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memento_vivere It was a strange situation to be in, Blink decided – trying to figure out what to talk about, with the person she’d never had a problem talking to before? At long last, the sedation had kicked in, and she spent the rest of the journey fast asleep.
She could no longer hear the powerful thrum of her friend’s engines, when Blink finally stirred out of her deep, drugged slumber, some days later. For several muggy seconds, she wondered if something had gone wrong… then noticed the pale daylight, streaming in through the little window by her chin. They’d landed.
“Good morning,” Skydash greeted, noticing her friend was awake. “Feeling all right?
Blink managed a non-committal grunt. “How long since we arrived?” She rubbed at her face, trying to force herself to wake up a little. Even though she’d long since warmed up, the careful artificial cooling that had kept her heart rate slow had left her feeling shivery, with a bone-deep chill.
“We landed in the night, some time. Just after midnight, I think.”
“You didn’t wake me up…?”
Not being able to see her face didn’t mean Blink couldn’t tell her friend was grinning. “It was dark, Bee. There was nothing to see. Besides, I thought it would be safer to let you come off the support drugs on your own. Better let your body deal with just the one drug, rather than give you a second one to counteract the first and leave you struggling to process both.”
“But we might miss the sleeper, if I’m just… laying here, all the time-”
“Don’t be silly. I wouldn’t let that happen. We’ve got plenty of time before it departs – it’s not due to break orbit until around midnight.” Skydash hummed a low, comforting harmonic that Blink could feel rather than hear. “I thought you might like to get changed, stretch your legs, maybe get something to eat? You’ve been in stasis – well, good as – for several days, you can’t be comfortable.”
“Ugh.” Blink let her head bonk down against the floor. “No. Not comfortable. But not uncomfortable enough to want to move yet.” She stared out of the little window, against which her nose now pressed. Her face felt very close to the tarmac. She could see the striking yellow lines she remembered being on tiao’I spaceport’s taxiways. “Where are we? Is it safe to stay here?”
“Don’t worry,” Skydash soothed. “We’re in a small civilian parking area, out of the way of most footfall. Security have already been past; they checked you out and were happy with our credentials. Everything is fine. Now come on.” She vibrated her hull plating. “Time to go out and greet the world. I want to get a good stretch too, and I can’t while you’re still aboard.”
“All right, all right, I’m moving.” Like a huge blue caterpillar, Blink slithered bonelessly out of the hatch, dragging her meagre possessions with her, and slumped immediately to her backside on the concrete when her legs refused to support her weight – which was a bad move, because she sat on one critical suit component, and pain shot up between her legs. “Ow-!” She rolled onto her hip, and although the immediate pain faded, suit electronics still stabbed into her. “Skeida! Oh, ow, please let’s get back to microgravity. The world hurts.”
After another few seconds of wriggling, Blink found the only way to get remotely comfortable was to lay flat on her front. She lay and listened to the soft sighs of hydraulics and gears as Skydash reconfigured herself to her usual bipedal form.
“Come on.” A big hand nudged her shoulder. “You can’t lay on the dirt all day.”
“Uugh.” Blink propped herself on one arm, but the suit felt even more uncomfortable than it had when she’d first put it on. Her whole body ached. Her limbs trembled, and the cannulas in her arms felt like they’d grown in size by several whole orders of magnitude. “I know. No offence, Dash, but I have to get out of this thing.” She struggled to right herself. “…My legs don’t work.”
Skydash gently picked her up around the torso, and held her until her wobbly knees had recovered enough to support her. “Such melodrama. I have no idea who you picked that up from,” she teased, in a tone of voice that said she knew precisely who.
“Whoever they were, they must have been an expert,” Blink agreed, making her unsteady way to the public facilities a few strides away. She finally vanished through the door, and the blue light marking the room as ‘empty’ flashed over to yellow-green.
Skydash had begun to wonder if her friend had dozed off again (and would she need to organise a rescue party?) when Blink finally emerged from the public bathrooms, dressed in clean clothes and with her hair artfully tousled. She hobbled over, carefully, clearly still aching, the suit draped over one arm.
