Authors: Alan Black
Maria said, “Nope. I’ll ride herd on him. I’m going to corral him in the observation lounge until I can throw a lasso around FO Graham and find out what’s going on. I hate to bother the captain with this, but we need to address this addendum. I don’t like planetary governments pushing crap like this on us. I don’t like being threatened.”
Stefan grinned, “You ready to climb aboard, amigo?”
Maria said, “Ready or not, we gotta get a move on. If you’re gonna be crew, I ain’t gonna call you Señor no more. Tasso, right? Okay, let’s get a move on, little doggie. I got to get you corralled before we lift off.”
Tasso only understood about half of what the woman said, but her intent was obvious so he hustled after her. Her boot heels clicked on the floor and his heavy work boots thudded loudly a step behind her.
He looked down. He’d expected the spacecraft to be like their shuttle with metal walls and metal floors. Smooth, polished wood planks, or at least what looked like wood planks, covered the floors along this hallway. He wanted to stop, bend down, and touch the floor to identity the type of wood. However, Maria’s short legs churned and he had to hurry to keep up.
It didn’t take him long to get lost. Various hallways branched off, some halls they turned into, and others they walked past. The walls weren’t the steel he’d expected either. Wood panels covered many of them. Plaster covered other walls, each painted in soft pastel colors and tapestries hung on wood and plaster walls alike at irregular intervals.
The doorways they passed weren’t like the steel hatch Grandpa set into their stone house. These doors all looked different. Some doors were wood and glass, others were inset with insect screens, although there didn’t appear to be any insects to keep out or in.
Maria led him through a wide-open courtyard. When he glanced up, it looked as if they could see the blue sky above them. Tasso wondered if the open air was an illusion or if there was a large open hatch. In the center of the courtyard was a water fountain. There were benches scattered among flowerbeds and shade trees. He saw little alcoves where people could talk privately, and off in the distance, he saw what looked like a small open-sided octagonal building surrounded by benches.
There were no people sitting in the courtyard. Everyone in sight was scurrying about, obviously getting ready for take off. Maria was hurrying as well. She led him across the courtyard and through a wide archway. The room looked like a giant’s living room. There were sofas and overstuffed chairs scattered about with a sprinkling of little tables.
“Pick a seat over near the window. You can watch our departure from there. I’ll come back and get you as soon as I can.”
Tasso walked across the room. He had his choice of seats, as he was the only person in the room. The window Maria pointed at covered the whole wall. He stepped up to it and could see the entire expanse of the spaceport spread out in front of him. There were a couple of other spaceships in sight, but they were too far away to see any activity. He thought all of the loading and unloading was probably done underground like this ship.
He tossed his bag onto the chair next to him and sat down. His feet hurt and he wanted to take his boots off, but he didn’t know how long he would be here. His stomach rumbled. He hadn’t eaten since yesterday’s boiled yapikino and potato lunch and he hadn’t finished that. He sat quietly for a while, but hunger and thirst were about to drive him out of his seat.
Two young people bounced into the room, laughing and chattering. They rushed over to stand in front of Tasso. He started to stand up politely, but the girl waved him down. She was about his age, but the boy was a few years younger. Both had dark hair, the girl’s dark eyes were larger than Tasso had ever seen, with full, lush lips. He’d never thought of lips as being lush before, but he thought so now.
She clasped her hands, stared at the back wall, and began to recite an obviously memorized speech. “
Soy
Anisa Rojo-Graham.
Voy a ser su la acomodador
….” Her voice faded away as the boy cleared his throat loudly.
The boy gestured with his chin at Tasso.
The girl realized Tasso didn’t understand a word she was saying. She asked “English?”
Tasso nodded, “Yes, miss. I’m sorry, but I don’t know any other language.”
She smiled, “Great. My Spanish isn’t very good anyway. Let me start again. “My name is Anisa Rojo-Graham. I will be your attendant for this take off. Please buckle up.” She looked at Tasso and waited until he took the seatbelt and strapped it across his waist.
