The Milk of Paradise
No one on the Valentina Tereshkova asked to be there. Archivist Laura Mathis knows that well. It's time to settle down: but why?
No one on the Valentina Tereshkova asked to be there. Archivist Laura Mathis knows that well. It's time to settle down: but why?
Some wistful, hopeful, smutful standalone sci-fi! More of an experiment, I guess--I woke up with an SF idea and wanted to write a story around it, rather than starting out with a plot in mind which is the usual way of working. Hopefully it lands? Thanks to Spudz for helping me to straighten out the structure and get this into shape.
Released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. Share, modify, and redistribute -- as long as it's attributed and noncommercial, anything goes.
"The Milk of Paradise," ** ** by Rob Baird
One tree at a time, spring blinked out of existence. Just like that, the stars were back, and there was a brief moment where Laura became aware that they'd never really left. Those moments were growing more common, of late. Where she saw some yawning, lightless chasm in the void, some abyss without end, some--
"Thank you, miss Mathis."
The sound jarred her back to her sensibilities, and she nodded to the half-dozen children with her. "Any time," she promised. None of them would be back any sooner than class mandated it, but--might as well put the offer out there, anyway.
Most of them left on their own. A little girl remained: a fox with brilliant silver fur and clear, keen eyes. "Mom will be a bit late," she explained. Her black fingers toyed with the projector. "You don't have to wait, if you don't want to."
Where else would she go? The room was her home, for all intents and purposes. "Don't worry about it. Did you like the lesson?"
"Yes, miss Mathis."
The Border Collie cocked an eyebrow, leaning against the wall to give the vixen a skeptical look. "Did you really?"
"Well... it's all a bit..."
"What's the point?" Laura Mathis prompted. Tanya was too young to be asking dangerous questions, at seven, but you couldn't keep the truth at bay for long . Like the stars, it was always out there. "You wonder what the point is?"
"I'll never see a Tokyo." Tanya swung her arms aimlessly, like she was keenly aware of her own nervous energy, the grand iniquity of its own confinement... the unfairness of it all.
Laura would never see Tokyo, either. Or the aurora borealis over Tromsø. Or the moon. Not really. Just the projector, certified by Fujitsu technicians to be indistinguishable to biological vision at a range of ten centimeters or greater. Well, you see, Tanya, we don't have a choice in these things, now, do we? But you be a good little girl and--
"What we have now is better, anyway," Tanya went on. "Better than some old stones with algae on them."
"Well. Moss."
"Mr. Truby says that lichen are symbiotic organisms, and what we're seeing is the algae they're bonded with."
The Border Collie let a grin crack the momentary mood that had descended on her. "Oh, yes, I suppose he's right. Fine, stones with algae on them. You're not curious about Tokyo?"
Maybe some day, Tanya allowed--no doubt hoping it would pacify Laura. In any case, it wasn't a minute or two more before her mother appeared. Tanya had her mother's eyes, sharp and playful. The only difference was that hers were brighter than the elder vixen, who was plainly exhausted. Elise Owen, 37. Such information came unbidden to the archivist's brain. Daughter of James Hudson, agricultural specialist, and Janet Owen, agricultural specialist. Currently assigned to Sector A5.
Agricultural specialist Elise Owen let the door hiss closed and took a deep breath. She must have been running. "God, Ms. Mathis, I'm so sorry."
"It's fine, Elise. It's fine--you know the room's open for another three cycles, anyway."
"But your work..." Laura shrugged, because none of her work was especially pressing. "You're a tremendous help. Just--you know, since the last harvest it's been double-shifts and..."
"And it's paying dividends," Laura pointed out. "Apparently the soil macronutrients have never been better; that's what the last report said." Actually, the contamination levels were so low I had to add another degree of precision to every table in that record. Dr. Grier gave me his usual speech about the memory requirements, every-bit-counts and all, but he'll thank me. Or, if not, his children would. But she left off unasked-for details.
"As long as something's never been better." Elise reached down, taking her daughter's paw. "We should go, though--I'm sorry I can't chat, it's just, I haven't been actually home for dinner in weeks. Connie--"
Laura patted the vixen's shoulder understandingly. "Of course, go! Go. Your wife is a saint, Elise."
"Don't tell her that; she'll get ideas." Elise grinned, and opened the sliding door again, turning her attention to the ever-animated Tanya. "Don't tell her Ms. Mathis said..." Their conversation receded, and vanished entirely when the door shut and she was alone in the archive room.
She stayed, watched by the stars she scrupulously avoided, until she heard the door hiss open behind her again. This time she did not move--not until she felt the caress of paws around her belly, and then it was only to lean back and into the comforting warmth she knew she'd find behind her.
"Hey, Dennis," she murmured.
The Samoyed bit softly down at her ear. "Hello. How was your day?"
"Alright, I guess. How was yours?"
"Same as yesterday. Same as the one before that." Another nip. "That's a new dress, though, isn't it? I like it."
"Mm-hm." Aya Toshiro designed it--Aya had been retired for almost ten years; now she kept busy by making the best use of their materials recycler. Laura distantly wondered if one of Aya's sons would take up the mantle when it was their turn to retire. Perhaps?
"Well. I like it," Dennis repeated. "It looks good on you."
