Юджин Фишер - Adrift

The drugs were discovered after Henri got the node running again. He was able to retrieve the routing information and manifest for the shipping container. The routing information indicated that the container had been acquired by FloatNet off the coast of Angola, which was consistent with Laurent’s story. The manifest indicated that the cargo was cobalt ore, which was inconsistent with the stacks of not-very-heavy plastic tubs Henri’s team had unloaded. They opened one and discovered that it was filled with marijuana.

New information. Janet took a printout of the report with her to the visitors’ quarters to question Laurent. He and Nagaila were listening to Therese read aloud from a French novel when Janet arrived. Henri had apparently brought it by for them the previous evening, when he had taken them the clothing. Therese was doing voices for each of the characters, affecting a squeaky exuberance when Janet entered the room.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Janet said into the sober silence that followed after Therese stopped reading and the siblings gave her their attention. “I have some new questions for you, Laurent.”

“Of course, Ms. Candle. I will answer for you any questions that I can.”

Janet stood holding the report, suddenly uncomfortable in front of the three pairs of eyes. The girls were both on one of the room’s two beds. Nagaila was sprawled on her stomach and Therese was seated on the edge, the book closed on her index finger. Laurent was in the room’s desk chair, which he had moved next to the bed.

“You know, we don’t actually have to do this here,” Janet said. “It’s really just you I need to speak with. Why don’t we talk in the commissary; that way your sisters can keep reading if they like. You can bring back food for them.”

As they left the room, Laurent commented that his sisters were well used to his needing to leave them to their own devices as he pursued ways to improve their lot. That this was the first time in five days they had parted company was one more novel aspect of the scenario he had constructed for them. He shared his other observations of things that were new to him as they walked, things ranging from the architecture of the platform to learning that a woman was in charge of it. His reaction to this last didn’t seem critical; he expressed it as just one of the exciting differences that showed he was somewhere new. Still, Janet didn’t engage with Laurent in his ruminations, feeling her role was more properly to be collecting information than supplying it.

When they reached the commissary they both filled trays and sat facing each other across a table. Janet began to question Laurent about the details of the report.

“I did not have any idea what was inside of those boxes,” he said. “Nagaila wanted to open one and look, but I told her that they belonged to people in the United States, and we should leave them alone because we did not want to cause anger before we even arrived.”

“And what about the people you arranged your passage with? Did you know that they were involved with drugs of any kind?”

“They said to us only there is a container, and in it there is space for me and for my sisters, and the container will go to the United States. That is all I knew of them. That they had a container with space.”

Janet wrote claims no knowledge of drugs in the margin of the report and flipped through the pages.

“Okay. So you didn’t know about the marijuana. The other odd thing we found was that the onboard electronics of the shipping container had been altered. Someone removed and rewired the battery. Do you know anything about that?”

Laurent smiled very broadly. “Yes. I removed the battery so I could install a lamp.”

Janet had been ready for him to attribute it to his drug trafficking contacts, or to claim ignorance. She did not expect him to claim credit. “You did it?”

“Yes. It was very dark inside, and this was making Nagaila and even Therese frightened.”

“How were you able to do that?”

“I brought with me my tools, and of course the lamp. I had a flashlight for finding the battery compartment.”

“No, I mean how is it that you knew how to take out the battery and install a lamp? Yesterday you told me that you had never heard of the FloatNet until shortly before you left your country.”

“The circuit is very simple, Ms. Candle!” he said with laughter in his voice. “I am very good with circuits. For money I will wire a house for electricity, or fix a machine that is broken. I learned about circuits in Form 3 physics.”

Janet’s astonishment must have been evident on her face.

“This is a surprise to you! My teacher was an American in the Peace Corps. She taught me circuits, and also optics. This was very important for me.”

“What do you do with optics?” Janet asked.

“Optics I do not use as much as circuits. But still it was very important. I will tell you a story: when she starts to teach us, she says of optics that it is about light and shadows. Now, all of us had heard that there was a man in a nearby village who did not have a shadow. Someone raises his hand and asks our teacher, ‘What about the man who has no shadow?’ And our teacher says, ‘That man is not real.’ All of us wanted to know how she could say the man was not real, when she had never been to the village. She says, ‘pay attention to the lesson, and you will learn.’

“She teaches us about light; about how it moves in lines. The geometry to light. This is what she teaches us. And she shows to us on the chalkboard how, if we can see the man, then it must be that he has a shadow. So the man who has no shadow cannot be seen. And the reason he cannot be seen is because he is not real!

“This lesson was the most important one for me. She showed for me that if you understand how a small thing works, you can know very much bigger things about the world. After this I listened very closely to the lessons. Always I want to know how things work. I try to teach this lesson to my sisters as well. Always when I learn I try to explain to them.”

Laurent had held Janet’s gaze as he told his story, but now he broke it, picked up his fork and turned back to his food. Janet’s hand hovered over the paper, looking for what to write and finding nothing. She should be writing something like admits to sabotaging container , but that felt like missing the point. What was the important information here? She supposed it was that packing off to sea in a breached container, consigning oneself to the FloatNet — insane, borderline suicidal — could be the act of a genuinely intelligent person. But refugee a thoughtful man wasn’t the sort of revelation to be annotated and filed. Janet put down her pen and looked up at Laurent, who was looking back at her, brightly amused.

“I think that’s great,” Janet said finally. “Really. Both the lesson, and the way you take care of your sisters. And I bet Henri is going to be as surprised as I was to learn that it was you who rewired the battery.”

“I am sure that I can put it back the way it was before, if you want that.”

“No, that’s all right. Actually, I think Henri wants to leave it the way it is until he figures out exactly how you made the node fail.”

The amused sparkle left Laurent’s eyes.

“The failure of the node was a result of my actions?”

“Well. Yes,” Janet said. “That’s what Henri thinks. The container battery is charged from the node, and something about what you did to it confused the node’s software so it thought it had broken down. He’s still trying to figure out exactly what happened.”

“And this is why it brought us here?”

“That’s right. This is where it comes to get fixed.”