Chapter Six
Gowns
Alara Kitan approaches the Synthesizer Room, lost in thoughts too few of which are pleasant. 'Ignorance is Bliss' the humans say, and that appears to be the sole answer to 'How could he?'
Now 'all I have to do is keep the entire ship ignorant' is her only consolation.
Immediately after Gordon had left her quarters, she'd taken his present off from about her neck and she's ashamed to have thought 'what if I said I didn't know my own strength and snapped the hinge?'
No. Hurting her boyfriend is no way to preserve her dignity.
Nor would 'I don't have a thing to wear to go with it' be less than an insult, not with a room designed to fashion absolutely anything in the computer's files and with the ability to fashion original things by verbal command. So she'd decided to bite the bullet 'what does that even mean?' and to choose something appropriate for the Reception for the new crew.
She hadn't expected to step through the opening door and collide with the back of a green jacketed crew-woman. "Oh, sorry."
The woman whirls to her. "No, my fault."
"Mother McGee?" Did she read fright in that first moment? No, couldn't be. The woman was only startled.
"Who – oh, I remember. Alara Kitan, Chief of Security."
"Yes," she confirms with a smile that's intended to be disarming; it's so rare that she is greeted by her title, but she's unsure which of them she's trying to relax. She'd escorted the new Chaplain to her quarters after her meeting with the Captain, but she's sure the woman has met so many new people very quickly so it's understandable if she loses track.
x
"I was told to come here, to find a dress, a gown really but..." the priest gestures vaguely into the room. Its contents consist solely of a set of lighted cubical pedestals with circular central synthesizer outlets of varying diameters and computer controls at the lower right of each top.
"Are you familiar with the system?"
"No. I mean I've seen synthesizers plenty of times but not like these. I used the one in the Seminary, and the one in my apartment has a hundred controls."
Alara refrains from commenting on this. Union vessels have State-of-the-Art systems and Orville is slightly more than a year out of space dock and therefore many devices are more intuitive than would be found in personal possession, especially among civilians. "Well, it's simple." They step to the nearest pedestal. "You call up the item on the computer, if clothing…."
"A dress. Gown. For the Reception."
x
Alara activates the controls, calls up on the screen above the controls in the near right hand top of the cube the appropriate categories. "Then you fill in the size, color and so forth, then press that button." The woman stares at the control for several seconds. "Would you like some suggestions?"
"When I think of the number of years that I spent wearing anything but dresses... My 'dresses' were black Cassocks and white Albs, my formal gowns were liturgical vestments that were nothing like the things anyone else wears. When I went into the city, I wore stuff as far from formal things as I could get. In summers shorts and tee shirts got me just fine. I literally do not know what would look good."
"How abouuuu...?" Kitan looks the Chaplain down and up, considers. "Computer, one Acaterian dumartican gown, lavender, cut diagonally at top to leave the left shoulder and arm bare." She turns again to Crystal. "What is your size?"
She gives the machine the particulars, pushes the 'Execute' button and a moment later a materialization field in the cube's center rises and falls as a column of white light and a stack of folded cloth rests upon the cube. Crystal takes it by the shoulders, the light purple gown falls out as she removes it from the device and holds it before her. The sheen of material changes shades as it drapes down her body.
"I find that the left side being bare hints at accessibility," Kitan explains. "Right is subconsciously aggressive, as if keeping the sword or weapon arm free."
Sword?
"It does look nice." The gown is not diaphanous nor is it especially ornate but the material flows as she turns it in the overhead light, each change in angle altering the lavender shades in near fluidic harmony. "Very nice."
x
Alara takes her turn at the control; she has a clearer image of what she wants and, in a moment, produces upon the pedestal and lets hang out a cobalt blue gown with subtle Xelayan decorative stitching along a sloping neckline which contains no suggestive or distracting dip. It too has the flowing sheen that is reminiscent of the blue ocean.
The neckline will be low enough to activate Gordon's gift but she hopes the gown will distract from the silver band and most especially the blinking lights.
Right.
x
"Lovely," Crystal says, but when she looks down at the gown before her own body, she seems self-conscious.
"Is anything wrong?"
"Does it seem a little too… sexy?"
"Do you mean 'for a priest'?"
