The Feast of Stevens, Page 2

Stanislaus quietly suggested to Mostafa that the room be cleared, and it soon was.

  “Now, gentlemen, “ Stanislaus started, as the four of them sat down with their drinks, “I realize there are fundamental ideological differences between your colonies—”

  “Yes,” spat Elfman, “we don’t massacre innocent animals.”

  “Just because you—” a raised eyebrow from Brewster forestalled whatever epithet Jefferson had been about to apply “—have chosen to abandon the omnivorous habits of your Terran ancestors doesn’t mean all humans have to.”

  “And we are all humans, here, aren’t we?” Brewster smiled, radiating charm. “Whatever our other differences?”

  Neither could disagree with her. They, like Stanislaus, obeyed her honey-sweet voice like trained puppies.

  • • •

  Since Brewster had so ably taken control, when Stanislaus’ phone rang he excused himself with no qualms about the outcome of the meeting.

  He opened the phone in the corridor.

  “Captain,” his first officer said from the command center, “Chaplain Yamaguchi is in your office with Mr. Mostafa and Mr. Kolinski. Something about the Christmas dinner.”

  “Oh, for cryin’ out loud.” Stanislaus closed his eyes. He couldn’t pull Brewster away now. She was the only hope of establishing peace between the Europans and the Martians. “I’ll be right there.”

  • • •

  When Stanislaus entered his office, he found the others standing around his desk. He moved quickly past them and sat down, shielding himself behind the narrow plastic desk.

  “With all due respect, Captain,” the chaplain began, “we understand that Mr. Stevens is planning a Christmas dinner for the crew, and I must tell you, those of us who are not Christians are troubled.”

  “That’s an understatement,” Kolinski said. “It’s insulting.”

  Stanislaus raised his hands. “I distinctly told Mr. Stevens he could not serve a Christmas dinner. The dinner will be on December 31, Earth time. I believe we all agree the year ends on that day.”

  “Yes, but that is not the point.” Mostafa leaned on the desk. “The point is that it is turkey and stuffing and whatnot—your ‘trimmings.’ And it is after the start of Ramadan.”

  Stanislaus sighed, and leaned back in his chair. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize Ramadan started this week.” Stanislaus looked up at Yamaguchi, a tall, thin woman who wore her long black hair in a bun speared with what looked like two short, black chopsticks. “What do you Buddhists think about this, Chaplain?”

  She shrugged. “The three of us don’t care, as long as we get something other than VegeMold soon. I’m just here to mediate.”

  “Well, I’m open to suggestions. I thought we’d hit on a perfect compromise with the New Year’s thing, but obviously we didn’t look at our calendars.”

  “Obviously.” Kolinski snorted.

  “What’s your beef, Mr. Kolinski?” Stanislaus tilted his head to look at Kolinski, a barrel-chested engineer with thin gray hair. “You’re not insulted by the New Year’s dinner, are you? And Yom Kippur’s not for months.”

  “True,” Kolinski nodded. “But half the crew is calling it ‘Christmas dinner.’ That’s what’s insulting.”

  “But it’s not on Christmas!”

  “That’s not the point!”

  The chaplain raised her hand. “I have a suggestion.”

  Stanislaus waved, giving her the floor. “Please.”

  “Have the dinner on December 31, as planned, but ask Mr. Stevens to hold back enough soy turkey to prepare an equally elegant dinner for the Muslims when they celebrate Eid al-Fitr.”

  “I’m sorry—what?”

  “The festival at the culmination of Ramadan,” Mostafa said.

  Stanislaus nodded. “Okay, but if we’re going to do that, we might as well have a separate dinner for each group. Christmas, Chanukah—”

  “Chanukah’s over,” Kolinski muttered.

  “Oh, for cryin’ out loud.” Stanislaus put his head in his hands.

  Yamaguchi frowned. “Look what you did.”

  • • •

  “I’m about ready to cancel the whole thing,” Stanislaus told Brewster over dinner.

  “Now, Stan, don’t. It’ll do the crew good, despite the bad timing. The Muslims will just have their dinner delayed.” She chuckled. “Did you even ask if they wanted it now?”

  “No.” Stanislaus stabbed at his VegeMold, which was shaped and colored like salmon but tasted like papier-mâché. “That’s not even funny.”

  “Oh, the whole thing is absurdly funny if everyone would just stop taking themselves so seriously. Honestly. Like that whole fracas between the Europan vegans and the Martian turkey farmers.” She sighed.

