Crescent

by Phil Rossi

  “Hey,” Gerald said in an attempt to get the attention of the opposite cell’s occupant. A fat man in a stained shirt—it had to be blood—and torn khaki pants lay on his side on the cell’s metal cot. The bed was far too narrow for the man’s substantial girth. He didn’t respond, so Gerald called him again.

  “Shut the fuck up!” someone shouted from down the row.

  “Mister,” Gerald called, a little softer this time.

  “Please. Leave me alone,” the fat man said. “I just want to sleep and forget that anything happened. They promised me they’d let me go tomorrow if I kept my mouth shut. I just want to get home to my family. I just want to make sure everyone is okay.”

  Gerald leaned against the bars and remained silent. He looked down at his bare feet. Suddenly, the floor didn’t seem so cold. Or rather, Gerald just didn’t care anymore. He felt bad for the guy. The sound of defeat was thick in his voice. But, Gerald couldn’t keep his curiosity at bay any longer.

  “Look. I’m not trying to be insensitive. I can tell you’ve had it rough. I’ve been in here all night. Do you think you could tell me what happened out there?” Gerald asked.

  “What’s your name?” the fat man said, but didn’t change positions.

  “Gerald.”

  “Gerald. I’m Bob Parks.”

  “Nice to meet you, Mr. Parks.”

  “Gerald. Do you have a family?” Bob asked.

  Gerald thought of Liam then. He tried to picture his older brother in the same situation, and could not.

  “Not really, no,” Gerald answered.

  “Consider yourself lucky. Something really bad is going on around here. No one is safe anymore,” Bob said.

  Gerald didn’t have the stomach for anything cryptic. He grimaced, but bit his tongue before he could lash out at his neighbor. The pilot took a deep, measured breath before he spoke.

  “Bob. Mr. Parks. With all due respect, please don’t get all preachy-creepy on me, here. I’ve got people that I care about on this station too, and I want to make sure they’re okay. So, please. Cut to it. What the fuck happened out there?”

  Silence grew between them. Gerald had all but given up on Bob Parks when the man finally started speaking.

  “There was a fight in Heathen’s. Turned into a brawl. Turned into a riot. And then… it happened.”

  “What happened, Bob?” Gerald insisted.

  “I… I don’t know. Horrible colors… a lot of blood and a lot of screaming. I hit the floor and started crawling. I remembered something I had learned once, in an emergency, you should crawl to safety,” Bob said.

  “That’s if there’s a fire, Bob.”

  “Right. Yeah. Okay. I’m lucky I didn’t get trampled. But people… ” Bob’s voice trembled with a sob. “They were getting torn apart in there.”

  “It’s okay, Bob. I think I’ve heard enough.” Gerald sat down on the cold slab of a bed. He propped his chin on his hand. He was sure Bob was exaggerating a little bit, but judging by the man’s appearance and the quaver in his voice, Bob wasn’t exaggerating by much. No doubt Nigel was having a field day. Gerald looked at his toes and wiggled them. He told himself the riot had nothing to do with all the other weird shit that had been happening. The wrong combination of people in the wrong place at the wrong time, that was all. But that wasn’t all, and he knew it.

  A prisoner several cells down started muttering. The piss off guy yelled at him to shut the fuck up and he went silent. Gerald stretched out on his cot and yawned. Now that the alarm was silent maybe he’d get some sleep. The muttering started again. The pissed off guy was screaming for quiet again.

  Maybe he wouldn’t get any sleep after all, but he was damned if he wasn’t going to try. What the hell else was he going to do?

  (•••)

  “Dad?” Ina stepped into the apartment and the door whispered shut behind her. The unmistakable thundering bass lines and enthusiastic “Uh huhs” of Charles Mingus’s Old Earth Jazz drifted from the back of the three bedroom flat. Dimmed halo-globes rendered the lines and contours of the living room furniture soft. Ina pulled off her shoes. The white soles of her sneakers were caked with dried blood. She tossed them aside. Exhaustion came over her in waves. The thick carpet pushed between her toes as she walked. If she stepped hard enough, maybe she could sink into the material and melt away. At that moment, that was what she needed—all she needed.

