With a whoosh the doors disappeared revealing only darkness interspersed occasionally with the faint flicker of blue light. Stepping forward uneasily my eyes began to acclimatise. Searching wearily for directions I saw the signs and began to lumber forward.
Head down I passed a large opening and made my way into the organised bustle of people hard at work.
‘Mr Engeltine.’
I turned my head to the right and saw a woman dismounting from her podium, smiling falsely. ‘My room, if you please,’ she barked and spun on her heel. She moved in confident strides away from me. I hurried to match her steps as I trailed behind her.
My eyes had no sooner recovered from the shock of the relative darkness of the CIC than I was confronted by the excessively bright light of her chambers which were a mixture of the eccentrically ultra modern and the woody conservative fixtures of the past.
‘Mr Engeltine, in case you hadn’t noticed,’ she pointed towards her pins, ‘I am your captain.’ It was clear she intended to begin the conversation with an air of authority. ‘You are directly responsible to me and to no one else. The nature of your deployment with us is a matter of sealed record. It is your duty, and the conditions of your stay upon my vessel, that you abide by my rules and no others.’
I murmured something in agreement. It was hard to keep focus on this woman. She was tall without being high. Good looking without being beautiful. It was as if some creator had fashioned her out of all the most perfect materials and then combined them in a haphazard fashion. Most unnerving of all was how it came together. She looked no more than twenty but seemed a thousand years old. If I was asked I would never have been able to guess at her true age. She was an anachronism.
‘Tea?’ She enquired.
‘Please,’ I managed. Taking a seat, whilst she raised an eyebrow, I tried to calm my senses.
A glass mug quickly appeared in front of me. Drinking deeply I allowed the warmth and comfort of the liquid to seep through me as we sat without sound. Only the rustle of breathing interrupted our perfect silence.
Something had to be said and yet it appeared as though there were no words left in the entire universe. It was as though the realm where words existed had been sucked away by an immense gravitational pull. Images and concepts flashed through my mind and found no substance with which to give them life, and so they flashed just as quickly out of existence. The silence continued.
Eventually of course the silence ended. It was the captain that spoke first. ‘George, I’m Aeniah. But please don’t assume we are on first name terms.’
I could not place the name. It was unlike anything I had ever heard.
‘If I am honest George I’m not too sure what we should be doing. My orders are to travel to the Ascension station in search of some ridiculous and frankly unbelievable artefact upon which our future depends. In the entire history of my career as a ship’s captain I have never been given such an absurd request.’ She paused thoughtfully. But, I suppose, since the Wars, nothing has ever made too much sense.’
I looked towards her with questioning eyes. She looked towards me with eyes of regret and sorrow. Curiously it was not the sorrow of a fresh wound. It appeared as old as time.
‘You know it wasn’t always like this,’ she sighed.
‘I don’t understand,’ I replied.
‘I don’t suppose you do. Never mind. It is in the past now buried along with our planet. Let us talk no more on this.’
She stood and in the process ended our moment of awkward solitude. She stared down into my eyes and said, ‘we will arrive at Ascension in two days. You should go to your quarters and watch the presentation provided for you by Sephra. Be ready.’
In a trance I left upon those words more confused than ever and burning with an irrational desire to make her proud. In the course of a few minutes she had infected me with a desire, a little less than love but more than admiration.