Vale of Stars

by Sean O'Brien

  Dolen added, “Plus, if we do anything, the incidents of harassment will only get worse.” He hesitated. Kuarta knew he was holding back something.

  “What else?” she asked, stopping in the middle of the path.

  He turned away and looked abstractedly at the nearest tree. “I’ve heard…talk. At the University.” At his partner’s expectant silence, he continued. “It was nothing I was supposed to hear, I know. I was coming back to my office during one of my classes a few days ago—I’d forgotten the holo of those old Earth scenes, the ones from the mid-twentieth century United States, all about immigration. You remember those? With the ships and Ellis Island and all that?”

  Kuarta smiled despite the gravity of the situation. Dolen had a habit of trailing off into side issues and completely forgetting his main point. His students could frequently miss an entire class-worth of instruction if they managed to get him talking about Earth history’s more interesting moments.

  “Yes, dear. I remember. You were talking about something you overheard?”

  “Oh, right. Well, I was going back to my office in the middle of class, as I said, and there were two, no, three young student-professors in the history office, which is the one right past mine. But you know that, don’t you? You’ve been there before. In any case, I was going to go straight into my office and get the holocube, then go back to the class, when I heard my name from the history office. ‘Professor Verdafner must have it bad for shippie tail,’ I heard.”

  Kuarta’s smile vanished. She knew that there had been similar accusations leveled at her, but in reverse, of course. Still, she bristled at the thought that she was just some kind of vessel for an argie’s lust.

  Dolen continued his story, apparently unaware of the effects it was having on Kuarta. “It was just student-profs griping about us oldsters, you know. Happens all the time. Still, this had gone too far. As you can imagine, I stopped then and there and was ready to go into the history office to have a word or two with those inside, when another comment floated outside into the hallway where I was standing. And that comment made me pause.”

  He stopped. Kuarta did not prompt him—she knew he would speak when he was ready.

  “Someone in the office said, ‘Those damn shippies think they’re entitled to everything’ and someone else replied, ‘I wonder how they’d do outside?’ and the whole bunch of them laughed.”

  Kuarta nodded. “Dolen, dear, that’s no different than what we have been hearing for a while now.”

  “Yes, but to joke about genocide? That’s….” He could not find the words.

  Kuarta smiled at her partner. His depth of knowledge about certain subjects, ancient history, for instance, was matched only by his incredible ignorance about the darker side of his society. He could see evil in history books, perpetrated by human beings one on another, but he sincerely seemed to believe the human race had evolved beyond such institutions as racism and prejudice. He was not capable of seeing it all around him, even when he himself was the target. Kuarta could not bear to shatter her husband’s innocence by telling him the students were not joking.

  Kuarta patted his arm soothingly. “I know, dear. Let’s talk about something else. Have you noticed the leaves are staring to turn?”

  * * *

  Yallia was an unusually bright girl for her age. Even among the already naturally intelligent argies (who, after all, possessed not only a genetic advantage over their immigrant brethren but had the intangible environment of the colony itself to support them) she stood out. It was for this reason she had been placed in the four-year old (New Earth years) class. There, she could work with others of her ability and receive appropriate instruction. There was no denying, however, the active resentment the other children and their parents felt at the presence of this precocious shippie child, the granddaughter of a Commissar.

  Helena Murgat’s parents were perhaps the most resentful. They had elected to withdraw their daughter from Cassiopeia School, the school that Yallia and four hundred other children attended in New Chicago, and move to another Dome entirely rather than have to associate with filthy shippies. For their daughter, it meant, of course, abandoning friendships that Helena was just beginning to form and becoming the “new girl” in a different school in a different Dome.

  All of which was in the back of young Helena’s mind as she prepared the concoction for the cause of all her troubles. Yallia Verdafner would pay for what she had done. Helena scooped another handful of the foul-smelling soil into the bowl. There had been little difficulty in opening her father’s soil sample case—as Helena had never showed the slightest interests in her father’s work as a xenobotanist, he had never thought to keep the samples of Epsilon Eridani III topsoil under tight security. A bit of observation and a stepstool later, and Helena was mixing the potion that would make Yalli as physically sick as Helena felt inside at the impending move.

