Starmind Chapter 23 (Patreon)

The day ended pretty quickly after the meeting. Bekeri was very excited to switch on the Teletic Fabricator and then, after queuing up two Matrix blanks on the deposition lathe, spent the rest of the evening after dinner figuring out how to actually make it do anything. Varlanda and Simeon were both allowed to go off duty early to get some rest before their unnecessary watches, and Temeri went back to Gunship-Me to finish up in the armory. She said that it was so I could recycle the reactor as soon as possible, but I had a sneaking suspicion that she was just being nice when she said that; she seemed too excited about the whole thing.

When she returned to my main body, she was carrying one long weapon on a strap over her shoulders, one short one on a belt around her waist, and two big cases in her hands. I hated them all. My first impulse was to just recycle it all, right out of her hands, but that would have really upset her. Then I thought that I could maybe convince her to leave them, but she looked so pleased with herself that I didn’t even bother trying. I settled on asking her to please keep them in her cabin where I wouldn’t have to see them. Thankfully, she didn’t argue, stowing them away before she cleaned up and went to bed.

Even with the bit of understanding I’d gained talking to her, I still didn’t understand how someone could be so happy about weapons. I barely even had any happy memories from her about weapons, either; she’d won a competition or two, but that was about it. Still, that didn’t change the fact that right then and there she looked a little more relaxed knowing that she had those things. I couldn’t bring myself to take that comfort away from her.

Once everyone else had left the bridge, Harvin reclined his couch and closed his eyes. Then he just lay there, doing Harvin things. Whenever he did, he looked like he was sleeping, and he could be pretty unresponsive, but he was definitely working.

At least that was what everyone told me. And while I really didn’t want to doubt anyone, I’d watched him a lot, and I really couldn’t see it. “So…” I asked him after he’d lain there for a while. “What’re you doing?”

Harvin didn’t answer for a long while. Then his eyes fluttered open, and he mumbled, “Sorry. Forgot you can’t hear me yet. Uh, doing a couple of things, really. Keeping an eye on that watcher right now, mostly, but I’m also sending at Mundus about once every hour, listening for any message from their direction indicating that they’ve heard me or that they’re looking for us, and I’m trying to keep my mind open to spot any other incoming ships that we can’t see on the sensors. That one’s a long shot; trying to spot a mind when you don’t know where it is… yeah. The distances out here are far beyond anything I ever expected to work with. It’s all a little much, to be honest.”

“All that at once?!” That was amazing! I mean, he hadn’t gotten in touch with Mundus yet, and he hadn’t spotted any of the ships before the sensors did, but no wonder if he was doing all those things at the same time! “I had no idea you were working that hard! Is there anything I can do to help?”

He smiled and closed his eyes again. “That’s alright, Star. Keeping me comfortable enough to relax is already a big help. Though, maybe this is a good time to see if you can learn to listen? If you could do that…”

“I could help you look for ships and everything?”

“Right. Or maybe listen to messages from home. Just being able to focus completely on what’s happening around Avara would be a load off me.”

“Okay!” I said. I wasn’t sure if I could learn to listen to thoughts the way Harvin could. Speaking into the Crew’s minds was just something I could do; I didn’t even have a skill for it. But hearing how hard Harvin’s job was filled me with determination to do my absolute best. If it was at all possible for me to learn, I was going to do it!

*

“I think we may as well stop here for tonight,” Harvin said a few hours later. “It’s getting to the end of my watch, and I should get some final observations in before I go to bed.”

He was right. I didn’t see any point in trying anymore. Even recycling the reactor and weapons on Gunship-Me hadn’t been enough to keep my spirits up as I failed, time and time again, to “hear” anything at all from Harvin. He’d made it sound so easy, too!

I was absolutely miserable.

