Things Fall Apart: Chapter 52

Newer York, 7 Tammuz 2541 AS

With everything that had happened in the last two days, and everything still waiting to be discussed, Singer had not expected to sleep soundly. That she fell asleep quickly did not surprise her—she'd been exhausted, without doubt. That she stayed asleep for an actual full, restful shift was what surprised her.

In fact, by the time Singer made it to the dining room, it was clear she was running slightly behind the rest of her companions, which earned her a good-natured, "Glad you decided to join us! I was about to send a search party!" from the ambassador. Singer took it with good grace and a smile, and took in the scene. A sideboard was set up with a buffet, rather than the usual expectation of being served family-style. Singer supposed this was a compromise with local Shabbat customs. Setting up the buffet this morning surely had been work, as had cooking the food in the first place, but the staff were exempted from actually serving it. Well enough. Singer grabbed a plate, filled it, set it down at a place at the table, then returned to the buffet for tea.

O'Halloran broke the companionable sounds of people eating by asking, "How do we like the idea of going to the Starfall Museum today?"

Singer took a moment to consider. She could sense her officers waiting for her opinion, which was interesting. She didn't really expect that level of deference and wondered where it was coming from. She found she was conflicted and decided she could voice her conflict in this company. "On the one hand, I think it sounds lovely. On the other hand, I feel...guilty? Something. Everything's still hell-in-a-handbasket out there and I'm here having comfortable family dinners and enjoying cultural experiences like museums instead of fixing it."

Ellison nodded, saying, "I see your point, but the truth is, there's not a lot we can do today. The people you most need to talk to next are from the AI institute, and if they're bringing in who I think they will, I know he keeps Shabbat pretty strictly. As it is, unless he's willing to bend a bit to get on a shuttle, he won't actually be here for another day. The good news is, I'm pretty sure if that were the case, we'd have heard by now, but we still have to consider it might happen. We need their expertise. Unfortunately, we get it on their terms."

Singer sighed and had recourse to her plate while she thought. She realized she still owed O'Halloran—and by extension everyone else—her answer. "I do want to see it, so yes, let's do it." She sensed relief from Espinoza and Cadotte. "Also, if it's not too much like working, I'd like to come up with some kind of plan for the crew's shore leaves. I checked my queue this morning, and Zephyr should be in its parking orbit chasing the station by mid-day. I did some poking, and from its position, our pinnace or the station's tenders should be able to make the trip in about 2 kilos, each way, so getting them here should be reasonable."

"When were you thinking of having Madame President aboard for that tour?" Cadotte asked. There was a hint of mischief in the question, for which Singer could not blame them.

"I'd briefly thought of trying to cram it in this evening, but I think I'd rather do it tomorrow evening after our meetings. My current thought is: have Alexander start putting together shore parties as soon as we get the all clear from the station, let them come over starting this evening. That's why I want some kind of plan: how many can come at a time, where they'll be berthed, whether they have run of the station or only parts of it, that kind of thing.

"Meanwhile, I'll give Alexander the option to pass the hot-seat to Terranova if ze wants to come across as well, to be part of the meetings tomorrow. If ze says yes, I'll ask Robina to join us for a trip to the aft docks to meet the shore party and get the initial reunion out of the way there, and back here at the embassy, so that they're not both trying to not be emotional in middle of a serious meeting. Then, tomorrow after the meeting, we can all go across on the pinnace, along with whatever other dignitaries want to take the tour, sleep ship-board. If there's still things for us to do here, we can come back after a sleep shift."

There were nods around the table as people turned this over in their heads. Espinoza said, "That reminds me. We should probably let Wasserman and Goldsmith have some shore time. They've been sitting aboard the pinnace the last two days."

"Good point. Do we feel comfortable enough here to leave the pinnace unattended, or should we have them rotate?"

Espinoza answered, "Dockside security is pretty tight, honestly. We actually don't go in much for ubiquitous surveillance here, but the docks are a bit of an exception. I understand why we left the pilots aboard right at first, but the posture here toward us has definitely relaxed. I think we can let them both come aboard for a shift or two."

