Chapter 10: Getting a Roommate

A few days later I got an email from Diana saying that they were sending me an early birthday present. Okay ... The next morning I got a call to meet someone at the Station's transporter hub. When I got there, there was the usual ratfuck from a new group of ladies, and one of the accompanying MPs -they called them 'guides' but they were security guys working for a military project- waved me over. Standing beside him was an overweight but well-developed and not too badly run-down young woman, maybe 30, who looked sad more than anything else.

"Miss Reese? This is Captain Edelmann. He'll be taking care of you. He's a good man."

What was I supposed to do? I said the same thing, trying to smile as I did it. "Good morning, Miss Reese. I'm Roger Edelmann. Apparently I'm supposed to take care of you. And, my wife thinks I'm a good man."

She looked up at that. "Both of them?"

"I only have one wife, but she makes me take care of her best friend, too. Ginger lost her husband in an accident some time back and sometimes needs a man but doesn't want to date or marry again. So, she bugs Diana until she makes me do whatever it is she wants."

"Then that's why they picked me. I lost my husband and children in an accident. Ever since then nothing really matters."

Okay, I know a cue when I hear one. I stepped up and gave her a hug. When she stopped fighting me I whispered into her ear "You're safe here. You don't have to do anything you aren't ready for." After that I just stood there holding her until she put her arms around me, too. After she did that I held her for a few more seconds, then let go of her and picked up her bag.

"Okay, first things first. Do you want the grand tour, or do you need a nap first? Did you get any sleep on the shuttle? Or, do you need to eat?"

"I'd like a nap, if you have someplace quiet and safe. The shuttle was too noisy to sleep in. And that was a long trip."

"I completely understand. I did that myself a few weeks ago. All I can offer you is my little cabin, but I'm starting my workday so you'll have it all to yourself until about 1600." I stopped and looked at her. "Four PM, if you aren't used to military time."

"Thank you. My Grandpa used to talk like that but I never understood it. I guess I'll have to learn, right?"

"Yes. Although, it's really easy. Hold on for a sec." I looked up and said "Jupe, two people for Freighter 12."

<Pad Three is set for Freighter 12.> Which was usual, but it's better to check than assume. I told Miss Reese to step on the pad when it turned green again, and I took her bag with me to make it more likely that she followed.

By this time I'd learned to get out of the way, and I was waiting for her when she appeared. I motioned her to come with me, and continued the lecture.

"When people are shooting at you, it's very bad to get confused and do the wrong thing. The military tries hard to avoid confusion and ambiguity whenever possible. The normal American civilian has a clock that is marked '1' through '12' and circles twice a day. It takes extra time, extra effort, more talking, more thinking, to be clear about whether we are talking about 9 in the morning or 9 in the evening."

"The military, indeed the rest of the world, uses a 24 hour clock that just goes from '1' to '24'. Instead of trying to keep AM or PM or morning or evening straight, we just say the time and we're done. If you say the attack goes in at 0530, everyone knows that you mean 5 and a half hours after midnight. If we meant 5:30 in the afternoon, we would say 1730, which is 12 hours after 0530. Within a week or two you won't even think about it. So, how much did they tell you about what we're doing out here?"

"Not much at all, and what they did say was rather misleading. We were told that we had some servicemen who were stuck out in the middle of nowhere and couldn't leave to go home, so the government was sending people out to help make their lives easier. There was a very strong overtone of, um, marital relations."

"That is all true. Certainly, we are all well taken care of out here so companionship is all we really lack. So, maybe they didn't tell you that the nowhere that we are stuck at is a bit farther than you expected. I'm glad to hear that they didn't actually lie to you. Did they tell you why we are out here?"

"No. That was apparently a secret."

"Well, it is. But, you're in on it now so you need to know what's going on. Hey, did you ever see the old movie 'Pirates of the Caribbean'?"

"Yes, that was fun."

"There's a place in that movie where the pirate captain asks the 'beautiful young damsel' if she believes in ghost stories. She says no, and he replies 'Well, you'd better start, lass, 'cause you're in one.'"

"I don't think that that was in the original movie. It was in one of the sequels."

"You probably know better than me, then. Anyway, do you believe in science fiction stories about interstellar wars with aliens?"

"No. Oh. Am I in one?"

