A Thing As Good As Sunshine

by Juliet Nordeen

  I did not remember Earth. I didn't have any memories before living with Momma in her unit. There was no one for me back on the planet, nothing and no one. Everyone who mattered to me lived in the Rock — Momma, Auntie, Sheng Tian — and they had contracts binding them to it for years and years. They couldn't leave and now I couldn't stay. Parker's decision was the cruelest choice he could have made.

  I'd rather be put out the airlock.

  Sheng Tian pulled me out of my thoughts as he knelt by my side and took my cuffed hands in his. "We'll fight it. I have friends who know people... I'll contact the Company myself... I won't let this happen."

  I could tell by the way he laid his head in my lap that his bluster was worth no more than the air it took to say it. Momma and Auntie's gossiping over the years taught me that maybe someone at the Governor's level could exert that kind of influence on Parker, but Momma obviously couldn't — even with her thin Ledger — and he'd never bend that far for a Driller cum Navigator.

  Though I loved Sheng Tian, and I appreciated he wanted to mean the things he said, I found in the moment that I didn't love him enough. I wanted my Momma. I pulled away from him, buried my face in Momma's shoulder, and flung my shackled arms around her and Auntie Pria. We soaked each others' hair with our tears.

  I felt Sheng Tian pull away but did not watch him go. The mayhem surrounding us ebbed and then finally died. Eventually we three, and a dozen guards, were all that remained of the biggest, scariest, angriest crowd I'd ever seen in my life. Auntie Pria settled herself, exhausted, into the chair recently held by Governor Ethan, the lawyer.

  Momma struggled with her cuffs to gather her long hair away from her blotchy face, and somehow managed to pull it back and secure it in a knot. "What are the chances she'll make it back to Earth?" Momma asked Auntie.

  I swallowed hard. That idea didn't go down well, it stuck sideways in my throat like a drill wedged against choke-rock. When Parker had spoken my sentence I hadn't even considered the possibility that I wouldn't survive to be all alone on a planet I didn't care about. After all, I had gotten here okay as a toddler.

  Auntie frowned as she thought. "The technology hasn't advanced much in the last ten years. Without the pregnancy, I'd say eighty-twenty. But with a fetus drawing strength from her body, especially as low as her body-fat is already, I don't know. Most of the stasis studies come from the military and those folks are almost as anti-child as the Company."

  "Guess." Momma wasn't dealing with a punk, but I realized she needed Auntie to answer.

  So did I.

  Auntie considered. Hesitated. Stayed quiet.

  "Better than fifty-fifty?" Momma asked.

  Auntie shook her head.

  "Twenty five percent?"

  "Maybe." As a medic, Auntie was experienced at giving bad news, but this broke her and she had to look away from both of us.

  My head shook slowly without me asking it to. I couldn't believe the future Parker had damned me to. I'd be drowned in liquid oxygen, chilled to hibernating-cold, stuffed in a tube where I might or might not maintain my awareness (or dream), wedged into the nose cone of a computer-driven, cargo boat full of billions of dollars of ore, hurled across space for months, plunged through a burning atmosphere into Earth's gravity well. After splashing into a body of water so big I couldn't even imagine it — thousands and thousands of times bigger than Perseus Two itself — a planetbound ship would retrieve the whole thing and tow it to a continent almost as big as the ocean. A continent full of people, of whom not a single one would care a lick about what happened to me or my unborn child. And now Auntie said I had a one in four chance of it turning out that well.

  More than likely I'd die out there. After the boat splashed down on Earth, and the company had taken its ore, some stranger would find my dead, emaciated, naked body in the stasis tube. And then what? There wouldn't even be anyone to cry for me.

  I no longer felt sorry for Parker. He was a monster. The worst monster imaginable. I laughed at myself for ever having pity for him.

  "What's funny, Honey-Girl?" Momma asked.

  I shook my head faster, my disbelief turning to rage. "I won't go that way."

  "Honey-Girl," Auntie said in her calming tone.

  "No." I banged my fist on the table. "Parker and his Governors can go to hell first. They're not sending me away from you to die in a frozen tube." I banged my hand again, harder, and the cuff around my wrist gouged a chip out of a soft ore vein in the table.

