<USS Atlantis> The War of Smiling Pt I
- From: "Tempest Rainbird" <counselortempest@xxxxxxx>
- To: "USS Atlantis" <ussatlantis@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2002 02:33:08 -0800
"The War of the Smile"
Ensign Julia O'Leary of the USS Socrates
"Ensign?" Lieutenant Connor asked. He glanced over his shoulder at
Julia O'Leary. She braced her cheek with her hand; tendrils of red hair were
falling over her eyes. "Ms. O'Leary?" He sighed, and added less formally,
"Julia?"
Julia wrenched. "Oh... I'm sorry, sir. Yes, sir?"
"Scan Bluegrass. The results?"
Julia arched her spine, and gave her head a sharp shake. She ran her
finger along the screen. "Three point... oh four," she read out flatly.
"I'm reading point oh six," Connor contradicted.
Julia frowned and blinked. Her vision had begun to blur with fatigue;
the numbers swam in front of her. "...oh six?" she echoed. "Oh six... you're
right, sir. Sorry, sir."
Connor came up behind her and placed his hand firmly on her shoulder.
"Julia? Are you doing all right?"
Julia mustered a smile. Her muscles were well trained in the art of
cheerfulness. "Yes, sir... I'm fine, sir. Just adjusting, sir, like everyone
else." She pulled away from his comforting hand and focused on the screen. "I
was just a little tired, sir. It's all right now. Bluegrass scan yields three
point oh six: within normal parameters."
Lieutenant Connor twitched his moustache. He wasn't sure what to do
about his assistant. She wasn't the type to accept compassion; she was the kind
of woman who, when having undergone the amputation of an arm and a leg, would
sling the missing limbs aside, shrug it off, and one-handedly prepare a bowl of
chicken soup for an acquaintance with a cold. Empathy wasn't native to
Lieutenant Connor anyway. He preferred his relationships to be professional
with a remote amiability: I like you and you like me, and now we can work in
the same space with a minimum of pleasantries.
"I can handle the rest of this," he said, twitching his moustache
again. It was a gesture of discomfiture.
"Just the same, sir, I'd like to stay," Julia said. No matter how much
her inner self wanted to be at home, safely tucked beneath a smothering
comforter, she couldn't bring herself to just shrug off her responsibilities.
"You'll need my help to finish re-adapting the weapon's systems."
Lieutenant Connor had already moved to another console. His fingers
moved fleetly; his eyes were fixed on his work. He hardly seemed to notice her
protest. "You get sleep," he said shortly. "I'll see you at Alpha shift."
Julia paused as she stared down the corridor that led to her quarters.
She didn't want to go in yet.
The scent of day-old coffee wafted to her, and she followed the scent
to the replicator by the turbo-lift. She frowned as she removed the styrofoam
cup. A tracery of lipstick around the rim brought back to her the memory of
hurriedly depositing her morning's caffeine in the replicator as she bolted
down the hall in response to Lieutenant Connor's call to duty. She must have
forgotten to press the disintegrate button. Idly, she sipped. The tepid coffee
was bitter on her tongue. She let it sit and pollute her mouth, then just as
idly returned the coffee to the replicator, remembered, this time, to press the
button. She watched as it dissolved.
Nothing, now, between her and that looming door at the end of the
corridor. She walked.
Her daughter was sitting on the couch, clutching her pillow in one
hand. She turned baleful eyes on Julia. "Mommy, couldn't sleep," she piped. She
rubbed her eyes with a tiny fist.
"OK, honey," Julia said, lifting the girl to waist height and carrying
her into the bedroom. "Didn't Counselor Odyle come to put you to bed?"
Dorothea nodded. "Couldn't sleep," she repeated, and burrowed her head
into her mother's hair. "Want daddy."
"I know," Julia sighed. This conversation had been recurring since
Julia had started out on the Socrates as it left spacedock. At one point, she
had ended it by ruffling Dorothea's hair and gurgling, "You'll have him soon."
