by Jack Robuck
In the distance, looking up past the hip bone of the wicker statue, Ella could see her own little doorway, and the concrete glowed blue too, but the unlit open square window was a black hole. Staring into it, she leaned forward, almost losing her balance before she snapped to. She gripped the bamboo umbrella stem with both hands and laid it back on her shoulder so she could see the world without getting too wet.
She turned right and went past the Silver Lady along the southern fork of the canyon, the opposite side from her room. The streets here turned into the busy section of Luna, the way was wider, and the rain poured in. She passed a couple walking arm in arm, and she was startled by a man leaning out from an awning thrusting something at her.
"Would you care for some dinner this evening, madam?"
She looked again; it was just a menu, he was just a barker in front of a restaurant. Ella shook her head shyly and stepped away, but she turned back and captured the moment in her mind: the man, looking on for the next customer, and beyond him, through the open window past delicate wooden shutters, a popular bar, where the well-off and the wannabes of the city mingled with Fleet officers and any other few who happened to be passing by. Ella wondered then whether she had always felt like she wasn't a normal person, or if she felt like she were the only one.
She continued on, turned right down a quieter street, past open doors to kitchens and tiled living rooms where the poor did their socializing, some playing cards, and some praying. A child beggar stopped his whimpering when she rolled her eyes and winked at him. He giggled and rattled his cup at her. She walked on.
She waited for a man on a bicycle to go by and crossed the lane between puddles. She let herself into a faded blue door with some sort of flowering plant embossed on it, went inside by the candle light to a foyer and up an iron spiral stair to the second floor. She knocked, set down her bag and umbrella, and leaned out of the open window, looking down at the street while she waited.
In a moment, a dark young man with a beard opened the door with a tin cup in one hand, and a short pipe in the other. He smiled when she stepped into the light.
"Ella!"
"Stephen."
"So good to see you, come in." Stephen led her inside. He wore suspenders over a white shirt, untucked in the front and back, and he had his sleeves rolled up. His home was one huge open room, and only a single brick wall was lit by a makeshift chandelier of hanging incandescent bulbs. On a short platform sat a velvet chair and a matching sofa with a skinny naked woman lying across it, apparently asleep.
Stephen laughed. "I'm not really painting right now. She's out cold, I'm afraid, and I'm a drink and a few bowls of piati down myself.” He looked at her, pale and wet, looking back at him.
“Actually, can you pose for me? I can draw, I think, will you sit just there?" He gestured with his cup toward the chair, and walked slowly over to an easel. He took off the canvas, and covered an art board with paper. He opened a paper case of pastels on the table near his easel, and fixed Ella with a piercing, red-eyed gaze, leaning, peering around the easel with the pipe in his mouth.
Ella stepped out of her robes and up to the platform, edging past the sleeping woman's dangling arm, and sat on the edge of the soft upholstered chair. She arched her back, leaned forward, and let her pendant dangle just off her ribcage. The power flickered, the chandelier blinked, the spiral filaments in its bare bulbs glowed down to orange, and Stephen looked like a madman leering in the darkness, but she wasn't afraid.
Truth be told, Ella enjoyed sitting to be drawn. She liked to feel the pause; to wait until the little muscles right above the twin dimples in her back began to ache, and her mind numbed out in a blur of the lights of the streets of Luna. The finger wave reflections in the puddles like windows to a world where everything and maybe everybody was different, if only you could get there somehow. If you could get there, you’d be wavy too, but you wouldn’t have to be yourself. Her pendant grew cold where it barely brushed her skin.
"Ella. Ella!"
Ella snapped back into focus.
Stephen took the pipe from his mouth. "You're leaning, dear."
"I'm sorry, I went away for a moment."
"It’s alright, I'm done."
Stephen picked up the board, turning it slightly left and right in the amber haze of pipe smoke, nodding to himself and muttering affirmatives.
Ella slipped down and walked toward him, she loved being naked; she stretched out her arms and tingled at the feel of the soft skin of her thighs slipping past each other.
Stephen turned the board to her, and she smiled. On a turquoise base, an elegant collection of curves. Dark ones outlining the chair, and bold purple and white strokes made her look exquisite, the hourglass torso, the twin ivory globes of her breasts, and the shapely legs down to her dainty feet.
"You've made me look like one of the sirens of the Salt People." She stopped. He had captured the careful dome of her head, the fawn outline of her short hair, but the eyes were dark trapezoidal blurs.
"Not drawing eyes, tonight, Stephen?"
He smiled, kicked at the easel until it turned toward the light of the room, and set the drawing down. "That's the chandelier for you. Not very good light for deep, beautiful eye sockets, I'm afraid."
Ella looked at the drawing again. It was a good drawing, but there was nothing of her in it. She swallowed, and looked up at Stephen, smiling. "Well, maybe you can try again. Maybe if I stand here, like this?"
She twirled into the center of the space, bending her knees, and tilting her chin back and up into the light, her lashes wide black frames around her sparkling eyes.
Stephen pulled his mouth up into a tight-lipped smile. "Maybe another time." He took a leather pouch from off his work table, and began to pack his pipe again.
