Adrift, page 19
Maybe he did. He was feeling it. God damn but he was feeling it. He’d always been pretty aware of his body; long as he could remember he could tell when he was getting sick and had a pretty good idea how bad it was going to be. It wasn’t a special skill or magic power or anything. Weren’t nothing that’d earn him a scrap of anything. Far as he was concerned, anyone could do it if they just paid attention to themselves a bit more and the drama around them a bit less. Bodies gave clues all the time, he was just good at noticing them. What he was feeling now, nothing good was going to come of it. He was already coughing up blood, and he was pretty damn sure the worst hadn’t come just yet. This bug, whatever it was, it was holding back something big to hit him with. Whitman wasn’t sure he had it in him to weather something big.
Ruben had worked too hard for too long to end up just another body in that room. And to get taken down by some sneaky little bacteria? How did a man fight back against that? He didn’t. It wasn’t right. Fair was a concept Whitman stopped believing in a long time ago, but it just wasn’t right. He’d done what he could to be an ok man. If he had to die, and he sure as shit didn’t want to do that, but if he had to it should be like a man. Fighting, running, shooting. Blowing up or taking a bullet in a proper firefight. Not that he’d had too many of those. Not since he’d gotten out.
He was terrified. Every second he let himself think about the blood coming up out of his lungs, he wanted to run through the Lucy screaming. Maybe hurl himself out the airlock. Whitman didn’t want to die gasping – the last day had shaken lose any doubts about that – but just about anything was better than dying from the inside out. Anything to keep himself out of that room. Every time he let his eyes close for more than a second, he saw himself laying on top of one of those piles, the stench of his rotting corpse mingling with a hundred others. He’d bloat and rot and no one would remember him. Maybe Jemma for a while, when the money dried up. Sophie Anne would be sad for a while. But the longer they went without hearing how he ended, the less they’d think of him. He’d just be one small part of that mass of rotten meat, a part that no one really missed.
So yeah. He needed a nap. But he sure as hell didn’t want one. Keeping his mind out of that screaming nightmare required vigilance and distraction. That meant staying awake until he was too tired to dream. He might be getting close, but he wasn’t there yet.
Besides, there actually was something to do.
“We got to get out of this debris. You want to learn to fly this heap or not?”
Whitman wasn’t sure when he’d decided he was going to teach Tron after all. Maybe it was guilt over locking the guy out of navigation. It was the right decision. He’d kept the doors open too long already, waiting. He’d done what he could to increase the guy’s chances on the outside, and Tron had made it through, so it was the right call. But that didn’t mean Whitman didn’t know what a shitty move it was. As bad as Big Benny and the gun. Or maybe it was just hearing how the kid dealt with the lockout and what he’d done to save them all. Probably, it was just because of that awareness of how sick he was and the gnawing fear of where it might be leading. Whatever it was, Whitman had changed his mind.
He wouldn’t teach them both. Oh, he could offer. And they could think about it. If they said Kivi was going to learn too, he’d even make a show at getting her up to speed. But teaching her was time wasted, and he thought they knew it as well as he did. Whitman had seen what she’d done on that panel, and he knew what it meant. He’d heard of geniuses before, even thought he’d met one or two over the years, but he was staring it in the face now. He was absolutely certain she’d learn everything she needed to know by listening in, all on her own, without him giving her a single bit of instruction. He’d never be sure how good at it she was that way, of course, but Whitman was pretty confident she’d turn out to be better at whatever she put that mind of hers to than Tron. Maybe even better than him. So no, he wasn’t going to play teacher to Kivi. She could take care of herself.
