Mind Over Ship

Starke, as you claim, and you are companioning her out of mutual affection, I see no reason why you can’t maintain that relationship remotely. Friends do it all the time. And you have to admit, it would be easier than trying to maintain a remote marriage with me.”

She snorted. “You got that right.”

_____

THE SUN SANK into the ocean in a brief, fiery sunset. Venus sparkled in the gloaming sky, and then a blaze of stars! Eventually, they said everything there was to say, and they could say no more. They sat in the darkness and listened to the surf for a while. Then, Fred’s hand found hers, and he tugged her to join him in his armchair. She stood up but didn’t join him. Instead, she leaned over and offered him a good-night kiss.

“But I thought —”

“Oh, I can imagine what you thought, Mr. Spacer Man, but it ain’t gonna happen, at least not in here.”

“But you won’t be able to cycle in again before I leave.” He could hear a pleading note in his voice.

She made her way in the darkness to the hatch. “That’s right, sailor,” she said. “And then it’s twelve months — plus transit time. On the other hand, if you come out with me . . .”

IT SEEMED LIKE every doris Fred ran into lately was grousing about the purges. But to Fred the purges were liberation itself. Each successively more intrusive formula of visola, each gaseous interlude filled him with fresh and clean feelings.

SHIP DAY 17. When at last the spybot test results were negative, the Dauntless crew unsealed the bulkhead sections and allowed passengers to intermingle freely. And intermingle they did, at least for the first few days. Even Fred took a grand tour of the passenger decks. The ship seemed much larger than when he first came on board. One of the multi-bays was converted into a freefall gym, and others became a library, chapel, and lounges. Aside from these, though, it soon became apparent that every nook and corner of the ship was “claimed” by one group or another, and trespassing was discouraged.

Fred learned this the hard way one day while out swimming. The swimming/jogging lane, complete with recessed fingerholds, was painted on the corridor decks in a circuitous loop that stretched from the forward compartments to the stern. One complete lap measured two kilometers, and after the bulkheads were unsealed, Fred and hundreds of other passengers took advantage of them to get in some aerobic exercise. Most of them used flippers or gloves with long webbed fingers for propulsion. One evening before supper, Fred was halfway through his first lap when he encountered a traffic jam in an exclusively free-range section. About a hundred residents were tethered together in clumps of four or five and floating freely in the corridor, completely blocking the way. A dozen russ, doris, and free-range swimmers were backed up behind a handmade banner that was strung across the passage: 

Block Party

Fri 5-6 PM

Residents Only

NO SWIMMING!

 A trio of free-range men floated behind the banner and confronted the unhappy swimmers.

“This is a public path,” one of the russes declared. Sweat glistened on his forehead and soaked his shirt. “We have the right to go through.”

But the three men refused to give way, and one of them raised open palms in a placating gesture. “This is our Friday community tradition. It helps foster neighborhood harmony.”

“What about our harmony?” demanded the russ.

“Why don’t you go back to your sections and start block parties yourselves?”

“Swimming harmony!” insisted the russ. “We don’t care about your freakin’ neighborhood.”

“Watch the mouth, dittohead,” said one of the other gatekeepers.

Dittohead, one of the most offensive slurs against iterants. There was a moment of dead silence, and then the dorises started grumbling, and a handful of russes moved to position themselves along the banner. Fred didn’t like the signs; things were about to slip out of control. In the corridor beyond, the local residents watched uneasily. A lot of noses were about to get bent.

Before that happened, a russ next to Fred raised his voice. “Time out. Time out,” he said. “Let’s think about this, friends.” He spoke with slightly accented English, and his face was roundish even for a russ. “It’s a small thing.”

“What’s a small thing, brother?” said a russ at the banner. “Them blocking the way or us going through them?”

The peacemaker pointed at the banner. “They only want one hour during the whole week. That is no problem.”

But the other russes were having none of that. “What’s wrong with you, brother? No stomach for it?” “You a mongrel-lover, brother? You a hink-hole-fecker?”

The russ flushed a deep red and the dorises backed away from him. Things grew deathly still in the corridor. “Oh, hell,” Fred said, pushing himself to the banner. “The brother is right. There’s better ways to deal with this than brawling. I mean, what are we — jerrys?”

That brought a laugh and helped ease the tension. The dorises piped up and called for a truce. The garrulous russes backed off, and some of the residents started calling, “Join us. Join us.” They passed bulbs of beer along the corridor and one of them removed the banner.

Some of the swimmers stayed, but Fred and others started swimming back the way they had come. When they encountered more swimmers, they shouted, “Roadblock ahead.”

The peacemaking russ caught up with Fred and swam at his side. “Thank you for the assist back there,” he said. “I was about to lose it all over.” He saluted with his webbed hand. “Armando Mendez, but you can call me Mando.”

Fred almost gave him his real name, but he caught himself, and for a moment blanked out on his cover name — Clifford? Higgins? He filled his lapse by saying, “Good to meet you, Mando. No need to thank me; we’re all getting a little cabin fever on this boat.” Walter, that was it. “Name’s Walt.” They shook webbed hands.

THEY WERE TETHERED to two dorises in one of the lounges, and Mando told them about his life. He was from the state of Yucatan, and he and his evangeline wife, Luisa, had recently moved to Cozumel and purchased a two-seat submarine to enjoy the underwater national park there. That, in fact, was why Luisa had agreed to let him sign up for a stint at Trailing Earth. A one-year contract paid not only a signing bonus but a hardship differential equal to three times the usual russ wage. Meanwhile, Luisa had a new job, her first job in ages, as well as dividends from the Sisterhood on the Leena earnings. “Overdue loans, the boat payments, deferred rejuve — when I return we will be debt-free for the first time in our marriage! It will be a new beginning.”

The dorises clucked and bobbed their heads. No doubt they, too, had special plans for their contract windfalls. And it made Fred wonder about the rest of his fellow russes aboard the Dauntless. Why were they all heading to do duty that other russes were lining up to flee? Were they motivated by the extra earnings? Russes were frugal men, allergic to debt and good at managing their personal finances. It was true that the last ten years hadn’t been easy on russ/evangeline couples. It cost a lot to live, and one income just didn’t cut it. His and Mary’s standard of living had fallen steadily every year. He had only to recall their lousy apartment at APRT 7. And he recalled something else too, something Mary had flung at him during their devastating argument on the morning of the Roosevelt Clinic debacle, that russes espoused to ’leens were on average five years older than the russ mean. Deferred body maintenance, skipping expensive rejuvenation treatments, that was the kind of loan he and his brothers tended to take out. Fred rubbed his jaw. After his time in prison, he was even older, pushing forty, in fact. Mary, from the look of her, had rejuved while he was inside and taken five years off her age.

Fred looked closely at Mando’s face, looking for wrinkles and crow’s feet, but his Indian blood, round features, and the facial edema of low-g hid them. Fred glanced around at the other russes in the lounge. Now that