Singer turned to Cadotte, who shrugged. Security was not their area, and this was still a foreign country to them. Next, she looked to Ellison and O'Halloran, who were both looking thoughtful. The younger woman said, "It would be a gesture of goodwill, really."

Ellison nodded, still frowning a bit. "It would, but it would also be admitting we were rattled in the first place."

Singer shook her head. "Donato can count. He told us how many we could bring across, and it included a pilot and co-pilot..."

"...whose absence aboard the station will already have been noted. Yes, I take your point. I think I agree with Ari. If there is any trouble while they're away, Donato will come down pretty hard on whoever causes it."

"The pinnace also isn't entirely dumb," Espinoza said, and Singer was glad it was in company where she would not feel called out for not knowing this. "It doesn't have a full AI suite, but it can monitor its own environment enough to throw up a flag if it thinks it's under threat. The pilots would certainly carry HTs with them as a matter of course."

Which, Singer thought, she and her party had not done, relying on their mail queues, tablets, and other means to stay in touch. Singer found herself feeling slightly embarrassed she had not thought to have at least one of them carry a handheld for direct communication with the pinnace at all times. It was the first moment in a while Singer had realized how much she did not know about the role she was playing. Everyone—her crew, the dignitaries here, the ambassador—had treated her with the respect due her position and with the assumption that she knew what she was doing. Right at this moment, though, she was feeling a spike of impostor syndrome.

Rather than let it fester she asked, "Should we have done that?"

Espinoza had read her as easily as if he shared her gift, apparently, and gave her a lopsided smile. "It wouldn't have hurt anything, but we don't seem to have missed it."

Singer took that at face value, made a mental note to remember in the future, and said, "OK, I'll clear it with Tower. If they don't object, I'll tell our pilots they can join us at the museum, if they like, or otherwise consider themselves an advanced party for shore leave."

The rest of breakfast was spent discussing shore leave plans. Singer had thought she might have to talk to Tower about that as well, but here, O'Halloran had been ahead of her, on the embassy's behalf. It turned out O'Halloran had been the one doing most of the negotiating with station admin since they'd surfaced at the system's edge, so she already had a working relationship with the folks in Traffic Control. Singer spent maybe half a second being irritated at being surprised, then accepted that some surprises can be pleasant and, after all, this is the reason the TCTO had an embassy in the first place—to build and manage relationships.

"The station maintains a fleet of ferries for multiple purposes. Some of them circulate constantly around the Inner Belt—they're basically the inter-station transit system. They can double as tenders for ships like yours that aren't berthed directly in or on the station. If we had to, they could bring your whole crew across in one go, but obviously, we're not doing that here. Station would like to bring them in, say, fifty at a time, but let leave shifts overlap. Each shift could stay as long as seventy-two hours, assuming you're expecting to stay that long."

Singer pondered and looked at her officers. Espinoza shrugged—here, his inexperience as an officer meant he wasn't as much help as his rank suggested he would be. Cadotte, by contrast, had an opinion. "I know we're impatient to get to Tau Ceti as soon as we can, but I really think the crew needs some real shore time. Maybe 48 hours each shift? We could still be out of here in three more days."

Singer made a face, then sighed, "I really hate to lose the time, but..."

"But everyone needs time and space away from the ship. We went from Bellerophon to Zephyr without a break. We've all been in one tin can or another with the same people for far longer than anyone is used to. Everyone's taken it remarkably well but we need a reset, sooner rather than later."

Singer suddenly remembered her friend Sipho, and her ordeal in the Almaty life pod, and said, conceding the point, "OK. What's that work out to?"

Cadotte got that face—Singer thought of as their "communing with implants" face—and said, "How important is it that the ship remain crewed?"

"You mean not just Chef and Castor and Pollux?"

"Yeah."

"You trying to get me court marshaled?"

Cadotte snorted, still not quite focused on the room, "OK. Let's say we need at least 50 aboard at any time. The easiest thing to do is four shifts of 50-ish, but the first shift will have to take their 48 hours total in two chunks and come back in the middle."

