Becalmed (6 page)

Just me. Alive. In my apartment.

Becalmed.

“Send her in,” I say, “and I’ll
tell her the truth.”

~ * ~

The
truth is that I am terrified of my own mind. The truth is that I’m afraid my
memories will kill me. I’m afraid if I never access them, they will kill me,
and I’m afraid if I do remember, I can’t live with them.

Somehow I stammer that out to
Jill Bannerman and she takes some kind of notes and Leona gets her dispensation
or whatever it is and I meet the senior staff’s advocate, a man named Rory
Harper, whom I’ve seen before, but I can’t remember in what context.

He’s older, fifties, sixties,
silvering hair and a dignity that I don’t like. I don’t want someone like him
to see me go through the tests. I don’t want anyone to see me.

But I have no choice.

So I agree to everything, and end
up here.

~ * ~

You
never see the whole ship, no matter what ship you’re on. About fifty ships have
a specialty. Those ships never go on planetside missions because we don’t want
to lose them. I got the last of my education on the
Brazza.
The
Brazza
specializes in education, the
Sante
specializes in medical training,
the
Eiffel
specializes in engineering, and the
Seul
specializes
in officer training, just to name a few.

And even on the
Brazza,
adventurous
and young, I never explored the entire ship. No one did, no one could. There
was just too much to see, too much to do.

And here, on the
Ivoire,
even
though I’ve worked in the medical wing, I’ve never seen these rooms.

The testing rooms.

They’re dark and strange, buried
deep within the ship. They feel like the very center of the ship, even though
they cannot be. The
Ivoire,
like all of the ships in the Fleet, have a
birdlike design—a narrow, curved front, expanding to massive body in the center
with wider sections that seem like wings, and a final tail toward the back.
This makes the
Ivoire
sound small, but it is not.

The medical unit is in one of the
wider sections, with easy access from several areas of the ship. The unit is
several levels down, with a lot of material between it and the exterior, unlike
my apartment, which is right on the edge. If an attack destroys a section of
the ship, that section mostly will not include the medical unit.

Or these testing facilities.

They seem close, cavelike, and my
breath catches as I step inside.

I will be alone in here, with
doctors of all kinds, as well as my advocate (Leona) and the ship’s advocate
(Harper) observing through the walls. Or through something. I am a bit unclear
on the mechanism.

Jill assures me that I will be
safe, that the monitors in the floor, the walls, the very room itself, will
know when I am too emotional to continue, and will pull me back. I will rest,
then, and maybe even receive something to help me into a dreamless sleep.

I do not like this room. I do not
like the low light, the dark interior, the cushy floor. I want a portal or a
screen or something familiar. Before the door closes, I catch her arm.

“Is there somewhere else to do
this?”

She shakes her head. “This room
is safe.”

“I don’t like it,” I say. “There’s
nothing here.”

She gives me a sad look that I
suspect she intended as compassionate. “We need the room to mold around you.
Nothing in here can contradict what’s happening inside your mind. That’s
probably what’s making you uncomfortable.”

I cannot go inside. I remain in
the doorway. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I can’t do this.”

“It will help you.”

I shake my head—or rather, I
shake my head even more. I don’t realize until this moment that I’ve been
shaking my head all along.

“No,” I say. “I can’t go in this
room.”

Somehow Leona has found her way
to my side. “If she doesn’t want to go in, she doesn’t have to.”

Leona’s voice is firmer than
mine. Its forcefulness makes my stomach muscles tighten. I feel nauseous.

“People often balk before going
in,” Jill says. “It’s part of the process. Your memories are difficult, and the
fear you feel has to do with them, not with the room.”

I’m still shaking my head. “No.”

Leona slips her arm around my
back. She leads me out of the area. Jill follows, uttering soothing words,
trying to coerce me back into that room.

I can’t. I won’t.

We get to the main room—the room
that constantly changes—it’s white now, with yellow accents—and I burst into
tears.

Part of me stands aside and
watches myself cry. I don’t cry. I can count the number of times I’ve shed
tears, including the day my parents died.

The crying feels alien, as if
there is a part of me that I cannot control.

“I’m sorry,” I manage.

“It’s better,” Leona says.

But it’s not. I’ll be alone, in
my room, dealing with the memories all by myself.

At least I’ll have a portal.

That views foldspace.

Nothingness.

Becalmed.

~ * ~

But
the dreams are gone as if they have never been. As if a mere attempt to enter
the room has taken the memories from my head and made me feel more human.

I clean up, then I clean the
apartment.

