second half, chp. 1
Note: It was meant to be together with the first--but it was too terribly mixed up to post. It still is. Both pieces being fit with the second half now, and edited. Still mixed up.
---
"Oy, you need some sleep. Hell. Communiqué, you know, from home?”
“From?--”
“Home, Earth.” The slight cadet, concern tangled in perplexity, waved his hand again. “I said news--comm. from home.”
Focusing, Fletcher found Andrei immobile, stopping the line--one eyebrow quirked quizzical.
“Hell--something from?…”
“See, now you heard me. Can I have half?… didn’t get mine, late duty--early here… But Waverly’s called a something-or-other, meeting--thing about all this. Quasar, c’rade. All this precognition thing, remember? Sort of crazy…before we shot off here ‘course… good timing--”
“A--what?” Fletcher felt his hands jerk, involuntary--he was standing a yard back before the words broke his lips. A sealed container tumbled off his tray.
“You know--precog?” Andrei rocked back on his heels, ignorantly convivial, open features falling as he spoke-- “Presque vu, they’re saying now. Or preski vuz? D’unno, Russian or French…”
“French,” said Fletcher faintly.
“Yeah, that--never could in French…”
“What, what was it it said?” Panic, still sleep-vague and hollow was threading his thoughts, drip down his back. He stared, closed-expression and damned himself for whatever reason--damning came easier than recognition, easier than memory and more pleasantly.
“Oh, um…usual…” Andrei trailed off, “Precog. worked out for interplanetary, or something; whole new program. You’re not all right, are you?”
“Fine,” said Fletcher, “--Don’t say it, all right?”
Andrei opened his mouth, soundless and closed it, anxiety finally cracking offhand tactlessness. “Say…I didn’t. Wait.”
And Fletcher began laughing, halting humourlessness catching his breath on the edge of a sob. “I’m…sorry. Sorry. God. Damian’ll explain, anyhow--listen, in just a minute.” He glanced down at his disordered tray. “I’m not hungry.”
“You haven’t eaten anything.”
Hands quivering, Fletcher shoved the tray into Andrei’s arms, ignored the fleeting shock, and hoped seconds were enough to reach the far side of the hall.
“Are you going to tell now, Fletcher? Are you going to tell me before I tell…”
“I can’t,” he muttered.
Bewildered cols. stumbled back from his frantic line across the hall. “I can’t.”
He hit the slide-steel doors the same moment sound crackled over the intercom. It hissed. He fumbled for the touch-control.
“Five-sixty, ten-twenty… Lt. Damian speaking. Non-personnel dismissed to colony until 2100 hours.”
“Oy! Fletch!” Andrei’s voice, bewildered, rose over the scattered bulletin-- “I only wanted half, you know?”
The door slid to behind him as Damian went on, as cols. congregated with trays, half-full and began to follow his way out, as his thoughts seemed finished far ahead.
“Crew to be in observatory floor room by 0800 hours; Captain’s directive. That does mean 0800--not a suggestion. And that‘s a note to Cadet Vytorsky. You‘re permitted to skip breakfast. You‘re not permitted to miss a debriefing, especially one you deserve.”
He closed his eyes, dulled the announcement to a scattered dissonance, and walked. For a moment, uncertain, he forgot he couldn’t see. His feet found the corridors faultlessly. “…comm.--crisis on precog. …” Starts and stops, Damian’s voice still rattled through his consciousness, sometimes from outside.
“You can look ahead, Fletch--look ahead!”
“I can’t.”
With a sickening sense of falling forward, Flethcer drew up short. His feet hadn’t known the way, not the present. He stood before the observatory door.
---
“Sit down, Fletcher.” Waverly leaned, distracted, into the back of his chair, gaze wandering.
Fletcher’s inclination wandered with it, thoughts in distinct disorder. Disorder intentional. Flickered scenes, brief words slid between; they were things he didn’t know.
“I don’t know,”
Waverly glanced up. He was a broad-faced man, fair-haired with the faint creases of care near thoughtful eyes and faint creases of humor near his mouth.
“Oh? That is, I hadn’t thought I’d asked yet.”
“No,” Fletcher shook his head, “No, nothing, sir. I’m all right standing.”
“Sit.”
He waited until Fletcher sank down.
“I know this has been difficult for you,” he began finally with measured doubt and weariness. “That is, the scare with Earth. I know you’ve been running yourself bloody ragged watching.”
“I…”
“Ah,” Waverly gestured, dismissive-- “Don’t worry now. Don’t apologise, for God’s sakes,” he smiled faintly, “I know the comm. leaked early…and I know the crew’s been muttering about precog. here.”
“Here,” Fletcher echoed, throat dry.
“Damian’s been particularly break-neck, jumps like hell when you come up next to him--worried about you too, doubtless… He’s asked to take your place a dozen times.”
Hand on chair-rim, Fletcher tried to stand and caught himself.
“It’s been tense, sir.”
“Understatement, that,” said Waverly, “And it’s driving the colony mad. Even the cols. have got wind.”
