Humanity in the Deep

Roger was looking out the window, thinking about how he would paint the scene before him. The dot that was his home would have to be made larger; it was too important to just be a pinprick. He would have to add stars, maybe show the halo as an exaggerated ring around the planet.

They would be on the boat for two weeks, and then the Erikson would start getting ready to leave the grid entirely. He was still wrapping his head around the idea of going where no human had ever been, of seeing things no one had ever seen. The construction site the Erikson was going to was unexplored. Not so much as an unmanned probe had ever been there.

Saying his final goodbye to the world that had given him birth, where his father was buried, he felt an arm being put around his shoulder.

The woman was younger than he was, no older than twenty years. She was black, a little short, and, truth be told, a bit round. He saw nothing but compassion on her smiling face.

He was looking into her eyes when he realized she was talking. “...Sorry, but you looked like you needed it,” she said quickly. “I’m Katrina Loke, ‘Kat’ to my friends. You want to get some lunch?” She stood up and offered her hand. When he put his hand in hers, her smile almost reached her ears.

He said, “I’m Roger Powell, the new painter.” As he took her hand. When he stood up he ended up jumped and instead of standing, he sped to the ceiling. Kat grabbed his arm but was pulled up with him instead of slowing him down. They both hit the ceiling and then bounced to the floor.

They laughed. Despite the pain from slamming into the ceiling, Roger felt better than he had in a long time. It’d been a while since he had had a good laugh.

With a large smile on her face, she said, “How about I help this time?” As she put her arm was put around his waist.

“Glide, don’t walk. You only weigh about a fifth of what you’re used to.”

Roger felt uncomfortable with her being that close. But he knew he needed help, and she was so friendly, it was hard to refuse.

She helped him get from the observation room to a giant room that looked like it had been converted into a chow hall. All the tables looked to were collapsible and clipped to the floor. The food was being cooked on what appeared to be like portable equipment.

It was loud and crowded, with everyone talking. When they had their plates, Kat led him to a table where Kyle from the auction was sitting. He was with a short girl who looked to be thirteen or fourteen.

He had thought her last name was familiar. Having seen them together, he easily saw the resemblance.

“I am truly sorry for whatever my sister did. I mentioned that I thought you could use some company, and she rushed off.”

He looked at her and smiled, saying as he sat down, “I’m glad she came.” Then sat down.

“This is our sister, Nadica. Nadica, this is Roger Powell, our painter. The council finally approved hiring one.”

Nadica hesitantly extended her hand, and he shook it. “Good to meet you,” she said quietly, then went back to eating.

After eating a banana, Kat asked, “So....you want to draw me naked?”

He probably would have choked if he had been chewing at the time.

Kyle sighed, and gave Kat a glare when he said, “What she MEANT to say is, do you want to hold a drawing class while we’re making our way to the Erikson?”

---

Roger shook Joe’s hand as he put away his drawing pencil.

Joe was old, older than forty anyway. He had a gravelly voice and looked like a man who did a lot of manual labor. He was not the kind of person Roger thought of when he thought of art students, or engineers, for that matter.

“You going to do this on the Erikson?”

Roger smiled. “I don’t know; I’ll have to talk to Gina.”

“You do that. We all could use more to do in transit. You have to keep in mind, son, that most of us spend the time in transit going over technical journals, training, or being trained. After doing that all day? Learning how to draw sounds like a good way to relax.”

Nadica slipped out fast, for as outgoing as her sister was, she sure was shy. He was surprised by how focused she was.

He had taught at least two sessions per day in a quickly knocked-together room. He may have only gotten a little drawing in himself, but it was still exhilarating. It had been years since he had live models, and he had never taught anyone how to draw before. He found it was fulfilling in ways hard to describe.

He thought that maybe he could move on, that he could leave the past in the past. Maybe the Erikson would be a fresh start.

As Roger shook the last person’s hand, he turned back to Kat and saw that she was putting her clothes on. They had spent a lot of time together.

When everyone had gone, and she was still only half-dressed, she turned to him and said, “You want to move in with us?”

She walked up to him, still less than half dressed and put her hand on his shoulder.

He blinked a few times, then said, “What?”

“There’s a nice roomy single next door to our cabin on the Erikson. Do you want to move in? Please, I promise it’ll be fun.

“Besides, Kyle is in charge of getting you qualified; it will go much faster if he’s next door.”

He opened his mouth, but no words came out as he looked at her half-nude form. He took his wristcomp and left. He did his best to move slowly when he said, “I’ll... think about it.”

---

Most of the temporary walls had been taken down and the chairs put back in place. In front was a large wall screen that showed the Lief Erikson, which they were fast approaching.

The Erikson was a long cylinder that was pinched about a third of the way along its length. Where it was pinched, there were two squat rotating cylinders. Roger assumed those were the gravity rings where most of the living space was. The back part of the ship was wider and ended in a large sizeable concave plate that was noticeably wider than the ship itself. In front of the rings were what looked to be tracks going forward and backward across it. As they got closer, Roger could see the whole track section the tracks were on was inset. The front of the ship had a plate as well, although it was much shinier and thinner than the other one.

