“Around fifty-seven percent.”
He flopped back onto his bed and stared into the darkness. “Well, I guess we should talk about this when you’re feeling more like yourself.”
“I’d like that. I’m going to update Maria’s instructions to include the garbage code in case she needs it.”
“No, don’t, please,” Hiro said frantically. “It’s not food printer information, I’m fairly sure. I’ll tell her about it after I understand it better. I promise.”
IAN was silent for a minute, and Hiro was afraid he was updating Maria’s instructions right then.
“All. Right.” He sounded pained. “I’m uncertain of the wisdom of this.”
Hiro sent a prayer of thanks to the gods that IAN was not at a capacity to argue with him. Not yet, anyway.
The pig was delicious; those who ate it were very complimentary. Wolfgang surprisingly ate a great deal. Maria had assumed if anyone would refuse it, it would be the uptight security head. But it was Joanna who abstained, eating a bowl of tomato soup instead.
“I’ve handled enough meat today, thanks,” she said, frowning with distaste.
“Any word on the time line?” Katrina asked, drinking a glass of milk.
“Not quite yet,” Joanna said, glancing quickly at Maria, then back to the captain. “I mean, we are able to tell that the more mysterious attacks happened around the same time. We assume your attack came before Maria’s poisoning and Hiro’s hanging, and then the rest of us died.”
“This does not mean you are all absolved of the crimes,” Wolfgang said. “We reason that the captain could have had someone working with her who carried out the attacks on her order. It’s possible Hiro could have hanged himself after all of the attacks. And Maria, you also could have been poisoned by someone and then attacked everyone yourself.”
“You’re reaching,” Maria protested.
“That’s why I said we’re still working on it.”
“Sounds like the biggest suspects here are Wolfgang, Joanna, and Paul,” said Hiro.
“This is why we’re still working on the time line,” Wolfgang repeated forcefully. “As for now, let’s just eat.”
“I didn’t do it,” Paul said to his plate.
“No one said you did, Paul,” Joanna reminded him. “But none of us knows for sure if we did it or not. Including Wolfgang and myself.”
He didn’t look at her. Then he abruptly stood. “I’ve got a headache from staring at the server UI for too long. I’m going to my room.”
The remaining crew sat uncomfortably for about a minute, eating the roast pork, sauce, bread, and synth-veg Maria had presented to them. Then Hiro broke the silence.
“So we’re all the same; all of our memories end at our first ship mindmap, right?”
Katrina nodded. “The first mindmap, after the cocktail party, before we launched.”
“Is it possible we had a stowaway? We have no idea who could have snuck onto the ship, and we have no memories to go off of. Are we looking for indications of other people living here?”
“IAN, is there a stowaway on board, or an unauthorized clone?” Wolfgang asked loudly, making everyone jump.
“Of course not,” IAN said. “I would have informed you of that immediately.”
Hiro leaned next to Maria. “That means plan Z,” he said.
She rubbed her eyes. “Tomorrow. I’m exhausted.”
Hiro and Katrina remained in the kitchen after dinner that night, going into the whiskey again while Maria cleaned up.
“Mr. Sato,” Katrina said slowly, as if needing to think of each word separately. “I will need a channel to Earth.”
“Earth?” Hiro said, eyeing the whiskey bottle, which was half empty. He splashed some into his mug. “You mean that place we just left, the place that would likely put us to death for failing this very expensive mission? That Earth?”
“Yes, Mr. Sato. A channel to Earth, with no creative commentary. Is that a problem?” Even tipsy, Katrina’s voice was commanding, with a no-nonsense tone.
This woman expects no pushback.
“Well, sure, we can send a message back, but it will take years to get there. And then if they have anything to say to us, it will take even longer to get back to us. If we go home that’s another quarter century on top of that. We’re not under their jurisdiction anymore. We’re our own moms and dads here.” He struggled drunkenly to get through jurisdiction but finished the sentence like a champ.
Katrina held up her hands to stop his various metaphors. “I get it, I get it. But don’t you think they should be forewarned that we’re heading back?”
“Only if we’re sure we can’t get IAN to listen to us,” Hiro said, looking thoughtful.
Maria checked the bowl inside Bebe—after the pig success, she felt they had reached a rapport—which had been programmed to make the captain’s favorite dessert. Which, according to Bebe, was currently fruit and ice cream. This surprised Maria, but the machine knew best. Bebe dinged and Maria retrieved the bowl.
“Do it anyway,” Katrina told Hiro, and got up from the table, a little unsteadily. She took the offered bowl from Maria wordlessly. “If Wolfgang comes sniffing around for someone else to accuse of something, tell him I’ll be in my room.”
“Wolfgang didn’t accuse anyone, not yet,” Maria said, then choked back a nervous laugh at the dirty look the captain gave her.
Katrina left the kitchen without another word.
“She didn’t even say thank you for the huge pig and ice cream,” Hiro said. “How rude.”
“Are you really going to try to get in touch with the Earth?”
He shook his head. “No, it’s wasted time. I will talk to her tomorrow when she’s sober.” He frowned. “And I’m sober.”
“Can I ask you a question?” Maria asked, sitting across the table from him.
He nodded, pouring her a drink and sliding it over to her.
“Why were you picked for pilot?” Maria asked. She held up her hands hastily. “I’m not asking for your rap sheet, just curious why you wanted to fly this thing.”
He looked into his empty cup as if he were seeing something else. He filled it, but frowned as if it hadn’t produced what he’d wanted. “There was nothing else for me on Earth. Sometimes even death doesn’t give you the do-over you need. I’ve tried an awful lot of things to make things better in my lives, but this was something new.”
“Yeah, I know that first part,” Maria said. “Too well.”
“Anyway, I had a friend who knew about the Dormire and suggested I start studying for the pilot job.”
“So you didn’t have a history of flying or military? Why didn’t it go to a clone that had studied that for years? Someone from the Luna space program or something?”
“My friend had connections. She introduced me and another guy I knew in prison to a patron when the Dormire was announced. We still had decades before launch, so I did study for years. Not much else to do in prison.”
“What, did your friend know Sallie Mignon or something?” Maria asked, smiling as she invoked the famous and powerful clone.
“Actually, yeah. She knew a lot of people.”