“…sorry about that, sir.”
“I’m sorry about it,” Waverly muttered, “You--you, Fletcher, have got orders to sleep and to stop worrying about the whole bloody thing. I don’t want to be the first colony marshall to send back accidental death report for a man dead of over-conscientious anxiety.”
A moment later than he meant, Fletcher nodded, relief too startling to make it to his face.
“That was half-a-joke,” remarked Waverly.
“Y-yes.” He could still smile. “Half funny.”
“Dismissed then. You can skip that meeting--likely give you a fever, if anything would. Go to bed,” Waverly sat at last, distracted again, tapping desk-top to bring up his comp. screen. “You’ve the watch, 30 hours from now.”
“Yes sir.”
---
He followed his eyes this time to his bunk, fatigue-fallow instinct a stain on ill-woven thoughts; a familiar stain. Night settled beneath his eyelids as it settled over Nadezhda’s ocean, a quivering, uneven shadow that recalled daylight without warmth, reminded of dawn without a sun.
Determined not to dream, he couldn’t sleep for 24 hours, let alone fourteen.
“Your duty now?“ Kolya mumbled, knocking on the bunk above him.
“I’m awake,” said Fletcher.
“Did you hear the trouble from home?” Now Kolya’s drowsy murmur became plaintive. “They say future’s changing wrong.”
“I didn’t make the briefing. Captain sent me to sleep.”
“Oh.”
On four hours’ dozing, Fletcher stumbled off to the observatory. One day, finished--two more hours half-sleeping above dreams. Two days, past; he watched waves wear stone and a wan sun waver over water and fall again. Three days, done; anxiety too sunk in sleeplessness to sting, he began to stumble into Damian.
The senior lieutenant, dispassionate, nonchalant, waited behind him at supper. In the meter-width quirking corridor around the perimeter, he passed him. If, he said more seldom.
“Missed briefing on the news?” he asked. “’Must have missed hearing about home.”
Fletcher shrugged.
And “if?” Damian interjected thoughtlessly--”If you could, would have known it all ahead.”
“Bloody well if,” snapped Fletcher; “I’m late to relieve Vytorsky.”
“You probably know he’s not one to be left waiting.” Damian shrugged offhand--but his gaze flicked over Fletcher’s shoulder, wariness a fleeting eddy. “Will he dodge out?”
“He’s--Hell,” Fletcher pushed past, “How would I know?”
“We all know Vytorsky,” said Damian.
Fatigue grew heavier on his reason; his mind played tricks--not the light, illusive on Nadezhda. If caught his memory, memories he couldn’t have.
And Damian turned up, took his shift ahead or after, met him at doorways and in between meals.
“…worried about you…” Waverly had said.
The fifth day--Fletcher ignored the mess entirely. His head was too full, sleepless stuffed with Earth, with knowing--too stuffed to let a hollow stomach bother him. Damian would be waiting.
The service corridor half-ringed the mess, always dim in artificial light, wire-crossed and uneven. Tools and spare pieces for Avdotya tumbled into its length. The far end, unused, was stacked high in crates, crates with unneeded weapons that leaned over the narrow door and cast crooked shadow. Stumbling, Fletcher slid in behind the half-jammed door.
“Hey, Fletcher.”
“Good God,” Fletcher jerked back, dim blurred in his stinging eyes.
Crouched over a cracked crate, Damian fumbled lazily with a palm-held Kalashnikov.
“I thought you might come this way,” he went on, languid as his thoughtless hands, “I meant to eat first, I admit. First idea. Not until the last second, thought I’d duck in here. Waverly’s got an unidentified signal--wanted weapon’s check.
“Not hungry?” He glanced up.
Fletcher faltered. On the rim of consciousness, something nettled, stricken voice or falling tide or--
“Just--tired. Bloody hell, you startled me.”
“Really? Hell.” He slid the crate closed, stood. “I wanted to talk, honestly. Some things, you know, you probably missed, missing the meeting.”
“’Didn’t need to know,” said Fletcher, “Look, I’ve got to--”
“You have 30 mintues 'til duty. Andrei can wait until his shift is over, you know.
“And you know,” he smiled, irony harsher in his impassive diregard, “You probably missed some pretty important stuff, sleeping; it being in the past. Precognitives jumped planet, right? And they got to colonies, or something--and come on, Fletcher, don’t run on me. Where’s there to go?”
Feet tangled in free wires, Damian’s fist in his sleeve, Fletcher stiffened--and fell back.
“Waverly’d never guess,” went on Damian, “Don’t worry too much, right?”
“What the Hell are you talking about?” Fletcher felt his voice break, hoarse.
Dispassionate again, fiddling idly with the slender gun, Damian raised an eyebrow. “We ought to talk, you know. Are you going to tell now, Fletcher? Are you going to tell me before I--”
“Don’t,” said Fletcher.
“Before I tell Waverly,” Damian finished, immovable; “Before I make a bloody mess of everything? I’d rather not. I want to know something. It hasn’t happened yet.”
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