The two exchanged a look. Whitman might’ve thought it was Tron asking for permission, back when he first let them in. He still thought there was an element of that to it, but he knew it was more than that now. He’d muted his mic and listened in to some of their conversations. Not all of them. Whenever they started getting into things that sounded like deep dark secrets, he’d flick off onto another station for a while. Listening at all, especially without their knowing, put him solidly in the asshole category and he knew it. But he needed to know what kind of trouble might be waiting for him from them, if they survived. He also wanted to make sure the guy was breathing. Whitman wanted to do everything he could to keep Tron alive, and if he couldn’t he wanted to know the exact second he became a murderer. So he knew full well that the two had done some quality bonding. It was no mystery why Tron was into her. Kivi was the only girl left in his whole universe. Besides, even if you discounted the creepers who would be into the little kid look, she was plenty special enough to win a heart or two.
All of that was in that look they shared. Asking permission, sure, but not permission to say yes. Tron was going to say yes, and they all knew it. He’d fought to get the instruction, and Whitman knew he was still desperate for self-reliance. Couldn’t blame the boy for that either. No, this look was more like he was asking her how alone she was going to feel, if he stopped paying attention to her. They’d been through a hell of a lot, those two. If Whitman was afraid of the horrors waiting behind his eyelids, he didn’t even want to try imagining what was waiting for either of them to have a few moments of uninterrupted thought. Would be worse than hell, that. And Whitman couldn’t fault either one of them for worrying about getting lost in that.
Kivi nodded. Just a bit. Fraction of an inch, really. Whitman saw it, even though he was pretty sure he wasn’t meant to. Tron arrived at his side a minute later. He heard the girl settling in to the spot she’d occupied during most of the previous lessons, in the far right corner.
“We’re all exhausted,” Tron muttered lowly. “How long do you think this is going to take?”
Whitman eyed the boy and was surprised by what he saw. It wasn’t a threat or recrimination. It looked to be an honest assessment followed by an equally honest question. It wasn’t what he’d expected. Anger, hatred, a deep need for vengeance, those he was prepared for. Instead it was an open acceptance of whatever his verdict might be. It threw him off.
How long? How long would it be until the nightmares were gone? But there was more to these new lessons than just that. Ruben needed to get Tron ready to fly this clunker, and he needed to do it fast. Before the disease growing inside him gathered up enough strength for the big wave of bad he knew was coming. “Won’t be long now.”
Self-Reliance
Tron knew he was surprising Kivi and Whitman both, and he could admit to himself that he took a little bit of satisfaction from that. Mostly, though, he just wanted to learn everything he needed to know to keep Lucy flying. To get her wherever it was the old man had them going. So his dedication to Whitman’s lessons, despite the exhaustion that clung to him for days and Kivi’s obvious boredom, had a lot less to do with shocking them than it did survival.
He knew they didn’t understand his motivations. He’d thought Kivi would, but she kept dropping comments about how the old man wasn’t really a ‘bad guy’ that made it pretty sure she believed he was still thinking about tossing Whitman out the airlock. Tron probably would’ve, and felt perfectly justified in doing so, if it weren’t for a comment the old man had made. It had been after Kivi took off her helmet and started her insane flight across the ship to the engine room, and it had changed everything. He considered telling Kivi about it every time they settled down into their beds, down in his room. He also considered how alone they were and how easy it would be to finish what they hadn’t quite started that day in the engine room. He never acted on either one.
Honestly, he was relieved they’d been interrupted before he could kiss her. He’d wanted to, wanted her, so bad he couldn’t breathe for the smell of her. She’d invaded his whole mind, and the idea of her as a kid was banished forever. But the second that com had clicked on, Tron had realized what he’d been about to do. Kissing her, doing anything with her, would change everything between them. They’d never be family again. Or never just family. They’d be something else. Something better, maybe, for a while. Maybe forever. But maybe not. She was three years younger than him, and that was huge. They had Lucy, what they’d been through, and everything that had come from that.
And it was wrong. Not the age difference. Not completely the age difference. The idea that other people would think he was sick for the way he was thinking about her did bother him. But the fact that there was only the two of them and Whitman made that concern hard to keep a hold on. It was the loss that made it really wrong. Like he was putting a tarp over the chasm all the dead had left inside his soul and pretending it wasn’t there.