  She found her father sitting up in bed. Donovan’s features were still ashen, but there were two rosy circles of color on his cheeks. He had a plastic tray folded out over his blanket-covered legs, holding a steaming bowl of soup and a portable terminal. He studied the terminal screen and adjusted his glasses. The frames had become slightly bent and refused to sit straight.

  “Hi dear,” he said, and smiled, but did not look up at her.

  Ina echoed the smile. Her already fragile mind had been stretched to the breaking point, and while the term of endearment from her father made the tension scale back some, she still trembled in the aftermath of the violence she had witnessed. The small taste of affection had her suddenly starving for more. The realization of it—of just how unloved she had been feeling lately—made her want to cry. She placed a hand on her stomach and wondered if it was hormones making her feel that way. Hormones, and exhaustion.

  “Feeling better, Dad?” Ina asked, forcing the wave of emotions back.

  “I’m feeling much better. It’s amazing, really. I feel more myself than I have in days.” Donovan took a big swallow of soup. Ina wondered if the riot had been the space station’s way of feeding—the underlying form of life gathering strength for its final push to freedom. That the force was getting stronger could not be denied. Crescent was unstable and changing, and with each catastrophe—the floods on L Deck, and now the riots—the Three needed Ina and Marisa less to exhibit its presence. Maybe it was almost done with them.

  “Something happened tonight, Dad.”

  “What something?” Donovan asked.

  “Did you watch the news at all?”

  “No. I did not,” Donovan returned his focus to the terminal. “There’s been nothing but bad news lately. Murders. Abductions. Fighting in the colonies… All hard to stomach when you’re not feeling well. Do you want to know what Murhaté means?”

  “There was a brawl at Heathen’s and I was there to see it. It got out of control fast. The fighting spread out to Main Street. There was a riot,” Ina said.

  “Are you okay?” He asked and finally looked up at her. He didn’t react to the blood stains on her clothing and Ina was taken aback. She had to gather herself before she started speaking again.

  “Yes. I’m fine,” she said at last and then added, “A lot of people are not.”

  He smiled then, and she wasn’t sure if he was smiling at her reassurance or at the fact that a lot of people were hurt. Either way, his response to the news that his daughter had been caught in the middle of murder and violence was lacking. Ina wondered much of her father was present behind that familiar face. She couldn’t see the purple light swimming in his eyes like she had before, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. She knew it was.

  “I’m glad you’re okay, Ina. It’s not safe out there,” Donovan said, though his words carried like an after thought. There were several seconds of quiet as Donovan returned his eyes to his terminal screen.

  “Do you want to talk about what I told you yesterday?” she asked, breaking the silence with the sudden impulse to get an emotional response out of him.

  “About…” he hesitated and looked up at her. His eyes flitted to her belly before returning to the terminal’s display. “No.”

  Ina was disappointed, and a little relieved. She was physically and mentally unable to have a discussion about the tiny life growing inside of her. She was quick to change the subject.

  “What are you doing, Dad?” She sat at the foot of the bed.

  “A bit of research on the Anrar III mining colony. Formerly dubbed
Outpost 13—the residents renamed it Outpost Murhaté.”

  “Oh.” She glanced at the open bedroom door.

  “As far as I can tell, Murhaté is the name of the final home. According to one line I read in some fragmented correspondence between miners,” Donovan read directly from the terminal screen, “There can be many vessels, but Murhaté is the omega.”

  Ina nodded and studied his face. Vessel, she thought. Another conversation she didn’t want to have. She kissed her father on the forehead and left him there.

  Ina took a long, hot shower, wary that at any moment the water pressure would drop or the temperature would flare too hot or cold. She couldn’t remember the last uninterrupted shower she had taken. Nothing was constant on Crescent anymore. But water pressure and temperature remained steady for the duration, and she was thankful.

  After, Ina padded barefoot across her bedroom floor, slipping out her robe as she went. Naked, she crawled beneath the bedsheets. The light panes on the walls, fashioned to look like frosted windows, began to blanch with daylight. Was it really only morning? Nausea fluttered in her belly.

