The Seeds of Time (40 page)

Clio took off the cap.

Hocking glanced at her shaved scalp, its garish red nicks. They faced off for a moment.

“Well then, put it back on,” he said. He spun on his heel and strode off. Singh came down the bridge ladder, double-time, caught up to them, whispered to the captain. Captain muttered back, disappeared up to flight deck. Singh, a slight man with black hair and small, pointed beard, gestured her to follow him, which she did, down the wide mid-decks corridor, past Biotime crew in the familiar bright green, and past army, not so familiar, in olive and tan.
The Biotime uniforms watched her, looked away. Army ignored her. Information was everything. What you knew told you how to act, and Biotime crew knew, by God. Knew about Clio Finn. Not dead after all. No, and getting a by God tour of the freeping
Galactique
.

Singh gestured, a delicate sweep of his hand toward a door marked
OBSERVATION
. “You will be waiting here for Captain Hocking,” Singh ordered sweetly, and Clio nodded. Satisfied, Singh left her.

Clio entered the room.

It was twilight, created by the docking-bay light from a broad expanse of curved viewports on her left. Outside, a dozen Vanda techs ministered to ship’s needs. Clio was in an amphitheater, the sort of place where you could gaze out on the far territories of space or hold a crew meeting. Clio fumbled down a narrow aisle, found a chair, and slumped into it. Remembering to breathe, she drew in a few deep ones. She felt sick, a pain up the middle of her rib cage. One step onto the bridge, and there was the old bank of flight controls, and she could feel the switches, computer keyboard, and flight-control stick under her hands. Felt the lights pulse down, the control panel lights surging up, felt her body meld into the pilot’s seat. Even if it was the ponderous, overproduced
Galactique
. Could fly her the same as any, by God. She brought her hands up, covering her face.

After a time she looked up to see someone standing in front of the windows, a black silhouette cupped by the concave glass as though trapped in the merciless eye of a gigantic microscope. A large, bearish man with barrel chest and hair pulled into a short ponytail. His hands were clasped behind him in a contemplative pose as he appeared to watch the
Galactique
’s priming, but on closer observation Clio felt that he must have looked past the scene outside, with his face unmoving, his body planted solid. She didn’t speak then, at a loss as to whether she spied upon him, or he upon her.

Without turning, he broke the silence. “This place is the only place on this ship where you can be in a room
larger than a coffin and be alone.” He scratched the back of his neck slowly, still gazing outward. “So I don’t blame you, don’t worry.”

Clio found herself saying, “Blame me for what?”

He turned, his features totally eclipsed as the windows shone behind him. “For hiding, soldier.”

“I’m not a soldier.”

“Then you’re a spy. I’d certainly have to report
that.”
His deep voice filled the room, though he spoke softly. Clio squirmed in her chair, despite her innocence on this charge.

“Crew here like to rat on each other, do they?” Clio asked.

“We like to think of it as watching out for the common good, rather like Blockwatch. Carl the Crimedog says this community’s not safe for criminals—that sort of thing.”

“Like I said, you rat on each other.”

“Now, that’s cynical.” The figure strolled down from the viewing platform. Stopped in front of Clio, took the seat next to her. “Mind if I sit?”

Clio shrugged. Brain starting to sort and sift, whether this was army, Biotime, DSDE. She was gauging which persona to adopt, but she usually worked it through faster, finding her mask.

With him seated next to her now, she saw a solidly built man of olive complexion, a round face and slightly hawkish nose, dark hair fighting for territory with grey. On his face, the creases of middle age traced a faint network of lines, dominated by a scar that pierced his left eyebrow, pointing to his temple like an arrow on a star chart. While she frankly stared at him, he also stared at her. For a while they let the ship’s hydraulics and bangs from cable couplings outside fill the space in the theater. Didn’t owe him a goddamn conversation.

She decided on the fuck-you persona, always the most dependable. Part of this one was to say little until provoked, then to lash out. She waited.

He turned away from her and slid down in his chair, stretching his legs out. “You want to be more careful, around here, in what you say. Doesn’t do to be cynical
about things—about security, especially—soldier.” He clasped his hands behind his head. “On a cruise, this place, this observation cabin, is always in use. So you can kiss solitude goodbye once we’re under way. Hope you like to live like a sardine. Ever been on a spaceship, soldier?”

Clio’s back teeth clamped down on her response.

