Ch 13
Never in her life had Jack watched anyone plot a course on paper before; she didn’t have years and years of travel under her belt like the others but she had enough to know that it was done by computer and that people didn’t really have an awful lot to do with it. Theo did it on paper, and he used instruments she had never seen before to do it.
Unable to hide her fascination, she edged ever closer to Theo, all the while feeling Riddick watching her. The compass, if that’s what it was, swung, and swung again, and she listened as he kept up a string of mumbles. His hand fanned out just above the chart, he never quite touched it, and she listened to the names of planets and stars as he plotted a course through the strange blue nebula that they floated through.
For the past two days Riddick had kept his eye on her. Since they had cleaned up the loading bay. She wasn’t a child, and she refused to back out once she had insisted she be allowed to help, but if she said she had been prepared for what faced her in the darkened bay, that would be a lie. The blood she had expected, and that wasn’t really what had bothered her. She had seen a lot of blood; her past was a violent one, and blood didn’t have the effect on her that it might on another girl her age. This was more than blood; it was guts and brains and shattered bone. It was cold enough in the loading bay that they could see their breath, but still the smell hit her. Everything let go upon death, and there was something so awful when you looked and saw what an entire life could be reduced to. Blood. Bone, flesh, brains. Shit.
Standing in front of her; his large body had blocked her vision. He had whispered to her so quietly that she could barely hear him and it hit her hard that he cared about her enough to leave her with her pride, to not make her feel like a stupid child. He said there was no shame in leaving and that he would never judge her for it if she left. She nearly did, but she wouldn’t. She couldn’t. But he watched her carefully as she held the hose, and he had directed her so that she never had to get very close. He watched her afterwards too, and showed relief when she didn’t break down. She wouldn’t do that either.
He had made her a cup of coffee when she went to get out of her damp clothes; it just had a tiny bit of milk in it; the same as his. It was such a strange thing, that how he had made her coffee could be such a big thing to her, but he didn’t treat her like a child. Jack drank her coffee that way the next morning as well.
As Jack peeked over the edge of the table at him, specifically at what he worked on, Theo had tried not to watch her. He could feel Riddick’s eyes bore into him from behind, alert for any movement, any sound. It had been days now that they had been together and over those days Riddick had relaxed around Theo, the two men had developed a strange sort of camaraderie, if not friendship, between them. But the two women were another matter altogether. Riddick was still fiercely protective of them both, and Theo had the feeling that would always be the case, so he stepped carefully.
Jack was fascinated however, and edged closer to the table to peer over his shoulder, in order to get a better eye for what it was that Theo saw as he worked. Her fingertip traced the air just above the chart where he had just plotted the course, and as she almost touched Theo, he knew that it would have to be dealt with. The last thing he wanted would be for Riddick to deal with it. Not just because it would in all likelihood mean that he would join the others that had been ejected from the loading bay but because he had genuinely begun to enjoy Riddick’s company.
Riddick didn’t talk a lot, but Theo knew the man heard everything, retained everything. He was subtle and quick minded in a world where Theo had rarely met or spoken to anyone but the brutishly stupid or cruel, those who would follow orders to the letter but never think for themselves. As the days had passed he had even shown a quiet sort of humour, even if it was a gallows humour. Given what he was, that was to be expected and Theo found that the occasional dark comment had him smile in spite of himself.
A quick look over at Riddick before he answered Jack’s question; he still had not spoken directly to the girl, and he had spoken directly to Shazza only under duress. He wasn’t sure he could repeat that now. Jack’s question hung unanswered as he waited for Riddick. The smallest tilt of the head thundered in the thickened silence of the room; it said so much for such a small gesture. It was stern and abrupt and spoke of authority; the hard line of his mouth a dire warning. That he allowed it said something else entirely; that he trusted Theo enough to allow access to something he valued enough to kill for. Theo knew the value of a thing that was in front of him, and this was valuable beyond words. Secure in the knowledge that he wouldn’t get his throat cut if he spoke to Jack, he began to answer her seemingly endless supply of questions about the charts. After about a half an hour of non stop questions from Jack, he looked over at Riddick, who had looked away as he hid a grin. He could almost hear him say, ‘You asked for it.’ The worst part of it was that he had.
Theo found that he didn’t really mind Jack’s questions; the girl had an incredibly inquisitive mind and she had made him stop and think on more than one occasion before he answered her. She had first asked why he charted by hand at all. That one was easy enough. What if there were no computers? What if the computers were wrong, if every modern convenience had it wrong? There were times when you had to look and know a thing, because you had touched it, made it, with your own hands. When he plotted a course, he knew where he would end up, because that is where he had planned to be. She had asked questions about how he knew what he knew, and that took a little longer to answer, and every answer led to more questions. Every question circled closer to what drove him; that bright spark of hope that had lived in his chest since he was a boy.
