Pam wasn’t sure exactly what she’d expected when Roy was woken up. Kelly hadn’t told her—which was odd, since Ice usually couldn’t help herself from talking, and indeed had been talking a steady stream of vaguely excited words for the duration of the resurrection project—and she could only vaguely remember what little they’d been told about the act of resurrection during orientation. Oh, to be sure, she’d been paying attention at the time, because she’d been aware even then that Roy would be undergoing the process, but she hadn’t internalized it for whatever reason. It just hadn’t seemed all that important, she supposed.
Now of course she was paying for that little bout of forgetfulness, because she was waiting on pins and needles to figure out what was going on and whether it was normal or OK or any of those things. Roy was snoring now, louder than she remembered, but she wasn’t sure if that was her memory or an actual change. After all, she was realizing, she’d been without Roy for the longest time she’d ever been without him in her life in the couple of months that the DM Scranton had been underway. She wasn’t used to him anymore; his unkempt beard (the hair continued to grow in the cryodeath, which was one of the ways it was distinguishable from, well, actual death, but it grew slower than usual) wasn’t just the result of a few nights of debauchery when the mornings had been too consumed with hangovers for shaving to appeal to him; the way his mouth gaped open as he snored no longer seemed cute—though if she was entirely honest, it had ceased seeming so after the first week or two that they’d lived together, which was definitely long enough ago by now to make it distinctly uncute. She supposed she’d been infatuated then, and loving enough when he went into the Warehouse to not care. Now it was annoying, and she was worried by the change.
He rolled over towards her, his eyes blinked open in confusion, and the noise he was emitting changed abruptly from a snore to a groan. She rushed to him in a burst of sympathy—it must be awful waking from such a sleep, and such a cold, to the real world again—and his eyes focused on her as she gripped her hand. His mouth opened and she awaited his first words to her with apprehension. What was he like, this man she’d agreed to marry and then not seen again for months?
“Hiya, Pammy. Turn off the alarm will you?” And he rolled over and began to snore again.
She was disappointed for a moment, then remembered that, of course, for him it had felt like a single long night of sleep. Of course he wasn’t thinking of how long it had been for her, or how strange it was for her to see him again. It was just normal. He’d gone to bed and she’d been there when he awoke. As she always had been, except for a few days of intensive training of course…and if she was honest, the many more nights when he’d stumbled home after she’d gone to bed and crashed on the couch—or made so much noise and fuss coming in that she’d voluntarily foregone sharing the bed with him to sleep on the couch herself. But still…she’d hoped for more.
Kelly was puttering around them both, unhooking some kind of wires and tubing that she’d hadn’t even noticed linking into Roy’s back. Pam had never really seen Ice in her professional element before: it was mesmerizing to watch. To her surprise, Kelly almost never spoke to Roy, though she had kept up a pretty constant chatter with Pam before his awakening. Rather, she took care of his needs almost before he became aware of them, providing water and wafers and even a bucket for vomit (Pam repositioned that last right before Roy filled it, remembering from years of practice that he always pulled to the left while upchucking). Apparently, she whispered conspiratorially to Pam, they had done studies (with her voice! Can you imagine, they thought she was important enough to study for the whole colonization project!) and they’d discovered that the newly awakened did not like talking to their cryogenic techs. Apparently there was something about the transition between the deep sleep of cryodeath and a sudden need to follow human conversation that was aggravating.
In that context, Pam supposed she shouldn’t be too bothered by Roy’s laconic treatment of her. She wasn’t the cryotech, of course, but she was still present at his awakening, which meant the same statistics should apply to her. Even if she was his fiancée…
She felt a little vindicated in this thought when, after about half an hour of Ice running various tests and diagnostics, Roy was released from the bay. He immediately slung an arm around her shoulder and gave her a big smacking kiss—though he had apparently misjudged how she’d turn towards him when he touched her and the kiss landed squarely on her cheek. He had extensive morning breath, but then again, he had been asleep for months. He squeezed her tight and leaned in low.
“Heya, Pammy. I feel awful.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry, Roy, how about we…”
He didn’t even seem to notice she’d spoken as he continued. “There anywhere to get a drink on this spaceship?”
She was so surprised that this was his first question for her that she answered immediately: “Just the Almanac.”
“Thanks, Pammy.” He pulled out his datasleeve and punched in a few commands. “Let’s go there.”
“But Roy…”
“Not now, Pammy. I need a drink.” He suddenly grinned, showing the dimples she loved. “After all, I haven’t had one in a couple of months.”
So somehow she found herself trailing behind Roy as his datasleeve showed him the directions to the Almanac. She kept trying to engage him in conversation—did he know how far they’d come? Was he excited for the wedding? What were his thoughts on food for the reception afterwards in the mess hall?—and the most she got out of him was a “whatever you like, Pammy, it’s your day.”
