The Loneliness of Distant Beings

Chapter Fifteen

I move into berths two orbits later. Dad is working when I pack up my stuff so there isn't any kind of lame scene with him, but Pan manages to come out of her room at just the right moment, so big she barely fits through the door.

'You make some really stupid decisions, you know that, right?' is how she decides to bid me farewell, followed by, 'I just hope you won't make even more dumb moves without us there to keep an eye on you.'

'I'm pretty sure I'll live up to your expectations,' I say, shouldering my bag and heading for the door, where Cain is standing, arms outstretched for a hug. I oblige him since he's probably the one who's been the least awful to live with out of them all.

'Ready to tell me anything about that planet down there yet?' I say, into his shoulder.

He kisses my forehead and smiles.

'Classified,' we both say together, since this is the only answer he's given anyone who's asked about his recons to Huxley-3 this whole time, the idiot.

'Seren,' he says, just as I'm stepping out of the door. 'Where's your berths? Where can we find you?'

'That, my friend, is classified,' I say, but I throw him a smile over my shoulder.

Of course, because I'm in North for Maintenance I get berths there too. Mariana manages to swing it so that I'm with her, in this berths of only six of us in a room for ten so I get to choose a bunk in the corner and, you know, for the first little while it's kind of exciting, it's kind of cool that I'm out on my own. The other girls in the berths are mostly OK and I can believe, or maybe kid myself, that this is the right thing for me. Mariana's all for heading to the plaza to get a drink and I'm just getting ready when my pod rings and it's Dom, and I guess because we're both a little overexcited by my new freedom and not actually thinking things through a whole lot, he says he'll come and meet us.

So the other girls from the berths and I get to the plaza and sit around a little, talking. Here's the thing: I've kind of always been led to believe that there aren't that many young single people on Ventura, but now I'm finding out that's not really the case. There are more than you would think. They've got a whole bunch of different stories, usually involving one or other of the life partners having a career they want to concentrate on, which in my mind probably just translates to them taking a while to come to terms with the fact that this is the person they're going to have to spend their life with and it's not what they would have chosen. No matter what platitudes they trot out, this is what it comes down to. The other story you tend to hear involves somebody dying. This is just one out of the whole host of flaws there are in the Ventura plan. Make people in pairs. For every boy make a girl. And if one of them dies, that's just hard luck. Because death is something not even the great scientific minds of the Ventura are able to prevent.

There's a bunch of Engineering guys over at the bar and after a while one of them comes over and puts his hands over the eyes of Jen, this girl I'm talking to, so that there is this long awkward moment where Jen's trying to think who it could be and I am just sitting there looking at him and slowly realising that it is one of the guys who was hassling me at the vending machine the other day. The one who works with Ezra. I'm not quite sure at this point whether he recognises me back because all he does is wink and listen to Jen frantically guessing who it could be so that the whole thing can be over. I sigh and look away; I really hate people who play this game.

When she tells him she gives up she twists in her seat to look at him and looks pretty genuinely disappointed with the truth. 'Oh it's you,' she says. 'This is Arnold Witney, my brother-in-law.'

And he stands there waving dumbly. 'What's happening, ladies? Little session?'

'Sure, Arnold,' she sighs. 'I would ask you to join us but I can see you have company.'