Heard as Well as Seen
The sky was the color of a reddish-purple plum, and Joanni gazed up at it, hoping to capture everything it had to offer. Soon her view would consist solely of a vast blackness dusted with pinpoints of stars. This sky above her right now was beautiful, but it had no softness to it, and the air was a little hard to breathe out here on the patio cafe of the Ritcher Starbase hotel. “Let’s finish our coffee and go back in,” she said to Lieutenant Rez Yoshida, the escort officer assigned to her by ISEA. They had struck up an easy, chatty camaraderie during their brief time together. It was Lt. Yoshida’s task to get this unique ambassador ready for the long trip to Oreana and up to diplomatic speed on her role in the securing of the mutual cooperation treaty. As they gathered up their data pads, and got up to go, Lt. Yoshida put her hand on Joanni’s arm and motioned with her head toward two people coming out of the hotel entrance, heading away from them. By the time Joanni processed the gesture and looked in the right direction, all that was to be seen of them were their backs—the woman, tall, almost the same height as the man, with a blonde ponytail that swung back and forth in rhythm with her gait; the man with excellent posture and a broad, muscled back. A good-looking couple.
“That’s him, that’s your captain,” Rez whispered, although no one was in danger of hearing her.
Joanni stared at the retreating figures. “I’ve heard a lot about him.”
“Yes, his reputation precedes him, for good and for ill.”
Joanni felt an immediate, unfounded need to push back, surprising herself that she would brook no criticism of him. “Why for ill? He’s done great things, according to just about everybody.”
“Yes, yes, the old song and dance: all women want him, all men want to be him. Just don’t get overwhelmed is all I’m saying. “
“This whole thing is overwhelming! All I’m saying is, it’s better to have someone with some intelligence leading the way, that’s all.”
“Just a heads-up.” Rez shrugged. “Do what you want. If you wanna go for a ride . . .”
“I’m going on a big ride.”
“If you wanna go for a ride, fine. But don’t lose your head. You’ll be . . . they’re thrill seekers; they’re in it for the chase. And, there’s always some new thrill ahead, someone newer to chase, isn’t there? It’s a no-win situation.”
“Yes, well, maybe for him as well.” She wasn’t even sure what she meant by that, but this lecture, directed at her as if she was some kind of rube, was not sitting well with Joanni.
“What?” Lt. Yoshida looked at her as if there was a broken circuit somewhere; her warning was not getting through, and she wanted to do her duty. “Just watch it.”
“I’ll be fine. It’s a big ship.”
The next day, Captain Thomas Chipman convened a meeting of his senior officers in the executive briefing room of the ISS Eridanus. He had just read through the command packet for Operation Tarrash and was now filling them in on their mission: first, to pick up and transport the diplomatic personnel, including Ms. Neiswender, to Oreana; and second, to provide security for this diplomatic delegation and the young musician and her instrument. The classified portion of the briefing focused even more on security, particularly with respect to Joanni and the clesig. There were outside forces eager to secure a portion, if not all, of Oreana’s mineral riches, and the destruction of the clesig and/or disappearance of its present owner could only help that cause by removing ISEA’s bargaining chip. The captain brought up on the large main screen a memo from the head of the diplomatic mission. In that memo, First Deputy Ambassador Gillis stressed yet again the importance of keeping Joanni and her clesig safe, and noted her uncooperative nature and limited understanding of the seriousness of the mission (and limited appreciation of his leadership). Safely ensconced within the bowels of the Eridanus, she should be fine, but, to put it bluntly, she was a bit of an idiot and a pain in the butt.
Next up on the screen was a tour poster of Jack Sanour’s band with an unflattering photo of Ms. Neiswender, the camera exposure flattening her face, her expression blank, as if, indeed, she didn’t have a thought in her head.
“Ms. Neiswender, ladies and gentlemen, with her clesig.” Captain Chipman looked at his notes. “C-l-e-s-i-g.”
“Well, Tom, you have a real damsel in distress to protect; now don’t go breaking her heart.” This gibe from Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Pissario.
Chipman frowned at her; he didn’t like the introduction of his personal life into the proceedings. He took a quick glance at the screen then looked back down at his papers. “Not my type,” was all he said, lightly.
“The next one is your type, I believe,” the doctor said, mostly to herself, though, unfortunately, her remark was audible to everyone in the room. Even Pissario felt she had gone over the line this time, and there was an awkward silence as the officers waited for Chipman’s response.