What I needed to learn was to connect my thoughts to his — to establish a sympathetic link, as he called it — without actually sending anything his way. He’d tried to teach me the way he’d learned — the way anyone learned who wasn’t self-taught. The way that worked was that I’d send a thought to him, the way I did whenever I spoke into his or anyone else’s mind. “Humming” a note was a popular way of doing it, since it was easy to keep up forever. That would establish the link. While I did that, he’d be sending as loudly as he could in every direction — which was apparently not the same thing as just thinking really hard, but I didn’t quite understand the difference. Then I’d reduce the volume of what I sent until I could only barely hear it — another good reason to “hum” — until I wasn’t sure that I was sending at all, and keep it that way while I tried to hear him across the link.

I’d tried over and over and over, and I couldn’t hear a thing.

“I’m sorry for wasting your time,” I said despondently.

“Not at all!” Harvin said. “It’s your first time trying. Nobody could expect you to succeed at something the first time.”

“But it’s not. It’s my first, and second, and third and… I didn’t count how many times I tried, but it was a lot! And I couldn’t do it!”

“That’s not how I… Listen, Star. I promise you, there’s nothing to be upset about. It took me a few days before I heard the first whispers. Sometimes you just have to sleep on it, you know?”

I knew that he was trying to be nice, because he was great like that. But that really didn’t help. “I don’t sleep, though.”

“Right.” He deflated a little, and I felt even worse. Not only had I failed, despite taking so much of his valuable time, but now I was making him sad with my whining! “But do you know what?”

“What?”

He smiled and said, “That just means that you have more time to practice. You have my permission to try to listen to me while I sleep, alright? People’s thoughts while sleeping can be chaotic, but they’re there. And they’re not always loud enough to hear unless you’re right next to the sleeper, but that’s not a problem for you, is it?”

“But I can’t do it! We tried for hours!”

“Star, listen. We started some time after dinner, right? Call it 2000 hours. And you’ve worked really hard since then, with short breaks for me to check our surroundings. But it’s only a little past 2300 hours now. That’s nowhere near long enough to learn anything! It’s not even long enough to know if you can or cannot learn something like thought reading and mind detection in the first place.”

“Yeah, but—”

He cut me off, but his tone was gentle. “But nothing, Star. It takes time. You have memories from us of learning things; from me if no one else. I want you to think about those memories, okay? I want you to try to feel how the joy in those memories comes not only from knowing that I, or whoever it is, could do something new, but the sense of accomplishment that came with having put in days and weeks and months and, sometimes, years of practice and training to get there. You tried really hard tonight, Star; the fact that you didn’t succeed doesn’t mean anything. Okay?”

I wanted to cry. I wanted to install one of those automated fire suppression systems that were used in buildings on Mundus, just so I could spray water everywhere. He was just being so nice about my failure! How could I not try harder in the face of that?

“Okay!” I promised. “I’ll try!”

“Atta girl! Now, I’m going to see if anything’s changed with that little ship, alright? Feel free to keep trying if you want; I won’t be sending, but I’m sure there’ll be some kind of noise in this head of mine. And before you ask, I know your voice, and I can tell if I’m hearing someone I know or someone new. You won’t bother me.”

Maybe if I just teleported in some water… but no. There was no reason to make Harvin uncomfortable just so I could be dramatic. I was just so—

Harvin Alder has reached Crew level 3!

“I won’t let you down, Harvin!”

“I know you won’t, Star. No matter what, you could never disappoint us.” He paused to let me bask in his kindness for a moment then finished with, “I’m going to start now, okay?”

“Okay!”

Harvin relaxed into his couch and looked like he went to sleep. And I started humming. Over and over again I hummed, then reduced the volume while trying to hear anything that might be Harvin’s thoughts. I hadn’t succeeded so far, and now there would be much less to hear, but I didn’t let that discourage me. I refused to disappoint Harvin. Not by failing — Harvin said that it was okay if I failed — but by giving up.

Now, I didn’t give up, but I did take a break after half an hour. Even if you refuse to be discouraged by failure, constantly failing is boring. Besides, Harvin had started scrunching his face, and I worried that I was bothering him despite what he’d said.

