Adrift in Space

"Hey, Angie," she slowly turned her head toward him, "I'm familiar with these kinds of machines, I can show Carole later. How about the whirlpool and showers?"

"Oh, ok, this way," she forced her smile back and led them to a set of doors at the far end. Peter realized the machines such as Sheryl's, bikes and treadmills all offered a holder and Sheryl had a padlet in place on hers, a video played and her right ear had one of those magical 'earbuds,' a yellow one. Whatever she had playing she'd decided it deserved her full attention.

Sheryl had been gone once they'd left the well appointed locker room.

Locker Room. Singular. All of the facilities meant to be shared by everyone. The sauna and whirlpool requested nudity. 'More sanitary,' Angie had said.

"But please take more intimate endeavours back home," Angie had said without apparent embarrassment.

Peter had no doubt she'd given this tour before.

They'd retraced their steps past the hallway that led 'home.' Peter looked that way while Angie and Carole discussed services like a hairdresser, salon and the like. Somewhere ahead he gathered but his mind wasn't on that. About fifty yards that way to their hallway, another fifty to the far set of closed doors their guide had said led to labs, offices. Work. That made this satellite at minimum a couple of hundred yards each in the two directions but based on his escorted trip to meet Anna he felt it had to be maybe double that. But square? Round? Rectangle?

"What the fu...," they'd just arrived at a set of open, double doors and Carole's change of voice from near shared laughter with Angie to a hissed exclamation that chased schematics from Peter's brain. He hurried to stand behind a frozen Carole, Angie had halted just ahead of her, obviously surprised. Maybe subconsciously Carole shuffled backward and reached for Peter's hands, he gripped hers.

Angie swiveled her head, her mouth went to an 'O.' Peter leaned forward to speak into Carole's ear but caught Angie's eyes and she leaned in. They'd just entered a large room, similar in size to the gym, with around a dozen round tables spread evenly. Two tables were occupied, two humans sat at one table with a third companion who wasn't human. Another table had four seated around it.

"Carole, relax," Peter said just above a whisper, squeezed her hands, "those are our hosts. Anna... Queen Anna is like them."

Angie opened her mouth to speak but Peter shook his head slightly and she stayed silent. The far wall offered windows that were heavily darkened as the sun was simply a bright disk. The left wall offered service stations and behind that what Peter assumed were kitchens.Whatever the 'time' was it wasn't meal time.

"Well, Queen Anna has longer hair than they do, and she's strawberry blonde."

The occupants of the room had all turned to look but most seemed uninterested and went back to their mugs and what looked like various sorts of snacks. Only the two humans and their companion stayed interested. All were in variations of their printed short-sleeved garments. Carole's breath was ragged and gripped his hands but she seemed calmer.

"You worked for them. But remember, they need our help. Somehow. Those four," he continued, "two men, males, two females."

Lacking Anna's stain and heterochromia, the four aliens all had pale skin with the striations in a various paisley patterns. Their eyes were browns and greys without whites, their hair ranged from dark brown through a blondish color similar to Carole's. Peter wondered if any of these aliens came in 'A' or 'B' cups, the two females at the table weren't quite in Anna's class but close, they and Angie and Carole all of a size and shape that Peter tried to not think about as Carole's grip and her posture relaxed slightly.

Everyone had at least one earbud.

"Hey Angie," he said as he stood straight, "is the soup here better than what our machine puts out?"

"Oh, uh...," then she brightened and spoke just loud enough to be heard around the room, "this is Peter and Carole. They're new."

A few hands were raised in acknowledgement, a couple raised mugs of whatever they were drinking. Carole and Peter raised hands and both said 'hello.'

"This way," Angie led them to the serving stations to the left. Most were empty now, except for the center section which held an array of beverages, including coffee and tea and what looked to Peter like a soft drink fountain. But it also offered space for additional items.

"This side," the left side, "is where human foods will be, and the other side is Sylvan."

Signs in English, Spanish, and what Peter took as Russian and Chinese or Japanese confirmed that, as did the other side.

"What about the middle? Is that... for everyone? I shared coffee with Anna and she put milk in hers... What's um, on that side? Like, live slugs or something?"

Angie's expression made clear she didn't think highly of his comment.

