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AS THE NEXT FEW DAYS evolved and their course continued to diverge from what had been plotted, the captain had tasked the engineering department with setting up a huge Perspex screen so that the order of the day, the navigation discrepancy, was forefront in everyone’s mind. The line on the chart and the dotted projection of where that might take them was getting farther from the orbit of the fourth planet of the Sirius system, also drawn on the chart, every day. Lena though, had other worries. While the crew were obsessing over correct position taking and star-finding, the ship was asking Lena for other things entirely. The signals from the forward radio dish were not in any way clear enough and Rowie was concerned about it.
Concern from something as massive, alien, and all-powerful seeming as Arohirohi was deeply unsettling. Up till then, Lena had enjoyed and hidden in her position as the only one who could talk to the ship and understand it, imagining herself as a brave merwoman whale-rider, perched on the back of a massive orca, trident in her hand, splashing in and out of the waves and cheering and whooping as the wind ruffled her hair and the spray washed her face. But she was a human playing with giants. There always was the possibility of being hurt, even by accident. What if she fell off and was smashed by a massive fluke? What if she fell off and the whale didn’t notice, and by the time its behemoth attention had turned to its tiny friend, they were light years apart in this coldest of oceans. And that was before she engaged with what Fazar and Stanley and all the marines were thinking to a greater or lesser degree. It wasn’t coincidence that she picked an orca as her fantasy ride of choice. It was massive, it was dangerous, and she needed that big ally on her side. Though orcas didn’t traditionally eat humans they could, if they were hungry.
Now the ship was going its own way seemingly, Lena could feel the pull of that string dragging the well-behaved mental boat of the captain—off the course set by its rightful navigators, into the jaws of the killer whale they all knew they were riding. Even Fazar and the marine sergeant, who she increasingly suspected, thought of Rowie as a super-weapon, were aware of the flipside of riding a beast. Lena was sure there were salutary tales from the naval college of enormous losses of troops to trampling as Hannibal made his crazy elephant gamble. With the best-tempered elephant in the universe, elephants were very, very big. Humans were small and squashy.
As often as she’d asked the ship where they were going, either on her own account or at the behest of any number of officers, the reply came back the same—‘the colony. And that was under the proviso that all replies Rowie made were sufficiently vague and visual in nature. Lena had seen many different things each time she’d asked, as though Rowie was seeing the place in real time and the light varied. No, not even that was it. Sometimes she saw different things close up, almost like the things that the ship was concentrating on, and that changed on a minute-by-minute basis. The last time she’d been asked was in a navigation briefing meeting where there was just her, Jenny and the captain. Lena was starting to be able to compose a composite of sorts from all the fragments.
“Well, it’s definitely a planet.”
“Good,” said the captain, “I’m pleased to know we’re not careening off into deep space.”
“It’s only light sometimes, and then not all that much.”
“Can’t be Sirius Four then,” said Jenny flatly.
“No,” said the captain, gazing at the 3D projection. “It can’t be. So, where the hell is it then?”
“Have you got any idea why the ship won’t tell us, Lena?” Jenny asked.
“It’s not that she won’t,” Lena thought through the mood in her head every time the ship and she had this interaction. “It’s that she doesn’t understand the question.”
“Ok-ay,” said the captain, “that does seem like one of the simpler things we’ve translated between us and the alien intelligence?” She winced and began again, “Sorry, that came out more sarcastically than I’d intended. Lena, I know you’re trying your best, and I suspect the ship is too, it’s just I’ve got everyone else to deal with and they’re a hell of a lot less patient.”
“It’s okay, captain. Rowie understands.”
“I hope you do too Lena,” said the captain, smiling. “I don’t know whether it’s a compliment or an insult that we tend to forget that you’re only ten.”
“You can take it as both if you like.” Jenny nudged Lena, who pulled tongues in return.
She took a deep breath, “It’s like she knows exactly where it is as far as she’s concerned, but any way of explaining it to us, we couldn’t understand, or she can’t figure out a simple way to explain it to us. It’s the whole extra dimensions thing? I have trouble—” Lena threw her hands up, “Urgh, I’m explaining this terribly. It’s like, your cat got on the bus and wound up in town—trying to explain to it where it was or how it got there would be really weird?”
Jenny looked blankly at her. The captain reached behind her chair for the coffee jug without taking her eyes off Lena. She poured slowly in the silence.
“I’m sorry,” Jenny ran her hand through her hair and put it back in her hair bobble. No matter how hard she pulled it back after three attempts, the bit on top of her head remained wavy. “Are we the cat or the owner in this scenario?”
“Or the bus?” Everyone stopped to stare at the new speaker. Ash Cento had come in after having opened the door, found a mug, and was holding it hopefully next to the captain’s while she poured. The captain closed her mouth, poured a slosh off coffee into the midshipman’s mug. In turn, Cento found a chair and sat. “You never can tell with these higher dimensional analogies.” They turned to face Lena and said, “Do go on, dear.”
When she didn’t, the captain broke in, “Firstly, I think in that charming image, sadly, we’re the cat. Secondly, why are you here midshipman?”
“It’s like telling the cat, it shouldn’t be there or, that it’s dangerous or it could get squashed would be easy and the cat, given enough time could work out where it was—”
“But you couldn’t tell a cat how to catch a bus!” said Cento.
“Exactly!” said Lena.
Cento dipped their head towards her.
“Why are you here again, midshipman?” said the captain.
“More germane to proceedings is why do we still use a naval term from the sixteen hundreds when the Gender Reform act was passed five hundred years later?”
The captain sighed, “I don’t know? Mid-ship-person is awkward to say? Personally, I preferred calling you Off-Cad, but here you are back on my crew like the proverbial bad penny all grown-up like, and with a rank and everything. You didn’t answer my question.”
“Oh, sorry, I have information that may pertain to this discussion, and it sounded such fun too.”
“That’s ‘Oh sorry, captain’, to you, Cento,” said Jenny. “Why do we keep them again?”
“Because despite extreme levels of arrogance, they are occasionally quite useful. I’m hoping against hope, this is one of those occasions.”
“Captain, you wound me.” Cento threw their hand to their forehead theatrically.
“Can we get on?” said Jenny.
“Yes,” said Cento, and as a theatrical aside to Lena, added “I’ve fixed your radio!”