Laura turned, catching sight of the Samoyed--his soft eyes meeting hers, his perfect white ears lifted. He was still wearing his work uniform. The Border Collie let the look in his eyes push the rest of her thoughts away, and smiled. "It would look better on the floor of your cabin."
And later, by the time they were relaxing in each other's arms, and his paws were gently smoothing down the collie's fur, she had forgotten everything that had otherwise snagged her thoughts into distraction. The Samoyed's fluff was heavy, and soft. She snuggled into him.
"What are you doing tomorrow after work?"
"You mean besides--" He stopped himself, seeing her grin. "Regular checkup, but nothing after that. I was thinking, though. I might consider ending the suppressant therapy." The Border Collie nodded, her nose rubbing into his chest, without any verbal reply. "Would you mind?"
"No. Do you think it might change your opinion?"
The Samoyed dragged his claws through her pelt. "I wonder, that's all."
It was not, of course, too late for them to have children. And this was good, because it was expected of them: you couldn't have a generational ship without generations. Like her, though, her boyfriend was ambivalent about the prospect. Is it really the medication? Or is it that he feels the same way I do? Sees the same things I do...
This wasn't true in every, literal way. Dennis's cabin looked inwards, on the agricultural section. It meant the view was green, and that it varied month by month, and with the ship's daily cycles. One day, the starward cabins will be a lot more valuable, someone had told her. Not for Laura, though, or for Laura's children--completely theoretical--or the grandchildren who were even more theoretical than that.
Eight hundred years in the future, when the Valentina Tereshkova arrived at its destination, it might be valuable. Then, while the ship still orbited, sometimes it would be seeing the surface of P2566, their new home. But by that point, the only thing left of Laura would be whatever bits of her had been successfully recycled. Perhaps she'd be part of someone's dress.
Not worth thinking about it. She trusted Dennis to make the right decision--in any case it wasn't very well like he could get her pregnant on his own. Indeed, within a few days the conversation faded into the background of her memory, with the steady routine of her work in the archives.
***
"We need to pull the records on the fourth census. There should be some information on the bloodwork distribution, but Medical doesn't seem able to find anything."
The Border Collie pulled on her gloves and clipped a datalink visor to the jack on her temple. The Tereshkova's records exploded into virtual space before her.
Laura's predecessor had been the one to run the census. It looked fairly complete to the Border Collie, but who knew?
"What were you looking for?"
"Anything on the results of embryo Marek factor profiling. Those tests should've been run, but they're not coming up in the standard search."
And, indeed, Laura quickly saw why. "No. All that data's stored in a new, normalized format now. The last archivist, Phandu, did that towards the end of his tenure... I guess he never bothered to update the census results. I'm downloading it for you."
And when she was done, she made a note to go through and check all the other medical records, so the data could be renormalized if necessary. Tedious work, but.. well, honestly, most of her work was tedium, when it came down to it. Necessary tedium, to be sure, but it was all processing requests from the other departments or teaching bored primary school students about the ancient history of an irrelevant world.
When she was alone again, and before returning to real work, she pulled up Phandu Molefhi's record. 2480 to 2594, a good life; age had softened the impala's features in his profile hologram, but his eyes looked as intelligent and kind as she remembered. It didn't seem like only ten years since he'd passed.
Laura picked his mother next. 2446 to 2501. Phandu had inherited her graceful features, she thought. There, in a protected folder, was the list of files--the collie's privilege as the archivist to review. Nobody ever asked or questioned her, anyway. She chose one.
The impala was suddenly younger. Her image froze for a few seconds, while the words 'TRANSLATION LOCK' flashed.
It's April 30th, 2471. We went for dinner in the plaza today. It was Polish night! Stan told us they almost got it right. She laughed. We have some time to practice, don't we? I never had pierogis before, so what would I know? Do you know what I wonder? Oh, yes, yes, I forget. She straightened up, staring right at Laura through the recording. I wonder what kind of food you're eating now. Have you invented recipes of your own? You must have. I hope they're delicious.
On a dangerous whim, she scrolled through the list and picked again, selecting one date in particular.
It's August 3rd, 2482. The impala swallowed, looked away from the imager, and shook her head. I don't know. It's harder than I thought. She glanced off-screen: a hundred years ago, there'd been an assistant managing the recordings. Can I try next month? Oh. Then... that's it. It's hard. I don't know why I thought it wouldn't be.
After thirty seconds of silence, the recording ended.
Kobane would've been but a toddler then; he'd have no memories of that day. Maybe he'd never asked his mother why he'd remained an only child. Maybe, as an archivist, he'd finally realized on his own. The Border Collie shut the hologram down, and her fingers slipped her by rote into the communication logs of the starship.
2.8.2482: 1030Z. SIGNAL STRE[ERROR: EXPECTED 64 BYTES GOT 23]CIBELS. ALIGNMENT NOMINAL. CANBERRA WEATH[ERROR: EXPECTED 128 BYTES GOT 7] SKIES. UPDATES: [ERROR: EXPECTED 2560 BYTES GOT 7]25.64. WILL TRY RECONTACTING TOMORROW. WARM REGARDS FROM EARTH. [CHECKSUM FAIL]
3.8.2482: 4.8.2482: 5.8.2484: 6.8.2484:
She could've kept going. But of course, she knew what she was going to find. The impala had known, too; she saw the certainty of all those empty rows to come in her haunted eyes.
