In the hallway on our floor, Meg said, “You shouldn’t be upset about the clothes. You don’t realize how good you look in them. You look like a regular boy from California now.”
“I’m not upset,” I lied.
Meg didn’t say anything. She just cleared her throat in a way that made it obvious that once again she didn’t believe me.
So, just before I opened the door to our room, I stopped and asked Meg, “If things went back to normal and the cogs don’t want to eat you and Jeffrie, and they have stopped cannibalizing each other, or, better yet, if we could somehow go back home to Earth and the thirty-whatever fucking wars had ended and things were okay again, and if I asked you out, to . . . I don’t know . . . play Hocus Pocus or go see live theater or visit an art gallery or whatever, would you think about going out with me, Meg?”
Meg Hatfield looked at me and said, “No, Cager. I don’t think so.”
A Normal California Boy
The only thing worse than having to carry the weight of what Meg said to me in the hallway was walking into my room and finding Billy Hinman and Jeffrie Cutler in bed together.
My bed was apparently the popular spot for everyone except Cager Messer.
I turned on the lights and said, “Oh. Oops.”
I didn’t want to look at Meg, because I was hurt and embarrassed, so I watched as Billy Hinman, who was snuggled up to Jeffrie with his arms wrapped around her shoulders, opened his eyes and raised his head.
Billy Hinman groaned.
I said, “One of you isn’t by chance that piece of shit Livingston, are you?”
“Um. Hi, Cager. We were only sleeping. Seriously. That’s all. We . . . Um, we were kind of scared—worried—when we realized you two were gone. But we were seriously only sleeping. Seriously. Only sleeping. For real,” Billy said.
One thing I knew about Billy Hinman was this: He was just about as good at telling lies as Reverend Bingo was at throwing shoes.
I could also tell Jeffrie and Billy were both naked. Billy Hinman’s underwear and socks were lying at the bottom of the bed. Meg couldn’t tell, but I could. The place had the overwhelming, nauseating smell of sweat and sex.
Whatever.
And Billy said, “What time is it, anyway?”
Like that fucking mattered.
“And what are you carrying?”
I turned the tire iron in my hand. “I killed some monkeys with it.”
Jeffrie looked at Meg, then me. She said, “You don’t have to be mad or anything, and I apologize if you feel embarrassed. We just kind of . . . Well. Sorry. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there? I mean, we’re stuck here pretty much forever, right?”
Jeffrie’s fingers combed through Billy’s hair.
I said nothing, and silence—an incredibly awkward silence—smothered the room like soupy fog.
Knock knock knock.
“Cager? Billy?”
Rowan’s voice came through the small speaker on our door’s wicket.
Billy whispered, “Please don’t let him in.”
“I’m not going to. He’ll get mad at both of us. I can’t stand Rowan’s cold-shoulder bullshit when he thinks we’ve misbehaved,” I said.
Rowan would probably have assumed that Billy and I had turned our stateroom into some kind of nonstop sex party, which was kind of true, and then he’d get quiet and mopey and have a permanent look on his face that translated to something like Do you really expect me to not tell your parents about this?”
Even if nobody had any parents anymore.
I inhaled deeply and turned around. “Come on, Meg. Let’s let them sleep. Or whatever.”
Then I grabbed Meg Hatfield’s hand, turned out the lights, and walked to the door.
“By the way, what the fuck are you wearing, Cager?” Billy said.
As soon as we were out in the hall, Meg let go of my hand. But Rowan, who always noticed everything, did see I’d been holding her hand.
I glanced at Meg. Did she actually just blush?
“Good evening, Cager. Meg,” Rowan said. “I was just checking in on you. You’ve been asleep for the better part of the day.”
“Not us,” I said. “Meg and I just came back. She’s been working on the computer system. She may have fixed things now. Billy and Jeffrie are still asleep. Well . . . I think they’re awake now.”
I felt myself turning red. Of course Rowan knew something was up.
