difficult and painful.
“Try some drawing,” Lieutenant Shue eventually suggested. “You said you wanted a hobby.”
“I’m right-handed.”
“Maybe you’ll find you’re ambidextrous.”
In other words it was OK for me to change my body when it suited him.
He hunted round and he found some coloured pencils and a sketch-pad and set me up in a corner of the coffee lounge. “Try drawing the things on the table. A still-life.” Two coffee mugs, the packet the pencils had come in, an empty sweet wrapper and a single coaster. “If you don’t like the pencils, I think Jenny has some watercolour paints. She might lend them to you if you prefer them.”
He drifted off, and I had drawn the table and the objects on it in seven different styles before he returned. I was not fast: he was slow. He did at least come back holding a box with ‘watercolour starter set’ written on all six sides.
“Where’s your bandage?” he asked suspiciously.
“It turns out I am not ambidextrous,” I explained. “I needed to use my right hand and the bandages were getting in the way.”
“So you healed yourself?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Just like that?”
“Uh-huh.” I finished my portrait of the table and its companions in an aboriginal style and added it to my pile of completed drawings.
“Jenny says you can use these if you look after them,” he reported. I doubted Lieutenant Weston had said anything of the sort. The paints had probably been wrested out of her grasp For The Good of the Ship, in order to Keep the Alien Happy.
He put the box down on the table and I tore off the next page in the pad and carefully lined it up, moving the box out of the way. I was going to go Cubist this time.
“Is there any charcoal on board?” I asked.
“Sorry?”
“If I’m going to use pencils and watercolours I’ll have to try other media as well. Like charcoal. And I’ll have to have acrylics. And pastels. I don’t suppose there is any lino, but we can sort something out. Ditto for metal point. And I’ll need some more paper.”
“D’you want to slow down a bit?” he asked.
“No.”
“Well, you’re going to be stuck with whatever’s on board.”
“What about crayons? And coloured chalk, of course. I suppose sand-painting might have to wait. But you must have pen and ink.” I looked up at him. “Graphite pencil?”
“I’ll see what I can do,” he said diplomatically.
“And don’t forget the paper,” I added, starting on my next drawing. “Lots more paper.”
1.17. The colour of names
It was, according to my research, culturally acceptable to give gifts to people who had helped you, and Lieutenant Shue had been helping me (albeit under orders and with noticeable suspicion) since I had arrived onboard. As he had not been impressed by my offer to take his name, I decided to try something he would have less difficulty in comprehending.
He had come to see how I was doing. I was back in the coffee lounge and was half way through a project to draw portraits of every member of the Bonaventure’s crew. So far I had used 37 different art styles. As the Captain would not force anyone to sit for me against their will, and no-one would volunteer, I was doing it entirely from memory.
I pulled a sheet of paper out of the pile of finished portraits.
“Here,” I said.
Lieutenant Shue took the page with his usual caution. “What’s this?”
“You wanted to know my core name, so I’ve written it out for you. That’s what my name looks like. In 2-D, of course. It would look different in 3-D, but I think I’ve drawn it from its best side.”
Lieutenant Shue studied the lines and twists of my name. He seemed interested.
“The colours are only approximate, of course.”
“Your name is coloured?”
“I think you will find most names are.”
“This is beautiful,” he said. “Thank you.”
I shrugged. A little bit modest, a little bit dismissive, a little bit pleased. A beautifully nuanced shrug.
“How do you pronounce it?”
I said it out loud, but unsurprisingly he didn’t catch it fully.
“Say it again.”
“No.” I was more interested in getting the details of Doctor Howard’s portrait correct.
“Just once more.”
“No.”
“Then tell me what a core name is.”
“No.”
“Please. Explain your system of giving names.”
“No.”
“Very briefly.”
“No.”
“Go on.”
I abandoned Doctor Howard and found a fresh piece of paper. I drew a quick portrait of Lieutenant Shue in the style of a four-year-old. Stocky body, arms out to the sides, three fingers radiating from each hand, a slab of hair sitting on top of his head and a semi-circular smile, and dots for eyes.
“There,” I said. “That’s your portrait.”