“Got no room for personalities, or not much,” he said. “Too much personality, and you draw attention, make folks nervous. Best not to have a personality. Yours comes out in the first twenty seconds of conversation, which may annoy your superiors.”

“Thanks for the advice.” The man knew how to annoy.

He looked over at her. Brow creased a moment. “What’s your job, soldier?”

“Got no job.”

“Most grunts, they’ve got a job.”

“Got no job.” She let out the breath she’d been holding, let it out through her nose. “Used to be a pilot.”

Quiet then, as he looked away, steepled his hands in front of him. Then, softly: “That’s a fine calling, pilot.”

“Used to be.”

“Sometimes jobs get caught up in all kinds of crap,” he said. “Politics. Public relations. Makes it hard to do your work.”

The enormity of the understatement made Clio want to laugh. “Yeah, sometimes.”

A beat. “You the Dive pilot we’ve been waiting for?”

“Somebody hopes I am.”

“You’re Clio Finn, then.”

“Used to be.”

He sat up straight, turned, smiled. The smile took over his face. “Guess it doesn’t matter what you say, then. Can’t be reported for treason, when you’re Miss Treason herself.” He watched her, his generous mouth still holding the smile.

Clio found herself liking that thought. “Guess that’s right. The rest of you poor nulls can watch me in envy.”

“So you’re going to take us to Nasty Niang?” His smile faded.

“I doubt it.”

“May not have much choice, I imagine.”

“Who are you?” Clio asked.

“Timothy Ashe.”

“Tells me a lot.”

“Maybe I’m your friend. Maybe the only one you’ve got on this ship.”

“Helps to know who your friends are.”

His brows crowded down over his dark eyes, riveting Clio for a moment. “Watch out for people offering friendship, Clio.”

“Such as you?”

“If you like. But nobody offers something for nothing. Friendship doesn’t come cheap: it comes with some wicked tagalongs.”

“What’s yours?”

The cabin door opened. Lights up. Captain Hocking’s glance took them in. “Ashe,” he said, nodding. Then to Clio: “You. Follow me.” He turned and left the doorway.

“Captain’s doing me the honor of a tour,” Clio said.

“The uniform. What’s that all about?”

“Must’ve pulled the wrong ensemble off the rack this morning.”

As she turned to leave she heard Ashe say, “Yes. That was the wrong one, all right. Unless you’ve gone army.”

Clio turned her head back to him. Something in that tone of voice.

“Come by botany and see me, Clio,” he said. “When you get tired of the bureaucrats. Most of the time I’m in botany.”

Clio shrugged, following Hocking out for the rest of his tour.

The
Galactique
was second-generation Dive spacecraft. Second-generation, so already, at twenty-eight, she was an old spacer, having seen the first round where nothing was tested in the deep and things fell apart now and then. Here, as Captain Hocking squired her around, was the ship to leave all others in the dust. State-of-the-art fusion rockets—oh, not mere fission for mighty
Galactique
—with deuterium/helium-3 reaction and a thrust/mass ratio cranked
up to do the job, and smartly. She glanced to the innocent-looking aft bulkhead on the botany deck, where, hulking behind six-inch plates, the massive controlled-fusion reactor presided over fully one-quarter of the ship’s bulk.

First-generation Dive ships had been spare, with every ounce counting, as the engineers pared down mass as low as they dared. But now—now the number crunchers got Vandarthanan’s formulas loosened up far enough to squeeze the
Galactique
through Dive with its forty-six crew cabins, comfortable officers’ quarters and observation deck, and, at 160 meters in length, a sense of elbow room for spacers like her who’d ridden the early rigs and thought it good enough.

But for all its flash,
Galactique
was not much more than a big
Starhawk
. Three decks in the bulbous forward section: flight deck, mid-deck with a galley and observation theater, and lower deck. Stretching between rockets and galley, the two-deck span housing crew deck above and botany below. Simple. They could add flash, but couldn’t improve on the old design. Took some comfort in that, she did, clinging to the old ways worse than any Biotime grunt twice her age. Loyalty, it must be. Stupid loyalty, to a ship blown to chunks somewhere between Earth and Mars, and so long ago made no difference anymore.

Captain Hocking was standing, waiting for her answer. A botany tech cocked his head, looked confused.

“Sorry,” Clio said. “What did you say?”

Hocking pulled on his flight jacket, bringing it down over his belt. It rose again as he breathed. “I said, would you like to run the instrumentation pallet?” He nodded at the rotation switch.