And Rowan, dressed in a jacket and tie, had apparently intended to feed Billy and me at Le Lapin et l’Homme Mécanique. He arched that one eyebrow and, saying nothing, made a palm-up gesture at my clothes.
“What?” I said. “I like these clothes. Meg picked them out for me. She said I look like a normal California boy in them.”
“Unfortunately, that is true, Cager,” Rowan, always the snob, said.
“I even have Rabbit & Robot underwear and socks,” I added.
“I’m sure they’re delightful,” Rowan said. He glanced at Meg with one of his I’m-telling-your-parents looks.
Then Rowan pointed at the metal bar in my hand. “And what’s that?”
“A tire iron. Haven’t you ever used one?”
Rowan frowned. “Why would I ever use a tire iron?”
I had finally done something Rowan didn’t have the first clue about, even if I didn’t know anything about what tire irons actually do, besides destroy cannibalistic cogs. Still, it made me feel very manly.
And normal.
And I suddenly had a new appreciation for the clothes Meg had picked out for me.
The door opened behind us. Billy and Jeffrie came out into the hallway. Billy, his hair wet and freshly combed, looked like a fashion model. He had on a black shirt and jacket with a slate-colored bow tie and two-toned shoes.
He said, “I’m really hungry. But dude, Cager, they are not going to seat you dressed like that. This is still the Tennessee, after all.”
“And I own the place,” I said.
“Let’s see how far that gets you with the cogs who run the show.”
So Meg and I went back inside my room to dress properly for dinner.
Getting the Wrong Idea
Look. Here’s the thing,” Meg said. “It’s not that I don’t like you. After all, I made you tea while you were sleeping in a bath, and I picked out some decent, not-stuck-up-asshole things for you to wear, that actually make you look cool. But I said I wouldn’t go out with you because I didn’t want you to get the wrong idea.”
“Why would I get the wrong idea?” I asked.
“Because it’s not like either one of us has any alternatives. There’s no Plan B. And there is no place to go. It’s pointless. We’re stuck here.”
I stood there in my Rabbit & Robot socks and underwear, rummaging through Billy Hinman’s clothes, trying to find something that could reasonably compete with his sense of style.
“There are lots of places to go. This is the Tennessee, the cruise ship to end all cruise ships. We have a fake Lake Louise, a Rabbit & Robot amusement park, and public baths and sex clubs on Deck Twenty-One. Shit, we could even go shoot some monkeys if you wanted to.”
“Never.” Meg pulled on a tight black dress.
She looked amazing.
“Well, that was just a test to see what kind of person you are. I’d never do that either,” I said. “How about a visit to the library? There are more than one hundred thirty thousand actual books on the Tennessee.”
“Really?”
I knew a girl like Meg Hatfield would respond to books.
“Really.”
“Going to the library isn’t a date.”
“If you say so.”
I sighed. I didn’t know what to wear. I settled on some black dress pants, a white shirt, and a checkered bow tie.
“Not that tie,” Meg said.
I held up one with thin diagonal stripes and a print pattern of tiny sailboats on it, and Meg nodded.
Meg found some black heels and slipped her
feet into them. “The main thing is, although I appreciate how you stuck up for me with that insane preacher—”
“Reverend Bingo.”
“Whatever. And the chimpanzee creeps on Deck Twenty-One—”
“That was beyond disgusting.”
Meg faced a mirror and brushed her hair, but I could clearly see she was watching me as I knotted my tie in it. “Whatever. What I mean to say is, if you think I need you to protect me all the time—if that just pumps up your sense of manhood—well, I don’t need it. I’ve done fine on my own.”
I pulled on the pants, tucked in my shirttails, and buckled my belt.
“No belt. Suspenders,” Meg said.
I switched. I was so frustrated and flustered by her. And what were we doing here, actually changing clothes in the same room together, like nothing mattered? I sat on the edge of the messed-up bed so I could tie my shoelaces.
“I’ve never thought that I was your protector, Meg. Besides, I’ve seen you throw shoes before. You’re a fucking assassin.”
Meg stopped pretend-brushing her hair. She turned to me. And then Meg Hatfield actually laughed. A real laugh. And I laughed too.
