Maria needed alone time with the Behemoth, and she wasn’t getting any.
She was so distracted by running the printer through its paces that she hadn’t realized most of the crew had raided the liquor stores. Hiro, Katrina, Wolfgang, and Joanna all sat at a table with a bottle of whiskey between them.
“Really? Whiskey at nine in the morning?” She paused and then realized the thing she was truly angry about. “Without me?”
“It’s always five o’clock in space,” Hiro said, raising his little shot glass to toast her.
“Whatever. We’re so far outside the realm of social norms anyway,” Maria said, shrugging.
“I don’t recommend drinking with new clone bodies on an empty stomach,” IAN said.
“Now ask us how much we care,” Hiro said.
Joanna hadn’t touched her shot glass. She looked at them all in disgust, her hands wrapped around a mug of tea. “You know we all have time-sensitive work to do, right?”
“I’m useless until I get some food. And whiskey will help the waiting,” said Katrina. “Just a sip.”
Joanna looked at Wolfgang. He shrugged. She rolled her eyes.
“If you get drunk and rowdy while I’m trying to fix this thing, then floating bloody in the cloning bay will be the least of your problems,” Maria said.
“Understood,” Wolfgang said, smiling slightly.
She refocused on Bebe, wishing there were a door between her and the tables.
“Where is Paul?” Hiro asked.
“He was working on the servers when I left him,” Wolfgang said. “I told him to come here by nine.”
“It’s five after,” Hiro said.
Wolfgang pulled his tablet out and paged Paul.
“Here,” Paul said, his voice sounding stronger than yesterday. “Is it breakfast yet?”
“Not quite yet,” Wolfgang said. “We’re all in the kitchen, though. Join us.”
“I should work more on these servers,” he said doubtfully.
“I’ll let him know when it’s time,” IAN said.
“Hey, IAN, do you watch us in our rooms?” Hiro asked suddenly.
“In the interest of full security, I have to,” IAN said. “When the cameras are all functioning, that is.”
“Well. That’s interesting,” Hiro said, going slightly pink.
“All your cameras aren’t functioning yet?” Katrina asked.
“Not yet. I’m taking time to run the various commands you’ve given me, as well as repair my internal issues. I’m getting more and more eyes and ears all over the shop.”
“Let me know when you’re fully operational,” Katrina said.
“You’re right, I could use a break,” Paul said over the link. “I’ll come down.”
“All right, everyone,” Maria said. “I need to go back to my quarters for a backup disk that has all of your tastes in a program. But in the meantime I want you to give saliva samples to Bebe because apparently it can determine your tastes by just that little bit of DNA. Hiro can show you how.”
“Why do you need the disk, then?” Wolfgang asked, narrowing his eyes.
“I want to compare the two. If it makes a wrong decision, then we’ll have the backup.”
“I’ll come with you,” Joanna said.
As they headed down the hall, they passed Paul hurrying to the kitchen. “Food yet?” he asked, his red face hopeful.
“Yes, in the last minute we went from nothing to a full meal,” Maria snapped.
Joanna put her hand on Maria’s arm. “We’ll get breakfast soon,” she said. “Wolfgang is waiting for you, Paul.”
“I’d rather have breakfast,” Paul said. They continued on their ways.
“He seems to be returning to us,” Maria said. “Any idea what was wrong with him yesterday?”
“Some people get uptight about the cloning process, some people don’t like when routines get damaged, some maybe don’t like waking up to floating gore. It could be anything,” Joanna said.
“Or he could be responsible for it,” Maria said in a low voice.
“If we were to damn people based on acting oddly after waking up the way we did yesterday, I could point fingers at any one of us.”
“It’s not helping that we’re all dealing with low blood sugar,” Maria said, thinking out loud. “Which is why I need to get everything worked out.”
“I’d like to test-check your toiletries as well,” Joanna said. “You may have some more poison traces on your toothbrush or lip balm or something.”
Maria continued down the hall. “Sure thing,” she said. “I’m fairly sure I have nothing to hide. Well. I don’t have anything to hide. I don’t know about the other me.”
They entered Maria’s room, and she pointed to her small bath. “Why don’t you grab my toothbrush and anything else you want? I can get another from the supply.”
Joanna nodded and turned toward the bathroom. When Maria was sure she was out of sight, she knelt below her bed and pulled out a small safe with a mechanical lock. She ran through the combination.
“Maria, why do you have a mechanical safe?” IAN said. “A digital safe is much harder to crack.”
