Savage By Nature Page 8

  Felina beamed. “Thank you, I’m glad to hear I wasn’t being a complete idiot. And you’re a good seed yourself. I hope to see you emerge in high order when all of this is done.”

  Loudon nodded. “Nine more days, can you believe it? Already feels like a week here. I can’t imagine nine more.”

  “It’ll be a breeze, trust me,” an unfamiliar voice caught their ears. The two women pirouetted calmly but attentively to see a newcomer to the waiting line. He had deep brown skin, darker eyes, and a kind visage matched by a similar voice. He offered his hand. “Sanjit Madhavari, pleased to meet you.”

  “Felina Sabartinelli,” she greeted without hesitation, unlike Loudon. Eventually she forced a smirk though and shook his hand; Felina wasn’t sure why the reluctance in her.

  “How do you find the Manticore so far?” Madhavari asked, smiling with hands clasped before him.

  “Impressive, very,” Felina smiled, eyes widening. “Especially the bridge. What a view…and the orrery.” Felina whistled, then shared a chuckle with Madhavari.

  “The visitor quarters are lovely, too,” Loudon said lackadaisically. “It’s pleasing to know that the Manticore thinks so highly of its guests.”

  “I honestly wouldn’t know,” Madhavari said with a kindness, “since only the lead personnel of the vessel have seen other crew’s quarters. We aren’t permitted to. I believe it’s to suppress any potential feelings of jealousy or envy; even pride and arrogance, depending on the quality of the rooms in comparison to our own. But it delights me to hear this, anyway. Guests do deserve high treatment, it’s only been a customary cordiality for so many centuries.”

  “I agree, Madhavari, although I can’t say I’m too fond of being called ‘gavels.’” Felina sighed, then shrugged. “But hey, I get it—the nickname thing, and the discomfort maybe from some of the crew.”

  “Some, maybe, but I assure you not all.”

  “Well, I sure hope there’s more aboard the Manticore like you…and a few others we’ve been introduced to so far.”

  “Ah, yes, the tour…how is that proceeding?” Madhavari asked, anticipation in his voice. “Are the main labs in today’s itinerary for you?”

  “We sure hope so. We definitely have time for it,” Felina said avidly.

  “You seem nervous,” Loudon said judgmentally. “Why would you be nervous?”

  “Oh, only the usual kind of anxiety you might get from some strangers—no offense—visiting your place of work, scrutinizing everything you do. It’s absolutely no major concern, just a tinge of reasonable nervousness. I assure you everything we have to show you in the labs will simply tantalize your perception of science and what it means to be aboard the greatest USRD vessel ever produced.”

  “Well, I for one, am growing eagerly impatient,” Felina smiled affably. “I understand you aren’t at liberty to disclose any information regarding your research during off-hours, much less without the consent of Thomas Asher, so I appreciate your candor here…and I’ll keep myself from prying for more information.”

  With this spill of words in the air between them now, Felina and Madhavari shared another smile before she turned away with Loudon in tow. They proceeded down the line, thankful nobody had cut in front of them. Concurrent to this, Felina peered over her shoulder and noticed another white-uniformed scientist step in to converse with Madhavari.

  “What was that all about?” Felina asked Loudon under her voice, peeved with the woman’s coarseness.

  “You don’t think they’re hiding something, Sabartinelli?” Loudon scoffed. “I mean c’mon, look at this place! And the security? I assure you they’re not dissecting plant DNA from Jupiter.”

  “You’re not very patient, are you?” Felina said.

  “Neither are you, from what I hear,” Loudon winked.

  Felina sighed. “Look, just…tone down on the hostility. Trust me, I’m on your side—but I’d rather be on their good side in the event that what they show us is anything that surprises me.”

  “Right, right…I suppose you’re correct. A straight-thinker, Sabartinelli. I can be a little, eh…rough around the edges sometimes.”

  They reached the serving counter, retrieving trays from a frequently replenished stack on the right side.

