Plot Mechanics
The novella (currently in process) is (tentatively) titled Proving Cruise, and takes place in the early months of Andrej Koscuisko’s assignment to Scylla. It’s mostly about character issues, though there is also a plot to go with the story. Andrej and his bond-involuntaries assigned have been sent on remote assignment for reasons into which I will not go just at present; it’s an industrial site in an arctic environment, and Joslire’s crabby about it, because it’s cold. There are other much more important issues to be crabby about: there’s an Inquiry to be prosecuted/persecuted, and there’s a problem with Erish Muat that I’m not talking about because hey, spoilers.
The first time I wrote this scene it was fairly balanced in terms of the issues at hand, but the scene itself is static, and I had some logic/continuity issues with it that aren’t pertinent to the point I wish to present to you. The second time I wrote the scene it was much more interesting, but it got more touchy-feely than I generally think of bond-involuntaries getting in an emotional sense, and also although I knew perfectly well that there was the “elephant in the room” with Erish I’d done nothing to indicate in the context of the scene that there was anything more at stake than Joslire being cold and crabby.
Third time’s the charm. The scene will probably still change between now and the finished product because there’ll be balancing and editing and all of those things, but I like the balance. I also liked remembering that Joslire’s more plugged in to the animist world-view than some other people might be, so he feels the aurora borealis as a sentient entity to which he does not know how to relate and which makes him a little nervous. I’m still missing the slight flavor of an edge to the way it played out in my head originally, a subtle element of I’m going to hang on to you until you talk to me so you may as well talk to me because we don’t have very much time.
The important/obvious changes between the second and third draft are mostly only after the dialogue starts, so I’m only including the third draft from the point at which that change occurs.
I thought about titling this page “Kentucky Windage,” but decided that that might be too obscure (“Target Registration” would work too, but now I can save those for the next times). I’m hoping that you get a chuckle out of watching the scene teeter-totter to find its fulcrum.
The first rough draft follows below.
Click here to jump straight to the second draft.
Click here to go to the resulting synthesis scene.
First Rough Draft
It was dark, it was cold, and Joslire didn’t like it. Transit had been unobjectionable; the tension between them all he thought he understood. Watching Robert St. Clare was a constant perplexity to Joslire, and that was as good as the long dusk’s music, in its own way.
But now they were here. Yarkusk Station, Norfang Industries. Civilians, the lot of them, but there was a sort of a uniform – everyone wore the same trousers, the same over-blouses, even if their shoes and the quality of their clothing varied. He knew they weren’t some branch of Fleet that he should know about. He knew that nobody gave instructions to bond-involuntaries without prior clearance from his Chief, even if they didn’t always know that, even if it didn’t stop them. It was still a constant itch, a nagging irritation trickling through his brain and giving him a headache. He didn’t like headaches, either.
Because the officer was in the operating theater the access points had to be controlled. Chief Samons had put Joslire on with Toska, when Joslire would rather have stood with Robert. It was nothing against Toska, but Joslire had a long way to go – he felt – before he’d be anywhere near as comfortable with the man as he was with Robert.
Cold. It had been cold under the sky, unfriendly, challenging, what are you doing here, I will ice you into the grave as soon as look at you. Cold in the transport, though there’d been hot food. Hot food they’d had in transit, and its warmth didn’t go far enough. Now they were here, they were arrived, and it was still cold, in this bright wide corridor.
On the other side of the door into the medical theater complex Joslire heard Toska breathe out, forcefully, as though he’d swallowed back a tickle in his throat. The corridor was empty; Joslire glanced over at Toska, to see if he was all right. No sign of distress. But finger-code that was emphatic, a little confrontational.
About time.
True, Joslire realized. He’d been focussed on his own issues, not paying attention. Toska had a right to expect better of him. They were all watching him, still, after these three months, trying to figure him out. There was nothing to figure out. Sorry, he coded back. Cold. He should have kept his mouth shut and let the grouping go forward, but he’d been worried about what Koscuisko would make of it when he found out, and convinced that Koscuisko would find out. Koscuisko reacted strongly to hints of sexual coercion. He’d have held it against people who needed him more than even they could understand.
