Sleepers — Part 2

Ship’s Log — Security Division Stardate 3142.1. The guest wanted books. That was the first thing the whole ship knew about him. Not his name. Not where he came from. Books. “Technical manuals,” Hale said. He said it the way other people said phaser burn. The duty room was half full. End of one rotation, start of another. Ox was eating. Rainer was pretending to sleep in a chair with her boots on the table. Mercer was pretending not to be watching Hale pace. Hale did not pace. Hale was pacing. “He asked for access to the ship’s library,” Hale said. “Fine. Reasonable. Man’s been asleep two hundred years, he wants to catch up. History. Politics. Music. Whatever.” “So?” Rainer said without opening her eyes. “He’s not reading history.” “What’s he reading?” “Engineering schematics. Ship’s systems. Propulsion. Life support.” Rainer opened one eye. Ox stopped chewing. Mercer sat up. “How do you know that?” Hale looked at him. “Because I checked.” “Are we allowed to check?” “Nobody told me I wasn’t.” Rainer opened the other eye. “That’s not the same thing.” “It’s close enough.” Kane came in. He took one look at Hale standing in the middle of the room and stopped. “What.” Hale told him. All of it. Kane listened without moving. When Hale was done, Kane walked to the duty terminal, called up the guest’s access log, and read it himself. Nobody spoke. Mercer watched Kane’s face. Nothing. Then something. Very small. Kane closed the log. “Who knows?” “Us,” Hale said. “Library computer. And whoever authorized his access.” “Who authorized it?” Hale hesitated. “The captain.” Kane nodded slowly. Rainer swung her boots off the table. “So tell the captain.” “The captain knows,” Kane said. “Then tell him again.” Kane looked at her. Rainer looked back. For a second Mercer genuinely wasn’t sure who would blink. Rainer did. But not by much. Kane told him anyway. Mercer knew because he was standing in the corridor outside the briefing room when Kane came out, and Kane had the expression of a man who had been politely and completely ignored. “Sergeant Major?” “The captain is aware of the guest’s reading habits.” “And?” “And the captain is aware.” Mercer waited. Kane started walking. Mercer followed. “That’s it?” “That’s it.” “He’s reading how to run the ship.” “Yes.” “And nobody thinks that’s a problem?” Kane stopped. The corridor was empty. He looked at Mercer for a long moment. “I think it’s a problem.” Mercer didn’t know what to say to that. Kane started walking again. “Which is why you’re on his door.” The guest’s quarters were on a deck Mercer didn’t usually walk. Officer country. Quiet carpet. Better lighting. Doors that slid open a half-second slower, as if they had opinions about who deserved them. Ox was already there. He stood beside the door with his arms folded and a ration bar sticking out of his breast pocket. Mercer looked at the ration bar. Ox looked at Mercer. “Snack.” “You’re on guard.” “Guards get hungry.” “Kane will kill you.” “Kane gave it to me.” Mercer stared at him. Ox shrugged. “Said it was gonna be a long shift.” Mercer took the other side of the door. For a while nothing happened. That was fine. Mercer had learned to like nothing. Then the door opened. The guest stood in the doorway. He had changed. Not just his clothes, though those were Starfleet issue now, a plain tunic that somehow looked more expensive on him than it did on anybody else. He had color in his face. His hair was combed. He stood like the corridor belonged to him and he was deciding what to do with it. He looked at Ox. Up, then down. Then at Mercer. Then at the phaser on Mercer’s hip. Then back at Mercer’s face. He smiled. It was a good smile. That was the problem. “Good evening,” the guest said. His voice was deep and unhurried. Mercer couldn’t place the accent. It seemed to come from several places at once and none of them in particular. “Sir,” Mercer said. “Sir.” The guest seemed to taste the word. “You call me sir. You don’t even know my name.” Mercer didn’t answer. The guest looked amused. “You’re guarding me.” “We’re posted here, sir.” “To protect me?” Mercer said nothing. “Or to protect your ship from me?” Ox shifted his weight. Just slightly. The guest noticed. He noticed everything. Mercer could see it happening. Every movement in the corridor filed. Every angle measured. Exactly the way Mercer had been taught to look at a room. Better. “Both,” Ox said. The guest turned and looked at him with genuine interest. “Both,” he repeated. “Yep.” “An honest man.” “Try to be.” The guest studied Ox for a long moment. “You are very large.” “Farm.” “A farmer. Good. Farmers understand something most men forget.” The guest smiled again. “That everything which grows must be managed. Pruned. Directed. Or it chokes on its own disorder.” Ox considered that. “Mostly you just gotta pull weeds.” The guest laughed. A real laugh. Then he looked at Mercer again, and the laugh was still in his face, and the eyes above it were not laughing at all. “I am going to dinner,” the guest said. “With your captain.” “Yes, sir.” “You will escort me?” “Yes, sir.” “Then lead.” Mercer led. He didn’t like the way that felt. Dinner was in the officers’ mess. Security stood outside. Of course they did. Through the door Mercer could hear the captain. Spock. The engineer. Others. Glasses. Silverware. And the guest’s voice. Always the guest’s voice. It didn’t rise. It didn’t need to. When it spoke, the other voices went quiet to let it. Mercer couldn’t make out the words. He didn’t have to. He could hear the shape of it. The voice was making a speech. Then the room went quiet. Too quiet. Then the captain said something short. The guest laughed. The door opened. The historian came out first. McGivers. She was flushed. Not embarrassed. Something closer to the opposite. Her eyes were bright, the way people’s eyes got when they had just heard something they had been waiting their whole lives to hear. She didn’t look at Mercer. She didn’t look at Ox. She looked back through