"Great," Gavin said. "What the hell are we going to do with a mammoth?"
17
the revelation
No matter where; of comfort no man speak:
Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth.
The maintenance of her physical form had always been one of life's chief pleasures for Caitlin Conn. She enjoyed food, exercise, rest, work, self-care, affection--all the capabilities of her flesh and colony. Adventure and accomplishment were her meat and drink.
So it was a great frustration that not only was she obliged to remain behind at the helm of largely autonomous processes while her brothers and Chelsea adventured, but that both Tristen and Benedick had fallen out of contact just as things were getting interesting.
It was a devil's bargain. She couldn't relax enough to enjoy a much-needed meal and cleansing, but she hadn't nearly enough to do at this point to keep her occupied beyond worrying. Though she had to be informed and ready to assist the Captain in making policy decisions to contain each crisis--and minor ones were still appearing with disconcerting regularity--everything else taking place in the world was at scales too tiny and speeds too great for even Exalt humans to participate.
Helplessness was not her stock in trade, but despite feeling as if she were drowning in it, she forced herself to step into the scrubber and set the sonics and the steam to high. Even if it didn't relax her brain, it would be good for her muscles, and the human system worked better if everything was maintained. She would have complete contact with Nova, and Jsutien was still shrouded in his nanochains and watching the consoles. A little independence would serve as a test of his loyalties, though Caitlin was not about to let her observation of him lapse simply because she happened to be out of the room.
So even with her eyes closed, her forehead leaned against the scrubber wall, her head was full of images. Steam billowed around her, loosening roughened skin. It weighed down her short curls until they brushed the back of her neck. The sonics stroked her body in waves. Condensation, dead cells, and her own sweat knifed from her to vanish into the recapture, where it would all be returned to the ecosystem.
Maybe her stress could wash down the drain, too, and go find something to fertilize. It certainly wasn't doing any good where it was.
The timer pinged after three minutes. She straightened up and pushed her fingers through her hair amid vapor rolling back like the fabric of a dream. She kept her eyes closed for a moment longer, anyway, savoring the fantasy of a world in which cleansing lasted as long as you wanted.
This world wasn't it, though, so she blinked open moisture-stuck lashes, took one last warm breath, and reached outside the door for her robe. Warm cloth wrapped her shoulders as she stepped back out onto the deck, leaving damp footprints in her wake. It felt good to finally be clean of the last sticky residue of synthetic amniotic fluid. It felt better to have had a few instants alone in her head.
Now she could go back, soldier up, and continue to worry about Tristen and Chelsea--and Benedick, too, though she hated to admit it--in the belly of the world.
She felt the absence of her unblade at her hip like--well, like an absence, which struck her as a curious comparison, because when she was carrying it she would have said that it was null space personified. She pulled her hand away from its lack. When she reentered Central Engineering, her robe reshaping itself into trousers and a tunic for authority's sake, Jsutien looked up.
"Nothing broke," he said, spreading his arms wide to indicate the colonies whose repairs he had been supervising. "Well, nothing new broken, anyway."
"That's good news," she said. She touched the control box in her pocket--it had remained secure through the transition from clothes to robe and back again--and released his tethers from the floor. "Your turn. Go get cleaned up, and I'll mind the forum."
He arched his back and raised his arms, stretching the drape of nanochains like a canopy overhead. When he lowered them again, he said, "Thank you. No word from the prodigals; communication has not been restored. But Nova and I found some things that may be useful to us."
"Star charts?" She said it with arch amusement, trying to get a smile, but he answered seriously.
"Not that good. But there's a bunch of old astrophysics and astronomy data on primitive optical storage media. Nova can construct readers that can handle it. Some of that might include information on rocky planets. The Builders had very good telescopes. Even some orbital ones. If we can figure out where we are in relation to Earth and how long it's been since the images were taken, we can use that data to construct our own charts."
Caitlin felt herself begin to smile. "Astrogation."
He grinned back before he brushed past her. "After all, it's what I do."
While he was gone, she drew rations and arranged a meaclass="underline" nothing exciting, but a selection of carbohydrates, fats, minerals, and amino acids that would keep two people and their colonies functional and in good repair. When Jsutien reemerged from the locker room, hair still trailing wisps of steam, she tossed him one prewarmed consumable tube of grayish porridge. He caught it, nanochains flaring like a microgravity dancer's drapes, and bit off the top. The gel crunched audibly between his teeth.
"Nature-identical grape," he said, with a wrinkled nose. "Boy, this takes me back. And not in an entirely pleasant fashion."
Caitlin grinned between slurps of porridge. The taste was too sweet, harshly artificial, without the nuance or subtlety of real fruit. "What's it like?"
"Being back?"
She tossed him a pod of water, too, and watched Oliver's body snag it by reflex at the top of its trajectory. "Being in the future. If that's not a cruel question."
He bit open the water, too--stale, if Caitlin's was anything to go on--and sucked it dry, throat and jaw working as he washed down sticky porridge. Then he crumpled up the pod, which crackled in his fist, and shoved it into his mouth. Buying time, Caitlin thought. The contemplative thoroughness of his chewing did nothing to disabuse her of the notion.
Seconds later, he swallowed and said, "It's a lot like the porridge."
Under Caitlin's fingertips, readouts tracked, averaged, and streamlined billions of processes, keeping her apprised of repair and defense trends worldwide. There was no need for her to look at the external display, which was only a fail-safe. All the information she needed was right there in her hands. "I beg your pardon?"
"The porridge," he said, patting Oliver's stomach. "Or maybe I should say, I'm a lot like the porridge. Nature-identical. Which is to say, flattened out. The most interesting part is knowing stuff--pieces of me--are missing, but not knowing what they are. I can feel where they should go, but ... It's like reading a novel in translation. You can tell you're missing stuff, like all the jokes, but what it is exactly that you're missing is hard to say."
A novel was a kind of static entertainment in the written word. Like a story, but fixed as it was written rather than interactive. Immutable. A historical document.
Caitlin thought she was coming to understand Damian Jsutien. Like him, she finished the last of her rations, then said, "I am given to understand that you weren't faithful, then."
He dropped back onto his cot, raking both hands through Oliver's tousled curls, which were still flattened here and there from sleeping. "What's faith? I was an astrogator. It was my business to lie, not to believe."