“My school used the buddy system,” someone said, sounding worried.
The Manifestor looked at him. So did a lot of people, but her smile was nicer.
“The
n I’ll be your buddy,” she said and held out her hand.
And just like that, it turned back into an airplane. People started getting up, looking for their bags, muttering and laughing and getting tangled up in their seat belts, and ev
erything was fine again. Shouldering her duffel bag, Amber waited for a break in the stream of disembarking people and then joined it, holding her sister’s hand firmly in her own. ‘Just like an airport,’ she thought, stepping onto the painted line. ‘Nothing to worry about. Keep walking. Stay calm. It’s almost over.’
The queue moved faster t
han the one back at the skyport. They were already in space; she supposed there was really no point in anyone dragging their feet anymore. The halls they walked through were clean and well-lit and carpeted, not at all like the grim, utilitarian ships you saw in sci-fi movies. More like a hotel, except for all the shiny metal trimming. There were no windows, nothing to remind them that they were in space. There were a few pictures on the walls in the boarding hub, but they were all of the Director—walking with various dignitaries, frowning seriously at important documents, gazing pensively into the sky, clasping hands with his loving cultists, and just generally being inspiring. Supposedly, he was putting in a lot of public appearances these days, but she hadn’t seen him anywhere around the compound.
She found herself wondering if he was even coming to Plymouth with them.
“Welcome aboard!” said the square-jawed young usher waiting for her at the end of the line. He even fired off an honest-to-goodness salute which, in addition to raising Amber’s eyebrows, brought out a gust of laughter from the actual Fleet soldiers lounging around a little further down the corridor from the Manifestors. “I’m Crewman Everly Scott of the
Pioneer
! And you are…?”
“Amber B
ierce,” said Amber. “Space Adventurer.”
The Fleetmen
down the hall laughed again and this time some of the Manifestors joined in. Crewman Scott’s enthusiasm visibly iced over. He lowered his saluting hand and looked at her, not smiling.
‘Great,’ thought Amber. ‘Now he thinks I was making fun of him.’
Weren’t you
? some small part of her wanted to know. It sounded a lot like her mother.
“Sorry,” Amber said
, setting her duffel bag down. “I didn’t mean anything by that. Just nervous, you know. It’s my first time going to another planet.”
This prompted anoth
er good-natured rumble of humor down the hall, but did not appear to thaw Crewman Scott much. His professional smile went no further than his clenched jaw as he scanned their thumbprints again, checked whatever came up on his little screen against their papers, then against their wristbands, and finally gave them both an official nod of approval. “Bierce, Amber K.,” he said. “You’ve been assigned to bed FH-0419. Follow the green line to the family housing bay, take the elevator marked H to the fourth floor, turn right, and bed 19 is down the first hall on your right, okay?”
“H, four, right, right. I got it.”
“Bierce, Nichole S., you’ve been assigned to bed FW-1866,” Crewman Scott continued.
“What?”
“Follow the green line to the family housing bay and take the elevator marked W to the—”
“Hang on,” interrupted Amber, giving Nicci’s startled, clutching hand a distracted pat. “We’re supposed to be together.”
“—to the eighteenth floor—”
“I was told that we’d be together,” said Amber again, a little bit louder.
“—turn left and you’ll find your bed on the third hall on your right,” Crewman Scott concluded, holding out a helpful printed map of the ship. “Enjoy your flight, ladies.”
Amber did not take the
map. “Are you finished?” she asked coolly.
“Enjoy your flight, ladies.”
“We were told we’d be stationed together.”
“Enjoy your flight, Miss Bierce.”
“I hope you can say that all day, because I’m not moving until I get this cleared up and seeing as I’m standing in the boarding hub of the friggin’
Pioneer
, I think you can safely assume I’ve got nowhere else to be.”
Crewman
Scott continued to hold out the map.
Amber folded her arms across her chest and waited.
The other uniformed people in the hall were still watching them.
“I’m sorry,”
Scott said with a polite smile. This time, it made it to his eyes, but not in a very polite way. “I don’t have anything to do with the bed assignments. Please follow the green line. There are other people waiting for assistance.”
“I want to speak to your supervisor.”
“This is a starship, Miss Bierce, not a Starbucks. I don’t have a supervisor, I have commanding officers. You can speak to one by going to the family housing bay and picking up any courtesy phone. If you’ll please follow the green line—” he suggested, reaching past her to scan the next man in line.
Amber
took the scanner out of his hand and set it down firmly on the desk. “I’ll let you know when we’re done here, pal.”
“Miss Bierce—”
“Everly,” she countered. “Get your goddamn supervisor.”
Nicci shuffled off to one side, looking slightly relieved now that the situation was being handled by a person and in a manner she was accustomed to. The people behind them in line gave them a littl
e space. Crewman Scott stared at her, his mouth shut tight and his ears brick-red, then turned around and walked stiffly up the hall to the place where the other red-suited Manifestors were standing. They listened to whatever he had to say and soon one of them came for Amber.
“Good morning,” he said pleasantly. “I
’m Steven Fisch, the docking coordinator. How can I help?”
“She doesn’t like her assigned—”
“I’m handling it, Scott,” said Fisch, still pleasantly and without looking at him. “What seems to be the trouble?”
“My sister and I signed up for a five-year contract,” said Amber, presenting her
thumb for him to scan, which he did. “And I was told we’d be stationed together for the flight and at the colony.”
“Mm-hm. And it looks like you’ve both been assigned to beds in the family housing unit.”
“Right, on different floors and different, um, letters. That’s not acceptable to me,” said Amber as Nicci sidled up closer to her. “I’m not looking for trouble, but I was told we’d be together and I kind of want what I was promised.”
“I understand.
