Penumbra

by Dan Ackerman

He eyed the small lab.

  The medical team clustered together on one side, running tests. They hadn’t stopped moving either.

  He edged over, taking in the supplies they’d brought. He saw everything needed for first aid, bottles of vaccines…and formulas, their bottles all lined up on a single shelf, adorned with plain numbers, one through twenty.

  He stared at the bottle of Twelve and the little shot glasses stacked beside the formulas.

  It made sense to bring these. It made sense for them to be here.

  So why had the sight of them shocked him?

  Why had it felt like water after a brutal practice?

  One of the medics noticed him lurking. “Did you need something, Your Eminence?”

  That title felt like soap on a cut. “Uh. I.” He glanced back toward the Terrans, spread out through the bay, talking and taking things in. “Making sure everything’s going well?”

  “So far so good.”

  He nodded and walked away.

  He retreated to the shuttle.

  He nearly got into bed before he remembered that Winslow needed somewhere to sleep now.

  Stupid old fool. He shouldn’t have come here.

  He scavenged through the shuttle for another set of pillows and blankets. He made up the bed for his uncle and the couch for Oggie. He piled a few pillows and blankets on the pilot’s chair. It didn’t recline but he’d dozed off in it before.

  He’d wanted to go to bed so badly, to curl up and hide from everything again.

  With that option thwarted, he went back out and sat next to Winslow. “Aren’t you even going to ask me how my trip was?”

  Winslow didn’t answer him.

  The silent treatment. He must have been truly pissed off.

  Arden pulled up the pictures on his tablet and slid it onto his uncle’s lap. The first was a sweeping panorama he’d asked someone to take from the radio tower. He’d thought about climbing it himself and had chickened out. The woman who’d scaled it had been happy enough to do him the favor.

  She’d liked that she could take the picture and zoom in on the more distant parts.

  “I got a distress call from that radio tower. They said they didn’t send it, that they didn’t even know how to work it. I couldn’t figure out how anyone had gotten it to work but Holly told me some tribes have these old generators. They drag them around on sleds.”

  Winslow turned toward him.

  “I guess having generators is more dangerous, though. They make noise, which means raiders know you’re there and they know you have something worth stealing.” Arden flicked to the next picture. A tree with twisted branches. He’d begged Oggie to stand next to it for scale. “Holly says up north the trees are tall and straight. I didn’t get any pictures of those; we didn’t move around.”

  He continued this scrolling narration until he came upon a picture that he hadn’t meant to show anyone. He quickly flicked past it.

  Winslow flicked back.

  Arden tried to pull the tablet back. Not that it was anything bad. He even looked nice in it. Something about the picture of him showing a child how to set up the projector had an intimate quality to it.

  He didn’t have any pictures like that anymore.

  Winslow didn’t let go. “Who’s this young man?”

  Arden squinted at the picture. “His name is Yunis.”

  “No, this one,” Winslow said. “He looks just like my nephew except he knows how to smile.”

  Arden took the tablet. He cleared his throat. “This, uh, this is a building, a bookstore or a library.”

  Winslow didn’t look at the picture. He looked at the Terrans milling around. “Why did you bring them here?”

  “Because you shouldn’t have to pay for a seat on a lifeboat.”

  “You’ve upset a lot of people.”

  “Does that mean you don’t support me anymore?” Arden asked. “Or does it mean you finally want to hear about what I’m doing?”

  “You were such a spoiled little boy. Your mama and I both did that to you. I never.” Winslow touched his own face. “I never thought you’d be anything else.”

  “Oh.”

  “When your mother passed and you had such a hard time with it, people worried, you know. I always told them you were too spoiled to do anything that took effort.”

  “You told people that!”

  “Better than letting them think you’d turn out like Morris. And speaking of him—”

  “I can’t, Winnie, I absolutely can’t talk about that. Not now.”