Laura forced herself to concentrate on the task of correcting the old census data. It was a nice, monotonous job; the rest of the shift allowed itself to be dragged onwards, until Dennis finally showed up. Slipped behind her, as always. Nibbled her ear, as always.
"What have you got for me today?"
Laura brought the projector back to life, and suddenly they were underwater--their vision filled with darting fish, and colorful, all-but-alien life. "Grade Two was learning about the Great Barrier Reef today."
Dennis rested his muzzle on her shoulder for a few seconds; she felt his head turn a few degrees, back and forth, catching the view. "You know what's kind of strange? Remember our second date? We went to the ocean section."
"I remember everything," she teased, tilting her head to lick the Samoyed's muzzle. "I'm the archivist, aren't I? It was our third date. But yes."
"It's so much... prettier. So much more colorful. More diverse."
The Border Collie's paw cycled quickly through the menus. A voice filled the room: calm, authoritative. You may notice that these specimens are less dramatic than the ones you're used to. The coral on the Tereshkova were engineered to be flexible in serving the needs of our ship and its future home. By an unexpected consequence, they're also, well... nicer to look at.
"Here's where I point to the--hold on," Laura cut herself off, and her paws waved, bringing the view in close on a soft, undulating specimen.
This is an example of Sarcophyton trocheliophorum, otherwise known as elephant's ear, the voice continued. An Alcyoniid coral.
"Now he'll pause for questions," Laura said, though she cut the recording off altogether instead. "Commander Weston, second leader of the drone group. But a bit of an aficionado of undersea life, in his spare time."
"Sounds regal."
"He was a squirrel. One-sixty, almost too short for the space program." The Border Collie grinned, and turned the projector off. The stars came back; she turned, and as her vision adjusted she could see them reflected in Dennis's eyes. "You're more handsome, anyway."
"Thanks." He kissed her softly. "Hey, can I tell you something?"
"'I love you'?"
"That too." He wrapped his arms closer about the collie's back. "But... uh. Sonny talked to me before my shift. She's a little worried about us. She wouldn't say that, but... she's worried."
"Worried?"
"Our NCP scores are some of the best in the section. We're supposed to be compatible."
Laura felt her ears droop. "You don't think we're compatible? Sonny doesn't?" Then something else occurred to the Border Collie. "Did she ask you to stop taking the suppressants, too?"
"She suggested it as an idea, yes. An experiment."
"You agreed?"
"As an experiment? Sure."
"It's not that I don't..." She started again. "I don't not want kids, Dennis."
His paws framed her head, gently, and he nuzzled her nose. "I understand what you're saying, Laura, but I want you to consider something for a moment. If you're comfortable with it."
Why am I dating a goddamned shrink, anyway? She smiled wanly. "I'm comfortable."
"What do you think it says when the lead psychiatrist and the person in charge of our memories, with an NCP of over 99.8, haven't had children yet?"
She didn't have an answer. Obviously, he didn't, either. Laura thought--well, they were compatible, after all--they probably agreed on all the basics. That a family would be nice. Ideal, even. Academically, everything made sense. She loved him. Their personalities were stable; their jobs were flexible enough.
And, hell, it wasn't like it was just her. Wasn't like Dennis was pushing for it, even without the treatments. He enjoyed the companionship. And the shared bed. And the sex. So what were they missing, if it wasn't 'compatibility'?
She wanted to want kids, and loved working with the schoolchildren, but the desire eluded her. Her brother was finally starting a family, but when she'd asked him, his answer--"why not?"--was less than helpful. And he was older, by four years.
Maybe something would change by that time. For some reason, she doubted it would make that much difference, though her parents had also waited until their late 30s.
And what about theirs? She lost herself in the archives. Her grandparents had their first child, on average, five years younger. Her great-grandparents, five years younger than that. They'd been among the first children born on the Tereshkova; she'd never met them.
Without any particular reason she settled on Andrew Madine, her great-great-grandfather. A computer scientist, he'd designed the starship's life support regulators. He looked like any other Border Collie. Their holographic technology, unchanged since launch, had a bizarre effect: the message might have been hours old, instead of over a century.
It's... August 3rd, 2482. That's it. We're alone now. I think that... I want... I--who designed this? Why can't I delete this? I want to start over. Fucking--do you know what? I bet they clean this up, though. All this 'just say your fucking mind'? Bollocks. They're gonna clean it up. Nobody will hear this. God damn it. What's the fucking point? It's August 3rd, 2482. I...
The dog put his head in his paws; his ears went back. His shoulders rose and fell in a dozen deep, shaky breaths. Laura kept watching, refusing to let herself look away. Finally his head lifted. He swallowed heavily.
It's August 3rd, 2482. We all knew it was coming. I hope it makes sense to you that the dumb thing I wish is that it had been more... meaningful. They couldn't know. I guess it's fine. Is that what I'm gonna tell my kids? Has to be, doesn't it? He looked like he was going to say something else, but never did.
By the time she met her great-grandfather--an only child, as it turned out, like Phandu--the Border Collie was in his 90s, well into comfortable retirement, wandering the gardens and occasionally volunteering at minor tasks to occupy his mind. He'd adapted. Everyone had adapted.
