Racers of the Night: Science Fiction Stories by Brad R. Torgersen (41 page)

Ben and Laura don’t talk about it.

I don’t talk about it to them.

The kids? They talk about it when they think I can’t hear them. They feel sorry for me because they know if I live to see our new planet, I’ll be too old to enjoy colonizing a virgin world.

Speaking of virginity, something else I don't talk about is how Li and I have been … ummm, you know,
doing it.

Mama and Papa would have preferred that I be married first, but then if things had worked out the way they preferred I’d be in stasis right next to them. Nobody planned for me to be stuck in limbo like this. And while I suspect Li is partially doing it out of sympathy, I think she enjoys it too. It helps cure the loneliness. For a little while. When all the rest of the ship is asleep and the computers have taken over and the only sound you can hear are your lover’s hot gasps of appreciation in your ear as you work up a naked sweat with her in your bunk.

So at least I can say that my life on this tub isn’t celibate.

Sorry, Mama. Sorry, Papa.

I hope you can forgive me.

Audio Journal Transcript: Day 7,500

It’ll be time to wake up the next batch soon.

Like me, Kroger, Molly, and Leah before them, the new kids aren’t exactly kids anymore. They’ve worked hard, and paid their dues. Just like Ben and Laura. All of them are anxious to go back to sleep. Let someone else take the reins for awhile.

Li says she’s going to stay awake with me.

I've told her many times that I can't allow it. She’s a medical doctor, and where we’re going all medical doctors will be worth their weight in platinum-coated diamonds. For the colony to succeed, Li must sleep. Whether either one of us likes it, or not.

She tells me I can’t stop her.

I tell her that she’ll be dead long before I am, assuming she can stay sane for the entire trip. Something I am not even sure about myself, much less someone else.

She’s already got lines on her face. And I’ve seen the little silver strands in her black hair—when we’re curled up together and she’s fast asleep. Leaving me wide awake and wondering how it’s going to be for me when I take the only woman I’ve ever held in my arms and loved, and put her back into stasis for the remainder of the voyage.

Ben and Laura have agreed to help me.

It won’t be difficult.

One of these nights after Li and I have made love, I’ll slip some sleeping agent into her electrolyte drink. Then when I’m certain she’s out for keeps, I’ll call Ben and Laura on the comm, we’ll all carry Li down to the medical bay, and I’ll resign myself to watching her through the lid of a living coffin—for the rest of my days.

Audio Journal Transcript: Day 8,500

With Ben, Laura, Li, and the kids all safely put away—down in the medical bay—Chris and Janicka came next.

Dealing with them is different than dealing with Ben, Laura, or any of the other adults to date.
Because I’ve become an adult too.
Just a few years younger than Chris and Janicka, biologically speaking. Though I’m feeling far older—and less charitable—than when Ben and Laura took charge.

Now
I’m
the point man. The one with the experience. So that I feel like I’m devoting my time to managing 6 children, instead of 4.

Which is not to say the arrangement remains precisely unchanged from the way it was before. I told them all that while I was perfectly happy to help show everyone the ropes—and do a little baby-sitting now and again—since I’m the odd man out for this particular phase of the voyage, I play by my own rules, and would remove myself from the pell-mell of the daily chore list whenever I pleased.

This does not exactly cheer Chris or Janicka, but then I didn’t ask for their permission either. After all, they are going to go back to sleep eventually. I’m not. Therefore they
owe
me. Just as everyone else onboard owes me. Even my parents.

Unlike Ben and Laura, Chris and Janicka weren’t husband and wife when they boarded the
Osprey
.

In fact, they don’t get along that well.

Though Janicka surprised me in one specific way.

She likes to work out with me in the gym the same way Ben and I liked to work out in the gym, whereas Chris is a bit on the pudgy side and loathes anything that makes him break a sweat. So while Janicka and I don’t have much else in common, over a few weeks we’ve gotten to understand each other the way gym rats everywhere understand each other.

Audio Journal Transcript: Day 8,525

Spending time with Janicka in the gym, I’ve learned that she prizes physical fitness. And admires people who can stick to a regimen. Something I’ve been doing for years. She wouldn’t believe me when I told her I was soft as a kid. Even made me show her pictures as proof.