I’d only been silent for a few seconds, though, when Harvin opened his eyes and said, “No, don’t stop! Don’t stop, Star! Whatever you were doing, keep doing it!”

If I’d had a Crew body I would have jumped with surprise! “What? What was I doing?”

“I don’t know, Star, but keep doing it! I almost had them!”

“Uh, okay!” I said with infinitely more confidence than I felt. As far as I knew, all I’d been doing was to hum and listen. But if that was all I’d been doing, at least it was easy to decide what to do!

I hummed, and I listened, and I hummed, and I listened, and I asked Simeon if he’d had a good nap when he got up and told him not to disturb Harvin. Then, at around 0040 hours — an hour after his watch ended — Harvin opened his eyes with a rather unpleasant smile. “Got ‘em!” he declared as he sat up out of his couch. “One went to sleep and the other one’s bored out of their mind, but I got ‘em!”

“Who did you get?!” I asked eagerly. “And what do you mean by that? And also Simeon has been up for an hour and you should go to bed!”

“The watchers, Star! The two crew in the unknown hostile that’s watching us. I picked up their thoughts!

“That’s great! You can tell me all about it while you get ready for bed! What’re they thinking?”

“They’re scared,” he said, and his smile got even more unpleasant. “Scared of us, and scared of going back. That’s about all I could get in a short time, with the distance and all. But Star, that’s not what I’m excited about!”

“Well, tell me!”

“Alright,” he laughed. “Star, I know what Starmind Astropathy does. I don’t know how, and I don’t know any specifics, but when you connected to me it was like… like I’d been listening through a thick door, and you came along and opened it! Everything became so much clearer! Now, we’re still well over a hundred thousand miles away from that ship, but before I was pretty sure that there were two crew onboard. Now, I still couldn’t pick up any distinct thoughts, but I could distinguish the two minds onboard! I could tell not only what they felt, but what those feelings were directed at!”

“I’m like an antenna!”

“In a way,” he laughed. “Though I’d rather think of it as you granting me your blessing.”

I “sighed”, pushing some air around him, which made him chuckle as I said, “Harvin…”

“I know,” he said fondly. “You don’t agree, and I won’t insist. I just hope you won’t be offended that I still believe.”

Harvin went to bed after that, reporting that all was well to Simeon on his way to bed. He didn’t say anything about what he’d discovered; he just told Simeon that he’d have news during the morning meeting after breakfast.

“Do you know what that was about?” Simeon asked after Harvin had left.

“I do…” I said reluctantly. “Harvin discovered something really great tonight. But is it okay if I don’t tell you? He’s pretty excited to tell everyone.”

“Sure, I won’t push. But it’s important, then?”

“Oh, yes! Especially for Harvin!”

“Alright,” he said and settled back in his chair. “I’ll look forward to this morning, then. Anything else you want to talk about?”

“Well…” I started then changed my mind. It felt like I was bad-mouthing someone, which wasn’t a nice feeling. But I really did want to talk about it. “So…” I started again, and then stopped.

“What is it, Star?” Simeon asked, putting away his slate entirely.

And now Simeon knew that something was bothering me.

“Ugh. Okay. Please don’t take this the wrong way. I really like her and I understand completely why she’d do this but I just don’t like it!”

“Okay, Star. I’m sorry to hear that. Who and what, exactly?”

“Oh, right. Temeri! Temeri brought some weapons onboard! She already had the one, and now she has more, and I just don’t like it!”

“Oh,” Simeon said. “Sure. I know how you feel about weapons. But you said you understand why she wants them?”

“I do, it’s just…” I trailed off. It was a little embarrassing, really.

“They’re weapons, and you don’t like them?”

“Well, that, and… this is my body, Simeon! It’s… it’s me! And even if these weapons aren’t a part of me, they’re in me. You see? I have weapons in me, and it makes me… I have to remind myself, all the time, that I promised Temeri not to use any of my senses inside her cabin, right? And that’s a good thing right now, because I want to just go in there and teleport all her weapons into the waste storage for recycling! They make me feel dirty, and wrong, and awful. And I’ve told myself over and over again that she needs them, that they let her help to protect you all, and they make her feel safe and useful, but the feeling doesn’t go away! It’s like when I had all those tears in my hull. I hate them! I just hate them!”