“This is Freddy Rojo.” She gestured broadly at the young boy. “Freddie is your baggage handler for this,” she swept her arms about the broad glass window in an obviously practiced movement, “spectacular view for our departure from … um ….”
“Saronno,” Freddy supplied.
“Yeah, I knew that.”
“Like fun you did!”
Anisa said, “Where was I? Okay. Freddy is your baggage handler for this,” she swept her arms around the window again, “spectacular view for our departure from Saronno. In the unlikely event of turbulence, Freddy will store your bag in a
gabinet
in the back.”
Freddy said, “Cabinet.”
“What?” Anisa asked.
“Cabinet is English. You said gabinet which is Spanish.”
Anisa sighed in resignation. “In the unlikely event of turbulence, Freddy will store your bag in the cabinet in the back.”
Freddy grabbed the bag and took off. Tasso would’ve been concerned, but so far he kept losing the bag and it kept coming back. Besides, Anisa continued talking.
“As your attendant, if you need anything, please ask.” Pointing with two fingers, she continued, “In the event of an emergency, the observation deck has four exit doors. There are two in the back and two on the sides. Please keep all aisles clear of people and obstructions.”
She looked out the window behind her. “I have been informed we will be lifting off right after the …” She checked a small dataport hanging on a chain around her neck. “The Cooperstown.” She pointed at a spaceship across the port.
She looked as if she had something else to say, but she said nothing.
Tasso said, “Um …, Miss?”
Anisa shook her head. “Just Anisa. If we were being formal it would be
Señorita
Anisa Rojo-Graham, but you can call me Anisa.”
Tasso nodded uncomfortably. The last girl his own age he had talked with ended the conversation by calling him a bastard and walking away. He still wasn’t sure this meeting wouldn’t end the same way once Anisa found out who he really was.
“Anisa?” he asked, “if it is going to be a while before we take off, is there somewhere I can get something to drink and maybe a place to get some food and cook it?”
Anisa slapped her forehead. “Refreshments and restrooms, I knew there was something I was forgetting. Now I have to start all over.” She tapped a few times on her dataport.
“Can’t you tell me? It’s just the three of us here.”
“Yeah, might as well. I screwed the pooch on the speech. I might as well mess it up all the way if I’m going to get a failing grade anyway.”
“You’re getting graded on how well you do?”
Anisa nodded. “Yep, Freddy and I are both on training cruises. We’re on observation deck duty until we get it right, then we move on to another department.”
“I think I’m supposed to be on a training cruise, too. I don’t really know right now. But, if anyone asks, I’ll tell them you did fine.”
Anisa laughed. “Tain’t that easy, greenhorn.
La Dueña
Dunstan is watching.” She pointed at the ceiling.
“La Dueña Dunstan?” he asked. “Is she in charge? And my name is Tasso Menzies, not Greenhorn.”
Anisa laughed. “La Dueña literally means the owner, but it really means our babysitter, nanny, our nurse, and our chaperone. She is our central computer core and records everything for review by the section hands, foremen, supervisors, and officers in charge.”
Tasso shook his head. “I’m really lost, but I’m also really hungry. So if we have time, please point me in the direction of a kitchen?”
“I already sent Freddy off to get us all something.”
Tasso turned around but the boy was gone. “Really? Is there somewhere I can cook up whatever he brings back, or can he cook?”
“I wouldn’t trust Freddy’s cooking any farther than I can spit upwind in a Texas twister. He’ll grab something already fixed in the galley. I can’t cook either.”
Tasso frowned, “You and your brother can’t cook?”
Anisa shook her head. “No and no. No, he isn’t my brother, he’s a cousin, third cousin actually. And no, I haven’t had galley section training yet, not for cooking anyway. I have done duty washing dishes, bussing tables, and some prep work, but not in the kitchen. Why, can you cook?” Without waiting for a response, she continued. “That’s great. Maybe they’ll start you on galley training first and get that out of the way.” She plopped into the chair next to his. She propped an elbow on the armrest and rested her chin in her hand. She stared into his eyes. “So what can you cook, greenhorn?”
