Panterra: The Machinist

6: Privacy

I remember my first conversation with Captain Everett Lee. He'd been on board a week, eight months before the evacuation, and had never connected with the ship-net. He'd had numerous meetings with various members of the crew, Percy, Barcy, Indy, the baker, the head cook, Sergeant Omega Cho, Dr. Ali Ghammon, and Chief Bambang Phakathikhom. Most meetings were over a meal that he only had in his cabin, an austere but large room that had been Percy's home for nearly three years. All his meetings were closed to me by a request for "privacy."

I still find nothing peculiar about his guest list. Percy, of course, served as his second-in-command. Barcy was assigned by Dr. Ghammon, the chief medical officer, to be Everett's personal physician. She would help him prepare for permanent relocation Earthside.

The head cook brought him his meals, and the baker prepared special deserts for him and his guests. Sergeant Cho commanded the marine detachment that protected us from pirates. Arli's boss, Bambang, was the chief engineer. And Indy, of course, he dined with frequently. She was a special guest, traveling with us at the request of the Terran Ministry of Science and Culture, with her valuable cargo of a dozen sentient rodents.

I'd pulled Everett's record when I'd learned he'd been assigned to the Selkirk. His biography said he was 173 years old, chronologically, but his medical records indicated that he was physically only 82. I found that curious.

He first shipped from Earth on an ion-drive exploration ship, and that was the clue. Though he was only twenty at the time, he went into cryogenic sleep for three years, worked a two-year shift and went back into cryo for another eight years. By the time he was seventy years old, chronologically, he'd been in stasis for forty years, an old man still in the prime of his youth. He'd worked his way up through the service from a steward to a navigator then a commander, and there he stalled. Technology passed him by. While he was still working the old ion-drive ships, humans had discovered how to fold space. When he was finally transferred to a modern vessel, it was alien to him, and he'd been labeled as an "old salt," wise in the ways of navigation and interaction with other species but incapable of grasping new concepts, either by intellect or choice.

The last voyage of the RTS Selkirk was his first command, a retirement gift from the company. A new freighter, triple our speed and size, waited for Percy in Earth orbit and the bars of a captain to go with it. For that he would willingly let Everett take as much control as he wanted, to a limit.

Percy stands on the bridge and receives a verbal report from each station, as he likes to do. Two days out from the docking station we are accelerating smoothly, on course and on schedule. Our new crew members, our guests, and the rats are all settled in and adjusting well to the ship's artificial day-night cycles. I like it best when routine sets in. That's when the creative interactions of human relations become most interesting.

> Alex, Percy says to me through his SI as he walks down the passageway to the captain's quarters, his old quarters, if he asks for "privacy," stay with me, please.

>> May I ask why?

> We're friends, Alex, you and I.

>> Yes, Percy, I believe we are.

> Who do you most trust on board?

>> Arlington, of course, and Koosa most of all. And you, Percy. You are fair, kind but stern, and honest. You'll make a great captain.

> I appreciate that. But I appreciate more that you have the maturity to distinguish levels of trust. This is a moment when trust is most important. I must ask you to stay with me and keep my thoughts and our verbal exchange a private matter only for us friends. I'll explain later.