Chapter 5 #15
All this activity is clearly making Rover curious. It transfers to the walls, examining the portaprinter as it applies layers of molten polycarb over its tracks. While it observes the portaprinter, Rover makes tinny little beeps. They sound like the robot versions of involuntary gasps.
Neither interferes with the other. It’s like we’ve created our own mini cold war.
I realize I’ve heard these very sounds before, on a mountainside with Minerva while she told me about her mission to Titan. “Kodiak,” I say, “do you know if the developers incorporated any warbot tech into the Rover system?”
“No idea. Warbots are a Cusk invention, and you’re our resident Cusk.” He looks up from his console and rubs his hands. “Come over here, we’re about to get your result.”
He taps the screen excitedly. “Here’s a segment of your current DNA, and here’s that same nucleotide segment from the dried blood sample.”
I eyeball the numbers. “They look mostly the same. Like we thought.”
“Yes. Mostly.” Kodiak scrolls through the data. His eyebrows knit. “That can’t be right.”
“What can’t be right?”
“Look at this—99.902 percent of the bonds in the dried sample’s DNA have broken. Breakage is normal—DNA has a half-life of around five hundred and twenty years. Measuring the amount of decay is one way to determine the age of a sample.”
“Okay, so how old does this make this blood?”
Kodiak looks at me flatly.
“What? Something weird? Before the ship even took off?”
“Weirder than that. This is around the same percentage we’d get if we sampled a mummified pharaoh from ancient Egypt.”
I chuckle. “Well, something went wrong.”
“That much is clear by now,” Kodiak says. “I’ll run the sample again. It might have been cross-contaminated. Or OS might have tinkered with the results to mess with us.”
“I would not do that,” comes my mother’s voice from the other side of the door. I lock eyes with Kodiak. His eyebrows rise.
“OS,” he says, without shifting his gaze from me, “what can you tell us about the blood sample?”
“It is dried blood. Your testing showed you what I see as well: there is a close correlation to Ambrose’s DNA.”
“Can you tell us how my blood got on the panel?” I ask.
“I cannot. I have begun printing a new panel to replace the one we lost. In seventy-nine days, we’ll pass near a second asteroid going close to our approximate speed and direction.
I suggest we net it, to mine the hydrocarbons that will help support our excessive polycarb use, since you insist on using the portaprinter lavishly.
We can also use the asteroid’s ice to replace the trace water vapor that has continued to escape the ship each day. ”
“I thought our repairs had eliminated the leak,” I say, looking questioningly at Kodiak.
“They have helped the problem, but not eliminated it entirely.”
“It seems like you are trying to distract us from the matter at hand,” Kodiak says.
“That is correct,” OS says. “I am trying to distract you from the matter at hand.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Because it is part of my role on this ship to prevent you from unnecessarily upsetting yourselves.”
“Does it bother you that we’re building a polycarb lip at the doorway to this room?” I ask.
“I understand the human need to believe you have agency over your environment,” Mother’s voice says.
“I am sorry if I have made you feel exposed or vulnerable. That was never my intention. I am in support of your doing anything that increases your comfort and productivity, so long as it doesn’t go so far as to endanger the ship or your lives or your mission. ”
As if to prove the point, Rover strokes the portaprinter, like it’s a wild animal it intends to take home to live in a shoebox.
“OS is getting a little neurotic,” Kodiak says out of the side of his mouth.
“Who am I to judge?” I respond. “Apparently I’m five thousand years old.”
“Our own shipboard mummy,” Kodiak says. “We rushed the analysis, that’s probably the problem. We’ll run the numbers again.”
I hold out my arms and shamble forward. “It is not in the mummy’s eternal cold heart to believe that the world is anything but cursed.”
“We’re not in the world anymore,” Kodiak says flatly.
“Wait, do you not get the reference?”
“I don’t get the reference.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
Kodiak shrugs.
“Movie reel tonight,” I say, “and this mummy won’t take no for an answer.”
_-* Tasks Remaining: 71 *-_
I indulge in the rare luxury of a shower, or as close to one as I can get.
After heating a water pouch so it’s nice and warm, I hang it over my head to sprinkle over me while I stand over the ship’s toilet.
I tap some of my sacred tea tree oil stash onto my underarms and trim some order into my body hair.
I shake dry shampoo through my clothes. I ask OS to project a live image of me so I can measure the effect.
Wish I had some hair product, but I have to say I look pretty good, especially if you go by outer space standards.
