Katherine Mankiller: Corporate Oversight

Corporate Oversight

by Katherine Mankiller

Originally published in The Fifth Di..., December 2006.

Back on Earth Amy Roberts had seemed okay, like someone Marsha Morales could stand to be trapped with in a 750 square foot spacecraft with for two and a half years. She'd liked Amy.

Things change.

Amy stumbled blearily out of her cubicle. She hadn't changed clothes or showered in about a week, and she smelled like it. "Do we have any tissue?"

"I think you used it all," Marsha said.

Amy's only answer was a small whimper as she lunged towards the bathroom.

"Oh no you don't!" Marsha said. Their toilet paper supply was limited, like everything else.

"What the hell is your problem?" Amy asked.

"Maybe it's that you aren't doing any maintenance."

"I have to suffer to create. You wouldn't understand."

"No, I work for a living."

"Ooh. Asteroid mining. Impressive."

"Ooh. Father owns company. Impressive."

"I wish I hadn't come."

"Maybe you shouldn't have."

Amy turned on her heel, stormed into her room, slammed the door, and started throwing things around noisily.

Marsha walked into the engine room to check the navigation controls--it wasn't like Amy would do it, even though it was her job. Amy claimed to be spending her days composing an opera. They were still on course, which was fortunate, because even a fairly short period of time off course would be further than they had enough fuel to correct. Rotation was good, although they'd probably notice if it wasn't by things floating.

Marsha left to check the engines.

Marsha looked at the dishes in the sink. She wouldn't have thought there would be as many molds, spores, and fungi in a spacecraft, but apparently there were enough to grow on dirty dishes. Marsha could live with the piles of clothing in the living area, but this was just unsanitary.

Amy looked directly at Marsha, turned up her nose, walked right past Marsha, and deposited her dirty cereal bowl in the sink.

"Hey," Marsha said. Amy didn't react, so she repeated, louder, "Hey!"

Amy pointedly ignored her and kept walking towards the couch. Marsha grabbed her arm and twirled her around.

"I'm not speaking to you," Amy said.

"Those are your dishes and you'll do them."

"If you don't like living with me, maybe you should move out," Amy said. Amy wandered off, humming.

"Dishes!" Marsha called after her, but Amy gave no sign of hearing.

Spoiled little rich brat. I'm not her maid.

At least the humming was pretty.

Marsha heard approaching footsteps, but she didn't look up. Two could play the silent treatment game, however moronic the game might be.

"I'm sorry I'm such a pain in the ass," Amy said.

Marsha looked up.

"I did the dishes," Amy said.

"Thanks." She didn't want to forgive Amy, but she felt herself softening.

"I hate it when we fight." Amy smiled ruefully. "Guess I shouldn't removed my implant."

"Your...?"

Amy rolled up her sleeve. There was a bloody rag wrapped around her upper arm.

"Amy!" Marsha stood up and unwrapped Amy's arm. There was a deep, red, gash oozing yellowish-white pus.

Amy had cut some kind of psychotropic implant out of her arm. The size and shape of the wound, and her behavior... it had to be.

Marsha went into the living room to retrieve the first aid kit and sprayed disinfectant on and into Amy's arm. Amy winced.

"What did you...?" Marsha painted the bandage over the wound and expelled a deep breath.

"I told you," Amy said. "I have to suffer to create."

Marsha counted seven packages of soup opened and spoiling on the kitchen counter. "What the... Amy!"

"I wanted comfort food, but they tasted wrong," Amy said.

"Of course they taste wrong! They were cooked three years ago and have a shelf life of ten years... if you don't open them!"

"Quit yelling, it's no big deal."

Marsha honestly couldn’t tell if Amy was joking or not. "Just don't do that, okay?"

"Fine!"

Marsha heard humming in the living room as she walked by to get breakfast.

Amy had a small, sharp knife, and was cutting horizontal lines across the back of her lower arm. Marsha grabbed the first aid kit and gently took the knife away from Amy, then doctored the wounds.

"You're so sweet," Amy said.

Marsha didn't feel sweet. She didn't want this. She loathed emotional scenes. She'd chosen missions alone to avoid them. She was terrible at this sort of thing.

"You're good at this," Amy said.

Marsha looked up.

"You're so calm," Amy said.

"Getting upset won't do either of us any good," Marsha said.

"No, but that doesn't stop people, does it?" Amy asked.

Marsha emerged from the gym to find Amy scrubbing the kitchen floors. The dishes were clean and sparkling and drying in a rack next to the sink.

"I'll clean the living room tomorrow," Amy said.

"Thanks."

"Sorry about my arm. I don't know what I was thinking."

Marsha didn't know what to say to that, so she said, "I really like what you keep humming," and hummed a few bars.

Amy beamed at her. "Hey, you remembered a lot of that! Have you ever taken any music?"

