“Enjoy your swabbing,” Aparna said to Niamh, who threw a crouton at her.
“What about the kaiju?” Kahurangi asked.
“What about them?”
“I mean, look,” Kahurangi said. “We’re in a place where monsters roam free and things that humans have never experienced wait for us, and so far, all we’re doing is wearing plastic pants, catching up on required reading”—he tapped his two binders—“and being told we’ll be doing menial tasks.”
“So, you’re asking when you get to play with the kaiju,” I said.
“I wouldn’t put it that way, but yes.”
“Your predecessor played with the kaiju and had a limb ripped off twice,” Niamh reminded him.
“Two limbs, ripped off once,” Aparna amended.
“Either way, not exactly a fun time on Planet Kaiju.”
“I’m not saying I want to walk up to one and announce that I’m on the buffet,” Kahurangi said. “But the name of the organization is the Kaiju Preservation Society. When do we get to preserve some kaiju?”
As it turned out, the answer to that was: the very next day.
CHAPTER
9
“Oh, there you are,” Tom said to me as I came into the dining hall. I had stopped by the dining hall to get something cold to drink, he was coming out with a mug of something hot, most likely coffee.
“Here I am,” I agreed. I motioned to his coffee. “How can you drink that?”
“It’s … coffee?” he said. “And it’s ten a.m. and yet my brain still needs to wake up?”
“It’s like ninety degrees.”
“Thirty degrees,” Tom corrected. “We’re metric here.”
“It’s hot, is my point.”
“You get used to it after the first couple of tours. I hardly notice it anymore.”
I stood there sweating in my jumpsuit, overloading its ability to wick away my sweat. “That must be nice.”
“It’ll happen to you,” Tom promised. “How’s the first workday?”
“I’m lifting things,” I said. I had woken up and checked the base app and discovered that I was a very, very popular person: My task queue had fifteen items on it, mostly involving moving things, lifting things, and couriering things from one place to the next. Tanaka Base was not as vast as the Lower East Side, but I was getting a workout regardless. “I’m vaguely resentful that füdmüd gave me more relevant experience for this world than a full decade of higher education did.”
“It’s funny about that. Listen, I just put a priority task in your queue. Chem lab has some canisters it needs to get down to the helipad, which means you will meet Martin, our copter pilot. That should be fun, he’s a kick.” There was a light notification ping on my phone as Tom said this. “That’s probably the notification right now.”
“Is it such a priority that I can’t get something to drink?”
“Not at all. Always hydrate. Then go to the chem lab. Enjoy your beverage.” He tipped his mug full of queasily hot liquid at me and headed off.
I went into the dining hall and perused my choices. There was water, tea, coffee, juice that looked like orange juice but, I don’t know, could have been poopfruit or something. There was also a soda fountain, but our in-room base guides had warned us to be moderate with its use, because otherwise the syrups would run out fast. The guide suggested no more than one eight-ounce glass of the colored sugar water a day. I decided to do without. There was no need to import my crippling diet cola addiction to a brand-new world, and besides, the fountain was Pepsi products anyway. New planet, new life.
I downed two large glasses of water and checked the base app. Tom’s priority task was indeed there, along with a long list of other tasks I was requested for, which was being added to by the minute. To be fair, I wasn’t the only one working the queue; there was also my Blue Team counterpart, Val, who looked like she could bench-press me and not break a sweat. I met her earlier in the day because hauling a compost canister from Sewage and Recycling to Greenhouse C was a two-person job, unless you wanted compost to break loose and roll all the way through the base, which we emphatically did not.
I checked off Tom’s task in my queue, signaling to Val that I was taking that task, and alerting the chem lab that I was on my way. Then I bussed my glass and walked across the base to my destination, picking up a transport cart at Maintenance along the way.