Free Alternate Realities by C. J. Cherryh

it didn’t work out that way. It was one of the small horrors that worked at our nerves and urged us that just blanking out might be better. Likewise Modred and Percy said comp went out on them: it dumped program at times, and at others behaved itself. The crew stayed on the bridge or back at the monitor station—worried, I gathered, about the power plant that kept us going—but it did go, the fans kept turning and the air kept recycling and, Gawain said when I brought them another meal, there was no real need for them to stay by controls, because what was automatic was working tolerably well and what was not automatic was not doing well at all and they couldn’t fix anything, just live with it and be patient when comp dumped.
    Gawain was tired. His eyes were terrible. So were Modred’s, like black pits. They had been in their day cycle and had been through more than a day now. They ended by deciding perhaps they should stay up in controls after all, all of them—in case the alarms didn’t function dependably. “Until we see,” Modred said. So I brought up mats and pillows and blankets for the four of them and they bedded down up there.
    Vivien—Viv was asleep too, busy deepstudying, locked into that tape that would make her useful again, after which time she would likely have a thousand orders to give us all. Lance was somewhere repairing damages and cleaning up, where unsecured items had smashed into walls, or unbraced chairs made wreckage of themselves. Not technical things, but such things as we could do.
    Griffin called me, wanting two suppers in my lady’s quarters, so I went to the galley and fixed all he asked for ... he and my lady, who consoled each other, who had been consoling each other all afternoon of that quick/slow day. Well enough. It put no demands on us, tired as we were. I carried the trays up in a carrier and walked in with them, very quietly, into the sitting room.
    I walked farther, cautiously, and I could see the big blue bed and them tangled in the middle of it, golden blond Griffin and my pale blonde lady, pink to his gold, and white, and her braids all undone in a net about them. They made love. I waited, waited longer, finally put the carrier on the mobile table and quietly as I could I eased it through the door, just to leave it where they could have it when they wanted. They never noticed my being there, or they ignored it, lost in each other, and very quietly I left and closed all the doors behind me, downcast with my own aches and pains and where we were and what hopelessness we had of doing something about it.
    Sleep, I thought. I was due my rest, finally; and overdue.
    And I was right outside the library.
    I came in very quietly. Viv was on the couch, limp in deepsleep. She chose to do her deepstudy in the library, maybe not to bother those of us who wanted to talk in the crew quarters, but such extreme consideration was not Viv’s style. It was more, I figured, out of fear of being supplanted; she wanted no rivals who could do what she could do, and she didn’t want that tape in our hands.
    The lights were low. I could have slapped her face and not roused her, but all the same I kept very quiet picking out the tape I wanted. I slipped it into my jacket and went out again, trusting Modred would cover for me when he must. Ah! I wanted the deepsleep.
    I walked down the corridor to the main hall, and the lift and so down to the crew quarters with my treasure. I undressed and bathed and in my robe set up the unit on the couch, attached the sensor leads, took the drug—thinking with melancholy that we would run out, someday—not of the tapes but of the drug that made them more intense; that when my lady thought of that ... we would lose our supply, and she would not be long in thinking of it. It was only fair, perhaps, because we could sink into the tapes and the dreams so much more easily than born-men. I felt a guilt that had nothing to do with my tape-pilfering: I stole my