I find a language in the
database, an old language, a dead language (or so they think) and I proceed to
learn it, word for ancient word.

I am digging in for forever, when
my door chirrups. A preprogrammed signal, the only one I’ve put in my door’s
system.

For Coop.

My breath catches. I don’t want
to see him. I do want to see him. I want him to go away. I want him to tell me
everything.

I go to the door, but do not open
it. I engage the comm. “You’re supposed to be running the ship.”

“I am,” he says. I recognize that
tone. It’s constrained—his captain’s tone. His I’m-not-alone-so-don’t-bother-me-with-personal-stuff
tone. “I’m coming in.”

He’s captain. He can override any
command on this ship.

I step back, run a hand over my
hair, check my blouse. I’ve been dressing like a professional ever since I came
back, ever since I started my new language, even though I never thought I’d see
anyone again. I need the pretense.

I need to think I’ll have a use
again.

He comes in, and waits as the
door closes behind him.

I’m always startled at how much
older he looks. Not that command has aged him, although it has, it’s just that
I remember the boy I fell for, the handsome dark-haired boy full of promise,
and now that boy has become a man—a powerful man—who stands before me.

He’s wearing his black uniform
with silver piping, the everyday uniform, nothing special. He would look normal
if it weren’t for his hair. He hasn’t tended to it in days, and it has grown
long, brushing his collar, making him seem almost unkempt.

“They say you’re refusing
treatment,” he says.

I can’t tell if this visit is
compassionate or a ship problem. I can’t tell if he’s here because he’s my
former husband and still my friend, or if he’s here because he’s the ship’s
captain, or both.

I’m not sure I should be able to
tell.

“I went to them for help, but I
can’t go in the treatment rooms.” It sounds crazy.
I
sound crazy. But I’m
beginning to come to terms with that. I think I am crazy.

“The doctors say you’re
claustrophobic,” he says. “That’s why you can’t go in. You’ve never been
claustrophobic before.”

I look at him, a denial about to
cross my lips. Then—

—
the bodies pile on top of me.
I’m drowning in them, afraid to move, afraid not to move, my head wedged in a
slightly angled position. I catch some air, but not much. Enough, apparently,
to keep me breathing, even though I feel like I’m being crushed.

I curse and realize that I’m
sitting down. Coop is crouched before me.

“What was that?” he asks.

I tear up. I blink, hoping that
he won’t notice. “The memories,” I say. Then I take a deep breath, determined
to change the subject. “Why are they letting you in here? What if I’m
dangerous?”

He smiles. “You’re not?”

“The medical evaluation unit
thought I was.”

“They’re wrong,” he says.

“You don’t know that,” I say. “You
can’t know that.”

“You got brainwashed in a month
planetside? You’ve a firm core, remember? No one can brainwash you. That’s why
you’re such a good linguist. You can keep your sense of self while
understanding others.”

“Anyone can change,” I say. My
heart is beating hard. “They think I killed twenty-four people.”

He has taken my right hand. He
holds it gently, and rises just a little so that he’s not crouching any more.
He sits beside me, like a shy lover, but there’s nothing romantic in his
posture.

“Twenty-four people died,” he
says. “And you didn’t. That’s what we know.”

“Why didn’t you leave me there?”
I ask. “That’s protocol.”

“I wasn’t about to leave you
there,” he says.

I look at him. I don’t know how
to respond. So I say, “You should let me look at the communications array.”

“I’d love to,” he says. “But I
can’t. Not until we know what you’ve done.”

“What do the others say?”

“They say you abandoned them.”
His voice is harsh. “They say you left everyone to fend for themselves.”

“I would never do that.” The
words come out of my mouth before I can stop them.

This time his smile is real. “I
know,” he says. “I think they’re lying.”

~ * ~

Quurzid,
the language the Quurzod speak, is a mixture of six different languages we’ve
encountered in this sector. Only the Quurzod have toughened up the words,
shortened the syntax, added guttural sounds and some glottal stops that none of
the other languages have.

Yet the Quurzod language flows,
like music, even with the harshness. Almost because of the harshness—atonal and
oddly beautiful, spare, austere, and to the point.

I can hear the Quurzod talking
all around me, even though I am not with them. I am sitting in that awful
testing room. Coop walked me inside, his arm around my back. His presence
reassures me, even though it shouldn’t, even though we shouldn’t get along. We’re
not a couple any longer.

Yet some vestiges of couplehood
remain.

Coop has left—he’s on call, which
means if I need him, and he’s not handling some emergency, he’ll come. But my
sister sits outside this room. My twin sister, Deirdre.