Jonathan Strahan - The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year Volume 5 An anthology of stories

Beep was maybe forty, maybe eighty. She couldn’t tell. Living in space faded different people at different rates. The stubble on his head and his chin had gone gray and there was a dimpled scar on his cheek where the cancer had been carved out.He had the slouch that all bucket monkeys got from spending too much time weightless. There was nothing special about his coveralls, but one of the Shining Legend’ s two override cards hung from his neck on a green lanyard.

“I had a message today from your mother.” He scanned the galley menu. “I was given instruction.” His eyes were watery and vague.

“Really?” She felt her cheeks flush. “What did she say?”

“To take good care of you.”He pointed at the menu.“Ha-ha- ha .”Seconds passed and then the oven stuck its tongue out at him. On it was a steaming tart. He swiped it into the air, caught it before it could fly across the room, then juggled it from hand to hand until it floated, cooling, in front of him. “We go way back, Natalya and I,” he said at last. “A thick stick now, isn’t she?”

There was nothing safe she could say about that.

“Your mother doesn’t understand you, young Volochkova. She wants you to be a deep spacer, not a bucket monkey.”

“She’s never bothered to understand me.”

“You had the tweak. You can hibernate, sleep your way to the stars. So why are you dancing on one foot?”

She snorted in derision. “Only losers hibernate. You wake up and nothing is the same. You lose everything.”

He shook his head as if he didn’t believe her.“You know,I was supposed to be a spacer. Zoom through the wormhole to the stars.” He sailed a flat hand back and forth imitating a spaceship. “Your mother Natalya pronounced me unfit.” He caught his tart and bit into it. “Thinner than water, I was back then.” Mariska watched crumbs fly out of his mouth. More crud duty.

“That has nothing to do with me…sir.” She realized that she had been forgetting to say it.

“One generation plants the tree, the next gets the shade.” His laugh was like a grunt. “I met her when she wasn’t much older than you.”

Mariska jacked her guess about his age way, way up.

He stuffed the rest of the tart into his mouth and took his time chewing. “I’d say that you remind me of her, but then you are her.” He held a finger to his lips, cutting off her objection. “What’s my name, young Volochkova? No, not Beep.”

“Lincoln Larrabee,sir.” This was the longest conversation they’d had in months. She wished she knew how to end it.

“Good of you to know that.” He considered the back of his hand for a moment. “So if we have to share the same sky, we should help each other. I’m worried about FiveFord.”

She hadn’t noticed anything odd about Richard, other than that he wouldn’t take no for an answer. “Why?”

“Space blues. Apathy. Burn out. Maybe you’ve missed the signs, but he won’t be worth a mushroom in another couple of weeks.”

“But he’s only nineteen.”

“Do us a favor, would you? I mean, for the good of the ship and all.” He poked his forefinger to her shoulder, as if she hadn’t been paying attention. “Give FiveFord that ride he’s been waiting for.”

“ What ?”

“Go knee to knee with him. You’re patched, aren’t you? You can’t get pregnant.”

She couldn’t believe he was saying this to her until she realized that he must have been sniffing. “Are you high?”

“Why?” When he winked at her, his eyelid fluttered. “Aren’t you?”

“No.”

“Then let’s fix that.” He fumbled at the breast pocket of his coverall, withdrew a sniffer and offered it to her.

She resisted the impulse to bat the thing out of his hand. “You’re crazy.” She wasn’t about to sir him when he was twisted.

“What, it’s just some harmless wizard. You get high. I’ve watched you.”

“That’s different.” His lopsided grin infuriated her. She had accepted his bullying because she thought he was in control of things. “You’re supposed to be responsible. You’re wearing the override.”

He peeled the card from his coverall and twirled it on its lanyard. “But I’m not on duty.” He tucked it into the pocket where the sniffer had been.

“You’re always on duty.” She could hear her voice tremble. “What if something goes wrong?”

He waved the sniffer absently under his nose but did not squeeze off a dose. “You know why they call us monkeys?”

She closed her eyes, wishing this was just a nightmare she was having.

“It comes from first days,” he said, “back in astronaut time. Everything was automatic then. The engineers didn’t trust the old guys to do anything, not even think. Test animals don’t make decisions and that’s all the astronauts were. They used to say they were men sent to do monkeys’ work.”

She snapped the bungee against her wrist to keep from screaming. Beep was always saying things like that. She didn’t know what he was talking about half the time.

“We’re just along for the ride. Look here.” He held up three fingers on his left hand. “Three wardrooms.” He showed her all five fingers of his right. “Five of us. Crews used to need all that bunk space, but there was nothing for them to do. So they cut back. Everything is automatic now.”

“But I’m shadowing you on the nav rack.” Her voice was so small that she almost couldn’t hear herself over Galley noise.

“Sure, so you can read it. But if we get a course wobble, can you calculate a new trajectory home?” He waited for her reply but there was nothing she could say. “You want Didit tweaking the magnetic containment field in the reactor?”

“I’d tell the computers to….”

“The computers are automatic. They don’t need monkeys to override a busted routine.”

“Then why are we here?”

“Crud duty? Fix lights? Fetch the ice?” He scratched under his arm and shrieked hoo-hoo-hoo.

When Mariska motioned for the sniffer, Beep grinned. She brought it to her face, cupped hands over it and squeezed off a dose, which sparkled up her nose. The wizard sank to her lungs and streamed into her blood. Seconds later her brain was twinkling.

“Feel better?” said Beep.

For the moment, the wizard was more important than her fear and confusion. “We’re not monkeys,” she said. “We’re remoras.”

He cupped the sniffer to his nose. “Say again?” He pressed the trigger.

“Remoras. The fish that stick onto sharks and clean parasites off them.”

When Beep burst out laughing, his sniffer shot across Galley and out into the spine. She chuckled too but it was only because she was seriously twisted.

“Yes, loosen your cheeks.” He patted the packet where he’d put the override, as if to make sure he hadn’t lost it too. “Why don’t you think I like you?”

This also struck her as funny. “Because you don’t.” She giggled. “Sir.”

“Look here.” He pointed and the screen next to her woke up. She saw a grainy vid, obviously transcribed from a feed. On it was Mariska, except not. She was wearing a dress that was black and shiny and barely covered the crotch. The shoulders were bare except for the two skinny ribbons which kept the dress from falling off. She was wearing black strappy shoes with heels six centimeters long. The eyeshadow was purple.

She would never wear such ridiculous shoes. Or eyeshadow. “What is this?”

The Mariska on the screen tugged the dress up so that black lace panties peeked from beneath the hem. One of the ribbons slipped. The face’s hungry expression stunned her.

“Stop it.”

The scene shifted and another Mariska was perched in a golden cage. She was nearly naked this time. The arms fitted into outspread white wings like the ones they used in aviariums on the Moon. Feathers dangled from a golden chain around the waist but didn’t conceal much. The chest horrified her. Although she was fifteen, she was still pathetically flat-chested—her mother’s fault. But the figure on the screen would have needed at least a C-cup bra to cover the bare breasts. Someone— something opened the door to the golden cage, but all she could see was a hand with long, pointed fingernails.