This choice: Continue reading "Double Double" • Go Back...Chapter #40Double Double (15) by: Seuzz   Chapter 15
"HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JAMAL!"
Joseph Stuart, first officer of the Hood, lifted a glass to the guest of honor as a ripple of laughter went about the table, where food and a large cake were spread out.
He winced—extravagantly—and corrected himself. "I mean, here's to the new bride!" More laughter. "I mean—!" He frowned at the rest of the officers. "What do I mean?"
"Congratulations?" Kai Chin suggested with a tight smile. That smile tightened further when Henri Michaux shouted, "Good-bye and good riddance!" to more laughter. "Their loss is our gain!" Alan Paultic hooted as the merriment bubbled over.
Banks looked properly abashed and grateful, even at the teasing. And if the laughter died suddenly, and awkwardly, as he got to his feet, he didn't seem to notice it.
"I want to thank you all for this," he told the room quietly as he stared down at his plate. "It means a lot to me. I haven't been— I wasn't on the Hood long, I feel like. Not long enough to feel like I deserve— Like I ever really came to belong enough to deserve—"
Oh Christ, Vedra thought with a dreadful sinking feeling. Don't go there, Jamal. Don't make everyone uncomfortable by being uncomfortable yourself with this farewell party.
"The company ... the camaraderie ... the friendship ... of everyone on this ship," Banks continued, "is something I have deeply craved. And which I wished to earn. I did find it ... in places—"
Is he looking at me out of the corner of his eye? Vedra wondered. Is everyone else looking at me out of the corner of their eyes? She wanted to hide under the table, but she kept herself erect and unmoving. Unnaturally so, as she felt as she started to sweat beneath her tunic.
"So to have a send-off like this," Banks said. "Almost too late for me to realize that I did have those things—those ... friendships ... all along. To find out that you all did want to—"
"Push you out an airlock to send you on your way?" Paul Bodrick shouted. He giggled shrilly into the silence at his own jest. Vedra shot daggers at him, unforgiving even though she saw that he had arrived at the party already half drunk.
Banks froze on his feet, eyes locked on the table. Vedra could tell, just by looking at him, that his skin was crawling with embarrassment.
"Thank you all," he said, and fell into his chair.
For a count of three, no one said or did anything, until Vedra took it onto herself to begin clapping. After a moment, the others joined in.
Then, to her astonishment, Captain Martinez, from the other end of the table, boomed out, "For he's a jolly good fellow! For he's a jolly good fellow!" For a stunned moment he sang alone before the others fell in with him. A rictus spread over Banks's face as the song rang out, and he smiled painfully when it ended—"that nobody can deny!"— with another round of cheers and applause.
Later, after they had all eaten, and the cake had been cut and passed around, the officers rose and wandered and mingled with each other, drinking and talking. Vedra waited until most of the others had shaken Jamal's hand and drifted off again before she joined him in his corner.
"That could have gone a lot worse," she murmured at him.
"How?" he murmured back. "Someone could have given me a Denebian slime devil as a prank gift?"
"Well, that's one way it could have gone worse." Or, she thought, you could have started crying. "Don't hold it against them," she said aloud.
He said nothing for a few moments as they gazed past each other's shoulders. Then he said, "I don't hold anything against them."
"Really?"
"No, I don't. This was actually very nice. I didn't deserve it."
She sighed. He was doing it again, turning against himself the resentment he felt at not being as respected and loved as he wanted to be.
"Yes you did. The trouble is, they tried too hard."
She started to follow it up, but held her tongue as Matthew Simmons, the security chief, pushed himself in.
"Wanted to say congratulations in person, Jamal," he said, shaking Banks's hand and clapping him on the shoulder. "It's a damned shame, your leaving us. When're you going?"
"Two weeks," Banks said after a fractional, and very frosty, hesitation.
"Oh. Well, we'll have to make the most of it. Stop by my cabin some time before you go. I've got some holograms of a party I was at on Argelius II—"
"He'll do that," Vedra said. Simmons started at her interruption, then with a beady-eyed smile squeezed Banks once more on the shoulder and moved off.
"They really can't wait, can they?" Banks said.
"Jamal—"
"It's like a wake, and I'm not even dead yet."
