Read Online Becalmed by Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Free Book Online

at me any more.
     
    I don’t want to look at me
either.
     
    “The other two, they were right,”
I say. “I caused this. I’m why we’re here. Becalmed.”
     
    Leona does not nod. Nor does she
reach out a hand to comfort me. She sighs. “They abandoned their post.”
     
    They did. They left the Quurzod
as the rest of us went to the violence pool. They should have stayed with us,
but they thought something might go wrong and they fled.
     
    I should have told the others to
go as well. The mistake was mine, not theirs.
     
    “It doesn’t matter,” I say. “I
shouldn’t be here.”
     
    “The Captain decides that,” she
says. “He brought you back.”
     
    “When he didn’t have all of the
information,” I say.
     
    She inclines her head. She is
conceding that point.
     
    “Tell him I’m ready. He can’t
send me back, but he shouldn’t keep me here either.”
     
    “You’re volunteering for
execution?” she asks.
     
    “It’s the right thing,” I say.
     
    “I don’t think that’s your
decision,” she says. “Not any more.”
     
    ~ * ~
     
    They
return me to my quarters. The apartment no longer looks like mine. I recognize
everything in it, I even remember hanging the quilt, scrunching the blanket on
my divan, but the place feels strange to me, like a memory that I have
abandoned. The apartment has a dusty odor, as if I’ve been gone for months,
which is impossible. First of all, I have not been gone more than a few days,
and secondly, the air gets recycled in here. Nothing should smell of dust.
     
    I make myself dinner and sit in
one of the chairs to eat it. Normally, I would play a language quiz or watch an
entertainment, but I do neither. I sit and listen.
     
    The Quurzod whisper all around
me. The sound infects me, like the memories infected me. The memories are
there, but I no longer slip into them accidentally. Instead, I roll them around
in my mind, worrying them, like my tongue would worry a chipped tooth.
     
    No wonder I blocked them. All
those people, dead because of me. Because I did not understand—when I am
trained to understand.
     
    I should have known. I should
have figured it out.
     
    And I did not.
     
    Not even when Klaaynch said to me
that she could chose her own friends. When she said it with defiance, with that
glow the rebellious get as they anticipate a fight.
     
    If the Quurzod so strongly
protect the language they use for family and friends, it should have seemed
obvious to me that they would viciously defend the language they strove to keep
secret. I should have known—maybe I did know—of course I knew.
     
    And that is why I blocked the
memories.
     
    I didn’t want to remember that
feeling—that I’ll-deal-with-it-later feeling—the one I ignored.
     
    I have been sitting with my plate
in my lap for nearly an hour when the door chime sounds. Coop’s chime.
     
    It does not surprise me. A part
of me has expected to see him all along.
     
    He looks big, powerful, as he
comes through that door. His presence is almost too much for the room.
     
    “Leona tells me you volunteered
for execution.” He does not sit. He towers over me. “I won’t do it.”
     
    “It’s regulation.” I clutch the
plate. I have not really moved, except that my muscles have tensed.
     
    “Regulation is what the captain
says it is,” he says.
     
    I shake my head slightly. “If
that were true, each ship would be a tiny dictatorship.”
     
    He sits on the divan across from
me, balancing on the edge, leaning toward me. “It’s not like you to give up.”
     
    I look at him. When we met, I
predicted the lines that formed around his eyes. But the one that furrows his
brow is a surprise; he frowns more than I would have ever expected.
     
    “I haven’t given up,” I say. Even
when I should have. I’m the one who caused this, not him. I’m the one who didn’t
die in that pit. I’m the one who climbed out—over bodies, over people I knew. I’m
the one who staggered