Enigma (9 page)

“Just one. Why did you bother to sign on again?”

Sebright was immune to the venom. “No. Try Dunn. He’s only been back two months. He may still want to talk about it.” He laid back and poked Yolanda playfully with a finger.

“Anything to eat around here?” he asked her, and Thackery took that moment to move toward the door.

“Sneaking out, Thackery?” Sebright called after him. “For future reference—you’d be smart not to push in where you haven’t been invited. You can’t afford to alienate people on a little ship.”

His picture of Sebright savaged beyond repair, a benumbed Thackery made the climb to C deck and the library. Having absorbed most of his values from Government Service, he felt personally betrayed. Information was a free good, freely available, freely exchanged—the Ninth Article. To have a Contact treated as a personal possession was unthinkable, as unthinkable as a Contact Leader who refused to lead, who chose to spend eight weeks in a drug-induced black-out—

The Op Recs. Maybe the answers
are
there—if there are any answers for a man like that—

The story of the Muschynka was not new to Thackery. Hundreds of anthropologists had fallen over themselves in their eagerness to sift through the contact records and publish their findings. There was even a standing request before the Flight Office for a follow-up mission, since the Muschynka represented a form of human society no longer available for study on Earth: a polytheistic, communal-living patriarchy employing slash-and-burn agriculture.

But if there was any explanation in the voluminous contact report for Sebright’s attitudes, it was beyond Thackery to see it. There was plenty of data on the Muschynka’s dependence on lightning for fire, on their movable longhouses, on their death beliefs and funereal customs. But there were no answers in the records for the questions he would have asked Sebright: How did it go? What was it like to be there? How did you know what to do?

Any wisdom that had been gained in the course of the Contact had been stripped of its anecdotal elements and made part of the general Contact protocol. Any narrative power in the account had been erased by the third-person-impersonal voice. The feeling of the moment had been reduced to dry history and cold science.

Is that what they tried to do to you, Sebright?
he wondered.
Did you come back because you wanted to dream again?

That thought replaced most of Thackery’s accumulated resentment with a troubling premonitory vision.
Is that what I’m doing? Chasing a piece of the past?

Thackery pushed the thought away. There had to be better reasons. Sebright’s was the quest of the addict for a remembered high, he decided—one so exquisite that it made normal life unbearable. But Dove’s crew had sustained themselves through an abstinence enforced by unfriendly Chance. There had to be better reasons, and the
Dove
vets had to know them—or those now aboard
Tycho
would not have chosen to accept their new assignments.

Late to be wondering why you’re here. You know why you’re here
, he answered himself.
You just don’t know what will sustain you now that you are
.

A day later, Thackery found Thomas Dunn in
Tycho
’s wardroom, conducting a training session on the AVLO drive for Baldwin, Behnke, and four of the awks. The silver-haired senior tech was soft-spoken, but he clearly knew both his subject and how to communicate it. Thackery listened with interest from the doorway as Dunn held forth for twenty more minutes, then moved toward him when the class filed out. “Mr. Dunn? Sebright said you might be able to help me.”

Dunn cocked his head and squinted. “Aren’t you Thackery? The inquisitive one?”

Thackery’s face wrinkled up. “You heard—”

“Didn’t you think we veterans talked to each other?”

“I didn’t think anything worth talking about happened,” Thackery said stiffly. “Privacy has an exaggerated importance on a survey ship. You’ll understand after a while.”

“Is that a warning not to ask you any personal questions?”

“No.” Dunn settled cross-legged on the table. “I try to be a little more sympathetic to novices than Mark is.” Thackery settled in one of the recently vacated seats. “I was wondering why you came back.”

“To the Service? I’m not
that
sympathetic. Next question.”

“Well, what about Sebright? What makes somebody like that come back after five years out?”

Dunn craned his head and looked at the ceiling. “I don’t think that I can speak for someone else, Thackery. If I’m guessing, I might be wrong. If I know, I have no right to violate their confidence.”

Thackery’s face showed his growing exasperation. “So don’t talk about him specifically. You spent time at Benamira. How do the vets feel about what they did, about where they are?”

