"They're high in vitamin C?"
Manny looked up from his cutting board. "Wow, I'm impressed. Exactly right. What's handy to eat is fish, fish, and more fish. But humans can't stay healthy with just that, so we have to add fruits and vegetables to the mix. We're making a fish stew for lunch."
If Manny was willing to talk, Turk might as well learn more than how to cook. "You are Captain Bailey's . . .brother?"
"Nah, we're cousins. So is Avery. That means our fathers were brothers. We're a big family. Grandpa Bailey raised twenty boys."
"Twenty?"
Mannie laughed at his reaction. "Twenty. Our dads are the youngest three; most of our other cousins are older. We all grew up playing with each other like packs of puppies. In some ways, we're close as brothers and sisters. It was a good way to grow up."
It would explain why they all had the same blonde hair and blue eyes, with the one exception of the gunner. "Jones is . . .?"
"Kenya's a newcomer and Becky's adopted; her brother married one of our cousins. Her folks were killed in a storm. The adults went down with the ship; only the kids made it off alive. Everyone that had space took in a kid. We got Becky."
Now they had Turk. Only Becky was human and Turk was not; although Manny did seem completely at ease with him. Most likely the man had never seen a Red fight. Turk would have to be careful not to use his full speed and strength in front of the Baileys. And the more he knew about them, the better he could spot trouble coming.
"If you're all family, why is Captain Bailey in command?" Turk asked. "Because she's the oldest?"
"No, the Rosetta is her boat because she's the one that went to Ya-ya, worked her butt off, and earned the money to buy it. She's a very, very good translator. She could have stayed in Ya-ya and gotten very rich; but that did nothing for the rest of us, so she bought the Rosetta and fetched us as crew."
Mannie examined Turk's efforts with the dishes and nodded. "Good work. Here, run a little water into this pan and use it to scrub these potatoes." He held up another plant and identified it as garlic. "This has very strong flavor; you only need a small amount to make the food taste good. This recipe calls for four cloves."
"You're expecting me to cook this by myself sometime?"
"That's the plan. The more people that cook, the fewer times I'm stuck with it."
"Ah, Captain Bailey said you hated to cook."
"I don't hate it. I just don't like cooking the same things over and over again, but it's not like we have much of an option. There's only so many ways you can put fish and potatoes together."
Manny held up an impressively large knife. "Here's the trick of getting the skin off garlic. You simply lay the knife flat against the clove and press. Voila!" The cloves burst open, giving off a pungent smell. "Paige's a good captain. She knows the risks and the odds of success, and she does what is best in the long run. I suppose we do kind of stick to our ages as to who gets to tell who what."
"What about Jones?" The other outsider.
"She kind of does her own thing. When we're in shallow water, like now, she keeps an eye out for anything trying to crawl on board. There's things that see boats as serving platters. She's pulling long hours. Once we get to into deeper water, she'll probably sleep for a couple of days."
"You're spread too thin. You should have several watches, short enough that your personnel stay sharp."
Manny nodded. "We were going to take on more crew at Fenrir's Rock. A few more cousins."
"Why the change in plans?"
"Onions." Manny's expression was bleak as he held up a fist-sized sphere. "Recipe calls for four, thinly sliced." He chopped the onion in half. "Our engine has been dying for some time now. We don't have the money to replace it. My cousin Ethan—Paige's older brother—he radioed us when we were in Georgetown. He had found an unclaimed wreck; something that's never been salvaged because it's in Minotaur waters. We were going to meet Ethan and some of our cousins who have a boat called the Lilianna at Fenrir's Rock, and go together to stake claim on the salvage. The plan was that the Rosetta would have stayed in Minotaur waters, protecting our claim, while the Lilianna took what we salvaged to Ya-ya. Even splitting the take with the Lilianna, we would have made a fortune."
Fenrir's Rock. As the rock belonging to the spaceship Fenrir? "And we're not going to Fenrir's Rock because . . .?"
"It's not there any more. Something blew it out of the water."
Like the engine returning to Plymouth Station. "Oh." And seeing Manny's sober look he guessed the rest. "Your cousins were there."
Manny nodded grimly. "Onions always make you cry." He swiped the back of his arm across his eyes. "The thing is the engine is crapping out. If we don't make Ya-ya, we'll be dead in the water again."
Manny demonstrated 'sautéing' the onions and garlic in a pot he called a 'Dutch oven'. "After this we add in the tomatoes, potatoes, cloves, bay leaves, parsley, tarragon, marjoram, pepper and water."
"It's fish stew without fish?"
"We'll add the fish about ten minutes before we serve it." Mannie said. "So you have three hours to catch our lunch."
"Me?"
"Yup. Go find Paige and tell her you need to catch a couple of whiteys."
* * *
They were moving, that much was good. Paige didn't like the sound that the engine was making. It had run rough before, but now it had a rattle as if it was slowly shaking itself apart. They had no choice but to get to a port, even if it meant destroying the engine. Orin had plotted them a course; it was dangerously long.