"Uh, huh." She reaches to return the gown to the cube's top but Alara takes hold of her wrist.
"This crew is going to see you in your Worship clothes, in your uniform," she waves her hands over the green and black, "and sweaty, disheveled and panting in plastered tee shirt and dripping shorts after a two-hour Workout; I am a merciless taskmistress. Trust me, there is no such thing as too sexy."
xxx
Having hung the lavender gown in her quarters in the closet with what few favorite vestments she'd brought, she could synthesize more as needed, and Alara had hung her own blue one beside it for later retrieval, Crystal shows her new friend to her office. For now, this is a very informal tour that doesn't get more than a few meters.
Crystal is by no means markedly psychic but she thinks she's picked up on something in the Xelayan woman that's different from her initial manner, and she'd decided to provide privacy should the woman want it, during the guise of casual acquaintanceship should she guess wrong.
She lets Alara into the office first, very conscious of the reversal of roles from so short a time ago when the red uniformed woman had escorted her to her quarters, but now she's self-conscious for in reality there's nothing to show. The faux wood walls and the couch and chair before the viewscreen to their left and the table across the room at the right corner looking out the window at the Doppler stars and the round table opposite it with two chairs and the synthesizer at the right wall are starting to feel Standard Issue and most likely are.
"You can add anything to this place that you want," Alara says.
"I intend to, once I figure out what. You have nine non-Terran races here plus nearly every Terran Faith, but I want everyone to feel represented when they come in. I'm just wondering how do I avoid crowding the walls?"
"If I know humans, you'll get gifts. Post them. I'll be happy to give you something uniquely Xinxisian and I can drop some hints that you're looking to decorate."
"Thanks. I brought this from Earth," she says, picking up from the desk the ten-inch-long emitter bar. She chooses the short wall to her right between the Refresher door and the Synthesizer, peels off a protective covering and, using the automatic leveler at chin height until the tiny light turns from red to green, adheres the device. At a touch of the control, a rectangular blue holographic field appears above, filled with paragraphs of white.
Alara steps beside her hostess, close enough to read the words.
"What is it?"
"Over four hundred years old, it describes the nature of the adversary I'm always to oppose, from the view of a society that became too cool and modern to remember the struggle."
Who does the Mischief?
Author Unknown.
Men don't believe in the Devil now as their fathers used to do.
They've forced the door of the broadest Creed to let the rascal through.
There isn't a print of his cloven hoof or a fiery dart from his bow
To be found on the Earth anywhere today for the world has voted it so.
So who is mixing the fatal draught that praises heart and brain?
And loads the Earth with each passing year with ten hundred thousand slain?
Who blights the bloom of the land today with the fiery breath of hell?
If the Devil isn't and never was, won't somebody rise and tell?
Who dogs the steps of the toiling Saint and digs the ditch for his feet?
Who sows the tares in the Field of Time wherever God sows wheat?
The Devil is voted not to be and of course the thing is true
But who is doing the kind of work the Devil alone should do?
We're told he does not go about as a roaring lion now,
But who shall be held responsible for the everlasting row
To be heard in Home and Church and State, to the Earth's remotest bound
If the Devil, by unanimous vote, is nowhere to be found?
Won't somebody step to the front forthwith and make his bow and show
How the frauds and the crimes of the day spring up, for surely we want to know?
The Devil was fairly voted out and of course the Devil is gone.
A simple people would like to know who carries his business on?
"That's very powerful," Alara says, then tells her new friend "Xelaya doesn't have a Devil, no one to tempt and to torture us when we die."
"Oh?" she keeps it nonjudgmental, her eyes kept to the poem because bland discretion is something she'll probably never master.
"We have worse."
This pulls Crystal's gaze. "What could be worse?"
Alara turns to her and Crystal sees a horror she hadn't imagined in the Security Chief. "We have Forgetfulness."
Somehow this conveys a horror for the woman that Hell does not. "Forget?"
She has counseled, prayed with, many who wished they could forget.
