Yeoman

THE LOWEST-RANKING MEMBER

of the away team to a new planet, he can expect to be SPACE-MONSTER MEAT or prey to FLESH-EATING GOO.

IN SHORT, HE'S DOOMED.

Can he outsmart the script?

1AIE REACHED THE FINAL ¥¥ E FRONTIER TODAY.

Again.

No one wants to be the first to say it out loud, so it's one of those things where we have cake and beer and every­one mouth-smiles at one another while our eyes are all Does anyone even know what is going on anymore? As in, This is cool, for real it is, but seriously, what the hell? I'm on the observation deck looking at it. The last world. Am

I excited? Sure I am. I'm excited. Even if this is the 17th time we've been here. I guess technically we're still searching, but lately, to be honest, it has started to feel less like searching and a bit more like wandering.

MONDAY:

Monday mornings they announce the crew members for the week's away team, and it's always the same: captain, the XO, the medic, the Secu­rity Chief, the ethnographer and an unnamed yeoman.

This week's yeoman: me.

Also: The yeoman always dies.

Here's what I don't get: Why six? Why not five? Week in and week out they send six of us down knowing, knowing, only five will come back. What's so special about six? Is it because there are six spots in the transporter bay? Really. That's it. We can't just let that spot go empty. We can't let that spot go empty, but we have the holographic casino running all day and night. I mean, really? We can't just stick some equipment in there? An extra bag of food, maybe, or an empty sack

for moon rocks. Some extra toilet paper. For God's sake, anything.

Galactic HR assigns me a Coping Specialist.

We meet over breakfast in the non-officers' mess.

He orders a Denver omelet, a bowl of cereal with two percent milk, an Eng­lish muffin, grapefruit juice, coffee and a Yoo-hoo.

"You should have something," he says. "Breakfast is the most important meal of the day."

"How old are you?"

He says he's 12, but if I had to put money on it, he's 10, 10 and a half, tops. Galactic starts them young, while they're still optimistic, then trains them in a plot simulator that reenacts old TV episodes. They think all problems can be resolved in an hour, including commercial breaks.

"Anything you want to talk to me about?" he says with his mouth open. He stuffs a forkful of scrambled egg and bell pepper in there.

"I'm good," I say.

"Suit yourself."

I watch him eat way too much, way too fast. When he's done, he wraps his English muffin in a napkin for later and hands me his card, tells me to call him if the whole meaningless-death thing starts to bum me out.

"Or if you start to experience fear-

of-death symptoms," he says. I ask him what a fear-of-death symptom might be. He thinks about it for a second.

"Pretty much just fear," he tells me. "Also extreme fear."

"Here's the thing," I start to say. I want to tell him that I'm married, that in less than three months I'll be a father, that dying this week would really throw a wrench into our fam­ily planning. I want to say all of it, but for some reason I can't bring myself to say it. He wouldn't care anyway. So instead, I tell him he has a little piece of ham on his shirt.

"Score," he says and pops it into his mouth.

Over dinner that night, I try to figure out how to explain it to my wife.

"I'm probably going to die later this week."

"So, no movie night?"

"I'm serious."

"So am I. I've been looking forward to seeing that one."

"The away team. They posted the list this morning. I'm on it."

She puts her fork down and doesn't say anything for a while, just sits there

running her hand over the horizon of her pregnant belly.

"There's a small insurance policy," I say. "I got a packet from human resources. Let me go get it."

When I come back into the room with the folder, she's putting on her coat.

"Urn?" I say.

"This is bullshit. We're not living off of

a death benefit." This isn't how she talks usually, but then again, she's 28 weeks pregnant. She is not messing around. "I'm going to see the captain."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," I say. "You can't do that. You're not even wearing pants."

"You are not dying for this shitty job," she says, and she's right. It hurts to admit it, because this was my dream job when I was a kid. "I love you, but yeah, I said it. Your job sucks. This sucks. Living in a converted closet sucks. You even kind of suck. The only thing that doesn't suck is this baby that we are going to have."

"Okay," I say. "I'll talk to him."

That night I lie awake, staring out into the cosmic background radiation, listening to my wife snore, feeling the heat rising off of her skin, trying to fig­ure out what I could possibly say to the captain that would make him think I'm worth saving.

TUESDAY:

We're in the transporter bay. We beam down. Such a weird feeling. I won­der if anyone else is as excited as I am, but then I realize how dumb that is. Of course they aren't. They do this three times a week, and they're all bored of

it. They're management. Soft and com­fortable. People have been whispering that the captain's Lycra has been look­ing a bit tight around the middle ever since they instituted free soft-serve in the officers' dining quarters. It's hard not to notice.