When I got done giving her a brief tour of my flabby childhood, there was a little mischievous twinkle in her eyes.

Thus Janicka’s sneak visit to my after-workout shower was not precisely unanticipated. One moment I was all by myself—the curtain zipped up and hot water pounding across my tired muscles. The next moment I heard the curtain unzip. With soap in my hair I didn’t dare open my eyes. I felt strong female hands on my shoulders, arms, chest, biceps, and … other places.

All the rest was automatic.

Now, I won’t lie. Having to put Li into stasis still hurts too much. This thing with Janicka … we’re not a couple. Not really. Janicka is a different kind of woman altogether. Not nearly as sensitive nor hidden as Li is. Janicka knows what she wants, and isn’t afraid to say it. Or take it.

Janicka is also on the kinky side—nobody ever told me the birds and the bees could be as interesting as it’s been since Janicka and I hooked up. I don’t love her. And she doesn’t love me. That much we’ve made clear. But the sex is its own kind of bond, helping each of us to escape from different problems. We are, for each other, the most wonderful kind of distraction.

I think the technical term I once saw used in an old movie is
fuck buddy.

Of course, sometimes I think having a fuck buddy is sowing some unfortunate seeds with Chris. Especially when it’s obvious that Chris is feeling sorry for himself: left out of the mix, the poor bastard.

So what? It’s not my fault he’s a fatass.

Janicka likes buff.

And buff is the one thing I’ve got in ample supply.

I guess Chris will just have to get over it?

Audio Journal Transcript: Day 8,613

I hurt a man today. Badly.

I suppose I should have seen it coming.

Janicka and I had been getting gradually more adventurous and flagrant with our behavior. In different parts of the ship. In places where someone might walk in and catch us. It was fun. It was exciting. The more risks we took, the greater the heightened emotional and physical pleasure.

What was it Mama always said? It’s all fun and games … until someone gets hurt.

Chris came into the galley late one night—to find Janicka and I going at it rather frenetically and noisily on one of the tables.

He started screaming at us. And called her a whore.

So I clocked him.

One shot, to the face. I didn’t even think twice about it.

Broke his nose, his cheek, and put him into a coma …

Now I’m sitting at his side in the medical bay every day while Janicka scours the medical computer trying to find out what to do about his condition. We don’t dare put him back in stasis like this, but we’re not exactly sure that letting him float along at the edge of death is a good idea either. Neither of us has the kind of medical training that someone like Li has. I’ve even considered waking Li long enough to ask for her help. I resist the idea only because I can’t face admitting to her that I’ve done what I’ve done—to Chris in rage, or with Janicka in lust.

Mama and Papa are still trapped in virtual amber, like always.

As if their son hasn’t become an altogether different person than he started out being as a boy, long ago.

All I feel now … is empty.

Audio Journal Transcript: Day 8,648

Chris came out of it today. Much to my relief.

He was still banged up pretty bad, but he was conscious. And didn’t remember a thing about my having put his lights out for him.

Janicka and I haven’t yet had the heart to spill the beans.

But I think Chris is smart enough to have figured it out.

All three of us adults are just sort of trying to keep things puttied together, because the kids have been acting out something fierce—since Chris has been down.

If Janicka and I had been overly concerning ourselves with our libidos, Chris had been pouring all of his time into keeping the kids squared away. And in a rather thankless fashion to boot. No wonder he screamed at us. Like a housewife who’s logged too many sleepless hours, only to find her husband off drinking and pinching bottoms at a gentleman’s club.

I’ve profusely apologized to Chris, for shirking. I’ve put myself to work on the daily chores list like never before. Both to keep myself occupied—so that thinking about what’s happened doesn’t hurt as much—and to make it up to the man however I can.

Janicka?

Janicka … has withdrawn.

Audio Journal Transcript: Day 8,679

You know what?

The mission planners for this trip totally screwed up.

And do you want to know why?

There’s nothing in the
Osprey’s
extensive and voluminous operations library that discusses the fixing of
broken people.