  “Trust me, so can I,” Felina replied with an uneven smirk. “Especially if I go too long without sustenance. Speaking of which…”

  The choices seemed endless. It was a prime buffet line, with people serving them precise amounts. No sloppy spooning, excessive ladling, or snappy tonging. By the end of their line run, Felina and Loudon’s trays’ partitions were each evenly filled. The servers had been polite, answering sporadic questions when there were any, or making corrections. No attitudes copped nor disparaging gazes.

  “Now, where to sit?” Felina asked.

  “To be frank,” Loudon said amicably, “I wanted to go over my PDA notes some, by myself. Especially if we’re gonna hit the labs after lunch. Besides…I didn’t exactly sleep like a baby last night, so…probably gonna catch an hour of shuteye after I eat.”

  “No worries, sounds good to me. See you at two.”

  They exchanged a smile, and Felina could tell Loudon felt a little bad about being so coarse earlier. Maybe not in an apologetic mood with Madhavari, but considering Felina had taken it wrongly.

  Nonetheless, they seemed to leave on a good note.

  Now, standing there like an indecisive statue with both hands on her tray at the end of the line, Felina felt a gust of torpor. She was torn between wanting to mingle and wanting to play it single—sit, eat, review her PDA notes, and keep that tunnel vision aligned. She ultimately chose the latter, especially considering the stares she started to get, mostly from unfriendly faces. It appeared that those who didn’t mind the documenters’ presence, those even like Madhavari who seemed welcoming, treated today like any other—they hardly even acknowledged her presence. They spoke with colleagues or ate by their lonesome, and many were on their way out the door probably for some solace and maybe even shuteye. Felina was hesitant on the latter, but it was only fifteen minutes into their two-hour lunchtime, so she decided to tackle the food in her tray first.

  She occupied a seat at an empty table at the far right of the cafeteria. Furthest from the double-doors on that side, her back within reach of the plain beige-tiled wall, and a corner a few feet to her left. The table was some forty feet long, stretching the width of the cafeteria’s shortest side, its chairs vacant. She began eating immediately, and found herself thoroughly enjoying what the Manticore had to offer her.

  Felina appreciated the aesthetics of the cafeteria, how they strived to give it an Earthly feel. There were no exposed bulkheads or gunmetal gray panels, and despite being a large mess hall it was considerably well-kept.

  This helped Felina enjoy her meal all the more.

  Halfway through the demolition of her tray’s contents, she drew the PDA from her uniform’s back sleeve and set it on the table to her right. Within the ensuing ten minutes, four more seats were occupied down the length of the table—two women together in lab uniforms, talking quietly amidst sporadic glances at Felina, and two separate men further down keeping to themselves.

  Just the same, Felina kept self-focused.

  After devouring her lunch she felt a bout of food-induced lethargy come over her. The cafeteria acted as an auditorium for sound, making the occupants’ raucous banter really get to her skull. She decided to leave, setting her tray at a designated station, and wandered the corridors.

  She turned a corner, not knowing her itinerary nor destination, when someone bumped into her. He was passing on the left, walking fairly fast, but in an aimless manner.

  She apologized first, and he second, then caught his breath and smiled ear-to-ear.

  “Oh, Felina, right?” Calloway said.

  “Good memory,” she replied monotonously. They kept walking, side by side, Felina on the right. Any passersby had to squeeze between Calloway and the left wall
because he wasn’t very mindful of space. He also had a winding stride, his feet a mess of direction. She imagined that to see him dance was to witness pure chaos.

  “Right, right. Beautiful name, really.”

  Felina noticed he was looking more at her than his path, which would partially explain his erratic walk. He also cradled something in his hands, fingers constantly fidgeting with it when he wasn’t tossing it back and forth. She stole a few glances at it, trying to keep her eyes off him and focusing on the corridor itself. They passed signs here and there, but nothing that screamed “solitude” to her. She quickly realized it was a Rubik’s Sphere.

  “How so?” she asked absentmindedly.

  “Very…feline.”

  “And you’d say I have feline features?” she asked, cocking an eyebrow at him briefly.

  He almost veered off course into the left wall.