Yeah, for a human. Maria grimaced. She’d forgotten the AI was back. “A woman has her secrets, IAN.”
“Not aboard the Dormire,” IAN said. “What are you retrieving?”
Maria realized the camera couldn’t see into the safe. She glanced at the interior quickly and pulled out a blue backup drive, ignoring the several other drives of various sizes stored within. She shut the safe and then held the drive up to the camera. “It’s just a backup drive.”
“I would have kept all of those logs,” IAN said. “You didn’t need a redundancy.”
“Clearly I did; you lost the logs,” Maria said.
“Kick a man while he’s down,” IAN said, sounding wounded. “How do you know those hold the data you want? You could have overwritten it in twenty-five years.”
Maria shrugged and pocketed the drive. “Digital pack rat. It’s what I always do. It’s just good sense to back up the data important to your job. And you’re not a man.”
“I will have to report to the captain,” IAN said.
“I’m about to go tell her myself in the kitchen!” Maria said. “And Dr. Glass is right here to see me do it!”
This wasn’t entirely true. The doctor was still in the bathroom, rummaging through her stuff. Then she backed out slowly. The non-accessible bathrooms weren’t large enough for a wheelchair to turn around in, and it had been a tight fit for her.
“I’ve got what we need for the printer,” Maria said. “IAN is shitting himself that I have a backup he doesn’t. Do you need anything else?”
“I need a shower and to get my legs back on. Otherwise, no. I took your toothbrush, your floss, and a towel. That should be enough.”
“Then I will definitely be a new toothbrush and towel, unless you want to be around a stinky cook.”
Joanna smiled. “I expect you can trust yourself not to squander our supply cache. I’ll get these tested. I want to know how far the attempt to poison you went.”
“I have brushed my teeth and showered since yesterday. Do you think that’s okay?” Maria asked.
Joanna frowned. “I should have told you not to do that. Too much chaos yesterday. But if you’re okay now, you’ll probably be fine. Let me know if you start to feel sick. Until then I’ll be in the medbay. Tell Wolfgang to meet me there in half an hour.”
“I can do that!” IAN said.
“I’m playing Russian roulette with hemlock? Great,” Maria said.
Joanna followed her out of her room, and Maria stopped to key in the lock code.
“Did you really keep a copy of all of our food preferences?” Joanna asked, pointing at the drive.
“Of course. Backups are important. Just ask Paul and IAN how they’re doing without a backup.”
“I resent that,” IAN said, his voice less chirpy.
“Fair enough,” Joanna said. “I’ll let you know.”
They parted in the hallway, and Maria hurried back to the kitchen to try to recalibrate the food printer. Her nemesis. Bebe.
So much for the “just a sip” of whiskey.
Wolfgang, Katrina, Paul, and Hiro had been trading shots for an hour and getting more and more relaxed while Maria finished calibrating the food printer.
Joanna stormed into the kitchen, slightly damp and upright wearing her prosthetic legs. “Please tell me the printer is up and going,” she said. “I’m losing the ability to concentrate.”
“Almost there,” Maria said, watching Bebe work on printing its last test, a simple slab of tofu. “Did you find your spare legs?”
Joanna nodded. “Found them in my closet, while you all apparently got drunk.” She collapsed at the table with the waiting crew and looked accusingly at the bottle. “That was a great idea. Did you know they tested—rather unethically—how long a clone can live without food after waking up? They did some tests on sleep deprivation as well.”
“I wouldn’t have wanted to be in that experiment,” Hiro said.
Joanna pointed at him. “You’re in it. Now. That’s what you’re going through. And it’s not pretty.”
“But what kind of asshole would volunteer for that?” Hiro asked.
“The kind of assholes who will think it’s a great idea to drink on a stomach that’s never had food before?” Maria called from her station at the mouth of Bebe.
She was ready. She programmed in some bread that everyone could share while the printer dealt with several meals at once.
“Or like the kind of person who will call everyone who outranks her an asshole when she hasn’t been eating,” Joanna said. “Exactly.”
“So these unethical experiments,” Wolfgang said. “What else did they test?”
“Physical dexterity, emotional durability, mental endurance. Twenty-four hours without food and the clones are next to useless,” IAN said. “This puts you on hour eighteen.”
Wolfgang looked at Paul. Pale by Earth standards, Paul was positively ruddy compared with Wolfgang. He returned the stare and didn’t flinch when the much taller Wolfgang stood up. He reached out and grasped the Paul’s shoulders, pulling him to his feet. He ran his hands down Paul’s arms in an oddly intimate gesture.
