Chapter 13

The thrill of new books was wearing thin.

For a heavy reader, like Justin, the past year had been hell. Imagine: all there was to read, potentially for the rest of their lives (and their children's lives), was the contents of eight cellphones and iPods. Oh, sure, by pure chance both he and Melinda had the amazingly large storage in their phones filled with tons of books: the complete catalogs of Lovecraft, King, McCaffrey, Bear, Norman, and others, alongside equally large music collections. Their favorites would always be there for them. There had been little in the libraries of the other employees, though, just the title or two they were reading. So little, compared to the infinite wealth of words he had grown up with! Just made you cry.

Mary, for all he was happy to have her with them, had depressed Justin even more. Her phone had ... nothing. No music. No books. No movies. In the decade they had been gone, everything had been moved up into some "cloud". No internet access ... no content.

Fuck clouds.

Thus, Justin had jumped into the study of the squirrel books out of the joy of reading as much as a desire for knowledge. It was new. It was interesting.

At the start.

Two weeks in, and he was starting to get sick of squirrel "literature". To start with, he had never been that into religion. Oh, sure, church, Jesus, God, all that. He believed. He had never actually read the books Jesus wrote, though, leaving that to his Mom and others. It wasn't like it had mattered, and quite frankly he preferred fiction. Thus, the ... quality of the religious texts before him, the style of arguments, were totally unfamiliar. They made his brain hurt. Melinda, bless her, seemed to have more of a knack for it. Comparative religion was actually a bit of a hobby of hers, she had said, if only so she could laugh at the silliness of other faiths. Justin had started pushing most of the books towards her. Let her try and cut through the crap to the underlying facts.

The hand written English texts weren't all they had now, though. Among the possessions destined for the second temple were data spheres with thousands of books. All untranslated.

Yeah, that was going to do them a lot of good in the short term.

Justin looked across the Commons. Sarah floated before the wall screen, fingers flicking quickly across the virtual keyboard. She was translating. Well, in theory, both translating and teaching the computer how to translate, but they had already learned the software onboard was not up to the task. Its Malay/Orang to English translations had been ... horrible, Nona able to do much better work even when it used her instructions. That they were on a spaceship with computer systems in some ways a decade or two behind what they had at home was one of the many puzzling things in their lives.

He returned to the books floating before him. It was the first of Sarah's translations, done not because of importance but because it was the only physical book with major portions not in English. One of their few remaining spiral notebooks had been sacrificed to the cause, the black furred newcomer's careful English script laid out so it could easily be matched to the original. Composition, the placement of paragraphs among the illustrations and English phrases were important. It told a creation myth. Not the one, according to Sarah, traditional to the M'ntsn. It was new, and thus related in some way to She Who Saw's visions.

Probably why it was crazy.

The claim was that Earth was the creator of the universe. Or, at least, Humans. The two words were used interchangeably. It was all dragons, daemons, gods, good, evil, mashed up into a confusing mess. The timeline went back and forth, the future changing the past, and all matter of weirdness.

Justin closed the book again. His head hurt.

"Justin!"

The door to the bridge opened, Goldie and Mary floating in. Goldie was her usual happy, furry self, wearing a necklace they had picked up for her a few planets back for a birthday gift. In zero g like this, she was almost human, movements not much different than the bipeds among them. Her breasts, at least to Justin, became more of an issue. Maybe it was time they got some clothing on her. Mary wore a loose shirt and shorts, hair tied back in a pony tail. Her mother was sure going to town making new outfits for the girl.

Not that he paid attention to the outfits the young teens wore or didn't wear.

"So," he asked the pair, grinning, "what's on the agenda for the day?" Justin saw Sarah pause, listening. He ignored her for now.

"Chuck wants to teach me how to change out a droid's power supply," Mary said, seeming to blush a bit. Goldie, coming to a stop using a ceiling handhold, gave a disgusted grunt.

"It's HARD. I tried."

Justin sighed. The girl's body just didn't agree with most work. Mary was following the same path Danny and Goldie, and Rinda before them, had followed: spend time with everyone as they went around their daily tasks, find out what they were interested in and good at. Goldie STILL followed that path. Taking in her attitude, it was obvious that the two friends were not both involved in this robotic test. He thought a moment, then pushed the notebook towards Goldie.

"Want to help me make sense of all this?"

"Sure!"

Her expression brightened immediately. Justin smiled. She just wanted to be useful.

