The Right Thing - Part III E-Book

Suzann Dodd

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Rescued from a Space Station, aboard the Odin Path, a luxury ship which cruises space, Sharon tries to understand Daktoy, understand what is and is not and can and can not be in this future world.

Leseprobe

Suzann Dodd

The Right Thing - Part III

BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

Chapter One - The Impossible

eDAPKTCHOY

I am not human.

It is of secondary reflection when I am aboard the Courage. The crew responds to a uniform.I am not human. It requires slight consideration when I am alone.  There are treasuries of knowledge I can plunder until fatigue conquers. There is training of my musculature; I persevere in exercises until exhaustion overtakes me.

I do not miser time to reflect on incidents, for such is wastage of mental effort and physically demeaning.

I am ZerShaziemn.  I have experienced the impact of not being human all the days of my actuality; there is no sentiment to be attached.

There was an interval, an aborted sensibility, where I craved the inclusion humanness would grant. But it was of brief duration. I excreted the desire and persisted as I am.  As I am, a Lieutenant in the TSF.

A Lieutenant who is not human, but a Lieutenant in the Terran Space Fleet. An aviator, with sufficient security clearance to protect integrity if humans dispute my right to exist.

In this narrow band, it did not signify I was not human. Beyond that meridian, it was central. Which perhaps, elucidates why I could not disremember those moments in my cabin aboard the Courage.

Alone, as a child savouring a treat, I relived the encounter, savouring physical sensations. Passions I never cognized existed, existed within me.

My body, this body I regarded as subject to my will, escaped my control. Such departure frightened; yet, occurred each interval I anticipated confronting Shar-Ron. And I pursued the apprehension.

When I allowed myself to imagine the encounter, it would be as if we were in my cabin as we had been. In my cabin aboard the Courage, as if she had abandoned a brief moment and reentered.As moments to our encounter decreased, my anxiety increased, as did my postulates of possibilities.

Yet, when dream became reality, I was impotent to conduct it.

I had gone to the compartment Shar-Ron occupied within the Space Station, and awaited. She entered, her bearing altered, she appeared weak and ill. Ere I could speak, she began to cry.  

This was as the incident where she cried in the Re-An Unit. Then she turned her face to the wall, trembled and tears came from her eyes.  This time, it was extraordinary. She fell to the floor and convulsed as if shot; I did not comprehend how to react.  I kneeled beside her, informing of the  Odin Path, advising her of its berth, and with haste she board.

I did not apprehend what was required of  me in the challenge of her reaction, but was no span for analysis; the Odin departed in minutes, illegal for me to be aboard the Station. I relinquished.

Aboard the Odin I conjectured if she would come, or if the crying connoted expression beyond my comprehension. But she did arrive.

I could not speak as the ship was departing. I prepared her, then entered my cabin, reverting when it was safe so to do, found her most disharmoniszed.  I could not comprehend all she imparted, as she spoke in the language of her time, but I knew she was angry with me.

This was my friend, she was suffering and I did not perceive how to assist. Further, my own equilibrium effected, I must analyse my motives, my emotions, the consequences.

When I returned from my walk of the ship's corridors, Shar-Ron was asleep. I thought it correct for her to repair herself. But, she slept so attenuated, after the second watch I awoke her.  She seemed improved.

As I thought to approach, she informed she was feeling human. I am not human. No relationship could exist between us.

I could not interpret her, nor could she comprehend me. What transpired on board the Courage was an achievement of confusion. A peculiar situation in which dissimilar things appear similar. A mistake, an illusion.

I am of Zechia; not human. Shar-Ron is of Earth, human. No affinity could exist between us. Not even true friendship.

I had teased myself, must recognise I had done so. Discordantly she ordained me a liar. Of all epithets to be hurled at a ZerShaziemn, that is the most distasteful and If she were not pitifully small and helpless I would injure her.

No one can ordain a Zershaziemn a Liar. But it was greater than insult. It was authentic.

A singularity occurred. Immoral and perhaps illegal. An event of such gross indecency, the Captain of a Battlecruiser would pervert justice to avert it.  I knew it, Shar-Ron perceived it; that she was alert made my denial greater than simple falsehood.

If she had not been so human, so alien to my mode of thought;

if she had entered the compartment on the Space Station calmly and greeted me with friendliness;

If she had been as she was on The Courage;

If she had been as  the last I encountered her then what was begun there would culminate here.

But I was not human.

I had vowed, vowed as a Zershaziemn, to try to take her home.

On her home world, in her natural time, she had a mate. A human mate. What game is this to be played by a Zershaziemn?

There is a fact I appreciate, I have never forgotten. Not in all the years I grew on Galteri, raised by a human family. Not in the years I lived and worked among humans. Zershaziemn mate once, mate for life.

Humans may mate each day with a different partner, change partners in a day. Being human is being without the ability to mate fully. But my species mates once, forever.

If I love, as humans denominate it, if I love, I love once. And I can never break, nor alter, nor surpass that love. Dare I mate with Shar-Ron I can mate with no other. And Shar-Ron is human. I can not mate with a human. I can not mate with Shar-Ron.

Were there no bars to our mating on biological grounds, I could not mate with Shar-Ron. Shar-Ron has a mate. And I will convey her to this mate.

I have so vowed.

What transpired between us, on Earth, in the Re-An Unit of the Courage, concluded within my cabin. It must be banished to realms of lost and broken memories secreted during my life.

