The Engines of Dawn (6 page)

So he decided instead to go to the student health center. A young man his age shouldn't be having performance problems, and the staff at the student health center usually had the answers to everything. Or most everything.

To his surprise, Ben found the student health center fairly busy at that hour. He counted eight miserable-looking students in the lobby waiting to see the next available doctor.

At first Ben wondered if the students in the lobby had suffered side effects from whatever it was that destroyed the physics lab- burns, broken bones, and the like. But that didn't seem to be the case. Mostly, these students just seemed depressed. There were five young men, three young women.

Triage got him in to see one of the doctors an hour after the others were cycled through. On his way to an examination room he passed a ward filled with sleeping students. He couldn't count the number of students held there, but he guessed it was over twenty. That seemed high to him, for a university the size of Eos. But what did he know?

Ben climbed into a gown, feeling like a little kid putting on his jammies. The door to his cubicle opened and an attractive woman in her late thirties entered. A faint aura of perfume had come in with her and its caressing fingers surrounded Ben where he sat on the examination table.

"You must be Benjamin," the doctor said, consulting her chart. "I'm Katrina. Katrina Larsen."

Ben blushed. She wore no wedding ring and smiled at him familiarly. Even so, the woman's aura, hint of pleasantly large breasts, even her shapely mouth, could not rally his "boys." Inwardly, he bewailed his fate.

"So what brings you to me tonight?" she asked in a very musical voice.

Ill at ease, he said, "Are there always this many students in the health center?" Ben jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "There must be twenty or thirty students in that ward we passed."

Dr. Larsen began probing Ben's ears, flashing lights in his eyes. "Let's don't talk about them. Let's talk about us."

"'Us'?"

"Why
you're
here tonight. With me."

"Actually, I don't know if-"

"Sure you do. Tell me."

He swallowed and told the beautiful doctor his problem. Dr. Larsen listened patiently. She scribbled a few notes on Ben's file sheet.

"I'm almost twenty-eight years old," he said at the end of his pitiable disquisition. "This isn't supposed to be happening to me."

"You'd be surprised how often it does happen," Dr. Larsen said.

"You mean this is normal?"

Dr. Larsen nodded. "College students display a wide range of reactions to stress, particularly when exam time approaches."

"But, I'm not a student anymore," Ben insisted. "I finished my dissertation program two semesters ago and I'm just teaching now. That's it."

"Well, have you been depressed lately? Are you homesick at all?" the doctor asked.

"No," Ben said.

"To which?"

"Both."

"Hmm." The doctor scribbled more notes into Ben's file. She was nodding slightly as well.

"Listen, Doctor," Ben then asked. "I have to know about those people in that ward back there."

"If you must know," she said, lowering her clipboard. "Many of them are here with the same stress-related symptoms you have."

"No kidding?"

"Except for the one who just had her baby."

"A baby?" Ben said. "I guess that's normal. There are a lot of married students traveling with Eos University."

He then saw the empty look on Dr. Larsen's face. "Isn't it?"

The doctor hugged Ben's file. She seemed momentarily sad. "It might be normal if there were five or six births a year on Eos. But it isn't."

Now that he thought about it, Ben couldn't remember seeing any infants, even among the students who lived in married housing one floor above Cowden Hall.

"Then they
are
putting saltpeter in the food," Ben said with a startled whisper. "Those evil motherfuckers!"

"Dr. Roden-Rob Roden, our director-would
never
allow such a policy on the ship," Dr. Larsen said. "But, historically, our birth rate has always been low."

There
were
children on Eos. Many staff and faculty were traveling with their families, children included. But Ben couldn't recall the last time he had seen a pregnant woman anywhere on the ship, let alone a baby in a stroller.

"Then it's the Ennui," Ben said. "It is real!"

"I would bank on saltpeter before I accepted the Ennui," Dr. Larsen said. "That myth has been studied for a hundred years and no one has proven a thing. It's just an old wives' tale."

Ben knew from newscasts that the general human population in the Alley was not advancing the way most growth specialists had anticipated. Despite its three Earth-like worlds-Earth, Tau Ceti 4, and Ross 244 3-the H.C. had a population of around ten billion persons, eight billion of whom were on Earth. The population should have been three times that and rapidly expanding, but it wasn't. Perhaps more ships than they knew were being blown up in trans-space.

