Cat volunteered to take charge of the carpet demolition project, and I let her lead it, though I’d become accustomed to the role myself. For ten months, I’d been at the center of everything–arguing, coordinating, deciding–and now I was just another passenger. With a title and an amorphous job, but not in charge anymore. I had to get used to watching other people do it.
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Chapter fifteen
Marygay was theoretically on duty all the time, but in fact she only spent one eight-hour shift each day actually in the control room. Jerrod and Puul took the other two shifts.
Their physical presence in the control room was more a psychological, or social, need than an actual one. The ship always knew where all three were–and if there was a need for a quick decision, the ship would make it without consulting the humans. Human thought was too slow for emergencies, anyhow. Most of us passengers knew this, but it was comforting to have humans up there anyhow.
She liked studying the controls, a complex maze of readouts, buttons, dials, and so forth, arrayed along a four meter panel with two two-meter wings. She knew what everything was and did through her ALSC training, the way I knew how to fly a shuttle, but it was good to reinforce that crammed-in expertise with experience and observation in real time.
(One evening I asked her how many bells and whistles she thought there were on those eight meters of control board. She closed her eyes for about five minutes and then said, “One thousand two hundred thirty-eight.”)
She chose to be on from 0400 to 1200, so we always met for lunch when she got off. We’d usually throw something together at our place, rather than go down to the “zoo,” the cafeteria. Sometimes we’d have company. Back on MF we always had lunch with Charlie and Diana on Tuesdays, and saw no reason to change that ritual.
The second week out, I made potato and leek soup, for the first but not the last time–we’d be limited, for several months, to the vegetables Teresa and her crew had been able to grow in zerogee. So no tomatoes or lettuce for a few months.
Charlie showed up first, and we sat down to our ongoing chess game. One move apiece, and Marygay and Diana came in together.
Marygay looked at the board. “You ought to dust that every now and then.”
I gave Diana a kiss. “How’s the doctor business?”
“God, you don’t want to know. I spent most of the morning exploring the rectum of one of your favorite people.”
“Eloy?” I knew he had a problem.
She wagged a finger. “Confidentiality. I noticed a lot of vowels in his name, though.”
Eloy Macabee was a strange abrasive man who called me almost every afternoon with some complaint or suggestion. He was the keeper of the chickens, though, so you had to give him some leeway. (Fish and chickens were the only animals we’d had aboard in zerogee. Fish can’t tell the difference and chickens are too dumb to care.)
“Actually, you should know. Both of you,” she said to Marygay as they both sat down at the table. “We have a small epidemic on our hands.”
I turned up the heat on the soup and stirred it. “A virus?”
“I wish. A virus would be easy.” Marygay poured coffee. “Thanks. It’s depression. I’ve treated twenty-some people the last three days.” _
“That is an epidemic,” Charlie said.
“Well, people do catch it from each other. And it can be deadly; suicide.”
“But we expected it. Allowed for it,” Marygay said. “Not so soon, though, nor so many.” She shrugged. “I’m not worried about it yet. Just puzzled.”
I ladled the soup into bowls. “Do the victims have anything in common?”
“Unsurprisingly, it’s mostly people who don’t have real jobs, who aren’t involved in the day-to-day running of things.” She took a notebook out of her pocket and tapped a few numbers. “Just occurred to me…none of them are veterans, either.”
“Not too surprising either,” Charlie said. “At least we know what it’s like, being cooped up together for years at a time.”