Dead Space: Catalyst by Brian Evenson

Author:Brian Evenson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Horror, Action & Adventure, Media Tie-In, Fiction
ISBN: 9781429986762
Publisher: Tor Books
Published: 2012-10-02T04:00:00+00:00

23

Ensign Haley still wasn’t sure if she should be flattered or insulted. She couldn’t decide if Grottor was using her or not, and she wasn’t altogether sure how much or how little of the truth he was telling her. She also wasn’t sure if she could ask him.

You’re relieved of your duties, he had said to her in the privacy of his cabin. I have a more important task for you. He’d explained to her how she would continue to sit at the same console that she’d sat at before, but he’d arranged for an ensign off the bridge to handle her formal tasks, and then she’d be allowed to do what she was supposed to do.

“And what’s that?” she’d asked.

“Why, draw, of course,” he said. “Doodle and draw. Don’t think about it much. Anything that comes to mind or half to mind, just draw it and then vid it over to me.”

“You want me to spend my time doodling, sir?”

He nodded. “You really don’t have any idea, do you?” he asked.

“Any idea of what, sir?”

“You didn’t recognize what you drew?” he asked.

“No,” she said. And then said, “Well, it looked like the Unitologist symbol.”

“That’s right,” he said. “But it’s much more than that. Can I share something with you?” he asked.

“Umm,” she said, startled. But the hesitancy with which she’d responded had made him clam up again.

“It’s tied to our work on the planet,” he had said. “What you’re doing, Ensign Haley, is important work. It might not seem so, but it is. You’ll have to take my word for it. We need to be careful who takes advantage of it.”

She had laughed. “You must be joking, sir,” she had said.

But apparently he was not, for here she was now, sitting at her console, scribbling with her stylus on her digital pad. She had been doing it for more than a week now, and spinning each doodle over to Grottor as soon as she felt she was ready to move on to a new page.

Grottor’s response had been impassive at first; then, slowly, he had begun to express his disappointment. “No,” he finally said, “that’s not it. That’s not helping at all.”

“Perhaps if you’d tell me what you’d like me to draw,” she said, “then I could be of more help.”

He shook his head. “No,” he said. “If it’s to be of any use to us at all, it just has to come.”

But ever since primary school, she’d been trained to please and she was incredibly frustrated that now, somehow, she couldn’t. She tried to second-guess what Grottor wanted. He’d been initially pleased when she drew some version of the Unitologist symbol, and so she drew it again, and saw for the briefest moment a flicker of excitement when he saw it. But the excitement quickly faded.

“Stop thinking,” he scolded her. “Let it just come.”

Let what just come?

* * *

It might have gone on much longer like that, might have gone on just like that until the moment when

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.