Embarkment 2577 (22 page)

Adam shrugged. “Some have one body working on a
starship while another stays home. It works on the quantum level.”

He sighed and gave me a serious look. “It’s time for
me to go back. Will you be alright?”

Anya waved him off. “Don’t be such a mother hen,
she’ll be fine. And John and I are here.”

A slight smile tugged at his lips. “That’s what makes
me worried.”

John chuckled and emptied his glass. Was the man
bottomless?

“Call for me the second you need anything. No reason
is too small.” Adam held my gaze a moment longer.

I hesitated, watching him disappear in the crowd.
“Adam, wait!”

He turned around with a quizzical expression on his
face. I ran after him. When I had almost reached him, I stumbled on something
on the completely flat floor. He caught me and put me back on my feet. “Are you
drunk?”

He sounded amused rather than accusing, and after what
happened in the bar with Mika he could hardly blame me. It still made me
defensive. “No.”

“The alcohol balance on your breath and your pupil
dilation say otherwise.”

I wanted to stick my tongue out at him, but he was
much too close and his arm around me felt much too good to keep objecting.
“Well, maybe a little. Please don’t go.”

My plea made him smile, and he sounded apologetic. “I
have to. You could come with me.”

Oh yes, I could sit alone all night waiting for him to
come home. What fun. Especially compared to chatting with Anya and John. I’d be
a third wheel when Adam left, but anyway…

I shook my head, and he pulled me closer, applying all
his charm. “Most of the crew are on shore leave. We have a repair team
replacing the Tokamak. It’s just a guard duty manning the radio tonight. Come
keep me company.”

His arm around my waist held me firmly and his lips
were close to my skin, making it difficult to think coherently. He
was
overprotective,
but it was sweet too. “Are you sure?”

He smiled and tightened his grip on me. “Absolutely.”

I couldn’t say no.

In my mind, the route between the ship and the bar was
pretty simple. In reality, not so much. “Wow, I could have walked around here
for days without finding my way home.”

“No… If you get lost you call for me and I come get
you.”

“Would you do that? Leave your post for me?”

“I’d figure something out.”

When we entered the ship I expected to go to the
bridge, but Adam led the way in another direction. “Where are we going?”

“Observation deck. I figured you’d like that better.”

“We have an observation deck? What’s an observation
deck?”

He put up an innocent face until we reached a large
room. A part of it had consoles like a miniature bridge, and when his skilled
hands flew over the controls, the ceiling became transparent. The light from
the stars competed with the lights from the station. “Oh wow.”

“
This
is an observation deck.”

“Can we see home from here?”

“Give me a second…” He pressed something and said,
“Bridge, this is Adam reporting in from the observation deck. Please transfer
controls here.”

Jia’Lyn’s voice answered, “You have the ship,
Commander.”

I averted my eyes from the spectacular scenery
overhead. “Are you ever worried? That something will happen, I mean.”

If responsibility for the ship and all the passengers
were to rest on my shoulders, I’d be petrified. So many decisions to make, and
the wrong one would lead to disaster.

“No. Things happen all the time. You learn to plan
ahead and go with it. Computer, please magnify section two two four, one five
nine.”

A portion of the ceiling moved. “It’s a projection?”

“Yes and no. Right now, that part is. The rest just
serves as a window. See that little dot over there? That’s your sun.”

Wow. So far away. Since light takes time to travel,
maybe the rays I saw were from my own time. Or the time of the dinosaurs… I
preferred to think they were from a
when
I might have experienced. Maybe
the very day when I first met Adam.

A voice called on the radio. “Tokamak engineering crew
to bridge. We are ready to remove your device, shift to auxiliary power.”

My husband walked over to one of the consoles.
“Acknowledged. Is the TDD working?”

“Splendidly, Sir. We will need one on every base.”

TDD? Aah, it would have to be Time Dilution Device or
something like that. Good for Mika and her people. “Won’t we like… float away
or something if they take that thingy off the ship?”

Adam smiled. “Good thinking, but no. We’re on the
station’s gravitational field right now.”

I eventually fell asleep there, curled up in Adam’s
arms under the stars. When I woke it was morning, and he was gone. I sat in a
soft reclined chair, covered with a quilt. On the floor was a tray with
breakfast, a flower, and a note. “Sorry I can’t be here with you. Love, A.”

We stayed at the station for a few days. Adam spent
all too much time playing with the brand new black hole – well,
he
called it calibrating – and John took Anya and me for adventures. He seemed to
know every nook and cranny, every merchant, and every guard.

I couldn’t ask when Anya was around, but I took the
opportunity as soon as she was distracted in a store. “Don’t you get tired of
having me around? If you guys want to be alone, just tell me and I’ll be gone
in a second.”

He laughed. “I don’t know my son and he seems happy to
keep it that way. At least let me know you.”

Good point. Adam would probably be more interested if
someone told him about their relation, but I had promised to keep the secret.
In the strict sense of the word John and I might not be family, but at heart,
we were.

When I came home that evening, my husband stared out a
window with his arms crossed over his chest. He didn’t turn around, so I
wrapped my arms around him from behind. “Hey… I didn’t expect you home.”

He sighed. “Did you have a good time?”

“Yes. John took us for a picnic. This place is
amazing.”

He turned enough to meet my eyes. “You know he’s a
pirate, right?”

“Oh don’t be like that. He’s sweet and funny.”