the door. At the guest. Then she walked away down the corridor. Ox watched her go. He didn’t say anything. But he took the ration bar out of his pocket, looked at it, and put it back without eating it. Mercer had never seen him do that before. Kane relieved them at the end of the shift. He didn’t say anything about dinner. He didn’t have to. He had already heard. The whole ship had already heard. The guest had said something about men. About better men. About how humanity hadn’t improved, only its machines. Rainer was waiting in the duty room when they got back. So was Hale. Hale had his padd out. Rainer had her boots up again. “So,” Rainer said. “How was the emperor?” Mercer sat down heavily. “Don’t call him that.” “Why not?” “Because I think he’d like it.” Rainer’s smile faded. Just a little. Ox sat in his usual chair. It creaked. “He likes farmers,” Ox said. Hale looked up. “Does he?” “Said we understand managing things.” Hale’s mouth tightened. “Did he.” Kane stood at the duty terminal. He hadn’t sat down. Mercer noticed that. “Sergeant Major,” Hale said. “Permission to say something you’re not going to like.” “No.” Hale said it anyway. “The old chief would have had him in the brig before he finished thawing.” The room went still. Mercer looked at Kane. Kane didn’t turn around. “The old chief isn’t aboard,” Kane said. “I know. But her protocols are. Unknown guest, maximum threat until cleared. That’s still in the manual. That’s still literally in the manual, Sergeant Major. Section—” “I know what section.” “Then—” “I wrote half of it with her.” Hale stopped. So did everybody else. Rainer slowly took her boots off the table. Kane finally turned around. He looked tired. Not shift tired. Older than that. “I served under her,” he said. “Long enough. I don’t count.” Mercer didn’t breathe. Kane almost never talked about before. “She came up hard,” Kane said. “Harder than anybody in this room. Lost things most people don’t come back from. And she came back from them anyway.” He looked at the terminal. “She never trusted a guest in her life. Never trusted a smile. Never trusted a man who looked at a room the way that man looks at a room.” Rainer said quietly, “She’d have hated him.” Kane was silent a long moment. “I don’t think hate’s the word.” “What’s the word?” Kane didn’t answer. He looked at the padd in Hale’s hand. “She’d have known,” he said finally. “Known what?” Mercer asked. Kane looked at him. “What he was. Before any of us. Before the captain. Before the computer.” “How?” Kane shook his head. “Some people can just tell.” That was all he said. But Mercer had been aboard long enough now to know when Kane was choosing not to say something. Kane was choosing not to say something. Hale found Mercer in the gym an hour later. Mercer wasn’t working out. He was sitting on a bench staring at the floor, which Hale apparently decided counted. Hale sat beside him. Neither of them said anything for a while. “You’ve read her stuff,” Mercer said finally. “Whose?” “The old chief.” Hale nodded. “Everybody in Security has read her stuff. Some of us read it on purpose.” “You never served under her.” “No.” Hale looked at the far wall. “I came aboard after.” “After what?” Hale shrugged. “After. People leave ships. She left this one.” “Why?” “Nobody tells petty officers why.” Mercer waited. Hale didn’t add anything. That was unusual enough that Mercer looked at him. “You know something.” “I know rumors.” “Rumors are something.” “Rumors are noise with confidence.” Mercer almost laughed. “So what’s the noise say?” Hale was quiet. Then: “That she survived things nobody survives. That she didn’t sleep much. That she ran drills until people hated her and then ran them again until they stopped hating her because the drills kept working.” He paused. “That she once cleared a deck faster than the computer could log the alert.” “Is that true?” “I checked the logs.” “Of course you did.” “It’s true.” Mercer looked at the floor again. “What would she do? With him?” Hale thought about it. “Watch him,” he said. “Every second. Assume he’s smarter than you. Assume he’s stronger than you. Assume he’s already three moves ahead.” He stood up. “And then get ahead of him anyway.” “Can we do that?” Hale looked down at him. For a second Mercer saw something on Hale’s face he’d never seen there before. Doubt. “Shut the fuck up, Rook,” Hale said. But he said it quietly. And he didn’t sound like he meant it. Later, the rumor came down from the bridge. It came the way rumors always came. A yeoman told a nurse who told a transporter technician who told Rainer in the mess while she was arguing about whether the eggs were real. The computer had identified the guest. Mister Spock had found him in the records. Somebody important. Somebody from the wars. The wars nobody liked to talk about. That was all anybody seemed to know. Or all anybody was willing to say. “What wars?” Ox asked. Hale looked at him. “Earth had a bad century.” “How bad?” Hale opened his mouth. Then closed it. “Bad,” he said. Mercer looked at Hale. He had never once seen Hale run out of words. The next rotation went up on the board at twenty-two hundred. Mercer read it twice. He was off the guest’s door. So was Ox. Somebody else had the night watch. Somebody from second section. A crewman Mercer knew by face. Decent guy. Played cards badly. Always laughed at his own jokes before he finished telling them. He would stand outside the guest’s door all night. Alone. Mercer looked at the board. Then at Kane. Kane was looking at the board too. “Sergeant Major—” “I know.” “One man?” “I asked for two.” “And?” Kane turned away from the board. “And I asked.” Mercer looked at the name on the board one more time. Then he went to his bunk and didn’t sleep. Somewhere above him, the old sleeper ship rode at the end of a tractor beam, dark and empty and waiting. Somewhere below him, the guest was reading. Mercer lay awake in the dark and listened to the ship. It sounded the same as always. That was the worst part.