She had the charts spread out in front of the boat's wheel, studying her options when the door creaked open and Turk stepped into the room. Manny hadn't found him anything to wear yet. He was still naked except for the loincloth.
"Only Orin and I are allowed on the bridge." She told him.
"We need fish for the stew." Turk eyed the charts with interest. "Where exactly are we?"
"Here." She tapped the chart at their location.
He gave her a long, silent dark look. She wondered if he was top cat of his ship's pride. He had that legendary "control with a look." She wondered too if he realized what he was doing. "I mean the world. What is it? Did someone make it?"
As if she knew the answer to that. She supposed he needed some information, though, if he was going to be useful. "No one seems sure of where we are or what this place is. Everyone has a different name and a different idea. So far as I can tell, none are better than others. The Obnaoian believe we've been shrunk down to the size of atoms and we're inside an air bubble floating through a sea."
He shook his head. "I don't think they're right."
"Hmm, I'm not fond of the theory myself—air bubbles have a way of popping."
"What do you believe it is?"
"Personally I like the pocket universe theory."
"Which is . . ."
The joy of boiling physics down for someone who only been taught to point a gun and shoot. She made sure that the water in front of them was clear, and secured the wheel so she had both hands free. "Say your ship is here." She marked a point on a scrap piece of paper. "And your captain wanted to go here." She marked a second point. "These points are hundreds of light years apart and to go straight from one to the other would take a lifetime. What a warp drive does is this." She folded the paper so the dots connected. Then taking a pencil, she pushed it through the paper. "The warp field creates a hole that the ship goes through, instantly going from point A to point B."
"Yes." He nodded."
"The ships here, their warp engines created a warp field, punching a hole going from point A to . . .who knows. The thing is, they fell into the hole, they left point A, but they didn't get to their intended point B." She took the pencil out, and holding the paper, shook it. "If you fall off the paper—miss your universe completely—where do you go?"
"Here?"
"So it seems." She took control of the boat again. "This isn't a planet. This place—it's like an egg—and we're standing on the
inside of the shell."
Belatedly she wondered if he'd ever seen a real egg. But he nodded. Did he really understand? She thought for a minute how to distill what she learned at Ya-ya down to something a crèche-raised Red could grasp. "If someone in your universe wanted to make a place like this, they would start by smashing a planet flat to build the shell. One planet would only make a little, tiny section of this place. All the planets of one solar system wouldn't be enough. If you took . . .countless . . .solar systems, you start to get enough matter."
"It's that large?"
"It's huge. The minotaur have mines that extends hundreds of feet deep. The oceans are miles deep. I can't believe any intelligent race made this place. Only god makes things like this."
"Not even intelligent races that might seem god-like?"
"I've met those and they don't lay claim to it. Besides, if someone could make it, don't you think they'd also lock the door so every monkey with two thumbs didn't wander in?"
"Maybe they like monkeys."
She was startled into laughing. The faintest of smiles flashed across his face and was gone back to the dark watchful gaze.
"So we're here?" He reached out to tap the correct position on the chart.
"Yeah. 23.29 by -12.93."
"What do those numbers mean?"
"Ya-ya is the oldest of the human landings. Oldest surviving. They chose to represent themselves as zero-zero on an x-y grid. The numbers are miles from Ya-ya on that grid. The first number is longitude. Do you know what longitude is?"
"I know."
She was pleasantly surprised. "It means we're 2329 miles in the direction of the spin. If we were counterspin from Ya-ya, that number would be negative."
"Spin?"
"Newcomers talk about how most planets have a north-south pole which you can set compasses to. We don't have that in the Sargasso. Apparently you need a solid core of heavy metal spinning to create a magnetic field. What we have is the direction of the Spin. The water, the wind and the vimanas all flow in the direction of the spin, due to what we think is centrifugal force."
She tapped the axis marker on the map. "CS on the left for Counterspin is denoted as negative numbers, S on the right is Spin. Tells you which way is up on the map. The second number is up and down the y axis."
"Why not use latitude and longitude from the equator like you would on a planet?"
"Because people haven't agreed on where the equator is. Every ship coming in has a different universal reference that doesn't match anyone else's. Landings have fought over everything from map coordinates to time of day to what year it should be. Ya-ya's system has become the agreed standard just out of default since they're the oldest and probably the most successful of the Landings."
"Where's Fenrir's Rock?"
"Let's look at a different chart." She swapped to one of larger scale. "Here's Ya-ya, smack dab in the middle. We're 23.29 by -12.93. It puts us here. These islands you can see around us, they're all part of Fenrir's Archipelago. That means an area of sea with many islands. This is Fenrir's Rock over here."
"It seems close."