  Winslow put a hand on Arden’s arm. “Tell me you didn’t mean for it to end like that.”

  “I didn’t. I promise.”

  Winslow didn’t look reassured.

  “Want a tour of the shuttle?” Arden asked. He stood and walked away.

  His uncle followed him inside.

  Arden showed him the bathroom and the bed, then said, “You look tired. We can talk more in the morning.”

  “Tired! I haven’t slept through the night in a month, thanks to you. I’ve never worried like that in my life.”

  Arden swept Winslow into a hug. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  Arden kissed his fluffy curls and wondered if hair like that lurked in his genes. He remembered then that he bore no genetic relation to Winslow. “Get some sleep.”

  Winslow patted his back.

  Everyone else had gone to bed, every Terran, medic, and worker.

  Oggie and Arden sat in the cockpit, the door closed to the rest of the shuttle, not talking to each other.

  Arden had offered him the couch to sleep on, to which Oggie had responded, “I’m not sharing a room alone with your uncle.”

  They hadn’t spoken after that.

  Arden didn’t feel right leaving him to go to bed. “We can share the couch,” he offered after too many quiet minutes.

  Oggie shot him a dirty look.

  “I had to give him the bed, Og, he’s so old!”

  “I’m not mad you let an old man sleep in a bed,” Oggie hissed.

  “Then what’s wrong?”

  “Why does something have to be wrong?”

  “You seem distant.”

  “I’m not trying to blow you, so something has to be wrong?”

  Arden snapped, “That’s not what I said.”

  Oggie didn’t answer.

  Arden gave it a few minutes. He was tired, though, and he didn’t know what to do. “I’m going to get some sleep. There’s room for you if you want it.”

  Oggie stayed quiet.

  Arden lay on the couch. He hadn’t realized how much colder it got on Eden. The Terrans had talked about it almost exclusively. That and the food.

  He hoped he’d done the right thing.

  He tightened the blankets around himself and pressed his face into the pillow.

  He woke up alone.

  Winslow still slept.

  He eased off the couch and into the shower. He needed it, for his nerves as much as hygiene. He washed his hair.

  That always made him feel better.

  He left it loose to dry.

  People from Terra had started to stir and ask about breakfast.

  He went to the workers and asked them to start cooking.

  Kile said, “It’ll be a way off. More people to cook for than anyone figured.”

  Arden nodded.

  “What needs to get done?” Kineth asked.

  Arden glanced over his shoulder. He hadn’t expected her to be so close.

  Kile frowned.

  “We aren’t used to being…” She frowned too, as if searching for the right words. “Treated like babies.”

  Arden tilted his head.

  “Littles help out with what they can. Only babies get a free meal,” Mira explained. “Show us how to help.”

  Kile pointed to a knife block. “Could probably cut up the peppers and onions.”

  The Terrans descended on the kitchen.

  Arden
stepped back. He scanned the bay for Oggie and couldn’t find him. He approached the medical team. “Any news?”

  “You’re in good health.”

  “Huh.”

  Maggie said, “Surprised?”

  “Normally I get told off for a few things.”

  “You could use more iron,” she offered almost as a consolation.

  “What about the Terrans?”

  “No heinous diseases so far, but we have more people to examine and rather incomplete knowledge of existing diseases on Terra One.”

  “So even if they all get clean bills of health…?”

  “Something could still pop up,” she confirmed.

  He crossed his arms.

  “And we don’t know what our germs will do to them.”

  He uncrossed his arms and settled his hands on his hips. “Fuck.”

  Maggie shrugged. “Worse care scenario we all die. Best case scenario…We all live, I guess.”

  “Is that your professional opinion?” he asked.

  “It’s my hopeful-for-the-future opinion,” she answered.

  “Great.”

  She pointed out, “Most doctors wouldn’t come into this bay unless you threatened to strip their funds. Cole Baker personally asked me to do this when the Council couldn’t get anyone else.”