Vedra suddenly felt very tired, and she wheeled and stalked off. If he's going to turn himself into a self-pitying wreck, she thought, he can do it without me. Before she could quite know what she was doing, she was out the door.
Jamal, startled by her exit, stared in mortification after her. She was abandoning him too? No, he quickly and bitterly realized. He had simply managed to drive her off, the way he had managed, so quickly, to alienate the other officers on what should have been a— Well, if not a "happy" occasion, at least one of fellowship and good feelings.
Why do I always do this? he chided himself. Why can't I ever stop myself from it? I get in these moods and then I spiral, and I know I'm spiraling and I know how it will end, yet I can't stop it. Can I stop it now? He glanced around the lounge, where the others were talking in small knots, seemingly oblivious to him and to what had just happened. Should I go up and start talking? Should I push myself in?
But it didn't matter what he thought, for he found he didn't have the willpower.
His eye fell onto the table, onto the very small pile of gifts he'd received, the chief of which (from Vedra, naturally) was a book: Jules Verne's Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Seas. Far from being a first edition (which would be impossibly expensive, if even procurable), it wasn't even an antique, but a reproduction of the sort that people used to decorate their quarters. He had never read it, but he knew it by reputation, and recognized the gift as a thoughtful gesture: a story of scientific voyages into strange and dangerous places aboard an exotically and imaginatively appointed vessel.
On an impulse he picked up the book and glanced over the first page.
The year 1866 was marked by a bizarre development, it began, an unexplained and downright inexplicable phenomenon that surely no one has forgotten. Without getting into those rumors that upset civilians in the seaports and deranged the public mind even far inland, it must be said that professional seamen were especially alarmed. Traders, shipowners, captains of vessels, skippers, and master mariners from Europe and America, naval officers from every country, and at their heels the various national governments on these two continents, were all extremely disturbed by the business.
He sensed a presence at his side, and looked up into the face of Joaquin Martinez. "May I speak with you privately in my quarters?" the captain said.
Banks swallowed, then nodded. Putting the book down, he followed Martinez out of the lounge and down the corridors. When they were inside his quarters, Martinez wheeled and, with shoulders squared and his hands behind his back, addressed his science officer directly.
"I understand you feel you have had an unpleasant time of it aboard the Hood," he said.
Banks felt himself flush.
"I can't complain," he replied.
"Can't you?" said the captain. "And yet you do. And have. You have not made it easy for any of us. Yourself most of all."
Banks bit the inside of his cheek.
Martinez drew a deep breath, then turned to walk to the other side of the cabin. Over his shoulder he said, "I am, of course, to blame for some of this."
"Sir?" Banks said.
Martinez held the lieutenant's eye. Then he turned away.
"I have been unfair to you, Mr. Banks. Unintentionally, but it is true. I have been— And if this has colored your attitude toward this ship, and her officers, then I have done you a gross disservice, and I apologize for it. I will endeavor to make the remainder of your tour aboard the Hood as pleasant as I can. But before then, I have some hard advice for you."
He turned now and addressed Banks directly, in a clear and firm voice.
"You have a chance to begin again, with a fresh slate, aboard a new ship. The Potemkin is a good ship, and Seth Aescher is a good man. He'll give you a fair and honest shake. More so, I guess, than I have. Don't waste the opportunity."
Banks felt his jaw clench.
"And how could I waste it?" he asked.
"By sulking. By questioning everyone else's motives when dealing with you. By taking things in the worst way. And by taking them all too personally."
Banks bit down on his anger. "Is that what I've been doing, sir?"
"To my mind, yes. You've got to see things from the other man's point of view, Mr. Banks. You've got to remember that the other person has a point of view. And that sometimes you're not in his field of vision. Stop taking everything so goddamned personally."
"Is that the extent of your advice, sir?"
Martinez glowered at him. But before he could answer, the intercom at his desk whistled. "Priority message from Starbase Three," the bridge told him.
Martinez looked up at Banks. The science officer saw the exhausted disappointment behind his eyes as he said, "I have to take this privately, Lieutenant."
Banks turned on his heel and went.
* * * * *
To continue investigating the room: "Disposing of Lucy"    indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
| Members who added to this interactive story also contributed to these: |
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
More by this author