"We... eat almost the same. But, well, there are some differences, body chemistries. But yes, coffee, tea, these drinks, all are shared. But we don't eat live slugs..."

"Does everything come up from Earth? Like the coffee?"

"Oh, no, down below we have hydroponic gardens. And we grow the meats."

"Animals?" Carole's question.

"No, just... grown protein. No animals."

"And you're called 'Sylvans?' A land of elves. You're joking?"

Angie looked confused but Peter wasn't sure about what. Carole's expression was a question at him. She'd accompanied him to a couple of recent D&D sessions but after meeting everyone had taken her book to a separate room and ignored them.

"We had... recordings from Earth. Lots of nouns and verbs were good. But names, how to translate. Then after we arrived one of our linguists read various of your books, felt we... well," she looked at the four Sylvans at their table engaged in a low conversation Peter couldn't make out, "looked like elves in the books and we had to translate the words... I guess 'Earthlings' would be more accurate but well, that term's taken."

"You don't look like an elf," Carole looked at her then at the far table, "you're just a cute girl. Nothing like them."

Her pained expression made clear the conversation had gone further than she'd meant. But they'd cornered her.

"I'm... them. But, well...," her gaze swung from Carole to Peter then to the far table, "but... different."

She went silent but her eyes still moved.

"Queen Anna made... me, Kim, others, our genes. She changed us."

HR 5256

[End November 1983]

Peter blinked and stood still as the room went black when Laurel closed the door behind him. In eighteen months this was his first time in this section of the satellite and his best guess was this was mostly Sylvan living space based on markings he'd seen which were in an alphabet that hadn't originated on Earth. He'd treated that written language as just another programming language and could read and understand a fair amount, at least when it came to phrases with few words.

But the spoken language that went with that alphabet was another matter. To speak it? Queen Anna and her folks were, in broad strokes, very human-like. But their vocal cords, throat and mouth weren't so and plenty of the sounds they made were beyond him. He'd gotten past little more than 'hello,' 'goodbye,' 'good morning,' and 'beer.'And 'whisky' and 'coffee,' his hostess being a big fan of the Earth versions of both.

Fortunately the wristlets and padlets offered real-time translation. Many of the Sylvans Peter worked with were conversant in English but for the more technical discussions both sides depended on the machines although it had taken effort to adjust to dual streams of speech, the original and the translation delivered directly in your ear.

"Paetor," Peter blinked again, locked his wandering gaze on a dark shape slightly to his right, "come join mae."

He finally worked out the far wall was almost entirely a window, but it obviously faced away from Earth as he only now discerned tiny points of light. Stars. He thought for a moment, realized they were in Earth's shadow so even the sun was out of view and the moon was on the opposite side of the earth at the moment. But it allowed him to discern a seated shape.

"Anna, you know damned well my lame human eyes aren't as good as yours in the dark."

A snorted laugh came from the seated figure but a moment later a chair to the left of her glowed with a soft light. He returned the laugh and took four short steps and sat in the limned chair which immediately darkened. It was a comfortable high-backed chair similar to those on the shuttle that had brought him and Carole to the station.

"Put out your haend," Peter left his 'why' unspoken and reached with his right hand, whatever the Queen wore it seemed to absorb what little light came in. Then he felt her warm fingers and something hard.

A glass, a base and a rounded bottom, a slight concave shape that allowed it to narrow slightly before it widened at the brim. He took it and put it under his nose and swirled. He sipped and his tongue's immediate orgasm at the satiny smooth taste was strengthened when his throat rippled at the kick of higher than usual alcohol.

"Shi... Anna, what the... I know you don't drink crap stuff but..."

He shook his head and sipped again.

"Thirty yearsh old, a dishtilliraey now shut, from the cashk," Peter's brow furrowed, he'd never heard her voice so unsteady, especially when it came to her whisky, a subject she'd studied diligently. Studies the always broke college student was happy to assist in.

"Look," his eyes had adjusted to their best and it allowed him to notice her nod to the window, he turned to the field of stars. A soft circle of light formed around a very dim star almost exactly between them and just above the horizontal.

"HR5256," he said and kept his eyes on the star as the circle disappeared.

"Such an unromantic name, you think so little of your closest neighbors."

