'23kpc' Chapter 32: A Purser's Lot Is Not a Happy One

Things must be tough if you’re sorry your evacuation drill has been called off.

[I’ve been wondering what Matty looks like. I’d pictured him more square-jawed than this, kinda like this guy (who played police detective Guild in The Thin Man). But the AI site took the prompt and ran with it… and somehow managed to capture the exact sense of Matty’s attitude in this chapter. So: I guess this is what Matty looks like! If you’re not comfortable with it — after all, this guy could very well just be an ill-tempered tech bro — just sort of squint at the image so it’s not quite so… so etched-looking.]

Reminders:
The complete ‘23kpc’ saga is unfolding here.
The ‘23kpc’ Reader’s Guide (recapping names, places, and what-not) is here.

Last week:

In the Midship Diner, Guy was bringing Missy up to speed on his experience a few hours earlier at the Rijksmuseum — the ship’s art museum — with Al Morton: the sudden apparent hijacking of all the digital art by the word trú (and, in the case of a holographic sculpture, the strange F=Sm³ equation). Immediately after that experience, Guy and Al had been questioned about it, but especially about the background of Al’s brother Tyler.

Guy managed to get through the story about Tyler’s childhood aversion to churchgoing. Missy, however, interrupted further conversation by — let’s say — distracting Guy with her foot in his lap. In short order, this got both Guy and Missy out of the Midship and on their way back to their cabin…

Guy now continues his narration:

Chapter 32: The Crew Juggles Its Agenda

Sometime the next day, Missy and I emerge from our cocoon feeling like quite the butterflies, prepared for whatever fresh air and nectar the day chooses to offer and the ship can actually deliver. We have already mapped our route; Durwood snuffling along with us, we head for the promenade around the outer deck, our pace sprightly.

Which matches the mood of the ship’s meteorologists, apparently. They’ve got the thermostat and windspeed pegged at “balmy,” and the only clouds visible in the wallscreens seem kilometers distant, hugging the artificial horizon. Gulls wheel in the sky. The porpoises must be frolicking in some other ocean at the moment, though; we don’t see or hear a one.

If we were real butterflies instead of metaphorical ones, the first flower likely to draw our interest would be Matty. We encounter him stretched out on a lounge chair just a little bit before we get to the first bulkhead.

He’s got some sort of colorful drink in his hand — a Mai Tai, maybe — and he’s wearing a shrieking rainbow of a short-sleeved shirt which signifies, we know, that he’s taken the day off. But his hair is disheveled, his posture slumped in an unhealthy way, and his face gloomy — the smile unconvincing — when he turns his head in our direction. When he registers who we are, the corners of his mouth bend upwards. But the flicker of relief passes almost at once.

“Hello, kids,” he says. Matty calls us “kids” only when he’s about to pat us on the head and tell us to move along, or when the life of a purser threatens to overwhelm him. Evidently we’re facing the latter case this time: he waves a hand unenthusiastically, almost dismissively, at a couple of faux-wooden chairs nearby. I grab them and bring them over. I sit in the one nearest him.

Missy, however, chooses for the moment to stand at the railing in front of me, and gaze in contemplation out at the sea. Which you might think would block my own view of the sea, and so it does, but now that I’m looking in that direction I don’t miss the sea much. Missy’s hands grasp the rail, and her bare arms flex a bit. I find that this view of her is making it very difficult to think of anything else. Her voice, tossed casually back over her shoulder, brings me back to the here and now.

“Matty,” says that voice. “Oh, dear, Matty. You look like you could use some distraction. Difficult day yesterday?”

Yesterday, I think. What was yesterday?

Then: Oh. Yesterday. Right. The Rijksmuseum.

“You have no idea,” Matty says. “None. And it was all thanks to your charming husband here.”

I am wounded. “Me? I didn’t do anything—”

“No,” he says. “No, you didn’t. Except you were right there, conveniently, and generous with the answers when Daina needed to ask questions. You and Al and that damned animal.”

I go through the motions of remonstrating. (Sputtering wordlessly seems to suffice when you don’t know how to remonstrate.)

“Okay,” Matty says, “I know it’s not really an animal. And I apologize to its delicate Persona¹ for swearing at it. And yes, I know you and your Pooch and Al Morton just got caught in the action. Not your fault. I know. I know.

“But still, it was one hell of a day. The real problem just barely started with that little episode of yours in the Rijksmuseum.”

And then he tells us about it...: