"It'll be our albatross," Harpal said. "I don't know what the others are going to think…"
"It's a goddamned bloody sign from heaven," Hans said. "Rosa's going to have a ball."
Wild Night was not, as the awkward name suggested, a free-for-all; boredom with lust had settled in. The occasion was treated as both a welcome home for the three travelers and a chance for the crew to let off steam after absorbing news of the death ship; to get back at authority—at the moms, and more implicitly, at Hans, with his planning and approval.
In the cafeteria, the crew enjoyed the first dinner they had had since the Skirmish that tasted like anything.
Martin had not participated in the Wild Night planning, and so was as surprised as anybody by the depth of vituperation Hans endured. Rex Live Oak cut his hair to resemble Hans', and performed a skit with three Wendys about Hans' sexual escapades. The jokes were explicit and not very funny, but brought hoots and cackles from the crew. Hans smiled grimly and tilted his head back in mock chagrin.
Martin wanted to leave before the third skit, but saw clearly that that would not have been appreciated. Group action was the call of the night, cooperation and coordination: laugh together, poke fun together, rise from the pit together. The entire atmosphere only deepened Martin's gloom; on Earth, he had never seen a social gathering turn sour, but this must have been what it was like: forced hilarity, insults and insincerity passing for humor, bitterness and sadness masking as camaraderie. Hans presided over it all with dogged equanimity, sitting slightly apart from the others at a table.
The unexpected came, of course, from Rosa Sequoia. She had been quiet for the months when Martin, Giacomo, and Hakim had been away, "Biding her time," as Hans said. Now, as the skit's players took a break, she climbed on top of the center table and began to speak.
The show's presenters could not intervene without breaking the fragile, false mood of all for one and one for all; they had started something, and Rosa took advantage of it.
"You know me," she said. "I'm the crazy one. I see things and tell stories. You think Hansis funny. You think you are funny. What about me?"
Nobody said a word. Uncomfortable shufflings.
"What about us?" Rosa's loose robe did not hide the fact that her bulk had turned to muscle, that while neither thin nor graceful, she had grown much stronger in the past four months, much more self-assured.
Her face radiated simple pleasure at being in front of them; of all the people in the crew, now only Rosa could manage a genuinely pleasant smile.
"We're flesh and blood, but we allow ourselves to be dragged across hundreds of trillions of kilometers, to fight with ghosts… to take revenge on people who aren't there. That's funny."
Hans' expression solidified, dangerous, head drawn back as if he might snap at a passing bug with his teeth.
But there was something about Rosa's tone that kept them in their seats. She was not going to harangue them for being foolish; nor play the doom-saying prophet, holding up the example of the corpse of a Ship of the Law to chasten them; she was up to something else.
"How many of you have had strange dreams?" she asked. That hit the mark; nobody answered or raised their hands, but a stiffening of bodies, a turning away of eyes, showed that most had. Martin looked over his crewmates, neckhair rising.
"You've been dreaming about people who died, haven't you?" Rosa continued, still smiling, still disarming.
"What about you?" Rex barked.
"Oh, yes, I've been dreaming; if you could call it dreaming, the crazy things that happen to me. I've got it bad. I don't just talk to dead people; I talk to dead ideas. I visit places none of us have thought about since we were little children. Now that'scrazy!"
"Sit down, Rosa," Hans said.
Rosa did not flinch, did not shift her smile or narrow her eyes; she was oblivious to him.
"I've been dreaming about people who died on Earth," Jeanette said. "They tell me things."
"What do they tell you?" Rosa asked. Target acquired, audience responding, some at least warming to this change, welcoming relief from the previous cruel absurdity.
Kai Khosrau jumped in before Jeanette could answer. "My parents," he said.
"What do your parents tell you?"
"My friends when I was a little girl," Kirsten Two Bites called out. "They must be dead; they weren't on the Ark."
"What do they tell you, Kirsten?"
"My brother on the Ark," Patrick Angelfish said.
"What does he tell you, Patrick?" Rosa's face reddened with enthusiasm.
Martin's skin prickled. Theodore.
"They all tell us we're in a maze and we've forgotten what's important," Rosa answered herself, triumphant. "We're in a maze of pain and we can't find a way out. We don't know what we're doing or why we're here any more. We used to know. Who knows why we're here?"
"We all know," Hans said, eyes squinted, looking from face to face around him, shrewd, assessing. "We're doing the Job. We've already done more than all the others before us—"
He cut himself short, glanced at Martin, grimaced.
"We know up here," Rosa said, tapping her head. She placed her hand over her breast. "We do not know here."
"Oh, Jesus," Hans groaned. No one else said a word.
"We play and we try to laugh. We laugh at Hans, but he doesn't deserve our laughter. He's Pan. His job is tough. We should be laughing at ourselves. At our sadness."
Paola Birdsong cried out, "You're sick, Rosa. Some of us are still grieving. We don't know what to think… Stop this crap now!"
"We're all grieving. All our lives is grief," Rosa said. "Grief and vengeance. Hate and death. No birth, no redemption. We are like mindless knives and guns, bombs, pigeons in rockets."
" Make your point and get off," Hans said, sensing that taking her off by force would meet with strong disapproval.
"Something else speaks to me," Rosa said, chin dipping, shoulders rising.
"Monsters in the halls?" Rex Live Oak called out.
"Let her talk," Jeanette Snap Dragon demanded, angry.
Hans started to rise.
Rosa lifted her arms. "The things we fight against, we might have called gods once, but we would have been wrong. They are not gods. They aren't even close. I saw something last tenday that nearly burned me alive."
"The God of our mothers and fathers!" Jeanette sobbed.
Martin slipped from his chair and started to leave. He did not want to be here, did not want to face this.
"No!" Rosa cried. "It has a voice like chimes, like flutes, like birds, but it crosses this span of stars like a whale in the sea."
Martin froze, eyes welling up. Yes. So huge and yet it cares.
"It touches everything, and around it swirls parts of itself like bees around a flower. It…" She nodded self-affirmation and wiped her eyes.
"Stop this now!" Hans ordered. "Enough!"
" It loves me!" Rosa cried, hands held out, fingers clutching. "It loves me, and I do not deserve its love!"
A few of the men walked out past Martin, shaking their heads and muttering. None of the women left, though Ariel looked as if she might spit fire. Her body shook with anger, but she said nothing.
"It spoke to me. Its words ripped my head apart. Even when it was gentle, it overloaded me."