This was their script but Anna had none of her usual brio. He sipped his wondrous scotch and waited but his companion stayed silent. Her statement was a bit unkind as he'd never found that they had a name for their star beyond what simply translated as 'sun' and prior to them discovering life on its third planet their name for Sol had been 'boring yellow dot number 319' or close to.

"What's up, Anna?"

"Today...," Peter was about to speak in the long pause but Anna broke her silence, "would be, been, Eains 275th birthday..."

"Wha... oh," Peter's words trailed off, then he slowly held his glass up in the space between them, "happy birthday Ian Flowerday, you will live in the memories of my people."

Anna tapped her glass on his and they both drank slowly but deeply, the burn smooth as silk.

"You never told me..."

"No..."

They sat together in silence and Peter watched the star and sipped. Without atmosphere they shone with steady light. But he swore he saw their target twinkle one or twice.

"It's worse, right?"

"Yesh, neaed telescope, instruments. Just as my Eain predicted. Unfortunately."

"Will the fleet make it out?"

"It will be taight. All of the shipsh are built, getting paeple up will be the problem."

"I saw the update, at least the first fleet left. They have an adventure ahead of them."

"It'sh a good planet. Microbes. Nothing bigger. It will bae hard work, but no annoying humanss in the waey. Put out your glass."

He obeyed with a slight chuckle, starlight glinted off of the complex angles of Anna's favorite decanter. He pulled back his refilled glass. It was full.

"Hey, Anna, my liver's getting a bit ragged trying to keep up with you..."

"Maybae I'm trying to get you drunk, have may waey with you..."

"Already there, I'll whip it out while it'll still work... this stuff is supercharged. But really, I hope you don't expect any actual work out of me today."

He smiled at her clear if soft laughter.

"That Ian would be 275 makes you 272, my Queen. I can only go by the last time I actually saw you, but looking good for almost three centuries."

This time her laughter was firmer.

"I'm not sho old ash that, my yearsh are shorter."

"Only by a couple of weeks... so you're only 261 or so. And so long as you're staying in my solar system, we use fifty-two week years."

"If you are done abushing an old lady," Peter snorted at the sudden tremor in the voice before it firmed, "we neaed to talk."

He snorted again before he took a deep drink.

"I'm drinking decades old scotch with a female born almost two and a half centuries before me and over thirty light years away from my home planet... and she still knows the words that strike fear into every human male ever born."

"Everay maele on everay planet."

He clinked his glass against the offered one and sipped. They'd be out of Earth's shadow in a few minutes and he wondered what this window, whatever the surface was, would do.

"I hear you and Carole... having, ishues. Shay is not... happy."

"She's... yeah. She's... bored."

"No. She haetes mae."

Peter took a slow sip.

"That's a bit broad, she's not... never been happy that YOU brought us up here... thought she had a deal, put your nanos around, you leave us alone."

Anna's sub-vocal sound Peter recognized as more or less 'shit happens.'

"But she does enjoy helping create some of the PR bits you've been secretly putting out."

Peter took another sip, savored the burn before he spoke in a quiet voice.

"And she's not happy that I enjoy the time I get with you."

The sound from Anna wasn't either of the previous sounds of sympathy or dismissal. No. This was a harder sound. He'd heard it, in fact, remembered it from their second meeting, their first on this craft. But he'd not had the context to interpret it.

Until recently.

Anna had given him recordings. Not their equivalents of TV and movies which he could access via his padlet anytime but personal and family recordings from her home world. They'd started when she was the human equivalent of nineteen. The first had shown her and Ian, Angie and Kim. Not the changelings on the ship by those names, the originals. Her mother and Ian's mother. And their fathers. And a few others like her brother Brad and the fiancee Umbra who became his wife in some videos. All of them a century, two centuries dead. Their names he knew them as were the closest equivalents from the Sylvan tongue to his but he had to admit that when her own people addressed her in that native tongue her name to his ear conveyed 'Anna' even when he'd intentionally disabled translation.