“Even the universe’s most comfortable intravenous catheters needs looking after, evidently,” she joked, wincing. “My arms are pretty inflamed. I don’t think there’s any infection, but they’ll be stiff for a while.”
“Phlebitis,” Skydash explained, taking one small hand and brushing the sleeve back, so she could see the striking purplish lines on the fessine’s forearm. “It doesn’t look too serious just yet. We could hit the Infirmary for some painkillers later, if you need, but it’ll probably clear up on its own.”
“Small blessings, hey?” Blink shivered. “I just wish I could warm up a little!”
“That’s probably a side effect of the drugs, too. It’ll be fine once they’re out of your body.” Skydash leaned closer, and lowered her voice. “You got your disguise sorted…?” she checked, quietly.
Blink stretched her shoulders, with a wince. “Does it look all right? I thought I’d got enough practice on Hesger, but first time I did it too tight, now I think it’s too loose,” she explained.
“It looks fine. You just haven’t completely rebooted yet so you’re not thinking completely straight.”
Blink nodded, carefully. “You will tell me if I ever look ‘off’…?”
“Of course.”
Blink held the suit up in front of her, by its shoulders. “So what do we do with this, now?”
“Let me have it.” Skydash took it from her, delicately, and began to fold it up. “Never know when we might need it again.”
Blink rubbed her arms, uneasily. “I was sort of hoping we could just burn it,” she half-joked.
“Aw, Blink.” Skydash shot her a reproachful glance. “I know it was uncomfortable, but it got you here, didn’t it? Besides,” her voice shrank, just a tiny bit, “I designed it, mostly.”
Blink looked like she’d swallowed her tongue. “I-I didn’t mean it like that-! Skeida, Dash, I’m sorry-… just making a stupid joke. I’m sorry?”
Skydash offered a fleeting smile. “Brume might only be our first stop, after all.” She went on, stowing the carefully folded suit into a small storage compartment. “If we need to move on from there? We might not get the chance to print another one.”
Feeling thoroughly chastised, Blink just nodded, at first. “Trust you to out-logic me, as well, as usual.” She rubbed the back of her neck. “What-… what should we do now?”
“Well, um. I had an idea.” Skydash shrugged, sheepishly. “While you were taking a shower, I was investigating whether they have any bathing facilities for a person my size,” she admitted. “I don’t know if it’s just because I haven’t quite learned their language yet and don’t know what to look for, but I can’t see anything. Not even an automated facility. Sitting out in the rain on Hesger didn’t help in the slightest. I’m filthy, and I stink.”
Blink leaned closer and gave her an intentionally-close-and-thorough sniffing. “No; still smell acceptable to me.”
Skydash gave her a gentle shove that still toppled Blink onto her aft. “Cut that out, weirdo.”
“Oww.” Blink laughed around a groan, and subsided to lay flat on her back, arms akimbo. “If you really want a bath-”
“You’re not getting me on that sleeper without one, let’s put it that way.”
“-I may be able to help you with that. It’s not automated, but-… well, let me show you.”
Blink led her friend across the spaceport to a small area of hard-standing, close to the staff residences. “It’s a public facility, although only staff ever really use it,” she explained, waving her in. She headed to the small bank of well-used lockers, tucked under a canopy to keep the worst of any inclement weather off, and began to twiddle the dials on one of the top doors.
“How did you know about this place?” Skydash settled carefully in the tiled centre of the floor, and picked up one of the brush-tipped hoses, examining it closely.
Blink glanced back over her shoulder, and shrugged, sheepishly. “Well, it used to be my bathroom.” She punched the locker door, and it finally unstuck. “My soap is still here.” She picked out a jar of gelatinous green detergent, and a brush. “Catch.”
Skydash intercepted the jar sailing through the air before it could hit her, and carefully unscrewed the top. Dirty fingermarks liberally covered the outside, and the soap inside wasn’t a whole lot better, streaked with black grease. “Proof of ownership?” She snorted. “I’m surprised you didn’t put as much grease back on as you washed off. If this is what you call ‘soap’ then I’m not surprised Uncle Star didn’t think it existed here.”
