From Afar - Chapter 12

Chapter XII

Tag, the captain, and Rast stood crowded together in the command module, watching Bist and the two Orosians do a mock up of the separation procedure in an empty cargo bay. Bist caught the handholds, easily controlling his body in the null gravity environment. Jim slipped, bouncing off the ceiling and tumbling forward.

“You must brace your position.” Tag heard Bist say through the helmet microphone.

“I feel sick. I can’t do this.” Jim pulled off his gloves and reached for the helmet latch. Tag heard a retching sound.

“No,” Bist shouted. “Hands down and behind your back.” Bist grabbed Jim and pushed him through the airlock and into the connecting corridor where gravity and oxygen were maintained.

Bist ripped off his gloves and helmet and grabbed Jim by the shoulders of his suit, tossing the Orosian’s helmet aside. Bist banged Jim against the bulkhead. “You would have died out there. I won’t always be there to protect you from your own stupidity, and if we’d been outside, I wouldn’t have been able to stop you in time. The suit is your life. You do not invite the emptiness of space to rip you apart.”

“I’m sorry,” Jim choked.

“Being sorry when you’re dead isn’t helpful.” Bist shook Jim like a rag doll.

“Stop. You’re hurting me.” Jim’s voice was thick with suppressed tears.

“If I have to hurt you to teach you not to do such stupid things, I will.”

“Oh God, I’m going to be sick again.” Jim doubled over and threw up. Vomit splattered against Bist’s environmental suit. “I’m sorry.” He wiped the back of his mouth with his sleeve.

“Youngster,” Bist said softly, his hand wrapped around Jim’s neck. “I don’t care that you vomited on me. We now know you need to take an anti-nausea agent next time. Null gravity makes a lot of people queasy. I care that you took your gloves off and unfastened your helmet; that will kill you. Do you understand that?”

“I’m too young for this, I don’t have the experience.” Jim tried to pull away from Bist’s grip. “I’m useless to everyone. I should have died, not Commander Croft. It would have been better for everyone.”

“Stop it. I need you here, and I need you out there with me. You know how to take this blasted ship apart. You’ve been trained to do this. I will get you through the spacewalk.”

Jim turned away from Bist and sagged against the wall, his head buried in his hands. Tag heard a half whispered Saptan curse as Bist knelt down and pulled Jim to his chest. Rast stepped in front of the monitor and flicked the screen with his finger to silence the volume and cut the picture.

“Give them some privacy. Bist will make this work.”

“He’ll be OK with Bist?” the captain asked.

“Do you mean is Bist going to hit him?” Rast said. “We are a tactile people; we use corporal punishment. We do not wildly strike at others. Bist is tough; he’s not cruel. He will do what he needs to do to get Jim to perform, but he won’t hurt him.”

“He’d better not,” the captain said and turned back to ship business. “You want to get inside a man’s head,” she said as much to the computer as to Rast. “I’ll leave you to it.”

“Bist will make it work,” Rast repeated.

Tag heard the clatter of boots on the metal decks, and Bist and Jim squeezed into the command module, Bist’s arm draped over Jim’s shoulder. They had stripped out of their environmental suits, but the odor of vomit still hung over Jim.

“We’re going to try this again in an hour,” Bist said. “I want Kip to give him something for motion sickness. His stomach doesn’t like null gravity.”

“I’m sorry,” Jim muttered and burrowed against Bist in an obvious comfort seeking gesture.

“We’ve done this already,” Bist said, his eyes darting to Tag. “You can vomit on me any day. You don’t undress in space.”

“Yes, sir.”

Bist mouthed to Tag over Jim’s head, “What do I do with this?”

Tag shrugged. The kid had attached himself to Bist like a leech. God, that kid’s in love with Bist, Tag thought suddenly, feeling the urge to slap himself between the eyes. Tag tried to catch Rast’s eye. This was going to blindside both the Saptans. They didn’t have these type of relationships, or at least Tag had never seen them. 

“Come on, youngster,” Bist said and gently tried to untangle Jim’s fingers. “Clean up, debrief, injection, and then back at it.”

Over the next few days, Bist kept Jim and Commander Brag on a rigorous training schedule. He must have been satisfied because today they stood suited and ready to leave the airlock. Rast, the captain, and all three participants had meticulously gone over the suits.  Any break in the seals could mean instant death. The captain cycled them through the airlock, and tethered only to each other and the ship they stepped out into the vastness of space.

Everybody on board hovered around the monitors as the three space walkers began the slow process of of removing the pins and unscrewing the bolts that connected the modules together. By design specs, they were supposed to be easily removed, but the description of “easily disengaged” by an engineering technician in a laboratory test facility and removing the pins in the null gravity of space were two different matters entirely. Tag could imagine the condensation inside their helmets at they banged on and pried at what was only the first bolt. Suddenly a wrench slipped from Jim’s hand and banged harmlessly into the side of the ship before spinning off into space. 

“Shit!” Tag heard the muttered curse from Jim’s helmet mike.

“We have extra wrenches, youngster,” Bist reassured Jim. “Just focus.”

Three hours passed, and they had only managed to loosen one quarter of the bolts. Several appeared completely frozen, or at least as far as Tag could tell from the video monitors.

The space walkers were cycled through the airlock and now stood half stripped, exhausted, and desolate. Bist’s black hair was plastered with sweat and clung damply to his neck as he shivered in the drafty corridor. Tag passed each of them a sugared, hot drink. Jim wrapped his hands around the mug, not acknowledging Tag’s slight smile.

“Hey, that looked like hard work,” Tag said and immediately regretted the inanity of his comment.

“We can’t do it,” Jim said, not lifting his eyes from the floor. “And I dropped the only wrench that properly fits the bolts.”

“A team of gods couldn’t have shifted half those bolts,” Bist said and moved closer so his shoulder rubbed against Jim’s. “We need explosives, not wrenches.”

“We have a few small charges for planetary exploration,” the captain said. “Would they work?”

“Chemical explosives?” Bist asked.

“Yes.”

“That will work,” Jim said excitedly. “Because of the lack of oxygen, we should be able to control and direct the explosions.”

“Right,” Bist said and ran his hand down Jim’s face. “Please tell me you have training in explosives.”

“Yes, I have a class one blasting and explosives certificate.”

“The gods aren’t brawling after all,” Bist said with a laugh. “We’ll rest, regroup, and try again tomorrow.”

With a sense of deja-vu, Tag watched the two Orosians and the one Saptan prepare to exit the airlock again. Yesterday everyone had been optimistic and happily believed they were on their way out of this mess. Today they seemed almost resigned to another failure. Only Bist and Jim seemed at all certain that the plan had any hope, and Tag wasn’t sure if Bist was merely keeping up appearances. Over the last several weeks, he’d spent considerable time buffering Jim’s mood swings. The Orosians had seemed incapable of helping their youngest member cope with the disaster. Tag, with all the insight of a complete idiot, had taken weeks to realize the older Orosians were all coupled, leaving Jim as the odd man out. The captain must have been alone until the untimely demise of the engineer or been involved in some unfathomable threesome or a secret tryst. Bist, a man who wasn’t even capable of having intimate relations, must have noticed because he’d immediately taken Jim under his wing. Jim ate with them, played cards with them, and hung close to them, especially to Bist.

Bist was giving some final instructions, his helmet held between his knees as he talked. He touched Jim’s forehead and the young engineer lifted his head and smiled, his expression attentive and almost blissful. Tag stared and felt himself gasping for air as his body insisted that he breathe. That kid was in love with Bist. It showed on his face as clear as if they’d painted it across the sky in fifty meter high letters. Rast, Tag thought, did he know what was going on? This was outside the parameters of their normal social bounds. Theirs was a collective, not individual pairs.

Jim’s helmet clicked into place and the moment was over, his expression hidden behind the reflective glass.

“Is everything OK?” Rast asked, his hand brushing Tag’s cheek. “I saw you staring.”

“No, everything’s green,” Tag said hurriedly. Did he tell Rast? How did he tell Rast? Was it any of his business? “I was only hoping this will work.”

“Aren’t we all, but I’ve been living with you for more than seven months. There is something else on your mind. We will talk later,” Rast said.

“What if this doesn’t work?” Tag asked, not sure in his own mind if he’d asked because he had a real concern or because he was desperate to change the topic. Rast was doing his thing again where his eyes never quite focused on Tag, but Tag felt that he was being studied, each nuance of his body language weighed against some database in Rast’s head.

“We’ll move on to the next plan.”

“Do we have a plan C?” Tag asked.

“Not at the moment, but your motivation to distract me from my earlier question is transparent. It’s my duty to understand my ki even when they’re not being open and honest with me.”

Tag ducked his head. He was distracting Rast. He didn’t want to talk about his suspicions regarding Bist and Jim’s behavior. Tag focused his eyes back on the monitor and watched as the space walkers painstakingly laid charges. It seemed to take hours, but Tag knew in reality they could only remain outside for four standard hours. They would lay all the charges and then remotely detonate them from the relative safety of the ship.

Finally they all stood inside, crowded around the monitors as the captain flipped the switch to detonate the explosives. A flicker of color flamed on the screen before being immediately snuffed out in the vacuum of space. A connecting rod came free and floated gently away, spinning slowly end over end. Charges flared briefly on the screen from around the ship, and for a moment the cargo bay teetered as if still partially tethered to the remaining ship and then broke free, spinning away from them. A cheer rose in the small module.

Tag was lost in the general celebration, cheering and waving his energy drink as if it were champagne, when Rast tapped the back of his neck.

“Come talk to me while everyone’s distracted,” Rast said.

Tag let himself be guided into the small alcove where only a few days before he and the others had devised this crazy plan.

“What’s with you?” Rast asked in the short sentences that the Saptan language favored.

“Nothing. I was worried we couldn’t separate the ship’s sections.”

Rast pushed his fingers against Tag’s neck just strongly enough to be a constant annoyance. “I believe your people might try an expletive to shake the truth loose. You are my ki, and I have more effective means if I need to employ them. Are you going to need further assistance?”

“No,” Tag barked and tried to get out of Rast’s grip. He didn’t need to have it spelled out;  Rast was threatening retribution if he didn’t talk. Bist had made it more than clear to Tag that any form of lying or evasion was damaging to the seven and had dealt with it accordingly. Tag didn’t want to find out how Rast would deal with it.

Rast with the ease of much practice trapped Tag between the wall and his arms. He was far leaner than Bist, but equally solid and unmoving as he leaned against Tag. “I know being back among your own people has been confusing,” Rast said. “Do you wish to be released from the seven?”

Tag jerked in surprise and hit his head against a storage bin in the tight space. “Ouch!”

“Do not hurt yourself. I have experience with that,” Rast said, his voice vibrating in a hum which meant he was trying to soothe Tag.

“I’m not going to fly apart,” Tag said with exasperation and rubbed the back of his head. He could already feel a bump forming. “I didn’t mean to hit my head.”

“Do you want out of the seven?” Rast pressed on, his fingers playing against the ends of Tag’s hair.

“No.” He had fought being included in the group. With some shame, he remembered his initial hostility at being labeled ki, but now he couldn’t imagine leaving.

“As part of the seven, you are bound to all of us as we are bound to you. We must be truthful within the seven. You’ve been with us long enough to understand that.” Rast’s hand touched Tag’s bare neck. “I consider you mine, but I have not formally bound you to the seven. You can still leave.”

“No, I don’t want to leave.”

“You must yield and submit to the group.”

Tag bristled, but dropped his head to the left in the acknowledgment of submission. He still hated the words; they crossed his brain like a trail of acid. He submitted; he gave himself to them.

Rast’s lip’s brushed his forehead and both cheeks, an acceptance of his submission. “What is bothering you?”

“Jim’s in love with Bist?” Tag felt Rast stiffen against him for a second.

“He can’t be. Bist is ki. They cannot reproduce.”

Tag wanted to laugh. If only it was as simple as reproduction. “It’s not that black and white in humans. We can form life mating bonds without the need to reproduce,” Tag said, picking his words carefully. He still had little understanding of the si and ti, but from what he knew, they formed a bond for life with the sole purpose of reproducing and rearing children. He wasn’t sure if the bond was arranged by some evaluation of meshing characteristics or was allowed to establish naturally through mutual attraction. The ki  and kwi formed no such individual bonds, instead they formed the seven, a family of mutually dependent relationships where each relationship was only as strong as the whole. “Humans do not naturally form relationships such as the seven. Our closest would be a large family and within a family it is blood that holds it together. Jim will not understand a relationship shared among seven, and a relationship that is not...” Tag licked his lips. “Intimate, or intimate in the human way. Saptan touch is intimate, but not the touch of two lovers.”

“Bist is ki. He cannot reciprocate,” Rast said.

“He reciprocates as a ki, but to Jim it’s different.”

“And you don’t have a problem with it?” Rast asked.

“I’m ki. You have all said so. When you touch me, I understand. It’s no different than when you touch each other. The hard thing for me is admitting I like it.” Tag could feel the color rising in his face. “I like being ki.”

“You are ki. It’s not a choice for you.” Rast’s fingers traced Tag’s bare neck. “And Jim’s infatuation with Bist is going to cause a problem?”

Tag nodded.

“You’re my human expert. Talk to me.”

“Jim will be hurt. I don’t see any way to escape it,” Tag said. “If Bist withdraws from him now, Jim will be convinced he’s done something wrong. If Bist continues to treat him as...” Tag searched for the word. He knew that Bist didn’t see Jim as ki. “As a youngster, he is only leading him on. Jim is an adult in Orosian society. What will happen to Jim if our plan works? Do we leave the Orosians here to die? The ship won’t be habitable for long if I understand the plan.”

“No, it won’t. I assumed Jim would come with us, but you are right he is si. We already have seven, and he would never be at home with us,” Rast said

“The same as D’John,” Tag said softly.

“Similar, but D’John was older and more aware of his own status. He knew he could never be one of us. You and Jim are different.”

“I’m ki. The problem is that Jim does not recognize that he is si.”

Rast touched Tag’s hair, his hand absently stroking down the tangled brown strands. “I see no solution but to continue as we are and hope that Jim develops the self-awareness to understand that Bist cannot reciprocate certain feelings. Jim is still a youngster; he needs Bist’s support, and by the Seven Sisters he’s not getting it from his fellow Orosians. He should never have been here.”

“But he is.”

“Yes, he is, and we will manage. I am capable or improvising. Thank you, Tag. I expect you to keep me informed of anything else you notice among the Orosians. You bring a knowledge of their behavior that I cannot hope to grasp. You are a valuable member of our seven.”

Tag nodded but felt the praise was too effusive. He hadn’t noticed it until he’d almost been hit in the face by Jim’s expression. Had he noticed earlier, he might have been able to explain the futility of falling in love with Bist to Jim. Tag still saw no solution to the problem, and Rast had been aggravatingly vague.

“Why are you two here?” Kip asked, slipping into their small alcove.

“Tag was bringing to my attention a new development with the Orosians,” Rast said.

Kip flicked her eyes quickly toward Rast and Tag before looking away. It was a polite request for more information.

“It seems young Jim has developed an attraction for Bist,” Rast said.

“He is a youngster, That is not unexpected. Youngsters develop close relationships with their seniors.”

“He’s in love with Bist,” Tag blurted out. “This is not a platonic admiration for a teacher. Jim isn’t Saptan. He doesn’t understand that Bist can’t reciprocate. They don’t understand your social norms.”

“Bist will guide him,” Rast said.

“He doesn’t want guidance.” Why couldn’t Tag make the Saptans understand this? Jim wanted a boyfriend, not platonic affection.

“I will speak with Bist,” Rast said, running his hand over Tag’s cheek. Rast turned and headed back toward the other Saptans.

“Rast will handle it,” Kip said. “He follows the teachings of Kar.”

“What does a long dead philosopher  have to do with any of this?” Tag said, not hiding his frustration.

“Taga, Rast is not afraid to challenge our customs. Kar is seen by many as a heretic. Rast believes that the flexibility advocated by Kar is the true path. He has taken you into the seven, and he would not be afraid to come home with eight, even if the eight is si. He will find a way.”

Tag wanted to believe Kip’s easy reassurances, but she wasn’t a descendant of human stock. She couldn’t understand Jim’s desires; Tag could only partially understand them. He’d seen it with his shipmates and his family, but he’d never felt those passions described in the great poems. He’d always thought it was an illusion or something that happened to others. Tag didn’t understand this, and he was human. How could Rast and Bist possibly swim through these unchartered waters? Jim wanted what none of them could give.