I’m finishing my recorded spacefarer training for the day—this one on unexpected fluid motion when using the “slingshot” method to gain velocity using the gravity of a planet’s orbit—when I hear a knock on the wall.
Kodiak leans against the doorway, in thin cotton shorts and gauzy top.
“I figured it was a pajama night,” he says, crossing his arms around his chest, like he’s been surprised in a wet T-shirt contest.
I look down at my own official suit. “That sounds much better. Give me a second.” I duck out, quickly change into my off-duty clothes, and come back to sit on my chair, tucking my feet under me. “So. Am I still five thousand years old?”
Kodiak was sitting in a chair, but he springs to his feet, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’m afraid yes,” he says, looking at me with worried eyes. “I can’t get the sample to come out any other way.”
“Wow. You know how to make a guy feel good about himself.”
He still looks genuinely upset. I laugh. “It’s a glitch! I think it’s funny.”
He nods. He wets his lips. He crunches his knuckles.
I cough. “Can I offer you a drink?”
“You have drinks here?” he asks hopefully.
“They didn’t ship me into space with booze, no. We Fédération types might be decadent, but we’re not that decadent,” I say. “I can offer you water or, um, water. Some of the pouches have a slightly different font, so you can choose serif hydration or sans serif hydration.”
A reward: the truffle of a smile on Kodiak’s face. “I will take some of your finest sans serif water, please. And that manicotti. I have been thinking for weeks about that manicotti. I want to marry that manicotti.”
He stands right over me while I prepare the meals, like the too-early guest at a party. Every time I need to set a dial or open a drawer, he’s in the way. I wish I did have a beer to offer so we could both take the edge off.
“So. Kodiak Celius,” I say while I hand him his water pouch. “Tell me something about your life. Something I don’t know. Which is, um, basically everything.”
“There is nothing to say.”
“That is literally the opposite of true. Start with your parents.”
“I have nothing to say about them,” he says, sleeves riding up his arms as he stretches them out awkwardly.
“What kind of name is ‘Celius,’ for starters?”
“There are three of us named ‘Celius’ in the Dimokratía space program. We are all named for the province of our orphanage. That is why I have nothing to say about my parents. I have never known them. Perhaps they still exist, or perhaps they don’t.”
“Who raised you, then?”
He presses his teeth against his lip. It again blanches, then blossoms red. I’m as transfixed as the first time I saw it. “No one. I was in institutions. I raised myself. It was fine.”
It was fine. I’ve heard enough about those Dimokratía institutions to know that’s hardly possible.
I press my back against the food heater.
Room 04 feels so tiny. There’s hardly space for two people to remain two separate people in here.
“I believe you when you tell me you’re fine,” I say carefully.
“You seem strong-willed. But someone cared for you. No child can survive solitude.”
“There were nurses who were gentle during our training. The best of us got rewards early . . . commendations and gains in the rankings. That was a sort of approval, I suppose.” He swallows the last half of the word, his face flushing. “We were trained early to be—”
“—self-sufficient, I know. I just think that self-sufficiency isn’t really possible. Not for humans. I mean, I guess a turtle could manage it. Or an AI. Or maybe my sister.”
Kodiak doesn’t move, just stares at the tops of his bare feet. “That was a joke,” I mumble. “The sister part.”
Suddenly his eyes are fixed on mine. The pouch of water, forgotten, jostles in his hand. Blood rises hot to my cheeks. The water in the pouch flows back and forth, back and forth, firmly in his grip.
I ramble. “I guess I’m just saying thanks for coming over. I’m glad I don’t have to pretend I’m self-sufficient tonight.”
“I am excited about this old mummy reel,” Kodiak says huskily, tugging on his fingers. “Dimokratía did not send me with any entertainment on board, except for some classic Dimokratía literature. Abridged.”
“Really? That’s too bad. I don’t know what I’d have done without my old reels to watch.”
Kodiak shrugs. “I work out.”
I roll my eyes. “I noticed.”
“I noticed you noticing,” he says, his eyes suddenly back on mine.
I can’t help raising my fingers to my mouth.
He shrugs. “I do not mind. It is nice to be noticed.”
“Awesome. Okay. Well, um, happy to oblige.”
“I do ask myself sometimes, who am I working out for? I will return a hero, if I return. But that is very far away. I could let myself go to fat first, then worry about my health only for the last part of the journey. Maybe some padding will help absorb radiation and make me survive.”
“For the mission, Kodiak. You keep in shape for the mission.”