"But let's get back to you. Now, when was the last time you were 'successful' with a woman-or a man. Whichever."

"Woman," Ben said quickly. "Or women. Definitely no men."

"Then when was the last time you had normal sex with a woman? And use your own definition of 'normal.'"

"The last time?"
Now
Ben felt truly humiliated. "Last year. The university stopped at Kaikkivallan 5. A bunch of us had gone down to a ski lodge for a week."

"And?"

Ben wondered how he could say it. "It, uh, took me longer than usual to, uh-"

"Reach a climax?"

"That's it."

He had been with Page Stauffer, whose breasts were speckled with very delightful freckles, and had to work for three hours to achieve an orgasm. When they were finished, he fell asleep, exhausted; Ms. Stauffer put on a tiara and went StratoCasting with Prince Namor and the SubMariners. He had gotten his rocks off, but she hadn't. He never did see her again.

The doctor penned a few more notes. "And the time before that?"

"That would have been-" That would have been Jamie Schisler the semester before. But Ms. Schisler had certain fetishes she had never warned him about. He found out about them when he was bound and gagged and Ms. Schisler brought out the whips. She did look great in high heels, however.

"I can't remember," he said. "Sorry."

The doctor scribbled more notes.

"Look. Are there any medicines I can take for this?" Ben asked. "That would be the easiest."

Dr. Larsen nodded agreeably. "Well, yes, there are a few things I could prescribe. Some stimulants as well as a few behavioral exercises you can do two or three times a day-"

She dropped her clipboard.

Ben felt his stomach lurch.

The room seemed to heave slightly.

"Oh!" Dr. Larsen said. She stumbled backward. She then folded her arms across her stomach and bent over.

Ben jumped off the examination table. Something was terribly wrong. In the outer ward, glass objects crashed to the floor and several people let out cries of bewilderment or screams of terror.

Dr. Larsen fell back into the only chair in the room, her face gone chalk white, and the air in front of Ben's eyes shimmered. It seemed as if the ship itself-the actual vessel-had become violently ill, convulsing at an atomic level.

Then the nausea went away and the room ceased vibrating. All was still.

Ben knew exactly what had happened: The Enamorati had shut down the Engine and the molecules of their bodies had rushed to reposition themselves back where they ought to be from their trans-space compressions.

Ben stood up shakily. "Someone's just shut the Engine off."

"We're not supposed to leave trans-space for another two weeks!" the doctor said, rising from her chair.

Ben thought of the ill-fated
Annette Haven …
and of the large hole that had so recently been gouged in the physics department's alpha lab.

He fervently hoped that he wouldn't blow up in the middle of his next thought.

8

Transition into and out of trans-space usually caused a mild dis-orientation, which was why transition couches were fixtures in every room of the ship. But
this
transition had been downright
ugly.

Recovering his poise, Ben ripped off his examination gown, stepped back into his clothing puddle, then made his way out of the student health center. Dr. Larsen would have real afflictions to deal with now.

In the outer corridor, Ben found every wall flush with the Cloudman's visage and the sound of his voice ordering everyone to buckle into their transition couches, which in Ben's case was in his dorm room.

Ben found a transit portal and shot back to Babbitt Hall. There, he found Jim Vees on his knees in the hallway, dazed. He was wearing a T-shirt and a pair of underwear, having been yanked from a deep sleep.

"Do you know what happened?" Vees asked.

"I think the captain's turned the Engine off. We're in real-space now."

"Why?"

"I don't know," Ben said.

On the 2D in Ben's room, they caught Cleddman in the middle of some sort of explanation. The pilot was saying, "-we now have word from the Kuulo Kuumottoomaa that the Engine has been stabilized. The Kaks are determining our new position in real-space, and as soon as we know where we are, we can begin calling for assistance,
if
we need it."

"Ix on a stick!" the former astronomy student said. "Something happened to our Engine?"

Ben nodded.

On the screen the Cloudman said, "I've called for a Code Three emergency. Stand by. Watch your screens."

The 2D went blank.