Well. No, Laura knew, that wasn't true. Not even officially. The archives noted how, on August 4th, the life support system in Mike Morales' exosuit stopped working and his air bled slowly into space. How that same day, Amin Abad accidentally electrocuted himself when three redundant safeties in a power conduit failed. How Kathy McBride and Janeen Deason, in the medical section, both fell victim to a compounding error in the anesthetics they mixed.
Officially the Neuromedical Section's Analysis and Planning Report, Post-Event, Classified admitted the elevated death rates starting the day after and tapering only after a few months. As the archivist, Laura had access to PEAPR (NS) 565 and all its hidden footnotes. Worse than expected, one said.
But within acceptable tolerances.
***
Two weeks later, she wiggled her toes, watching how the water of the artificial stream coursed around them. The stream was new; every so often engineering crews reconfigured its flow to give the impression of novelty. "Gives them something to do, I bet, too," she mused.
Dennis nodded. "Well, yeah."
"They should do something crazy," the Border Collie said. "One time. They could make the stream do a loop, or something. Flow uphill."
"You don't think it would be unsettling?"
"I think it would be a change of pace. We're supposed to have changes of pace."
But only, she knew before he explained it once again, 'within acceptable tolerances.' Nothing really changed. The starship's habitats shifted when necessary to vary the agricultural mix, or to buffer something in the atmosphere; novelty was a secondary concern.
A poem snuck its way into the collie's thoughts, from time to time: Where Alph, the sacred river ran, through caverns measureless to man, down to a sunless sea...
Theirs was a sunless sea--it would be sunless for centuries after Laura was gone. And the stream might just as well have been sacred, for it was the only one on the Tereshkova and therefore the only one they would ever know.
And it struck her that the caverns were measureless. She could chart them, yes, and the engineers could chart them... but man could not. Man was light-years away, now, and the Tereshkova would be forever unknowable.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge never finished his poem. It had no ending. Laura did not know how to end it, of course. But when "Kubla Khan" slipped into her mind, she saw the blank page, and the pen clutched in tense fingers, and the ink slowly drying before it could form words.
She thought: how terrifying it is, and a moment later realized she did not know why she had thought it.
It was a day or so later when Dennis came to her while they were both still on shift. Laura was no longer thinking of empty pages or sacred rivers, for this was unproductive. It was around time for a regular audit of the database, and she wanted to be ready. Her mate's question caught her off-guard.
"You have access to all the classified documents, right?"
"Sure. If it's in the archives."
"Can you bring up CPT-X722?"
"Ugh. Dennis."
"What?"
"X," the Border Collie said, with a heavy sigh. "Why do you want it?"
"Something Sonny mentioned. Just to me--it's not an official request. But she was upset."
"Nobody's asked for X docs from me lately. All the old pre-launch materials are in cryo. I have to pull them manually. Plus, they're classified, so if I didn't love you..."
But she did, so Laura got her clean suit out of storage and retrieved the X databank. The chips were read-only; multiply redundant--Sonny and the other command staff had their own copies, Laura was sure of it. The storage chip she downloaded the file off of had never been read.
Contingency Planning Team, report 722 Short title: "Stable population maintenance exception" Long title: "Maintaining stable population in certain unpredictable exception scenarios"
Abstract: Stable, healthy population curves over the duration of the mission depend on the willingness of compatible individuals to reproduce at replacement levels. We explore certain cases where this might decline based on a miscalculation of the upsilon function, and present models of possible mitigation.
"What's the 'upsilon function'?"
Dennis scratched behind his ear. "It's the psychological stability of the crew. Everyone was screened and picked to minimize any variability there. The book on how to ensure long-term mental health is six million words, if you count all the appendices."
"But?"
Dennis skimmed through the document, eyes flicking back and forth rapidly. "But some of them worried about unpredictable factors. This report conjectures that later generations might... lose the will to continue. The first generation enlisted voluntarily. They wanted to do this. They would've passed that on to the second generation directly."
"But not us," Laura supposed.
"Not us. We have no attachment to Earth. We'll never see our new home. Some of us know the very real possibility that we won't even be the first to reach it--Earth might've launched a second ship, faster than the Tereshkova. Or a third, or a fourth. We're just... here. Why would we keep going?"
"Did they have answers?"
Dennis gestured to the report. "The mitigation suggests enrichment activities, or propaganda. If the population curve drops below stable levels, perhaps even... something more compulsory. Chemicals, or... other solutions."
Laura blinked, flattening her ears. "That would be unconscionable."
"The report suggests that it increases the probability of mission failure to over eighty percent, yes. But..." The Samoyed shifted on his feet; his omnipresent smile had vanished. "All Sonny said was that somebody mentioned it. Wheels must be turning."
"But we're not below stable levels, are we?"
"No, that will be for some other leader to decide. But if they're talking about it in the staff meetings, they'll probably ask me to write something up. Better to do it now, when the problem is still solvable. Ask me what I think the psychological impact will be." He shook his head. "Well, you said it already."
Unconscionable. How could it come to that?
As the ship's archivist, she was responsible for their historical record. For everything that told them who they were, and where they'd come from. For making sure they never forgot about the mission. Everything had been designed to ensure they knew their purpose.