Singer considered, and then said, "Think we can find 50 people to volunteer for the split?"

Cadotte responded, "Gut feeling, I'd say yes, but Saito or Kasel would probably be better judges. Want me to message them while I'm still in my headspace?"

"Please."

The science officer nodded, then blinked as they returned to the room fully. Ellison and O'Halloran were both staring a bit, not quite agape and Singer noticed it.

"You get used to it." Singer said, not sure she really had. "OK, I think that's a plan. I'll send that on to Robin and let zir know to huddle with Saito and Kasel. What happens when people get here?" This had been directed to O'Halloran.

"Newer York's used to this and actually has it all organized. This ring—Ellis—is a bit more specialized than the others. Their own children all eventually come here—it's the equivalent of university or trade programs, and it's where they're expected to start building their own michpachot. It's also where actual immigrants come in and stay at first, which is where it actually takes its name. Ellis wasn't a borough of New York City, but an island that was used for a while as immigrant processing. The embassies are all here, of course. Point is, this is sort of the interface between the DSR and the rest of the human universe. There's almost always spare capacity here by design, so your people will be put up in reasonable comfort. They'll be met at the docks by local personnel, checked in and IDed, and billeted all within an hour or so of getting here. After that, any public part of the city is open to them, same as it has been to us. The IDs they're issued will act as payment cards—Tower will make sure someone meets your pilots dockside to issue them IDs as well, and you all have be getting by so far on the embassy's dime, but we should probably get you formally IDed. They use a combination of energy credits and reputation credits as their economy here, and it's all but opaque to anyone who doesn't live with it every day, but TCTO has a somewhat complex arrangement that station admin is continuing to honor, which means you can mostly ignore it and just use your ID."

O'Halloran looked just a little smug about that, Singer thought, and Ellison in turn had a small, proud smile on her face. Singer guessed that O'Halloran had been the one to ensure that the agreement was still in force and suddenly wished she'd been a party to that negotiation.

Cadotte looked puzzled, "Why did they have our pinnace come in to the forward docks, then, when they could have had us park back here?"

Ellison smirked. "That's on me. I suspected you might enjoy the ride through core, instead of being bustled off directly to the embassy. Donato and Silverman both agreed because they're proud of their city and couldn't resist showing off, even if they weren't riding with us. It also gave you some time to get used to the Coriolis and gravity changes that are kind of a fact of life here. For your crew on leave, the ones that think they can handle it can go off exploring; the ones that are happy in the ring can easily find plenty of entertainment without riding down to the core. But you were all going to have to go up and down and across a lot as part of your visit."

Singer had to admit that it hadn't hurt her any to see all that green after the confrontation with the admiral. She was starting to have anxieties about her crew—her traumatized crew—suddenly uncorked here. She knew enough history, though, to know that this was not just a "her" problem. This was a problem of captains going back to the age of sail, at least.

As if she'd read the thought, Ellison said, "Don't worry too much about your crew. It's quiet right now, because they're shunting most traffic out to New Anaheim. In almost any other system, New Anaheim would be the official anchorage, anyway, being in an outer orbit. Point is, they're used to this—all of this. And Donato and Silverman both know people. They wouldn't have offered leave if they didn't expect there were going to be some bar fights and other hijinx."

"I'm letting my anxieties run away with me this morning," Singer said by way of apology.

"You have more than enough things to be anxious about. Letting a few run around to get the wiggles out is good for you," Ellison said, and the image of her anxieties personified as toddlers running around a playground was enough to get Singer laughing.

There was a lull in conversation after that, and Ellison got the ball going again, saying, "Right. Looks like we're mostly done with breakfast, although if anyone's still hungry, please help yourselves. You've got some messages to send to get things moving for those shore leaves, and I've got a couple of bits of mail to answer myself. Let's plan to meet up in the parlor in an hour, and we'll go to the museum."

"Sounds good to me," Singer replied, and stood and started for the door. Then, on second thought, she turned around and grabbed a muffin off the buffet as she headed out.