Paul stepped back out of his reach. “What are you doing?” His voice was slightly slurred.
“I want to run our own tests,” Wolfgang said at last.
“What are you talking about?” Katrina asked. “You’re pretty much breaking down in front of us, but you want to take it further? By feeling him up?” She paused to drain her shot glass. “That’s not the way to do security.”
“I need to blow off steam,” he said. “Sweat out the alcohol. I need a workout. Paul’s coming with me.”
“I don’t think—” Paul began.
“Dinner officially in one half hour,” Maria called. “The new printer is off and running!”
The crew cheered, and Joanna sagged in her chair.
Wolfgang looked at Paul. “So we have half an hour. Let’s go.”
“An empty stomach, plus alcohol, plus the stress of our current situation, means the odds of exhausting your new bodies are very high,” IAN said. “Scientifically speaking, it’s a really stupid idea.”
Maria paused and looked thoughtfully at the room’s camera. IAN was getting more of a personality. She wasn’t sure if that was good or not.
“Come on. It’ll let Maria work without distraction. It will be fun.” Wolfgang’s teeth were slightly bared and his eyes were wide. This looked like anything but fun. Maria was caught between pitying Paul and being grateful it wasn’t her.
“You’re getting delusions of immortality,” Katrina said. “Right at the moment you’re not immortal.”
“I’m a clone. I am immortal,” he said, and laughed. He grabbed Paul’s shoulder in a viselike grip and pulled him toward the kitchen. “Paul, go and lift that food printer in there.”
“Hey, wait a minute! I just got this hooked up!” Maria said, stepping in front of the printer. “Go to the fitness room to do whatever testosterone war you’re about to start.”
Wolfgang turned his icy stare onto Maria, but she stood her ground.
“I’m serious,” she said.
“Come on,” Wolfgang said, and he led Paul from the kitchen. The doctor followed them.
“That crisis just took my drinking buddy,” Hiro complained. Then he blinked as if realizing something. “Hey, they didn’t invite me. Aren’t I testosteroned enough?”
Maria thought that Hiro feeling left out of a macho war was less alarming than his referring to Wolfgang as a “buddy.” We’re getting loopy without food.
“You are totally testosteroned, Hiro. You’re the testosteronedest,” she said. “Now let me work.” She focused back on the printer. She checked the calibrations and the memory and turned it on. “Meals and beverages for the whole crew, please.”
“Do you have to say please? Why be nice to these machines?” asked Katrina, still seated at the table.
“Habit,” Maria said. “I had a strict aunt.” She held her breath as the machine whirred to life and began clicking to itself.
“What do you think we should do with the other printer?” Hiro asked. “I think I might use it to set up a black-market café in my room. In fact, that sounds like a cool idea. Maria, tyrant of the kitchen, won’t let us have our sweets, so we all go to Hiro’s Speakeasy for dark chocolate made from the finest Lyfe that can be found on the ship.”
“A speakeasy that serves only hemlock? Be my guest,” Maria said.
“It’s a fucking carnival in here,” Katrina said, and tried to get to her feet. She staggered and sat back down.
Maria turned back to the printer, which was busy printing black coffee all over the interior of its chamber. She swore and went scrambling for a mug. When she had retrieved one, she caught the last of the coffee. She pulled out the mug as the printer got working on something else.
“Taste this,” she said to Hiro, handing it to him while she looked for a rag to mop up the coffee.
“Heck no, are you mad?” Hiro asked. “You taste it.”
Maria looked at him in surprise.
“Could be poisoned,” he said, shrugging.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, you know this printer just came out of the box!” She gulped the coffee down, scalding her tongue. It was black coffee all right.
The printer made beverages for all of them, and Maria brought Katrina her black coffee.
Katrina was staring at the table, tracing the metal designs with her finger. “I should kill her. The previous clone. This life is mine now.”
“Captain, the inability to murder someone on the ship is pretty far down the list of problems we have,” Hiro said mildly, gently pushing the coffee toward her. “It’s possible she’ll never wake up. It’s possible we could find out she did everything and we can punish her.”
The captain gave him a sharp look, and Hiro sat back in his chair as if stung. “Of course, that implies you killed us, and that you should be punished too, which I am not implying at all. You’re clearly delightfully innocent.”
“Captain, you will feel better after a meal and some sleep. I promise. Apparently Joanna says it’s scientifically proven,” Maria said.
“People need eggs at a time like this,” Hiro agreed.