by Corey Ostman
Grace sat back and folded her arms.
“There was a witness.”
“There were witnesses at the mess hall, too,” Grace countered.
“None that really matter.” Mhau paused. “With the roider I was telling you about, the bode protector was there. He chose not to come forward.”
“Why?”
“I wasn’t there, but I can make a pretty good guess: I’m sure he felt coming forward would be worse for the colony.” Mhau stretched out her hands. “A bode, or any belt outpost, isn’t run. It’s handled. And sometimes it’s better to avoid a hornet nest than try to do something about it. Our small community requires consensus.”
“With only one person in charge of each crucial element? Sounds like an oligarchy to me.”
“I concede your point, Grace. But that’s what works out here,” said Mhau, tapping the table with her finger for emphasis. “From time to time, we meet. It’s called a clash: a roundtable where the bode principals discuss issues, request cooperation, lay out complaints, and agree on at least one thing by the meeting’s close: to keep the bode viable and profitable.
“As you can see, roider colonies are not necessarily bastions of justice, but they are the epitome of free enterprise. It may seem like the rule of a few, but the successful, the failed, and everyone in-between share in its profits and its complicity.”
“Well I don’t.” Grace gritted her teeth. She could hear the mantra of the bottom line echoing in the engineer’s voice. “I get that you’re a small operation out here, and you have your own ways. But when a kid dies, and no one stands up?”
She untethered and rose. “You said that the compstate is far away, and it’s true. But I’m here now. As far as anyone here’s concerned, I’m the backhand of the compstate. A protector protects.”
They stared at one another. Mhau’s dark eyes were wide. Perhaps she hadn’t interacted with many protectors invoking their authority. Grace felt her confidence swell, having drawn a line in the icy dust of Ceres.
“Do you have any interest in the job?” Mhau asked.
“What?”
“You. Protector for Bode-6.” Mhau steepled her fingers. “I do have some ethics, Grace. Most of us do, you know. I’m interested in keeping the air flowing, lights on, water running. And I want the citizens to feel safe. I do not think murder is acceptable.”
“That’s good to know, Mhau. I’m sure that Charlie would’ve been comforted by that.”
Mhau threw up her hands. “Do you want this or not?”
Grace glowered, sat down, and attached her tether.
“So how would I become the bode’s protector?”
“The clash.”
“And Kyran, as bode doctor, sits on the clash?”
“Of course.”
“The useless protector, too?”
Mhau sighed.
“His name is Jacob. Jacob Rander. Protector-in-absentia, failed slush miner, and now a full-time Inker.” Mhau frowned. “I won’t ask you not to judge, but the belt can ruin the best of us. It’s been a while since he’s attended clash. Longer still since his opinion mattered.”
“He won’t vote for me,” Grace said.
“Jacob would if I asked him to,” Mhau said. The words were confident, though her voice sounded small.
“Why you?”
Mhau looked down at the desk. “Because he still loves me.”
Chapter 10
Tim Trouncer silently performed his morning routine. Kyran had grumpily dubbed it the ‘creepy perimeter sweep.’ Tim would wake up, shift his focus away from the network, and then move from room to room, ultimately coming back to the bedroom he shared with Grace. He’d started the routine when they’d first arrived. He hadn’t fully connected to Bode-6’s sensor network, so the patrol of their quarters made him feel a little more secure.
“Charlie!” came the familiar sob, accompanied with restless side to side thrashing. All audible from down the hall. It had been a long night, and Tim had hooked an additional restraining belt onto Grace’s bed so she could sleep without flying off. It hadn’t stopped her nightmares. Tim wondered if he ought to wake Grace. She had slept for seven hours. Would she want him to?
He sailed over Kyran’s exam table and down the hall.
You’re scaring me, Grace, he thought. She’d seen other deaths. Gruesome ones, and untimely. What about this one is bothering you so?
Grace had grown silent in the bed, her arms resting above the sheets. Tim hovered closer: her breathing was relaxed. Better not wake her. Instead, he moved over to the window, his routine forgotten, and watched her pensively.
