"Over and over again / I keep tasting that sweet madeleine / looking back at my life now and then..."
.
.
It happens in the small hours, when one shift is weary and ready to get some rack time, and the next shift is still in deep sleep. The civilians keep to their quarters in this stretch of time, only a few essential workers going about their tasks, already anticipating relief.
It's as close to the dead of night as it ever gets in the Fleet.
Laura stands next to Bill, dog-tired, on the verge of tears, and angry at herself for her shallow emotions. This is the right thing to do, they both know it. It's just that so much has been taken from them, all of them. Rage at the unfairness bites at her. No one understands why this had to happen, not her, not the Admiral, not any of them.
This last task is not advertised. It won't be in the press. It won't go out over the wireless. It will barely be recorded in the ships' logs. She doesn't know how he can stand to write the words, other than the practice he's gotten in writing the unthinkable.
The glass-fronted space is filling with amazing scents, and she breathes in deep. It's a tropical, sweet-tart mix, a vegetal background underneath it. It's fruit salad served in a lush garden. She wants to bathe in it, wants to immerse herself in the richness.
She looks at Bill, and sees his throat move with involuntary swallows. His mouth is watering as much as hers is. It's almost unbearable, and she wonders if she should stop, ask for one more set of tests.
There's already been six. The results have been the same. But the part of her brain that remembers strawberry pie and pineapple cake and salted cucumbers with fresh ground pepper pokes at her.
Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure?
She tells her suicidal brain to shut up as the doors to the airlock open one last time. The image of Saul driving a forklift is almost novel enough to take her mind off what they're getting ready to do. The containers turn over, dumping their contents all over the airlock floor. He backs out of the space, containers still attached to the machine. They can't afford to waste the containers.
She should have sent for more when she had the chance. Every time she waved Billy or Tory or Jaffee away, telling them she'd eat later, coffee and toast would be fine, she was busy…she regrets them all.
Even out here, even after all this, I still thought I had plenty of time. The irony burns.
She's asked him if he thinks she's being silly. They will have sustenance; pilots have died to make it so. They'll have nutrients, protein, calories
He started talking about chilies and various kinds of noodles, fresh coffee and leafy greens and cherries, then stops. Finally he tells her no, she's not being silly. It's a final insult to their humanity and it makes sense that it hurts.
The bottom layers are mashed under the weight of the pile. Red and purple, yellow and green juices flow over the floor of the airlock. The combined smell gets richer and Laura finds herself missing the most prosaic of smoothies she used to make herself swallow when she was in a hurry.
A week ago, she left a boiled potato on her plate. It had been dotted with butter and pepper, earthy and comforting, but just starch, nothing special. Her eyes close for a second. She wishes now she'd eaten that potato, enjoyed the fragrant steam and the fluffy texture. If she'd known it was the last potato she'd ever get the chance to eat…
The mound of fresh fruits and vegetables are up past the glass, and she can pick out whole tomatoes, heads of lettuce, apples, bananas. In other airlocks, manned by other senior officers, there are stores of grains, piles of meat.
All contaminated with toxic chemicals. All deadly.
We need the room.
We don't need the temptation.
It's time, he tells her.
Stupid, that she's thinking now of children who will forget what real food tastes like. At least they'll live, and won't know what it's like to have their guts turned inside out by contaminated food.
We'll find Earth, he says. And it'll have all of this and more. Maybe better than what we had here.
Their hands are joined when they hit the button. It's an execution of one of the few pleasures they'd had left, an execution of their history, their past. Another link to "home" broken. A kaleidoscope of primary colors swirls against the black for a moment, then the vacuum of space does its job and every drop, every speck is scoured off the deck, like nothing had ever been there at all.
He puts his arms around her as the airlock doors close.
We'll have real food again, he tells her. We'll find Earth and I'll build us a cabin and we'll grow old tending gardens, raising chickens, whatever small edible bird they have on Earth. And we'll do what we can with the algae. The spice stores didn't get hit. It'll be okay.
She lets herself lean into him, and he's so confident, so sure, she can almost believe him and the future he's spinning.
She breathes in deep, and her lungs fill with the ghost-scent of fresh fruit. She holds it until her chest hurts, then lets it out.
It takes a few seconds to compose themselves, to get their minds right. Good people died to find the algae planet. It's life, it'll be enough. What's one more loss, in the scheme of things? They're still standing.
Their leader faces slip back over their features. By the time they're accepting their first cups of algae coffee in the officer's mess, their grateful smiles are firmly in place, one more necessary adjustment to Fleet reality.
"To finding Earth," they say, and toast each other with their cups.