  “Oh. Well. I appreciate it.”

  “Ah. I needed a reason to get out and work since Dad passed. Keep busy, you know?”

  “Yeah.”

  She looked at the Terrans. “None of them are getting clean bills of health. They all need dental work and like…six kinds of vitamin boosters. A few of them need serious health care, too, like…bones that need to be reset and chronic diseases. At least seven of them probably have melanoma and that’s just the ones we looked at so far.”

  “That’s grim.”

  Maggie shrugged. “From what they’ve told me, they’re lucky to be alive.”

  Arden looked around the lab. His eyes lighted on the line of formula containers. He pushed his hands into his pockets. “Well. Thanks.”

  He walked away without waiting for an answer. A quick peek inside the shuttle found Winnie still sleeping. He did tend to sleep in. Arden watched him long enough to make sure he still breathed.

  He went to the glass window of the bay. An operations room lay on the other side. Currently, a handful of people sat inside.

  He rapped on the glass.

  A trio of heads swiveled toward him. Cole, Xio, and a worker he didn’t recognize.

  He waved.

  Cole scrambled over and pushed a button. “Ardi! Morning!”

  “Morning.”

  “I swear as soon as I can get my hands on you, I’m going to strangle you!”

  “That’s not nice.”

  “Nice! You threw the station into chaos and went on vacation with an assassin! How’s that for nice?”

  “I don’t know, I guess you can look at it as righting generations of systematic wrongs and oppression, then putting my life at risk to rescue the people we abandoned.”

  “No one’s putting it like that.”

  Arden smiled. “I’m going to make sure the history books do.”

  “We were worried about you! You can’t—”

  “Oh, yell at me later. My tablet finally updated with all the reports. Do you have time to talk?”

  “You want to talk about reports?”

  “I’ve been gone for a month.”

  Xio approached the window. “You look well, Your Eminence.”

  “So do you.”

  “I wrote up a summary of Engineering if you want to go over it. I thought a month might be a lot to go over all at once.”

  He appreciated the effort and didn’t tell her a month’s reports meant nothing compared to all the numbers he’d seen in the past years. “Sure, let’s go over it.”

  He found a chair and they conversed for the better part of an hour. Given all the changes that had come from releasing the workers from their debts and putting Rhys in charge, he welcomed her summary. He didn’t know if every department had undergone such changes.

  Holly brought him breakfast. “You almost didn’t get any.”

  “Thanks.”

  She stared at the people on the other side of the window. “They can hear us?”

  He nodded.

  “Hi there.”

  Cole and Xio looked at each other.

  Cole asked, “What?”

  “She said hi!” Arden clarified. “You’ll get used to the accent.”

  “What accent?” Holly asked.

  “You talk slow.”

  “You talk fast!” she accused.

  Xio said, “Hi.”

  Holly jabbed her thumb toward Arden. “He really king up here?”

  “He’s Autarch,” Xio answered.

  “Yeah, they don’t seem to get what that means,” Arden said.

  “He’s the king,” Cole confirmed.

  “What about you?” Holly asked.

  “No.”

  To Arden, she said, “He dresses even worse than you.”

  “Don’t be rude. Cole, you look very handsome.”

  “How can you move in that much clothes?”

  Arden grinned at Cole. “Oh, you should see what he wears when he’s not at work.”

  Cole’s olive cheeks darkened. “Arden, don’t make fun of me in front of the Terrans. You’ll make them think I’m a joke.”

  “No, they’re all going to try to fuck you,” Holly said. “Joke or not.”

  “All their men died. It’s…it’s kind of had an impact on their collective psyche.”

  “Huh.”

  “Anyway. Oh! Have you talked to Oggie at all?”

  “I haven’t seen him.”

  “Me neither. If you do, tell him it’s a good idea for him to be Entertainment Minister.”

  “You can’t keep giving government jobs to your friends and lovers.”

  “You were elected.”

