Майкл Бишоп - The Final Frontier - Stories of Exploring Space, Colonizing the Universe, and First Contact

From this terminal he was only supposed to have access to entertainments, but with a little hunting, he found that the library’s reading material included the station’s daily news feed, which listed a record of dockings by interstellar ships. Mitchell found the records from a couple of weeks before and worked forward.

A week ago, the M.D.S. Francis Drake had docked for temporary repairs. It was scheduled to continue to the Mil Div Sol shipyards for more extensive repairs. That hadn’t been on their schedule; the Drake had years of operation left before it needed an overhaul. Unless something had happened. And something had happened, or Mitchell wouldn’t be here. The logs, he had to find the logs—

The screen went blank, the computer shut down. Its power had been cut off. Standard procedure for any terminal being used for unauthorized access.

He stared at his hands, flattened on the surface of the desk. They weren’t even shaking.

“Lieutenant, I’d really appreciate it if you not work on any math.” Keesey said.

He had started physical therapy—work on a treadmill, standard weightlifting. It was very boring, but the doctors watched him closely. Maybe in case he started singing when he only meant to move his leg.

He stopped walking. The treadmill powered down. “What?”

“You have books to read, vids to watch. You should avoid mathematics problems.”

He laughed. Navigational math lived in his brain like his own heartbeat; he didn’t even think of it.

Keesey explained: “The mathematics involved in navigation instigated your injury. I don’t want you making it worse.”

“Doctor, what was wrong with my cortical map?”

She consulted her handheld, donned her pleasant demeanor. “I think you might benefit from some social time. Meet some of the other patients so you can realize you’re not alone here.”

He knew he wasn’t alone. He’d seen Morgan.

The common room where stabilized patients were allowed to socialize was carpeted, comfortable, and round. It gave an impression of nest-like safety. There were no corners to cower in. A few upholstered chairs occupied one side, some tables the other. The lighting was soft. An orderly stood watch inside the doorway.

Three people wearing hospital jumpsuits sat in the room, all apart from each other. Only one, a shorthaired woman curled up in one of the easy chairs, reading a handheld, looked up when Mitchell and Keesey appeared in the doorway.

The other two, a man and a woman, sat at different tables. The woman’s eyes were closed, and she nodded in time to some tune all her own. The man held a stylus and bent over a handheld datapad, which he marked now and then. There was something odd about him, something small and shrunken. Maybe because he wore a helmet shielding him down to his ears. Mitchell expected him to start banging his head against the table at any moment.

Mitchell whispered to Keesey, “What’s the point of socializing if no one talks to each other?”

“Have a little patience.” She gestured to the man and woman at the tables. “Communication is difficult for Jaspar and Sonia, so they’ve isolated themselves. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t spend time in proximity with others. But here—this is Dora.”

No ranks, no surnames. Their old lives had been thoroughly erased here. He wanted his uniform back.

She led him to the side of the room where the woman watched them expectantly. “Dora? I’d like you to meet our new resident. This is Mitchell.”

“Hello, Mitchell.” Dora, head propped on her hand, smiled up at him.

Mitchell gave a mental sigh of relief. She sounded normal. Friendly, even. Not prone to screaming.

Keesey said, “Baz will come fetch you in half an hour.” She left them alone.

Dora gestured at the chair next to hers. “Sit. You look uncomfortable.”

“I am uncomfortable. I don’t think I belong here.”

“Because you’re not crazy. Because you’re not like them.” She nodded at the others.

“I’m not. I’m not.” Dora smiled a thin, cat-like smile. “What made them send you here?”

Dora smiled a thin, cat-like smile. “What made them send you here?”

“I don’t remember.”

She tapped her nose and grinned wider.

“So why are you here?” he asked.

She gave a demure tilt to her head. “It was a conspiracy. Captain didn’t like me. Some of the crew didn’t agree with the decision to lock me up. They’ll come back for me, break me out of here.”

And to think she acted so normal.

“Ah,” she said. “You’re giving me a look like now you think I’m crazy, too.”

“They break you out? Then what? You become pirates?”

“Hm, that sounds like fun. Didn’t you dream of that when you were a kid? Being a pirate, blazing across space having all sorts of adventures.”

“I was going to save innocent starships from the bad pirates. Kids never dream about being bad pirates; it’s always good pirates.”

“There are no good pirates.”

Mitchell gestured toward Jaspar and Sonia. “Do you know anything about them?”

Dora sat back in her chair. “Jaspar doesn’t do anything but work puzzles—for six-year-olds. Sonia will talk to you, but she won’t make any sense. Go try it.”

He half-expected this to be some sort of initiation—humiliate the new kid by making him try to find something that wasn’t there. But he crossed the room to Sonia anyway. She was pretty, if ragged. In her thirties, like all of them were, because that was when Mand Dementia tended to strike.

“Hello,” he said, sitting in the chair across from her.

She looked up. Her eyes were swollen, shadowed, tired. Her light-colored hair needed brushing.

“I’m Mitchell. I’m new, so I thought I’d introduce myself.”

She sat very still, in contrast to her previous nodding.

“Dora says you’ll talk.”

“Glass. Concerto for Violin,” she said in a hesitating voice.

Mitchell blinked, startled. “What does that mean?”

Her eyes glistened. There was a spark of something there, a flicker. Understanding. Sentience. Something that wasn’t insane. Like she was staring through the bars of a cage.

“Chopin. Opus 28, Prelude Number 6.”

Composers. Music. She was speaking pieces of music like they meant something. He stared at her, wishing he could understand, and it was like staring into his own future.

“Chopin. Opus 28, Prelude Number 6,” she called after him when he turned to leave. Her gaze pleaded, but he didn’t understand what she wanted. Except maybe out of here, like him.

He tried talking to Jaspar next, but the man turned his back on him, filling Mitchell’s sight with the off-white mound of his helmet—that was protecting what, exactly?

He returned to Dora, who explained, “She was a musician. The dementia crosswired music and language. Keesey thinks there’s some correlation between the mood or situation and what song she says. You know, ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ means ‘pissed off.’ I think it’s a smokescreen and she’s just hiding from everyone.”

“She looks like she’s listening to something.”

“The music in her mind. The doctors won’t let her listen to actual music. They’re afraid it’ll ‘reinforce faulty neural pathways,’” she said. She did a pretty good impression of Dalton’s flat tone. “I knew her, before. She associated every step of navigating to different songs. She said the sound of an M-drive powering up matched the opening measures of the overture to ‘The Marriage of Figaro.’ Then it all went to hell, I guess.”

If someone locked you in a room full of crazy people, was there any chance that you weren’t crazy?