"Isn't he going to tell us what happened to the goddamned Engine?" Vees asked. "And what is a Code Three emergency?"

"Let's find out," Ben said. To the video screen, Ben said, "Screen on. Main menu. Emergencies. Definitions. All codes."

The 2D scrolled out: EMERGENCY CODE ONE: MALFUNCTIONS; INTERNAL THREATS TO THE SHIP-I.E., GRAVITY; ATMOSPHERE; ELECTRICAL; WATER SERVICES. EMERGENCY CODE TWO: EXTERNAL THREATS-I.E., COLLISION WITH EXTERNAL OBJECT OR OBJECTS. EMERGENCY CODE THREE: POSSIBLE, PENDING, OR UNAVOIDABLE DESTRUCTION OF VESSEL FROM INTERIOR OR EXTERIOR SOURCE.

Eos University had been around for a hundred years and was as massive as an asteroid. Its shields were state-of-the-art. But they only worked in real-space. Something had killed their Engine in trans-space.

"And we're at Code Three?" Ben said, astounded.

Into Ben's room burst George Clock. With him came Tommy Rosales, their other Bombardier. Though of average height, Rosales had a peculiar muscular condition that gave him the strength of three human beings without the attendant muscle grotesquerie. He excelled in all things physical and failed in all things academic. He only recently had quit Eos University's architecture program, having lost interest in it.

Tommy Rosales was excited. "Did you hear? We're going to have to abandon ship!"

The Bombardiers were always happy for any sort of disruption in their daily routines.

"We're
not
going to abandon ship," Ben said.

"That's what everyone is saying," Rosales said.

Ben faced the 2D. Speaking directly to the screen, he said, "ShipCom. Eve Silbarton, please."

The 2D opened on Eve Silbarton. From what Ben could see in the background, Eve wasn't at her apartment at all. She appeared to be in the gamma lab in the physics department.

"Eve? Do you know what's going on?" Ben asked.

Eve Silbarton looked up from her work. She appeared to have been quite engrossed. "The captain thinks there might be something going on in the Engine compartment, some sort of disagreement among the Enamorati. There may even be fighting. No one knows yet. Whatever it is, the Kuulo has shut the Engine down."

"They're fighting
in there?" George Clock asked.

"That's what's circulating," Eve said.

"What about the Auditors?" Ben asked. "They live on their doorstep. The Auditors would know."

"I'm sure President Porter is conferring with Bishop Nethereott as we speak," Eve said. "But if the problem's mechanical, then there's little good those two guys can do."

"Are we going to blow up?" Ben asked.

"No one knows that either," Eve admitted grimly.

Jim Vees cursed. "Ix! The one thing we
don't
need is a bunch of Ainge Auditors interfering with the Engine. Somebody ought to throw them out a window."

"Nobody gets near the Engine but the Enamorati," George Clock said. "Let Porter and Nethercott confer. We should head for the lifepods."

"I still say we ought to throw them out a window," Jim Vees insisted.

Dr. Silbarton looked off to one side, consulting another screen. "I've got a message coming through here. You'd better switch over at your end. Out."

The image of Dr. Silbarton vanished and was replaced by a series of words. On Ben's screen appeared: EMERGENCY. CODE THREE.

ALL PERSONS TO THEIR ASSIGNED ESCAPE PODS. ALL PERSONS TO THEIR ASSIGNED ESCAPE PODS… And out in the halls, alarms rattled a newer tune, commensurate with the gravity of the situation.

"Here we go," Ben said, switching the screen off.

With that the Bombardiers raced for the nearest transit portal, which would now automatically send them to the escape pods.

Portals could only take three people at a time, so there was a line of young men from the dorm already there at the end of the hall.

The line, however, shortened fairly quickly and the young men of Babbitt Hall were shunted via optical cable to the lifepod bays that ringed the ship.

All but Jim Vees made the transit.

"What an idiot," George Clock said, stepping into the pod bay.

Humans were limited to only ten transit jumps a day. Any more than that and molecular degradation would begin. Beyond ten jumps, transit portals would automatically refuse to transit people whose chevrons had registered ten jumps. But many students, including the Bombardiers (and including Ben), often used transit jumps to get high.