  “I haven’t seen Oggie either,” Holly said.

  Arden turned around and scanned the bay. “He literally has to be in here somewhere. What do you think, Xio? Wouldn’t he be a good Entertainment Minister?”

  Xio shifted and didn’t look exactly at Arden when she answered. “Isn’t he the one who tried to kill you?”

  “It wasn’t like that. He didn’t try.”

  “And I thought you two weren’t even really sleeping together,” Cole said.

  Holly covered her mouth and turned away.

  Arden didn’t know if they could hear her snorting on the other side of the glass, but he certainly could. “Sleeping with me is not a job. Entertainment Minister is. And Frakes is terrible.”

  “Oh, no, I don’t know,” Xio protested, “I kind of liked From Never to Forever.”

  Arden wrinkled his nose instinctually. Frakes had gotten that movie approved in the deepest days of Arden’s troubles. “It’s awful and not even the fun kind.”

  She pressed her lips together and lowered her eyes. “I think it’s kind of sweet.”

  Arden raised a hand and waved her opinion away. “Anyway. We need to replace him.”

  “You think Nielsen can make movies that promote what we’re doing?” Cole asked. “He doesn’t seem…He doesn’t seem like he does that kind of work.”

  Arden walked away before he started a fight. He didn’t need to argue over this in front of Xio or the Terrans.

  He spied Winnie talking to Tola and decided not to interrupt.

  He checked the far side of the bay. He made sure to check behind the fuel containers. He found a pillow and a blanket in a small storage alcove.

  No Oggie, though.

  Arden sat down and waited.

  It only took about twenty minutes before Oggie showed up with a packet of rehydrated food.

  “You miss breakfast?” Arden asked.

  Oggie scowled.

  “Can we talk?”

  “I’m sure you’re going to anyway.”

 
; “Come sit with me.”

  “Is that an order, Your Eminence?”

  “Yes.”

  Oggie sat.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Oh, so you hide in corners and sleep on the floor when you’re in a good mood?” Arden asked.

  “Fuck off.”

  Arden had seen him get hysterical, morose, and flighty. He’d seen him become erratic. He’d never seen him so sour before. “What happened?”

  “Why did something have to happen?”

  “The other night you were telling Tyl you didn’t want to mess anything up and now you’re avoiding me.”

  “You were eavesdropping?”

  “I overheard. It’s not the same.”

  Oggie grunted. He shoved a gummy piece of bread in his mouth.

  “Oggie. Please.”

  “It’s…” Oggie threw the food packet away from himself. He put his head on his knees. “It’s not just one thing. It’s a thousand fucking things. Like…Like Rhys!”

  “What about Rhys?”

  “He fucking hates me, first, and you still like him, second, and—”

  “Hang on. I still like him?”

  “Obviously. I saw the way you looked when you were talking to him. And you were always going out to see him in the middle of the night.”

  “If you’d like to be exclusive—”

  “That’s not the point!”

  “Care to let me in on the point then?”

  Oggie sighed. “I’ll always be a stand-in for what you couldn’t have until you find something better.”

  “Fuck, Og, I…” Arden sighed. “You think that’s the kind of person I am?”

  “I think that’s the kind of person you all are.”

  Nothing in the world could make this conversation better. Arden thought about asking to postpone it, but a larger part wanted this resolved now. And, quarantined as they were, they had nothing else to do and no way to avoid each other that didn’t involve Oggie hiding.

  Arden told him, “I still want you with me.”

  “For now.”

  “Yes, for now. Now is all we have. What? Did you want me to fucking propose? It’s barely been a month.”

  Oggie glared at him.

  Arden half-smiled. He scooted closer. “Oggie.”

  “I didn’t! I’m not stupid. I’m not. I know it will never be like that.”

  “I wouldn’t say never.”

  “I’m not talking about marriage, Arden, but I don’t…”

  After a heavy pause, Arden urged, “Go on.”