The captain simply ended the discussion with “Meeting adjourned.” That the doctor’s joke rankled him more than it should was a hint that the ‘next one’ approach was getting old, but, hell, he did what he wanted to do, and, more often than not, he was a hungry man.
Joanni hated transport tube technology, which consisted of stepping into a rotating cylinder on the starbase, punching a few keys, then dematerializing and rematerializing in another rotating cylinder aboard ship. The ship’s canister would slowly stop rotating, the door would slide open, and there you were. The transport tubes always made her nauseous. And, even though they were automatically sanitized before and after each trip, they always seemed to smell, whether that was just in her imagination or in actual fact she wasn’t quite sure. Joanni greatly preferred traveling via shuttlecraft.
Stepping out of the tube onto the main transport platform of the Eridanus, clutching onto the clesig in its battered carrying case, it took several seconds for Joanni to regain her composure and refocus her vision. When she did, she saw that Captain Chipman had come down to the transport station and was standing in front of her to welcome her aboard. ‘Damn her. Damn that Rez,’ she thought. Rez had made her so self-conscious with her inane gossip, she now was afraid she couldn’t act natural and would make a fool of herself. She could feel her heart beating too fast, though that could be the effect of going through the transport tube. Or fear of the adventures that lay ahead.
Two thoughts came into her mind simultaneously on seeing the captain. First, she asked herself, how could a man look so exactly like she would want a man to look; and second, and more significantly, she realized the air of calm competence he exuded, the sense that he knew what he was doing, enabled her to relax; the novel sensation of believing things might be okay, of life actually going right and being fun rather than filled with anxiety and worry spread through her. She would be okay. The tension drained from her. She gave a small, brief smile and, still tightly holding the clesig, stretched out her hand.
Chipman stepped forward to meet her. “Captain Tom Chipman. Welcome aboard the Eridanus.”
“Thank you, sir. Joanni Neiswender. Thank you for taking us all to Oreana.”
As for the captain’s initial impression, he had been set up by Ambassador Gillis’ report to expect a person with an attitude. Instead, he saw a graceful young woman whose look of apprehension settled into calmness upon meeting him. He sensed that release and felt a fleeting rush at having caused it. The most immediately striking thing about her were her eyes, the workings of her mind projected through their expression. A vivid memory seized him right then of seeing deer in his grandmother’s backyard; of looking out the window and suddenly seeing them frozen there, silently staring back. Startling, even though common enough, back then, anyway. But still, something magical and fantastic and wild about it. For a moment, he had the same feeling here, though his only observable response was a slight lifting of the eyebrows. Chipman didn’t think she would be trouble—Gillis didn’t know what he was talking about—just one of those quiet girls people forget were in the room, not the type that turned men’s heads when they walked through the door. She was not shy per se, maybe just needed someone on her side.
One of the transport cylinders started rotating behind them, then stopped. The door to it opened, exposing a fair amount of luggage and bags strapped onto two dollies, both of which looked very unstable, both threatening to topple over any second.
“Oh, that’s my stuff,” Joanni said. “Sorry there’s so much of it.”
Caught just slightly on the back foot by the encounter playing out differently than expected, Chipman joked, “Well, a woman needs her outfits, I suppose. Particularly a performing one.”
Again, he could sense the wheels turning in her head, where her thoughts were going: annoyance at such a lame statement, but no resentment or need to reproach; merely the decision to go forward with an explanation.
“Yes, some clothes,” she said, still cradling her instrument, staring at the baggage. “But, really, lots of books and discs and research material.” She turned to him in a confiding manner. “I have to be fluent in Oreanian by the time I get there.” Then, a small rebuke, but it had no sting. “I have to be heard as well as seen, Captain.”
Chipman gave a small nod of his head as if to say touché, and ordered two security guards to take Ms. Newiswender’s bags up to her quarters. (She would not relinquish the clesig; she was the only one who carried it.) “We leave orbit in two hours,” he told her. A momentary sense of, not intimacy exactly, but a feeling of ease, of being able to say whatever one wanted to say, had sprung up between them, but the captain snapped out of it and took his leave. The encounter had ruffled his expectations, but by the time he got back to the bridge, he had forgotten all about it.
Image: The quiet wildness of it all. Source: “Deer Staring in Open,” Jay, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Edited by J. Weigley