Chapter 5 #21
He starts to rig up a splint, using a depressor and fabric bandages. More fire.
I guess I make little gasps and shrieks while Kodiak’s working, because he says, “Don’t be so dramatic. You’ll be okay. In the meantime, tell me one more time exactly what you saw.”
I know he’s only trying to distract me, and that’s just fine. I could use a little distraction about now. “I don’t think it was alive, I’m not trying to claim that,” I say. “But there was a dead body, no doubt about it. Wrapped up like meat. I don’t know how else to phrase it. Ow.”
“Why do you think that would be?” Kodiak asks as he kneads the center of my palm.
“Neither you nor I have any memory of the beginning of the voyage, right?” I say. “What if there were three spacefarers on board originally? What if one died, and instead of telling us about it, OS hid the body?”
“Why?”
“Because whatever killed the third spacefarer is still putting us at risk, and OS doesn’t want us to panic. Because it was, I don’t know, some crazy alien attack, and OS is worried that we’ll mutiny instead of continuing forward.”
“You said there might have been more bags and more bodies? So would that mean there are many dead spacefarers? All wrapped up and tidied away?”
“I don’t know. It’s all so confusing. The radio you rigged up is telling us that it’s the future now, too.”
“And that your country destroyed mine.”
“I honestly don’t know what to do with that particular piece of info,” I say. My good hand lies limp on the table. Helpless as the rest of me.
“I know,” Kodiak says grimly. “I don’t, either.”
He’s avoiding my eyes.
“What?” I ask. “There’s more?”
He still doesn’t look at me. “I’ve uncovered something about the distress signal that’s . . . unusual, too.”
“What do you mean? Has Minerva contacted us again?”
“I’ll show you in a moment. For now, you just keep talking to distract yourself. Any words that come to mind. The most painful part is coming up.”
“What do you mean, the most—GAH!”
“There, the worst is over,” Kodiak says. He begins wrapping the finger against the splint.
“Gah, gah, gah! You lied!” Each jostle sets off new eddies of fire.
I decide to take Kodiak’s advice and blabber through the pain.
“I’m sorry my country destroyed yours, if that even happened, which I can’t really think it did, I can’t really think that anything happened, have I told you that I think maybe we’re still on Earth, underground somewhere, can you, ow, I mean all I know is this ship and those stupid meals and what OS tells us about the distress beacon and I wonder if I’ll ever be the fearsome scientist warrior Minerva was and I’m not nearly the star that you and the rest of the whole fucking Earth expect I am and you’d probably be so turned on if it was her here instead of me, Minerva here instead of me, Minerva serving you manicotti, and don’t kick me out of your life again okay, because we’re all we have, holy shit this hurts. ”
“All done,” Kodiak says. He keeps his gaze studiously trained on the bandaged finger, and for a moment I can let myself hope that maybe he was concentrating too hard to hear anything I said. Then his mouth spreads into a grin. A spot in the middle of his chin stubble dimples.
Much as he tries, Kodiak can’t hide that he’s laughing at me. Laughing at me. “Kodiak, tell me you are not doing what I think you’re doing right now.”
Now the laughs come out full force. He pounds the table. Tears stream down his face, enough to drip down that dimple. He swipes his cheeks with his palms, takes long exaggerated breaths.
“Are you quite done?” I ask.
“It’s just that your voice got so small and scratchy toward the end.”
“Screw you, Kodiak Celius.”
“It was adorable. And you’re right. We’re all we have.”
“I am right. I don’t need you to tell me that!”
“I know. This is what it looks like when I agree with you.”
“Apparently I’ve never witnessed that before!”
We stare at each other as our breathing slows.
Kodiak busies himself with the important task of straightening his sleeves. “Just so you know, I wouldn’t prefer Minerva to you.”
My eyebrow cocks as I watch him not look at me. Kodiak presses up from the table and stands. “Shall we go?” he says.
“Could you say that part about Minerva again?” I ask, testing out the tender back side of my hand.
He reaches a hand under his collar to rub an itch on his shoulder. “Really?”
I nod, bottom lip pinned between my teeth. “About how you’d choose me over her?”
He sighs. “You, Ambrose. I prefer to be with you.”
I give a little shimmy-shiver as I stand. “Thank you. You don’t know how much joy that just gave to my petty and competitive Cusk soul.”
“I’ve created a monster,” Kodiak says.
“Where are we headed?” I chirp.
“Back to your quarters. I want to see this dead body for myself.”
“Really?” I ask. “You believe me?”
“Of course I believe you.”
“Oh!”