"Family is everything to Xelayans. There is no other thing that so defines us, our lives, our beings. Our connection to others gives our lives meaning. That's who we forget." Her voice, which had started out strong, is hushed further and further by horror. "Family. Love. Joy. Parents. Brothers. Sisters. Children. Grandparents. Grandchildren. All family. Everyone. We exist… alone… for a billion trillion years and more… with no one."
xxx
They'd parted soon after at Crystal's rooms, Alara retrieving her gown to change in her own quarters with plans to get together later in the evening. Their parting had been cordial, yet Crystal had been unable to shake the impression that something was wrong. Several times the Xelayan had been about to speak and had very obviously changed her mind.
She hopes her friend will speak of whatever it is later, even at the upcoming Reception.
x
Now, feeling extremely conspicuous walking the corridors in her long lavender gown when every step changes the shades of the garment, feeling ostentatious and far too distracting in the way the off-the-left-shoulder gown accents her bare arm and shoulder and way ... too … sexy, ('I can't even wear a bra.') Crystal approaches the door to Mooska's Lounge, but slows with every step.
Of course there's no vacuum on the other side waiting to kill her. Waiting? She has to get over this. There's a party in there, and from the chronometer in her quarters while she was fussing over this gown the party is already going on.
She realizes she's going more slowly, can hardly miss it. She remembers something one of her High School Math Teachers had taught; that if you approach something and halve your approach with every step, you will never actually reach it, you'll just keep approaching it with smaller and smaller progressions, forev –.
"Good evening."
"Eep!"
x
She whirls, a tall thin black man is there, wearing a deep blue jacket over black pants and he's trying to smooth down a smile. "Excuse me, did you just say 'eep'?"
"Yes and I'm sorry." She starts to salute, he's not in uniform so she can't tell but Lieutenant is mid-range so she'll play the odds but halts it chest high; these people don't salute so why was she taught it? She extends her hand. "Lieutenant Crys – Chaplain Crystal McGee I mean."
"Good to meet you, Lieutenant Chaplain Crystal," he says, taking her hand. "Again, that is."
"No - I mean - Crystal, not Chaplain - I mean I am the Chaplain but my name's Crystal. Again?" sounds a little safer.
"We met in the Shuttle Bay, though I suppose that was a rush. John LaMarr."
"Crys - you know that."
"Yes." There's that contained, wiped off and refurbished smile.
She flashes through what little she knows of the ship's roster - a grand dozen names. "Chief Engineer, Lieutenant Commander." Her hand snaps up but she halts it with greater force at neck high, then wishes the deck would open up and swallow her before she does another stupid thing; three Strikes already (counting the 'eep') and she wants to be Out.
x
"That's a very nice dress," forces her eyes down to it. The lavender gown reaches to three inches of the deck (she'd fashioned matching high heeled slippers) and any movement, any breath, changes the effect of the sheen. It bares her left shoulder, that and her arm and the top is diagonal across her upper chest and it doesn't droop but it's way too sexy, but the other sleeve is long and it too changes reflection with her movements.
"Chief Kitan made it for me. That is, she programmed the synthesizer."
"Alara." She supposes her face has fallen into 'what?' "We're off duty, and even on duty we're not sticklers for protocol. Unless we're running at Alert or we have VIPs aboard, the Captain runs a, well not a loose ship, we're pretty tight but less formal than, say, the Tesla might be."
She nods, glad of his perception. The Tesla is everything the Orville is not, but there she'd picked up on the rules and expectations pretty quickly. It's hard to make an ass of one's self by obeying the rules. "Takes some getting used to."
"You'll pick it up."
"I'd just picked up the Tesla." But aboard that starship, her first time outside the Solar System, knowing the trip was going to be very brief, she'd been companionable to the ship's crew as she'd been taught in the Seminary - treat everyone alike - but she'd socialized more with her brand new crew-mates heading for Orville. But the saluting, the formality, that was something from the Tesla that she'd adapted to and now it makes her look and feel silly to fall back on them.
x
"Would you like to go in?"
She feels the expression on her face must be a stupid one and tries to cover as quickly as she can. "Yes. I would. Thank you."
For a long moment neither moves, then LaMarr gestures with a sweeping motion behind her. "Oh, yes." She leads the last few steps to the door. 'Direct me oh Lord in this and all my doings with your most gracious favor and further me with your continuing help that in all my works begun continued and ended in you I may glorify your holy Name and finally by your mercy attain everlasting life amen.' The doors slide apart. 'HEEELLLP!'