  “Not really, actually,” he found himself laughing nervously. “More lupine. Fierce, dark eyes. The lighting in this place really makes them dance. But your brow, and your cunning personality…yeah, kind of feline.”

  “Calloway the poet.” Felina said with a half-smirk, her voice however unamused, and her gaze no longer on him.

  “Please, Felina, you can call me Geoffrey.”

  “That’s okay, Calloway.” Felina retorted, her voice as plain as ever. “Friends and family call me Felina. My colleagues, Sabartinelli. It’s a bit long, I understand, but it rolls off the tongue rather well; you wouldn’t know much about that, but that’s okay.”

  Calloway was a little flummoxed, but didn’t let it daunt his path. He kept at her side but no longer ogled as much. He nodded to himself and confirmed her surname aloud, then gazed down at the multicolored-multidimensional object in his hands.

  “Where’d you get that?” she finally asked.

  “Funny story,” Calloway smirked. “One of the astronomers gave it to me as a welcoming gift. Funny guy, actually, pretty nice too. Edward Irving, pumpkin-haired, high cheekbones, tiny chin. Tall, lean, looks and sounds like he got a lot of shit for his appearance in high school.”

  “Oh, and let me guess—you were a jock.”

  “That’s a matter of opinion,” Calloway said with a shaky laugh. It really threw Felina, then he got back on track. “Anyway, Eddie and his alchemist buddy, I forgot his name, well they claim to have bouts of boredom in their downtime. Not during work, but like lunchtime and before bed. These guys do the research into any inorganic material collected while the Manticore is—”

  “Floating through space, yeah, I know their roles, Calloway.” Felina tilted her head from side to side, eyes bouncing around as if to say ‘get on with it.’

  “Right, right, of course…so anyway…Eddie and his buddy, back in the cafeteria, they claimed—” Calloway squinted at Felina, appearing pensive as if he was going to reveal a big secret, but she was unfazed “—that this Rubik’s Sphere was a focus guide. They’d hack away at this thing and find their minds opening up to greater expanses. This tiny little toy is their key to absolute relaxation. Drug-free, too.”

  Felina smirked and shook her head.

  “The only people who tackle those things ‘drug-free’ are children and…” She stopped herself short and realized the truth. “Alright, fine, I get it. And now what? You’re gonna “unravel the mysteries of your subconscious” with it?”

  “Are you kidding?” Calloway practically chortled, his laugh echoing down the corridors. “I’m just fucking bored.”

  “Well, Calloway,” Felina briefly glanced over at him, “enjoy your vibrant, fiberglass boredom.”

  “I intend to, but say…where’re you going in a hurry?”

  “A place that, even in space, no man should follow,” she said, and with perfect timing left his side. She’d spotted the ‘lavatories’ sign hung from the corridor ceiling forty feet prior. The men’s was on the left, women’s on the right. She hooked the turn and a horizontal auto-door peeled open to accept her admission. It shut behind her, undoubtedly leaving Calloway in a mind-boggled standstill.

  She found herself grinning as she visited a stall.

  There were six to choose from, amid an immaculately white-tiled motif except for the black ceiling and obsidian marbled pedestal sinks. Shortly after entering one, a woman left another, washed her hands, and exited. Felina attended her business, washed her hands, and then lingered. She pondered where to next, then exited and was glad not to run into Calloway outside. Instead the corridor was empty. She walked a little ways further before putting the PDA in her hands and leaning her back against a bulkhead. She observed the standby map of the Manticore until she spotted what was called a lounging facility.

  There were two in the entire vessel, one forward and portside, the other astern and starboard. She was closest to the forward one, and spent the next three minutes lackadaisically walking there. She soon arrived without detour and found it to be most appealing.

  It was, in essence, a mindful waiting room.

  What were its occupants waiting on? The appointment of life and work. Basically, in this case, the end of lunchtime. It was hardware-free, just a room branching off of the corridor featuring no auto-door access and simple furniture, so there weren’t any access times. Felina imagined people came here whenever they had a breather away from their duties, whether it was now or during dinnertime, before bed, and even on the weekends. She currently spotted four individuals in here, amid a seating capacity of fifteen. There were individual wood-framed chairs, rattan bowl chairs, and even Chaise lounges—all adequately cushioned. Not a single one of them lifted their heads upon her entrance, instead glued to whatever literature they were engrossed in, or in one man’s instance engaged in a nap on a velvet Chaise lounge chair.

  It was the most earthly thing on this vessel so far.

  Felina homed in on one that caught her eye, which was of two empty ones available. The cushioning was hammocked within a steel frame with a stable rocking-chair system that proved to be as silent as the room itself. When she realized that it reclined, too, she let her head tilt back and lethargy take over.

  A unique solace she hadn’t found since last night in her room washed through her, and Felina fell asleep.

  4

  Ensuing her lunchtime nap, which she’d woken at the chime of others leaving the lounging facility just before the two o’clock announcement, disappointment washed over her afternoon. This reactive temperament was shared among the other USRD documenters, who were gathered by Keyes and Cassel in the main cafeteria after everyone had cleared out around 2:10. They were informed that, due to “an unprecedented and capricious rise in productivity” in the labs, their tour was to be cut short today. This riled up them all, although some more than others, obviously. Felina, Loudon, Baez, and Schuman were at the top list of labeling this news “unacceptable.”

  Captain Keyes expressed his “sincerest apologies” and excused himself when Birch’s intercom voice requested his presence on the bridge.

  Cassel became the next target, a smörgåsbord for the documenters’ upset questions and accusations. Felina noticed that she handled it with greater composure and patience than even the Captain himself. She believed she could tell that Cassel herself felt rather perturbed by whatever was going on ‘behind closed doors,’ particularly on the subject of Asher and the labs.

  She finally dismissed them without disclosing much of any information at all, saying that they were free to roam the corridors but access was denied to all workplaces. The lounging facility and recreation center were also open to them until dinnertime.

  In spite of this offer, only Baez, Baxter, and Zometa went to go exercise, probably as ventilation of their frustration and disappointment. Meanwhile Calloway and Godunov veered off to seek the lounging facility, probably feeling enticed by its sophisticated name, which gave Felina’s inner thoughts a chuckle as to their future disappointment. Then again, they both appeared rather exhausted, which she perceived as logical considering how both were ve
ry sociable during lunchtime; Felina extraneously wondered where Calloway had gone after ditching him.

  She and the others, however, moved like a lazy herd of cattle through the corridors back to their lodging quarters. En route there, Schuman and Ngo branched off to wander other paths networking the Manticore.

  Arriving at their rooms’ entrances, Felina sighed and nodded temporary farewells to Loudon and Wisniewski.

  She wanted to peruse her PDA but was so agitated about this turn of events that she just crashed on her bed and slept for nearly three hours. Her dreams were a chaotic concoction of pleasant atmospheres and nightmarish surrealisms.

  Just about everything was always moving.

  Even the shadows that typically clung to the bulkheads in dark and less fashionable vessel corridors were twisting with motion. Things that didn’t seem right with physics, even in zero gravity, moved without flaw. It wasn’t beautiful, though, as something might be. Everything was dark, indiscernible, unknown, and thus to most human minds, terrifying. Felina was always intrigued by the unknown, piqued by it, but not this. This facelessness warped her subconscious into believing fear wasn’t a choice but an imperative of the human soul and here to stay voraciously.

  Just the same, she didn’t dream pure horror.

  There were montages of pleasant events and experiences in her life, primarily those involving the USRD or space in general. The stars, the planets in their bosom, and the fantasy itself of adventuring into neighboring galaxies.

  Flashes of colleagues, both Earthbound and aboard the Manticore. Fuzzy faces of the Samum crew, then back to the Manticore, a space-gliding behemoth of impossible grace, returning to those coiling shadows and slithering shapes on gunmetal bulkheads—

  Felina woke forty-two minutes shy of the lunchtime announcement. Although she’d sweated greatly, the mattress’s absorbent and sanitization feature made it nearly impossible to discern. Nonetheless she felt uncomfortable in more ways than one, a distant clamminess of the skin while dense in her head.