"High school choir," Marsha said. "I wanted to study music in college, but I thought I'd never be able to afford it. When I finally got my scholarship, I knew I had to take something practical instead." She smiled. "When we get back it'll be time to put my sister Christina through school, unless she's gotten a scholarship of her own."

Amy sat back on the floor, looking thoughtful. "I guess the money is a big deal to you."

"I wouldn't do the job for free," Marsha said.

"Maybe when you get back you can study music," Amy said.

Amy used to be like this all the time.

Marsha awoke to the sound of the airlock closing. She got out of bed and padded out to the main living area. "What did you jettison?"

"I'm sorry," Amy said.

Marsha waited.

"I want to end it all, but I'm afraid. I thought I'd have the courage to do it if I were starving."

Marsha took a deep breath. "And what am I supposed to eat?"

"I'm sorry," Amy said. "I only meant to jettison half, but I don't remember how much I..."

"I'm going to have to ask you to go back to your room," Marsha said.

"I don't want to."

Marsha wrestled Amy into her room. Amy went limp and made Marsha drag her. Marsha dropped Amy onto her bed.

"This isn't funny," Amy said.

"It's not supposed to be."

Marsha slammed the door shut and quickly removed the lock panel.

"I'll be back later with food," Marsha said.

Amy tried the door, then beat her hands against it. "Let me out!"

"I'm sorry, no."

Amy kept yelling to be let out. It became less and less coherent--shrieks of rage and banging sounds.

Routine maintenance was nearly impossible with a madwoman shrieking in the next room, but it had to be done. All systems needed to be checked. The air filtration system needed to be cleaned. Waste disposal units needed to be purged. It took three or four times as long with Amy screaming and trying to beat her way out of her room.

Then she curled up in the fetal position in her room and put a pillow over her head to drown out the howling. She should really conduct an inventory and see how much food Amy had jettisoned, but she doubted she'd be able to concentrate with all the noise. Morning was soon enough, and maybe Amy would have shouted herself out by then.

Speed: 97% light speed, angular trajectory due to decompression and rotation--she could probably calculate how far away the crates of food were, but not the direction, and it wasn't like they had the fuel to get them.

Quiet.

Disturbingly quiet.

Marsha reassembled Amy's lock, then opened the door with a large tool in one hand in case Amy was waiting to attack her.

Amy was swinging from the ceiling by a makeshift noose.

Marsha noticed her face was wet. She was crying. She hadn't cried since she was ten years old.

Well, she couldn't stand around crying all day. She had an inventory to conduct, and Amy to deal with. Wonderful, now she was an undertaker, too. Roberts Mining Corporation really needed to revise their job description for this position.

Jettisoning Amy would be a hazard to navigation. Calculate the vectors on a 200-pound corpse travelling at 97% of light speed. Forty-pound crates of C Rations were bad enough. Hell, if the airlock had been behind them instead of on the side of the ship they'd--she'd--have been creamed on deceleration. On the other hand, travelling the rest of the way with a corpse decomposing onboard was unbelievably unsanitary. There were depleted, unused storage areas...

Disgusting. Jettison her.

No. It would be too irresponsible.

Waste disposal was intended for small items--food tins, biological waste--and was disrespectful as well.

She untied Amy and dragged her into the airlock, then vented the atmosphere. Freezing Amy would help her "keep."

They weren't paying her enough for this.

Inventory complete. Or maybe she should say, "damage assessment."

She only had enough food for two meals a day. She'd have to cut back on her exercise routine, of course. She figured that twenty minutes of running three times a week instead of forty minutes four times a week would keep her in good enough shape to assemble the hyperspace gate and the dome alone, if she kept up her strength training. If she lost too much weight she could cut back further, but she really felt she needed to try to maintain optimum cardiovascular fitness. The gate and dome were prefabricated to be assembled by two.

As for the maintenance, Amy hadn't been helping, so she was used to the workload.

She found herself trying not to think about the vectors on forty-pound crates of C Rations travelling at near-light speed crashing into a ship or planet. What was done was done, and was out of her control.

She didn't like being out of control.

There shouldn't be ships out this far, anyway. Just her.

She should be sleeping. She'd been trying, but she was too hungry. She was used to eating more.

This was all Amy's father's fault, Marsha thought as her stomach growled. He was the one who sent his insane daughter out into space to die.

No, on second thought, shifting responsibility didn't make her feel any better at all. She preferred choice.

"We don't choose our choices," she said aloud, and didn't worry about whether it made sense, or even that she was talking to herself. That was the beauty of working alone.

They should have sent her alone.

At last, Epsilon Eridani. She was the first person to come this far into space, and once she got the hyperspace gateway up and running, it would take her seconds to get home. She launched the robot mining scanners and crossed her fingers that the planet had Helium3. That would be the most profitable--power stations--and she was getting a percentage of the corporation's claim. Ten percent, in addition to the standard pay, which was piling up in the bank unused. She'd only been gone two and a half years, but it had been accumulating for ten and a half because of the time dilation. She doubted interest had kept up with inflation--it never did. There were also stock options.