"Absolutely. And, it's still a secret back on Earth but if you're here it's pointless to try to hide it from you."

"Why is it a secret back on Earth? Clearly, they know if they are sending people up here."

"Okay, now THAT's a complicated answer. If you want I'll lie to you and tell you I don't know. I don't mind lying to you as long as you know I'm lying to you. If you want the truth that'll take some time and I can't give you that much right now."

"I don't want lies. When can you give me that much time?"

"Tonight when I get off work. And, here is my place, your place too, now, and I have to get to work. Do you need help getting around?"

"I'll be okay for a nap, won't I? Can you come check on me in a few hours?"

"I'll try. AI? If she has any trouble with anything please contact me." I looked back at 'Miss Reese'. "Although, it would be easier to know who needed help if I knew your name."

"Oh, yes, I'm sorry. I'm Ellen Reese, at your service." She actually gave me a smile at that.

"Well, for now you are Ellen Reese taking a nap." I smiled back at her and closed the door behind me.

I didn't really have to go, my time was fairly flexible, but the poor girl needed a little time to get herself together. Yes, we were getting our ships in just a few more days, but until we had one there wasn't much we could do.

I was going to get one of the ships, and we had sorted ourselves out into several complete crews and several more partial ones. I didn't think that this was the best way to do it, but I was just a Captain. In matters pertaining to alien ships and AIs I may have a better insight than the admirals, but in matters pertaining to people and manning fleets they had more experience than I did. Maybe they were right.

Making things we had never seen before and didn't understand work right? That was my job. I was going to get the first ship, so that I could prove how good I was at figuring things out. I had been designated as the Chief Test Engineer for the Squadron, and until we had the ships under control I would also be the skipper for the first one.

Once we knew what we were doing, of course, I would be handing the ship over to the real skippers, the ones who had spent their lives training for command of a warship. I'd find something else to do out here.

While we were getting ready for the warships, the aliens had continued to send us more of those freighters we were starting to call "Auroras". They weren't really going to be ours, though. All of the freighters we were getting were under a long-term contract to help us.

Apparently one of the races in their Confederacy had a bit of a wanderlust and preferred the freedom of living on a ship to the stability of living on a planet. They had a bunch of ships, maybe like saying that "The United States had a bunch of cars", and the owners could either do whatever they wanted, or they could take a contract to deliver goods or passengers wherever needed.

In this case, the ships had been contracted by their government to help us out. We were to decide what we wanted to do, and the aliens would help us do it by providing transportation, equipment, and training. Said training all being done via the sleep-trainers, of course. We all had been shown videos of the Darjee, but few of us had seen one live.

They felt comfortable in their ships, but not around us. As long as we behaved like cargo and stayed in the cargo areas, they were fine with us being on their ships with them. So, we started filling those ships and sending them out.

The survey missions were easy, and they helped us learn about navigation and different systems while we got comfortable with the technology.

The monitoring stations were more of a stretch, but again it was nothing complicated by the Confederacy's standards. They were serving a purpose, yes, like watchtowers in a forest, but they also gave us valuable experience living away from Earth using Confederacy technology.

Since they were so isolated, we had to dedicate a couple of the freighters to communications work, just visiting them one after another in a continuous circle so that if they had problems -or saw the enemy- we would find out in time to react appropriately. There were ships down on Earth that did the same thing, just going from New York City to Miami to Sao Paulo to Lisbon to Belfast and back to New York City, over and over and over again.

Eventually we came up with hyperspace messenger drones or torpedos that could go back and forth with messages, and we could release those communication ships from their rounds. After that, the only ships to visit those monitoring stations were the ones bringing them whatever supplies they needed and/or new crew.

We were also trying to set up some colonies, once we had someplace to go, some way to get there, and something to do when we got there. One of the families that Ginger had trolled in to help her get this exodus organized had the oddest names, and when Ginger learned that the whole family was named after science fiction characters she had Diana pass them on to me, to see how many I recognized.

The woman who Ginger had brought in as "the smartest gal I know" was named "The Leewit O'Brien". That sounded familiar, but I couldn't place it until I asked the AIs. Oh, of course, yeah I remember her. One of the Witches. Her children, though, I felt like I already knew well: Telzey Amberdon O'Brien, Beowulf Shaeffer O'Brien, Kimball Kinnison O'Brien, Miles Vorkosigan O'Brien, and Adele Mundy O'Brien. Everyone in the family was a certified genius, even the father with a normal name. Yeah, sometimes even smart people have some screws loose.