  Helena smiled a crooked half smile as she saw tiny native worms wriggling in the mixture of dirt, milk, and beer.

  The school day went by uneventfully until first recess. Helena had already contacted her confederates through carefully scrawled notes passed during the day—when the children were released for recess, Helena’s crew went into action.

  “Hey, Yallia,” Helena called with false bonhomie. “Come on over here. I’ve got a present for you.”

  Yallia was under no illusions as to her status with her class. She was well-hated by all, and there were none that hated her with more fire than Helena. She looked across the playground warily and shook her head.

  “Come on, Yallia. I want to be your friend,” Helen wheedled.

  The ruse worked. Yallia, smart as she was, could not resist entirely the possibility that Helena might be undergoing a change of heart. Yallia came over but stopped some distance away.

  “You don’t like me,” she called out. She waited for an explanation.

  “Yeah, well, since I’m leaving soon, I want to tell you something. I’m sorry for everything I did to you.”

  Yallia scanned the faces of the three girls standing nearby. They radiated malice even as Helena spoke. Something was not right.

  “You are?” Yallia kept her eyes on the three girls.

  “Yeah.” Helena got up from the bench on which she had been sitting and approached Yallia. Her flankers moved with her. “Can I give you a hug?”

  Yallia did not answer immediately. Her inexperienced intellect told her not to trust this situation (and her suspicious Halfner genes did as well), but the overriding need for acceptance trumped all her rationality. She nodded slightly.

  Helena moved in to hug her. That was the signal. Helena and her three associates tackled Yallia and expertly pinned her to the ground. Yallia found her arms held fast, a girl sitting on each. The third toady sat on her legs while Helena produced a small bag of brown, muddy liquid.

  “You smelly shippie. You have to eat all of this before we let you go. Here,” she said, stuffing a pungent handful into Yallia’s mouth.

  Yallia’s shrieks of terror quickly became muffled gags as she fruitlessly fought against Helena’s hands. Helena managed to force three handfuls down Yallia’s throat before Ms. Fletcher’s startled cries ended the torture.

  Ms. Fletcher had fought off her disgust at Yallia’s initial arrival and continued presence in her class with professionalism—she was a teacher and took her job quite seriously. Still, when she arrived on the scene, a tiny part of her applauded Helena’s efforts. Outwardly, she radiated concern and disapproval toward the perpetrators, but she could not, despite her attempts to suppress the sadistic corner of her mind, entirely pity the coughing, retching shippie girl who lay at her feet.

  Yallia vomited copiously onto the sand of the playground. A sudden, sharp, aggressive odor of chlorine drove the onlookers back and away—they had been trained from birth that the smell spelled death to them.

  Ms. Fletcher was not an expert in any particular field, being a primary school teacher, but was reaso
nably well versed in practically every branch of knowledge. She knew what must be happening to Yallia—Helena must have forced some native plant or animal matter down her throat, which was now dissolving in the girl’s stomach acids. The combination of free chlorine in the biomatter was reacting with the hydrochloric acid in Yallia’s stomach and producing toxic chlorine gas.

  “Children! Run to my classroom and stay there! Get away from her,” Ms. Fletcher shouted at the assembled youngsters. They needed no additional prodding. The smell of chlorine was enough to send them running in panic. Helena and her cohorts were among the last to leave. Helena herself showed no sign of remorse at the convulsing result of her anger but retreated with dignity back to the classroom.

  Ms. Fletcher herself trembled with indecision. She knew she should help Yallia vomit up as much of the substance she had ingested, but her conditioned fear of chlorine and her disdain for the girl’s lineage threatened to override her natural instincts to help those in need. She remained, watching Yallia from perhaps ten meters’ distance and advancing in tiny, shuffling steps, as the girl slowly lost consciousness.

  The medical personnel arrived soon after the school’s administrator placed the call. Yallia had been unconscious for no more than thirty minutes when the paramedics, in oxygen masks, attended to her. Kuarta and Dolen had been called as well and arrived only minutes behind the paramedics.