She wondered briefly if she would get Amy's mineral rights percentage and stock options, too.

She went into the storage area and looked at the dome. It would likely be a bitch to install by herself, and she had lost a lot of weight on the Amy Diet.

Well, there was no sense sitting around dreading the task, when she could just do it and get it over with. She put on the suit and helmet, trying not to wonder if she'd be able to drag the prefab dome bits past Amy.

Marsha ached all over, and the gateway wasn't even assembled yet. She had two days worth of food left. But the dome was complete and functional. Not that it had atmosphere--they were going to get atmosphere through the gateway--but it was finished.

Amy looked like hell. Marsha tried not to think about it. No, instead she should plan the best way to assemble the gateway--also prefabricated for two people to construct.

The computer tone informed her that the mineralogical survey was complete. She hobbled over to the computer.

She was a rich woman.

She didn't feel like a rich woman. She felt like a very sore woman without enough food to eat.

Heave!

Marsha shoved, and shoved, and shoved, but it was no use. The hyperspace gateway was too heavy for her alone in her current condition. It was probably just muscle fatigue, but she didn't have enough food to sit around and wait to recover. Maybe she could use one of the dome supports as a sort of pulley. Maybe she could use some of her engineer brains and get herself out of this situation.

Even if they threw in Amy's ten percent of the mineral profits they weren't paying her enough.

God, she was hungry. And her nose was bleeding again. A piece of the gateway had fallen on her as she was unpacking it. Fortunately, it was just a trickle--not enough to fill the spacesuit helmet. She probably looked like crap.

Concentrate. Pulley. Marsha trudged back to the ship to get the rope. The sight of Amy in the airlock was enough to make her lose her appetite, anyway.

Marsha switched on the assembled hyperspace gateway. It hummed. She backed up against the wall like they suggested in training, and...

Wind, horrible wind, crushing. Then it was over. The dome was pressurized.

Marsha walked through the gate and rang the bell to be let into corporate headquarters. She pulled off her helmet and shoved her gloved hand against her bloody nose.

The door opened, and a technician stood there, staring. "Get me a tissue or something," she said. He scrambled away. "And we're going to need an undertaker," she added.

The technician stumbled over his own feet, turned to stare at her, and then dashed out of the room.

Marsha lay back on the hospital bed and sighed. Amy was their problem now.

"You've lost a lot of weight," the doctor said. Marsha couldn't remember her name. She'd have to ask someone.

"Amy jettisoned a bunch of food."

The doctor stared at her. Staring seemed to be the standard response. Marsha considered this, and decided she wouldn't know what to say, either.

"Mr. Roberts wanted to know if you wanted to write a eulogy for Amy," the doctor said.

A eulogy? How about, I'm Sylvia Plath, take care of me! No, that would be an epitaph. Marsha sighed. "No, I'm no good at that sort of thing."

The doctor made a sympathetic noise and left.

Some of Amy's opera was stuck in her head. Maybe she should tell Amy's father to download it out of the ship's databanks. He probably didn't know it existed.

Dr. Aaron Cooper looked a lot older than he'd looked when they left. Of course, ten years had passed for him, but those ten years had not been kind.

"I'm so sorry," he said. "Mr. Roberts told me he could vouch for his daughter. He's been arrested for negligent homicide." He made a face. "I was mission control, but I was also an employee, you know? I told him he should give you her mineral rights and stock options, but he refused, saying it would encourage future employees to murder each other. But I talked him into a bonus for you, before he was arrested." He handed Marsha a check.

Ten thousand dollars. Better than nothing, she supposed. "Thank you."

"We'd also like you to take charge of the mining operations on Epsilon Eridani."

"My asking price has gone up."

"Of course. Salaries have gone up in the last ten years. We would certainly take that into account."

Dr. Cooper wasn't going anywhere. He just kept looking at her. She wasn't sure what he wanted from her--forgiveness? absolution?--but as far as she was concerned, it wasn't about him or his guilt, and she didn't see why it should be.

"Can I help you with something else?" she asked.

"No," he said. "No, that will be all."

Marsha flipped the station on the television, and got... Amy's father, Jake Roberts. Damn. If she thought the years had been unkind to Dr. Cooper...

"Why did you send your daughter into space?" the reporter asked him.

"She was fine!" he answered. "The implant worked!" He looked like he was going to burst into tears. They then started in on Amy's criminal record, much of it juvenile--shoplifting, identity theft...

Parents have an endless capacity for denial, Marsha thought. Maybe it was easier for him to believe. Maybe he couldn't cope.

Amy's funeral had been yesterday, but she hadn't gone. She'd been afraid the service would be too full of grief--or worse, too void of grief and too full of euphemisms--and she would have had to bail. She'd go later, by herself, and pay her respects.

She needed to call her mother and sister tomorrow.

She turned off the television, put the remote on the nightstand, and went to sleep.