Plus one
10 Dec 2016Mara Korine
"Mara, try not to move yet. I need to look you over," Jim instructed. Jim prodded at her and asked where things hurt and where they didn't. She was wearing an oxygen mask and Jim stopped her from trying to remove it. "You need that until I say otherwise. Do you remember what happened?"Mara felt a little foggy but details came with a little effort. She was more aware and capable than after her first accident. She was a little sore but not broken this time.
"A boulder smashed my suit. I was on foot, trying to reach you." Mara winced and stretched her right arm, which ached and felt stiff.
"Don't do that, you could damage your joints," Jim warned, "You've been spaced. It's no big deal, you'll recover but you need to let your body readjust. Just a couple of hours. Keep breathing that oxygen and don't move if you can avoid it."
"You know a lot about this, were you a doctor?"
Jim explained that he had no medical training but that he had helped several people get over decompression sickness. "It's sort of an occupational hazard I guess," he supposed.
"You saved me, again."
"Yep. That I did. What the hell were you doing on foot anyway?"
Mara told him what happened with the rover and the volcano, and asked if her things made it on board.
"Everything you had with you. A pretty stuffed backpack, and a hard case."
"I forgot my clothes, damn. I've got a couple of outfits in the backpack but I left my luggage behind when my suit got damaged. I'll make do. I'll just be doing a lot of laundry."
"That's fine, you can get mine done while you're at it," Jim said with a wink, "Do you want some juice? I can get you something before we strap in and take off."
"No, thank you. My stomach doesn't feel up to it."`
Jim reached around her shoulder and pulled a harness from between the cushions of the seat he'd set Mara in, and the one beside her. He was close enough that she could feel his body heat as he reached around her, first on one side and then the other, gathering up the straps that would keep her buckled in before he left her to rest. He was gone only a moment before the ship rumbled and lifted off. Strapped into a seat with instructions to not move, Mara felt the only thing to do was sleep, and so she tried. She managed to nap for a couple of hours and felt completely revived when she woke. There was no pain, and her thoughts were clear. Not satisfied with waiting for Jim to return, Mara set off to find him. Jim's ship wasn't as cramped as the Roswell and she floated down two wrong corridors before finding the cockpit. Jim was bobbing in his seat to the beat of electronic music, which he had turned up loud enough to drown out all but the loudest of sounds. The air was crisp and aside from the faint smell of electronics, odourless. His ship was very clean.
"Hello."
Jim continued to bob, then paused as the bass fell away and the melody crescendoed. Mara was about to call again when the music continued and his in-seat dancing continued with invigorated enthusiasm. He initiated a jump through witch-space. Mara held onto the safety bar lining the cockpit entrance and watched Jim gesticulate and dance for the distorted visions of nebulae, globular clusters, and star systems and they warped past. When the ship dropped out Jim cut the throttle and unbuckled himself from the pilot seat. He pushed himself up and turning around found Mara floating there. He let out a surprised noise, caught his foot on his seat and tumbled into the ceiling sideways.
"Hello," Mara repeated, speaking loudly to overcome the music.
"Oh, uh, hi," Jim answered and paused the track, "You did not just see this OK?"
"See what?" Mara chuckled.
"Good, because we need to discuss business," Jim said, dislodging himself.
Mara was disappointed that this had to be the first discussion but realized it was important. Jim pointed out to her that they hadn’t settled on a price before they had been forced into action and enlisting Flea and Robert had been costly. He insisted that compensation for the sudden evacuation couldn’t be less than 500,000 credits plus a charter rate of 30,000 a day for the rest of her trip. Mara felt the price was a little steep but then she remembered that she had been plucked from a man holding her at gunpoint. She negotiated the price down but didn’t push for much of a discount. The charter rate was reasonable after all. She knew that Jim could make more doing survey work in the neutron star fields. She also wanted to move on from the whole situation. Mara felt safe now, and was looking forward to resuming her real work at last. She asked Jim where she would be staying and found it to be far more comfortable than her last quarters. The room was on the starboard side of the ship and was entered into by way of a small round port. The interior of the room was hexagonal. The sleeping pads, there were more than one, were positioned on the panel which would be the floor when the ship was under gravity. The other panels contained storage closets, a sonic shower, and a computer. The large hexagonal wall across from the entryway was made of six large windows. Jim left her to pilot the ship while a planet outside, a gas giant purple in colour with a faint ring system, hung in the sky as they flew past one of its moons.
