Then, quietly, “Not a pan out of place, indeed, Jamie. Good job.”
“Thank you, captain, sir,” JR said calmly, then advised Com 2 to activate the intercom, because it was time. The live intercom blinked an advisory Channel 1 in the corner of his screen.
“The ship is stable,” he began then, the age-old advisory of things rightfully in their places and the ship on course for a peaceful several days.
Routine settled over the ship. Fletcher would never have credited how comforting that could feel—just the routine of meals in the galley, and himself and the junior-juniors stuck with a modified laundry-duty, a stack they couldn’t hope to work their way through in the four days, while senior-juniors drew the draining and cleaning of spoiled tanks in Jake’s domain—not an enviable assignment. Meanwhile the flash-clean was going at a steady rate, since they had the senior-seniors’ dress uniforms on priority for meetings that meant the future of the Alliance and a diminution of Mazian’s options.
He’d never imagined that a button-push on a laundry machine could be important to war and peace in the universe, but it was the personal determination of the junior-junior crew that their captains were going into those all-important station conferences in immaculate, impressive dress.
They had to run up to A deck to collect senior laundry: all of A deck was so busy with clean-up after their run that senior staff had no time for personal jobs. Linda and Vince did most of the errands: Jeremy for his part wanted to stay in the working part of the laundry and not work the counter.
“No,” Fletcher said to that idea. “You go out there, you work, you smile, you say hello, you behave as your charming self and you don’t flinch.”
“They think I’m a jerk!” Jeremy protested.
“We know you’re not. You know you’re not. Get out there, meet people, and look as if you aren’t.”
Jeremy wasn’t happy. Sue and Connor showed up to check in bed linen, the one item they were running for the crew as a whole, and Jeremy ducked the encounter.
Fletcher went out and checked the cousins off their list, and Jeremy showed up after they were gone.
“You can’t do that,” Fletcher said. “You can’t flinch. Yes, you’re on the outs. I’ve been on the outs. They’ve been on the outs. It happens. People get over it if you don’t look like a target.”
“They’re all talking about me.”
“Probably they’re talking about their upcoming liberty, if you want the honest truth. Don’t flinch. They forget, and it was an accident, for God’s sake. It wasn’t like you stole it.”
Jeremy moped off to the area with the machines, a maneuver, Fletcher said to himself in some annoyance, to have him doing the consoling, when, no, it wasn’t a theft, and, no, losing it wasn’t entirely Jeremy’s fault.
Irreplaceable, in the one sense, that it was from Satin’s hand; but entirely replaceable, in another. He’d begun to understand what the stick was worth—which he suspected now was absolutely nothing at all, in Satin’s mind: the stick was as replaceable as everything else downers made. You lost it? she would say—any downer would say, in a world full of sticks and stones and feathers. I find more, Melody would say.
No downer would have fought over it, that was the truth he finally, belatedly, remembered. Fighting was a human decision, to protect what was a human memory, a human value set on Satin’s gift. It was certain Satin herself never would fight over it, nor had ever meant contention and anger to be a part of her gift to him.
In that single thought—he had everything she was. He had everything Melody and Patch were.
And he suddenly had answers, in this strange moment standing in a ship’s laundry, for why he’d not been able to stay there, forever dreaming dreams with downers. Satin had sent him back to the sky, and into a human heaven where human reasons operated. She might not know why someone in some sleepover would steal her gift, but a downer would be dismayed and bewildered that humans fought over it.
But—but—this was the one downer who’d gone to space, who’d set her stamp on the whole current arrangement of hisa and human affairs. This was the downer who’d dealt with researchers and administrators and Elene Quen. She knew the environment she sent him to. She’d seen war, and been appalled.
So maybe she wouldn’t be as surprised as he thought that it had come to fighting.
Maybe, he thought, that evening in the mess hall, when he and Jeremy were in line ahead of Chad and Connor, maybe humans had to fight. It might be as human a behavior as a walk in spring was a downer one. It might be human process, to fight until, like Jeremy, like him, like Chad, they just wore out their resentments and found themselves exhausted.
So he’d only done what other humans did. But a human who knew downers never should have fought over Satin’s gift. He most of all should have known better—and hadn’t refrained. It certainly proved one point Satin had made to him—that he really was a wretched downer, and that he was bound to be the human he was born to be, sooner or later.
And it showed him something else, too. Downers left the spirit sticks at points of remembrance, at Watcher-sites, on graves. Rain washed them, and time destroyed them—and downers, he now remembered, didn’t feel a need to renew the old ones. So they weren’t ever designed to be permanent. He had the sudden notion if he were bringing one to Satin, he could make one of a metal rod, a handful of gaudy, stupid station-pins, and a little nylon cord. She’d think it represented humans very well, and that it was, indeed, a human memory, persistent as the steel humans used.
In his mind’s eye he could imagine her taking it very solemnly at such a meeting, very respecting of his gift. He imagined her setting it in the earth at the foot of Mana-tari-so, and he imagined it enduring the rains as long as a steel rod could stand. Downers would see it, and those who remembered would remember, and as long as some remembered, they would teach. That was all it was. It was a memory. Just a memory.
And no one could ever steal that, or harm it.
No one but him.
He’d been wrong in everything he’d done. He’d waked up knowing the simple truth this time, but he’d still been too blind to see it. He’d felt Bianca’s kiss, it was so real. And that had been sweet, and sad, and human, so distracting he hadn’t been thinking about hisa memories. And that was an answer in itself.
Silly Fetcher, he heard Melody say to him. He knew now what he was too smart to know before, when he’d set all the value on physical wood and stone.
Silly Fetcher, he could hear Melody say to him. Silly you.
He sleepwalked his way through the line, ended up setting his tray beside Vince’s, with Jeremy setting his down, too, across from him.
Chad and Connor were just at the hot table at the moment. Maybe it wasn’t the smartest thing, remembering keenly that he wasn’t a downer and that those he dealt with weren’t—but he waited until he saw Chad and Connor sit near Nike and Ashley.
Then, to Jeremy’s, “Where are you going, Fletcher?” he got up, left his tray, and went over two rows of tables.
He sat down opposite Chad, next to Connor. “I owe you an apology,” he said, “from way before the stick disappeared. I took things wrong. That doesn’t require you to say anything, or do anything, but I’m saying in front of Connor here and the rest of the family, I’m sorry, shouldn’t have done that, I overreacted. You were justified and I was wrong. I said it the far side of jump, and I’m still of that opinion. That’s all.”
Chad stared at him. Chad had a square, unexpressive face. It was easy to take it for sullen. Chad didn’t change at all, or encourage any further word. So he got up and left and went back to the table with Vince and Linda and Jeremy.