“Shush.” Blink spritzed her with warm water. “Or I’ll make you do it yourself.”
With both of them wielding brushes, it didn’t take long for the unattractive industrial detergent to work up into thick dredges of soft green-grey foam around the big female. That is, Skydash tried to help, but having a skilled hand work the brush over her fuselage turned her rapidly into a helpless, purring wing-kitten in the middle of the floor.
Blink smiled and shook her head, and continued brushing.
Not needing to concentrate on getting all her accumulated filth off, Skydash had plenty of time to look around the spaceport, and finally spotted something interesting. “Bee? Look up!”
Blink followed the line of the foam-covered blue arm, and spotted a small silvery dot in the deep afternoon sky. “Is that the sleeper? It’s huge.”
The hibernaculum was more of an interstellar apartment block than a luxury cruise liner, easily big enough to be seen from the planet’s surface. Like a dramatically-tapering silver egg, with incongruously tacked-on engines at one end, it seemed to lack any kind of aerodynamic aesthetic. Blink guessed it didn’t really need it – it wasn’t designed with landing in mind. Most passengers reached it by shuttle, unless they owned their own short-range transit. She hoped the on-board ‘garage’ would be big enough for her friend to be comfortable.
“Mm-hmm.” Skydash flared her wings, so Blink could reach a little better, and grunted her pleasure as the brush worked down the edge of one of the larger plates, scrubbing out the accumulated dust. “I still have no idea what it is Footloose has against baths. It’s so much more comfortable to be free of… ugh. I don’t even know what I must be caked in.”
“Hush, it’s coming off easy. I might even give you a polish if we have enough time.”
“You wicked temptress. Is that a request for me to help?” Skydash picked up the brush, and got to work on her thrusters with a renewed vigour.
“Aw, Dash.” Blink laughed, sadly. “You travelled all the way from a different galaxy, to rescue me from myself. The very least I could offer is a little no-strings-attached pampering!”
* * * * *
That evening, the two travellers sat together on the hillside behind the spaceport, watching all shape and size of vehicles coming and going as the sun dwindled into a glorious sunset. Away on the distant horizon, sunlight glinted off the hibernaculum, turning it briefly into another star in the sky. They’d be heading out to meet it, soon – like the other small, private yachts that would be boarding passengers, Skydash had got permission from the captain to dock with the big vessel that evening, after traffic quietened down a little.
Blink sat primly on one of Skydash’s (newly clean and half-polished) legs, out of the wet grass, carefully unwrapping the cheap, pre-packaged takeaway she’d just bought. Thickly-spiced steam curled into the cool evening air. You could say what you liked about the poor quality of the ingredients – it smelt wonderful. Her mouth was already watering.
The blue jet vented warm air in a sigh. “So. That is going to be our home for the next forty six standard days. I wonder if I’ll be able to get out and stretch my wings much.”
“Mmm.” Blink leaned carefully back against Skydash’s chassis, and chewed quietly at her supper. “It does seems like an awful long time to be cooped up aboard for.”
Skydash snorted, softly. “You’ll be sleeping for most of it. What about me, stuck in the garage, with not even a comfy berth on which to rest my tired helm…” She touched the back of her hand to her brow, feigning a swoon.
“Such melodrama. I don’t know who you get it from.”
“You’re so sympathetic, as usual.” Skydash chuckled, and poked her gently in the arm. “At least you get a proper bed, this time. With real gravity. Not wearing a life-support suit. Comfortable. Looking forward to it?”
Blink nodded, chewing thoughtfully. “I suppose, as much as you can look forwards to forty six days cooped up in a giant silver egg, mostly sleeping.”
“Just think about where we’re going, though. Aren’t you a little excited?”
Blink looked up at her; the blue light of her friend’s optics threw the rest of her face into shadow. “Maybe a little,” she admitted. Inside, she felt like a mixed bag of conflicting emotions – sure, there was a little excitement, but right now her main feeling was one of apprehension. She’d never mingled in normal laima society before, and here she was, about to jump in head-first, pretending to be someone she wasn’t.