Tasso blushed. He hadn’t been this close to anyone other than his grandfather in years. “Um …, oh. This.” He pulled out his dataport. He called up a picture of a yapikino from a reference text on Saronno fauna and turned the display so she could see the picture. “I had some of this for lunch … um, yesterday. I think that was the last time I ate.”
Anisa made a gagging noise and backed away from the picture on the dataport. “Great guns, greenhorn! What is that thing? You ate that?”
Tasso shrugged. “I hunted it, killed it, skinned it, boiled it up with some potatoes, and yes, I ate it. Why? How else can you eat a yapikino? Besides, it doesn’t taste as bad as it looks.”
Anisa made a gagging noise again. “As bad as it looks? It looks like a radiated mutant zombie rat on steroids. I’m sure our galley can do something better than your last meal.”
Tasso said, “Well, I did boil up some potatoes with it.”
Anisa shook her head, “I’d hope you boiled up some hatch chilies to cover up the taste.”
“I know a hatch is like a doorway on a ship. We had one on our shuttle at home, but what is a chili?”
Anisa said, “What? No. It’s not that kind of a hatch. We had these chilies before we had spaceships. They’re call hatch because … I don’t know where the name comes from. You don’t know what a chili is?”
Tasso shook his head.
“You really are a greenhorn, aren’t you?” Before he could answer, she continued. “So, you have some experience on spaceships? Is that where you know about hatches?”
Tasso said, “No. We have a small farm shuttle. We don’t take it out of the atmosphere. Can I ask you a question?”
Anisa nodded. “Sure. That’s what I’m here for.”
“I thought spaceships were made out of steel, but the floors and walls aren’t metal.”
Anisa laughed. “They are metal, of a sort, but they aren’t steel. Most ships, especially those owned by the Rojo’s, are all a blend of titanium and ceramics. Steel becomes too brittle after extended periods in deep space. And we don’t have floors and walls. We have decks and bulkheads. They’re configured to look like something other than naked metal.”
“Why would you bother to make the titanium and ceramics look any different than they normally would?”
She pointed at the back door, ignoring his question. “Freddy is back from the kitchen. I hope they had something good.”
The boy slid to a stop in front of the pair. “Hold this, Anisa,” he said. He dropped a box in her lap before she could answer. He grabbed a nearby table and dragged it over to them.
Tasso watched the boy set the table, check its position, jostle it a bit, and flip a switch under the tabletop. He gave the table a quick hip-check, but it didn’t move. He took the box from Anisa and placed it on the table.
Freddy grinned, and with a flourish, he pointed at the box. “Ta da! We lucked out. They had tacos.” He sat in the chair next to Tasso. The pair had him bracketed.
Anisa laughed, “Great! I was afraid this close to take off all we were going to get would be leftover rice and refried beans from last night’s barbeque on Deck Double-C.” She pushed a tab on the box and it folded out of the way.
Anisa and Freddy each grabbed one of the three plates. Both tilted their heads sideways taking huge crunchy bites of tacos. They were halfway through their first taco before Tasso picked up his plate and looked at it in confusion.
He’d never seen such a thing. The taco was a weird U shaped hard … thing … shell and stuffed inside was some kind of something Tasso assumed was meat. He recognized lettuce and tomatoes because he grew them in their gardens. There was some kind of yellow spongy stuff sprinkled on top, with a red liquid poured over the whole thing. It leaked juice onto the plate.
Tasso was hungry enough to try anything, but he was also parched. He tried to balance the plate on one knee as he reached for a drink, but gave up trying as a futile exercise. He decided to eat first and then drink.
Freddy grinned, “I grabbed the last three Sola Colas in the cooler. They still hadn’t restocked from last night. I had my hands on a couple of Bright Star Beers, but La Dueña Dunstan caught me.”