Dunn swung his crossed legs back and forth. “Until you feel it yourself, it’ll just be words.”

“Tell me anyway.”

Nodding, Dunn said: “Some of us come back knowing what the parameters are. Some only need a few weeks at Benamira to learn it. Some resist and spend a few years trying to fight it.”

“Like Sebright?”

His eyes clouding, Dunn only smiled faintly in answer. “You see, the Service has to be your family, provide your loves and mates, even take care of you when you age. Because Earth will forget you, and if you ever return there you’ll find it strange, almost incomprehensibly so—even with the Council doing its best to put the brakes on change. My advice would be not to return. You’ve done more than change jobs, Thackery. You’ve changed lives. Your old one is now forever out of reach.”

Dunn’s words struck Thackery as unnecessarily melodramatic. “That’s no secret. Any fool would know it. And the Flight Office warns us.”

“You won’t begin to understand until much later,” Dunn said with that same faint smile. “It’s almost as though there’s a grace period—which is just as well. It’s not a reversible decision. You’re already out of time.”

“I thought that’s what Benamira was for—to put you back.”

Dunn chuckled knowingly. “When I was growing up, the world government was led by statesmen. Now it’s in the hand of bureaucrats. Back then, everyone knew who Devaraja Rashuri was. My father
worked
for Benjamin Driscoll. But say those names to someone from this era and you’ll get a blank stare two times out of three.” He threw up his hands. “I don’t like the music of today. I find the styles of clothing garish. I consider body adornments self-mutilation. What can the Service do to help me? Yes, they wanted Benamira to be a halfway house. But it never cures anyone. More accurate to call it a hermitage—and some vets aren’t made to be hermits.”

“What about Neale? Is that what moves her, too?”

Dunn’s eyes twinkled. “So you’re mystified by the Space Lily?”

Thackery grinned uncomfortably. “Where’d she pick up that tag?”

“That’s one of her several nicknames, none of which you should ever let her hear you using. A horticulturist at Unity hung that on her. When you were home, did you ever grow any lily-of-the-valley?”

“I think I’ve seen it.”

“It’s small, unobtrusive, and looks delicate—and the next thing you know it’s taken over the garden. You follow?”

“No.”

“She’ll make it clear to you at some time or other, I’m sure,” Dunn said, in a way that made clear the subject was closed. “Well—have I satisfied your curiosity, Thackery?”

“Less than you might have.”

“You incline toward the painfully blunt, have you ever been told?” He brought a hand to his mouth. “Let me be equally forthright. Have you paired yet? Are you happy with McShane as a cabinmate?”

The question cast Dunn’s willingness to talk in a new and unwelcome light.

“I’m fine,” Thackery said, too quickly.

But Dunn took no offense. “We’ll be out a long time. I hope you’ll keep me in mind when you’re ready for a change.”

A glimpse of the rainstorm building on the horizon pulled Thackery off the climb way and onto the
Tycho
edrec deck. The landscape was playing on all twelve of the screens ringing the huge circular room.

Iowa
, Thackery thought.
Or maybe eastern Nebraska
.

One chair had been turned to face the darkest part of the clouds, and above the fabric of the shoulder rest projected a shock of reddish hair.

“Dan?”

He was answered with a grunt.

“You pick this?” Thackery asked, settling in a chair nearer the center of the deck, where the illusion was better.

“Yup.”

“Something up, or are you just trying to depress the hell out of everybody?”

“I got chewed out by Graeff today, in front of everybody.”

“Deserve it?”

“No. She’s got it in for me. I work twice as hard as any bridge awk, and everybody knows it. She’s just busting me.”

“Don’t argue. Vets know everything,” Thackery said cynically. From behind he heard the faint ringing sound the climb-way made when someone was near. A moment later Tyszka bounded off the ladder and joined them.

“Is this the meeting of the
Descartes
Masturbators’ Society and Sewing Circle?” he asked loudly, striding across the deck and plopping into the chair to Thackery’s right. He craned his head and took in the landscape that was playing. “God, how depressing. If I tell you how it comes out, will you put on something else?”

“Put on what you want,” McShane replied disinterestedly.