I’ll just have to trust that Rae and Zee are right, and I won’t be there long enough for anyone to notice me...
21690 out of 50,000
She could no longer hear the powerful thrum of her friend’s engines, when Blink finally stirred out of her deep, drugged slumber, some days later. For several muggy seconds, she wondered if something had gone wrong… then noticed the pale daylight, streaming in through the little window by her chin. They’d landed.
“Good morning,” Skydash greeted, noticing her friend was awake. “Feeling all right?
Blink managed a non-committal grunt. “How long since we arrived?” She rubbed at her face, trying to force herself to wake up a little. Even though she’d long since warmed up, the careful artificial cooling that had kept her heart rate slow had left her feeling shivery, with a bone-deep chill.
“We landed in the night, some time. Just after midnight, I think.”
“You didn’t wake me up…?”
Not being able to see her face didn’t mean Blink couldn’t tell her friend was grinning. “It was dark, Bee. There was nothing to see. Besides, I thought it would be safer to let you come off the support drugs on your own. Better let your body deal with just the one drug, rather than give you a second one to counteract the first and leave you struggling to process both.”
“But we might miss the sleeper, if I’m just… laying here, all the time-”
“Don’t be silly. I wouldn’t let that happen. We’ve got plenty of time before it departs – it’s not due to break orbit until around midnight.” Skydash hummed a low, comforting harmonic that Blink could feel rather than hear. “I thought you might like to get changed, stretch your legs, maybe get something to eat? You’ve been in stasis – well, good as – for several days, you can’t be comfortable.”
“Ugh.” Blink let her head bonk down against the floor. “No. Not comfortable. But not uncomfortable enough to want to move yet.” She stared out of the little window, against which her nose now pressed. Her face felt very close to the tarmac. She could see the striking yellow lines she remembered being on tiao’I spaceport’s taxiways. “Where are we? Is it safe to stay here?”
“Don’t worry,” Skydash soothed. “We’re in a small civilian parking area, out of the way of most footfall. Security have already been past; they checked you out and were happy with our credentials. Everything is fine. Now come on.” She vibrated her hull plating. “Time to go out and greet the world. I want to get a good stretch too, and I can’t while you’re still aboard.”
“All right, all right, I’m moving.” Like a huge blue caterpillar, Blink slithered bonelessly out of the hatch, dragging her meagre possessions with her, and slumped immediately to her backside on the concrete when her legs refused to support her weight – which was a bad move, because she sat on one critical suit component, and pain shot up between her legs. “Ow-!” She rolled onto her hip, and although the immediate pain faded, suit electronics still stabbed into her. “Skeida! Oh, ow, please let’s get back to microgravity. The world hurts.”
After another few seconds of wriggling, Blink found the only way to get remotely comfortable was to lay flat on her front. She lay and listened to the soft sighs of hydraulics and gears as Skydash reconfigured herself to her usual bipedal form.
“Come on.” A big hand nudged her shoulder. “You can’t lay on the dirt all day.”
“Uugh.” Blink propped herself on one arm, but the suit felt even more uncomfortable than it had when she’d first put it on. Her whole body ached. Her limbs trembled, and the cannulas in her arms felt like they’d grown in size by several whole orders of magnitude. “I know. No offence, Dash, but I have to get out of this thing.” She struggled to right herself. “…My legs don’t work.”
Skydash gently picked her up around the torso, and held her until her wobbly knees had recovered enough to support her. “Such melodrama. I have no idea who you picked that up from,” she teased, in a tone of voice that said she knew precisely who.
“Whoever they were, they must have been an expert,” Blink agreed, making her unsteady way to the public facilities a few strides away. She finally vanished through the door, and the blue light marking the room as ‘empty’ flashed over to yellow-green.
Skydash had begun to wonder if her friend had dozed off again (and would she need to organise a rescue party?) when Blink finally emerged from the public bathrooms, dressed in clean clothes and with her hair artfully tousled. She hobbled over, carefully, clearly still aching, the suit draped over one arm.