  “What happened?” Kuarta asked of the assembled people around her daughter, her voice showing no sign of the emotions she was feeling. She could smell the chlorine in the air, but the clinical part of her had taken over, and she was prepared to solve the problem, whatever it turned out to be. Dolen spotted Ms. Fletcher, standing with other adults still about ten meters away from Yallia, and guided his partner toward her.

  “What happened?” Kuarta repeated, her eyes still on the paramedics’ backs.

  “Well, your daughter swallowed some native plants, I think.” Ms. Fletcher said.

  “You think?”

  “There were some girls, they were just playing,” Ms. Fletcher said, her voice already defensive, “and I think they stuffed some plants down her.”

  “Where are they now?” Dolen barked.

  “I don’t think this is the time to punish the girls, Mr. Verdafner. They will be dealt with in—”

  “I’m not going to punish them, dammit! Have you asked them what they made her eat?” Dolen’s voice carried uncharacteristic violence.

  “Well, I was more worried about getting them inside,” Ms. Fletcher said, then shrank under Dolen’s withering stare.

  Kuarta broke away from the woman and approached Yallia. Two of the other teachers in the area moved quickly to intercept her. “No, no, stay out of this. Let the paramedics work,” one of them said.

  Kuarta shook them off. “Let me go, damn you! I just want to see!”

  “Kuarta, we’ll see her at the hospital. Let them work, dear,” Dolen said softly, his hands on her shoulders. Kuarta relented. She knew he was right, and she could hear the paramedics’ muffled voices through their masks.

  “She’s stable. Let’s get her up and to N.C.G.,” one of them said.

  Kuarta turned to Ms. Fletcher. “They’re taking her to New Chicago General. Ask the girls who did this what they made her eat and bring the data to the hospital.” She barked the commands without rancor—there would be plenty of time for incrimination later. Now she had to secure her daughter’s life.

  Kuarta and Dolen were allowed to ride in the ambulance as it screamed its way to N.C.G. Public transportation would have been agonizingly slow and there was plenty of room in the little truck. The hospital was located in almost the exact center of the Dome, along with other municipal services. This meant it was no more than two and a half kilometers from the edge of the Dome in all directions, and considerably closer to the more heavily populated sections.

  Kuarta rode in the back with one of the paramedics and held Yallia’s hand. The girl was still unconscious and masked. The truck’s air scrubbers were on maximum but could still not completely erase the chlorine smell.

  “What are her vitals?” Kuarta asked, craning her neck to look at the monitor.

  “B.P. looks good: one-ten over sixty-four. Pulse stable at seventy-three. Respiration good,” the paramedic said.

  “What about blood gas?”

  The medic looked, then squinted and looked again. “Uh, blood gas is…normal?” He looked at Yallia again, then back at the monitor. “Yeah, it’s normal.”

  As if on cue, Yallia opened her eyes.

  “Yallia! It’s Mommy, sweetheart. I’m right here.”

  “Mommy?” Yallia said, then coughed copiously.

  “Yes, darling, here I am. Can you see me?”

  Yallia nodded and moved her hand up to the oxygen mask.

  “No, no, dear, keep that on. That’s helping you breathe. Does it hurt to breathe?”

  Yallia nodded again.

  The paramedic leaned in. “Yallia, My name is Marq. Does it taste funny to breathe?”

  Yallia nodded.

  Marq looked at Kuarta. “That’s the chlorine gas,” he said.

  “No, like plastic,” Yallia said.

  “What, dear?” Kuarta asked.

  “It tastes like plastic, not chlorine.”

  Kuarta frowned and glanced at the monitor. “You said her pulse ox is normal?”

  The medic checked again. “Yes. Normal and holding. In fact, all her stats are perfect. I don’t get it,” he mused. “Yallia, honey, I want you to take a deep breath. Can you do that for me?”

  Yallia nodded and breathed in, her little chest expanding. She coughed once, a short, sharp sound, but otherwise breathed normally.

