The Passenger Ch. 01

"Welcome to our view for the next few weeks," I said.

"Not much happening there," Anne agreed. "And it's gone quiet in here, too."

"That's because in hyperspace we're not using the sublight drive, which is what you've been hearing until now, " I explained. "The hyperdrive doesn't have any moving parts and it burns no fuel, so it's completely silent."

I quickly checked the monitors to make sure everything was as it should be, then keyed in the sequence that locked the controls.

Anne stood up and stretched.

"I hope you're not into some awful trashy music."

I chuckled.

"Not really. I'm a fairly pedestrian sort of guy."

"I wouldn't know. I haven't really had a chance to get to know you yet."

She looked at me, and somehow her gaze held mine.

"But I would like to," she said.

I returned her gaze for a moment, not sure what to say. Although she was standing a few feet away, it felt like she was very close right now. I realized that I would like to know her better as well. I just wasn't sure what that meant.

"Well, we've got lots of time to talk," I said.

I stood up.

"Are you hungry?" I asked her.

"I could do with a bite," she said. "How's your autokitchen?"

"Not bad, if I do say so myself."

"And you do say so yourself."

I nodded as I walked over to the 'kitchen and called up the menu on the display.

"Ladies first. And don't be shy."

She flashed me a smile.

"Thank you, captain."

She quickly scrolled through the menu, then tapped out her order on the panel. She punched more quickly than anyone else I'd ever seen. The kitchen clicked, hummed and whirred, and a few moments later it produced her meal: a large bowl with some sort of rich creamy pasta dish, and a smaller one with what looked to be a very sweet type of dessert.

"That doesn't look bad," she said as she took her food to the table and sat down.

"I haven't even tried half the kitchen menu myself yet," I replied. "I usually eat fairly light during flights. What you've got there looks like about a million calories worth of sugar and starch, and I wouldn't have enough waking hours to work that off in the gym."

She smiled and shrugged.

I guess I'm lucky that way. I just don't seem to put on any weight."

I punched for a more moderate dinner myself: lightly grilled fish, some mixed vegetables and a sweet potato. All fake, of course, although you couldn't tell: the 'kitchen simply synthesizes everything. It's hooked into the main recycling system, but most people prefer not to look to closely at the fact what comes out of the 'kitchen is pretty much recycled solid human waste. Which is stupid, if you ask me, because it's essentially the same process that grows food naturally in a planetary ecosystem, although there the cycle is far longer and less direct.

It didn't seem to bother Anne, either. She attacked her meal with gusto.

"Hmm," she said around a mouthful of pasta. "This is quite good."

I sat down across from her and put my plate on the table.

"Thanks. I'm glad you like it."

Over the years I'd spent considerable money and effort on the Slowboat to make her as comfortable as I could afford, including regular upgrades to the autokitchen. I won't say I felt anything like a home-owner's pride, but it was nice to see my efforts appreciated. I began to eat as well.

"So tell me about yourself," she said.

"Oh, there's not much to tell. I was born at an early age, I grew up, things happened... and here we are."

"I'm sure there's a little more to it than that."

I shrugged.

"Well... Yeah. I guess so. But..."

"But you'd rather not say."

"Well, no... I mean, I have nothing to hide. It's just that..."

Suddenly I felt clumsy, awkward.

"It's just that you're not so good with people these days?"

I took another bite.

"What makes you think that?"

She smiled.

"You're flying this ship all by yourself for weeks on end, so you've got to be more comfortable with being alone than being with people. Or at least that would be my guess."

I chewed, swallowed, nodded slowly.

"I guess that's a part of it."

"Also," she continued, "there's something about you... No offense, Harvey, but it's like you've got this No-Go zone around you."

Her beautiful green eyes caught mine, and the look she gave me was very direct.

"You've got to let someone in sooner or later, you know."

I sighed, nodded slowly.

"I'm not saying you're wrong," I said, a little curtly. "But you'll have to settle for later."

I took another bite.

"That's okay. Better late than never. We've got time."

She had finished her pasta and started on her dessert.

"Hmm. Your 'kitchen is good. This is really awesome."

"That looks a little too sweet for my taste," I said, grateful for the change of subject.

"I like sweet."

She took another spoonful, put it in her mouth. It was a pleasure to watch her.