There were tiny dots moving around it, mostly around the back part. He was so absorbed in the screen, that he almost jumped out of his skin when he heard Kat.

“That plate in the back is the heart of our drive; the large mag bubble is formed just behind it. We inject hydrogen and fuse it. It puts out radiation equivalent to a nuke, which pushes us forward. We’re the only ship to use a torch drive, that I know of, at least. We’re so large and travel so fast that a normal plasma drive wouldn’t be enough.”

She finally looked at him from two seats over and said, “I am sorry if I made you uncomfortable yesterday.” She was murmuring, much softer than he had heard her say anything before.

“I like you and would like to get to know you better,” Kat said softly.

He looked into her eyes and saw the beauty there, and he saw sincerity.

“I know I can come off as...insistent. I swear I will be the perfect gentlewoman.”

Roger did his best to look her in the eyes and said, “I would love to move in next to you, I just... I never got out much. I don’t really know how to be around people.”

If he was honest with himself, he was unsure why he agreed. Kat felt...felt right, like the color of the sky.

When she smiled, her whole body smiled with her. Being around her made him Roger want to be happy, to laugh. Looking at her, being near her, made him feel better than he had in a very long time. Like he mattered.

---

When Roger opened the inner hatch that led to the inside of the strut, he breathed deeply. He had been through it once with Kat four days before, but it would be different by himself.

The lifts looked like saddles with handlebars up front and a chair back behind. When on the rings, the rider’s back was down, when the lift got to the middle of the ring, there was no gravity.

Roger held onto the handlebars like Kat had shown him and jumped forward and fell onto the seat. It felt like he was lying on his back on the ground with his feet on a wall but it looked like he was on a cycle about to go down a tunnel.

When he hit the button for the transit, he with his right hand and a second later was shot forward fast enough to remind him of a train. He came to a stop more than a hundred meters later at the end of the strut, where it met the transit in the middle of the white ring.

He carefully pushed off the saddle lift and planted his feet across from him. Thinking of where they were as down.

He turned back around and got out of the way of the next person getting off the saddle lift.

The transit was a squat cylinder where the struts from the white ring joined the ship. To his left, there was an opening where the other ring, the black ring, had its transit. There were eight sets of half-circle-shaped holes around the upship transit upship, where he was. The open half was where Roger had just come up from. The other half was where the elevator shafts met at in the middle of the room.

Walking forward As fast as he could, he started to walk forward. He put one foot ahead of him. He pulled back sharply then and lifted forward with his back foot, and pulled himself forward. He moved as fast as he could, the transit was spinning; he didn’t want to stay there any longer than he had to.

He made his way through the large hatch that lead upship, and he pulled himself along the hand holds until he came to the one he was looking for. It led to an unused cargo bay, the one that Kat told him was used for zero-G sports sometimes. He pulled himself through and flipped end over end to point his feet to the new down. After A few minutes of climbing, and he was at it’s hatch.

No one else was there. He assumed it was because everyone else was either asleep or busy.

Not that Roger wasn’t tired, but he could not get the picture out of his head of how inadequate he was in zero-G. He had to be better, he had to show that he was earning his keep. He wanted to be fully capable in zero-G before they left.

Taking a ball out of his pocket, and he threw it at the opposite bulkhead at an odd angle. He then jumped off to try and catch it. It was an exercise that Kyle had said would help him adjust to zero-G.

After several minutes of practice, he heard someone call out, “What are you doing?”

He missed the catch and hit his head on the bulkhead as he turned around, surprised.

He saw Nadica, Kat’s younger sister, flinched and pulled herself into the compartment.

“Sorry, I was wondering where you were sneaking off to.”

Roger righted and oriented himself to face her, “I should have been paying more attention; I was just practicing.” He hesitated, looking around, “I’m not that good in zero-G.”

“You are quite skilled, considering you were living on a planet. But I would love to help you anyway,” she said.

He threw her the ball and said, “You don’t have to.”

“You know you can ask for help.”

“You’re all so busy., I don’t want to be a burden.”

She looked up from below him, tossed the ball at the bulkhead behind her, and said, “You’re not,” as she pushed off the bulkhead.

“The first rule of being an adult is ‘Don’t be afraid to ask for help.’. That was the first thing my brother said when I started studying for the adulthood tests.”

Their parents were dead, some kind of accident. Kyle had other rules for being an adult. He would always say, ‘The first rule of being an adult is...’. Apparently, all the rules for being an adult were the first rule.

Roger accepted Nadica’s help with all the grace he could.

---

“Now, close your eyes,” Nadica said seriously.

“Go.”

Roger quickly turned, felt around for the bulkhead’s oversized button, on the bulkhead and smashed it down with a loud click.

He heard A section of the bulkhead slide upward. He felt around inside. When he finally found the round, rubbery nob, he put the e-mask on his face. He made sure it was only touching skin, and he yelled, “Stop,” he and held still.