"It is. But there's nothing there now. Even if we limp our way there, we won't be able to repair our engine. Also these waterways are very treacherous with sand bars and reefs. We can't just sail straight to Fenrir's Rock, we'd have to wind through a maze to find safe passageways."
"Manny said you're from Georgetown." Turk was scanning the map.
"Up here, nearly off the map. It's a long haul."
"What about this one? Mary's Landing." He tapped the Mary's flats.
"No, no, we won't go there."
"It's closer than Ya-ya."
"Mary's a dangerous place for us. We won't go there."
"Why?"
She didn't tell him the real reasons, so she stuck to ones he'd at least understand. "It's a political thing. Nothing like open warfare, but we're not friendly. One doesn't show weakness to the enemy."
He nodded.
She considered her options on who should teach him how to fish. She wasn't fond of fishing; on a bad day, it could be mind numbingly boring. Orin and Avery were sleeping. Becky was too little to hold her own even though she knew all there was to know about fishing. Mitch? No! Orin was having issues with Mitch because Mitch somehow always managed to create issues. And if Paige loved her sanity, she'd better keep Charlene as far from Turk as possible. That left Hillary. A teenage girl looking to expand her sexual possibilities. A nearly-naked, half-feral man.
Paige sighed. "Someone should just shoot me and get it over with."
"Pardon?"
"Charlene!" Paige shouted. A moment later her sister appeared. "Take the wheel. Follow the course that Orin's plotted out. I'm going to be teaching Turk how to fish."
* * *
Turk hated fishing. It was boring. It involved taking rotting animal flesh, impaling it onto a sharp hook of metal attached to a line, and throwing it overboard. And then waiting. And waiting. With washing dishes, and cooking, at least there was something to occupy his mind. They'd reached open water and the islands were dwindling to nothing in the distance. Without anything but water to look at, nothing to do but sit, he found himself at the unfamiliar edge of dark emotions. His instincts were screaming for him to run from those feelings, fill up his world with something else until they were drowned out. He was anchored, though, to one spot of the boat's deck, fishing pole in hand.
"How long do we have to do this?" he asked Paige who sat beside him under an awning fixed over the stern of the boat. He had expected her to leave, but apparently there would be some difficult parts once the fish actually took the bait.
"Until we catch something or go hungry," Paige said. "Getting tired?"
He was, but he didn't want to admit it. It was like she said: you didn't show your weakness to your enemies. Until he was sure that the crew had nothing more than slave labor in mind for him, he had to remember that. "Why don't you catch the fish ahead of time?"
"Usually we do, but the freezer unit was one of the things hit by lightning a few days back. Fresh fish becomes inedible a few hours after it dies."
"Can't you keep them alive?"
"Normally we do, but the holding tank was hit by the drop nut. We've either had very bad luck or very good luck, depending on how you want to look at it."
"How could either of those be good luck?"
"No one was killed by the lightening, and we only lost the freezer, the ship's intercom and the radio. And the drop nut didn't sink us."
He supposed that looked at that way, they had had good luck. He supposed that he was fortunate to survive his fall and be rescued by Paige. But he'd lost his whole universe. Mikhail. The Svoboda. His Reds. The life he and Mikhail would have built if the nefrim didn't wipe everything out. Was his life worthwhile if it was reduced to being trapped on a boat as a virtual slave? Fishing?
They fell silent. Turk fought to keep his eyes open and stay awake, and yet not dwell on the things he'd lost.
"Can I ask you something?" Paige broke the silence.
"What?"
"What kind of name is Turkish Delight?" When he didn't answer, Paige guessed. "Does it have something to do with sex?"
"No!" He supposed it wouldn't hurt to tell her some things about himself. "I wasn't raised in a crèche. I was picked off a standard production line by a powerful man to be . . ." Be what? He was never sure why Ivan bought him. "Be raised with his son. He left it to my foster brother to name me. Nyanya had been reading Misha a fairy tale about a boy who was kidnapped by an evil witch. She lured him away from all that was good with his favorite candy—Turkish Delight."
"Because you were what Misha wanted most?"
"Actually, he wanted a puppy." Mikhail stated that whenever they fought as young children. He stopped saying it when Ivan offered to sell Turk and get a puppy.
"How old were you when they pulled you out of the crèche? A month old? A year?"
"Why?"
"I was just won
dering how much of the viral behavior you picked up."
"Viral behavior?"
"When the crèches were first trying to create adapted, they were looking at them as colonists for planets with extreme habitats. The idea was that once Reds landed on a planet, they would have to adapt not only physically but behaviorally to survive. So the first Reds were exposed to a range of animal behaviors on top of typical human behavior, so they would have a large pool of successful cultures to model on."
Turk was familiar with all crèche behavior programs. "There's nothing like that in the military production lines."
"Yes, but the experimental colonial Reds were still maturing in the crèches when they switched over. They had interactions with the military Reds. The animal behavior became viral in nature, passed on to all the following generations."