“A sweet and funny guy who steals and smuggles for a
living. The crew of this ship usually hunts people like him down. It’s our job
to put them away.”

I rubbed my temples.

“We’re leaving tomorrow, so try not to get too
attached to him.”

Adam headed for the door. Were we having a fight?
“Wait… Where are you going?”

“I’m going to work.”

A part of me wanted him to hurry up so I could fling
something at the door as soon as it closed behind him. Sure there would be
shards to clean up afterwards, but he was… impossible. My less temperamental
part won. I ran after him and pressed myself in between him and the door.

“What?” He sounded tired. I didn’t have anything to
say, so I threw my arms around him and pressed my lips against his. Long
seconds ticked by when he just stood there, but then he held me and kissed me
back.

“I love you. I’m sorry I’m making life hard for you.”

He gave his head a slight shake. “You go have fun.”

“If you were anyone else, I’d say you were jealous.”

“I’m late for duty is what I am.”

Interesting. I expected him to deny it. “Haven’t you
done an awful lot of that lately?”

“A lot of what?”

“Work, silly.”

“Well, there’s a lot of work to be done. Silly.”

I stole another kiss. “Just remember to hurry home to
your wife. She misses you.”

He finally smiled.

The next morning, I opened my eyes late
and alone. That couldn’t be good; unless we had a ship wide disaster, Adam
always
woke me up at 6:02 AM. I pulled the sheet around me and plodded barefoot
through the rooms. Maybe he was in his study, caught up in something only an
android would understand.

When the door slid open a horrifying
thought struck me; he might have company in there and I should probably have
put some clothes on.

Adam sat behind his work area. Alone.
Phew! I walked in and took a seat on the desk. “What’s up, handsome?”

“Nothing. I thought you needed to
sleep.”

I rested my foot on his chair, so he
would
have
to see my leg. “I got cold and lonely.”

He kissed my knee. “Do you want me to
make you breakfast?”

I sure wanted him to do
something
.
Food might not be on the top of that list, but it was a start. “Did you ever
meet your father?”

He looked as surprised by the change of
subject as I was to hear the words come out of my mouth.

“No. He was already gone when I was
activated.”

Activated. What a cold word for coming
to life. “How much alike do you think you are?”

“I’m supposed to be pretty much like
him. But more reliable.”

More reliable probably implied more
serious. No wonder I for brief glimpses of time thought John was Adam. I ran my
fingers over his cheek. “Take your shirt off.”

“Why?”

Sheesh. “What do you think? I want to
admire your body.”

He laughed. “You’re such a little troll.
You know they’re not real, right?”

Real, not real, who cared? His muscles
were there and that was definitely real enough for me. I moved over to his lap
and unbuttoned it myself.

*****

We had to say goodbye to John just
before lunch. Adam stood over to the side, waiting with his hands on his back.
Anya looked about to cry. Could holograms cry?

John hugged me with arms that felt just
like my husband’s, and murmured, “It was good to meet you. Make sure Adam takes
care of you.”

“When will we see you again?”

John smirked and fixed his eyes on Adam. “As soon as I
can figure out somewhere to meet up with you gals where your husband and the
crew won’t try to kill me.”

Anya slapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh no, they
wouldn’t do that.” She looked at Adam. “You wouldn’t do that, right?”

He rolled his eyes and John said in a sardonic voice,
“Of course not.”

I averted my eyes and tried not to cry myself when
John and Anya kissed goodbye. She stood looking for him when the heavy door to
the ship closed.

That night, just before Adam was about to leave for
the bridge, he asked, “You miss him already, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

He sounded distant when he said, “I’m sure you’ll see
him again soon.”

A couple of days passed, and Adam was still weird. He
tried not to show it, but holed up in his office. I decided to surprise him.
Trust me, not an easy thing to do. I figured a good way to say, “I love you”
would be to be awake in the morning when he came home, and meet him by the door
as the sexiest version of myself imaginable.

The plan made perfect sense in theory. In reality, it
was much harder than I expected. I started with asking the computer to wake me
up at 5:30. Half an hour should be enough time to get ready.

When morning came, I was so tired I didn’t want to
open my eyes. Could I stay in bed and do this some other day instead? No. Adam
would do anything for me, and being unwilling to sacrifice half an hour’s sleep
for him was pathetic.

Getting the clothes wasn’t easy. I couldn’t make the
replicator produce
anything
, and asking Anya for help with turning into
the sexy nurse Adam mentioned made me turn red as a tomato. It was probably a
joke, of course, but he must have gotten the idea
somewhere
to even say
it. When did nurses start using corsets? And how did the bloody thing go on?

I was ready at six sharp, two minutes before I
expected him to walk through the door. As much as I struggled to look sultry,
the outfit made me feel like an idiot. “Who wears these things anyway?”

I expected the computer to say, “No one I know of” but
it stayed silent.

Adam stopped and stared right inside the door. “What
are you doing?”

“You wanted a sexy nurse. I’m trying to be a sexy
nurse.” I bent forward and made a kissy pouty mouth.

He lifted his eyebrows.

“I might not be good at it, but I’m trying.”

I could almost see him switch his emotions on; life
returned to his eyes and he smiled. “You are the sexiest nurse any man could
dream of.”

Walking in these absurd high heeled shoes wasn’t easy,
but I only needed to take a couple of steps to reach him. “How did you get this
idea anyway?”

He laughed for the first time for days. “I don’t know.
It was the first thing that came to mind. I didn’t expect you to
do
it.”