Cold, problem? Yes, cold was a problem. Joslire frowned at the far wall, marginally, but Toska would know.
Hate cold. You?
Since their arrival on Scylla Robert had eased in. Robert made friends easily; he’d been raised with a traveling rotation of aunts and uncles and cousins coming through, sometimes to help with the in-gather, sometimes to keep out of the way of somebody else’s aunt or uncle or cousin or whatever. Robert was good at striking up peer relationships, there being no question in anybody’s mind how junior Robert was.
Makes a change. Oh, fine, Joslire thought. There was nothing like the support of a comrade to give a man strength in adversity, and this was nothing like it. Anything? Of course there was that. There were far more important challenges facing them all. And he didn’t have any encouragement to offer.
Thinks something’s wrong. Since they’d left Fossum it was harder to talk to the officer. They didn’t have as much opportunity, and Koscuisko was sensitive to any hints of favoritism. Over-sensitive, maybe, but it was up to Koscuisko to make the decision. May plan to ask Chief about it.
Nor was anybody talking about it with Erish in the room. It was hard enough on Erish without confronting him with the idea that other people noticed. So Joslire hadn’t had much time to talk it out with Toska and understand what they all thought he should do.
Come up before? Toska asked.
Joslire shook his head, if fractionally. No. Nobody wanted Student Inquisitors to be distracted by any administrative trivia to do with bond-involuntaries. A short discussion in one of the preliminary texts on the Bench’s position and its basic procedures and the history of the program, rough start, failure rate in early years much improved, less than one in eight, all very academic.
Not where he’d see. And Fossum was special duty to begin with, staffing very carefully selected to be least likely to fail under pressure. You?
Heard, Toska said, grimly. So Tosca knew what would happen. Probable reaction?
How was the officer going to respond. What was he going to think. How long did they have before failure of governor became too obvious for a man like Andrej Koscuisko to miss. What happened then.
Think I should tell, Joslire said, as firmly as he could in finger-code. Explain problem. Maybe Koscuisko did know what Fleet did with bond-involuntaries whose conditioning began to fail. He should know. He’d want to. He’d want to know what he could do about it.
Toska stood so straight and silent that Joslire wondered if Toska had heard someone coming, and stilled himself to listen. Nothing. When Toska spoke again Joslire knew it had been concentration, not caution-alert.
For all the good, Toska said, bitter. Sure. Tell him.
No, Joslire couldn’t think what Koscuisko could actually do to change things for Erish, any more than Toska did. But he’d seen Koscuisko do something nobody could ever have imagined anybody doing. Toska didn’t know the whole story – Robert couldn’t tell it without psychological distress, and Joslire didn’t want to go into the details – and none of them really believed any of it. Not because they thought Joslire was lying. Because what Koscuisko had done for Robert was unimaginable, and had never been done before. Anywhere. Ever.
Can’t hurt, Joslire said. Then he settled back into the safe and comfortable posture of a flesh-and-blood automaton and set his energies to imagining himself warm.
(return to top)
Second Rough Draft
The officer had gone straight into the station’s surgical suite. Chief Samons had put Erish and Robert on post, because Norfang could have the best private security in known Space – though Joslire didn’t see how that could be, when he hadn’t seen a single Emandisan here yet – and they’d still be civilians. Koscuisko was a Fleet resource. A Judicial officer. He was not a man to be accompanied by ordinary mortals.
That left Toska and Kaydence and Code, and Chief had taken Toska away to make messing arrangements. So they were three. The suite of rooms was deep within the upper-level administrative areas reserved for the accommodation of visiting persons of importance – audit teams, management inspections, that sort of thing, Joslire supposed. They were an audit team, but the issue was no longer internal. There was no way around that.
