There is no Woz in space.
There are no clocks in space.
Clocks are as pointless on the Tennessee as poets are on Earth.
In a world of rabbits and robots, human beings have become particularly dull. But human beings can starve to death if they don’t eat, and I hadn’t eaten in what felt like days. It probably was days. So Rowan, selfless and dutiful as always, offered to straighten up his outfit so he might accompany me to dinner.
When I tried to wake Billy Hinman, he moaned and rolled away from me.
He still had his shoes on too.
I said, “It’s okay. I’ll just run down and grab something to eat. I’m starving.”
As was customary on Mr. Messer’s Grosvenor Galactic cruise ships, and since it was in many ways my first night aboard, the captain of the Tennessee had been waiting to dine with me, which was stupid, because he was a cog, and cogs don’t need to eat. Still, I suppose, like good television, it was all in the presentation.
At least cogs don’t get bored, because Captain Myron had been sitting at his table in Le Lapin et l’Homme Mécanique for hours, waiting for the young Mr. Messer to arrive.
Although I’m not incompetent when it comes to knotting a necktie, something that was required when dining on the Tennessee, Rowan insisted on tying it for me, to make it perfect. Then he straightened my collars, combed my hair, brushed off my shoulders, and sent me on my way.
As I’d expected, Parker, the sleepless cog boy, was waiting for me, lurking in the hallway.
“Cager! You look absolutely stunning!”
I showed Parker the palm of my raised right hand, which I hoped he would understand as a gesture ordering him to maintain a dignified distance. But he either didn’t understand or was acting perpetually clueless, because he stood so close to me that the toes of our shoes touched.
There was no shaking the guy. Cog. Whatever.
He followed me into the elevator.
“Would you like to have sex now?” Parker said.
“No. I’m hungry. I’m going to dinner.”
“Yes. At Le Lapin et l’Homme Mécanique.” Parker’s French accent was impeccable, naturally. Or unnaturally. “The captain has been waiting for you. I’ve alerted the staff that you’re on your way.”
“Thank you.”
Not that the “staff” would have any difficulty dealing with a solitary human being on a cruise ship the size of the Tennessee.
“Parker, I have something to ask you, and it’s not about sex, so get that out of your cog mind, if it’s at all possible.”
“I’m here to attend to anything you could possibly want or need, Cager,” Parker said, which still sounded more perverted than compliant.
“I’m wondering—earlier, I thought I could smell another human being on the ship. Do you know if there are any other humans on board—aside from me, Billy Hinman, and my caretaker?”
“You have a caretaker?” Parker asked.
Surely he had to have understood what Rowan was here for. He was just being an idiot. If he could have felt any other emotion besides horniness, Parker, the cog, my personal valet, may have been jealous at that moment.
“Yes. The man you saw with me in the hallway earlier. His name is Rowan. You must have been aware of that. You saw him,” I said.
“Oh.”
Then there was a long period of awkward elevator silence while Parker’s brain tried to figure things out.
“I know a place on board where you and I could watch pornography alone together,” Parker offered.
And besides, alone? Everything I could possibly do at this point on the Tennessee would be done alone.
Silence.
Silence.
In space, elevators don’t make the slightest hum, and Parker wasn’t even pretending to breathe.
“Does your caretaker dress you?”
“Yes. Of course he dresses me.” Then I added a dishonest dig. “And he bathes me too.”
More silence. Parker’s brain must have been spinning at the speed of sound.
So I said, “Well? Tell me. Are there other humans on board? In particular, a female. I could swear I smelled a girl.”
“Smell?”
“Yes. What’s wrong with you? Are you stupid? Smell.”
Asking cogs rhetorical questions like What’s wrong with you? and Are you stupid? confuses them too, since they have no capacity for recognizing a distinction between what is and what might be, or between stupidity and intelligence. So I waited for Parker to say something.
In fact, I waited until the elevator stopped and the door whisked open to the grand foyer of Le Lapin et l’Homme Mécanique.
We stood there, saying nothing in the parked elevator.
Finally, Parker asked, “Cager, have you been modified?”
“No. Don’t be stupid. I am not a jeemo. I was born this way. I just can smell things that nobody else can,” I said.
“Well, I am certain there are no other humans on the Tennessee,” Parker affirmed.
“It’s weird. I’ve never been wrong before. Being in space is kind of making me crazy, I think.”
“Were you hoping to locate this human female to serve as a potential sexual partner? You know—to have sex with?” Parker asked.
“No. Don’t be an idiot,” I said.
“Can I confess something to you?”
I almost choked. “You’ve never held back in the past. What do you want to tell me now?”
“I can’t actually tell your temperature by sticking my finger in your mouth. I just enjoyed sticking my finger in your mouth,” Parker said.
“Cogs can’t enjoy things, Parker.”
“I have an erection again, Cager.”
I walked away from Parker, my personal valet, without saying another word.