He’d been with Grace after a particularly bad loss: her friend and fellow protector Martin “Marty” Randgarten. He was killed on duty, while Grace was still a fairly green and inexperienced protector. Tim remembered her crying, but she’d resolved her grief well. Certainly no nightmares.
Tim reflected on his own bad dreams while they were on Mars. Much of that seemingly internal conflict was caused by too much background communication from Martian robots. Perhaps there was something other than Charlie that was causing Grace’s bad dreams. Tim had explored his inner self painstakingly since that time, and was at peace with his unique existence. Even the morphing of Eugene into Tim no longer bothered him. Well, not much. Maybe Grace had an inner struggle too. Was it guilt?
Grace began to move restlessly again. Tim consulted his chronometer: eight hours. Good enough.
“Grace?” he said.
Grace stirred. He detected the cessation of REM sleep, but she did not open her eyes.
“Grace, wake up. You had a bad dream.”
Her right eye opened to a slit. She rolled away from him and the viewport.
“I feel awful,” she said. “What time is it?”
“Just past thirdrise.”
The silence stretched. He waited for Grace to respond, but she didn’t.
“I heard from Raj,” he said, floating to her bed. “He’s in cloister.”
Grace looked up, as he’d hoped. “What?”
“He and Anna are staying with your father. Apparently the Bod Town address was too exposed.”
“And cloister isn’t? If he brought any of his tech with him, he could get my father kicked out. Just like he got me kicked out. And nearly got Flora—”
She seemed to choke on that last name. Tim wondered if maybe Flora Tannenbaum was entangled with Charlie in Grace’s mind. He knew the story of how Flora was nearly expelled from Red Fox Academy. Grace had planted a dermal dot on Flora during a difficult test, to help her. It had gotten Grace kicked out of cloister.
“Raj knows cloister,” Tim said, deciding first to reassure. “It, at least, hasn’t changed.”
“And Port Casper has?”
“Yes, actually. AI crackdowns, modification police. They’re not letting any artificials through port because of the new Martian AIs. Spare parts, maybe, but no working artificials. Even toys like me.”
She didn’t rise to his bait. “So we’re stuck here.”
Grace rolled out of the bed and moved it into its vertical position, her gaze wandering to the viewport. The distant, brilliant sun dominated the horizon, highlighting a vast network of shallow fissures in the icy expanse of the plateau. Grace didn’t seem to notice: her eyes remained unfocused beneath a furrowed brow. She tapped her ptenda and the viewport tinted to limit the glare.
“What are you thinking about?” Tim asked.
“Charlie,” Grace said. She balled up the sheets.
“And Flora?” Tim added.
“Yeah, and—wait, how did you—?”
“I’m not a mind reader,” he said. “You just mentioned her, and you’ve been talking in your sleep.”
“Sorry, buddy—I think I’m losing my mind.” Grace reached out and pulled Tim close. His mimic surface had a basic sensor net yielding pressure and temperature data, but Grace’s touch was more than that. It made him relax and his thoughts became quiet.
He remembered worrying about her as the medical pod repaired her tortured body in Port Casper. He thought of lying at her feet as she recovered from depressurization on Mars. Some day he would try to explain to her how much of his blue gel was devoted to thinking of her.
“You’re not losing your mind,” he said.
“That’s not what Plate thinks,” she countered.
Tim nodded. Plate had unleashed his grief on Grace, confronting her—blaming her—for Charlie’s death. The PodPooch had watched the tears run from Grace’s eyes as she had allowed Plate to vent. He had apologized almost immediately, but—
“If I hadn’t insisted on Charlie getting the new grafty, he’d still be alive,” she said.
“It wasn’t your fault, Grace.”
“Huh. Kyran said as much last night: ‘it was an accident.’ There was nothing accidental about that execution. I keep reliving the moment that Charlie slipped away. He didn’t want to go into the mess with Lee there. I insisted. I didn’t protect him.”
Tim looked at her. Grace’s eyes were searching for an answer but not finding it in the room.