"So what do you do, when you're out here all by yourself? It must get boring after a while."

"Oh, not really. Of course, cabin fever can be a problem sometimes, I'll admit, but not as often as you'd think. Usually there are enough things to do. In-flight maintenance, mostly. Anything from checking the sublight engines to cleaning out the air ducts. The gym also helps. I don't know if you were planning on using it, but I strongly suggest you do, or you will start to feel it in a few weeks."

She smiled wickedly.

"You just say that because you've been thinking about me looking all hot and sweaty."

"Telling would be cheating," I said, trying for dignity but not quite pulling it off. "It's up to you, of course. I exercise about half an hour each day at least. I need it."

She smiled.

"Actually, I was planning on it. I'm afraid I'll start feeling cooped up if I don't."

"I find that it helps," I said. "I can't read and watch 3D all the time."

"What do you read, usually?"

"Oh, just about anything. Philosophy, popular science, ancient Earth history... Nothing to complicated, though. Stuff like hyperdrive design and that sort of thing is too much like hard work. I tried alien languages, but I'm not very good at it. Phenoian verbs make my tongue hurt."

Her laugh was like music.

"Phenoian? I'm not surprised. I don't think Phenoians even speak in the same frequency range as we do."

"Well, it's an inflected language with subsonic undertones, so yeah..."

She looked at me for a moment. Then she chuckled.

"What's so funny?"

"You are," she said. "You've told me so much about yourself already."

"Like what?"

"Oh, let's see. You're good at being alone and you're somewhat of a private person, but you're not anti-social. You're a gentleman, so you're likely to be considerate as well. You don't like very sweet foods. You have a brain and you're not afraid to use it, and you interested in a wide range of subjects, but abstract math isn't one of your strong points. So you're pretty much an intellectual type, but in the good sense of the word, and you don't let it interfere with your socializing. You're not into trashy music. You open to other species. You take good care of yourself, which also means you've got the discipline to go with. And you're not afraid of work. So. Not bad for a guy who doesn't want to give away too much about himself."

I slowly nodded.

"I think you missed your calling. You should have been a shrink. Or... Are you?"

She shook her head.

"No, that's not me. I'm just good at listening, that's all."

I got the hint, but I decided to ignore it for the moment.

"Anyway," she said. "I got some, so let me give some in return. Ask me anything."

I smiled.

"So what's a girl like you doing on a tramp freighter like this?"

She laughed.

"You can do better than that. Still... Life, I guess."

She sat there for a second, a distant look in her eyes, then she smiled again. She smiled a lot. I liked that.

"Alright. I was born on a research station orbiting Kappa Ceti. You know Kappa? It's small orange dwarf with crazy magnetic fields and an even crazier gravity signature that distorts space in all kinds of weird and wonderful ways. That's what the research station was there for. Anyway, I spent the first years of my life between telescopes and magnetometers and graviton detectors and what not. My father was an astrophysicist, so I suppose it was inevitable that I would turn out like a geek."

I smiled at her.

"You're not a geek."

"That seems to be a matter of opinion. Anyway, my parents were from Iota and when the station was decommissioned they moved back there and sent me to school. The meat grinder that passes for a society on Iota wanted me to do nice girly things, but I would have made a very bad office assistant and a worse child minder, so I managed to persuade my parents to let me study engineering. I was the only girl in a whole gaggle of male tech nerds. Let's just say it wasn't easy."

"I can believe that. I've been to Iota. Can't think of a worse place to buck the system."

"Yeah, it was pretty rough at times. And my chances of getting a job there were of course absolutely zero. I didn't feel like spending the rest of my life there, so the decision to leave was an easy one. Because I couldn't afford the passage, I hung around at the space port hoping to work my way off Iota. For a few weeks I didn't get anywhere, because I had no experience as a crew member. But then I met this freighter captain. Her ship was much larger than this one, but a lot less comfortable. And a lot older. The Excalibur. She signed me up right away. As a scrubber, but I didn't mind scraping away at engine crud for a few weeks, as long as it got me off Iota. So cleaning plasma manifolds on the 'Scalibur it was."

She chuckled.

"It was only after take-off when I discovered why the captain had been so eager to take me on. Her crew was all female. And, as it turned out, all lesbian. It was a very interesting trip."

