Except for Sirkin. Something was wrong, and Heris couldn’t quite figure it out. Of course, she would still be grieving for Amalie—that might be it. She had seen violent death up close for the first time in her life, and the victim was someone she loved. But Heris had seen other young people deal with their first serious losses. Usually, they came back to normal in fits and spurts, but with an upward trend. Sirkin had seemed to be recovering normally, but then took a downward turn. Heris didn’t expect her to be lively, happy, or full of the sparkle that had first convinced her the girl was a good prospect, but she did expect consistent good work at her job. And that’s where Sirkin had begun to fail.
Only little things so far—a missing log entry after a course change, a data cube left out on the counter rather than filed in its case. Heris had been tactful at first, murmuring reminders when she found the data cube, noticed the missing entry. Sirkin had looked appropriately remorseful and made quick corrections. But it went on. The other crew had noticed, and Heris arrived on the bridge one day to find Oblo giving Sirkin a serious scolding.
“I don’t care what your problem is, bright eyes, but if you don’t shape up, the captain’ll kick your tail off this ship the next port we come to. It’s not like you can’t do better—we know you can. And don’t tell me it’s grieving over Yrilan, because we could tell you were really falling for Brun.” Heris paused, just out of sight. Perhaps Oblo could do better at unkinking Sirkin than she had so far.
“But I tell you, I did log the jump coordinates. I entered them shift before last—” Sirkin sounded more defensive than apologetic.
“They’re not here. And Issi was on just after you—are you telling me he wiped your log entry?”
“No! I don’t know—I know I made that entry; I went over it twice because I know I’ve been making mistakes somehow . . . it was there, I swear—”
“Don’t bother; you don’t know how.” Oblo in that mood was dangerous; Heris could feel the hostility oozing out of him from here. “See here, girclass="underline" you have only two possibilities. Either you didn’t enter anything, or someone wiped it. I know damn well Issi wouldn’t wipe it, nor would I, nor would the captain. Who are you accusing? You think one of those clones sneaked in here?”
“I don’t know!” Sirkin’s voice trembled; Heris heard her take a deep breath that was almost a sob. “I don’t know what’s happening . . . I was so careful . . . and then it’s gone . . .”
“I’ve got to tell the captain; you know that. I can’t pretend not to notice something like that. It could kill us all later.”
“I know that,” Sirkin said. “I—I can’t explain it.” Heris shook her head, and went on in. Sirkin looked tired and unkempt—that was new. She had always been neatly groomed and bright-eyed. What could be wrong with the girl?
“Ms. Sirkin . . . I’ll see you in my office, please.” She did not miss the desperate look Sirkin threw at Oblo, who gave her no encouragement at all.
Sirkin’s explanation, if one could call it that, made little sense. She was trying to be careful; she didn’t understand how these mistakes happened; she was sure she’d logged the course changes and jump points, and had no idea how they had vanished from the log. Her hands trembled, and her eyes were bloodshot.
“Are you taking anything?” Heris asked. Drugs seemed likely, given the combination of physical appearance and absentmindedness. Sirkin hadn’t used before, that she knew of, but in the stress of Yrilan’s death perhaps the girl had started.
“No, ma’am. Not even the pills the doctor gave me after . . . after Amalie . . .” Her voice broke. “Things are just coming undone,” she said, tears beginning to slide down her cheeks. “And . . . and that makes me sound like Amalie. She used to say things like that . . . I wonder if she felt like this, trying and trying and nothing seems to work . . .”
Heris had no intention of getting off into that blind alley. Amalie Yrilan’s excuses were no longer anyone’s problem. “Sirkin, we both know you’re capable of better. You were doing extremely well up until we left Rockhouse Major. You must have some idea what’s gone wrong. Is someone . . . bothering you?” She was sure she could trust her former crew not to harass a young civilian, but it was only fair to ask. Skoterin, the newest? She’d have expected one of the others to notice and straighten out the offender, or tell her. No, more likely one of the clones, assuming a royal right to any pretty face and body. She wouldn’t put it past them to bring drugs aboard, either.
“No, ma’am. Nobody’s bothered me. I know I . . . still miss Amalie, but I honestly don’t think it’s that. It’s just—I do something, or think I do something, and then later it’s not done. I don’t understand it. Maybe I’m going crazy.” She looked up with an expression Heris had seen too many times on youngsters who had somehow gotten out of their depth and hoped an elder had a magic solution. “Going crazy” had been a favorite hypothesis in one ship, because there were medicines for going crazy. Simple inattention and laziness had no cure.
“I don’t think you’re going crazy,” Heris said. She tried to sound both calm and firm. “But I do think you can pull yourself together—and you must. Tell you what. Let’s let another bridge officer sign off on your log entries for a few days. If those entries disappear, we’ll know it’s not your fault . . . and you’ll have a witness to having made them. How’s that?” It was an insult, but Sirkin took the suggestion as gratefully as if it had been praise. “Now—take the rest of this shift off—we’ve no jump points coming up—and put yourself to bed. You look exhausted.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
As Heris expected, Sirkin’s log entries didn’t disappear when someone else countersigned them. So . . . logically . . . Sirkin had never made the earlier entries. It wasn’t a computer glitch; it was the far more common human error. Sirkin seemed to be making fewer of them now, in all categories—another data point on the plot of carelessness. Her appearance improved; she looked almost normal, if not the bright-eyed girl she had been. Oblo and Issi reported that she seemed alert, careful, everything she should be.
Just to be sure, Heris asked about conflicts with the crew; as she’d expected, they all insisted they liked the girl. None of them reported conflict with anyone else. And a discreet surveillance indicated that she wasn’t sneaking off to one of the clones (or any of them to her) when she was off-duty.
Yet . . . what had made Sirkin suddenly careless? Even in the aftermath of Amalie’s death, she had done tedious jobs with her former precision. Why now? Heris worried, unsatisfied. She sensed something wrong and promised herself to pursue it once the clones had been delivered safely for medical attention.
One morning Cecelia lay in her bed and did her best to hate herself to death. She was too old to rage at simple unfairness, but the unfairness of her situation went beyond anything she could accept. When Brun came to dress her and take her to breakfast, she did not respond to the usual morning sallies. The smell of hot bread and sage honey roused no response. She wasn’t hungry, and she wouldn’t eat. After the necessary rituals of personal care, she waited for her first workout, numb and passive.
“We’ve got someone new,” Dr. Czerda said. Czerda had begun to sound increasingly apologetic; it grated on Cecelia. “A specialist who might help. We had to wait, because she’s so well-known—just the person they might be watching.”
“Hi,” a woman’s voice said. “I’m Carly, your new therapist.” Another new therapist. Cecelia needed that like she needed a fluorescent bathing suit. She was glad she couldn’t say what first came to mind: such a string of obscenity would alienate all of them. “You’re very angry,” Carly said, in a voice that offered neither blame nor apology. “Did you know you could show that without words?”