  The fingertips of one hand trailed down between her breasts, across her flat stomach, and found the tender spot between her legs. She closed her eyes and applied the slightest bit of pressure. Ina wasn’t in the mood, but the slow crimson that pulsed behind her eyes was insistent. The Red had surfaced just enough to urge her on. It allowed her to do the driving, but would not let her stop until she climaxed. When Ina came, the Red slinked back into murky depths of her subconscious, taking the nausea away with it.

  She tried to sleep. She begged for sleep, but no matter how Ina tossed and turned, sleep would not come.

  Finally giving up on rest, she climbed out of bed and began to dress. The window panels glowed a warm orange. Sunrise, she mused. Once she was clothed, she crept into her father’s room. He was sound asleep. The tray was still on his lap, although it was now balanced at a precarious angle that threatened to spill both the terminal and the cold bowl of soup onto the duvet. She removed the tray delicately, careful not to wake him. Ina drew the shades down, obscuring the wall panels completely, and then clicked off the bedside lamp, setting the room to darkness fit for sleeping. She kissed her father’s forehead. It was cool. His fever was finally gone.

  The bazaar was quiet. Everyone Ina passed looked deeply weary. Even the children moved in listless packs. Ina looked up at sun globes that shone a fierce orange. She should have felt warmth on her face, but it was as cool as it had been for days. Her gaze dropped from the globes to a group of five or six men and women dressed in matching black tee shirts, cargo pants, and boots. Ina knew who they were: the Aphotic.

  Ina thought she recognized the owner of Heathen’s in their midst.

  She turned down an alley to avoid them, glancing behind her several times as she went to be sure she wasn’t followed. She continued on, and soon the air became heavy with the scents of cooking. Grease and spices—the odor made her mouth water and her stomach growl. She let her nose lead the way to a dwelling that seemed to have grown out of a tarnished and charcoal stained back alley wall. The bulkhead was opened wide. Ina stepped over the threshold without even thinking.

  “Hello, young lady.” The voice was like sandpaper. An old woman stood at the stove and monitored the steaming contents of a big, metal pot.

  “I’m so very hungry and whatever you’re cooking smells delicious. You must share it with me,” Ina said, a bit shocked by her own brazenness.

  “If you like cat, then by all means,” the old woman cooed.

  Ina took a step back and placed a hand over her mouth. The crone cackled. She turned then, showing a face that was older than the void itself. The old woman’s wrinkles were set so deep that they appeared to go right through her head. Her mouth was an ‘o’ of laughter, showing a few rotting stubs of teeth.

  “I’m only kiddin’ dearest. No cats. Pork. Not fresh. They’re not sellin’ fresh pork this week. Apparently, the livestock down at the Farm is getting sick. And I ain’t surprised. They gonna be dead soon, the whole lot of’m.”

  Though Ina was relieved the pot’s contents were not feline, she was so hungry she might have considered eating cat all the same. She glanced about at the antiques that filled the home. Trinkets spilled out of crates and were stacked on just about every surface, save for an old table with a big and rusted metal base. She reached into a nearby crate and retrieved a replica of a pointy looking spaceship—wiping away some of the dust that covered it revealed the word ‘Viper’. Ina tossed the Viper back in the crate. In another box she spied an old fashioned holo-projector and something called an 8-track cassette player. A fortune lay in the small space.

  “Don’t mind all that junk. Jus’ things I’ve picked up along the way. I don’t have the heart to get rid of’m. Now, sit my dear. It’s almost done.” The old woman gestured to the table. “My name is Naheela.”

  “I know who you are,” Ina said.

  “And I know you are Ina,” Naheela paused, “of the Red.” The crone looked back over her shoulder at the girl, and winked one cataract-milky eye.

  Ina sat and contemplated the title. Ina of the Red, she thought, and chuckled. Makes me sound like a Viking. Naheela filled a plastic bowl to overflowing with thick, brown stew. Some of the liquid splashed out as she set the bowl down on the table in front of Ina, but Naheela didn’t seem to mind. Judging from old stains on the table and floor, spills probably happened often in this home and were just as often ignored.