  Momma put her hand over mine. "Stop. Just stop."

  She let my hand go and I picked at the hole I'd made. "What would you do if you were me?" I asked Momma.

  "Here's what we're going to do," Momma said. "We're going to pull the old switcheroo. Auntie will sedate you and load you in a dry tube, and then we'll load another decoy stasis tube full of liquid oxygen on the boat. When the coast is clear we'll smuggle you out to one of the newly-cut veins where no one ever goes and set you up out there."

  "What if Parker checks the tube before it loads?" Auntie asked. "Or when his planetside contacts report the tube empty?"

  "I suppose you have a better idea!" Momma yelled, but in the next breath she apologized.

  I flicked the little chip of ore down the length of the table, its tinny sound echoing in the cavernous room. I watched it until it skittered off the edge halfway to Parker's empty chair.

  "I think I'd rather step out an airlock, finally see the sunshine for myself."

  "No," Pria said at the same time Momma said, "You'll see plenty of sunshine on Earth."

  "If I get there."

  "You will," Momma said.

  "You sound like Sheng Tian trying to tell me he's going to appeal to the Governors, contact the Company on my behalf," I said. "You don't know for sure that I'll make it."

  Momma took my hands in hers. "I know that you'll die for certain if you step out an airlock."

  "Maybe it won't be so bad. Finally, something in my life will be my choice. Something on my terms."

  "But the baby," Auntie Pria said, tears magnifying her dark eyes.

  I knew from reading about pregnancy on Momma's TechPad that I was supposed to feel attached to the tiny life growing inside of me — that little miracle that was half me and half Sheng Tian — but I was too scared of it to feel a hundredth of the love I felt for Momma. "I'm sorry, Auntie."

  We sat in silence. Momma picked at her nails. Pria sat utterly still. I turned my attention back to the little hole in the table.

  Momma eventually cleared her throat and said, "I'm coming with you." Then she called to the nearest guard and asked its masked face to get a message to the Commanding Officer.

  *****

  Momma, Auntie and I fought for three shifts over my decision, and Momma's, while Parker consulted the Governors about the implications of such a request. Eventually Parker agreed he had no standing to prevent our choice and even provided one last meal in deference to some stupid planetside tradition. I was too upset to eat even a spoonful of protein-enhanced soup so I begged of him another final request.

  In the end, a half-dozen space-suited guards and Auntie Pria in an emergency vacuum bubble escorted Momma and me to the receiving dock. It had the biggest airlock and there were currently no boats docked there. I watched the stars crawl toward a stop outside the door's large window — Parker had agreed to spin-down the Rock for ten minutes, even though it meant losing gravity for everyone inside. We all grabbed onto rails to keep from floating aimlessly around the bay.

  The immensity of what waited on the other side of the cargo door shook my resolve until I thought about being drowned, stuffed in a tube, and loaded onto a boat of ore. That had been Parker's justice. This would be mine.

  Sunlight flooded the cargo bay as I floated through a beam of intense, yellow light. I couldn't look away from its source, beauty beyond description. The skin on my arms and legs not covered by my tunic grew warm in the most pleasant way — reminding me of a hug, or a fluffy tomcat, or messing ar
ound in the laundry pod.

  I finally got a hint about sunshine and it steeled my resolve.

  One of the guards activated the airlock control. Vacuum warning lights and sirens flooded the bay as the air streamed out through vents surrounding the door.

  Our hair whipped in the wind as Momma clamped her arm around mine. Her hands shook where mine were still. "We'll do this together," she said.

  But it wasn't going to happen that way.

  I looked toward Auntie Pria — feet hooked under the rail, arms out to steady herself inside an inflated cocoon of rippling plastic — and she nodded that she was ready. Without any warning, I pushed Momma toward her at the same moment she unzipped the plastic shell and pulled Momma inside. Any other way it wouldn't have worked, but surprise and the lack of gravity kept Momma unbalanced as Auntie wrapped one arm around her and zipped the shell up. Momma fought her, but Auntie had promised me she would not let her go.