Common room; large visiports looking out into the darkness at nothing Joslire could see. Little line of blue lights in the distance at processing stations, power receiving stations, support stations; traveling lights, transports going from here to there and back again. Black sky. Full of stars. Stars were good. But there were ghost-lights in the sky in great shimmering curtains, electro-magnetic disturbances in Yarkusk’s atmosphere, and they gave Joslire an unpleasant feeling in the pit of his stomach. Like he was being watched.
It was a large common room, divided by furnishings and soft-walls that only went part-way to the ceiling. There was a meeting center, a smaller area – nice rugs, deeply cushioned chairs, high-end beverage service – set dead-center in the middle of the great wide window-wall, which helped a little bit, because it did block some of the view of those glittering lights. To one side, a door into a common sleeping-area with eight beds neatly made up and a washroom through to the back. Kitchen. On the other side, a small sub-suite for the ranking visitor’s use, a private sitting area, a private bedroom, its own little food service area, a washroom the size of the one that all the rest of them were expected to share. A conference room, with its own door from the common area. The secretarial aide’s room was on the same side as the officer’s room, Chief Samons’ kit was already there. She got a little closet for warming her night-time potion if she took one, but nothing like the drinks-cabinet in the officer’s suite. Which Joslire was supposed to be stocking, rather than watching the ionosphere storm out of the corner of his eye to make sure it wasn’t going to invade. It was an intelligence, a non-hominid intelligence. He had no strategies for approaching it to seek an understanding.
Code was in the officer’s bedroom storing the officer’s kit, his boot-stockings, his hip-wraps, his white-squares. Joslire wouldn’t have minded doing that himself. He’d been Koscuisko’s orderly for the months of Koscuisko’s stay at Fossum, after all, but he’d been given his assignment and he was going to do it. Eighteen bottles of cortac brandy. Ten of overproof wodac. An eight of sharbite-fruit, plump and fragrant, waiting to be stripped of its peel curl by aromatic curl and served with wodac. Glassware provided; Joslire made a note. They’d want something sturdier for the officer’s use if things went into Inquiry by more than an opening of the doorway. The officer could be hard on drinking-glasses.
Drinking-water, in containers, chilled; Joslire wondered why they needed a refrigeration unit at all, when all that anybody would need to do was to show the fluid in its clear vitreous flasks the lights in the night sky to chill it clean through. It worked for him, didn’t it?
Turning away from the now-stocked drinks cabinet to collapse the cargo-carry for storage Joslire ran into Kaydence, standing there in front of him; carrying a thermal-box with the officer’s rhyti-service. Right. Joslire took it with a nod of thanks and unshipped the contents, arraying them on the curved ledge – brewer, strainer, leaf, Aznir root-sugars, dairy cream in its own chill-container — but when he straightened up again to go out for whatever came next Kaydence was still there.
“Problem?” Kaydence asked, backing away to let Joslire out of the drinks-cabinet nook but not going far. Behind him Joslire could hear Code coming out of the officer’s bedroom. He didn’t have to turn his head to look in order to know that Code was giving Kaydence the signal – go out, watch for Chief, sing out – because Kaydence gave Joslire a nod of neutral concern and left without waiting for an answer.
Joslire didn’t feel like looking at Code. He could feel Code’s warmth at his back, and tensed despite himself. There were going to be words. Words were dangerous; Joslire preferred to avoid them. But he was new here; they were still learning each other. They hadn’t done a grouping, because –
“Problem?” Code repeated, his voice quiet and low, but – as Kaydence’s gaze had been – neutral. Plenty of space there. They hadn’t done a grouping because Joslire knew that Koscuisko would find out. Koscuisko wouldn’t know what to make of it; he didn’t come from the same sort of communal fraternities that bond-involuntaries and Emandisan had in common. Koscuisko wouldn’t have seen bonding exercises. He would only have seen sexual coercion, bullying, and that would have been a barrier between Koscuisko and his own people. People he was willing to accept as his own, but “his own” in Dolgorukij terms as Joslire understood them, not as Fleet meant bond-involuntaries to be. Property.