The word 'purpose' was oddly discordant. "It's a strange place we're in, isn't it?" she asked Dennis. "'Why are we here' is one of the most important questions in philosophy. We're unique, maybe across all of history--we have an answer. Nothing religious... or metaphysical... we literally know why we were born, and what we were born for."
"They teach us in school," he agreed. "You're right. I guess we're special. But it feels like such a burden to have that question answered, doesn't it?"
"Maybe that means it's the wrong question."
After he'd gone, Laura went back to the pre-launch archives. What else had been written? What other speculation was there? The report made sense, but it was incomplete. They predicted the ennui, but nothing hinted to an understanding of the irony in how knowing their purpose stripped it of meaning.
She hoped for more insight. Most of the data in the X archives was irrelevant: lists of parts, copies of bureaucratic forms, and drafts of their laws and guiding principles. But then, in the journal database, she found the very first entry.
Of course, she'd known there would be a 'first entry.' Logically, there had to be. But she hadn't thought of what she might find there. Laura downloaded the message and took it back to the projector room.
Good... morning? Afternoon? Whatever it is. It's March 24th, 2460. Earth is below me. Tomorrow, at 0717 and ten seconds, precisely, the Valentina Tereshkova will fire its engines for the first time. I see two options. The wolf stroked his muzzle thoughtfully. No, I see three options. The third is that we never reach our destination, and no-one ever sees this. But why plan for that?
The second is that I've been dead for a thousand years, and you're seeing this on a new world. I envy you. But, in turn, I hope that you envy me. I will never see what you see. You will never see what I'm seeing now--nor what caught the eyes of all who came after me. But you are looking with all our eyes. You carry with you the memories, and hopes, and visions of every generation that has brought you there. For our sake, look well on it.
The first option--I think it's most likely. The wolf grinned, his eyes twinkling. Is that you're not on an alien world. You're my successor, or their successor, or theirs, and you're doing a bit of peeking. You're probably curious, and bored... like I would be. You're one of our archivists. You want to know why I'm here, and what I wanted to do with this project. Fair enough.
The plan is that every person on the Tereshkova records a holographic journal, every month. Based on our travel time, and the population, we project two billion, 788 million, 940 thousand logs. Give or take. The crew will be graded on this, so we expect compliance--and you, you've had some busywork maintaining it, I'm sure. I do want to keep you busy.
But you want to know 'why,' what the purpose is of collecting so much... miscellanea. I have a secret for you. I've hidden it in the sequential database for the personal archives, at index--ready for this? Index A89449B88027DE43. I'd offer a clue, but, well. You're bored, right? Good luck.
She didn't know what to expect. A joke, perhaps; a short hologram of the wolf, teasing her for prying. The index was blank. Puzzled, Laura double-checked the value and tried again--but there was nothing there.
The Border Collie went to the technology division, just in case there was something she'd missed. Russell Hauk had an eye for riddles, and a thorough knowledge of the ship's systems, but the badger just shook his head. "Nothing, Laura."
"Maybe it's an alias? It points somewhere else?"
"No. There's nothing there. At a microscopic level, there's nothing there. It's an empty block. Random."
She cocked her head, thinking. "Not random. Sequential."
Russ looked over the computer readouts. "Fine, sequential. It's an empty block four percent of the way through the chunk reserved for personnel data. Same as the one before, and the one after."
"How would you hide something there?"
"Beats me? It's empty. I mean, maybe there's something in the compiler? Something obfuscated that treats the data block in a special way, but... we'd have caught that, I'm sure. Our audits are--well, you'd know, right? You have them all saved. We check every line of the code, Laura. There's nothing here."
She would grow frustrated, she knew already... but she hadn't quite gotten to that point yet. For the moment it was an intriguing curiosity. Dennis suggested that it might have been something in the number itself, some hidden code. If so, there was nothing that she could see. Random letters.
"Well," the Samoyed observed, "you've got a long time to figure it out."
Hal Thompson's psychological profile was part of the archives, just like everything else. She pored over it carefully. Nothing suggested the wolf was much for puzzles, and he wasn't a computer scientist--which made her doubt he'd done something clever with the systems itself. Thompson was... ordinary, really.
Twenty years as a librarian for the city of San Francisco. His dissertation, "Did Odysseus sing off-key?", was about knowledge missing in the oral tradition. He'd covered the construction of the Valentina Tereshkova and the training of its crew extensively; at the last minute he'd joined the mission itself.
He had no children, and no relatives aboard.
Over the following days, she kept thinking. There had to be something, or he wouldn't have said it. His message would provide guidance to a thousand years of archive work--it couldn't lead nowhere.
That didn't mean she knew where it would lead. Most of her life was work. Filing their reports, and organizing the mission's data, and occasionally doing what she could to educate the ship's children. This, talking about early lunar exploration, was what she was doing when the alarm went off.
"General quarters. All hands to emergency stations. There is a hull breach in section 1-5-1-alpha. Away damage control parties. Power switching to beta conditions in thirty seconds."
The kids groaned, and Laura sighed heavily. Section 151A was half a kilometer back, in the reprocessing sector; the archive room was totally secure. Still, under backup power the projector clicked off, and the lights dimmed.