”
“We don’t have anyt
hing to do with the bed assign—”
“I’m handling it,
Scott,” said Fisch again, not quite as pleasantly as before. He pushed a few buttons on his digireader. “It looks like you waited for the last minute before signing on with us, Miss Bierce. And Miss Bierce,” he added, with a nod to Nicci, who nodded nervously back at him. “I’m afraid the group units in family housing filled up months ago. There’s nothing left except singles and frankly, I’m a little surprised you got beds there at all. It’s just like any big event, Miss Bierce. These are the best seats in the house and after a certain date, you just don’t find two of them together. I’m sure the recruiters made you all kinds of promises to get you, but they don’t have anything to do with you once you’re on board and they shouldn’t have made you any promises at all.”
“I realize this seems like a petty problem to you,” Amber began.
Crewman Scott uttered one of those huffy little breaths that snotty people liked to use when they didn’t quite dare to laugh out loud. Amber was willing to overlook it this time, but Fisch’s face went cold.
“Excuse us for just a moment, please,” he said, and took
Scott aside.
Amber couldn’t hear anything that was said and couldn’t hazard any guesses to judge by Fisch’s broad and rather bland face, but she waited and watched
Scott’s ears turn red with a faint sense of satisfaction. In less than a minute, Fisch was back, smiling again.
“I apologize for the interruption, please go on. A petty problem…?”
“We’ll both be in Sleep,” said Amber. “I get it. We won’t be conscious, we won’t be lying there missing each other for years, we won’t miss anything at all. But we’ve been checking in for three hours already. I’ve got no reason to expect to check out in less time. And yeah, it may only be a few hours, but it’ll be a few hours on another planet, for God’s sake, and I want my sister with me.”
“Please,” said Nicci.
Fisch glanced at her and his eyes lingered. When he looked back at Amber, he seemed somewhat less politely pleasant and more sincerely thoughtful.
“Isn’t there anything you can do?” asked Amber. “We don’t have to be in family housing. We just want to stay together.”
He hmmmed again and checked with his digireader, tapping the stylus through several screens before frowning at her. “I think we could find a way to accommodate you, Miss Bierce, but you need to understand that once you’re confirmed to a bed, those may be your living quarters for quite a long time after we arrive.”
“We know.”
“The family units are much larger and, honestly, far superior in terms of comfort and entertainment purposes. The general housing mods are pretty much your beds, some public showers and a cafeteria. There’s no comparison to family housing. To prison, maybe, but not to family housing. And signing you off on a corporate mod or a suite or anything like that is simply out of the question, so if that’s what you were hoping…”
“General housing works just fine if we’re together.”
Fisch tapped his stylus against the top of his reader and glanced at Nicci. “Miss Bierce?”
Nicci stepped back, holding her case in front of her like a shield against his attention. “I…I guess. I don’t know. Amber?”
“Please,” she said.
“All right,” said Fisch, in that rising, sighing, I-wash-my-hands-of-this way that people use when they think you’re making, if not the biggest mistake of your life, at least the one people will be bringing up for the next ten
years to embarrass you. “Scott, come over here, please. Gen-Pop hasn’t been boarded yet, so we’re just going to take two beds in the women’s dorm and bump them up to family housing, then put the Bierces in their place. See how I did that?”
“Yes, sir.”
Fisch sighed. “Scott, for God’s sake, relax. Mr. Fisch will do just fine. Did you see what I did?”
“Yes, um…yeah.”
“Okay, it’s probably not going to be the last time, so do the best you can with it and try to remember that these people are not the enemy.”
Scott
’s ears pinked. “Yes, sir. Mr. Fisch.”
“Good. I’ll take over here for a bit. Why don’t you help these ladies with their cases and get them settled in their beds?”
Pink deepened into red. “Um…sure. I could do that. I don’t mind.” He turned stiffly to Amber, hesitated, and then turned away and took Nicci’s things.
She could have let it go. She should have let it go.
Amber cleared her throat and held out her duffel bag.
Scott
did his best to stare her down, but Fisch was standing right there and now he was watching pretty closely too. He took the strap out of Amber’s outstretched hand and slung it over his shoulder with as much dignity as such a menial task allowed. He started walking, his boots clicking firmly along the grey stripe on the floor like it was a tightrope over lava.
“He looks mad,” whispered Nicci, following close behind Amber as they moved out of the intake line, away from the rumbling, stuffy excitement of a thousand nervous families and into the largely empty corridor leading to the general housing mods. “I don’t think he likes you very much.”
“He doesn’t have to like me,” Amber told her, talking low but making no real effort to be inaudible. She didn’t care if Crewman Everly Scott heard this or not. “There’s going to be fifty thousand people and an alien planet to entertain us where we’re going. We’re never going to see each other again.”
Scott
did not reply or give any indication that he’d even heard them. He brought them into the empty, echoing, half-lit elevator bay and over to the lift marked with an A. Between the gunmetal-grey paint and the stark stenciled lettering, everything looked very much like a military operation. Cold. Authoritative. Menacing.
The lift was big enough for fifty people, according to the capacity rating posted above its utilitarian doors. The sound of three people breathing was very loud. They went up just one level and Nicci was clinging before the doors dinged open.
The first two doors on the first left-hand hall were theirs. WA-0001 and WA-0003. They opened at a swipe of their keycards on what indeed appeared to be a broom closet: narrow enough to touch both walls at once while keeping her elbows bent, just deep enough to accommodate the Sleeper, with a door she had to duck through and a ceiling that did not allow for jump rope.
Crewman
Scott dropped Amber’s duffel and went inside to secure Nicci’s to the wall. He opened up her Sleeper and moved back as far as the dimensions of the room allowed. He waited.