“Then that’s what you should do,” he said. “Protect.”
Grace considered him.
“Kyran up, yet?” she asked, after a moment.
Tim nodded. Grace reached around the back of the bed and grabbed her jacket, pulling it on. Then she bent over and scooped up a discarded food tray on the floor.
“Spring cleaning,” she said, softly. “Let’s go.”
“We’re leaving the apartment?”
“No. Not yet,” Grace said. “First I want to talk to Ky.” She bounced over to the door and into the hallway. Tim sailed after her.
“Morning, Grace,” Kyran said as she entered. He pushed a bulb toward her. “Breakfast?”
“Yes,” she said, pulling herself into a chair and drinking Kyran’s concoction.
“Tastes like oranges and kale. Not bad.”
“I call it my ape drink,” he said. “An attempt at synthesizing the perfect breakfast for primates.”
Grace drained the bulb.
“Tim tells me I’ve had a rough night. And his prescription is that I need to protect.”
Kyran jerked in his chair. “Grace, you don’t want to rush into anything.”
She shook her head. “No rushing. Already did that.” She stood. “But I think Tim and I need to stretch our legs while I digest my breakfast.”
Chapter 11
“Jacob? Are you still there?” Mhau whispered into her ptenda, tasting salt on her lips.
“Yeah.” Jacob’s voice returned.
“It’ll be better this way,” she said.
“She’s from Cloister 11?”
“I think so.”
“They raise ‘em strong up there,” he said. “Unlike me.”
She knew Jacob’s self-loathing well enough to imagine what he was thinking. Grace Donner would be too strong for Ink. She’d be too strong to look the other way. But that wasn’t Mhau’s concern. Would Grace be too strong for Bode-6?
“No response,” said Jacob. “Because it’s true.”
“Jacob, you should come over so we can talk—”
“No.”
“I can come to you, then,” she offered.
“No.”
“But if we call clash, you’ve got to come. We’ll need your vote if—”
She heard a click from her ptenda. Had he broken the connection, or was it interference from the Ink stream?
“Jacob!”
“I’m still here,” he said.
“I don’t know what Grace will decide, but if she decides to apply, I want to see you before the vote, to talk, to—”
“We are talking,” he said. “And now I’m done.”
She winced. He had to get back to his dissociative world, back to his sleep squeeze and his neural stream of non-reality. Did he think he was standing at the depths of Marble Canyon, near his cloister? Was she interrupting his view?
“Just be available if we call clash,” she said, trying to shake the image of Jacob lost in a downloaded fantasy. I’ll need you. The words stuck in her throat.
“Fine,” he said.
The link dropped and Mhau’s blue ptenda screen dimmed until she was alone in darkness. She sat, bringing her breathing under control. Whatever pride Jacob still had, Mhau had asked him to cast it aside and support a new protector. But did it even matter to Jacob? Did this world—the real world—even hold sway with him?
She heard familiar shuffling behind her. Mhau turned, tapping her ptenda to increase the light in the room. There it was, her robotic butiki, chirping as its adhesive feet crawled down the smooth surface of the wall. Boot never stayed in one place for too long, always scurrying, always vigilant. It hunts imaginary insects, she mused. She’d built it soon after arriving at Bode-6. She admired her little creation: ten centimeters long, with a pale orange body covered in beige bumps and speckles of brown. She’d left a lot of things behind to come to Ceres, but it didn’t seem like a home without a house gecko.
“Come here,” Mhau said, knowing it wouldn’t. She hadn’t designed it to understand speech, only react to sound. Its actions reminded her so much of the real thing that she allowed it the illusion of life. It always relaxed her.
Mhau rose from her seat and walked over to the gecko. She bent over and gently lifted the tiny robot from the baseboard. Its tan and white striped tail curled around the index finger of her right hand.
“What are we going to do with Jacob?” she asked, walking back to her desk. She put her palm down on its surface and watched Boot step off.