Nadica’s wristcomp beeped, and he opened his eyes. Nadica started to looked around his head where the emergency mask would seal. “Good job, easily made it in time. Shouldn’t have any problems getting qualified.”

“Thanks for the help.”

She said nothing, then hugged him briefly.

“Kat and Kyle could probably use some help packing up their bedrooms; want to help?”

“Sure.”

Kyle had volunteered to see that he was able to pass all the qual’s and had asked Nadica to help. Roger got the impression that he did it as much to help Nadica get out of their quarters more as for Roger.

Kyle had to do some of the training. What Nadica did, she did well and took it seriously.

---

Roger gently lifted the massive box above its identical counterpart and snapped it in place.

“You didn’t even flinch,” Kyle said from behind him.

“Should I have?” Roger said asked with some confusion.

“Of course not, but most people who have only been in freefall for a less than a month do; you are adjusting well.”

He carefully stepped back and looked at his handiwork. A half dozen boxes lined up against the bulkhead, clipped to each other and to the floor. Or the deck, as he was learning to call it.

The Lokes’ quarters looked like they had just moved in.

Kyle pushed himself above Roger and floated there. He looked at the boxes from above Roger’s head and said, “Looks good, we should pass inspection. Thanks for the help. Although we might not have needed it if someone hadn’t waited until the day before the officer’s walk through.” He looked meaningfully at Kat.

“The day before is still before. Plenty of time,” she said crossing her arms under her breasts.

“You two can head out if you want. I need to go through some skirt designs, and Nadica has to study for a history test tomorrow. Enjoy the zero-G while you can we’ll be cramped in the emergency quarters for more than a month at a full G after all.”

Nadica stuck her tongue out at him, then went to her room.

“I have to study some piloting doc’s. Want to keep me company?” Kat asked. She wanted to be a pilot and was doing the academic learning as fast as she could.

Roger smiled, grabbed her hand, and said, “Let’s go.” She let go of his hand and put an arm around his waist, practically marching him out of the room. She laughed as she let go of him and leaped ahead, landing on the bulkhead in front of them, and jumped to his left, around the bend in the corridor.

Roger followed, at a more sedate pace, but still much faster than he could have a week before. He made several jumps back and forth, mostly avoiding hitting people until he got to the strut and saw Kat waiting. She ducked in, and he followed.

He closed his eyes and reoriented himself, putting his feet toward the bulkhead opposite the door, and began thinking of that as down.

By the time he opened his eyes, Kat was at the far end, more than a hundred meters forward at the far end. He started to skip-run up the strut.

He crouched low and using the grip on his shoes to pull the surface while he slowly straightened. When he was fully standing, he pushed off while flipping around and landed on the opposite bulkhead.

Kat liked to make a game of getting to the top of the struts as fast as possible without using the saddle lifts. Roger enjoyed chasing Kat.

He made it to the end of the strut in three jumps and entered the upship transit. To his right was the hole that exited into the upship tube, a large empty tunnel running down the ship’s axis of the ship in the upship, or forward, sections.

He pushed off in the direction of the upship tube, the air rushing in his face.

He realized he was too dead center and couldn’t grab onto anything. He flailed around until he was caught by Kat.

As she pulled him up, he reoriented himself as she said, “You’re getting better, but still need to work at the end there.

“How about that corner?” She pointed to the far corner, at the fore docking ring and started to skip-run there.

He followed, taking only two more skips than her.

She began studying while he drew her.

---

Roger put his backpack on and left his quarters.

Kat and her siblings were waiting outside. “Got everything?” Kyle asked.

Roger nodded and said, “Feels strange to be moving out days after moving in.”

“Trust me, you don’t want to be here when we’re boosting.”

Kat started to chuckled. “You would know.”

Roger looked at Kyle, who sighed, “I had to climb up here five years ago. I forgot my wristcomp and hadn’t set it to sync. Trust me, it’s not fun.”

Not quite knowing where to take the conversation after that, Roger turned to Nadica, who was turning fifteen in two weeks. “Any big plans for your birthday?”

“Going to study to become an adult.”

“Um, okay...” he said slowly.

“Kat became one at seventeen,” She said defensively.

Kyle looked back at him and said, “I sometimes forget where you’re from. On the Erikson you’re an adult when you’re ready, not when an arbitrary age is reached. There’s a series of tests, basic school stuff mostly. Plus the debate, and working full-time for three months. She,” he pointed to Kat, “was out of my hair at seventeen. The same age when I passed the tests. That’s how I was able to become their guardian.”

Talking to Kyle, it was easy to forget the kind of responsibility he had borne. At seventeen, Roger would hardly have been able to take care of himself, let alone a thirteen-year-old and an eight-year-old. Doing so when also grieving for the loss of his parents showed a depth of character that Roger wished he had.

“I’m going to do it at fifteen.”

Kyle smiled and squeezed her shoulder while saying, “No doubt.”

“Decided on a cake yet?” He asked.

They had talked about her party, apparently. It was tradition for Kyle to make a period costume of some kind for Nadica to wear as well as to make a cake.

Roger smiled to himself. Moments like those, he could almost forget he was an outsider.