"My mom says they never fix the outer valve all the way," the silhouette of a young canid sulked. "It's only designed for five hundred years."
"Five hundred years is longer than us," another student shot back. "You couldn't do better."
"Could so."
"Let's wait until the lights are back on to squabble," Laura suggested. "I have an idea. You remember last week's lesson, right? The great hunter Orion. What about..." She had a laser marker with its own power source; she clicked it on and pointed to the window, taking the brightest stars she could find. "These. What does anybody see here?"
"Stars."
"Right, but--"
"A triangle."
Laura shut her eyes a moment, and tried again. "It's sort of a triangle, yes. But what if you imagined something else? What looks like a triangle?"
"Tanya's ear!" "Hey!" "A... shield." "Shields aren't a triangle." "They could be. Maybe it's a bow? Orion had a bow." "A spaceship!" "The claw of a giant crab."
The Border Collie weighed her options. "We'll work through these one at a time. Meryl, you said it's a spaceship. Why would there be a spaceship here? Whose spaceship is it?" Silence. "There's no right answer. Anybody? Why would there be a spaceship out here with us?"
"Because it got lost," a voice suggested. Aaron, the son of someone on the astrogation team and the source of the 'giant crab' proposal.
Meryl, on the other hand, was the daughter of mission commander Sonny Frankel, and by the time she came up with an answer it was clear she reflected her mother's own interests. "No. It's one of the ships they used to test how to travel in space before they built ours. But it exploded. Only... only the pilot knew it was gonna explode, but she..."
"It was like this," Tanya picked up where Meryl had left off. "They were on alert. And the engine was blowing up. And the pilot made sure everyone escaped and flew the ship away so it didn't hurt them."
"Yeah, and now she watches us. To make sure we're okay."
The notion was morbid, in the way that children could be, particularly when they were trying to cover up for their own insecurities. The Border Collie wouldn't admit her own: the alarm was probably nothing. In any case, inventing stories kept the kids occupied until the projector came back on two hours later, and Grade Two's teacher came to take them back to their proper classroom.
It was kind of funny, thinking about it, how easy they'd tumbled to thinking up the tale. Laura didn't remember much creative writing in her own schooling. They read the classics, of course--hell, that was why she'd been enlisted to show off distant constellations to the group. But they hadn't done much of their own. Too focused on finding their niche on the Valentina Tereshkova, fifty thousand souls bound together for centuries of a journey they hadn't volunteered for.
She was almost ready to finish her duties and go off-shift when the door opened. She recognized the bear as Rashid Azarov, who led one of the damage-control teams. He was a little younger than Laura. Also childless, now that she thought of it; she didn't know much of his partner.
"Report for you, Ms. Mathis, on the thing earlier."
"Yeah?" When he held his paw up, with the computer implant glowing, she authorized the transmission at her console. "What happened, anyway?"
"Collision, we think; minor impact. Spalling from the ablative tiles... it's not supposed to happen, but it does. All in the log for you."
Laura looked over the form to make sure it had been filled out properly. "Good... good, data looks rational. Is it validated? Yeah. Signed by you, Kordik, Trujillo, Pennanen... medical crosstab--huh, Jess Kordik is in sickbay?"
"Checkup," Rashid confirmed. "Routine, you know? She got her head knocked around when there was a secondary event... not bad, but there's always a minimal chance of concussion... she should be out in a few hours and you'll get medical."
"Your 'routine' is definitely not mine, Mr. Azarov," she said with a grin. "Alright. Twenty lines--you kept it nice and simple."
"Didn't want to bore you, ma'am."
"Thanks. I can slot this into the next upload batch."
The bear laughed. "You have space?"
"I have space. Next batch is a few late journals and these minor reports. Can do that in one transmission burst, it's just..." She looked at the summary for the next planned upload to the Tereshkova's archives. Her head cocked.
"Everything okay?"
"What happened to Jess? You said a 'secondary event'?"
Rashid nodded and explained that there'd been a pressure buildup from a frozen relief valve; it had knocked Jess Kordik back, all the way to the end of her tether--the jolt was the source of the whiplash and the 'minimal chance of concussion.'
"I don't see this in the report."
"We don't log minor incidents in the EVA forms," the bear told her. "If it turns out Ms. Kordik has any injuries, though, it'll be in the medical."
The medical log was not the mental image that came to mind, though. First she thought of Jess Kordik, hitting the end of her tether--material science the only thing keeping her from breaking free, from being stranded out in deep space until her oxygen ran out. Then she thought of Hal Thompson, teasing her from a centuries-old hologram.
She went back to her console, running a quick calculation on it. Rashid stepped closer, to see what she was doing. "What's this? I thought you said we had room for the log."
"Yes. Yes," she repeated, getting her wits back about her. "It's fine. Can you do me a favor, though, Mr. Azarov?"
"Sure thing."
"When Jess gets out, and you all have some time, would you mind coming down to the archive room? Wake me up if I'm not on shift."
"Uh. Sure, I guess. But... why?"
She did not answer him; the answer was still developing in the collie's head. But it seemed that outer space and an empty page might have some commonality in the void they represented. Perhaps it was not terrifying, after all. Perhaps it was a challenge. Perhaps it could be filled.
Perhaps...
