Ceteroquin: Doubt Cranks Up to 11

This is the thirteenth part of The Trapping of the Ceteroquin. This story appears in full in M/U's 2020 speculative fiction anthology, Demiurges and Demigods in Space, Vol. 1 and will be run as a serial online every Tuesday and Thursday for the next couple of months and each entry can easily be found here. To read this in its entirety, along with all of the other brilliant pieces included in the collection, you can obtain paperback and PDF copies in our store, with Kindle versions available on Amazon.

Laura retired, also without a word, to her own chambers, resisting the half an urge to go to the Captain’s room. It wasn’t necessarily the company of Hancock she craved, but she knew that she would not be able to sleep and she wished instead to stare silently out the Captain’s viewing wall until perhaps she could. Or not. Maybe she’d stare out into space (and, even more interesting, through hyperspace) all the way until the regrouping. Maybe it would be her turn to stay up all night. 

Unexpectedly, she did then feel the slightest twinge of desire, realizing that her own all-nighter would be far less interesting, to say nothing of pleasurable, than the ones in which she imagined the others to be engaged.

But no matter. That was not her fate. She would have other means of obtaining pleasure, both during the journey (even if almost certainly alone) and at their next stop, at which time she was determined to find pleasure in the company of another…and another…perhaps even at once. 

She was both amused and surprised to discover how horny she had become – and why not? All this time spent in discipline and duty and professionalism and she was the only one not getting laid. How long had it even been? And, yes, she acknowledged, she was not the only one. But was that a group she wanted to be in at all? How had she ended up so celibate? 

Was this really the path she had chosen? Was this actually a destiny in which she was interested or was all of this just happening to her? Why?

She knelt down in the center of the room and closed her eyes. It was unclear what to do or how to spend the time or what (apparently) she was even doing with her life. Perhaps, she figured, the only thing to do might be a little bit of meditative work. She breathed deeply and slipped easily into it, seeing for a moment the glory of the great viewing wall behind her eyelids before she gave in and switched her focus from the cosmic to the fleshly, shifting from a posture of meditation to one of self-attentiveness. 

*

The novitiates, Melissa and Jason, were at this point so embarrassed at their performance (and a little resentful at their supposed mentors) that they each went to their respective beds and directly to sleep. Both of them were entirely unsure whether or not they had made a mistake in coming here. Did they actually have what it took? What actually was their mission? How real was any of this? 

*

Frank Mario felt the same shame, and even more so. He felt the same uncertainty about his capabilities and choices, about the nature of the mission itself, only even more acutely. He understood his own nature, for the most part without much judgment – he knew what he was and he was what he was and he never made any apologies for that. 

And yet. 

And yet he knew better than the rest of them, at least most of the rest of them, and he knew that he had perhaps been more singularly responsible for the debacle of the prior days than anyone else. It didn’t put him on the track of self-loathing, but he was sincerely disappointed at what he had done. He was wondering pretty hard as to whether he should remain aboard the ship in this capacity.

He took a sedative and put a comedy on his holo-screen at low volume until he fell gratefully asleep – at least for a little while. 

*

Frietag perhaps lacked the sharp shame felt by many of the others; intoxication being his province, they were the ones who had gone overboard, losing control of themselves. Once in a while, there were upsides to being a drunk. He had, of course, participated in their libertine and reckless escapades, but had neither been an instigator nor even a particularly remarkable participant. This had been their show. He’d only been along for the ride. 

But even so – even so. There was something that, even so, gave him pause. So much so that he found himself declining his own mental offer of a drink. Just this one night, he said to himself, he would abstain. He didn’t know why. Just this once, he knew it was right. 

The night went on and his head got clearer even as his remaining energy waned away. Just before he fell asleep, as sober as he’d been in who knows how long, he too wondered what all this was all about, if this life made any sense. He was old and a drunkard, and had few options. Perhaps he could peddle his renowned bluegrass elsewhere, maybe even on his own – perhaps just go off and be a performmer, a musician, an artist, for real. Ditch the cover story and just play the music and feel it and put it out there without any sort of higher purpose or greater cause wrapped around his neck dragging him to the bottom of some planetary ocean. 

Wouldn’t that be something? 

Sitting in his chair (having refused to surrender to the bed), he slipped out of waking consciousness, at least for the time being.