All of which meant kissing her was a really, really stupid thing to do. He still wanted to. He could feel her behind him, feel her eyes resting somewhere between his shoulders. But if it was just a tarp over that loss, if it was only Lucy holding them together, he would lose her. Not just as what he was wanting right now, but as family. Tron was not going to lose that. Not for his hormones, not for anything.
Not unless she asked him to. Tron knew he wasn’t strong enough to say no. He didn’t think he’d be able to hold back if she ever gave the hint she wanted him as bad as he wanted her. He was lucky that Kivi didn’t ever mention what had almost happened. So he threw himself into his lessons, at least partially to distract himself from the thoughts that kept trying to undo his resolve.
She wasn’t the only reason he devoted himself to the work. The truth was, he was trying to get ready to replace Whitman. Not because he wanted to be rid of him. Not anymore. Tron didn’t know if he’d ever be particularly fond of the old man, but the guy was ok. When Tron had finally given up screaming for Kivi, Whit had spoken very quietly. “I gave up the best pair of gloves I’ve ever owned. Don’t let it be a waste.” It wasn’t some grand sweeping gesture, or some great statement about his morality. Tron wouldn’t have believed it if it was. It was just a simple admission of a sacrifice Whit hadn’t needed to make, one made solely to help Kivi. He still wasn’t sure Whitman hadn’t wanted to lock him out of navigation, but he was positive that the old man did his best to keep Kivi alive. That was good enough.
But Whitman was sick. It was more obvious every day, though Whit was clearly trying to hide it. It had taken Tron a day or two to sort it out. The old man was pretty convincing at first, and it wasn’t like they all didn’t have a good reason to look and act half dead. But the coughing fits didn’t diminish, the way his exhaustion and sore throat did. Tron was also pretty sure he’d seen blood on the old man’s hand a couple of times after one of those. And instead of recovering, Whit just got pastier. He also spent a lot of time wearing the jacket he’d lent to Kivi, despite how warm they all liked to keep the ship now. The man was definitely sick.
Tron didn’t know how sick, but he knew blood was a bad sign. They couldn’t be down a pilot long. Not with the mystery ship still out there somewhere. They’d gone two weeks without a sighting, but not one of them was dumb enough to think that meant they were clear. It wasn’t something they talked about. Well, he and Kivi did some, while they were alone. But there was a tenseness every time one of them took a turn recalibrating the sensors. So he absorbed as much information as he could, and brought his data pad with him to bed every night so that he could study his notes until he fell asleep.
It was actually a pretty decent distraction. Didn’t work quite as well when Kivi was using his shower, but no system could be perfect.
He was finally starting to feel like he had a handle on the whole flight thing. There was a lot more math involved than he’d ever realized, and that had been the most challenging part. Kivi was brilliant at it, but math had never been Tron’s friend. Whit kept telling him that he would ‘get the feel for it’ and not have to do so many figures on his pad after a while, and Tron had thought that was a load of shit for a long time, but the last two course adjustments he’d made he’d done with only a little bit of work. So maybe there was something to it.
“Are you going to tell me where we’re headed?”
It was a question he’d been thinking about for a week. Longer, really, but he’d actually been thinking about asking instead of demanding. Ever since he’d noticed Whitman staring blankly into the black for several minutes at a time. It was a little like looking at one of the corpses, and each time sent a shot of fear right down to Tron’s core. He couldn’t wait for the old man to decide to open up and tell them about how sick he really was. Every day Tron put off asking made it more likely that they’d come into navigation and find him past being able to tell.
Whit shifted in his chair, staring at him from across the pathway. The old man was drenched in sweat, despite being huddled in his jacket so tightly it made him look a little like the hunchbacks in the vids. For a second, Tron was sure the old man was going to snap at him. That kind of reaction had been increasing just as much as the coughing. Sometimes it was hard to keep his own temper in check in response.