Inside, Mara took stock of what she’d managed to bring aboard. Her backpack with a couple of changes of clothing was there along with the stuffed bear and some of the items she’d found left by her destroyed ships previous owner. It’s ironic that I’ve got Thelonius and the chip with music and random files from goodness knows who, but I forget to salvage my own clothing. She had been careful to bring the instrument she needed to use in the field. She opened the case and immediately felt dismayed. The calibration guarantee system had registered a shock and was no longer valid. Mara knew that she could still use it, but without a third party to certify the tool she couldn’t use the results in any official research. If she found anything with it, she would have to return again with an undamaged tool to repeat the observations. She set it aside and made her room up as comfortably as she could.
Being officially on her way back to Tosia was satisfying. She spent a good deal of time reading. Jim had a nice collection of novels in his computer. Most seemed to be action or spy type stories but he also had a few classics and dramas which Mara preferred. She settled into a routine of reading after breakfast with stretching and exercising after lunch. Jim suggested they eat supper together after the first week had passed, and surprised Mara with a dinner cooked from real ingredients. “Most days I eat the rations, but at least once a week I like to land and cook a real meal. I might as well make enough for two,” he offered. Mara was envious of the real kitchen on board and was grateful for the meals, though to her tastes she felt he overcooked and over salted the food. Salty or not, the food was exceedingly more appealing than a nutri-tube. Jim noticed that she was drinking a lot of her water and asked her if something was wrong.
“Well it is a bit salty for my taste,” she answered putting her glass down.
“I’m not used to cooking for others. I’ll use less next time,” he asserted. He nodded to himself and continued, “We’ll be in Tosia soon. The gap is coming up. Do you have a pass you want to take, or should I backtrack through the one I found last time I was here?”
“I don’t have the route anymore, I lost my data. Let’s use your path,” she suggested.
The trip through the gap took them another week. It was slow going. The stars were so far apart in this region that the weight of too much fuel in the tank could make it impossible to jump to the next star. Jim played a game of keeping the tank full enough only to jump to the next star, then topping up with only enough to continue on for one more jump again and again. Evening suppers were better prepared, and games would follow the meal or sometimes entertainment. Conversation became increasingly personal for both parties. They learned that they had grown up only a few light-years apart. Their lives were similar only on that point. Jim had left home at an early age while Mara had been coddled.
“I bought my first ship when I was twenty,” Jim told Mara, “I had been saving up for four years. First I worked cleaning scrap, then worked my way up. All kinds of people come into scrap yards and I made a lot of contacts. I’d managed to save up half of what I’d needed and I was offered the remainder to just hold onto a package for a month. I knew they were criminals but the money was so good. And I needed it so I did the job. And then another, and next thing you know I’m flying the galaxy in my own ship.”
“In my family things are often shared. We may have several ships, or businesses, but they don’t belong to any one of us in particular,” Mara countered, “It seems cooperative at first, but it leaves you feeling trapped within it. My sister has chosen a husband very carefully. He’s a good match to all involved and his connections are good for the family. And our connections are good for his family. It’s a good arrangement for them both and I’m sure they care about each other dearly but that’s not how I’d like to do things. I do consider the family in the actions I take by reason, but not those taken by heart. It has caused strife before. I’ve turned down several men, of whom my mother said she’d never forgive me if I didn’t marry. I think they assume I never will at this point.”
“I’ve never thought that marriage was all that important. But I have imagined settling down with someone. It would be nice to have a stable kind of life. One day I’ll find someone who’ll live with me away from the cities and we’ll raise horses and eat real food every day.”