"Oh?" I said innocently.

"Yes," she said, getting up and turning to the autokitchen. "I learned a lot during my time on board."

She punched in her order, then looked at me over her shoulder.

"Can I get you anything?" she asked.

"You'll find my favorite poison under menu shortcut one."

"Ehm... Yes. Got it. Oh. Wow. You're not exactly shy about caffeine, are you?"

"Occupational hazard. Sometimes you work strange hours in this job and you need something to keep you going. Eventually you learn to like it."

"I'll take your word for it."

She handed me the steaming cup, her fingers brushing the back of my hand when she sat back down.

"Where was I?"

"You were about to describe in great detail your very interesting experiences with this lesbian crew."

"Yeah, right, you wish. Alright, I'll say this: I was still fairly innocent when I left Iota. It took them a little while to seduce me. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't a virgin. But a misogynist society doesn't make for many good male lovers. I'd had sex a couple of times, but at that point in my life I considered it mostly a waste of effort. I wasn't very interested. Or very experienced."

She took a slow sip from her drink, apparently gathering her thoughts.

"The soundproofing on that old freighter wasn't much," she continued. "When I first heard the screams, I thought someone was in agony. But what I walked in on turned out to be something entirely different." She smiled and took another sip. "At that time I'd never had an orgasm, so to see another woman thrashing in ecstasy was something quite new for me."

She took another sip, and her expression became a complex mixture of shyness and amusement.

"So they... educated me, I guess," she said slowly. "I finally decided it looked like something I wanted to try. And you know what? It wasn't as good as they promised. It was a thousand times better." She gazed in the distance, a dreamy look in her eyes. "They gave me my first orgasm... And then a hundred more. It was... Well, let me just say that when three or four women work together to give you as much pleasure as they can, all at the same time... And they know exactly how to do it... It's something really special."

She took another sip of her drink.

"I could have stayed on after that trip. And I was tempted, let me tell you. But in the end, it wasn't the kind of life I had in mind. So we said our goodbyes, and after a while I found a job with Vergence Sigma, the company you're moving our cargo for. And I've been working for them ever since."

She smiled, looking at me.

"So that's what's a gal like me is doing on a tub like this."

"Wow..." I said. "That's... quite an answer to such an inane question."

"Well, you did ask."

She smiled at me over the rim of her cup. I liked that smile more and more.

"True," I said. "What did you mean when you mentioned the sort of life you had in mind? What are you planning for yourself? A home, a husband, children? Or are you a career woman at heart?"

She shrugged.

"Back then I was pretty much thinking of a career. Now I'm not sure. I enjoy my work and I'm good at it, but it's not what I'm living for."

She drained her cup and put it on the table.

"A family?" she mused. "Well, maybe, one day."

She looked at me directly.

"And what about you?"

I suppose I should have seen the question coming. And it's not as if she didn't deserve an answer, after the ones she had given me. So I nodded, albeit a little reluctantly.

"A fair question."

I drained my cup slowly, more to give myself some time to think than for any other reason. Then I sighed. I didn't mean to, but I did.

"Alright," I said. "I suppose one answer deserves another."

I took a deep breath, waiting for the familiar pain. I've become used to it during all the years I've carried it around within me. I prefer not to get too close to it. But this time, somehow, it was different. The pain was still there, but it was more... distant, muted.

"I was born on a small backwater planet named Artega", I began. "I'm pretty sure you have never heard of it, because nobody has. Even I didn't, for years and years. Everyone just called it "the world". I grew up next door to a girl named Lisa. Yes, that's right. She literally was the girl next door. We played together, we went to school together and yes, when we reached that age, we discovered sex together. I never knew a life without her in it. I couldn't imagine one, either. She felt the same way. Nobody was surprised when we got married as soon as we were old enough."

I raised my cup for another sip before I remembered it was empty. Anne got up and wordlessly punched me another one.

"Artega doesn't have what you'd call a strong economy. I got a job as an apprentice trader, which carries no more prestige than being a scrubber on a freighter, when you think about it. Fetching, carrying, delivering, that sort of thing. Lisa had been a waitress for a few years before we married. We worked hard. We lived a simple life. We were happy."

I took a sip, feeling the warmth and the caffeine work their magic.

