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Olesya rotated herself in midair, chasing DuBois to the top of the plane.
“Hey, DuBois, do you think Stratt and Grace are fucking?”
She faintly registered Yáo rolling his eyes on the other side of the plane. DuBois flipped himself backwards AND upside-down to look at her. “Normally I hesitate to comment on unconfirmed relationships, but it’s essentially confirmed, isn’t it?”
“See! That’s what I think!” She threw her hands up. “All the time they’re together, she drags him around like women who put dogs in their purses!”
“Ilyukhina, let’s focus on the gravity. Or lack thereof.” Yáo called up again. “Anyway, if you really want to talk about this with someone, you should talk to Lokken. After our exercises.”
“What?” She whipped around as the plane levelled off, letting them all alight on the floor, and then they all sat back down as it tilted up to ascend into the next parabola. “How do you know that?”
He shrugged. “I listen.”
“Doctor Lokken does have a habit of…chatting. Consistently. When people aren’t in the same room as her.” DuBois nodded. Ilyukhina rolled her eyes.
“You can just say gossip.”
“Gossip is a demeaning and heavily gendered word that I don’t think shows the appropriate respect for Doctor Lokken and her contributions to the mission.” DuBois crossed his arms as the ascent pushed them back into their chairs.
Ilyukhina looked at Yáo for support, but he shrugged again. “Maybe I’ll tell you more. After we’re done with the flight.”
He did not tell her more after the flight. (Mean! She’d been perfect the entire rest of it.) Or, rather, he did, but all he had to say was that due to lab layout Lokken frequently wound up alone in conversations with Stratt and Grace, and apparently had a lot of thoughts about it.
Luckily for Olesya, Lokken was her girl. They’d just been spending too much time talking about tensile weight and vacuum welding. All it took was dropping a comment about how Grace always seemed shocked when Stratt stole him from his lab for another meeting to get her going.
“I don’t think they’re sleeping together yet,” Lokken clarified, while she hand-cranked the sample spool back into place. “But it’s going to happen. I simply don’t see how they could not. Have you seen how they look at each other when the other one isn’t looking back?”
“DuBois thinks it’s insulting to suggest a woman and a man can’t be just friends.”
“A woman, generic, and a man, generic, can absolutely be friends.” Lokken paused as she fiddled with a screw on the spool. “Lubricant?” Ilyukhina passed it over. “But those two? They have something bubbling. Stratt’s going to break at some point. She’s carrying too much for any one person. And when she does, Grace will be there to catch her.”
Olesya shrugged. That part she wasn’t sure about. Stratt was pretty strong. But that sounded like a challenge, with a deadline.
“Want to bet?”
The doctor looked at her. She grinned back. “Come on, it’ll be fun!”
“Sure. Put me down for twenty francs on…” She wrapped the cord around her hands, thinking. “Someone catching them holding hands, after the next UN general call.”
Ilyukhina nodded, flipping to the last page of her notepad to jot it down. “Sure. You got any cash on the boat?”
“Only what I had on me when I got Stratt-napped. That’s why I only want to be down for twenty.”
“Okay, got it. Let me know if you want to change your bet, okay?”
Whatever DuBois said, gossip was 100% the word for what Lokken did. By the end of that same day thirty four people had come to her to get in on the betting pool. She’d taken bets in rupees, yuan, U.S., Canadian and New Zealand dollars, baht, euro, and a bunch of the trinkets people had started bartering around in lieu of cash. People kept interrupting her dinner to drop off various beaded and crocheted things, which Dimitri found too funny for her taste.
“What’s the most popular discovery scenario so far?” He teased in Russian, already moving on to his pudding cup. She stuck her tongue out at him over her fish.
“A lot of people think they’re going to find them in a stairwell somewhere. That’s seventeen of the bets so far. I think that’s a stupid one, though, Stratt’s too paranoid and Grace is too skittish for that to happen.”
“Well, what’s the bet you’ve given the best odds, then?”
“One of the Thai scientists thinks one of them will slip up and call the other by their first name in the next three months. I thought that felt pretty close to true. A lot of people are specifically saying they think, whatever happens, it will be Grace’s fault.”
“It could be Stratt, under some circumstances.” He mused–oh, finally, a chance to eat. She started shoveling the food into her mouth. “The circumstances would have to be extreme, but what are we under if not extreme circumstances? Everything she does is thoughtful. There are a few circumstances where I can see her coming clean about it without having to be caught. For instance, after…” he caught himself.
She looked up at him. His eyes had slid to the side.
“What, you think it’s not going to come out until after I've already launched?” she laughed through the food in her mouth. Gosh, so sensitive. He flipped her off. She swallowed, then laughed louder. “If you’re gonna place a bet with me that won’t pay out until after I’m gone, the price is that you have to take over bookie duties.”
“Me??” He was indignant. “Yeska, I’m the world expert on Astrophage-based engineering. I have better math to do with my time!”
“No you don’t, come on.” She flashed her grin at him again, leaning in. “All the math is in excel sheets and shit now. Don’t you want me to entrust this to you? What if it was my final wish?”
“Then I would start my own betting ring just to spite you.” He grinned back. “It’s not like I can read your handwriting to get at your notes. Did you take all those bets while you were doing gravity training?”
“You would just make another excel sheet! And then it would get found and you’d have to answer questions.” He raised an eyebrow at her.
“What, you think Stratt hasn’t already caught wind of your operation?”
“No way, she knows everything. But if it’s all written down she still has to come find me, instead of just having someone wipe it off a laptop.” She brandished her fork at him. “That’s the power of paper!”
A throat cleared next to them, and they both turned. It was that weird little guy–the beetle one. What was his name? It was a word–Gate? Hatch!
“Hey, Hatchie!” She switched into English. “What’s up? We look at the beetles together soon, yeah? They’re gonna be my buddies.”
“Yes! We’re getting ready for Pete’s test flight, and then you can tinker around with him while we work on the rest of the band.” He puffed up. “Ilyukhina, I heard that you’re the woman aboard to speak to about probability.” She made side eye contact with Dimitri. What a way to say that.
She unfolded on the cafeteria bench and pulled out her notepad and pencil. “Yeah, you got it. What’s your guess and what’s your bet?”
He leaned in. “DuBois and Shapiro. Getting caught in a bathroom, within the next two weeks.”
She stared at him. He couldn’t be serious.
“Hatchie, that happened. Like. A month ago.”
He blanched. “What??? No way!!!! Who are you taking bets about, then? I thought it was them??”
Oh, this was too good. She had to laugh. And laugh. Dimiti was looking at her like she was crazy. And then DuBois came over, which made everything worse because she took one look at him and it set her off again. Oh, ow, her abs hurt!
“Sorry, sorry,” she gasped out, flat on her back on the bench. “Oh, that was too good, Hatchie. You’re my friend now.”
“Um. Okay?”
She got herself vertical again. The endorphins of it all. Hysterical.
“DuBois,” she turned to him. “Here to place a bet?”
“Yes. Obviously.” Aaah, she could see the smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. “I want to bet on absolutely no information pertaining to their relationship coming out until at least four and a half years post the completion of Project Hail Mary.”
She looked up at him. “You want my shitty little paper matrix to pay out when we wake up?”
“Oh, no. I don’t anticipate your individual scrap of paper lasting that long.” He shrugged, and pointed to Dimitri. “Doctor Komorov is one of the individuals most likely to last the longest after this project is over. I just want someone on Earth to know that I won, when everyone else’s bets inevitably fall through.”
Dimitri’s face turned red like a tomato. That was the most DuBois thing the man had ever said. Oh, she had to laugh.