“A stable life? Horses? Really, was that a pun?”
Jim laughed and claimed it wasn’t intentional. He went quiet for a moment and Mara wondered about the change. He looked around the recreation room and with a sigh he said, “Well I hate to break up the fun but we’ve got some tricky navigation to do tomorrow, and then we’ll be in Tosia. I’m sure you will have plenty of work lined up to do once we are there. I need to give the living areas a good cleaning. I do that once a week and I’ve never had any infestations or funny smells. Not since I co-owned a ship with a junker. I became a bit fanatical after that. It will take me a couple of hours. Mind if I put on some music?”
“Not at all,” Mara wondered if she should offer to help, but didn’t. She was paying him after all. Mara went back to her quarters to read but found that her mind wandered too much to focus. She thought of the work ahead and her mind wandered. She followed her imagination through discoveries, of finding whoever was hunting her, and of Jim riding horses - sitting tall and racing toward the horizon. She remembered that she had some music on that chip that she’d found on her ship and accessed it to make sure it wasn’t damaged. It was in the same condition she had found it in originally, with the same corrupted data clusters, one damaged song, some books, and photos, in varying degrees of wholeness. In spite of her introverted nature, she felt the need to be near someone now. Mara called out from her cabin, “Jim, want to listen to some old dance music?”
“Sure, toss it on. Why not,” he replied. And so the sounds of rampa room dance music filled the ship. Mara offered to help clean despite her earlier disinterest but was interrupted by Jim dancing ridiculously. He stopped and called, “Now your turn, show me what you got Mara!”
Mara was embarrassed and her face turned red. She started to dance as best she could, but got tied up on herself and tumbled into the wall. “Well that’s enough dancing for me,” Mara said, dusting herself off. Jim was smiling and went back to cleaning. The lights dimmed for a moment and he paused and asked, “Did the lights just go?” They dimmed again and returned back to normal. Jim accessed a terminal and started a system diagnostic of the ship. He puzzled over it and asked Mara if she’d checked that chip for problems. She had checked it, of course, anybody would. Nothing had come up; if there was anything malicious on that chip it was extremely well hidden and Mara informed Jim of that. “Well, something is eating up the system’s power and everything was working fine until you put on the music,” Jim said as he turned it off, “You’re cursed aren’t you? There’s the ghost of some long forgotten jerk haunting you. I’ve rescued you from near death twice, and now my ship is acting funny.” A bang came from down the corridor. No, not a bang. More like a thud. What could it be?
Jim and Mara floated through the corridor to investigate. Jim took the lead, and as they approached the cabins the noise again sounded. This time it was distinctly three thuds coming from Mara’s cabin door. Jim rushed to activate the safety seal which would lock the door closed.
“Ah fuck, come on!” cried a voice from inside, “Open the door!”
Jim carried himself with anger from head to toe. “I don’t think so buddy, who the hell are you? Do you know where we are? It’s a long walk back if we decide to space you.”
“Space me, I don’t think so pal! I know exactly where we are, but I don’t know who you are. Answer or I turn off life support and bleed the air out into space.”
“Don’t make me laugh,” Jim said, “You’re the one locked in a room here.”
The lights went out, and the computer warned that life support systems were terminated. Jim turned to an access panel and tried logging in several times, but each attempt was denied. The air was already feeling colder, and Mara unsealed and opened the door. Jim cried in anger, “Mara what the hell are you doing?” The room opened and the lights came back on, along with life support. They looked inside and Jim said with a puzzled face, “There’s no one in here.”
“Who the hell are you calling no one?” called a voice from the left side of the room. Mara noticed her backpack floating near the ceiling, torn open. Looking toward the voice she saw Thelonius floating upside down, looking first at Jim and then at herself. “Sup,” said the stuffed bear, “A little help here?” Jim seemed paralysed with astonishment. Mara was also too stunned to react. Thelonius floated, slowly rotating without control staring at each of them in turn.