“I don’t like that,” she said. “That’s food. Who knows what contamination—”
“Absolutely none,” Jenks said. “You can write that down somewhere.”
Sibbetts looked at the captain cautiously. She had gotten thinner, tauter, quicker, but there was a little blurring around the edges. Her chin wasn’t exactly the same shape? Could that be possible?
The rest of them all looked at Sibbetts eagerly, as if she might perform. Then they laughed again, their bodies bouncing around. They each rested their right hand on their stomachs, as if the laughing hurt.
Sibbetts lowered her head and ate her soup. When she was finished, she looked around. None of them had eaten and they were all still looking at her, expectantly.
“What?” she said.
“We can see that soup move down your esophagus,” Squirrel said. “Like going down a drain.”
“No you can’t,” Sibbetts said.
“We have x-ray vision,” Brute said. And she winked.
Sibbetts’ heart was racing. “If you guys don’t eat, then I’m going to stop cooking for you. We shouldn’t waste food. But you have to eat?” She had changed her tone halfway through, careful not to be out of line. The captain was her superior, after all.
“We eat the urden,” Jenks said.
“Urden?”
“The seaweed thing. It’s delicious. And it takes care of your appetite for hours, maybe days. You don’t need much and your whole body feels light and clear.”
“You shouldn’t eat it!” Sibbetts burst out. “How do you know what it will do to you?”
“We do know what it will do to us,” Brute said, standing up. “Because we’ve eaten it.”
And they stood up smoothly, all together, and faced her. All their faces looked the same, and Sibbetts couldn’t be sure if she was looking at Brute or Jenks or Darcy or Squirrel. How could all their faces look the same? She wanted to weep, but she never did that. It was just this sense of total frustration, this sense that it had gotten away from her. Could this be some kind of hallucination?
“I think I’m sick,” she said finally. “I keep seeing things that can’t be.”
“Oh really,” the person most on her left said. “Like what?”
“You keep changing. Physically.” She lifted her head. “Right now, I can’t tell any of you apart.”
“You’re all cooped up,” Brute said (if it was Brute). “That’s the problem.”
“Come out and play!” Squirrel hooted.
“I’m a scientist,” Sibbetts said feebly. “I don’t think what you’re doing is right. It’s untested. We don’t know what will happen.”
“It’s funny. You said ‘we.’ We’re the we, now. You’re just an I.”
Who said that, Sibbetts wondered, squinting a little. Was it Darcy? Or Squirrel?
“Awfully lonely,” Jenks said. “Isn’t it?”
And with that, they left, like a bunch of puppets. Thank God they slept outside. She cleaned up, wiping down the chairs and the table with antibacterials. They were “off,” she was sure of it. They had abandoned their duties, such as they were. They had, really, abandoned her. And she thought, again and again, this is unforgivable. It gave her a small sense of triumph, that she could define their behavior that way. But the sense of anger faded—what good did it do, after all, to blame them for their actions? They had bonded. They had excluded her. Against all the rules. Against advice. How could they do it, do something so fundamentally wrong? Her anger was rising again. Leaving her to face it all alone!
She felt it strongly. She was the one now who had to maintain civilization on this planet. Was that it—had they gone native? What could that mean in a place with no natives? She stared out the plexi, scanning the beach for them. There they were now, knee deep in that thick water. One of them bent down, snaking her arm into the water. From this distance, it looked like the arm became part of the water.
She turned her back on them. It was up to her to do all the work, then. She went back to her office. She would stop preparing food for them. Until they changed their behavior, it was nothing more than an ordeal for her, and a farce if they didn’t eat. It would keep them from slipping something in the food, too; that had to be a consideration. If they could drop a contaminated hair in, who knew what else. … What if they snuck some of that water in, behind her back?
She would lock them out during mealtimes because, really, they were no longer members of her team. That was true, wasn’t it? She stopped and looked out the window. They weren’t there, so she moved into the next dome and looked through that window.
There they were, she realized with a jolt, standing lined up, all facing her. Just standing. And then they all waved at her and walked away.
A feeling of exhaustion overcame her, and a longing for someone to talk to about it. Then she saw them walking into the water, sinking down, and disappearing. No bubbles, no outstretched hand (just as welclass="underline" what would she do in that case?).
And then they slowly rose again. It was very graceful, but she found herself straining for air long before she could see the tops of their heads slowly begin to surface.
It did look beautiful. They did look happy. She wasn’t happy, that much was certain. But she had no inclination to join them, whatever they were doing. If, in some future time, they proved themselves to be right, proved her to be wrong—fine.
The next day, she didn’t open the door to let them in for meals. She could hear their voices, now, very dimly, all of them sounding exactly the same. Sometimes they were right outside her window, saying things, as if speaking to her. But the words sounded made-up. She wouldn’t put that past them, that they were speaking some language not their own. Or, well, not hers. Too infuriating, really. Like pig-Latin, meant to point out how she didn’t fit in.
Each morning she got up and wrote her report and transmitted it although it went nowhere—the planets blocked her words from reaching anyone. It was comforting all the same. In less than a year, some morning not unlike this one, she would hear a blip, a beep, some startled movement on the line. It would be a warm voice, a human voice, a relief after all this weirdness—and maybe this wasn’t even the end of it, maybe they would become sand or rock or pellets of water themselves (she couldn’t know)—there would be a voice over the line, telling her, You made it. You were right, to seal that door. You are the one who is valuable. You are the one who saved the mission, and we adore you.
And she liked the sound of that so much—the love that was in that voice—that she began to fear that Jenks or Brute or Squirrel or Darcy would knock on the door someday and ask to come in. And she would be uncertain. She would want to open the door because for once they would sound normal. And they would complain they were hungry. How would she be able to withstand that? If they did that? Or if they bumped their foreheads against the plexi, crying, “Sibbetts, Sibbetts, we’re sorry, let us in!”
That would be unfair. To endure for almost all the way, and then have them trick her like that at the end. She would have to set up some rules. She would be clear about what they could and could not do. If they wanted food, she would leave it outside. That was reasonable. If they wanted anything else, they could leave her a note.
She found a notebook and pen to give them and suited up. Just because they had survived without a suit didn’t mean she would change procedure. Who knew what was growing inside their brains or in their blood vessels, biding its time?
She waited for the air lock to empty, then she stepped outside. Where were they now? They’d been in sight before she suited up. She turned around and bam! something hit her. She dropped the notebook, staggering a little. She still held on to the pen.
Then another strike. Her mind was trying to figure it out. She looked down at her arm and saw something moving down it. Like oil.