style="font-size:15px;"> “I’ll leave you two to get on with it,” the boss said and wandered off.
“Come on,” D’Bridie said. “I’m meant to show you what to do,” and she led me to a storeroom. While she was organizing me a mask and brushes, I looked around the store. Mostly the cleaning equipment was on open shelves, but there were one or two closed cupboards. My nose alerted me. I walked over to one of the cupboards.
“I bet this cupboard is locked,” I said.
D’Bridie stopped what she was doing, and looked at me in silence for a few seconds, and then grinned and said, “How do you know?”
“I can smell the stuff,” I said.
“Like a bloody sniffer dog,” she said. “But hooch stills are only part of the game. It’s advisable not to speak of the laundry’s secrets belowboard.”
“Belowboard?”
“The rest of the ship. Here: put this on.”
She handed me a mask. I put it on. I felt like the masked raider. “I feel like the masked raider,” I said.
“It won’t last,” she said. “You’ll feel like a chemical warfare victim soon enough. Let’s go.” She pulled her own mask up.
* * * *
By lunchtime I was beginning to feel I’d got the hang of the laundry. The actual work was dirty and tedious, but there were plenty of breaks. No one was busting a gut. We didn’t leave the laundry for lunch; apparently, the rest of the crew would have complained about dirty overalls in the mess if we had. There were about a dozen of us, and we ate sandwiches in a cozy little lunchroom with its own tea urn. D’Bridie sat next to me, stirring her tea with a silver teaspoon encrusted with precious stones. I looked quietly round the table. The cutlery was a mixed bunch, some tin, some plastic, some plain silver and gold, some elaborately carved and engraved and covered in precious inlays and stones. I didn’t comment. If I were John Doe and I’d knocked off the officers’ precious eating irons, I too would’ve arranged to have them hidden in the laundry.
* * * *
Em Talking
Flight Regulator Montesquieu approached down the corridor. Not my favorite person, but I always tried to be civil.
“Good evening,” I said.
“I want to talk to you,” she said.
“Please do.”
“Not here,” she said, as if having a conversation in a corridor was an unheard of barbarity. “In my office.”
“When?”
“Now.”
She kept on walking. I turned and started to follow her. I was trotting along behind her like a dog. I felt a fool. I increased my pace. I’d walk beside her, regardless of how unpleasant she was. I drew alongside. She didn’t turn her head, but slightly increased her own pace. I did likewise. Luckily the door to her office was only ten meters away, we’d have been sprinting if it were any further. She flashed her ID at the sensor and marched through the opening door. I followed. She proceeded to the swivel chair behind her desk. I dumped myself down, unbidden, in an armchair, ignoring the straight-backed chair directly in front of the desk.
“Shut the door,” Montesquieu snapped.
“Isn’t it automatic?” I said.
“No, it’s not.”
“A bit primitive,” I said and recognized the phrase as I spoke it as one of Ned’s. But I stood up, closed the door, and returned to my armchair with good grace.
Montesquieu looked at me in silence for five or six seconds. I returned her stare. “What’s he up to?” she said suddenly.
“What’s who up to?” I said.
“Don’t play dumb. What’s Malley up to?”
“Ned. As far as I know he’s proving to be a valuable washer woman.”
“He spends half his spare time with Her Excellency.”
“I think they’re writing a poem together. A cycle of poems.”
“Ulrike Lewis hasn’t written a poem in fifteen years. That’s fifteen of our years, Ms. Harpenden. Not miserable little Earth years.”
“She wrote a poem when she was visiting Earth. We heard her recite it on the telly.”
“Recycled. She changed a few proper nouns, that was all.”
“Well, maybe Ned has inspired her, given her a new lease on life.”
“He’s giving her organs a new lease on life. The ship’s organ factory has orders for no less than twenty-two new body parts for Her Excellency alone. Her first transplant is next week.”
“Meatus,” I said.
“Precisely.”
“Well, if Her Excellency wants to regenerate herself.…”
“It’s not just Her Excellency. She keeps recommending Malley’s services to all and sundry. There’s not an officer at the High Table who hasn’t got an order in. Most of them have three or four. New lungs, new livers, new hearts, miles of veins and arteries.…”
“Well, they’re old guys,” I said. “They’re wearing out.”
“Look, sister,” Montesquieu said. “This is an intergalactic spaceship. It is a closed community. We all live in close quarters to one another.”
“I know.”
“What you don’t seem to know is the power of mass hysteria.”
“Hysteria?”
“Yes, hysteria. It gets magnified in closed institutions. No one has an outside perspective. No one can take time out. Everyone reacts to the obsessions of their neighbors by becoming obsessed themselves, which in turn causes an intensification of the original.… Round and round it goes.… Everybody gets caught up.… And before you know it.… Look, Harpenden, there won’t be a single member of the ship’s company who doesn’t think his or her whole body is riddled with disease.…”
“Calm down,” I said.
Montesquieu looked as if I’d slapped her face. She took a deep breath, swallowed a few times and said, “Ms. Harpenden! You are very close to being criminally impertinent.”
“Maybe,” I said, “but, Flight Regulator, let’s try and look at this in perspective. Coolly and rationally.”
“I’ve just told you, there is no outside perspective, not while the ship is in flight. We can’t look at it in perspective. He’s started on the crew.”
“Who’s started what on the crew?”
“Malley.
