Gareth Will smiled. He had brought a man back to life. Yet one more thing to knock off the list of stuff he’d never expected to do during his apportioned run of mortality. The wonders would never cease. Then again, as a child he knew doctors had been selected at birth and he certainly hadn’t been in that category- not with his father being who he was, and the Canderians being who they were- so the likelihood in his own mind was probably lower than the actual average, galactically speaking. Still, he had in fact done it, and though the guy was choking and cursing from his stay in the improvised defrosting tank Gareth had built Gareth was positive there were traces of restrained gratitude in the young man’s face.
With the saving done, Gareth took a moment to sit back and wonder at the miracle of events while his personal melting popsicle recovered from having briefly been a cannibal’s summer treat. The ship being loaded and in orbit meant Gareth didn’t have much to do anyway. Gasocorp avoided assigning too many responsibilities to anyone on a ground crew- if they died with a lot left to do it would be too much trouble to replace them quickly, and labor was a minor enough expense that people sitting around doing nothing wasn’t a particular concern. This- perhaps inevitably, perhaps intentionally- led to a division, in which on one side the ground crews were openly indifferent to the orbit crews but secretly jealous of the company’s (still minor) investment in their lives… while on the other the orbit crews were openly hostile to what they considered the lazy and useless ground crews while also secretly hostile to what they considered the lazy and useless ground crews. It made for an interesting dynamic, Gareth thought, and while his days on-ship normally consisted of trying to be accidentally given some essential in-flight job, he decided that this particular day called for a special embrasure of the freedom open to him and the other relatively lucky survivors of the fuel offload from Malyria. Besides, there was an extra person aboard now, and Gareth had to get him registered and moving up the company ranks. Otherwise the guy’d starve and die right where he lay on the deck, and Gareth would first have to clean him up and then fill out several reports about why the man had been there in the first place. The coughing had stopped.
“So, fella, what’s yer name?”
A deep breath from the otherwise inert entity on the floor. Then: “James Morris.”
“Well, James, I don’t wan’ ta rush ya but when yer feeling better… maybe yeh could stand up and we could head over to requisitions to get yeh some New Clothes. Space bein’ cold, and whatnot.”
He saw James shudder. It wasn’t particularly cold where they were, but Gareth knew the deeper they went into the bowels of the ship the colder it would be. Only select areas were artificially heated, and the external heat from Malyria’s sun was warming the compartments along the hull- one of which they were in. Pretty soon the ship would take off and the temperature everywhere would drop to near freezing. At that point, assuming no changes, his moist charge would probably die again. Gareth grabbed James’ arm and carefully tested his pliability. Sometimes, Gareth found, people were ready to get up but wouldn’t on their own, and if you started trying to lift them they’d do it. So he lifted and, lending credence to an already fairly rock-solid theory, James started to rise.
“Were you…joking about the… ship thing?”
“Nope, she’s really called the Albright. Bit of a joke now, but I guess back when the ship was commissioned she was some kind of big hero-”
“I meant being on one.”
“Oh! Well, nope again. Look around. Where else’d you think you might be?”
The ship was pretty spaceship-y, Gareth thought. It wasn’t many other places where you could be completely surrounded by brushed white metal and no windows. Then again, James had come frozen out of a cargo belt, so Gareth had no idea what was normal for him. Looking around, just to confirm that they were in one of the real, true, spaceship-type rooms on board, Gareth’s eyes wandered away from James for a moment. When they wandered back the bedraggled boy had thrown up again. Real vomit this time, not just liquid, which Gareth found interesting since he hadn’t given the kid any food. Nevertheless, there was no more confusing it with coughing. Gareth looked at the chunky taupe mass, then back at James.
“Are you sick?”
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“Your definition of sick. Never mind.”
That was good enough for Gareth, for now. They had to get out of there. If not, one of the robot maintenance workers might happen by and make them clean up the mess. If there was the one thing that got under Gareth’s skin it was the existence of robot janitors who wouldn’t actually janit. Plus he hated cleaning up messes, so he grabbed James around the waist and dragged him out into the hallway.
