Chapter 5 #17
Kodiak is insecure about his intellect. I’ve already suspected as much, but it feels strangely good to have confirmation.
I’ll have to step carefully around this insecurity—or manipulate it full throttle if we come to open conflict.
He’s looking at me, a slight smile on his lips.
I realize he could be deploying this “insecurity” to his advantage.
I want to share with him that maybe we’re not that different, he and I.
That we both have our strength, and our fear.
I want to tell him that I grew up in my own sea of Cusk, that I had to fight thirty siblings in a dark pool for my mother’s attention and affection.
But I don’t feel safe enough to say that.
So I take a different tack. “You said ‘Celius Li Qiang.’ That means he was from your same orphanage?”
“Yes. We grew up together.”
“So he was close to you.”
“Yes. Friend, sometimes my erotiyet, sometimes like a brother. But that ended when he became my competition instead.”
“Erotiyet? What’s that?”
He blushes. “I’m through talking about this today. Let’s watch the reel.”
We watch the 2459 version of The Mummy. It’s much worse than I remember.
I’m embarrassed, and offer to turn it off, but Kodiak is totally rapt.
My attention keeps wandering to the torrents of stars in the windows around the screen.
Afterward, I yawn and stand, but Kodiak makes no move to leave his chair.
His eyes are bright, and his face is practically glowing.
He’s more excited than I’ve ever seen him.
“I have so many questions. Why did the Nubian Snakelords not attack when they had the advantage? Did some part of this reel get censored?”
“I don’t think you’re supposed to read too much into the motives of the Nubian Snakelords,” I say, yawning.
“I think we should watch this movie again, right away. Maybe it will make more sense the second time.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
He thumbs his chest. “Of course I am serious. Kodiak Celius does not kid.”
“See, even right now, I think you’re actually kidding. If we get down to it, what you are, Kodiak Celius, is indirect.”
“I am what?” he says.
“Indirect. I don’t blame you. When people assume there is no one listening who cares, they put up walls. You have many, many walls. Indirectness is one of them. It’s not your fault.”
“Thank you,” he says. His smile is huge, but his eyebrows have knitted.
I’m in dangerous territory. But I’ve also come to suspect that dangerous territory might be where Kodiak prefers to be, that if I want to keep in communication with him, it’s where I should keep the both of us.
So far all my challenges have been met with respect and excitement.
It’s kindness that makes him contemptuous.
What a mess of a person. It’ll be months before I get him comfortable enough to stay earnest.
“Do you have a chess set?” Kodiak asks. “I miss the feel of something real under my fingers.”
“You want to play chess? You’re really not tired? I’m exhausted.”
“Ambrose, we are in the middle of space. Ship time is no longer anywhere close to Earth time. At our speed, time itself is warping around us. Are you really worried about getting your beauty sleep, so you can remain gorgeous?”
Gorgeous? Where did that come from? “We could have the portaprinter make us a chess set. But I actually do have a deck of cards,” I collect myself enough to say.
“I had a small space allowance for personal items. I brought a pack of cards, the same one my classmates and I used at the academy. I have my violin, too.”
Kodiak sits bolt upright, eyes shining. “You brought a violin?”
“Yes. From the nineteenth century. I guess it’s the oldest thing on this ship. And the only wooden thing.”
“You would show it to me?”
I duck next door and return with the case.
The preparatory motions are automatic: I tighten the bow, position my shoulder rest, pizzicato a few notes, then play a scale.
Kodiak’s eyes are wet. “It is so beautiful,” he says. “May I?”
I feel a pang of disappointment that he’s more interested in the violin itself than my playing.
I pass the instrument to him. He shelters its narrow neck in his powerful hands, runs the backside of his fingers up and down the wood that has been warmed by my body, as if worried his fingerprints would mar the surface.
I’m not disappointed anymore; I’m proud.
“We had a few days of break each year,” Kodiak says, to the violin more than to me.
“Other boys would go to their families if they had them or get drunk in the city, but I would go camping on my own in the woods. I remember the feeling of the old logs I would use for the fire. This feels like that wood, but with this polish, it is the color of a tree once it’s on fire.
You were wise to bring this violin to remember Earth. To remember forests.”
He turns his head, so I can’t see the emotion on his face.
He doesn’t release the instrument, but holds on to it like it’s supporting his weight.
Part of me worries that he’ll break it, but I’m loving his love for the violin.