***
They were looking at the outside of the Valentina Tereshkova's hull, substantially magnified. When it was created, this was the most resilient material known to man. Our scientists are doing better than that, but the process of upgrading these--what we call ablative tiles--is slow and tedious. Just like cleaning your cabin, we have to do it anyway.
"Ablative is a word from the old Latin," Laura explained. "Something that erodes, like the canyons you learned about last course. In this case, they 'erode' when something strikes them."
The view pulled back, and Jess Kordik came into view. The husky's face was obscured by her helmet; her voice had been recorded later. It's strong! But sometimes, space is stronger. See here? This is the impact from a micrometeoroid. We think it was about the size of a grain of sand.
Right now, the Valentina Tereshkova is in an extremely dusty region of space. How dusty? Well, there's almost 1400 grains of dust per cubic kilometer. Most of them are much smaller than this, but we need to watch out, anyway. At our velocity, even a grain of sand can cause trouble. And it's not the only thing that can!
Abruptly there was a flash--and a gasp from the children watching as the husky went reeling, away from the ship's hull. The holographic playback slowed. Now, what do you guess I'm thinking right now?
Meryl raised her paw. "The kinetic energy of being launched from the ship?"
Grade Two was learning simple physics. Laura tilted her head. "You'd be thinking about kinetic energy right then?"
"Scared," Tanya spoke up. "I'd be scared about getting left behind."
Jess had recorded a few different options, just in case; it was part of the lesson plan. Laura chose the best one. Now, the worrying thing isn't our ship leaving me. It's not like falling off a boat in the Level C gardens. In deep space, inertia means I stay traveling forward--helpful annotations appeared over the husky's hologram. And this tether is enough to make sure I don't go anywhere. But I'm still worried about inertia.
She explained the forces on her body when her acceleration stopped. And she went on to say that mostly, she was thankful for the engineers who designed her safety equipment, and the teachers who'd trained her to react to a situation like that. It almost seems routine. And you know, it makes me think of something.
Or it had, with Laura's help.
Our archivist, Ms. Mathis, looked up the genealogical records. My ancestors were farmers, like some of your parents are farmers today, here on the Tereshkova_. One of them lost his house in something called a 'tornado.' We don't have those, just like he didn't have explosive decompression. We learn to adapt. You'll learn to adapt, too._ Space can be frightening, it can be boring, it can be beautiful--but whatever else it is, it's our home.
Their legacy, measureless to Terra but not to their own society. To their own unique place in the universe, filled with their own stories. If Earth was the cradle of mankind, how fortunate were they to be among the very first generations to be born already beyond its grasp?
She saw that the students understood, and perhaps they always had. Thinking back to the myths they'd created, the archivist wondered if they might have grown up never knowing they were meant to be orphans had she and the others not reminded them.
What would that have meant? The collie smiled, and watched the young students take in Jess Kordik's lecture with rapt attention. She would have to find out.
***
"Are you awake?"
Laura nodded, and rolled onto her back to wave Dennis over. "Watching the stars," she said. "Join me?"
She heard the Samoyed's tunic coming off, and the soft tread of his feet. He joined her in the bunk, and slipped his arms around the collie. "So, Sonny had me catch an encore presentation of Grade Two's... dramatic recreation of the EVA a couple weeks back."
"What'd you think?"
Dennis chuckled, and nuzzled her ear. "I think her kid is not destined for a career in acting. They looked like they had fun. It was cute, honestly--charming. Was that Rashid Azarov doing the voice?"
"Jess and Rashid volunteered to help," she confirmed.
"Consulting for accuracy?" He squeezed her, his paws warm on her belly; he gave her ear a playful bite. "Where was the bit in the incident report about an aggrieved giant crab with a bow shooting a micrometeoroid at us, anyway? You'd think the command staff would want to know that."
Laura twisted around to face him, meeting his smile. "In the extended log. Well, Tanya and Aaron's extended log. You should read it."
Their noses were too close for Dennis to do anything but kiss her; her eyes slipped shut, and she sighed at the touch of his warm lips. He pulled away gently. "You've been different," he said. "The last week. You always come to my cabin, so you don't have to see outer space."
"Yeah. I know."
"You figured it out, didn't you? The puzzle."
She felt her tail thump against the bed. "I think so. I think I did."
"Yeah? What did it say, detective Mathis?"
"Nothing." She grinned, and kissed her boyfriend again to reward his curious smile. "Russ Hauk told me that the index was about four percent of the way through the sequential archive. I ran the numbers. Based on the average size of the crew journals, and the number they expected to collect? All of that, all of it, would take point seven percent of the allocated storage space. Without advances in compression or anything like that."
"Massively over-built."
"No." Her tail wagged faster. "Dr. Thompson picked a space close to the beginning of the journal archives, knowing that... pretty much no matter what archivist found it when they listened to his message, it would be blank. So why did he ask for so much space? You know how operations is always complaining about storage."
"I'd guess backups, or a miscalculation, but... you're going to tell me otherwise, aren't you?" His curiosity was piqued, though; his tail had a wag of its own.
"We're from Earth, but we're not Terrans anymore. We're our own people. What about our myths? Our stories? We're not just carrying an old library to P2566. We're bringing our traditions, our myths--our history; completely unique. He wanted to make sure that the heritage of this journey arrived intact, not just a bunch of medical logs--us. He wanted to make sure we didn't disappear."