As we're dematerializing, the captain starts in with the monologue.

You can tell when he's going to start with this nonsense because he sucks in his stomach a little. Then he touches his chin and checks his hair a couple of times. And then he gets that off-into-infinity look. It's the Age of Science Fiction, he says. Everyone avoids eye contact.

He always does this in the transporter because we're not allowed to move dur­ing molecular calibration.

He says, We have reached the point where our knowledge of the world now exceeds our ability to believe it, to believe what we are seeing, to believe what we are able to do. He has a way of speaking in italics. He says, What we are capable of has caught up to and sur­passed our intuition about what should be possible. We have surpassed our­selves. And even though I've heard this monologue 5,000 times over the ship's speakers, and even though I know it was written by the ship's speechwriter, I can't help but feel just a little inspired, to remember just a little bit of what I felt looking at the poster in the recruit­ing office that day when I signed up for duty, imagining what it would be like to explore the universe.

And then we rematerialize on yet another world populated by sentient goo, and there's green glop everywhere, and it's oozing, which is how the glop procreates, and in the process of ooz­ing, it makes a kind of groaning sound, and overall the whole planet smells like sulfur and even though it's hard, I try to remember that each and every place in the cosmos is an opportunity for discovery and that each and every life-form is a treasure and a marvel and a wonder, and I take out my Life-form Analyzer so (continued on page 127)

YEOMAN

{continued from page 60) that we can catalog this wondrous, mar­velous, slimy goop.

On the surface, we look to the captain for a plan.

"Meet back here in an hour?" he says, shrugging his shoulders. 'Just throwing it out there."

Everyone mumbles agreement and wan­ders off. The medic heads for the lip of a nearby crater formation, pretending to look at readings on his handheld. The Security Chief says he's going for a run. The XO is working on her resume. She should have her own ship and everyone knows it. Instead she's stuck as number two for the booziest captain in the fleet.

The captain strolls off, practicing a new monologue he thought up in the shower this morning.

That leaves the ethnographer and me. She doesn't look thrilled.

"Lieutenant Issa," she says, a little stiff. She says she's going to head over to a nearby cave and see if she can learn anything about the mating process. "You can follow me if you want," she says.

I watch Issa collect slime samples for a while, with a very serious look on her face, but that gets boring, so I wander over toward a nearby rock formation. There are weird noises coming from behind it. I look back at Issa to see if she hears it too, but she's focused on her work, so I keep going toward the noise. As I get closer, I hear what sounds like the captain, in distress.

"Sir?" I say, walking around to behind the rock—and wow. Not what I expected to see.

The captain jumps up. Actually, he sort of jumps up and back and off of whatever he was crouching over, and now he's stand­ing, flushed, with a wild look in his eyes and a fistful of goop in each hand. Next to him is what appears to be a little sculpture that the captain has formed with his hands, out of goo. A little goo-person.

"You didn't see anything, yeoman," he says, but not in a menacing, abuse-of-rank way. Even now, getting caught doing what­ever it was he was doing, he's charming. I guess that's why he's captain.

"Let's keep this between us dudes," he says and winks at me. I say "yes, sir" and try not to think too hard about what the captain was getting ready to do.

WEDNESDAY:

Another mission today. Another chance for random death. I don't think it'll happen just yet, still a little early in the week, but who knows? Yeomen have died on Wednes­days. Hell, yeomen have died on Mondays. We die. It's the job. It's actually in the job description, so I can't say I wasn't warned.

Duties and responsibilities, Yeoman, Sec­ond Class:

• Assist in collection of soil and vegeta­tion samples.

Be prepared to die for no good reason.

We beam down and split up. I tag along with Issa again. She collects samples. I try to assist her.

"What are you doing?" she says.

"Trying to assist you?"

"Please stop."

"Look, I know you actually have a role to play. The thing is, I don't. I'm the yeo­man, and I know you're kind of new as an officer, so I don't know if you know what being yeoman means in terms of my situa­tion and all, but if you don't let me pretend to be helping you, I don't know what's going to happen to me."

Issa looks over at the XO, who seems to be sort of watching me, trying to figure out if I'm actually doing anything.

"All right," Issa says. "Pick that thing up and sort of wave it around in this general area."

I tell her thanks.

We work for a while in silence, or rather, she works and I pretend to work, and it feels good, having a job to do, a purpose, even if it is a fake purpose.