“So, about your sister’s SOS signal,” Kodiak says, waiting for me to catch up before climbing the rungs to the ship’s zero-g center.
“Yes,” I say. “What’s weird about it? Or at least, weirder than before?”
“It doesn’t exist.”
I stop on the ladder. While Kodiak’s been speaking, my mind started Minerva’s last distress reel playing in my head, desperately calling for help. “What do you mean, ‘it doesn’t exist’?”
“I can’t detect it on the antenna we rigged up.” He looks at me closely. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” I say. “I’m just confused, is what I am. It must have been manually turned off . . . which means Minerva is alive but not in distress anymore?”
“I’m not sure she was ever there,” Kodiak says, holding his hands out in a pose of surrender when he sees my scowl.
“Follow with me here: the distress signal was picked up on Earth across all the noise of our solar system. The antenna I’ve rigged is strong enough to pick up transmissions from Earth that were never intended to leave orbit.
The Titan camp is even closer to us now.
In the vacuum of space, its transmission should be absolutely deafening.
But there’s . . . nothing. That frequency is just static.
Unless it’s the OS relaying the distress signal to us.
Then apparently everything comes through crystal clear. ”
“Have you asked OS about this?”
“Yes, he has,” my mother’s voice responds as we drop back into my quarters. “And I replied that a jury-rigged can of bolts that you’ve decided to call a radio receiver can’t be expected to function properly.”
“Hi there, OS,” I say.
“I think we offended it with the whole off-grid antenna thing,” Kodiak says, not bothering to keep his voice low.
“I don’t think an operating system can get offended,” I say.
“You most certainly did offend me,” OS says simultaneously.
“Oh,” I say. “Sorry.”
We pass by the yellow portal. The sweet tang of hot polycarb hangs in the air. Rover has already cleaned up the fragments and is up beside the hole, where it’s busy printing a replacement covering.
“Rover, stop,” I say.
Rover does not stop. It’s a jellyfish in still water, motionless while its arm prints away. Rover is both facing me and not facing me. Rover has no eyes. Rover has no face. That fact is suddenly horrifying.
“Rover, we asked you to stop,” Kodiak says.
Rover does not stop.
Kodiak glances at me before he climbs toward zero g so he can reach Rover.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” I start to say, before Rover jerks one of its printing arms and electrocutes Kodiak.
The jolt is strong enough to dim the ship’s lights, and sends Kodiak careening through the air, tumbling into gravity to fall just where I fell not an hour ago. The lights flicker back to full force while Kodiak screams, then curls his body in silent agony, mouth agape.
I rush to him, hands on either side of his face. “Are you okay?”
He brushes me off and staggers to his feet. “Yes, I’m fine.” He starts yelling, his voice slurred: “OS! Disable Rover.”
“I will not disable Rover,” OS says.
“Rover attacked me! That is forbidden. You know that. I order you to disable it.”
“Rover is protecting you. Ambrose wounded himself by entering an area not intended for humans. I am preventing you both from damaging your bodies further. If I disabled Rover, the Coordinated Endeavor would soon become nonfunctioning, creating conditions that would end in your deaths. Disabling this Rover or the Rovers in storage is simply not an option. My commitment to your survival forbids it.”
Wincing, Kodiak takes a step closer to Rover. The robot doesn’t even pause in its printing; it simply extends its spare arm and sends out a blue warning spark. It has a flair for the dramatic, that little bot. “Stop, Kodiak,” I say. “Rover will just shock you again.”
Kodiak’s body goes rigid. “Shazyt! This. Is. Not. Good.”
“It’s possible that OS is telling us the truth,” I say.
“Don’t be an idiot,” Kodiak says, glowering.
“I am not being an idiot,” I say calmly, after biting down my first angry response. “It’s an essential element of OS’s programming not to lie to us. We are totally dependent on it. If we can’t trust our ship, we’re done for.”
“Wise remark,” comes my mother’s voice.
I swallow the first taste of rising bile.
“You’re both idiots,” Kodiak says, getting off the table.
“Look, I know you’re mad—” I start.
He whirls and bashes his fist into the wall. “None of this makes sense,” he says. “How can we receive radio from the future? How can my homeland be gone in that future? How can OS have just attacked me—and you’re calm about all of it?”
“I’m not calm,” I say. Calmly. “I just don’t want to do anything rash.” My eyes look up around us, then back to Kodiak, beaming a message: let’s not say anything more until we’re in the blind room.
“I think rash is exactly what is called for,” Kodiak says. He punches the wall again before stalking out of the room.
“Where are you going?” I yell after him.