The Lonely Whelk (16 page)

“
Yes, Admiral.”

“
Computer, do I have
communication with Corridor 1?”

“
Yes, Admiral,” the
computer replied.

Shivering, Holland tried to imagine that the
voice sounded more like a generic robotic voice and not her late
peer. Lady Mastin’s voice still annoyed her, and probably always
would. She would have to see if one of the programmers could set it
back to the generic voice.

“
Hook me up. Crew, can you
hear me?”

“
Admiral! It’s McGraff.
Great to hear your voice. What’s going on out there?”

“
We have a virus... of
sorts,” Holland began. “Pilgrim is… incapacitated for the moment.
Sammy, I need you to walk everyone through the exercises as quickly
as possible, as I think I will be needing support sooner than
later.”

“
That sounds great,” Sammy
said. Holland imagined they were all saluting to the comm system.
“How does everyone feel?” Holland heard Sammy ask. Then Holland
turned off the comm.

There had to be some way to get rid of those
monkeys. Holland got up and wandered towards the front of the
bridge. She pulled open a junk drawer – typically the most useless
drawer on the entire ship. She dug through it: rubber bands, paper
cups, three dull personal jackknives, a hive tool, a few loose
bandages, a pair of finger cymbals, banjo picks, a bodkin, four
match books, the last four pages of a romance novel… but no magic
wand to solve her problems. She pulled out a rubber band and tied
her hair back, and then sighed slowly. It was hard to save your
crew, be sad, and be tired all at the same time.

“
I’m coming to Corridor 1,”
she said over the comm, and then walked quickly from the room. Her
legs felt better, but her brain felt like a sponge that soaked up
information and then was painfully squeezed by a giant hand, which
caused all important details to drain from her mind shortly after
entering. When she arrived, all of the occupants were awake and
stretching. Sammy walked from person to person, helping them
stretch out their sore and disused muscles, all while offering
words of encouragement.

“
The computer is waking up
all of the medical personnel,” Holland explained as she stepped
through. Everyone in the room turned to look at her and saluted. It
was a rather amusing image, Holland thought, as they were all able
to salute, but they couldn’t all stand. Some sat awkwardly on the
floor, some still lay in their coffins, and a couple of crew
members were flat on their backs on the floor – yet all
saluted.

She returned the salute, and everyone went
back to stretching.

“
I am going to split you up
into teams, based on Sammy’s recommendations. I want the five in
the best health to head down to the arboretum and find out what
happened to Pilgrim and the alien girl. I want a second team to
head to Corridor 11 and see if they can find a reason for the
electrical spike we had this morning. Finally, I want Sammy to
split up the remaining individuals, based on their relative health,
to go support the waking of all medical personnel, and then,
immediately afterwards, any equipment personnel and crew. Once they
are taken care of, you should begin with the passengers.
Thanks!”

McGraff strode rapidly towards Holland.

“
You look good.” Holland
nodded to her subordinate. “Lead the team to Corridor
11.”

“
Yes, ma’am!” McGraff
replied. She turned and pointed to four other people and the team
took off.

“
Bali, you take the other
team to the arboretum. You have my permission to take more than
five if you wish.”

“
Yes, ma’am!” Bali saluted
and he and his team took off.

Holland left the room, leaving Sammy in
charge of waking up everyone else on the ship. She began to wander,
and remembered when she and Hawkings had first arrived on the ship.
He had been so excited.

“
We can name it Steve!” he
had exclaimed. His eyes glowed with the thrill of owning a ship and
the thought of the adventures that awaited them. He had been the
most supportive person in her life after the death of her
son.

“
I don’t think so,” Holland
disagreed. After all, what kind of name for a ship was
‘Steve’?

They had toured the ship and laughed and
talked; it had been the first time she had laughed since… it was
better not to think about it. She should focus on the moment. She
thought that maybe they should name the ship after her son, but
Hawkings had thought it was morbid.

Later that night, Hawkings had stumbled into
their shared apartment, a little drunk and a little sheepish.

“
I lost a bet,” he had
said.

Holland gave him a look which said, “what
now?”

“
It was to a painter. He
won a thousand dollars and the opportunity to paint the name of our
ship on the outside.”

“
That’s not so bad,”
Holland said, “as long as it was your thousand dollars.”

Hawkings nodded and covered his face with
his young, smooth hands. “He also gets to pick the name. It will be
done in the morning.”

“
What?” Holland asked,
shocked and suddenly quite nervous. She had grabbed her coat and
practically flown from the building. But by the time she got to the
ship, the painter was stumbling down with a mostly-empty bucket of
paint in one hand and a silly grin in the other.

“
I named it,” he said,
pointing a shaky hand towards her precious ship. “It’s sho pretty.”
He giggled.

Holland shined her light on the rather
sloppy-looking letters. They read, “Whelk.”

“
Cuz it looksh like one,”
the painter giggled, and stumbled off into the night.

Holland smiled a little at the memory. Her
beautiful ship was so sad now – thousands had died on their maiden
voyage across the galaxy. All of a sudden the weight of their lost
souls fell onto her shoulders, and she stumbled forward until she
landed on her knees. Her arms locked around her stomach in pain and
the dry sobs of guilt and fear wracked her tired lungs and echoed
in the empty corridor. She felt so lonely and empty – her son dead,
her husband long passed away, and Hawkings gone now, too. It was
only her and her Whelk now, alone in the empty vastness of
interstellar space.

Is this going to be awkward?” Kaia whispered
as the group of graduate students filed in. The room was largely
empty; it contained only a table, a few chairs, and a Door.

“
A bit,” John
replied.

“
I’m sorry, John,” Kenton
said. His face looked desperately miserable, as if he wanted to
crawl under a table and hide. “It was my fault.”