I couldn't help it. In my reply I asked Diana if Mrs. O'Brien was going to make Bey name one of his children "Louis Wu". A day or two later I got my answer. Nope, they only used names once, and one of her nephews was already named Louis Wu O'Kelly. Wait, there's a whole clan of these wackos?

Mrs. O'Brien (Ginger called her "TLO") stayed Earth-side for a long time, helping Ginger organize our colonial effort. She got heavily involved in the social structure, and I blame her for a lot of the negative sides of the caste system we ended up with. From what I gathered, she pretty much agreed with the AIs in their less-than-human viewpoint for the idiots and thieves and grifters, and she didn't want them going to her colonies.

However, she ran into the same brick wall that we had up behind Jupiter. The CAP test selected for warriors that the AIs could trust. The results were very strongly skewed towards the male gender. There were some females who passed; Diana, Ginger, and TLO herself were probably the first three, so we knew it could be done. Women like them weren't very common, though.

By and large our species had some males with integrity who could be trusted out of your sight. If they knew -or could figure out on their own- what the right thing to do was, they would do it without any supervision. We also had a lot of females who would do ANYTHING to protect their families and thus could not be trusted about anything else, and well over half of our species who just couldn't be trusted at all, for no reason that we could find. We just weren't a very reliable species. Still, I couldn't very well say that the women were wrong. Men protected the family or village or nation or whatever, and women protected their children. It was a good system and it worked well for us.

TLO fought the statistics as long as she could, but eventually she had to give in. If we wanted our colonies to live and grow, they were going to have to have families: men, women, and children. And that meant sending people out to the colonies that we had absolutely no reason to trust.

Speaking of people we couldn't trust, the AIs let me know after a few hours that Ellen was asking for help. I had them patch me in to my little cabin, and said "Ellen, this is Roger. How can I help you?"

"Where are you?"

"I'm in my office, in another part of the ship. Do you need me to come home?" I don't think she wanted to think of my bedroom as her home, but it is what it is.

"I ... don't know. I think so. Yes."

"Okay, I'll be right there."

When I got to my home sweet cubby-hole, Ellen rushed into my arms. "Thank you for coming."

WTF? "What's wrong, honey?"

"AI was telling me that I have to sleep with you."

"Well, I wasn't thinking that it would be that horrible, but yeah, that's pretty much why you were sent out here."

"But, you're MARRIED!"

"Yes, I am, and that's bothering me quite a bit, but I thought you had met my wife and Ginger."

"I did. They seem like nice people."

"They both are. They are wonderful people. However, they can't be here. And, they don't want me cheating on them with some skanky slut I found on a street corner. I'm a good husband. I've never cheated on my wife, and I do whatever she tells me to do. She can't be here, so she had Ginger find a woman they liked to come take care of me. I'm supposed to take care of you, too, and yes that's going to mean both of us doing whatever the other needs in bed."

"But, you're MARRIED!"

I got the idea that my new bedwarmer, my early birthday present, may not be wrapped too tightly. I mean, if sleeping with me was a problem, why was she holding onto me so strongly? "Honey, what's my wife's name?"

"Diana."

"And, who sent you out here to me?"

"Your wife and her friend Ginger. I know all that."

"So, what's the problem?" I asked the woman with her arms around me, pressing her chest into mine.

"It's wrong!"

I pushed her away a little so we could look at each other. Then, I pulled her to sit beside me on the bed. "Okay. Ellen, act like I'm an idiot and have no idea what you're talking about. What is it that's wrong? Lead me through it."

"You're married."

"Yes. To a wonderful, beautiful woman who takes care of me very well when we are together."

"You aren't supposed to be cheating on her."

"Define 'cheating'."

"Cheating is when you sleep with someone other than your wife."

"No, that's not true. Honey, cheating is when I sleep with another woman behind her back or against her wishes. Without her permission. I have her permission, with you. She SENT you, because she can't be here to take care of me herself. Now, if I was with any other woman, that would be cheating. I'm not doing that. I'm not sleeping with anyone else except you."

"And Diana. And Ginger, too, apparently."

"Well, okay. I'm not sleeping with anyone except my wife and the two women that she authorized."