What Was Left Behind
Last night I dreamt of snow, falling softly down out of the old static night sky. It made me happy and I was at peace. I walked down the road unencumbered, footsteps soft and silently accepted; I drew in a deep breath of fresh air . . .
The voyage to Oreana had started off in rough waters with the ‘diplomat in the dryer’ affair, as the crew called it. Joanni was made aware of what had transpired by her library colleagues the next morning. “I met the protocol officer; he seemed nice. What happened with that diplomat? Where was he from? Vaarnix?” she asked.
“Yeah, Vaarnix. Nothing to worry about. An unhappy customer.”
The next delegation, a party of one, arrived via shuttlecraft without incident. Nevertheless, a realization of the enormity and complexity of the captain and crew’s responsibilities sprouted and grew in Joanni’s mind. She began to understand what Captain Chipman . . Tom . . . actually found in front of him, what he faced day in and day out, and to perceive as well how his capabilities were connected to his sense of usefulness and duty. Her respect for him was tinged with a growing fondness.
Chipman’s command ability was put to the test again a few days later, when the Eridanus was hit and buffeted about by a storm of proton energies from X-class coronal flares. A storm of respectable length, lasting six hours and causing radiation damage to the ship. Minor casualties were reported and damage was determined and repairs initiated. Chipman made a visit to sickbay where Dr. Pissario and her staff were testing crew members for radiation exposure. All in all, the Eridanus had escaped with minimal structural damage. On returning to the bridge, Chipman ordered a recalibration and reset back to their original course. He was silent as all returned to normal operating procedure, and when satisfied that all was well, and after receiving an update from Dr. Pissario, ordered First Officer Samuel to take over, saying, “I’m gonna check on our guests.” Lt. Morrison and Samuel glanced at each other, Samuel looking knowingly at the communication officer from under raised eyebrows. Samuel never gossiped with his remarks, only with his expression.
“Is everything all right?” Joanni asked as she buzzed open the door and saw Captain Chipman standing there. Even though she had heard the Secure from General Quarters, the fact that he had come down to her quarters surprised her, and the ridiculous thought that he was going to ask her to evacuate shot through her brain. She stood there, startled, holding shards of orange glass in her right hand; a small vase had fallen off her desk due to a particularly sharp pitch during the storm, and had shattered.
“Back to normal.” He walked into the room. There had risen up an unacknowledged informality and ease between the two of them since they had sat side by side scanning the report on her father. “You heard the announcement. Just following through. No damage here?”
“No, I’m fine. I was a little scared, to tell you the truth. I almost hid under my desk like they did in the old days.” She laughed at herself. “Like a real amateur.” Chipman smiled and made as if to take his leave, but instead stayed. “Though I did break my collarbone during an ion storm a few years ago . . . while touring,” Joanni continued, wanting to demonstrate a certain degree of toughness.
“That must have made it hard to play.”
“It did. But no casualties this time, well, just this vase. I just noticed it a minute ago.” She knelt down to pick up the rest of it and felt a wet spot on the rug. “Plus, half a bottle of my favorite perfume—mudan perfume, peony perfume—it tipped over and spilt. I shouldn’t of had it out here.”
“Is that what I smell?”
“Yes, sorry. I love it, but half a bottle is a bit much. Half a bottle! And it’s hard to find, too. I do have another small flacon of it. My sister Lillian gave it to me before I left because she knows mudan—they used to call them peonies—are my favorite flowers.” She threw the broken bits of vase into a nearby wastebasket. “And you can’t grow them anywhere but Earth. Look, here’s a nice painting of them.” Joanni walked over to her worktable strewn with charts and workbooks and discs, the clesig resting at one end, having been safely stored in its case to avoid possible storm damage, and showed Chipman a watercolor of three peonies, one white and two red, in a thin ebony frame. “This is from Lillian as well, a not-so-subtle hint, I think, to remind me what I’m missing. You know, if I want Earth flowers, I have to be on Earth. Stop galavanting around and come home, and you can have these flowers. Once I sprayed the frame with the perfume to try to approximate the real thing, and that worked as well as you might expect.”
The captain picked up a sheet of paper off her desk and examined it. “How’s the Oreanian coming along? Looks like you’re doing a lot of studying.” He turned the worksheet toward her so she could see her own effort. He didn’t want to leave; he liked to feel he was penetrating her world (a world that beckoned to him with its charm and comfort), staying a little too long, longer than duty (even if one could say there was an actual duty to check on her) required, and liked that she was allowing it. She liked the attention he was giving her. Finally, his stalling became obvious and a little awkward.
“Would you like a cup of coffee? I can make you one fresh.” Joanni had rigged up a workable food prep station in a corner of her quarters.
“No. No, I have to get back . . .” Yet he lingered, picking up one book, then another. Then he turned to her. “But, I’ll take a rain check.”
“Yes, that would be nice . . .”
“Later today, when I’m off duty, perhaps.”
She hesitated, and he got the sense that this was as far as she was prepared to go, for now at least. That she was a little skittish and would push back when he moved forward. “Well, what day is this, Wednesday? Isn’t that your gym night?” she asked.
“It is . . ..” He looked directly at her. “How did you know?” His tone was not accusatory, if anything, it was presumptively indulgent, as if he already knew the answer. That he knew he would eventually be able to go further.
Joanni blushed and picked up one of her discs from her worktable and aimlessly fiddled with it. She was irritated with him and herself. “I don’t know. I must have heard someone say it. Information comes to you, you know, but let’s plan on it for some time soon.” This was her dismissal and Chipman took his leave without further comment. Because he had many opportunities, the opportunities afforded a charismatic man, the opportunities of a captain, he took what women gave him and didn’t push.
Joanni sat down at her desk and picked up her framed painting. She remembered how beautiful the real mudan were, how fragrant and how soft. To exist with that as one’s reality, to be the favorite flower of the gardener was her desire, but, by definition, the gardener tended many living things. She wanted to walk beside him, have it be their garden. Could they work that earth together? He bore his duty solo, she was afraid. She did not know if this was just a stage in his maturation, evolution, or if this was his destiny; a lonely one, she thought. She got up slowly paced around her desk, absentmindedly picking up random papers in a fair imitation of the captain’s earlier behavior. The mudan perfume was still permeating the room; it did not seem inclined to dissipate and she longed for a breath of fresh air.
Image: A flower of Earth. Source: Photograph by J. Weigley