OUCH!
Do writers ever listen? It seems I do not.
The giant galactic ship, ‘Gondwana,’ travels silently through space, passing between stars, its solid-fuel rockets not fired up in one Earth’s century, a vacuum of cold and hibernation.
She is far from home. That anyone or anything could be that lost, and that alone is unthinkable. But there it is. With the ship’s navigational computer locked up, trajectory unknown, Gondwana is three hundred million miles off course in the infinity that is space, filled with serene light, uncountable dying and forming stars, solar systems, all in a cold unimaginable vastness.
***
“What’s this, Harry? Oh God, please, no, not space travel? You’re writing bloody science fiction?” Steve says, eyebrows exaggerating their arc across his forehead.
I was beyond pissed before he walked in. “What the hell, Steve. Reading over my shoulder now. Anyway, inside the house, you should stand six feet away, not six inches!” I said, more concerned that he’d seen what I’d been writing than keeping a safe pandemic distance. Steve’s eyes crinkled, giving him that adorable expression I’ve long hated. “I mean it, Steve. You’ll make me sick.”
He steps back, not before picking up another typed sheet. “Just commenting, that’s all. I’ve been tested. I’m clear. So, how far have you got with this? What’s the story? Will the ship be found? Is anyone alive?” He asked, smirking. It is precisely that self-assured smirk I like to imagine ripping off his handsome features. Then sew them back together with poorly stitched lines. Right this minute, in one sentence, I want to turn Steve into something I can blow out of the open window that floats away like a dandelion puffball.
***
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Three of the seven crew were being revitalized in the reconstruction chambers. The ship’s navigator, Kirsty Harrison, had both legs and a good portion of her body burned by radiation during the hibernation. The dead bone and tissue were removed. She was a corpse floating in a vacuum and not the attractive young astronaut she’d been a century before. Then the computerized medical unit screen spoke: ‘running diagnostic.’ Two minutes later, lights on the console began blinking green: ‘Kirsty Harrison, Navigator: Repair sequence initialized.’ When she stepped from the chamber, she looked pretty damn good for a woman one-hundred-thirty-one years old and been dead as dead can be. The Science Officer, Alexander Parks, who had been reawakened an hour before, was in no hurry to suggest Kirsty get dressed, looking as she did, which was pretty damn near perfect.
***
“Oh, wait, look, here we go…we do have life onboard. Kirsty has been remodeled into life, Harry. That’s an interesting idea in science fiction. Of course, she’s a beauty, what is she — a Brazilian beach girl, turned astronaut? No fat astronauts for Harry Hogg.”
“Steve, when you’re quite done with your over-the-top lofty-headedness, I’m busy.”
“Touchy, touchy! I’ll go check in with the Captain of the Fridge,” he says, noisily closing the study door.
“Asshole!” I muttered before turning my attention back to the computer screen.
***
Page70:
Several months passed. The ship and crew repairs continued. They would have to work delicately to achieve the necessary criteria that would awake the two remaining crew. T.J. Blake, Gondwana’s illustrious Commander, made his way back to the Bridge but found his way blocked by a pressurized door that refused to open. He tried another. “Darrow, is there a way open to the bridge?”
A cavernous computer voice responded. “Go to deck five, Commander, Main Engineering, then down to deck three. Proceed to hatchway four. It will take you to the Bridge.”
“Great. In the meantime, don’t de-radiate Larkin and Clifford until you’ve fixed the damn doors. Understood?”
“Understood, Commander.”
***
It was a couple of minutes after ten am. The study door creaked ajar. The puffball had returned. “Captain of the Fridge wants to know if you’d like a piece of cake with your cup of tea?”
I didn’t look up from the keyboard. “A slice of Madera,” I said. Then, because he’s every inch a sarcastic son of a nun who can’t help himself, he closed the door with the last quip.
“I’ll have it beamed up immediately, Harry.”
He didn’t notice the middle finger of my right hand pointing sharply upward.
Steve arrived yesterday morning, having borrowed my car while his was in for maintenance. He parked in the drive and walked up the path to the front door. He was wearing a half-size too small hat, bought, I suspect, in a charity shop. Steve always walks with a peculiar gait, a long-ago accident, not a pretty limp. Having chatted with Jenny for a few minutes, he came up the stairs and sat down at my desk. Steve peered fleetingly at a couple of manuscripts — no words spoken. When he’d finished reading, he got up and moved across the study to look out the window on a California day with its clear skies and calm ocean.
“I would say you’ve pretty well set your roots down here, Harry. Maybe it’s time you got to work, or at least finished one long story. My problem is I don’t think of you as a writer, but as a patient, one with the inability to finish a piece of work,” he said. He was not looking back at me, assuming he had my attention, which he did. “From the beginning, you have created believable characters, incidents, and situations that subordinate to a set of ideas about life and love. Good characters have definitely been created. However, a well-developed character doesn’t compensate for what is missing in action and emotion and length to tell a good story. If you think it does, the whole novel will fail.”
***
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Christian, the physicist and oldest among the crew, nods, “everything is reaching capacity levels, including the chronometers and the intermittent sensor array to conserve power. The ship’s nuclear electric propulsion, the reactor moderator, and our thermoelectric generators will greatly reduce overall core mass. This will require a reduction in operating temperatures and reduce the total power levels achievable. We need to do everything we can to conserve the power from the Light Sail; even so, it will take months to generate enough power to leave this solar system.”
The Commander thought for a moment. “Okay, to conserve energy, the crew will be sharing quarters. It cannot be avoided. Christian, power down the ship at 19:00 hundred hours until 05:00 hundred hours, in which time let the robotic maintenance equipment take over. Mike, make sure that equipment is up and running by 19:00 hours.”
“Yes, Commander.”