  "No!" Momma yelled as I floated toward the slowly opening door alone. "I'm coming with you."

  "Momma, you have to stay," I yelled above the wind.

  The air in the room grew thinner and I had to concentrate to draw one last deep breath from the air streaming past me, carrying me toward the airlock. My foot brushed the edge of the wall at the threshold and my body started to spin toward the light.

  I waved good-bye to Momma and Auntie and yearned for the sunlight.

  It took all the stretch I had to reach for the edge of sliding door as I neared it to stop my spin. I barely caught a fingertip, bending it and pulling tendons, but I held myself, facing toward the sunshine as I floated out beyond the boundaries of the Perseus Two, the only home I'd ever known.

  As the air around me dissipated, the cold rushed in — spears of ice stabbing me all over. My pulse thrummed in my ears, pressed against my skin, and bulged at my eyes until I could no longer keep them open. Squeezing them shut and pressing against them with my fingers, I fought to keep my last breath inside my body. I knew there wasn't enough time to even think all of the wonderful things I felt about the power of sunshine. Its warmth on my skin, the way that contrasted with the cold shadows pricking at my back, the way it called me forward to sleep in blissful peace, the way it made me feel whole in a way I'd never felt before.

  But, no, that was wrong. My sleepy, foggy brain fought that idea. I'd felt whole with Momma.

  Knowing it might not work, I curled-up and then tossed my arms out to the side, over and over, in an attempt to turn my back on the sun. The cold sapped my energy as vacuum pulled at my life. My lungs screamed for air and my arms grew incredibly weak, but I willed my brain to stay conscious for just a few moments as I slowly, slowly, slowly rotated. I felt the sun's warmth on my skin move from my front to my side to my back, and when I was sure I faced Perseus Two again I opened my throbbing eyes to see Momma one last time.

  My Momma, who was better than any sunshine.

  THE END

  About the Author

  Juliet Nordeen lives on the Kitsap Peninsula of Washington state with her husband and multi-species family. When Juliet is not writing she's training her German Shepherd pup in Schutzhund, designing quilts, and baking the best pizza west of the Rockies. You can check on news and story updates at www.JulietNordeen.com.

  A Sneak Preview of

  Blue Suede Darlin'

  By Juliet Nordeen

  CHAPTER ONE

  After feeling like I'd been riding a rollercoaster through an earthquake for two and a half days, the inky Gulf waters finally settled down around our little wooden lifeboat. The calmer swells rocked us with a down-beat of gentle rollers topped off by a 4/4 tempo of lapping wavelets. The breeze that chilled the clammy skin of my bare shoulders drove the thick storm clouds eastward and the stars did their best to twinkle through the oppressively humid September air.

  My four best friends slept, heads resting at awkward angles on each others' arms and torsos, trying to get comfortable in the little space the lifeboat allowed. I couldn't blame them. Since the rough seas calmed, I wished I could sleep, too.

  But it was my turn to watch.

  I scanned the horizon all around for the lights of fishing trawlers or the giant gouts of flame burning atop offshore drilling platforms. Between passes of the distant horizon I scanned the surface of the water closer to the boat, wary of fins. Occasionally I stretched out the kinks in my neck and glanced toward the stars, hoping to orient myself by a familiar constellation, but I couldn't find one.

  Mostly I watched the four people I loved most in the world sleep. Exhausted, pruney, rain-sodden, and getting awfully close to that place where all hope for rescue and seeing dry land ever again is lost.

  Even in their sleep, my bandmates kept a natural rhythm with each other. JoJo's un-lady-like, deep-throated snore set the bass line that Cooper's steady rhythm and Paulo's melodic snores riffed across, as if they were jamming on stage, rather than lost at sea. Maria — always the quiet one, unless she was pounding on the keys of her piano — held her snore-ful comments until the rare occasion when the other three fell silent, and then like Gracie Allen delivering the punch line to a perfectly-timed George Burns joke, she'd let out a snort from down deep in her gut and shift position.

  I might have laughed if I could find something the least bit funny about being lost and adrift somewhere in the western reaches of the Gulf of Mexico in a twelve-foot lifeboat without food and nearly out of rainwater.

