“You’re on, Carter.”
Chapter Twenty-seven: Below Decks
Eva Robinson glanced up at the burst of laughter from the nearby table, the coffee stirrer in her hand. Colonel Carter, the commander of the George Hammond, seemed to be good friends with a number of the senior staff in Atlantis. The relaxed humor at the table occupied by Carter, Colonel Sheppard, Teyla Emmagan and Carson Beckett spoke of long friendship. She hadn’t known Carter well at the SGC, despite the fact she’d heard it was Carter who recommended her for this job, but of course she knew of her. Who didn’t? At that point, Carter had been in her tenth year with SG-1, the flagship gate team, the pride of the SGC. She was extraordinarily hard to miss, and incredibly difficult to know.
Eva had learned a lot from having worked as a consultant at the SGC about the breadth of bizarre things that could happen that nobody had ever learned about in school. Gender swapping. Mysterious alien agencies in one’s mind. Time dilation. Mind probes. Ancient devices that dropped databases full of knowledge in one’s head. She’d learned that you had to stay on your toes, keep an open mind, and above all listen to the people. Some of the things that really did happen were unimaginable.
And she’d learned that everyone had a different face from their official persona. How well people coped with both the bizarre happenings and the not so bizarre griefs and stresses had a lot to do with how supported that private face was, with how well equipped they were to process things. And so her job description evolved. One of the most important things was helping people find that private face, helping them to develop the things in their lives that allowed them to cope, and to endure the worst the universe could throw at them. It was a lot more proactive than the job description had been, a lot less to do with mulling over the latest reason why Dr. Jackson was curled up in a fetal position mumbling in a dead language and more to do with encouraging people to actually have lives.
Friendships were a good thing. Emotionally isolated people were more vulnerable, more likely to make deadly mistakes. It was easy for people in positions of great responsibility to become isolated. They had few peers, and friendships within a supervisory position or up and down the chain of command were always fraught. Colonel Sheppard was hardly going to pal around with a second lieutenant twenty years his junior, or Dr. Beckett with a new medical assistant. Carter couldn’t be chummy with anyone who served on the Hammond. Not only were those friendships rendered complex if not actually inappropriate by the supervisory relationships, but they were unlikely because of age and life experience. Teyla stood outside the chains of command, but surely being the only Athosian besides her son currently living in the city was isolating enough. Seeing the four of them laughing and talking over the breakfast table was a good thing.
The milk jug was empty. Eva tilted it all the way up, but only a couple of drops fell out. And coffee without milk was like a morning without…she would say sunshine, but the high windows of the mess hall showed nothing but an expanse of purplish gray sky heavy with snow.
Milk. The serving line was open, but the two young soldiers were busy helping people. She might as well go refill the pitcher. Her coffee cup in one hand and the thermos pitcher in the other, Eva ducked through the kitchen door.
It was immediately obvious why the original Atlantis expedition had chosen to use this room as the kitchen, though it wasn’t like any kitchen she’d ever seen. It was high and airy, a ceiling fully two stories high, with broad windows in a curved wall looking out onto a panorama of other towers, a Fortune 50 °CEO’s office view in New York or London. Down one wall ran what appeared to be a long bronze trough, but on closer inspection was one long, slightly tilted sink, a dozen faucets and buttons providing water of various temperatures. The opposite wall had several heavy doors in it, freezers or supply lockers or something else. And in the middle was set up a modern stainless steel field kitchen, stoves and prep surfaces and deep fryers and a steam table.
It was an interesting juxtaposition. Boxes stacked neatly for easy access identified themselves as Chicken and Gravy Meal, use before 10/22/2012, property of Strategic Air Command, Nellis AFB. Next to it was Hot Dog, Lunch, Sausages and Condiments, ship to NORAD Lot number 7475. An open case beside it proclaimed itself MREs (Kosher and Halal) Florentine Lasagna with a hand-lettered sign on it that said, “Please do not take more than two at a time unless you have permission. Our quantities are limited.” A sign below it read, “For permission talk to Sgt. Pollard.” Another sign below that one read, “And he really really means it.”
Eva couldn’t help but smile. She looked around, wondering where milk would be.
“Need something, doc?” A man her own age, his graying hair cut in a buzz so severe he looked almost bald, came around the corner of the steam table, drying his hands on his apron. Beneath it he wore the red shirt of Atlantis support services.
“Sergeant Pollard?” Eva asked. She waved the pitcher around. “I was just looking for some milk.”
“That’s me.” He snagged the pitcher from her. “Over here.”
“How did you know I was a doctor?” she asked.
He grinned at her, his face seamed with premature lines. “You’re not military, so you’re a doctor. Doctor something.”
“Dr. Eva Robinson, the new psychologist.”
“Oh.” He filled the pitcher from a nearby tin jug. “Got your work cut out for you, don’t you?
“People keep saying that,” she said.
He shook his head. “I came out here with the second deployment. Third, if you count Colonel Everett’s. He lasted four days, God help him! I came out on the Daedalus with the second bunch, right after the siege. Been in the United States Marine Corps nearly thirty years, and it was one of the damndest things I ever saw! And I’ve been some interesting places, let me tell you. It runs you pretty crazy around here. So if you’re looking for crazy, we’ve got our own special brand of Pegasus crazy, right here.” Sergeant Pollard handed her the milk back. “That’s what I tell these new Air Force kids. At least we’ve got a proper support unit now. We didn’t, back in the old days.”
“It seemed like there were a lot of new people,” Eva said. “And I had no idea there were kosher and halal MREs.”
“Oh yeah. They’re pretty good. They’re always available as alternatives to the main meal, whatever that is, though most folks keeping kosher or halal usually go down the line and just try to avoid certain foods.” He looked with some pride at his kitchen set up. “We’re only serving 200 breakfasts, though there’s 417 in Atlantis, well, plus the baby and Teyla and Ronon, and right now the crew of the Hammond. So it varies. But a lot of people don’t eat breakfast, or they just want coffee or something. So we only make 200 portions.” Pollard grinned. “Today it’s pork sausage links, creamed beef, hashbrowns, coffee cake, grits, scrambled eggs with salsa, orange juice, and instant Irish cream cappuccino. Not that the eggs are really eggs, but the salsa helps disguise that some. Also sliced Sila fruit and teosinte cakes with sour cream.”
“Excuse me?” Eva blinked.
“We’re supposed to supplement the A rations with local fresh food. Which sometimes is easier said than done.” Pollard reached for what looked like a knobby yellow potato. “This is a sila. They grow on a lot of planets around here. Tropical fruit, high in vitamin c, taste something like a tangerine. We got these guys from Pelagia last week.” He gave her an encouraging nod as she smelled it. “You can keep it. The teosinte cakes…” Pollard put his bullet head to the side, thinking. “I guess you’d call it kind of an heirloom corn. Dr. Parrish says that when the Ancients brought stuff from Earth before the war they brought a lot of domesticated and semi-domesticated plants that they liked. Teosinte is maybe kind of like corn was ten thousand years ago. Little bitty ears as long as your finger, reddish brown kernels, like the ornamental corn people use for flower arrangements and stuff on Earth. Anyhow, people here grow it for food and as animal feed, just like they do at home. Most of it’s ground up for grain. Grain’s always one of our problems here. We get a certain amount of flour from Earth, but it doesn’t even begin to touch what we use. So we trade for a lot of it here, stoneground and all. Makes kind of crunchy corncakes. You ought to try them.”