But she loathed lying to the child. Because of that, or simply through the
empathic brilliance children of Dorothea's limited age seemed to possess, the
girl had acquired a more startled, pleading note to her request. She seemed to
think Julia could conjure him the way she conjured ice cream or toys from the
replicator. And why not? What did a transporter seem to a child but a magic
door?
Julia smoothed the emerald green quilt over Dorothea's stomach and
pressed a kiss to the girl's forehead. She stayed and sang a light, lithe
melody, lilting and Irish, whose meaning she didn't know. Her mother had sung
it to her. Exhausted, Dorothea dozed quickly. Julia stood to leave, but didn't.
She lingered instead beside the child's bedside.
Daddy's gone, she thought.
Counselor Odyle bent her lips upward. She practiced quirking them in an
amused fashion. She tried to grin, exposing as many of her teeth as she could
manage. It felt too Cheshire. It didn't fit. Experimentally, she raised one
eyebrow as she smiled mysteriously, thinking of the Mona Lisa as her model.
Which smile best fit?
Most people who met Aluenna Odyle thought she was silly, inane, perhaps
idiotic. A smiling simpleton with permanently rose-colored contact lenses.
Counselor Odyle simply put her faith in the smile. The right smile for the
right situation. The trouble was, she wasn't sure which smile fitted now.
She put on the one she used to express sympathy. Eyebrows tilted inward
at a slant; one corner of her mouth upward to create a dimple. "Come in,
Ensign," she said.
Julia O'Leary was smiling too. She nearly always smiled the same way:
bright and dazzling. She sat and waited with her hands folded in her lap.
"How is Dorothea, Julia?" Aluenna asked.
"She's fine," said Julia.
"How is she taking the news about her father?"
Julia shrugged slightly, never letting her smile slip. "How do you
explain something like that to a child? I don't even know how to begin."
"Does she know about the time-portal?"
Julia nodded. "Yes... at least, I tried to tell her. But I have a hard
enough time with the concept of measuring the passing of thirty years. I'm sure
it's beyond her. She knows that we've moved, somehow, if not in space."
"And does she know about the ... disease? About earth?"
"She saw the pictures," Julia answered. Her voice made it clear that
the subject was closed. Her smile was fixed. "Counselor, I appreciate you
taking the time to see me, but I have work to do."
Suddenly, Counselor Odyle realized she was using the wrong smile. She
switched to joviality, letting her her eyes dazzle with humor. "Oh, but you've
been here so little time!" she exclaimed. "And there's so much I want to catch
up on. How else can I take good care of your lovely little girl?"
"You're doing a wonderful job, thank you." That smile. That damned
smile of Julia's. Always the same. "She likes you very much. Now, please, I
really have work to do..."
For the first time in her life, Aluenna Odyle had lost the war of
smiling.
Behind Julia's smile, interesting changes were taking place. Here was a
woman who had smiled through everything. It was part of her sense of duty: it
was part of the ethos of her family. One smiled. When tears threatened, or pain
leapt through every nerve in the body, one smiled. When one was bored stiff, or
felt wrung out like a rag doll, one smiled.
And so she had smiled when they asked her to take a few months on the
USS Socrates. Her husband had pleaded with her not to, their daughter was too
young, and they had so wanted to share every moment of those precious years
when they were together raising a child. But the Admiral, looking harried, had
pleaded, promising Julia that it would just be a few months before their first
choice for the project became available and they sent him via courrier ship to
meet the Socrates. "It's my duty to the fleet," Julia had whispered to her
husband, smiling. He passed Dorothea to her, kissed her on the cheek and bid
her goodbye, and she smiled.
She had smiled when the courrier ship was delayed for just another few
weeks and she was doomed to the corridors of the Socrates.
She had managed to maintain the smile as she glimpsed the first few
moments of a video that had been labelled "Events on Earth." It had been sent
via internal communique to every member of the crew and it contained the
horrible footage that had documented the last few moments of the lives of
everyone on her homeworld.
But it had awakened a question in her. And it filled her with dread.
In the last thirty years, what happened to my husband?
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