Becalmed Read Free Page B

strikes me as strange. I’m not offended. I turn.
     
    She’s sitting at my table, her
own portable notebook on her lap. Her dark hair is up, and she’s wearing a formal
tunic with matching pants.
     
    “I’m not talking about me,” I
say, sweeping a hand toward the portal. “Something odd is happening on the
ship. To the ship. I don’t know where we are.”
     
    Her expression freezes as if I’ve
said something wrong.
     
    “Is this something you’re not
supposed to tell me?” I ask.
     
    She shakes her head. “I forgot,
that’s all. You can’t access the news.”
     
    Shipboard news is an outside
system. I’ve never really paid attention anyway, except when I need to for my
work, and even then, I’m not really watching. I’m listening—not to what’s going
on, but to how it’s expressed.
     
    I am the ship’s senior linguist,
a position as important as the captain’s in its own way. Strange that I haven’t
thought of that since I’ve come back. I haven’t identified myself as a linguist
at all. I haven’t missed the interplay of languages, the way that the same
sentence in one language can mean something completely different when
translated word-for-word into another.
     
    Context, subtext, word origins,
emotions, all contained in one little phrase, one little word. The difference
between “an” and “the” can alter meaning dramatically.
     
    And it’s my job to know these
subtleties in every language I specialize in. It’s my job to understand them in
the new languages I encounter. It’s my job to make sure we can all communicate
clearly, because the basis of diplomacy isn’t action, it’s words.
     
    Words, words, words.
     
    “You’ve gone pale,” Leona says. “Do
you need to sit down?”
     
    “No.” I walk back to the portal.
It’s space-black out there— not quite total darkness. The universe has its own
light, and it’s lovely, most of the time. But usually you can see the source—
the star in the distance, the reflection off clouds protecting a planet’s
atmosphere.
     
    I see nothing.
     
    I have seen nothing for days.
     
    I sometimes check my own eyesight
to see if the problem is inside my head.
     
    (I’m so afraid it is inside my
head.)
     
    “What’s the news?” I ask, even
though I’m no longer sure I want to know.
     
    She pauses. I turn. She’s
frowning. It’s an expression I didn’t expect to see on her face. She’s not
someone who lets her emotions near the surface.
     
    I have a clear sense of how
terrified she is, and how unwilling she is to admit it.
     
    Although I can’t tell you why I
feel that way. I can’t tell you how I know.
     
    I just do.
     
    Something subtle then, something
subtle like the things I specialize in.
     
    “The anacapa malfunctioned,”
she says. “We’re becalmed.”
     
    Becalmed. A nautical term, adapted from
Earth, in the days before ships sailed the heavens. In those days, ships sailed
the waters, the seas, they were called, and being becalmed was dangerous.
     
    Sailing ships had no engines.
They were powered by the wind. And when the wind was gone, the ship didn’t
move. Sometimes, way out at sea, a becalmed ship wouldn’t move for days, weeks,
and the men—it was always men—on board would die.
     
    Some say they died from thirst or
lack of food.
     
    But other accounts say that men
who were becalmed died because conditions had driven them insane.
     
    “Becalmed,” I repeat, and sink
into a nearby chair. My heart rate has increased.
     
    Leona watches me, as if she’s
afraid of what the news will do to me.
     
    She should be.
     
    The Fleet adopted the word “becalmed”
because it’s the best way to describe being stuck in foldspace. The anacapa malfunctions,
and we can’t get back. It has happened throughout our history.
     
    Ships get lost, some because they’re
becalmed. What no one knows, what no one can figure out, is if they’re stuck in
an alternate universe or in the actual fold of space