Alicia sat on the examination table, clothing in a pile on the floor. She had never really liked doctor visits. Part of it, probably, was the scar. The constant examinations after the accident, the touching, the questions, had made her self-conscious about a flaw she had wanted to just disappear, wanted others to ignore. Not that anyone had ever ignored it. Every eye was drawn there, her paranoid mind kept telling her. It was all others saw ... but, after awhile, that became a secondary issue with regard to doctors. The main one was that the idea of some old adult prodding her body, especially "down there", just gave her the willies. Well ... usually. Her doctor as a kid had been a man, and at some point she got a kind of crush on him. Maybe because he had called her "beautiful", and completely ignored the well healed scar. It was short lived, though. Mom must have noticed, since in seventh grade she had switched her over to a female one. That ended that, and things went back to being weird.

That was definitely the case here. She was being examined by Nona. A friend. Not a CLOSE friend, to be sure, in the way her girlfriends in the olden days had been. Brandi examining her would have been silly and fun, and in fact while both girls had been totally straight they had examined each other on sleepovers. Nona, though, was a friend through necessity. Someone she trusted and respected, yes. Maybe even liked. But...

"So, has the baby been kicking?"

Nona, dressed in the white lab coat she always wore for these things, walked up holding a computer pad. It was obvious she, too, wasn't too comfortable with all this. Her eyes tried to stay on Alicia's face, or swollen belly. That hadn't been the case before. The Malay had always been clinical about this kind of thing. Why the change...

Ah.

Tammy.

Feeling a bit more at ease, now that she understood, Alicia placed her hand on her belly button and rubbed.

"He's been a bit active. More than I expected, being Justin's kid."

"Well, you haven't swallowed any books for him to read, so he's bored."

Alicia's eyes shot up Nona's face, surprised.

"Both Justin and Daium use that same joke."

"Well, I'm sure it's just as funny the hundredth time." Giving her a weak smile, Nona began the exam. Alicia was prodded, poked, scanned. They did NOT have an ultrasound, and naturally x-rays were out of the question. Just another limitation they had to deal with. At least the latest remodeling had turned the old tractor trailer, parked at one edge of the dome park, into a reasonably clean and modern clinic. Nona had pushed for moving their sickbay into it, despite the space limitations. She had argued that this way, once they DID find a planet, the entire structure could just be picked up and moved off the ship to form part of their initial settlement.

Whether that would be practical when the time came remained to be seen.

"All done."

Alicia let out a long breath, relieved. Perhaps her main objection, her main problem with these exams, was that Nona seemed to know what she was doing. Alicia was jealous. This was serious, hard work that needed someone very smart to do it, and the younger woman was doing extremely well with few resources. Alicia couldn't do it. That was for certain. Oh, yes, what she did with the sensors on the bridge took skill and brains as well, don't get her wrong. But this ... there had been nobody, literally nobody, to teach Nona medicine.

Then again, she could just be faking it.

Sitting up, Alicia was about to get to her feet when Nona bent down and grabbed the pile of discarded clothing, putting them on the bed next to the blonde. Grabbing the bra, she nodded her thanks.

"So, any problems, Doc?"

Nona shook her head, double checking her notes. She was always so serious.

"Nope, not that I can see. You're about the same as Melinda was at this stage..."

"That is NOT reassuring."

" ... and you line up with Hannah. I have the sickening feeling you two will also pump out your kids close together."

"If she goes first, you have my promise that I'll try and hold my legs together for at least another day."

"Thanks."

Slipping her underwear on, Alicia watched Nona remove the long white coat and hang it up next to the desk. Photos of her parents hung on the wall, blown up from cell phone images. Alicia, with a new phone, had yet to put any pictures on it that fateful night. In a way, that had made it easier to adjust, or so she told herself. She rarely thought of her family, or her boyfriend ... damn it, what had been his name again? A change on the desk distracted Alicia. There, propped up next to a potted flower ... was a photo of Tammy. With a grin, Alicia arched an eyebrow at her.

"So ... how is it going?"

"How is..." Nona's expression, at first puzzled, changed to a blush. One hand moved, as if to take down the photo of her significant other, then just dropped. Alicia laughed.

"Come on, dish! What's going on? How is it?"

"It's..." With a sigh, Nona dropped into the swivel desk chair. She began to swivel, eyes anywhere but on Alicia. "I don't know what to say."

Man, was she that out of practice talking about girl things? A guilty pang hit Alicia. She had been left out of a lot. By her own choice, to be certain, but ... Alicia and the others should have tried to include her. Talk to her. Well, now that she was in the relationship club, maybe she'd be more open.