“
Not directly,” John said,
looking at Boris. “You disobeyed me, yes, but Boris here is at
fault. To start, I will tell you what is going to happen next, and
then we will discuss what already happened and how the issue was
resolved. Firstly, Boris, you will be banned from the facilities.
Please turn in your ID and keys and exit the building
immediately.”

“
But why?” Boris protested.
“I didn’t do anything! It’s not my fault!”

“
It is your fault. I saw
you, with my own eyes, stab the Door with the microwave emitter at
full. That’s what caused the Door to go critical.”

“
No! It’s not my fault.
Naytiri handed me the thing – she must have turned it on! I only
accidentally bumped the Door with it.”

“
I did not!” Naytiri
protested.

“
Hush,” John said. “I saw
the whole thing. I watched you pick it up, turn it on, and quite
deliberately and stab it through the Door. Now, please, if you
won’t exit the building amiably, I will call security to have you
removed.”

“
Fine!” Boris shouted
angrily. “But I’m going to fight this. And I’ll win, you’ll
see.”

“
Okay, have a nice time,”
John replied. A little frown settled into his eyebrows as he
watched Boris stomp from the room. Kaia watched him pull out his
teaching tab and quickly type.

“
Just have to let them know
he’s coming,” John muttered. “Now you three,” he said, looking up
as he finished typing. “What do you have to say for
yourselves?”

“
It’s all my fault,” Kenton
admitted. “I was trying to impress you so I told them to set up for
our next experiment. We weren’t going to do anything before you
okayed it but... well, Naytiri argued with me but I didn’t
listen.”

“
What’s the rule?” John
asked.

“
Everything must be okayed
by John before moving further into the process,” the three
chorused.

“
Indeed. And you wouldn’t
have been able to start until tomorrow afternoon anyway – the math
isn’t finished!”

“
I just thought.... maybe
we could start without all the math-”

John’s fist interrupted Kenton as it smashed
into the table with a thundering boom. “Wrong! Wrong, wrong, wrong!
You never ever, ever neglect the math! The math could save our
lives! Tell me this – what if your idea had specifically been to
stick that microwave emitter in an actual microwave? The math would
have told you it was a stupid idea! It would have told you that
should you attempt it, you would end up destroying a perfectly
useful appliance. If you had done the math on this one, you would
have discovered the same thing: that you would be destroying a
perfectly good Door and everything around it. You never, ever don’t
do the math.” He took a breath.

“
Sir,” Olivia ventured
timidly, “When Boris stuck the microwave emitter in it caused the
problem, but when you did the same thing it fixed the
problem.”

A smile pushed the frown out of John’s face.
“Yes, it’s a simple problem really. I just did the math and reset
the emitter to neutralize the extra waves flowing through it. It’s
happened more than once.”

“
What about the microwaves
that are supposed to be in the Door?” Naytiri asked.

“
That is all part of the
math – which is why you should never start without doing all the
appropriate calculations. If Quin and I hadn’t reacted quickly, the
Door could have blown sky-high, taking us and our entire city with
it, destroying several miles of terrain on the other side, and
causing miles of devastation on both sides of all of the Doors
within the blast. Which is potentially a lot. I mean, look at the
room we’re standing in.”

Kenton grimaced and dropped his head into
his hands.

“
So, you three are on
probation. Kenton, you will not be able to set foot in the Door
Room until I decide otherwise. You will be spending time monitoring
some of the undergraduate students and their
experiments.”

Kenton grimaced, and his friends looked at
him pityingly.

“
Naytiri and Olivia,” John
continued, “Kaia will be taking over the team, but if anything else
happens, you’re out for good. Understand?”

“
Yes, sir!” the girls
nodded.

“
Good.” John looked at his
watch. “Now, get out of here. Kaia and I have work to
do.”

The three exited the room.

John turned to look at Kaia and grinned.
“See this?” He pointed to the Door. Kaia was surprised that he had
moved past the incident so abruptly, but she followed his lead.

“
It’s a Door,” she replied,
leaning in to peer closely at it. “But it looks weird. It’s got
colours floating in it.”

“
You can see those? Good
work! Most people don’t notice them. Anyway, this is
it!”

“
What?”

John sighed. “What do you think?”

“
Is it an underwater Door?”
Kaia gasped. “In school they said those were impossible, because
the brainwaves of all the fish push water through the Door at an
uncontrollable rate! Or maybe it was just that fish kept swimming
through.”

“
It’s not that! It’s the
Bridge Door!” John replied, exasperated.

“
That’s even better!” Kaia
stepped forward and gazed at it intently. “You’re serious? It
really exists? Really? And it can take me anywhere?”

“
Well, anywhere there is
another Door.”

“
Obviously,” Kaia replied,
rolling her eyes. “Can I go through it?”

“
No,” John said. “You don’t
have travel clearance yet, as you’ve only been here for one day.
I’m working on that. But this is your project, of which you are not
allowed to tell anyone. It requires Level Four clearance – which
you will have as of tomorrow. The students are only at Level Six.
First you will be watching it for a few days. You will analyze and
monitor all colour, opacity, and shape changes for the period of
one week. We have some tools for that. Then, presuming our proposal
gets accepted, you will be allowed to go through to one known
location, to monitor the sensation of traveling through the Door.
We also have some tools for that. Put on those glasses I gave
you.”

Kaia pulled out the 3D glasses and looked at
the Door. Her mouth dropped open. The edges of the Door were
sparkling and fuzzing, blurring and clearing. The colours bled
together and separated. It looked like a rectangular rainbow that
was bleeding colours and attempting to pull them back while they
tried to escape.

“
Amazing!” Kaia said,
moving her head back and forth to make the colours change and
blend.