“It’s cold.” He knew they could trust the officer. His knives had taken Koscuisko’s measure, and the holy steel never failed. They had no way of knowing that, and Joslire couldn’t explain, because they’d all seen one too many bond-involuntaries fall into that trap. All he could do was trust them, blind, and hope they’d decide to trust him, because then they’d start to understand about Andrej Koscuisko. “I don’t like cold.”
“Cold?” Code’s voice sounded amused, but in a sympathetic way. “You’re not cold. You’ve got all this good gear, and it even mostly fits. And these rooms, let the officer sneeze once and we’ll all be roasting.”
Hand to Joslire’s left arm from behind, between his elbow and his shoulder. Something he could shake off if he wanted to. Friendly. Joslire clenched his fists in front of him and hissed at them with venom. “I don’t like it. It smells wrong. And it’s cold. It’s unnatural. The Poet didn’t make places to be this cold. I hate cold. I hate being cold.”
It was hard to let the emotion out, hard to take off his training and his acculturation and speak nakedly. Code stepped much closer, reaching around between right arm and ribs to wrap Joslire around from behind. “Sorry I asked,” Code said, but it was an offer, not an apology. “We’ll warm you up the best we know how, if we can.”
And since Joslire had already uncovered himself, since he was already naked, there was no point in pretending he didn’t appreciate what Code was saying. Raising his head, unclenching his fists with an effort, Joslire relaxed against Code standing behind him, letting Code support his weight, letting Code take the strain. Take the pressure off. Accept Joslire’s trust. Code wrapped his arms around Joslire from behind and held him, and Joslire was so grateful for the simple comradely warmth of human contact that he might have wept. Except that too much emotion endangered them all. And there was Kaydence in the outer room, greeting Chief Samons, letting them know. “Very good, Chief, your instructions?”
Joslire brought one hand up to cover Code’s across his chest, thank you. “Two curls of sharbite-peel,” Joslire said. “Makes the officer sneeze. Thanks. Needed that.”
“Noted.” Code’s grip tightened, a briefly prolonged hug. “Back at you. – Linens, ice, Chief? Are we missing anything?”
Code was moving as he spoke, out in front of Joslire to go from the privileged space of the officer’s quarters back into that spacious gather-room. Giving Joslire space. Giving Joslire time.
There was another problem, it was about Erish. Joslire knew what that problem was. They just couldn’t afford to talk about it where Erish might hear. Chief Samons knew; Joslire had gathered that. She didn’t know how to fix it, but she was watching. That was good marks for Chief Warrant Officer Caleigh Samons in Joslire’s reckoning.
Kaydence came through to find Joslire, Code engaging Chief Samons in the outer room; put his hand to Joslire’s shoulder and looked at Joslire, asking, offering. For a moment Joslire stood, his hand raised to cover Kaydence’s, drawing strength from community.
Then he moved out, to report. “Everything in place?” Chief Samons asked. “Officer’s still in surgery, estimates apparently place him there for another two eights. Rations are in through here. I’m going to go see station security, no escort, just remember. Nobody here can direct you. You’re answerable only to me and Andrej Koscuisko. You have your instructions.”
The ion storm was still in full spate. Joslire resolutely faced away from the window. He’d been offered warm. He meant to enjoy it; and not all the ions in Yarkusk could stand in the way of trust and brotherhood.
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Synthesis Scene
“Unhappy, Jos?” Kaydence asked, backing away to let Joslire out of the drinks-cabinet nook but not going far. Behind him Joslire could hear Code coming out of the officer’s bedroom. He didn’t have to turn his head to look in order to know that Code was giving Kaydence the signal – go out, watch for Chief, sing out – because Kaydence gave Joslire a nod of neutral concern and left without waiting for an answer.
