Forever Free

“Yeah,” I said, “but not in years. You’ll be seeing some of us before long.”

“Good soup,” Marygay said. “I don’t know. I’m feeling more and more comfortable, now that I’m used to…”

“Bill,” I said.

“Yes. Shipboard wasn’t the worst part of the war. This is like `old home week,’ as we used to say. But without Taurans to worry about.”

“One,” Diana said. “But it’s really no problem, not yet.”

“Keeps to itself.” I hadn’t seen it five times.

“It must be lonely,” Marygay said. “Separated from its group mind.”

“Who knows what goes through their heads. ”

“Throats,” Diana said.

I knew that. “Just an expression.” I made the kissing sound for the ship. “Continue Mozart.” Soft strains of a lute being chased by woodwinds.

“He was German?” Diana said. I nodded. “Maybe Prussian.”

“He was still being played in our time. It sounds strange to my ear, though.”

I called the ship again. “How much of your music comes from before the twentieth century?”

“In playing time, about seven percent. In titles, about five percent.”

“Good grief. Only one out of twenty I can listen to.”

“You ought to sample the others,” Charlie said. “Classicism and romanticism return in cycles.”

I nodded, but kept my opinion to myself. I had sampled a few centuries. “Maybe we should switch jobs around. Give the depressed people something significant to do.”

“Could help. We wouldn’t want to be too obvious about it.”

“Sure,” Marygay said. “Put dysfunctional people in all the important positions.”

“Or put them in suspended animation,” Charlie said. “Table the problem for forty thousand years.”

“Don’t think I haven’t considered asking for that.”

“We couldn’t just tell everybody there’s a problem?” I said. “They’re intelligent adults.”

“In fact, two of the patients are children. But no; I think that would cause even more depression and anxiety. “The problem is that depression, and anxiety for that matter, are both behavioral problems and biochemical ones. But you don’t want to treat a short-term problem by altering a person’s brain chemistry. We’d wind up with a ship full of addicts. Including the four of us.”

“The mad leading the mad,” Charlie said.

“Ship of fools,” Marygay said.

I kissed for the ship and asked, “If we all went insane, would you be able to carry out the mission?”

“Some of you are already insane, though perhaps my standards are too high. Yes, if the captain so ordered, I could lock the controls and conduct the mission without human mediation.”

“And if the captain were insane?” Marygay asked. “And the two co-captains?”

“You know the answer to that, Captain.”

“I do,” she said quietly, and took a sip of wine. “And you know what? I find it depressing.”

——————————————————————————–

Chapter sixteen

The next day, we had something more depressing to worry about than depression.

I was in my office on the common floor, doing the flunky job of tallying people’s requests for various movies for afternoon and evening showings. Most of them I’d never heard of. Two people asked for A Night to Remember and Titanic, which would do wonders for morale. Space icebergs. Hadn’t worried about them in days.

The Tauran appeared at my door. I croaked a greeting at it, and glanced at my watch. Five minutes later and I would have escaped to lunch.

“I did not know whether to bring this problem to you or the captain or the sheriff.”

“The sheriff?”

“You were closest.”

“What problem?”

It made an agitated little dance. “A human has tried to kill me.”

“Good God!” I stood up. “Who is it?”

“He is the one called Charlton.”

Cal, of course. “Okay. I’ll get the sheriff and we’ll go find him.”

“He is in my quarters, dead.”

“You killed him?”

“Of course. Wouldn’t you?”

I called Marygay and the sheriff and told them to come down immediately. “Were there any witnesses?”

“No. He was alone. He said he wanted to talk to me.”

“Well, the ship will have seen it.”

It bobbed its head. “To my knowledge, the ship does not monitor my quarters.”

I kissed for the ship and asked it. “That’s correct. The Tauran’s quarters were improvised out of storage. I was not designed to monitor storage.”

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *