Каарон Уоррен - The Lowest Heaven

The engine wasn’t louder at the back end of the ship, but he could feel it more distinctly, like a phone vibrating in his pocket. Halliwell was waist deep behind a panel, her legs bent to brace her movements.

“Judi? Just checking up on you.”

“I’m fine,” she said, her voice both hollow and muffled, as if there was a mattress over an open well. “I need to fix this valve like I need to scratch, you know.”

Her hand snaked out and unerringly found the replacement solenoid resting on the loose panel cover, her palm dropping the faulty one even as she scooped the new one up. As she moved, she released a puff of the sharp sweat stink she carried.

“Why don’t you cut yourself a deal, Judi?” Johnson eased her tablet out from between her knees, where it was inevitably open on the faults list. “Why don’t you do this one, and the tell-tale on the tertiary radiator pump, then go and get something to eat? Maybe get yourself in the head and freshen yourself up?”

“Leroy, these things won’t fix themselves. While I’ve been in here, there’s been another four faults flagged. Got to get them all.” She grunted with the effort of fitting a tiny widget in a small space.

“Do I get to order you?” he said.

“Geez, commander. Why don’t you find me a tube of something, and leave it here?”

“Fair enough. Cereal bar and a bulb of coffee?”

“Whatever’s easiest,” she said, distracted. She didn’t want him to be there, and he’d done his duty. The screen blooped and slipped in another fault. By the time she’d done those five, there’d be others. A never-ending cycle of breakdown and repair, and no one to tell her to stop. He didn’t think he’d ever seen her so happy.

The kitchen was the next level up, so he climbed easily and started to busy himself collecting breakfast not just for Halliwell, but for Malinska and McMasters. Bradbury was there, sitting sideways at the tiny fold down table on a pop-up chair. Johnson had never seen him go up or down the ladder, so Bradbury just appeared around the ship without ever taking a step or climbing a rung.

“Shall we try that again? Good morning, Leroy,” said Bradbury.

“Okay.” He filled a coffee bulb with hot water from the spigot and snapped the lid shut: zero-g training right there. “Morning, Mr. Bradbury.”

“You can call me Ray, son. Mr. Bradbury’s awfully formal.”

“I’d like to stick with Mr. Bradbury, if that’s okay.”

“Sure. That coffee smells good, Leroy. You know that means ‘the king’ in French, don’t you?” Bradbury smiled up with his crooked teeth on show.

“If I gave you a coffee, how would you drink it? You being a, a whatever it is you are.”

“Ghost? No shame in being a ghost, Leroy. Even when I was alive, some of my best friends were ghosts.” He gave a little chuckle and his belly jiggled in waves. “Why don’t you leave that for a moment and sit down with me?”

Johnson carried the coffee bulb over and perched at the very edge of the seat opposite. He bowed his head and listened to the thrumming of the engines and the rustling of the air.

“You’re almost there. Final breaking manoeuvres for orbit. Have you thought about what you’re going to do?”

“I… no.”

Bradbury took off his glasses and peered the wrong way through the immense lenses. “You didn’t put up much of a fight when the others mutinied.”

“You were right: there didn’t seem much point in making them push me out of the airlock.” Johnson squirted some coffee into his mouth, and pulled a face. It hadn’t been properly hot when he’d made it: the cabin pressure didn’t allow it. “Does that mean you’ve changed your mind? Do you think I should have? Fought them, that is.”

“I don’t think there was much fight in you in the first place. The whole mission is well, unpalatable, and as for dying for it?” He rubbed his glasses on his jacket cuff and slid them back on his face. “I’ve been showing people the way to Mars for the better part of a century, and because you decided to live, I finally get to go myself.”

Johnson swilled the coffee around in its translucent bulb, seeing how the vortex caught the light. “You realise they’re never going to let another black man so much as drive a bus again, let alone command a spaceship?”

“Oh, Leroy. How do you know what they’re going to do? It’s not as if you’re talking to Earth, are you?”

“Abe thinks the aliens are trying to talk to him through their tyre tracks. Rusa spends all her time searching the software for backdoor exploits that’ll let Mission Control retake the ship, I’m convinced the computer is inventing problems for Judi to fix, and Mo? He’s turned sleeping into an Olympic sport.” He didn’t want the coffee any more, and put the bulb down between them. Its high-tack base stuck it to the tabletop.

“You missed yourself out,” said Bradbury.

Johnson pressed his fingertips together hard enough to make his nailbeds turn pale. “I know what my particular problem is. However you want to explain it, it all adds up to a whole pile of nothing to say to the people back home.”

Bradbury had stopped smiling. “Why don’t we talk about the missiles, Leroy?”

“Do we have to?”

“For Christ’s sake, they’re parked right outside on the hull. Pretending they’re not there is unworthy of you.” He leaned across the table, making the plastic creak. “You can prevent this catastrophe, you know.”

Johnson felt sick. “I’m not comfortable–”

“Good God, man. You’re not comfortable? Imagine how I feel? I warned you before about hubris, and yet you’re making all the same mistakes.”

“You warned me?”

“Those stories of mine weren’t just pleasant diversions for half an hour, and I know you didn’t take them like that when you read them. I’d hoped I was training your mind to reject this lethal brinkmanship, but clearly not.” Bradbury sat back and folded his arms, looking belligerent. “That’s why I’m here now◦– to make you listen to sweet reason.”

“Mars is ours,” said Johnson, making the old man snort in derision.

“We’ve ignored it, with a few notable exceptions, ever since Lowell trained his telescope on it and thought he could see canals.”

“But it’s still ours. It’s our backyard.”

“Take a look at your screen, Leroy. Pull it out and spool up those pictures your colleague McMasters is looking at.”

Johnson reluctantly slipped the tablet from his thigh and accessed the video. “These ones?”

“Those exact ones. What do you suppose they’re doing, crawling around in that red dust? What do you suppose they’re saying to each other while they’re doing it?” He dabbed his thick finger at the surface, of the screen, of Mars. “Whose yard does this look like?”

Bradbury had a point. He knew he had a point because Bradbury wouldn’t have a point without him thinking it too. “It, it looks like their yard,” conceded Johnson. “I’m conflicted.”

“Sure you are. You’ve got braid on your arm because you were smart and followed orders. You feel obligated to the suits and the hats because they put you where you are. Where are you, Leroy?”

“I’m on the first manned spaceship to orbit Mars, to meet the first aliens we’ve ever known.”

“Then why are you so miserable about it?” Bradbury’s face broke into a wide smile, and he banged the table with the flat of hand hard enough to make Johnson jump. “I’d have sold my soul to be here in the flesh. What an incredible, startling opportunity, what an unexpected, unlooked-for gift! You should be happy and excited: if it was me, I’d be going to the bathroom every five minutes.”

Johnson felt so sick he started looking around the cabin for a barf-bag. “You know my orders.”