Regardless of whether or not Chris has forgiven me, there’s still the question of justice. You can’t just hit a man like that, and get away with it.

One of the kids suggested we have a trial. Like on Earth.

I told them it was an excellent idea.

With Chris recused, Janicka reluctantly called the tribunal to order, and the kids all heard my confession, with the medical records as evidence. When it came time for sentencing, Janicka was stumped. But the kids were quick on the uptake.
Put him in time out!

I’ll be departing for one of the observation bubbles soon. For six months solitary confinement. No entertainment, other than one hour of music per day. I’ll take a week’s worth of rations with me, and someone will come every week thereafter to retrieve trash, give me new food and water, and make sure I haven’t done anything unfortunate to myself.

A small part of me dreads the sentence.

But then again, I feel like it’s a great object lesson for the kids. When we left Earth behind, we also technically left civilization. But civilization is also something you carry with you in your heart. Your soul. I am afraid I’ve gradually turned barbarian since I got the news that I can’t go to sleep like all the rest. It’s time for me to re-learn my manners. So that the kids will know that regardless of where we are in space, the rules are still the rules. And when you break the rules, there are consequences.

Audio Journal Transcript: Day 8,700

It’s been hard, being stuck out under the stars all day every day. Nothing to do. Not even the gym. No chance of escape—they didn’t let me keep a suit, not even in case I might need it. I don’t even have any reading material, because they wouldn’t give me a pad or a computer terminal.

But once a day, I do get my music.

Selected at random from the massive MP3 archive that the
Osprey
brought with it from Earth. Millions of recordings. Decades worth of listening. And for one hour each day I’m able to partake.

Sometimes it’s classical, like Mozart.

Sometimes it’s jazz.

Other times it’s the latest—at the moment of our launch—pop stuff from any dozen Earth cultures: Japanese, Chinese, Korean, North American, French, et cetera.

And still other times it’s spoken word.

I think I like that best of all.

Not exactly audio books. But poetry and short stories.

There was an old actor named Geoffrey Lewis who told wonderful tales set to music. I recognize his distinctive voice from some of the old movies I’ve seen over my long years of being permanently awake on the ship.
Celestial Navigations,
they’re called. Haunting pieces, in that I sometimes hear myself in them: the eternal wandering man, in search of himself, or his idea of the perfect woman.

Speaking of which, it’s been difficult not having access to Janicka.

Chris is the only one who comes to see me every week, bringing fresh food and hauling out my waste in sacks which I’ve filled and tied off: sorted by color, for recycling.

He doesn’t say much, and neither do I.

But I dream about Janicka.

And, sometimes, I dream about Li too.

The stars are crystal clear all day and all night.

When I get to go back inside, with the others, I want things to be different.

Audio Journal Transcript: Day 8,860

I’m a free man again.

Whatever hard feelings there might have been, between Chris and I, they seem to be settled. He’s healthy, and appears no worse for wear. And none of us can say that I wasn’t given ample time to consider my sin, and reform. Which I was determined to prove was the case.

And Janicka is still distant.

Which is, I suppose, to be expected.

I think both of us were more than a little ashamed of ourselves, for what happened, and why. There haven’t been any sexual encounters since I came back inside. Nor have I desired any, really. Janicka and Li are like night and day: the one soft and gentle and earnest, the other muscular and forceful and daring. I can’t say I regret having been physical with either one of them. But I think Janicka and I both believe that it’s for the best that we don’t try to pick up again right where we left off.

Our fuck buddy days are over.

So I’ve gone back to work, and the kids are working with me, and while I still have a blank, terrified spot in my heart over the fact that I am essentially trapped on the
Osprey
, a man without a world, it’s easier to ignore that spot when I am busy.

Audio Journal Transcript: Day 9,082

Janicka is dead.

Stupid accident. None of us could have predicted it. Janicka went outside for routine maintenance on one of the external radiation sensors when a piece of dark interstellar debris clipped her helmet. Just,
slice,
one second Janicka was alive and working, the next … half her head was gone and she was dangling backwards along the hull by her safety tether.