  “Eat while it’s hot. It’s best while it’s hot,” Naheela said.

  Ina believed her without question and took the spoon that stuck out of the steaming broth. She began to suck the stuff down. It was delicious. A plethora of spices, only a handful that she could identify, made her mouth sing. Ina looked up and smiled as she chewed. A trickle of stew ran out of the corner of her mouth when she grinned, but she didn’t care. She returned her attention to the bowl, and it was soon half empty. She continued to eat.

  “I know you didn’t come here for stew. But you wouldn’t have even spared my humble home a glance if you hadn’t smelled the spices. And aren’t you a lucky lil’ thing that I happened to be making it.”

  Ina nodded. She wished she had a piece of bread. She was already foreseeing the need to clean the bowl entirely. Would it be out of line to lick it? She glanced around the disheveled living area. It probably wouldn’t matter if Ina licked the bowl; she certainly questioned the receptacle’s cleanliness, but she found she didn’t care. What bliss! Ina thought. Not to care about anything.

  “You want to know, eh? Old Naheela, she knows the way of things. She always does and always has,” Naheela said. She sounded sad. “The life that stirs here. You call it the other. Some call it the Three. I call it the clusterfuck of the universe.” Naheela laughed; there was no humor in the sound. “You’re not the first to be touched.” The crone shook her head and clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. Stray strands of greasy gray hair fell across her ruddy cheeks. “It’s been right here a long time, Ina. Longer than this station. Longer than that planet out there and longer than that star. So, the knowing of one little girl doesn’t really amount to that much in the grand scheme of things. But yes, it’s been here all along.”

  “Right here?” Ina asked and looked around. Her head became foggier with each spoonful she took, but she couldn’t stop eating.

  “Not right here, ya fool. Just on the other side of the glass.”

  “The other side of the glass,” Ina said.

  “You think this is all there is?” Naheela spread her hands out. “The void and crap that fills it?”

  “No. I know what you’re saying,” Ina set the spoon down as she spoke. “There could be an infinite number of dimensions in our universe. Parallel universes, even. I took more than one quantum philosophy class in my time.”

  “Blah blah blah. Can your smart-talk, girlie. It only makes ye sound daft. There ain’t nothin’ parall
el about it.” Naheela reached into the pocket at the front of her ratty dress and revealed two scraps of paper: one brown and one white. She held them up. “Ye see? Ye see these pieces of paper?”

  Ina nodded.

  Naheela crumpled them together and tossed them on the table. She smiled a satisfied grin. “Lookit that for a bit. Really look at it. So you understand what you’re lookin’ at.” Naheela got up from the table; her joints popped as she moved. The old woman shuffled away and soon Ina heard her rummaging through some mess or another. Ina eyed the crumpled ball of brown and white paper. Two separate pieces of paper. One ball of crumpled paper. The folds and creases overlapped in places. She poked at it with a fingertip and wished she had more stew. Naheela returned and watched her for a moment before speaking.

  “You’ll get more stew in good time.” Naheela shuffled away again. When she came back with no stew, Ina was deeply disappointed. The crone tossed a shard of deep red stone onto the table, so dark it was almost black. Sanguinite. The muted light reflected in a trail along the curve of the polished piece. The stone had been carved into a dagger—a beetle-shaped dagger. Ina felt her senses clear at the sight of the object.

  “Ye know what that is?”

  “Sanguinite. Yes. We found some… ”

  “On the planet. Three-quarters of that rock is full of the shit. Maybe the whole planet is made of it,” Naheela said. She was slurping on something now. Ina smelled menthol. “Did ye study that piece of garbage?”

  “Yes. I understand what you are trying to explain to me.”

  “If ye understan’ so well, then tell me.”

  “You’re saying the universe—existence, maybe—is different dimensions all crumpled up on top of one another. No uniformity, no pattern.”

  “Existence. Very good. You’re smarter than you look, then,” Naheela beamed. “I’m old, girl. Older than you think. I ain’t wastin’ my breath to tell you something you’ve figured out on yer own. This is the way of things. Do you believe it?”