"You're sure?"
The Border Collie laughed. "No. But... thinking about it... it's wrong to think of us as just... just a step along the way from Earth to a new planet. Our species won't end there. Some of them will stay, yes, but eventually many will leave. We'll be part of their journey, like... well, like Valentina Tereshkova was part of ours. I want us to be aware of that!"
"I love how you get when you're excited." His eyes danced. He kissed her again, and as she locked her arms around the samoyed in a tight hug, Dennis pushed ever-closer. She loved that about him, too--how supportive he was, how his grin was so sympathetically tied to her own.
Maybe it was only instinct that made her cling to him. Maybe it was only simple, physical desire that worked her fingers through his pelt. But then, she thought, maybe it was not. Maybe it was life--trying to tell her something in the taste of his lips, and the music of his breathing as it grew shallow, and the way instinct and her consciousness blurred together.
He arched against her side, and she felt thick warmth slip along the fur of her thighs, and catch at resistance. Breathless, panting at his lips, she gasped enough air in for whispered speech. "Dennis. Hey."
The dog huffed a wordless question. His body stayed close. A short, firm grind served to remind her of his arousal, like she'd needed any help.
"I, uh. Might've..." She rallied: "Might've stopped taking my meds."
First he huffed again; then it turned into a growl. Her world twisted--she was on her back, looking up at him and his deep brown eyes. "'Might've'?"
"Did."
His foot pressed at the inside of her calf. She spread her legs for him, settling him invitingly between her soft thighs. His shaft--slick and warm and deliriously, enticingly hard--brushed her provocatively. "Yeah? You want me to pull out?"
"I don't think so."
Dennis nodded at the conditional. And as she took his soft white fur in her paws, he pushed into the Border Collie gently. Steadily, easing inside, leaving her mind blank but for the pressure of her body slowly stretching to take him. He stopped, hilted, and kissed her tenderly.
I love you. Maybe he'd said it aloud or maybe she'd simply read it in his gaze. She echoed it anyway, and it was his cue to begin moving. Rhythmic and even, his hips worked between Laura's clasping thighs to fill her with his length, sliding deep in one smooth stroke after another.
He felt good--he always felt good, it was always satisfying to have him in her. To be reminded of the heavy strength of his movements, and the way she fancied she was perfectly molded about his cock when he sank in deep and their bodies were completely joined. This time, though--this time was different. From the first moment, she needed him close; needed him pressed to her, every centimeter of a distance an aching imposition.
The collie's arms wrapped around him, squeezing. She heard his breathy grunt, and her own pleading moan when the Samoyed thrust in sharply--tense, burying himself in her. When his pace resumed it was getting faster. Just like their heated gasps, and the grip of her paws as they roamed over the growling, rocking dog claiming her.
She could feel him twitch and throb. The building heat and wetness of his precum joined her own arousal, leaving her ever more slick and each thrust more effortless than the one before. But he only sped up, and as her mate's length pumped rapidly through her folds Laura felt the twinges of pleasure coming faster, too.
Dennis was starting to lose control. From long, happy experience she knew that much without a single word from the panting Samoyed. As soon as his knot began to catch in her his pace would pick up until he was pounding into the collie, and she was crying out--urging him to take her, to make her his. And then he'd seize up, and his shaft would pulse, and he'd sigh her name with the falling tension of his climax--but.
This time he could really get me pregnant. And it sent a tight, exhilarating shudder through her. Unexpected, but undeniable: her nerves quivered as he bucked heedlessly, instinct guiding him to give her what she... wanted. Somewhere in the shock of that realization she wondered if he might doubt it.
But Laura's mind was going fuzzy. Her legs locked behind his hips. She drew them tighter, constricting his thrusts, keeping the Samoyed close. There he is, she exulted. His knot was tugging, grating as their hips clashed. Too thick to pull out, too firmly locked to do anything but its job of keeping every drop of him inside her.
Dennis groaned and fell against the collie's chest, hips hammering wildly and the bulb of that canine tie teasing her. Laura gasped as the ripple of pleasure broke free into a rolling wave that clenched her muscles and overrode her senses. Her claws gripped her lover's sides and at the touch he froze. He seemed for a moment to swell larger, to push just that little bit deeper...
His length jumped, flexing against her spasming walls. Then a gush of warmth as he erupted, spilling his cum in long, purposeful spurts. So eager, so satisfied, so... virile, she amended, hugging her wonderful mate as he filled the collie with seed.
When it was over, or perhaps just starting, he settled atop her. He nuzzled her, lapping her ear, whispering his affectionate for her. Laura hugged the fuzzy dog. "I love you, too, Dennis. And I think..."
"You think you might be ready?" He rolled onto his side, taking her with him. So that they were level again, and his eyes were meeting hers.
She looked into them, and caught the reflection of deep space out her cabin window. Presently, awaiting her answer, he blinked. For a heartbeat the stars vanished. But his eyes opened again, bright, and just like that they were back.
And for a moment, staring into that glittering, boundless, timeless, sunless sea, Laura became aware that they had never really left. She felt the call not of harbors, but the horizons in between. Of the blank page, demanding a story be told, and the pen demanding to tell it.
And she grinned.