I might never ask for it back. To be honest, I forgot that I’d intended to bring it.
He strokes it in silence, the stars revolving outside as the ship tilts and rotates on its way to Minerva. I don’t play the violin that night—we just go silent and close, passing the wood of a five-hundred-year-old tree back and forth. It grew from the carbon in Earth’s air.
_-* Tasks Remaining: 71 *-_
We don’t get to see Jupiter. I’d known that would happen—it takes Jupiter twelve Earth years to revolve around the sun, and by rotten chance it has spent this whole voyage on the far side of it.
“I’d love to spend a few minutes in Jupiter’s Great Red Spot,” I tell Kodiak while we work on our blind room. “Four-hundred-mile-per-hour winds . . . can you imagine?”
“Those would be the last few minutes you spent anywhere.” He’s slow to smile, but when he does, it lingers. I find him minutes later, his lips curling at the corners while he works.
The next morning I whistle as I head through the Dimokratía quarters but stop as I approach Kodiak’s workshop.
Usually there’s the sound of banging, ratcheting, pinging.
Today there’s nothing. I quietly approach the doorway.
Kodiak’s cross-legged on the floor, headphones over his ears, looking as intent as a kid putting the finishing touches on a masterpiece of blocks.
“What is it—” I start to say, until Kodiak holds up a hand to silence me as he points the other at another pair of headphones beside him.
I step over the polycarb lip—printed thick and arcing outward to block Rover, like anti-terrorism guards at a parking garage—and sit beside Kodiak, giving his shoulder a pat of greeting.
I place the second pair of headphones over my head. It’s just static.
I twine the cord between my fingers and marvel. I kid you not: he’s rigged these headphones so they’re linked by a true and actual wire. Putting them on, I feel like I’m a character in a vintage reel. Like I really am in The Mummy.
Kodiak adjusts a dial that he’s rigged from vintage parts. A real, retro, manual dial! The static changes tone as he goes. He nudges it gently, like he’s testing the wing of a tumbled bird.
The static jumps and glitches. I listen to the high-color noise, so unlike the womb-throb of the ship, and startle when I hear a word, or part of a word. “—ax—”
I slap Kodiak hard on the shoulder. He rubs it, scowl soon slackening into concentration. His movements on the dial get even more delicate. “—in—dal—tion—”
“Do you know what it’s saying?” I whisper.
Kodiak shakes his head, continuing to tune the dial. But we can’t get the transmission any clearer. Anytime he touches the knob we lose the signal completely, and it takes a while to get back even the unintelligible shreds we were hearing before.
Finally Kodiak removes his headphones. I do the same.
“Kodiak, that was—” I say. He places his hand over my mouth and points to the open portal.
Technically I’ve programmed OS not to have any consciousness of this room, but just in case I get up and close it.
“Kodiak, that was amazing,” I say once we’re in privacy.
Or what might be privacy. Probably isn’t privacy.
I can still feel his fingers on my lips. “You made us our own radio.”
“Just the receiver. I don’t think there’s any way I can rig up the ability to transmit. But yes!” He jabs his thumb at his chest, exaggerates his accent. “This Kodiak Celius is pretty useful guy.”
“Is there a way we can strengthen the receiver?”
Kodiak shakes his head, rapping his knuckles against the wall. “Because there is no atmosphere in space, radio signals can reach this far without much distortion, but this hull is heavily shielded. I have to get this device to the exterior, or at least rig an antenna out there.”
I look through the tiny window in the workshop, into the stars wheeling before the dark. “That means a spacewalk,” I say.
“An unauthorized spacewalk,” Kodiak adds. “I’ll have to set up the antenna, affix it to the ship, and run independent wiring along the hull. Not easy, but not especially complicated, either.”
“Not for Kodiak Celius, ‘Pretty Useful Guy,’” I say. My voice trails off. “Except, Kodiak—these are all things OS won’t want you to be doing.”
“OS’s list of tasks is shrinking, but I still have a few exterior damages left to repair,” Kodiak says. “I can attach the antenna next time I’m out. We have little hope of tricking OS, but at least the spacewalk itself won’t be suspicious.”
“We’re still at the mercy of a shifty computer. I don’t like the idea of your going out there.”
“Well, yeah. I’m not exactly thrilled about it, either.”
_-* Tasks Remaining: 71 *-_