Looking down at a grey mass the size of my fist,
textureless, a squat brick, still sticking to the wrapper next to my tray. It
resembled a cross-section of livestock brain; more fit for dissection than
digestion. It didn't help that I still had a vomit-bile taste in my mouth,
having not long ago bent over the sink in my quarters and heaved and heaved
until pale slime came out of my mouth. And there was still the nagging
sensation that the floor kept dropping out from under my feet. It didn't help
that I had been Out before. It was like my body was saving its full-on
rebellion for when we were too deep to feel anything else; too deep to turn
back or to hurry up and get there already.
"You
look about as colorless as that synthmeat," said Ben as he shoveled a full
forkload into his mouth. "We're lucky, though," said Ben, still
chewing, "because the guys who've been up this whole time, from launch to
LEO and the Acceleration into the total grav vacuum, back before they turned it
up to point-seven g, they said some of
the new guys got space sickness real bad. It's like how they tell you what it's
going to be like but it's pointless because it's a sensation. This was all back
when it was zero g, which is the
reason those dumbass new guys wanted to stay up. And, dur, it's the feeling of
perpetually falling, not like floating in a swimming pool. I mean, they call it
space sickness in slang, you know, but the guys literally got sick. None of
them had solid food in their system, but they still spent like a week straight
dry-heaving in the sick bay, living off a drip. What a bunch of morons. Way
worse than anything we felt on our day-trips up to the Rock."
Ben
drove his knife through the nameless bulk and it jiggled in a way that didn't
seem natural. Not that any of it was natural. He looked up at me and I felt
something rise in my throat.
"Jesus
christ, John," said Ben. "Eat, eat, eat, little Johnny!" in a
deranged kidvoice, back to normal and, "Don't make me turn your fork into
an airplane. And hey, if you throw up again, it's not like you haven't thrown
up a hundred times back on the surface training for this shit, right? At least
it's just physical and not bogus emotional baggage making you feel ill, right?
Never mind. Don't answer that."
I
dug in with my utensils and cut the rubbery thing and kicked it down my throat.
I picked up my glass carefully and watched the water dance in the freedom of low
gravity and washed my tastebuds halfway clean and felt my esophagus squeeze it
down.
"Good
to see you eating, John."
That
crisp, over-articulate voice behind me. I turned and the Colonel-Pilot, in his
flight jumpsuit, slid fast down the last few rungs of the ladder, squeezed his
hands against the sides at the last moment so the hard soles of his combat
boots seemed to levitate over the textured floor before he let go, made contact
and came forward. All silver hair, professional smile, clean-shaven,
black-metal eagles with wings spread on his collar.
"Morning,
sir!" said Ben with a salute.
The
Colonel-Pilot laughed his well-rehearsed laugh.
"At
ease, civilian," said the Colonel-Pilot. He clamped his hand on my
shoulder, grip firm as a military handshake, leaned over to look at my tray,
close enough that I could smell he was wearing both aftershave and cologne.
"You know," said the Colonel-Pilot, "back when I was in
Pakistan, we were cut off from supply for three weeks and had to eat this stuff
out of humrats. Humanitarian rations, that is. I actually started to like
it," he said, never resolving that odd tone that was simultaneously
mid-laugh and not.
"Back
in Pakistan, huh?" asked Ben, continuing his long-standing trend of
digging into the Colonel-Pilot, probing for tender spots, pushing it a shade
further each time, Ben trying to let the Colonel-Pilot know of his aimless
contempt of, if nothing else, his useless rank.
"Absolutely,"
said the Colonel-Pilot.
"Must've
been hot over there, huh?" said Ben as he folded his arms behind his head,
leaned back in his chair so far the legs came off the ground without tipping,
indulged one of those low-gravity tricks we never tired of.
"Yes,"
said the Colonel-Pilot with a certain finality, and Ben's mission was complete.
The Colonel-Pilot stood there, hand on my shoulder, knowing he was out of
things to say, formulating his exit strategy without making it awkward, without
further widening the rift between the civs and the mil on board. "Well,"
said the Colonel-Pilot, "best finish my rounds," then the hand
released, up first and then down again for a pat on the shoulder, then his
lock-step leave.
Ben
watched the man's retreat back up the ladder.
"You
know, Ben," I said, "you can be a real asshole sometimes."
"And
like he isn't? Jesus fuck. Wears his colonel's eagles and this isn't even a
military op. We just hired some guys to fly us there and help us build some
shit and he thinks he can pull rank."
"He's
a nice guy," I said and, without thinking, I ate another bite. It tasted
like newspaper.
Ben
pointed his fork at me and said, "If he's such a nice guy, then how come
no one knows his first name?"
It
made no sense. It was the sort of classic Ben Meridien wind-up, a sort of
inverse bait-and-switch, something that'd throw off someone who hadn't known
him all his life.
I
shoveled the rest of my chop. The plastic-molded seat dug into my lower
vertebrae. I wanted to go to the humid greenhouse and escape the general chill
of the main vessel. So I stood up, and Ben stood, and we bussed our trays in
the near-empty Mess and started off down the proper hall. Ben followed, and I
didn't mind.
Grey
all around. Echoes that died, seemed to suck the sounds out of the air. Plenty
of overhead, but an everything-is-getting-smaller optical illusion because of
the uniform, industrial color. We walked from corridor to corridor. I hooked
around a few turns past the big windows that looked out at the gaping black, a
sky almost as starless as the view from any big city. It didn't do anything for
me. I felt confined. I was glad I had only been awake for a week and a half.
Then back into an endless grey corridor. I saw the steamed doors of the
greenhouse ahead. The motion detector LED showed that no one was inside.
"It's
like a damn itch I can't scratch," I said, unprovoked, thinking about
something that had latched onto my brainstem like a deer tick and wouldn't let
go. Ben was used to it. He said nothing. He understood it best as I could.
"I just want to do something,"
I said. "I'm tired of waiting."
(Chapter 5 coming Friday, November 25, 2011.)
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