The videos had started at a summer holiday at some semi-tropical resort town. Many of the videos had been ordinary, he assumed, although they'd shown a lifestyle of middle-class comfort he'd never known. But he'd seen movies and read books that had taken him beyond a poor youth surrounded by crime and criminals so he understood that it all could've happened on Earth and little would've been different. Even with cat-elf aliens with paisley skin instead of humans it didn't matter. It was families who all loved each other reuniting. Even, hell, even the espresso machine Ian was so adept at wouldn't be out of place on Earth, the alien equivalent of 'coffee' was essentially chemically identical! No wonder Anna secretly bought beans from farmers around the world.

But it had been... a specific subset of videos that he had in mind. Anna's sound. It was... the sound from when as the Princess she'd voiced her challenge to the Queen.

Angie. Her mother. The Queen. Who'd offered back a similar, but distinct, sound. Her answer and challenge back.

"Do I get a blindfold and last cigarette, Anna?"

Her laugh was finally one of amusement.

"You should bae so luckay I kill you that waey. You'd go very happy. But. Alash. Not that."

He'd learned to not always assign the same emotions to Anna and her folks from their voices and reactions. But this time he felt by the end it was indeed a wistful tone in her voice. He was about to speak when she continued.

"I have two thangs to ashk of you. I want to shend Carole to another shaetellite, for awhaile at laesht. It has more changelaings and humans and children and shay can do more of her work and shae'll be around fewer of... mae."

Peter silently considered that, sipped, was down to the last quarter. The whisky had laid a slowly thickening layer of fuzz around his brain. HR5256 disappeared and was followed by even the brighter stars when their ship passed the terminator into the sunlight. Anna came into soft focus as the wall darkened but allowed a pre-dawn glow to permeate their space. Four more chairs like the ones they used, two beyond each of them.

"I think it will... bae good for the two of you. Time apart."

As with voices and sounds, Peter had learned to be wary of reading expressions and postures. Some of the changelings were nightmares to read, their bodies transformed but their minds and psyches less clearly so. Anna and the other 'originals' were easier in that he was usually wary, but he'd learned a smile really was, simply, a smile even on faces that didn't have lips.

But at the moment she wasn't smiling. She... was... was sad? Worried? 'Today' being Ian's birthday would play into that but Peter suspected that wasn't all of it. A thought pushed itself toward consciousness but he sent assassins to knife it to death quietly.

"Anna," he said slowly when it became clear she'd said her piece, "I... think you're right. But, um, how—-"

"Not you to shay, not tell her," Anna's mood clearly lightened and between words he heard her challenge sound again, "I do that. I'm the boss."

"You don't mean... forever?"

"No, Paetor, you two... you two will neaed to find again what you had. You often find what you look for when you are not looking."

"Thought you were a biologist, not a psychologist and a philosopher too."

Anna laughed.

"I WASS shimply a biologisht. The resht I had to learn on the job. I wash the Queaen."

"A title you earned when you challenged your mother... which of you could... fuck the hardest. The longest. Who could give and get the most orgasms. Who could get the males to first scream 'no more!' To get them to beg for mercy. You out fucked her and every other female on your planet, just to outdo your mother! Males and females died to allow your ascension, dried husks left behind. I have no idea how Ian survived."

"Hae wash how wae did in sso many femaless. Whay hae wash may lover, so smart, so viraile. Draid hushks wae left baehind, but shmailing draid husksh!"

Their shared laughter had a tinge of sadness.

"The reports I see claim they've worked out the hypersleep wrinkles. Won't lose older folks like on the first two expeditions. They hope."

"It was... a mesh," Anna voice low but certain, "but we... rallied. I have been luckay."

She picked up the decanter and wiggled it.

"Um, I'm going to stumble outta here as it is..."

This expression he knew was her 'no way I'm drinking alone' order. He held out his not quite empty glass. She filled it then her own three-quarters full. He smiled, that empty space might keep him mobile by a hair.

A new thought bubbled into his brain, this one he couldn't kill and bury. But if he said anything Anna would know he'd forced his way past the access limits they'd put on him. Like those phone phreakers he'd read about who'd used sound tones to get free calls and control systems. With every computer connected to every other once you were in one the others beckoned.

His Uni had been an early member of the nascent Arpanet, widened worldwide and becoming the Internet. Anna's folks had their Ultranet, way beyond Earth's version, and he'd found much of interest. He tried not to smile that he'd 'phreaked' their Ultranet so he sipped again, his Queen was surprisingly perceptive of human cues.