Mhau had met Jacob three years prior to Ceres. She was completing engineering at Saints Ferry Academy. It was Jacob’s first protector assignment outside of cloister. He was different then. Idealistic. When they went to Ceres, he had been excited about living at the distant outpost. Had he found security at the bode too dull? Or too hard? Is that what made him try slushing? Is that when he started streaming Ink with the other roiders? She had tried Ink once, found it too distracting. But Jacob couldn’t leave it alone.
She shivered and tugged her jacket from the back of the seat. Jacob’s jacket, once. They’d brought it halfway across the solar system, from his cloister. She’d never seen leather before. Jacob had given it to her while she was at Saints Ferry, the first of many kind gestures. He’d found her studying on the quad. It was early winter and she was so engrossed in her fact agent that she hadn’t realized she was shivering. It had been easy to fall in love with him. They had two blissful years of living together prior to spaceflight, and on Ceres, too, until Ink.
Mhau wrapped the jacket tightly around her and sat down.
“If we can bring this bode back in order, I know I could help Jacob,” she said to Boot. “Lee won’t be preying on him. Jacob won’t be a target anymore.”
The gecko sprinted along the desk and began an ascent at the intersection with the wall, its feet chirping as it climbed.
“You’re not even listening,” she said. Jacob’s not listening, either, she thought.
Kyran had warned her about Jacob shortly after they’d arrived at Bode-6. The doctor had cautioned that there was something about cloisterfolk and Ink. Mechflesh downloaded Ink for mental diversion, but with Jacob it had become all-consuming.
Maybe that’s what Lee wanted all along. Lee was born at Bode-6, so he’d had time to see the effects of Ink on mechflesh and cloisterborn. Was it more than control? Maybe he had some kind of spaceborn contempt for Jacob’s kind.
Her ptenda pinged. She looked at its display and saw an outer spiral address: the med lab. Kyran? Or Grace? Mhau tapped her ptenda.
“Go for Tapang.”
“I’ve just spoken with Grace.” It was Kyran.
“How is she?”
“Not good,” he said. “Nightmares. Won’t take anything for them.”
Mhau’s heart sank. “You’re telling me she’s unfit to work here, aren’t you?”
She expected a quick reply, but when the silence stretched, she queried: “Kyran?”
“She just left my place,” Kyran said. “That’s why I called you. She seemed… intent. Took a hammer with her.”
Mhau frowned. They didn’t need another crazed vendetta at the bode.
“She’d better wait for the clash before she decides to enforce anything.”
Are we really going to call clash?” Kyran asked.
“Up to her,” Mhau said.
Chapter 12
The hammer had two heads: one flat, extending ten centimeters from the shaft; the other a chisel, which was used for splitting rocks or prying open fissures. The handle wasn’t straight, but had an s-shaped curve halfway down to shorten its length, allowing a better grip for gloved hands.
Grace clipped the hammer to her belt. She touched the access pad and Kyran’s apartment door slid shut.
“Ready?”
“Yes,” Tim said, “but what about Kyran? He didn’t think I should leave.”
“He’ll get over it. I need you with me. I need your enhanced awareness.”
“Understood,” Tim said, and then touched a paw to the hammer. “But why did you decide to bring that?”
“Just look around,” she said. “Most of the roiders are wearing one.”
“Trying to go incognito?”
“Something like that. Let’s go.”
Grace turned right and into the oncoming breeze. She tugged hard on the handholds, pulling herself forward aggressively. Her speed increased, and she marveled at how fast she moved forward.
She flew around the outer spiral, weaving between the bulkier roiders. Tim kept up, uncomplaining.
When she saw a cruiser docked at Chamber Four, Grace took a firm grip on a pair of handholds. Her body rotated beneath and forward as she abruptly stopped.
“Why are we—?” began Tim.
Grace reached out and grabbed the PodPooch. “Ssh!”
“Ok, I understand,” came Tim’s voice in her dot. “Do you want me to record?”
“Don’t you always?” Grace subvocalized.
“Woof.”
She bent down, affecting motions as if adjusting her boots, and listened as two people exited Chamber Four.