“Well that’s put me in my place,” he replied dryly, but at least he stopped his blah-blah-blah questions.
1.18. The new Shue
The John of Dublin was a very square ship. It was many times larger than the Bonaventure and had winches, cranes, arms and docks sticking out in all directions in a very purposeful, business-like way, and had red warning squares, striped yellow hazard areas and white text in large capital letters plastered over much of her surface. ‘Do not step here’, ‘do not use this for tethering’, ‘do not touch’, ‘do not open’, ‘do not use while winch operational’, ‘hazard area’, ‘danger zone’, plus a plain ‘danger’ or two. There were probably people out there who thought the name of the ship was Keep Clear.
Captain Munk allowed me, after some discussion and the provision of a suitable guard, onto her bridge to watch the ceremonies attendant on one ship meeting another. I pressed the missile launch button neither by accident nor design, avoided switching off the life support system by mistake and did not attempt to hijack the ship, and after the two ships had sorted themselves out, Captain Munk invited Captain Nuruk on board to meet me prior to my transfer to his own ship.
After the two captains had had the chance to talk in private for a while, I was summoned to the conference room for the introductions. There were two people to meet, for Captain Nuruk had brought the woman who was to be the new Lieutenant Shue.
Captain Nuruk was a fat man, with the features of his face floating in a sea of excess skin, and hair that was suspiciously black.
“Ah,” he said, turning his whole body to look towards us. His gaze flickered between Lieutenant Shue and myself.
“Captain Nuruk, may I introduce you to ‘Ben’,” said Lieutenant Shue. He had never accepted my name and even now couldn’t say it without the implied inverted commas.
“Pleased t’meet’y.”
“Sir.”
“And I’m Sundae Lelaurie,” said Lieutenant Shue #2, leaning across the table to shake hands. Sundae Lelaurie was tall and thin, and blond and blue-eyed. There was a good chance I could get away with blue eyes on the John of Dublin. Sundae was bright and cheerful, and watched me with keen interest. I could not sense any of the caution and wariness and distaste I got from Lieutenant Shue. “I’m your new Contact Officer, and I’m looking forward to working with you.”
And she was. Keen, excited and unconcerned at the prospect of dealing with a shape-shifting mass-murdering (accidental) alien entity.
“And I’m looking forward to working with you,” I replied, to be equally polite.
“Jon’s told me all about you and your interests, and I’ve been working up a schedule for you. When you come on board this evening perhaps we can go over it together.”
“I’d be happy to.”
“And of course we have a cabin ready and waiting for you.”
“They have a cabin for me,” I said, with a glance back towards Lieutenant Shue.
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“Will he be sharing with any-one?” Lieutenant Shue asked Sundae.
“Oh, we thought it would be more convenient for him to have the cabin to himself,” she replied, and Lieutenant Shue flicked a glance back towards me. Sundae Lelaurie looked between the two of us, aware something was going on, but not quite understanding it, before clearly deciding to ask Lieutenant Shue about it later. “If the Captains will excuse us, perhaps we could go and grab a coffee,” she said.
The Captains happily excused us.
“Jon, are you coming?” she invited.
“I’ll let the two of you get to know each other.”
And off I went to get to know the woman who had another of those bizarre naming errors apparently so common in human life.
1.19. The need for rivets
The plan was for the Bonaventure to stay around for a day or so to complete an orderly handover, and then take her leave. The disaster with the Invincible had cut short the Bonaventure’s cruise and she was to return to the Min-XR base at Camp Munro for redeployment. The John of Dublin would stay and salvage the wrecked ship.
The first thing they did on the following day was bring in the corpses tied to the outside of the ship, and lay them out in a suitable cold store. The John of Dublin, being equipped for all manner of disasters, had a good choice of those on board. Here a small team would identify the bodies, re-unite the broken pieces, and record the causes of death.
The second day they held a ‘farewell’ memorial service in a bland general-purpose chapel. As many of the crew of the Bonaventure as could be spared were granted permission to attend, but as I would no doubt be told it would be ‘inappropriate’ for me to go I did not bother to ask. So I went instead in non-corporeal form instead. There was no way I was