But Tyszka made no move toward the control pedestal, instead sliding sideways in his chair and hooking one knee over the arm. “You two look like you’ve already heard the news.”

It was Thackery who offered the obligatory response. “What news?”

“It’s done. They’re all gone,” Tyszka said, clucking and shaking his head. “And unless my intelligence is faulty, none of us have one. I warned you, Thack.”

“
Now
I know what you’re babbling about.”

“Will someone tell me?” called McShane.

“Women, my son, women. They’re all spoken for. I know. I just helped the last one move in with my roommate.”

“No doubt a painful experience.”

“Considering it was Nakabayashi, I would say significantly painful.” He made a loud clicking noise. “We don’t need them, though, right?”

“Celibacy forever,” McShane rallied.

“That’s right,” Tyszka said, pounding the padded armrest for emphasis. “We resisted, despite their crude attempts to seduce us.”

“We were too smart for them,” Thackery said, trying to get in the spirit of the foolishness.

“We refused to let them sap our vital life fluids,” declared McShane.

“No matter how much they begged.”

“Right. They didn’t meet our standards.”

“Not a one of them.”

The patter became rapid-fire, self-reinforcing improvisation. Thackery sat back and listened, the laughter building in him but showing only as a wry smile.

“Muir.”

“Too butch.”

“Abrams.”

“The ice queen. Uibel is still defrosting.”

“Shaffer.”

“White wear.”

“Too fragile.”

“DeLaCroix.”

“Too experienced.”

“Too crowded in her bed.”

“Baldwin.”

“Big sister.”

“She’ll tuck you in but she won’t fuck.”

That brought the first involuntary, half-embarrassed laugh spilling out of Thackery, and his laughter triggered theirs. “Graeff,” McShane managed to say, trying to keep it going. “Untouchable,” Tyszka fired back. “Neale.”

“Unthinkable,” Thackery blurted, and as the landscape dis solved into rain around them, they dissolved into the silly, out-of-control laughter of the tired and the stressed. Thackery laughed until his chest hurt, until his throat rebelled with rough coughs and his eyes brimmed with moisture.

“Well,” Tyszka said as decorum slowly returned, “if the Concom was right, maybe we’ll be too busy to notice.”

The mention of Sebright wiped the remaining smile from Thackery’s face. “I don’t know how much stock to put in him these days,” he said soberly, then kicked Tyszka’s chair. “Change the freezin’ tape, will you? This
is
depressing.”

Ten days from A-Cyg, Neale posted a schedule of crew interviews—four a day in two-hour blocks. No purpose for the interviews was given. Some of the interviewees came back in fifteen minutes, while a few stayed the two hours, and Nakabayashi was gone for three. None would discuss the interviews or even divulge their topic. The consensus in the hive was that the interviews were fitness reviews, and the anxiety level of those well down on the alphabetical list climbed precipitously.

To minimize his distraction, Thackery refocused his attention on increasingly difficult Contact simulations. Almost before he realized it, his appointment was imminent. He convinced himself he was at ease by eating a normal lunch just before he was due in officer’s country. En route from the mess to Neale’s cabin, Thackery detoured to his cabin to relieve his slate.

He was startled to find McShane there, sitting cross-legged on his bed and hunched over a portable netlink, a unit similar to the slate but with input capabilities.

“What’s up?”

McShane did not look up, and Thackery moved to peek over his shoulder. The screen was filled with two columns of names, none of them familiar.

“Aren’t you supposed to be on the bridge watch?” Thackery asked, glancing at his watch.

“I’ve got to get this finished first.”

“What the hell is it?”

McShane touched the scroller several times and the list jumped downward. “There,” he said. “There you are.” Thackery’s name was in fact on the screen, along with the names of several other crewmembers.

“Some sort of personnel list?”

McShane craned his head to look up at Thackery. “Do you remember the name of the woman who passed us through the Unity screening center?”

“No.”

“Come on, the blonde with the long hair. The young one.”

“I barely remember her. What are you doing, anyway?”

He turned back to his machine. “I’m trying to make a list of everybody who ever knew me. I mark them with a caret if they were friends, and an asterisk if I had sex with them. Everybody else is just an acquaintance. See, your name has a caret.”