All of the charts that he had made for the Trieste system were pulled out, for what was known of it anyway, and he laid them across the entire surface of the table. There were empty spaces, and he had restrained the urge to inscribe ‘here be monsters’ on the charts. It hung over the edges in spots and was held down by all manner of paperweights but it was finally complete. He told Jack to stand back and look at all of it, as a piece, to see all of it together.
Jack circled the table as she looked across the charts, her mind filled with everything that Theo had already told her. She had seen star maps of course, but they were smaller and took up only the space of a console screen. They would show a system by pieces, and when the image would pull back, to show an entire system, it always looked so small, so insignificant. Its true scope could never be seen.
This was different. Where a computer image was a pinprick of blinkered light, this was a blinding spotlight. It was all so clear, the distances between things, the stars and planets and other heavenly bodies Theo had pointed out. “Come here, Jack.” She had stood on the other side of the table across from Theo, and she circled the assembled charts, to stand beside him. They both stood side by side, Theo had again quickly looked over to Riddick, to seek permission. Theo raised his hand and asked her quietly to follow with her eyes while he spoke.
Her jaw dropped as he pointed to stars outside of the huge blast shield in front of them, and then pointed down to its position on the large assembled star chart on the table in front of them. Everything was there, the planets, the stars, everything, all of it was there and all of it made so much sense that she was struck silent. Theo stood in the middle of it all, a master of it all. Theo’s voice was quiet as he took in her awe. He knew how she felt, he understood. “That’s why I chart by hand, Jack.” He didn’t need to ask if Jack understood, he knew that she did because he had felt the same way. He felt that way every time he stepped onto his bridge and looked out at the stars. He had plotted those charts for years; he could see them clearly in his head even without the need to look at them. To be the captain of a ship was one thing, to be a master of the sea she sailed in was another thing entirely. A lot may have changed since the days of tall ships, but not everything.
—
The computer screen returned to its black state when the message was complete, just as his secretary brought him another cup of tea. She worked silently; the tea service from her previous visit was efficiently cleared away without a sound. Bishop had no time for women and women’s chatter; the secretary said nothing, a stipulation made of every secretary that worked for this office. He waited until she had prepared his tea and left her to stand in uncomfortable silence for a moment, and savored her discomfort. She hid it well; the moment she became comfortable with the routine she would be let go to be replaced by someone else. No one questioned his methods, no one would dare.
Her weight shifted subtly from one foot to the other, the only outward sign of her discomfort. Bishop kept the room cold, and insisted on a dress code for his secretaries that ensured that they would be chilled to the bone, in more ways than one, upon entry to his office. The mounted heads were enough to unsettle most women. This latest one, he didn’t bother with their names, had not been rattled by them. She would be gone before the day was through. He waved his hand in a dismissive fashion as he spoke, “Send in Mr. Warfield before you leave.” A few keystrokes on his keyboard and the secretary was met by another as she left the offices. They spoke too quietly to hear but he ran the conversation through his head; it was familiar to him by now.
He turned to face Duncan Warfield as he walked through the large doors to the office. “The third one this month Jonathan; that’s a new record.”
Warfield had known Bishop for almost twenty years; it still unnerved him slightly to see him smile over his practiced misogyny. He was never sure just how real any of it was, so much of Bishop was a studied façade. He placed the files on Theopoulis on the edge of the desk; he had already looked through them, and Bishop would never question him about them. It had turned into something of a game between the two men. Duncan always seemed to know what Bishop worked on, and it was this near prescience that may well have accounted for the friendship the two men had shared this entire time.
Bishop took a sip of his tea as he watched Duncan intently; the man was a mystery, even after all this time. He had spent years in an effort to make him ill at ease, and had failed at every turn. Duncan Warfield was a man gifted with such coldblooded intelligence that Bishop could not help but be fascinated by him.
The silence drew out between the two men, as their wills wrestled with each other. As was frequently the case, it was Bishop that grinned first. To hide it, he stood and strode towards the huge floor to ceiling windows and gazed out over the city below. “So, Duncan. Where are we going?”
Bishop watched the other man smirk at him in the reflection of the window. He knew that if he were to turn around, all trace of it would be gone, so he stayed where he was, and waited for an answer.
Duncan waited until the new secretary had come in and poured him a cup of tea; she had clearly been instructed beforehand as to his preferences. He winked at her when her hand shook ever so slightly as she put the delicate cup down. Duncan had often spent time in thought about why Bishop was what he was; occasionally he had even tracked down the secretaries afterwards and saw to it that they were financially taken care of until they could relocate elsewhere. It usually took them a month to shake off employment with Bishop. The funds came from a massive slush fund the two men had run for years; he was never sure if Bishop knew that he did so.
“The Trieste system.”
Copyright© September 2006 xxxevilgrinxxx