Becalmed Read online

  “You tell her that,” Leona says. “Make it very clear that this is a medical issue.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  “Because that gives you legal protection. You’ll be considered a patient, not a criminal. If they had taken you that afternoon when you called me, you’d’ve been a criminal. Just like you would have been if you hadn’t waited for me today. This way, you’ll be able to say anything, do anything, and it won’t come out in a legal proceeding. At least not in detail. The ship’s staff can have an advocate in the room, and he can testify to what you say, but it won’t have the force of your testimony. It can only be used to start an investigation, which they’re already running.”

  I stare at her. She thinks I’ve done something wrong. They all seem to think I’ve done something wrong.

  Is that why I can’t remember?

  “Before you decide,” she says, “this is your last chance to go back to your apartment. You can do this on your own and no one will ever have to know.”

  My stomach clenches. “And then what?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Will I ever be able to leave my apartment? Will I be able to return to my duties?”

  She shakes her head. “You’ll be alive. Isn’t that enough?”

  I think about the view from my portal. Stuck in foldspace with nothing to see. The same walls, a different view, if we’re lucky, but the same walls for the rest of my life. No more languages. No more work.

  No more friends or family.

  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.

  We no longer look alike, she and I. We’ve lived our lives so differently that what once looked identical now just looks familial. If I had lived her life, I would look like her—heavier, settled, smile lines around her mouth. Her hair flows around her face, and her eyes are soft.

  Deirdre waits for me in the waiting room, even though she knows this might take a day or more. She doesn’t care. She acts as if I’m dying of some dread disease, and for all we know, I am.

  Some mental disease.

  I have already settled onto the floor of this strange room, but it hasn’t curved around me yet. It’s waiting for me to give the go-ahead. Because I balked the first time, I get an extra five minutes to reconsider my choice.

  I’m not going to change my mind.

  The Quurzod whisper around me. If I close my eyes, I’ll be able to see them. They met us on a broad plain, the sun setting behind them. It was a dramatic and powerful introduction, the sky blood-red as the light died.

  The Xenth warned us that the Quurzod would be dramatic. The Xenth warned us that the Quurzod would lie.

  My arms are pressed against my side. Something has punctured the skin in my wrist. My eyes flutter open for a moment, and it becomes clear that the room has absorbed me.

  My breath catches in complete panic. My heart races. I want to claw myself out, I want to climb, I need to—

  —get out. Escape. I could die in here. I will die in here if I’m not careful. I will disappear and no one will know what happened to me in this bloody silence, this stench, this heat and the pressure and the horrible, horrible—

  “No,” I whisper. It takes me a moment to realize I whisper in Quurzid. Unlike most human languages which use simple words, often words of one syllable, for no, Quurzid uses seven syllables for no—a long, complicated word, one that requires a lot of effort to speak correctly. You can’t involuntarily finish the word “no” in Quurzid, like you can in Standard. “No” in Standard slips out. In Quurzid, you know what you’re saying by the third syllable, and you can leave the word unfinished.

  The Quurzid word for “no” is the most deliberate word for “no” in any language I’ve encountered.

  And that’s the word I spoke. A deliberate word, one shows I do not now—or ever—want to revisit those memories.

  For a moment, I imagine screaming for help, thinking of escape, like they told me to, so that the room will release me. But then I will see my sister’s face as I leave, filled with disappointment and fear and concern.

  My sister, the caretaker, knows that she will be responsible for me, because she can’t not be responsible for me, no matter how much I try to keep her out.

  I close my eyes as the whispers start again, the Quurzod, talking among themselves as they stood on that ridge. They were half naked, only their arms and legs covered with some kind of paint, a bit of armor across their genitals. The women as well as the men are bare-chested. They show no shame in revealing their bodies, unlike some cultures we’ve encountered.

  Unlike the Xenth.

  The Xenth should have been the musical ones. Their language is all sibilants intermingled with soft “ch” sounds and the occasional sighing vowel. But the effect isn’t musical. It’s creepy, as if something is hissing with disapproval or anger.

  Three of our people quit at the prospect of facing the Quurzod, but it was the Xenth who terrified me. The Xenth with their too-thin women, wearing long sleeves and high-neck collars and tight pants that sealed at the ankles, even in the heat. The Xenth, whose men looked at me as if I were not just dressed improperly but suggestively.

  I wore a uniform that covered everything except my neck, and I considered coming back to the ship just so that I could get the proper clothing. But our Xenth hosts assured me there was no time. They wanted us to broker some kind of resolution to a fight with them and
the Quurzod, a fight over a genocide that had occurred a year before, a fight that could—in the opinion of the Xenth—lead to planetwide war.

  We had studied everything, or so we thought. Sixteen different cultures existed on the only continent on Ukhanda. Sixteen different cultures with only two that had the military might to dominate—the Quurzod and the Xenth. The Xenth controlled the plains, but the Quurzod held the mountains. They also controlled most of the airways, giving the Xenth the seas. Both had space flight, but the Quurzod used it to their own advantage.