After my outburst, I paused. Simeon seemed shocked at my outburst, and frankly, so was I. “Sorry!” I said, worried that I’d offended him somehow. “I don’t know what came over me!”

“No, don’t apologize.” Simeon sounded distraught, but not at all upset with me, which was a big relief. “Star, have you talked to the captain about this?”

“We talked about it,” I muttered. And we had. That was why all the weapons were in her cabin, after all. “I didn’t lose control of myself like this when we did, though.”

“Does she know, though? That you feel this strongly about the guns she brought onboard? Did you make that clear?”

“I don’t know! I can’t read her mind no matter how hard Harvin tries to teach me!”

“Harvin…? No matter. Star, when you talked to Captain Carlon, did you ever use the word ‘hate’, or ‘dirty’, ‘wrong’, or ‘awful’? I don’t mean to blame you at all, but you can be pretty… you don’t like to upset people, do you?”

“Of course not!”

“Right. So is it possible that you told her that you don’t like weapons? That they make you feel uncomfortable? And then she explained why she wanted them, and you worked really hard to see things from her point of view, and then you agreed?”

“...we compromised.” If I’d had eyes I wouldn’t have been able to look at him. Honestly, his guess was uncomfortably close to how things went when Temeri came onboard with her ‘guns’, as Simeon called them. She’d explained why she needed both of her weapons, and how the cases were full of ammunition for them, so we’d never have to find a way for me to make any. And I’d told her how it made me feel bad to even see them, and she’d promised that I wouldn’t ever have to. They’d be in her cabin, and she wouldn’t bring them out unless she had to use them. And that was that.

“Star,” Simeon said softly, “again, I don’t want to blame you. I hope you don’t take it that way. I’m proud of you. You’re willing to take a lot of responsibility and to sacrifice for our sake. But I think it would be in your best interest to learn to stand up for yourself better, okay? For what you want and what you believe in. It would be much better for you to give a firm ‘No’ every once in a while than for you to keep agreeing to things that hurt you.”

“But Temeri—!”

“I know,” Simeon said, and my objection died as I said it. He got out of his chair and put his hand on the wall. I couldn’t feel it at all, but I appreciated the gesture. “I know, Star. Captain Carlon — Temeri — would’ve been disappointed. She’d be really chafed if you waited until she’d already done all the work of going through their armory. But she’d get over it, and she’d adapt. She’s very good at adapting to her circumstances, at least according to what the people I’ve talked to say. And I’m sure you would be a little bit upset over denying her something, but you wouldn’t have gone against your principles. You wouldn’t have those extra weapons inside you, sitting in the back of your mind.”

“I don’t like this,” I whispered. And that was a massive understatement. Thinking about telling Temeri that I wouldn’t allow her to bring her horrible toys onboard, or telling anyone that I simply forbade them to do anything, filled me with a grinding anxiety.

“I know, Star. I’m sorry. But you’ve already stood your ground on making weapons and arming yourself, right?”

“That’s different.”

“Is it?” When I didn’t reply he continued. “Well, I guess it is. Either way, I can’t force you to change. I can only tell you what I think would make you happiest in the long run. And we all want you to be happy, Star.”

“You really mean that?”

“I really do.”

I couldn’t say exactly what it was that did it. Why the Crew gained Crew Levels wasn’t exactly clear to me. But whatever it was, when he said that, pressing his hand into the wall in an attempt to comfort me, I got a message that I’d been expecting for days.

Simeon Tell has reached Crew level 2!

And that was enough for me to make up my mind. “Okay,” I told him. “I can try. Or think about it, at least.”

“That’s all I ask.” Simeon patted the wall, and even if I couldn’t actually feel it, it felt good.