“Even the universe’s most comfortable intravenous catheters needs looking after, evidently,” she joked, wincing. “My arms are pretty inflamed. I don’t think there’s any infection, but they’ll be stiff for a while.”
“Phlebitis,” Skydash explained, taking one small hand and brushing the sleeve back, so she could see the striking purplish lines on the fessine’s forearm. “It doesn’t look too serious just yet. We could hit the Infirmary for some painkillers later, if you need, but it’ll probably clear up on its own.”
“Small blessings, hey?” Blink shivered. “I just wish I could warm up a little!”
“That’s probably a side effect of the drugs, too. It’ll be fine once they’re out of your body.” Skydash leaned closer, and lowered her voice. “You got your disguise sorted…?” she checked, quietly.
Blink stretched her shoulders, with a wince. “Does it look all right? I thought I’d got enough practice on Hesger, but first time I did it too tight, now I think it’s too loose,” she explained.
“It looks fine. You just haven’t completely rebooted yet so you’re not thinking completely straight.”
Blink nodded, carefully. “You will tell me if I ever look ‘off’…?”
“Of course.”
Blink held the suit up in front of her, by its shoulders. “So what do we do with this, now?”
“Let me have it.” Skydash took it from her, delicately, and began to fold it up. “Never know when we might need it again.”
Blink rubbed her arms, uneasily. “I was sort of hoping we could just burn it,” she half-joked.
“Aw, Blink.” Skydash shot her a reproachful glance. “I know it was uncomfortable, but it got you here, didn’t it? Besides,” her voice shrank, just a tiny bit, “I designed it, mostly.”
Blink looked like she’d swallowed her tongue. “I-I didn’t mean it like that-! Skeida, Dash, I’m sorry-… just making a stupid joke. I’m sorry?”
Skydash offered a fleeting smile. “Brume might only be our first stop, after all.” She went on, stowing the carefully folded suit into a small storage compartment. “If we need to move on from there? We might not get the chance to print another one.”
Feeling thoroughly chastised, Blink just nodded, at first. “Trust you to out-logic me, as well, as usual.” She rubbed the back of her neck. “What-… what should we do now?”
“Well, um. I had an idea.” Skydash shrugged, sheepishly. “While you were taking a shower, I was investigating whether they have any bathing facilities for a person my size,” she admitted. “I don’t know if it’s just because I haven’t quite learned their language yet and don’t know what to look for, but I can’t see anything. Not even an automated facility. Sitting out in the rain on Hesger didn’t help in the slightest. I’m filthy, and I stink.”
Blink leaned closer and gave her an intentionally-close-and-thorough sniffing. “No; still smell acceptable to me.”
Skydash gave her a gentle shove that still toppled Blink onto her aft. “Cut that out, weirdo.”
“Oww.” Blink laughed around a groan, and subsided to lay flat on her back, arms akimbo. “If you really want a bath-”
“You’re not getting me on that sleeper without one, let’s put it that way.”
“-I may be able to help you with that. It’s not automated, but-… well, let me show you.”
Blink led her friend across the spaceport to a small area of hard-standing, close to the staff residences. “It’s a public facility, although only staff ever really use it,” she explained, waving her in. She headed to the small bank of well-used lockers, tucked under a canopy to keep the worst of any inclement weather off, and began to twiddle the dials on one of the top doors.
“How did you know about this place?” Skydash settled carefully in the tiled centre of the floor, and picked up one of the brush-tipped hoses, examining it closely.
Blink glanced back over her shoulder, and shrugged, sheepishly. “Well, it used to be my bathroom.” She punched the locker door, and it finally unstuck. “My soap is still here.” She picked out a jar of gelatinous green detergent, and a brush. “Catch.”
Skydash intercepted the jar sailing through the air before it could hit her, and carefully unscrewed the top. Dirty fingermarks liberally covered the outside, and the soap inside wasn’t a whole lot better, streaked with black grease. “Proof of ownership?” She snorted. “I’m surprised you didn’t put as much grease back on as you washed off. If this is what you call ‘soap’ then I’m not surprised Uncle Star didn’t think it existed here.”
“Shush.” Blink spritzed her with warm water. “Or I’ll make you do it yourself.”