It's late when we get back. We go through the ion scrub and then debrief, and by the time I get back to my quarters, it's past two in the morning. My wife's in bed. I slip off my uniform, slide under the thin blanket and drape my arm over her hip.

"Did you talk to him yet?" she says with­out looking at me.

I don't say anything.

"You're just going to let this happen. To yourself. To us, to your kid."

"What am I supposed to say?"

"How about 'Hey, captain, I don't feel like dying for no reason this week. You cool with that? Everyone cool with that?'"

"It's not like, you know, official. It's not like they're planning for me to die," I say, but even as I'm saying it, I'm remember­ing the slightly crazed look I saw in the captain's eyes yesterday, playing with his goo-woman, and I get a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach.

THURSDAY:

Today's world is a wet one, filled with vapor-based life-forms. One breath of the atmosphere will cause you to know the answer to every question you have ever asked yourself. Where am I? Why did I do that? Was I right? Do they like me? Do I deserve love? Am I going to heaven? Why do I keep doing this? An answer for every ques­tion. All the answers at once. Not a pleasant fate, so we all put on our gas masks. No one really wants to know the whole truth.

And, of course, there's goo. The cap­tain seems to visit only places with goo these days.

I wait all morning for a good moment, but the XO is still watching me, so I have to pretend to be studying the environment. I make a face that I think of as Hmm, This Life-Form Is Super Interesting.

After lunch, I get my chance. Everyone is taking a smoke (concluded on page 130)

YEOMAN

(continued from page 127) break except for the Security Chief, who is doing yoga. The captain tells everyone he's going to take a leak and wanders off behind a grove of 20-foot mushrooms. I wait a couple of minutes, then I follow him back there.

"Hey hey, look who it is," he says.

"Captain, I need to ask you something."

"Of course. Anything for my buddy. Assuming you've kept your mouth shut. Have you? Of course you have. Look at you, you lump," he says. And I'm thinking, He's calling me a lump? I've got four inches on him, easy, although admittedly that's not saying much. I could definitely kick the cap­tain's ass—or probably, definitely probably.

"Okay, sorry, that was mean. What do you want, man? Make it quick. This goo isn't going to make love to itself."

I watch him play with the goopy sub­stance, sculpting and forming it into what I assume is a shape that he finds attractive.

"It's Thursday."

"Yeah, so?"

"I'm the yeoman."

"Ah, yes," he says. He stops what he's doing and turns to look at me. "You want to know why you have to die.'

"Yeah. Uh, yes. I mean, yes. Sir."

"Look, I'm not saying I'm happy about it. Or that I like it. I'm just saying, you know, it makes for a more interesting report. If stuff happens. As you can see," he says, gestur­ing toward his gooey girlfriend, "it's really freaking boring out here. And if central command ever realizes that, they'll cut my budget and I'll end up sitting behind a desk. So I need stuff to happen."

"I get that stuff has to happen. But, with all due respect, sir, I don't know if you know this, but my wife and I, we're expecting."

"Oh, boo hoo. What am I going to do, kill Issa? Have you seen her? She's superhot. Kill my medic? Then how would I get my Vicodin, silly? You're the yeoman, dude. Do your job and die."

No mission today, so in the morning I go down into Records. I find the quietest cor­ner and ask the computer to pull up files on "Deaths, Weird."

Three-hundred seventy-one weird deaths come up, and they're all yeomen. Yeoman Rhee died on XR-1 luu7S, a water planet. Died of thirst. Drowned. Died of thirst while drowning, which doesn't sound suspicious at all. The ship's log says the captain made a grab over the side of the raft, but sources close to the incident report that it "wasn't much of a grab." Yeoman Allen died of Leuchin fungus that got ahold of her mind, and she wouldn't get back into the trans­porter area. At least according to the official report. As the ship pulled away, her mind was being eaten by the fungus, each of her memories being stored forever in a fat cell of the creature, to be replayed forever in an endless loop. I read for hours, into the evening, and they're all like that. Plausibly random-sounding deaths that the captain could not have foreseen or prevented that,

on further inspection, sound like exactly the kind of thing that would be cool to report in a captain's log.

I tell my wife what the records say. She just looks out the porthole and doesn't say any­thing. We both understand what I have to do. I've got to find a way to avoid dying, but if I actually manage to do that, we don't know what would happen to her. She's got to get off the ship tonight.

We eat dinner from the replicator in silence. I start to do the dishes, but she says why bother. I help her pack a small suit­case. She's not mad at me anymore, she's way past that, but the fact that she's not cry­ing is more than a little surprising. Sort of troubling.

