Providence - Max Barry Page 0,42

as long as Talia could detach from a conversation before it became weird, she presumed. She replayed the last three sentences in her head and reached for a sunny platitude.

But something about Anders plucked at her attention. She had thought he was doing his usual Anders thing—being kind of a dick while seeking out the most potentially dangerous outcome for everyone—but his arms were folded tight, his legs crossed, and he was leaning back in his seat. All of this was such a classic fear reaction that it momentarily struck her dumb. Why was Anders scared?

“I hope that’s true,” Jackson said. “But I want a plan B if the shit hits the fan again.”

The confinement? He had exhibited an extreme reaction to it in the first place. Now that he was out, he was behaving like an abused child. This implied that he didn’t want to be sent back. He was terrified of being sent back.

Oh, God, she thought suddenly. Anders is claustrophobic.

It was preposterous. That was why she’d never figured it out. It was the last place in the universe she’d expect to find a claustrophobe. He had known what it would be like, yes? He had realized the corridors would be small? But it was true. She knew immediately that she was right.

You are Life Officer on a warship two years from home and one of your crew is claustrophobic. Go.

“That’s reasonable,” Gilly said. “Let me think on it.”

“Good enough for now,” Jackson said, and Gilly nodded.

She stared at Anders. Why, she thought. Why.

* * *

—

She couldn’t talk to the ship anymore. It felt like they were having a fight. The silence between them became a palpable thing and it was so ridiculous, because the ship was an inanimate object, or, at best, a creature with which she could never communicate. But still, she felt abandoned. She was shaken and post-trauma with no one to talk to and at a complete loss as to what to do about Anders. At the end of her shift, she wound up in Rec-1, trying to print pancakes. But when they came out, she couldn’t eat them, because they were too beautiful.

“You dealing?” said Jackson, materializing out of nowhere.

“Hmm, with what?” she said, wiping her nose. She adjusted the pancakes. Jackson. She did not need Jackson right now.

There was a short silence. “Let’s talk.”

She sensed reluctance and so could deduce what kind of talk this would be: It would be Jackson pretending she wanted to hear Talia’s private thoughts and fears while judging her mercilessly for every one of them. “No, I’m good. Thank you.” She turned and gave a smile, a bright one that said, Aren’t you sweet and This is the end of the conversation.

Jackson didn’t move. “I know what it’s like to be close.”

For a moment, Talia honestly didn’t know what she meant. Close to what? But: death, of course. Jackson had been close to the cold and the dark. And she was regarding Talia with something that looked like genuine understanding, and Talia closed her eyes to not see it but it was too late. She turned away. A noise popped out of her that was part hiccup and part sob. “Oh, God,” she said, mortified.

“Come,” Jackson said.

“I’m fine,” she protested, but she let Jackson lead her away from her pancakes. They went to Jackson’s cabin, also a surprise; Talia had never been there and never expected to. Beside the bed was a picture of Jackson’s husband in a collared shirt, smiling in dappled sunshine, a little cottage behind him.

“His collar is askew,” Jackson said. “I want to reach in there and fix it.”

Talia nodded. She had seen this picture in the background of Jackson’s clips and always suspected it was something of a prop.

“Sit,” said Jackson, gesturing at the bed and pulling out a metal chair for herself. “Talk.”

She sat. She wanted to. But Jackson’s back was ramrod straight and her perfect posture was a reminder that Jackson would never put herself in Talia’s position, not in a million years. There were no circumstances in which Jolene Jackson