With both of them wielding brushes, it didn’t take long for the unattractive industrial detergent to work up into thick dredges of soft green-grey foam around the big female. That is, Skydash tried to help, but having a skilled hand work the brush over her fuselage turned her rapidly into a helpless, purring wing-kitten in the middle of the floor.
Blink smiled and shook her head, and continued brushing.
Not needing to concentrate on getting all her accumulated filth off, Skydash had plenty of time to look around the spaceport, and finally spotted something interesting. “Bee? Look up!”
Blink followed the line of the foam-covered blue arm, and spotted a small silvery dot in the deep afternoon sky. “Is that the sleeper? It’s huge.”
The hibernaculum was more of an interstellar apartment block than a luxury cruise liner, easily big enough to be seen from the planet’s surface. Like a dramatically-tapering silver egg, with incongruously tacked-on engines at one end, it seemed to lack any kind of aerodynamic aesthetic. Blink guessed it didn’t really need it – it wasn’t designed with landing in mind. Most passengers reached it by shuttle, unless they owned their own short-range transit. She hoped the on-board ‘garage’ would be big enough for her friend to be comfortable.
“Mm-hmm.” Skydash flared her wings, so Blink could reach a little better, and grunted her pleasure as the brush worked down the edge of one of the larger plates, scrubbing out the accumulated dust. “I still have no idea what it is Footloose has against baths. It’s so much more comfortable to be free of… ugh. I don’t even know what I must be caked in.”
“Hush, it’s coming off easy. I might even give you a polish if we have enough time.”
“You wicked temptress. Is that a request for me to help?” Skydash picked up the brush, and got to work on her thrusters with a renewed vigour.
“Aw, Dash.” Blink laughed, sadly. “You travelled all the way from a different galaxy, to rescue me from myself. The very least I could offer is a little no-strings-attached pampering!”
That evening, the two travellers sat together on the hillside behind the spaceport, watching all shape and size of vehicles coming and going as the sun dwindled into a glorious sunset. Away on the distant horizon, sunlight glinted off the hibernaculum, turning it briefly into another star in the sky. They’d be heading out to meet it, soon – like the other small, private yachts that would be boarding passengers, Skydash had got permission from the captain to dock with the big vessel that evening, after traffic quietened down a little.
Blink sat primly on one of Skydash’s (newly clean and half-polished) legs, out of the wet grass, carefully unwrapping the cheap, pre-packaged takeaway she’d just bought. Thickly-spiced steam curled into the cool evening air. You could say what you liked about the poor quality of the ingredients – it smelt wonderful. Her mouth was already watering.
The blue jet vented warm air in a sigh. “So. That is going to be our home for the next forty six standard days. I wonder if I’ll be able to get out and stretch my wings much.”
“Mmm.” Blink leaned carefully back against Skydash’s chassis, and chewed quietly at her supper. “It does seems like an awful long time to be cooped up aboard for.”
Skydash snorted, softly. “You’ll be sleeping for most of it. What about me, stuck in the garage, with not even a comfy berth on which to rest my tired helm…” She touched the back of her hand to her brow, feigning a swoon.
“Such melodrama. I don’t know who you get it from.”
“You’re so sympathetic, as usual.” Skydash chuckled, and poked her gently in the arm. “At least you get a proper bed, this time. With real gravity. Not wearing a life-support suit. Comfortable. Looking forward to it?”
Blink nodded, chewing thoughtfully. “I suppose, as much as you can look forwards to forty six days cooped up in a giant silver egg, mostly sleeping.”
“Just think about where we’re going, though. Aren’t you a little excited?”
Blink looked up at her; the blue light of her friend’s optics threw the rest of her face into shadow. “Maybe a little,” she admitted. Inside, she felt like a mixed bag of conflicting emotions – sure, there was a little excitement, but right now her main feeling was one of apprehension. She’d never mingled in normal laima society before, and here she was, about to jump in head-first, pretending to be someone she wasn’t.
I’ll just have to trust that Rae and Zee are right, and I won’t be there long enough for anyone to notice me...