  “How’d that turn out?”

  “Not too bad. I got them to agree to stay out of each other’s way by using the mess hall in turns.”

  “Thanks, Brew.”

  She batted his remark away with a wave of her hand. “It was nothing. I do feel bad about forgetting Ramadan, though. I usually check that sort of thing.” She put her fork down. “I suppose I got distracted.”

  “Hmm?” He looked up. “By what?”

  She laughed. It wasn’t a silly, girly laugh, it was a hearty, honest laugh. He loved it. “By you, you buffoon, you.”

  He dropped his fork. It missed the plate, slid across his lap and clattered onto the floor. “Huh? Wha’d I do?”

  She grinned and leaned toward him. “You’re so helpless sometimes. It’s adorable.”

  All the crises in the solar system couldn’t steal the delight those words gave him.

  • • •

  The following morning, one of the mechanics stopped him in the corridor on his way to the mess hall. “Captain, I want to register a complaint. We neo-pagans are very dissatisfied that we were not given an opportunity for a special feast on the Solstice—”

  “Happy New Year!” Stanislaus crowed, not hesitating a beat in his stride. The crewman took the hint and went about his business.

  There was Brewster, chatting with some of the women from the third-shift fueling crew. She looked up when he came through the door, and excused herself from their table. They giggled behind her. She turned and waggled a finger at them before joining him.

  “Good morning, Stan.”

  “Good morning, Brew.”

  “And a Happy Christmas.”

  “Don’t let anyone hear you say that. We’re in enough trouble already.” They picked up their breakfasts at the galley window and took the trays to their customary table. They had just begun to eat when Stanislaus’ phone rang.

  It was the third watch officer in the command center. “Sir, we’ve got a disturbance at dock three. Chief Mostafa is on his way.”

  “So am I.” Stanislaus pocketed his phone, and he and Brewster left the mess hall at a quick clip.

  They jogged the short distance to transit tube three and started climbing its ladder. Rungs ran up one side of the meter-wide tube, and electrical conduits ran down the other. His weight lessened as Stanislaus moved toward the docking ring, until he could push in long leaps upward. At the docking ring, he and Brewster floated out of the tube and into chaos.

  A fire crew fought a blaze in the airlock leading to the coop-ship.

  Captain Jefferson floated near the hatchway. “By Ares! I expected better than this from a company with a reputation like yours!”

  Feathers floated all around him. A turkey flew by. Several more could be heard squawking further along the circular docking ring.

  Stanislaus pulled out his phone and called the command center. “Lock down the docking ring now! We’ve got turkeys here!”

  Brewster lost her grip on the handrail and tumbled, a free-fall giggling mess. A claxon sounded, and the orange light above the transit tube hatch flashed as the door clanged into place.

  Stanislaus raised his voice to be heard over the bleating alarm. “You could help, you know.” He grabbed
one of the offending fowl, tucking it under his arm like a beach ball. “We need to round these animals up.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry sir, yes sir, I’ll get right on that, sir!” She giggled as a turkey drifted past her head.

  • • •

  All hands were called to duty, but the docking ring hatches had closed too late. Several dozen fowl had fallen down transit tubes into the outer ring of the station.

  “Perhaps they’ll be easier to catch when they’re flightless,” Brewster said.

  “Somehow, that’s just not consoling.” Stanislaus’ phone rang. In moving to answer it, he lost his grip on the captured bird. It got away, flapping and gobbling down the corridor. He sighed and opened the phone.

  “Sir,” said his first officer, “there’s a problem in docking bay two.”

  “On my way.” Stanislaus put his phone back into the thigh pocket of his jumpsuit, and kicked off down the corridor. They passed the escaped turkey on their way.

  The odor of scorched flesh reached them before they came in sight of the bay.

  When they arrived, they found a young security guard, his face fixed in a gaping stare, surrounded by floating turkey corpses. His empty gaze went from the blaster in his hand to the captain, to the turkeys, then made the round again. Stanislaus drifted over, and placed one hand gently on the guard’s shoulder. “What happened here, son?”

  “I—there were just so many of them! And they kept coming, and coming!” Singed turkey feathers floated all around him. Some clung to his hair and his jumpsuit. “I didn’t know what to do!”

  “It’s all right, son. You did what you had to do.”

  The young man began to weep. “There were just so many