“How far above acceptable limits?” Kodiak asks.
“At their highest, two hundred four millisieverts.”
“We’ll live,” Kodiak says as he pulls himself out of the water, lying on his side and wiping water from his thick hair. “We’ll get cancer in our twenties, but we’ll survive at least until then.”
“Was that a joke?” I ask, arranging myself next to him and wringing out the hem of my shirt.
“Yes. It was a joke, and also it was true. It is a Dimokratía kind of joke.”
“Proceed to the infirmary so Rover can undertake anti-radiation maintenance on you,” OS says.
“I don’t think maintenance is quite the right word to use about human bodies,” I say.
“That was the least wrong thing about what we just heard,” Kodiak says, before heaving himself to his feet and padding off. He’s shivering. I wouldn’t have thought a body so muscled would ever need to shiver.
“Do you want us in the same infirmary?” I ask.
Kodiak’s already shaking his head before OS says, “That would be wise.”
He grunts and heads into his half of the ship, feet leaving wet prints on shiny gray polycarbonate. “Follow me if you want,” he calls over his shoulder.
I take a quick glance back at the pool of water that mighthave saved us, where Kodiak took my pulse while we hid from the gunfire of atoms shot from supernovas. We’ll be drinking that water for months.
I follow him.
_-* Tasks Remaining: 116 *-_
The Dimokratía infirmary looks much like mine, only everything’s gunmetal gray instead of my radiant white. Even theAurora’s Rover is darker.
Kodiak stands before a bench built into the wall, balancing on one leg and then the other as he strips out of his wet acrylic suit. I cast my gaze away, but not before I see a long line of flesh, from hairline to heel, where the side zipper of his suit has parted.
“There’s a fresh uniform on the bench,” he says without turning around. A wet smack as his discarded suit hits the floor, and then a whir asAuroraRover hauls it off somewhere to be cleaned and dried and fluffed and returned.
I work my own suit off, wondering what my lean body would look like to Kodiak if he cared to look. I put on the fresh red Dimokratía suit before I lie on the infirmary bench. “I appear to have just defected,” I say, smoothing the red nylon.
Kodiak chuckles. “Phtur! Our state director of evangelism will be delighted.”
I look at him, disappointed to see that he’s already changed into his new dry suit. “Wait, does Dimokratía really have a state director of—”
“Hold still,” interrupts my mother’s voice.
Rover inserts the IV needle effortlessly, and I watch the anti-radiation meds flow into my arm. “I don’t want to lose my hair,” I say, giving it a wet pat.
“That would be a shame,” Kodiak says from the next bench over. “It’s very nice hair.”
I play that line in my head as I let my body relax. My imagination puts Kodiak in a different position each time he says it. Sometimes he’s lying down on his belly, sometimes he’s on his side, head cradled in his hand. Sometimes he’s stroking the hair he just admired. Sometimes he’s wearing his red Dimokratía suit, sometimes he’s wearing nothing at all.
_-* Tasks Remaining: 116 *-_
I snoozed while the IV was doing its work, and when I wake Kodiak is gone. The door leading deeper into the Dimokratía half of the ship is sealed, and there’s no answer when I call Kodiak’s name, so I make my way back to myquarters, with only the memory of company for company.
I have a surprise waiting for me next time I strip down: my skin has broken out in lesions. Fat red welts, painless and smooth but nonetheless alarming. They disappear a few days after they show up. Radiation poisoning, for sure, but then again so is a sunburn. The more insidious effects of radiation can take some time to emerge. Looking out for symptoms means I’ll be spending a lot of time with the medical diagnoses portion of the ship’s internet image. I have a lovely paranoia game ahead of me.
“OS,” I say, lying on the floor and drumming my fingers on the hard polycarb to distract myself from imminent medical doom, “has mission control sent us any updates on my requests about the gifts I gave my mother, and if there were any responses yet to my seminar essay?”
There’s a millisecond delay while OS ponders its response. “Mission control is researching the answers to your questions, I am sure. Once they are able to, of course they will send along updates. But until the antenna is fixed for good, communication with Earth will remain erratic.”
A memory comes of my mom and me at a garden table on the Cusk mountaintop estate, the roaring sandstorms that were obliterating refugee camps in the distance reduced to a mere hush. I’d just been playing the Mendelssohn concerto, and Mom had come out to listen. After I finished, we fell into conversation about Minerva’s mission, Mommoving the rosin cake from my violin along the table to represent my sister’s craft progressing toward Titan.