  Then again, just smiling would've been bad for my dry, cracked, burning lips. What I wouldn't have given for a tube of cherry Chapstick to soothe them. I knew licking them each time they dried just made it worse, but I couldn't help myself.

  And a toothbrush, I'd have killed for three minutes with a toothbrush. My tongue felt like it had gone-in-halfsies with my teeth for a set of custom-fit fuzzy slipcovers. Not pleasant.

  But perhaps worst of all was the way the fabric of my favorite red polka-dot swing dress, stiff from soaking and drying and soaking and drying, chafed at my skin every time I moved. And it stunk — mildew, salt, too much time without a shower. I would have to throw it out if we ever got...home.

  Being adrift sucked in every way, but it was less frightening than being sucked into the water in a capsizing boat.

  Those ten minutes after a rogue wave had flipped-over our new record label's forty-foot yacht had been the most horrifying of my life. The three attempts it took Cooper to dive down and cut the lifeboat loose from the sinking behemoth had just about driven my heart out of my chest with panic. Three days of paddling the little boat with our hands, screaming out for help, and drinking rainwater squeezed from our clothes had forced me into a place of numbness where I stopped feeling much of anything.

  Except love. And fear. Love and fear were all I had left.

  I loved my bandmates; I called them my phamily — short for pseudo family. We'd been each others' rocks since I was fourteen years old, and I was scared to the depths of my soul that our final legacy on this planet would be a three paragraph article on the Austin Chronicle's news website with the headline: Hometown Rockabilly Band Lost at Sea. Billy's Asylum Rats — that up-and-coming, just-landed-a-recording-deal band of hep cats also known as me, JoJo, Cooper, Maria and Paulo — were as tight as friends and bandmates could be, and I hated this shitty situation and how helpless I was to do anything for them.

  Lifting my watchful eyes again to the stars, I picked out the brightest one I could find. "I don't know if there's anyone out there listening, but we could really use some help," I said quietly.

  "None of us is perfect," I told the sky. "We don't go to church or pay all of our taxes, and I think I might hold some record for time spent chasing carnal pleasure, but we rock hard, love deep and live big. That's got to count for something."

  Maria snorted in her sleep and wriggled to find a more comfortable position resting on Cooper's shoulder. Her adjustment cascaded around the lifeboat — hand bumping hip shifting shoulder turning head — but they soon settled,
each into a new, equally uncomfortable-looking position.

  I needed to cry so badly. For them. For myself. Agony gripped every sorrow-expressing portion of my body — shoulders wanted to shake, throat wanted to cry, belly wanted to bawl — but I simply didn't have any more tears left to shed. I knew that meant I had lost all hope of being rescued.

  "Please," I begged the sky. "Please, we're not done yet. I'll do anything to keep them safe."

  When the brightest star in the sky started falling toward the rolling waters of the Gulf, I thought it was an illusion brought on by the upward roll of the lifeboat and the darkness surrounding us. But when the boat nosed down into the next trough and the star continued to drift lower, I knew something amazing was happening. My heart raced into my throat like the kids charging the dance floor at the start of one of our shows when Cooper lays down the first lines of Blue Suede Shoes.

  Help was finally on the way. A rescue plane, or maybe better, a helicopter! I waved my arms, even though I knew they were too far away to see me.

  The light blazed brighter and whiter as it grew closer to our little boat. I was about to reach over and shake Maria's shoulder to wake her so we could watch together, when I realized that the aircraft, whatever it was, couldn't hold altitude and was hurtling straight at us. A morbid part of my brain wondered if it would clobber the lifeboat as it splashed down into the Gulf. We could trade starving to death for getting pulverized.

  The orb of light grew to about the size of a snare-drum skin held at arm's length and then silently, splashlessly, met the water and submerged into the black. I had a hard time guessing the distance between me and the point of impact in the darkness, but I saw the glow rise up under the surface of the water as it continued in our direction. In a few moments it closed the distance to the back of the lifeboat across which Paulo lay sleeping, and showed no signs of slowing. Acting on instinct I braced for an impact; one hand against the inside of the prow of the boat and the other clamped onto Maria's shoulder.