"But we both knew that that was as far as we'd ever get, being stuck in a small village on a backwater planet as we were. We had dreams of leaving, of traveling, of finding a better place for ourselves. Like most people do, I guess. Then, one evening when I went to pick up Lisa after work, one of her customers was giving her a hard time. He was drunk. Couldn't keep his hands to himself. So I walked up behind him with a nice, chunky piece of firewood and I hit him over the head with it. I must have hit him pretty hard, because he dropped like a brick."

"Firewood?"

"Wood that you burn to get heat for cooking and warmth. I told you it was a backward place. It's only on the more primitive worlds that you'll still find wood being used for fuel."

"It seems such a waste."

"Unlike most industrialized planets, Artega had tons of it. It grew more quickly than we could use it. Anyway, the local constabulary arrived after an hour or so, in force, which is to say all three of them. I was lucky I hadn't hit the bum too hard, or I'd have been up for manslaughter. The cops took down some statements. Eventually they concluded that I had justifiably defended my wife's honor, they took the unconscious drunk into custody, and we all thought that was the end of it."

I took another sip from my cup.

"But it wasn't?"

"No," I continued. "Two days later one of the cops came to the store where I worked. I was busy packing boxes, if I remember correctly. I thought I was in trouble for some reason, but he congratulated me. It turned out the bastard I'd whacked on the head was wanted for a whole string of murders, rapes and other crimes, and there was a price on his head. Since I'd been the one to subdue him, the court had awarded the reward to me. So suddenly Lisa and I were quite well off, at least by local standards."

I chuckled.

"So there we were, all dressed up and nowhere to go. Suddenly our dream of leaving Artega was within our reach, but passing ships rarely visited there. We'd have to wait until one did. We continued to work and saved our money until our chance came. Two standard years later we managed to get passage on a passing trader. It wasn't much, just a small old tub, but it got us to Ch'ontré with enough money left for a tiny apartment and to keep us going until we found a way to make a living. Eventually we both ended up getting jobs at a small interstellar trading company. It was hard work, but we soon learned that there was money to be made in the interstellar trading business and we began to dream of having our own ship."

"You obviously managed that," Anne said.

"Eventually. It took quite a while. For years we worked our asses off, saving every credit, until we found the Slowboat sitting in a salvage yard. She wasn't in great shape, but we knew we could fix her up. Most of the equipment still on board was so obsolete that nobody had bothered to rip it out, and in the end we saved some money by refurbishing those clunky old systems and shipping them off to another tiny backwater planet where they were still worth something."

I paused, remembering. When I looked up her green eyes held mine. I took a deep breath, forcing myself to continue.

"We never would have been able to get anywhere at all it hadn't been for Lisa. I have never seen someone haggle like she could. It took us a standard year and every credit we had, and we lived on the ship while we worked on it, but eventually we had her space-worthy again. She was far from finished, but we knew we could fly her safely. We'd spent our evenings in a simulator for months on end until we both had our piloting licenses, and we took off as soon as we had a cargo. As soon as Lisa got us a cargo, I should say. Over the years she became every broker's nightmare, let me tell you. She didn't just settle for blood when she negotiated; she went all the way down to the bone and straight into the marrow. It was because of her skills at the trading game that we managed to make ends meet, and we finished upgrading the Slowboat in a few years. We worked our fingers to the bone between trips, and we spent the days and weeks in hyperspace just...being together. Tight. Sweet. We loved each other. We were happy. We were very happy."

I sighed. Then I fell silent. I really didn't want to continue. Anne seemed to sense it. She gave me some time, then she reached out across the table and put her hand on mine.

"What happened?" she asked.

"We got a shipment to Qm'ra, an obscure mudball close to the Rim. We made a good profit that trip. And we needed it, because Qm'ra doesn't produce much more than swamp flies and our chances of finding a new cargo there were slim to none. There are no cargo brokers there. It's also one of those worlds where you can't really count on Traffic Control doing your jump calculations in under a week, so we came in with a precalculated flight plan for Hoisan, which looked like the most promising next stop around there. But of course Lisa wasn't going to let it go at that. No way she'd settle for taking off empty without at least trying. And given her talent for squeezing a profit out of just about anything, there really was a chance that we just might pick up something to help pay for our fuel. So we spent a day trying to find a cargo that would be worth shipping to Hoisan."