“How are Glenda and Carol doing?” The Commander said, turning to Kirstin.
Answering cautiously, “I had them compute a course. The location is the Delta Quadrant, near a desolate sector on the outer rim. We can get underway as soon as we have the power source initialized.”
The elevator hatch hushed open. Parks entered.
“Okay, sounds good. That’s all for now,” the Commander said, then turned his attention to the latecomer. “Parks, you’re late. Take Glenda with you; you’ve got half an hour.”
Parks raised his hands in, eyes rolling, and then gasped. “Take Glenda? She came out of the cocoon forty-eight hours ago. Her limbs hardly move. It’s a difficult assignment. She hasn’t the strength, Commander.” But the Commander was already leaving. “One other thing,” Parks called after him. “Keith is not going to make it.” Into the shocked silence, he added, “his body is rejecting. The radiation shield failed him during the journey.” The Commander stopped, turned, and looked at Parks for answers. “If I had a more extensive lab and working equipment, I could probably nail the problem down and do something about it. But-” and he shrugged, despairingly, “there’s nothing in the knowledge base we haven’t tried.”
“Parks,” said the Commander, “save him, that’s an order,” and he turned away.
***
My study door opened. The floating puffball, wearing an eerily prophetic grin, peers around the door. “Captain of the Fridge wants to know if you’d like a piece of cake with your cup of tea?”
“A slice of Madeira.”
“Then I’ll have it beamed up immediately, Harry.”
The door was pulled closed again, but it didn’t protect his ears from muttered abuse.
When Steve walked up the path, he did so having returned my car, which he loaned while his was in the garage. He was wearing a hat with a turned-up brim, half size too small. Steve walks with a peculiar gait, not a pretty limp, the result of an accident long ago. Later in the morning, at my desk, he mused over and picked up a manuscript, browsed for fifteen minutes. No words were spoken. He got up and moved across the study to look out the window, seeing a clear sky and calm ocean.
“It is not yet a book; it is a skeleton of a book, it shows promise, but is not yet ready to send to a publisher.”
Poor Steve, he can’t tell me I haven’t got what it takes, that I lack the focus to write anything substantial, and I’ll never complete a publishable novel. He sees me as a man drowning, making a last gasp effort to reach for an editor’s hand, hoping to set his own feet back on dry land.
***
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To make matters worse, Parks had been paired with Kirsty. He was so tired at the end of his shift he couldn’t possibly have cared less. He showered, hit the drier, staggered towards the capsule, pressed a button on the wall to release his cot, and got in.
He half-woke at the sound of Kirsty taking a shower an hour later.
He let himself fall back asleep, waking again to the persistent pounding from outside the capsule.
Shit! The power is off! She is stuck in the cubicle, and it was already below freezing. He opened the capsule, freezing his ass off. Kirsty had stopped pounding. He listened through the door.
“Kirsty?”
He thought, or maybe imagined that he could hear her sobbing on the other side. Cursing, he found the emergency release lever at the top right corner and pulled it. He then leaned against the door, pressed his hands flat against it for friction, and heaved it open.
“Jesus, Kirsty!”
She was sobbing, shivering, huddled in the corner, naked, wet, and almost unconscious with cold. Parks scooped her up and carried her back to the cot, laying her down. “What were you thinking? You were supposed to be back here before 19:00 hundred hours,” he told her. “The power’s off, except for life-support.”
She was trembling like jelly. “I’m not sleeping with you. I want my clothes.”
“Right, of course, you do. Where’d you put your clothes? In the disposal, right?”
“I’ve got other clothes — ”
“And how, if I may ask, are you going to get the locker open?”
She was silent a long moment. “I want the cot to myself?”
“Kirsty!”
“Yes?”
“Move the fuck over; I’m freezing and not arguing with you. Get over. No, the other way, with your back to me so we’ve got enough room for both of us.” Kirsty slammed over, keeping her knees pulled up as a child might. “Oh hell. Your hair’s full of ice.”
“Don’t hold me like that.”
“That’s enough. Shut the hell up. For now, this is how we have to sleep.”
Sighing, Parks gave himself up to blessed sleep.
Kirsty stayed awake, smiling.
***
“Any sex happening yet? Steve asked. “I suppose you’ve got spacemen making love to robots,” he said. “Weren’t you…just last week, writing about pirates, sailing ships filled with treasures, peasant sailors, and a young beauty being rescued?” He said, still staring out the window.
If I had a shovel, I’d shovel this piece of shit, wearing his tan Italian moccasins, right out the fucking window. On the other hand, I have a genuine admiration for open mockery.
Looking over at the back of my friend, his hands set deep in jean pockets, his Untuckit shirt, bought in Corte Madera last Friday, where we had coffee and a conversation not dissimilar to the one he’s looking to have now, Steve feels I’m losing my nerve. I am incapable of putting a finished book in his hands.
He and I happen in life so differently; we are emotionally different and professionally light-years apart. I’ll guarantee, though, our love for each other is to the same degree. Always been that way.
Getting a story finished is like strapping me to an electric chair. I don’t go there willingly.
“The stories I’ve read have substance; they reveal plots worth following, the characters are believable, but each must culminate in something to justify the reader’s interest. Do you understand where I’m going with this?”
Steve has never been afraid to risk offering some general remarks.
“Could we do this over dinner? My attention is elsewhere at the moment,” I said.
He finally turned to face me. “You finished ‘Rhino’ two years ago. I explained to you what I thought it needed. It’s still sitting there on your desk, untouched since I gave it back to you.”
“I’m on it, Steve. I’m just into a lot of stuff at the moment.”
“I told you The Chair was an exceptional basis for a story. Halfway done, and nothing. What is the point? What we have is a tedious disconnected casserole of ideas that have come to nothing.”
“Ouch!”