But Whit didn’t snap. He tapped out something on his console, and a second later a red blip appeared on Tron’s. Tron tapped it twice and the small screen opened up to show a star map with a circle around a point that didn’t mean anything to him.
“This doesn’t mean anything to me.”
“It’s Vah,” he grumbled. Whit was always grumbling now. Tron was pretty sure it was all the sound the man’s throat could manage.
Tron pursed his lips and tapped the screen again to zoom in on the circle. He was looking at a solar system with a small yellow line dissecting it, though the only proof Tron had that it was the one they were in was Whitman’s word. Stellar studies weren’t part of the curriculum on Lucy. No one there was ever supposed to be going into space. Not after the ship landed. So his understanding of what he was looking at was limited to what Whit had taught him over the last two weeks. That wasn’t much, with all the other aspects of piloting that he had to learn as well, but it was enough to pick out the most likely trajectory of the yellow line.
It was a test, of course. There were always tests. Whit never gave anything for free. It was always a bargain. Want an answer to this question? Give an answer to another in exchange. Explain what was wrong with the example he gave five minutes ago. Want him to open the door to navigation so you can get dinner? Recite the ten worst mistakes a pilot could make and how to avoid them. If Tron wanted to know what Vah was and why they were going there, he was going to have to figure out where ‘there’ was.
The problem was, with the way they had to navigate around so much of the debris field, it wasn’t as easy as following the line. There were three likely points. Two were planets and the third was a moon orbiting the second planet. There was no particular reason to pick that one, except that it was different than the other two. So he circled the moon and sent it back over.
Whit’s face twisted into a small smile. “Not bad.”
That was the best praise Tron had gotten in days. He wasn’t about to admit it was just luck. “So? What’s the big deal with this tiny little rock?”
“Vah’s a medical base.” The old man shot a glance back at Kivi, who was busy working on something on her pad. She didn’t look like she was listening, but Tron knew she was. Kivi was always listening, always waiting for some new scrap of information that might interest her. “I’m, ah, not doing so well.”
“You don’t say. Kivi, did you hear that? Our friend Whit is not doing so well! Are you as surprised by this news as I am?”
Kivi gave him a ghost of a smile then shook her head. “Don’t be mean.”
“But it’s fun,” Tron protested. He wasn’t really trying to be mean. She knew it too, or else she wouldn’t have smiled.
“You knew.”
“Of course we knew. You look like shit,” Tron answered. He softened his tone, but just a little. They weren’t friends, and he wasn’t going to act like it just because the man was in bad shape. “How long can you keep this up?”
Whitman sighed and sagged in his chair, as if the act for the two of them was the only thing that had kept him upright. Maybe it was. “Long as I have to,” the old man answered.
“Don’t lie,” Kivi murmured from her spot. It was Tron’s turn to flash her a smile. She beat him to it. “You are too sick for this.”
Whit grimaced and acted like he was going to argue. Before he could, Tron jumped in. “You’ve had me doing all the course corrections for days now. You just told me where we’re going. What is it, exactly, that you have left to do worth putting yourself through this?”
Whitman hesitated. Then he sighed and slumped down even further into his jacket, until he was just a face amid all the brown leather. “Make sure you’ll go,” he answered in little more than a whisper. “Make sure you won’t change course as soon as you know you’re self-reliant.”
Tron wanted to tease and reassure, but he didn’t do either one. The truth was, he’d had every intention of doing that when he first struck this deal with Whitman. He had still been thinking about it right up until Whit told him why they were going to Vah. Not that he would’ve. Not anymore. Tron understood that it wasn’t his world out there. It was populated by strangers and enemies, and he didn’t have the ability to tell the difference. Not yet. Just like he didn’t know how to find any of those people without some guidance. The black was just too big to go wandering around and hoping for the best. “We’ll go,” he said instead. Not that Whitman had any reason to believe him. So he gave him the other reason going to a medical station had instantly struck him as the best idea possible. “Kivi needs her leg fixed. I’m not going to let her deal with a limp the rest of her life if I can help it.”