The lack of response from him bothered her at a deeper level than she’d expected. Somewhere in the last two or so months of flight, she was beginning to worry, she might have idealized Roy. She had remembered all of the good parts of being with him—the security, the comfort, the familiarity—and none of the bad. Or else it hadn’t been bad, back then. Maybe she’d been OK with being called Pammy (a name she privately despised), with monosyllabic responses, with immediately and constantly repairing towards the first bar available. She couldn’t be sure: had she changed, or had he? And if either of them had changed (which she had to admit, because she was distinctly not happy with the last half an hour) when had it happened?
Had she gone on living her life with Roy in the Warehouse and become someone different? Or had the change come earlier, and she hadn’t been willing to see it? She began to remember some of the moments she’d…not repressed, because it hadn’t been even that conscious, but de-emphasized during their journey. The time Roy had practically slobbered all over the quartermaster when she’d come by to check on the status of the individual cryosleeves (called “purses” in shipboard slang) in the Warehouse. The times he’d refused to let her even consider a career in or even adjacent to her love of design because it “just wasn’t practical—everyone needs a communications officer, but only like one person gets to design all the ships.” The nights spent alone, waiting for him to come home from some stupid game night or pub crawl. How he’d always justified them by saying “there won’t be pubs where we’re going, will there? So I’m just getting it all out now.” Only now that he was awakened again, here they were going to the damn pub.
“Hey, Pammy, which door is it? My sleeve’s on the fritz.” Roy’s voice broke into her reverie.
“Seriously, Roy?” She didn’t know what exactly made her choose that moment to stand her ground—maybe it was the realization that once Roy got into the Almanac he would undoubtedly keep drinking until the next shift started and she had to go to her bunk to prepare for the next day, so she had to do this now—and she wasn’t sure why this was the hill on which she chose to die, but she was not letting him keep calling her Pammy. “We’re on a ship underway. I’m the communications officer. You can call me Comms.” A feeling of guilt fluttered into her gut as she remembered one person on board who definitely did not call her Comms. “Or Pam. But not Pammy.”
“Aw, Pammy, c’mon…” He reached back for her as she crossed her arms.
“I’m serious, Roy. I know it’s not a big thing, but it’s important to me.” She looked up into his eyes, hoping to see…she wasn’t sure what. But certainly not the annoyance that flashed across his face.
“But I’ve always called you Pammy.”
“I know. And I’ve always told you I hated it.” Less and less as the years wore on, because he’d worn her down, she realized. “Remember when we were in the crèche together, and the teacher started calling me Pammy because you did, and I threw a temper tantrum so bad my mom had to come get me?”
He laughed, a deep booming belly laugh. “Pammy, we were five.”
She shook her head. How could he keep coming so close to the point and miss it? How could he remember something from when they were five, but not remember that she didn’t like being called Pammy? “I know, Roy. And I haven’t started liking it anymore since.”
He peered down at her, and finally she saw something like concern start to appear in his eyes. “But I thought that was just when other people called you that! I thought that was what made us special, that I called you Pammy. Like a boyfriend-girlfriend thing.”
One battle at a time. She did not have the bandwidth right now to remind him also that they were engaged, not just boyfriend and girlfriend. “No, it just meant that because I loved you I was willing to forgive you for forgetting. I still didn’t like it. And I’d like you to try to remember now. We’re getting married in three days, after all.” There, she’d gotten the reminder about their engagement in anyway.
Unfortunately, Roy chose to latch onto a different aspect of what she’d just said. “Three days? What did you go and wake me up for then? I thought we were getting married the day I woke up.”
She stared at him in disbelief. “Because I thought you’d like to be actually involved in our wedding, Roy.”
“Aww, c’mon Pammy. You know I’m happy with whatever you choose. Just send the boys to get me when it’s time.” He shook his datasleeve and it gave a little ping. “Oh hey, it’s back online. This door then.” He pushed open the door to the Almanac and slid inside, throwing a little aside back over his shoulder. “Love ya!”
Pam waited a moment before following him in. Was this seriously the man she’d been planning to marry her whole life? A man who had no interest in being involved in their wedding beyond getting it over with? A man who ran immediately to the first bar he could find and apparently planned to spend three days straight in there? A man couldn’t remember even while she was actively reminding him what name she wanted to be called? The last thought spun out in a different direction, as she wondered what it would be like to be engaged to someone who actually called her Comms. Or Pam. Or Beesly…and for some reason all of those names were said, in her imagination, by a slightly different voice than Roy’s. A voice she’d almost never heard call her “Comms” but often enough heard call her both “Pam” and “Beesly.” A voice she’d never heard toss off an unthinking “Love ya” but had recently heard, wracked with emotion, say “I’m in love with you.”
She rested her head against the door to the Almanac and sighed.