Walking through the ship, we try to act casual, like we're on our way to the medical bay for an appointment. When we get to the right place, we look around briefly and then duck into the cramped area where trash is held before it gets ejected out into space. We find an empty shuttle pod and I help her in. I try to give her one final kiss, but she just looks at me, so disappointed, and slaps my face gently.

"I'm not going to die, okay?" I say. "I'll find you somehow."

"I love you,' she says. "But you're an idiot."

We hear someone coming and she shuts the hatch and I press the eject button, and then she's gone.

SATURDAY:

It's a weird place to be. I'm not even mad about it anymore. I get it. This is my role.

We beam down safely and I breathe a little sigh of relief. At least it's not the transporter.

We do our usual thing, and by 3:30 in the afternoon the thought is starting to creep into my head. Maybe. Maybe I'm the one, the only yeoman to ever survive his whole week on the away team. Maybe I'm not just another yeoman after all. It would be so easy to find out. I could take off this mask, breathe in this atmosphere, and in an instant I would know. Maybe it is my destiny to make history. If only I weren't so afraid of finding out what I really am, afraid of what the answer might be.

Around 6:15, the captain gathers us up, gives us a little parable about what we learned here. The thought is definitely in my head now, but I don't even want to entertain it. More time goes by, and I'm thinking, Here I am. I'm still here with 15 minutes left.

It's eight minutes to seven when the cap­tain says it.

"You," he says to me. Still doesn't know my name. I wonder if I even have a name.

"Captain," I say.

"I need your help collecting some sam­ples," he says. "Over there."

Everyone tries to pretend they don't know what's happening, but as I'm walking away, I look back and catch them watching us with grim looks on their faces.

We walk for a while. Far enough away so that, presumably, the rest of the team won't be able to hear whatever horrible thing is going to happen to me. "Over there, behind

that huge space-thingy." He actually calls it a space-thingy.

"You're like not even trying anymore," I say.

We go around the huge space-thingy and there, standing in front of us, is my wife, in all of her full-bellied glory, next to the shut­tle pod I put her in yesterday.

"You, wha, how, uh?" I say. "You flew that thing?"

"Ugh, sometimes I can't believe I married you," she says. "The on-board computer, dummy. Hello? Technology? You don't even have to know how to do anything anymore to have your own ship." She looks at the captain. "Isn't that right, chubs?"

The captain has a look in his eyes, half terrified, half in love with her, and I have to admit, she does look pretty incredible. I'm not sure if it's the light of the six moons or some molecular effect caused by the com­position of this planet, but she is literally glowing, and for half a second I suspect that I might have married and reproduced with an alien goddess.

"What's going on here?" I say, and it starts to dawn on me.

"Yesterday, when I was in Records,

you "

"Went to see the captain, yeah. We struck a deal. I told him I'd prefer that my husband not die by himself on an empty planet," she says. "And he clearly doesn't want to be cap­tain anymore."

"It's a win-win," the captain says, getting into the trash pod. "Your wife's a smart woman."

"What are we going to tell the crew?" I say.

"Trust me, you lump. The crew is not going to care."

SUNDAY (AND BEYOND):

In the end, the official report listed the cause of the captain's demise as "Death by Space-Thingy." An inquiry was made by internal affairs at central command, but that was quickly wrapped up when it became clear that all the crew members' stories were consistent. Yeah, man, the space-thingy just totally came up and got him. The captain got to live out the rest of his years alone, on that planet, humping a pile of alien goop or whatever it is he wanted to do. The ship's officers voted to give my wife a commenda­tion, which she gladly accepted, and a job offer, which she declined. (Although, as a favor to her, they did make me Yeoman, First Class, which came with a new uni­form and a little more in the paycheck every week, just enough to cover movie night.) We had a party to celebrate our new cap­tain, the former XO, and as usual there was cake and beer, but it was different because, for the first time in a long time, we felt like we were searching again. In her first official action as our new captain, she admitted that we were totally lost, which everyone knew but the previous captain had been unwilling to admit, and she said that our new desti­nation was home, wherever that might be, and we all agreed that it was as mysterious and noble a pursuit as any, and we all set our sights that way, hoping it would still be there if and when we found it.

"IT'S THE AGE OF SCIENCE FICTION," HE SAYS. "WHAT WE ARE CAPABLE OF HAS SURPASSED OUR INTUITION ABOUT WHAT SHOULD BE POSSIBLE."