are you searching for one more piece of the jigsaw puzzle named Kyle?”

“I want to know everything about you. Every one of the thousand little pieces.”

“Nine hundred ninety-nine. One’s missing from the box.”

“Tell me. Why communications?”

The answer to the question, never before put into words, wasn’t exactly a tale of woe, but wasn’t that pleasant to me either.

“Please.”

There was something in the way Kelly voiced that one word that made me want to tell her, and my
wanting
to tell her, I realized, was more important to her than the story itself.

“OK,” I said, and watched her eyes brighten. “But for now, will you settle for the short version of what I call my deformative years?”

“I’m happy to hear any version.”

“When I was fourteen or fifteen my brother left for college, leaving me alone with two very incompatible and argumentative people, namely, my parents. What I remember most vividly was the three of us sitting at the dinner table. How eerily quiet it was.”

“But I thought you said they argued…?”

“Oh, my parents argued, but only sporadically, and when they did I intently listened. I remember thinking to myself, as words said in anger went flying back and forth, back and forth: Why can’t they understand each other’s point of view?

“Some of the arguments had a logical basis, like about money; other times, it boiled down to not understanding one another’s feelings. Whatever the reason, they almost never got through to each other. So what did they do to resolve the impasse? Nothing. As the anger stewed, my mom would cook dinner, as always, and we’d sit, the three of us, evenly separated at the small round table, in the small square kitchen, in the small suburban house, and the dreaded silence would descend.”

“That’s awful. No talking at all?”

“Virtually none. Only the minimum words necessary for any three people, even strangers, to coexist. My parents were both too stubborn to speak and I was a teenager stranded in the middle.”

“This went on until the next day, the next argument?”

“Oh, no, the silence would drag on, quite literally, for several weeks at a time. More noticeable, much more, when I was marooned with them at the dinner table.”

“I’m sorry.”

“They say never argue in front of the children. There were times my parents turned that adage into an art form. Anyway, after a year or two of this, college was on the horizon. You can see why, although it wasn’t a conscious decision at the time, communications, plus a smattering of psych for good measure, would be an outgrowth of what went on before.”

Kelly looked sad, the story affecting her more than me. “You’re aware that the effect of this abuse, and that’s what it was, has to be on more than your choice of study,” she said.

“I’ve given it considerable attention. Why wouldn’t I, since living through that whole silent treatment thing made me a bit antisocial and a tad introspective.”

“Kyle! Introspective? Just a tad?”

“You want
more?
” I said with exaggerated astonishment.

“Come on, you can do it, you can do it…!” Kelly, half serious, half playing, was urging me on to a further revelation.

I played along. The most serious playacting I likely would ever do. “Internalizing? That’s it! I internalize my emotions!”

“
Veir merkink gutten progress, ja?
”

“Not bad,” I said, referring to the accent. “Affectation, or should I say mockery, of a German accent, in English language, by a native of Japan, who was raised in Los Angeles.”

“That has to be a first on Orb, don’t you think?” Kelly responded. Not waiting for a reply she suddenly rose from the bed. “To be continued. I must be off to see Thompson. Any message?”

I scanned the floor, and spotted what I was searching for: Something now resembling a slightly damp and bunched rag, lying in the corner of my cabin.

“No,” I said. “But can you return this T-shirt Angie stole off his bed?”

As she turned to leave I kissed her, saying, “Don’t worry about Dr. Melhaus. Yes, he’s all of our responsibility, but more so Thompson’s. I feel confident he’s up to the challenge.”

I leaned against the open doorway and watched her head off down the narrow hall. Amazing how someone that sensitive wants to be with the likes of me.

Or am I so atypical? I guess we all have emotional baggage weighing us down, mine being no heavier than most. And while Kelly’s burden conceivably is less, and Melhaus’s conceivably is more, every so often it’s a good idea to unlatch the suitcase, as Kelly helped me do, and attempt to peek at what’s inside. Fine, but what are your chances of reaching in and actually removing something to lighten the load? When your world has the gravity of Jupiter, it’s the same chance as hauling a steamship trunk up a mountain. I sadly remembered a friend who took his own life. His chance was zero.

Tragedy is it didn’t have to be. Not always. Talking to someone is a start. Music. Art. For a very few, writing. Some form of expression.

A way to communicate.

Right, Thompson wants a plan. Well, we all need a plan. Am I missing a connection right here on Orb?