Clio looked blankly at the pallet, then threw the switch. The pallet turned toward the bulkhead, humming mightily. Then it stopped. Clio hit the switch again. Gears ground.

The tech stepped in, threw the switch to Off, paused, then On again. More grinding.

Hocking wrinkled his nose. Waved at the pallet. “Fix that,” he said.

As he and Clio climbed the ladder to mid-decks, she
could hear the pallet protesting. “That’s never happened before,” Hocking said.

Oh yes it has
. Put a ship under pressure, lots of things grind to a halt. Things fall apart. Even in Space Recon, with its fantasy of precision. Hocking looked like a man for whom nothing had fallen apart. Believed in the illusion of mechanical perfection.

They arrived back on flight deck, walked aft to officers’ quarters. Here were cabins for Captain Hocking, Commander Singh, and Tandy, along with officers’ mess. Hocking stopped outside the last cabin on the deck.

“It’s not that you can’t work out here, you understand.” The captain’s nose had collected several large beads of sweat. Clio watched them, waiting for them to spill down. “You do your job, I do mine. Keep the channels open, but observe procedures, you understand?” He seemed to wait for her to answer.

“Yessir.” Four years with Biotime, and knew when to say yessir.

“Good.” Hocking jutted his chin up slightly, keeping the nose droplets from succumbing to gravity. He walked off, leaving her in front of Colonel Jackson Tandy’s cabin door. By this, Clio deduced she was to enter. She knocked. Heard “Enter,” from within, and opened the door.

She stood on the threshold looking into a large cabin, dimmed by the reddish glow of a carpet as a hard light flooded from the windows onto the floor. The curved viewports peered out directly upon the observation platform where she had stood gaping at the ship only an hour before, and where now Vanda techs swarmed to their tasks. Aft, a privacy wall for the sleeping nook. From the deep maroon carpet, matching upholstered furniture swelled, as though cast from a mold. A black lacquered credenza anchored one bulkhead. On its gleaming top a crystal decanter caught the loading bay’s glare, turning it to a moment of glitter. A desk, in front of the viewports, faced the door, ready for business. Music filled the room, something classical. Tandy sat on one of the couches, eyes closed, right hand on the
couch arm just touching his cheek as though it were a fleshy audio antenna.

She closed the door and waited for him to notice her. On the instant that the music finished he sprang from his seat, slapping his thigh. “Are you a fan of Bach, Clio?” He strode to the console in the black lacquered cabinet, snapped the power toggle. He turned back to Clio, head cocked. When she didn’t answer, he said, “No, I suppose not. Too much to hope for. You’ll like the modern music. Something with a beat.”

“Yessir,” she answered, wondering what kind of music she
did
like.

“I did too, at your age. Didn’t know any better, did I?” He gestured her to a chair. “Sit down, Clio, sit down.”

He sat opposite her, studying her face.

The room’s smell settled around her. It was that slightly syrupy odor of new carpeting and fresh paint.

“How did you like the tour?”

“Beats the shit out of the quarry.”

“Hocking’s not exactly a riveting personality. A little stiff?”

“A pompous ass.”

“Well, he’s harmless. Give him predictability, Clio. He’ll soon come around.” He watched her again. If he was waiting for her to make small talk, he’d be waiting a long time. Now she stared back at him. The smooth wave of his hair at the temple was frozen in a snapshot of an ocean crest.

“Do you like to read, Clio?”

“Read, sir?”

“Yes. Books. Do you? Read?”

“I guess so, sure.”

Tandy crumpled his mouth slightly, as though her answer wasn’t quite satisfactory. “Never read any Milton, I suppose? Most people haven’t. Those that have, if they’ve read
Paradise Lost
, they often find themselves rooting for the devil, rather than God. Here’s this poor, ambitious, fallen archangel, picking himself up from the holy wars, so to speak. He’s been crushed and routed, and his enemy,
God, has claimed the battlefield, heaven. But Satan’s not beaten—that’s the intriguing part. In some essential way, he’s still proud, he’s still got his principles. And eloquence. Great eloquence, as he rallies his fellow fallen angels to make hell a paradise of their own. By comparison, God comes off as a tyrant. It’s a twist there, you see. Milton wanted to expose the devil’s portrayal of himself as heroic, and God as the villain—he wanted to reveal the similar self-deceptions we all engage in, to justify ourselves. Quite masterful.”