  “Did that hurt?” he asked.

  Yallia shook her head.

  “Damned if I know,” Marq mumbled. “Okay, that’s good, sweetie. Now just lie back and relax.” He looked at Kuarta quizzically. “She have any unusual blood chemistry you know of?”

  “Nothing I’m aware of. Her natal work was all normal.”

  Marq shrugged. “She’s looking real good now. They’ll do more detailed work at NCG. Blood gas, cellular scan, and so on.”

  The rest of the ride only took five minutes, and Kuarta spent it looking at her daughter and watching the monitor. When they arrived at the hospital, Yallia was rushed to the total exam room where she was placed in the Complete Body Scanner. Kuarta herself had helped design the device—a short tunnel that combined all the possible passive and active scans and lab services a doctor could want. It was fully automated and very quick, gave a detailed analysis of the scans it performed, and otherwise acted as an invaluable diagnostic tool. Doctors still verified the results and prescribed treatment, but their role had been vastly simplified by the machinery. The machines were somewhat expensive and cranky of maintenance, and as a result, every hospital housed only two. Hospitals were always clamoring for more CB units, but they knew full well that no Dome would get another scanner until all did. That was the price of a neosocialist society, but it also meant no colonist would be denied medical care because a more influential citizen took precedence. Even with the obviously prejudicial environment that placed shippies at the bottom of a supposedly nonexistent social ladder, the medical community was still almost entirely egalitarian.

  Yallia came out of the scanner a scant ten minutes after being put in, and Kuarta crowded near the read-out screen that was normally reserved for doctors. Her standing in the medical community gave her access others might not have had. When the numbers flashed on the screen, the emergency doctor furrowed his brow and said, “You’re sure she ingested chlorine?”

  Kuarta could not answer for a moment. The blood work and tissue samples showed no sign of chlorine at all.

  “Mommy, can I get up now?” Yallia asked from the exam table.

  Kuarta ignored her. Dolen put his hands on his partner’s shoulders again, seeing the numbers but not understanding their significance. “What is it?”


  “There’s no chlorine in her,” the emergency doctor said.

  “Could the scanner be wrong?” Dolen asked.

  “No. Not like this,” Kuarta said decisively.

  “We’ve had no problems with it,” the doctor confirmed.

  “Then why—” Dolen began, but Kuarta interrupted him.

  “It was chlorine,” she said to herself out loud. “We all smelled it. Has the school called yet?” she asked the doctor.

  “Yes. A Ms. Fletcher called it in, and a sample of the material is on its way. We’ll know more then. Right now, let’s get her to a bed while we wait.”

  Kuarta, Dolen, and Yallia were escorted to a room in the emergency ward. When they were alone, Kuarta asked her daughter, “Tell me what happened, dear. Did you eat anything?”

  Yallia started to tear up again as she remembered the incident. “She—she made me, Mommy! She said she wanted to be fuh-friends, but when I gave her a hug, she—she put it in my mouth!”

  Kuarta hugged her close and patted her hair. “Shhh, shhh. That’s okay, dear. Now, what did she put in your mouth?”

  “Dirt and stuff. Worms,” came the muffled answer.

  Dolen tried to make light of the experience. “Ewww! Worms, huh? I’ll bet they tasted really bad.”

  “Uh-huh. In the beginning.”

  “What do you mean, dear?” Kuarta stopped the hug and looked at her daughter’s tear-streaked face.

  “After a while it didn’t taste too bad. It tasted like…that stupid oatmeal Daddy makes.” Yallia managed a weak smile at her father.

  Dolen thought for a moment, then said, “Irish oatmeal? The kind I cook on the stove and make with water?”

  Yallia nodded and wrinkled her nose.

  “But that doesn’t taste like anything, dear.”

  “I know,” Yallia said.

  Dolen and Kuarta looked at each other, confused. Kuarta spread her hands slightly in an “I-don’t-know-either” gesture, then held Yallia again. The three sat in silence for a few minutes until the emergency doctor came into their room. “Hi there,” he said with too much enthusiasm. “How are you feeling, soldier?”