I heard the faint sound of whining at my feet and there was Angie, staring up at me with her beady little eyes and her mouth crammed full with a stuffed toy rabbit. I sat with my back against the bulkhead opposite the open doorway and threw the rabbit into the hall.

Play began.

My little dog Angie had straightforward, uncomplicated needs: Food, space to live and breathe, time to play and romp. Most important, she had need of affection. Call them simple, but that sounds condescending, for they are very much the same needs we have, only reduced to their uncomplicated essence. And with a bark, a meaningful stare, or a nuzzling, she nearly always received or gave what was wanted.

Two doors down, in a soundproof cabin, sat Doctor Larry Melhaus, not feeling anywhere near as satisfied or communicative.

KELLY AND I agreed to temporarily postpone a visit to the cove in order to be on hand in the off chance there was a flare-up of tension when Melhaus was released from his confinement at 1200 hours. At precisely 1300 hours he emerged as if nothing happened. I attributed the extra hour to pride: He could damn well stay in his cabin as long as
he
wished to do so.

At 13:05 I approached Thompson, asking: “Did Melhaus see his shadow when he came out?”

“Well, yes, I do believe he did,” Thompson responded, playing along.

“Damn,” I said. “Six more weeks of winter.”

This was pretty accurate. As the afternoon progressed, the physicist engaged in only minimal and constrained conversation with the rest of the crew. Sufficient, no more, to satisfy Thompson’s basic requirement for civil personal conduct, enough for me to facetiously comment to Kelly (but I wasn’t too far wrong) that his behavior was becoming reminiscent of my parents’ at the kitchen table.

Logic dictated (that with little time left on the planet) Melhaus would not want to jeopardize his research by behaving in a manner that would precipitate another confinement. As for the implied threat he made—if that’s what it was—Thompson decided to let it go.

Or did he? I remember him saying to me, “Onboard
Desio
, my duty is to make sure nothing gets by me.” Or words to that effect. I had this uneasy feeling that a concealed chess game was going on between Melhaus and him, a grandmasters’ game where something as slight as the favorable position of a pawn affords a significant advantage.

Our apprehension about Melhaus’s state of mind was not at all mitigated when, behind his back, we attempted to evaluate his threat to the mission. In fact, this mental exercise had the opposite effect. In one distinctly unpleasant scenario, the most draconian we could conceive of, Melhaus sabotaged
Desio’s
crucial operating systems (life support, propulsion, navigation), essentially marooning himself on Orb along with five very unhappy crewmates. There would be an unlimited supply of purified water, but after four months—six or seven with rationing—our food stores would be depleted. We would then be faced with two choices: Starvation or the little blue L-pill. This scenario, we tried reasoning, would not be an act of a rational person. Small comfort, given the giant hole in our logic. We had no reliable way of predicting that Melhaus would behave rationally.

Playing out our self-sustaining dramas motivated us to increase our watchfulness, looking for suspicious behavior on Melhaus’s part. At first we did this sporadically, even unconsciously. But now, motivated by what some would say was paranoia but we liked to think of as enlightened self-interest, we were surreptitiously stealing more frequent and furtive glances in his direction. Through all this, Thompson continued to see nothing sufficiently alarming to warrant the drastic measure of placing one of Earth’s top scientists under round-the-clock confinement. Nor did he seriously consider the less severe (but perhaps more humiliating) step of ordering one of us to accompany Melhaus on all occasions he was not resting in his cabin.

The upshot of this decision permitted the physicist to conduct his research unhindered, mostly unsupervised and, ironically, probably more unhinged by the affront of our ill-disguised scrutiny. Nevertheless, we all placed our faith in, and fully agreed with, the way Thompson was attempting to handle the situation. We all weighed the risk involved in the present course of action and considered it to be acceptably small. Unfortunately, our assessment of what constituted an acceptable risk was open to question: The mere act of signing on for a deep space mission, a mission well beyond any hope of rescue, meant you had to be willing to tolerate a boatload.

With this uneasy state of affairs, specifically with the starvation scenario fresh in mind, I received an odd look from Diana when, to amuse myself at her expense, I blandly asked whether the plankton living in the ocean of Orb had any nutritional value. When she correctly determined I was only trying to get a rise out of her, a spark of mirth came into her eyes. Her response: “No, but you do … Yum.”

“And I was thinking the crew was
mentally
quicker than I, now I have to worry they are
physically
quicker too.” I made room for myself on the stone slab she was sitting on.

“Well, Kyle, it’s survival of the fittest. Looks like we’ll have Darwin here with us after all.”