Joslire didn’t feel like looking at Code. He could feel Code’s warmth at his back, and tensed despite himself. There were going to be words. Words were dangerous; Joslire preferred to avoid them. But he was new here; they were still learning each other. They hadn’t done a grouping, because –
“Unhappy, Jos?” Code repeated, his voice quiet and low, but – as Kaydence’s gaze had been – neutral. Plenty of space there. They hadn’t done a grouping because Joslire knew that Koscuisko would find out. Koscuisko wouldn’t have seen bond-involuntaries coming together to form a new community, and he wouldn’t have asked. He would only have seen sexual coercion or bullying, and that would have been a barrier between Koscuisko and his own people. People he was willing to accept as his own, but “his own” in Dolgorukij terms as Joslire understood them, not as Fleet meant bond-involuntaries to be. Property.
“It’s cold.” He knew they could trust the officer. His knives had taken Koscuisko’s measure, and the holy steel never failed. They had no way of knowing that, and Joslire couldn’t explain, because they’d all seen one too many bond-involuntaries embrace idealization as a defense mechanism. All he could do was trust them; and hope they’d decide to trust him, because then they’d start to understand about Andrej Koscuisko. “I don’t like it.”
“Cold?” Code’s voice sounded amused, but in a sympathetic way. “You’re not cold. You’ve got all this good gear, and it even mostly fits. And these rooms, let the officer sneeze once and we’ll all be roasting.”
Hand to Joslire’s left arm from behind, between his elbow and his shoulder. Something he could shake off if he wanted to. Friendly. Raising fists clenched with sudden passion Joslire clenched his fists in front of him and bent his head to bare his heart. “No. It’s Erish.”
It was hard to let the emotion out, hard to open himself up and speak nakedly. Code stepped much closer, reaching around between Joslire’s right arm and his ribs to wrap an arm around him from behind. “No solution in inventory,” Code said, bleakly. “I’m sorry you came in on it. Cold we can fix.”
And since Joslire had already uncovered himself, since he was already naked, there was no point in pretending he didn’t appreciate what Code was saying, the offer to share the pain. Taking a deep breath Joslire relaxed, leaning back, letting Code support his weight. It was worse for Code. Code knew Erish. Joslire didn’t. He’d only been here three months.
Code wrapped his arms around Joslire from behind and held him, and Joslire was so grateful for the simple comradely warmth of human contact that he might have wept; except that too much emotion endangered them all. And there was Kaydence in the outer room, greeting Chief Samons, letting them know. “Very good, Chief, your instructions?”
Joslire brought one hand up to cover Code’s across his chest, thanks, needed it. “Two curls of sharbite-peel,” Joslire said. “Makes the officer sneeze.”
“Noted.” Code’s grip tightened, a briefly prolonged hug. “Check back later. – Linens, rhyti, Chief? Are we missing anything?”
Code was moving away as he spoke, leaving the privileged space of the officer’s quarters for the gather-room. Giving Joslire space. Giving Joslire time.
Kaydence ducked back into the room to find Joslire while Code engaged Chief Samons outside; put his hand to Joslire’s shoulder and looked at Joslire, asking, offering. For a moment Joslire stood and studied the ceiling, drawing strength from community.
Then he gave Kaydence a little shove of unspoken thanks and went out to post himself in the gather-room, to await instruction.
“Everything in place?” Chief Samons asked. “Officer’s still in surgery, estimates apparently place him there for another two eights. Joslire, rations coming through into the kitchen, let them in through the service entrance. We’re promised full supplemental rations, no pre-packs.” That was encouraging. Snacks. “I’m going to go see station security, no escort required. Just remember. Your instructions are to stand by here pending further direction — from me or from your officer of assignment only.”
The ion storm was still in full spate. Joslire resolutely faced away from the window. It was a little warmer; someone must have adjusted the environmentals.
If there was any help for Erish Muat the officer would find it. If there was neither help nor hope the officer would find it anyway. It had nothing to do with the infatuation that was so regrettable a hazard of a bond-involuntary’s occupation and servitude. Everything to do with sorcery, and Joslire had seen it.
He needed to find time and space to speak to the officer about it before it was too late.
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