Maybe there was some hope for Cager Messer becoming a normal person after all.
But probably not.
“We should go,” Meg said. “We wouldn’t want Billy or Jeffrie to get the wrong idea.”
“Yes, and especially Rowan. By all means, wrong ideas are just . . . well, wrong.”
“Right.”
I put on one of Billy’s jackets, and Meg stopped me at the door.
“No jacket. Just the shirt and suspenders. It looks really . . .”
“Really what?”
I watched Meg swallow. Was she actually blushing?
Meg Hatfield was definitely not the kind of girl who would ever blush.
She said, “It looks really nice.”
I looked around for something to hold on to. I honestly thought my knees were going to give out, and that I’d die right there on the floor of my stateroom, but I managed to maintain bipedalism, which is probably the most significant human achievement ever, no thanks to King Carlos’s goddamned monkey sperm.
I went back to Billy’s closet and ditched his jacket. Meg held up her hand and pressed it right above my heart.
“Hold on,” she said. “It’s crooked.”
Then she reached up and straightened my bow tie. The edges of her hands lay against my chest. I wanted to kiss Meg Hatfield so badly in that instant that I actually felt myself salivating. But I suppressed the urge, because I didn’t want Meg Hatfield to get the wrong idea about me.
That was what some people would call a moment, right? Meg Hatfield and I had some kind of thing going on between us—if only for a second—and I was too stupid and clumsy to make anything out of it.
I hated myself so much.
Meg tilted my tie slightly and said, “That’s better.”
But it was so far away from being “better,” whatever “it” was may just as well have been strapped to King Carlos’s fetus face, jetting along somewhere on the opposite side of the galaxy from us.
Nothing was better.
I grabbed my tire iron—just in case—and we joined the others outside in the hall.
Shakespeare’s Crowbar
Although we were dressed for it, none of us made it down to dinner that night. Or up. Or whatever.
“Ah! Cager Messer! And young William Hinman! Just the people I was looking for!”
Nobody ever called Billy William, much less young William, unless it was someone like a security bonk with auto-access to our identification records, or, in this case, a doctor who only knew of “William” from his medical history.
Dr. Geneva appeared at the end of the hallway, waving and calling to me and William, just as the five of us were about to get into the elevator.
Billy whispered, “Shut the fuck up. Nobody calls me William.”
I tightened my grip on the tire iron. Considering my present mood, I was not above bashing Dr. Geneva’s head in if he got hungry eyes at Jeffrie or Meg. But then I found myself thinking, We’re going to eventually need a doctor, though. Was Dr. Geneva the only physician on board the Tennessee?
I had to hope not.
Dr. Geneva was disgusting. The hole in the side of his face was big enough to stick a baby’s arm through, and his shirt and jacket were slimed all down the right side of his chest with the foul-smelling, greasy cog goo that dripped from his jaw.
Where did cogs get all that juice from, anyway?
I kept my eyes fixed on Dr. Geneva’s, waiting to see if he became preoccupied with Meg or Jeffrie. But it seemed as though Dr. Geneva didn’t care about the girls at all.
Dr. Geneva cupped a hand on Billy’s shoulder and leaned toward him, so that their noses were only two inches apart.
Billy Hinman recoiled slightly and made an expression like someone was holding a hot scoop of runny dog crap in front of his mouth. That hole in Dr. Geneva’s face was alarmingly foul.
And Dr. Geneva said, “You look splendid! And the cut on your head—vanished! Remarkable physician you must have, William! Ha ha ha! And, Cager! I should think we’ll need to establish a routine for your therapy now. You know, in cases such as yours, the detoxification process is not a cure; it’s merely a beginning. A fine start, young man! The next step involves building a scaffold of support structures for you. Can I explain? Let me tell you about what we will be doing from here on out—well, as long as you’re here on the Tennessee, which will undoubtedly be for the rest of your life. Ha ha ha! I apologize for the sarcasm. Did I ever tell you about where the name Tennessee comes from? No?”