I will put it beyond contemplation, perform my tasks, disremember feelings; if unable, assiduously suppress them.

I analysed where I had made my illogical assumptions concerning the alliance between myself and Shar-Ron.  Yet, I need not search. It is a repetitious chant, a slogan.

I am not human. And she is not Zershaz. And we can not mate.

Nothing more need be established.

Chapter Two - What Doesn't Work

SHARON

To go Home.

To escape this nightmare.

To escape.   

To escape to what really are the 'Good Old Days.' 

Don't doubt it.

With everything; war and disease and poverty, taxes and car accidents, with murderers climbing into your bedroom window--those are the good days.

I have seen the future, and it doesn't work.

It could have been predicted, it was the obvious outcome

The Space Station was being in a colony of mental defectives. They weren't people, just bodies, perfect bodies with the mentality of ants. It reminded me of the subway in New York City.

I smiled, remembering my visit to New York City in 1974. I was twenty years old, Gordon a tiny baby, and Fred, the big Union man, invited to a function, taking his family. 

Why do I remember? It's gone.

No.

It's not gone. Daktoy's here. He'll take me back there. He'll take me where there aren't Space Stations of three hundred clones without conversation, idea or soul. Take me back to before they ran out of souls but kept going, figuring that it didn't matter. Take me back to freedom, to space.

I'd never imagine how confining Space is. Being in Space is probably worse than being in a submarine. You can't move anywhere. Even walking is curtailed.

They had to put these exercise machines in each compartment and order people to use them. If one didn't use them, one would totally mummify.

I don't know how long I spent on the Space Station, or on the Ship. To me, the time on the ship was like a week, the time on the Station like twenty years.

Time is weird in space. There's no sunrise, sunset, just permanent day with each person on a shift. I'm not sure how many real hours are in a day on the Space Station.

There were ways to tell time, what day it is on Earth, what year, even the hour in one's hometown. But on the station there are no days. There is no Monday. Everyday is Monday. Every day is work, because there isn't shit to do. And no where to go.

Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad for me if I'd lived in a one room flat in some city like New York in my 'real life' on Earth. But I hadn't. I had lived on over two acres of sea front and had my own house.  And since I'd lived in the tropics, windows and doors were rarely shut. I lived outside, outside in the sun and air and sea breeze.

Putting me in the station, despite the fact I was five feet tall and 100 pounds and they were all close to six feet tall and 150, was like putting a Great Dane in a Volkswagon. They might be accustomed to it. I could never be accustomed to it.

I'd thought of killing myself continually. The only reason I didn't was the vow Daktoy made to me. Daktoy vowed he would come and try to take me home.

Since he wasn't human, the vow was a pledge of his soul. I believed he would come. And he did come. He did take me from the Station. Took what was left of me, from that hell, to this pre-heaven.Knowing I was going home, I became my real real self. My l989 'just got up and took a dip in the sea, reading the Sunday paper', self. I was happy for like four hours. Then, it started to sour.

If he took me home, what would happen to him?

Our meeting had been an accident. He'd misjudged, wound upfive hundred years in the past, instead of so many miles away. And the flyer upon which he traveled had dissolved. If his people hadn't come for him, he'd be stranded on Earth, five hundred years in his past.

No.

It was not his past. It was my past. And he could not live in my past. But did he really live here?They hadn't come for him, not really. They'd come for the flyer. The flyer was their main concern. He was an appendage to that. He was not important. And I was not important. Why then would my comfort, my convenience, mean anything to anyone?

Was it official that I be sent home?

Would he be officially transported back to his ship, and would his ship officially return with him to when ever this was?

It seemed like a hell of a lot of money to spend on someone as negatively important as myself.

The Captain of the Courage said I would not be returned to my time. I'd seen the flyer, I knew about it. The flyer. That was the alpha and omega.  My going home was not going to be official. Daktoy was going to steal a craft and take me back to my time and place. He was going to risk everything he had to do it.

No.

Daktoy would have to die. To do it, he would die.  

He was not human. He didn't look very human.  Sure, put him in circa 1989 clothes, get a tam on his head, a pair of darkers over his eyes and he'd just look strange. From a distance.  And even so, even if he could 'pass' as human where in hell could he go in 1989, and how long could he live? And how likely was it that he would be captured?

Captured?

No.

He would die.

I'm not the most wildly brilliant person. But adding two and two and recalling his conversations, it was clear and getting clearer.

During my sojourn aboard the big space ship I learned how much he was disliked by crew. Humans hated him because he was a Z. Which was the general racism I knew well. But, added was the fact for like two centuries humans had been at war with the Zs.

The libraries were full of references to them, making them out to be real monsters. Of course, reading something off of a computer in a government installation is not automatically stamped as true.

Anyway, I'm sitting in my room and Daktoy isn't there, and he's not in his room next door either and I'm getting unhappy with my own company.

An aunt of mine used to travel on cruise ships. This was like a cruise ship; lavish and full of activities.  

I went to the duper and got something to wear. Something nice, a bit punky but nice, and went for a little walkabout.  As I was going home, since I was no longer a prisoner, I was getting back to my old jaunty style. I went about, looking into the big rooms. In one was some excitement, probably a casino.

I went along but wasn't able to follow the activities and not all that interested. And then, I walked in and saw a swimming pool. A double Olympic size.

I didn't look at anything else. Not the people, not nothing.