I tried. I tried to get Dr. Geneva to shut the fuck up, but he was a cog with immutable code sequences machine-gunning through his frazzled circuits.
And although it was stupid, considering Dr. Geneva was as annoying as a fucking squeaky ceiling fan, I chose the polite approach. It probably had something to do with the clothes I was wearing.
“I apologize, Dr. Geneva, but we were just on our way down to dinner. Maybe we could talk about this later.”
I grabbed Billy’s elbow as though to herd our group into the elevator.
“Dinner? Did you say dinner?” Dr. Geneva, who never, ever shut up, said.
I gripped the bar tightly, glancing from Dr. Geneva to the girls and back to Dr. Geneva again. “You aren’t hungry are you, Doctor?”
“Hungry? No! Don’t be ridiculous! I am a v.4 cog, Cager. Didn’t you know?”
Billy said, “Duh,” and tapped an index finger on his right cheek.
“Well, I was only wondering. Because of . . . you know, what happened with the other cogs,” I said.
“Oh! That! What a calamity! Well, you’ll be happy to know that, although we’re down a significant number among our . . . ahem, staff . . . things are being put right! Yes! Things are going to be smooth from here on out on the Tennessee! Wait till I show you the amazing repair work we’ve been doing down on the maintenance and lifeboat deck!”
“Maybe later,” I said, pushing Billy and Meg into the elevator.
Dr. Geneva waved his hands in the air emphatically. “But surely you can’t be intending to go to Le Lapin et l’Homme Mécanique! They’ve had to shut down due to staffing shortages. You know, no maître d’, no cruise director. A restaurant like Le Lapin simply can’t function without its maître d’ and cruise director. You’ll have to make other arrangements! Might I suggest—”
“Good-bye, Dr. Geneva,” I said. And why was the fucking elevator door so slow in closing?
“Is that a crowbar?” Dr. Geneva was about to go off again, I could tell. He unfurled one arm dramatically and said, “ ‘Friar John, go and get me an iron crowbar. Bring it straight back to my cell.’ Did you know that William Shakespeare makes reference to the use of a crowbar in act five, scene two, of Romeo and Juliet, which confirms the enduring functionality of—”
And if the door hadn’t closed
just then, I very well might have bashed the burbling idiot right in the face.
“Dr. Geneva must be very lonely,” Rowan said.
“He’s a cog,” Billy pointed out. “That’s like saying your lawn mower is lonely.”
“Well, all I know is, whatever Meg did worked. It was like Dr. Geneva couldn’t even see the girls,” I said.
And Billy said, “Safe bet they’d open up Le Lapin for us now if you brought Lourdes and Milo back from the dead.”
I nodded. “I was thinking that too.”
“But you could leave that little fucker Parker out there, for all I care,” Billy added.
Jeffrie said, “Did any of you people realize that guy with the hole in his face said there’s a lifeboat deck?”
I remembered the presentation we saw when we arrived, and hearing about lifeboats in the song that played when we put on our extravehicular suits after the incident with gravity, but I hadn’t thought about it again until Jeffrie brought it up in the elevator.
There were lifeboats.
The Porridge of Officer Dennis
There was something especially mournful about the Tennessee now. It was like being alone inside a massive and empty church.
Spending eternity here was going to take some getting used to.
On our trip to the lower west arrivals deck, nobody said anything. I was sure the others had been thinking similar thoughts about being alone here—noticing the quiet, and the absence of cogs. Even having outraged cogs shouting all the time was preferable to the absolute emptiness and quiet of outer space.
Whoosh.
The doors slid open, and we stepped out into the vast echoing cavern of the arrivals hall.
We were greeted by squeals of mechanical delight. “People! People! All the humanity of peopley humanness! Wheee! You’re alive! And living! Yippeee! We are all alive! I am so happy to see you, I am wetting myself with joy! But mostly with urine, too!”
I tapped Meg’s elbow. “Since you’re so good at this shit, maybe you could get in there and do something about happy cogs who piss on themselves.”