Ella felt a thick heaviness in her chest, as if there were a room there, and someone were quickly filling it up with water. She blinked through confused tears. After a moment, she said, "Sorry, I'm not sure what's the matter with me tonight."
She wiped her eyes, and walked over to her clothes on the floor. "Anyway, there won't be another time, Stephen, because I'm leaving tomorrow. I've decided to go to the ocean, you see, and I won't be around anymore."
Stephen raised his eyebrows, but said nothing.
"I'm going to take the Fleet transport out to Gate City, and walk from there. They say it’s a day or so."
Stephen tossed his pouch down on the table, pulled out a small matchbox, and shook his head. "No, you aren't."
Ella stood with her feet crossed, her clothes in a bundle over her chest. She turned as quickly as if he had slapped her.
"The transport is shut down. Maybe for good, they say. There's something up, my little Nora told me this morning." Stephen gestured to the sleeping woman. "She's the wife of a Fleet officer, a Captain, I think. Anyhow, there won't be any more paint, unless I go out and grind up some fucking glowing lichen off the wall of this aquarium, and there won't be any more booze. There won't be any more marketplace, the whole place will probably close down, and you, darling, are definitely not going to the ocean."
Ella stood, frozen, her chin lowered, looking at him through dark wet lashes. A long moment of silence passed, and the chandelier flickered again.
"Well, what do you expect, Ella, you're just a whore. And I'm an artist. Which one is worse? They don't give a damn about what we need. Someone should do something. Fight them again." Stephen licked his lips, lit his pipe, and drew in a long pull. "You want to work?"
Ella shook her head slowly. "No, I think I don't feel like it just now."
Stephen smirked, setting down his pipe. "Just a quick one. Nothing intricate."
He blew his smoke out up toward the chandelier, and for a moment the bulbs looked to Ella like a city in the clouds. He walked over, putting a hand on each of her freckled shoulders.
Ella slowly backed away, toward the platform, and sat down on the edge. She leaned her head back against the chipped gold trim of the sof
a, and pulled her pink toes up to the edge of the platform.
Stephen smiled, as he followed her, shrugging off his suspenders. "That's a good girl."
Ella hooked her chin over his shoulder, and looked at the painting with the dark eyes. It stared back at her from the easel like a shuttered store's naked mannequin.
Later they smoked, sitting on the tasseled cushions tossed around the edges of the room, and Ella let the piati blow away the cold panic she felt knowing that all her plans had come to nothing.
Chapter 6
They emptied the cargo ship for three days. Matthew worked, keeping his head down. It took a force of will to open his fingers and pass on the items to the next person in line. Every jacket, every bowl felt like his real life and the rest of the world, a desaturated nightmare.
By the fourth day, Matthew was in a stupor. He tried to snap out of it. He tried talking to Ashley, the mousey young woman who led their work team, but she was either too afraid to keep the conversation going, or too wrung out to have anything left inside.
Sunset after sunset after sunset, the time swirled, the orange and amber strobed, the shadows grew and shortened. In the distance near the wall, Matthew watched an Asian woman with long purple dreadlocks. He realized he'd been watching her all day, and when he saw her slip something small into her jacket pocket, he realized why. He put down a shrink-wrapped bin of medical supplies and squinted at her. She had a somber look about her, and a sort of disjointed grace that was both off-putting and provocative.
He picked up the bin and carried it to a cart nearer to the pile where she stood bent over, picking through clothes. Over the next few minutes, he worked his way around to her pile, sorting goods and adding them to the cart, then coming back a bit closer. When he was close enough, he said in a low voice while pretending to gather some pictures and papers in a pile. “You finding anything good in here?”
The woman glanced at him briefly, then stared back down at her work. “Mind your own business.”
Matthew’s face pulled back into a small, tired smile. “Just that I saw you take a few things, and we’re not supposed to do that, so I was wondering if you found anything worth the risk.”
The woman worked on in silence, and Matthew decided to press his luck. “Anything that might get us out of here? I’m Matthew, I’m here with a group.”
The woman snapped through gritted teeth. “And I don’t give a fuck, Matthew. You’re going to get us a beat-down if the guards see us talking.”
“Shh, relax. I see you’re not dead behind the eyes like all of these people. It's nice to know we’re not the only ones still kicking in here.” He rose, carried a pile of papers to the cart, and returned to his spot next to Ashley.
The next day, Matthew was stripping broken terminals of wire and fiber optic when he felt a presence behind him. The Asian woman was sitting on the crate with him, her back turned, working. When a nearby Trooper paced out of sight, he heard her voice come quietly over her shoulder. “I’m Natalie.”
Matthew didn’t look up. “Matthew, like I said.”
Natalie’s voice was crisp, but apologetic. “I know. I’m sorry about yesterday. This place makes me want to kill someone. Everyone.”
Matthew smirked. “Yeah. No problem.”
“How many in your group?”
“Five of us.”
“All fighters?”
Matthew’s eyebrows shot up. “Yeah, you planning an escape?”
Natalie shook her head slowly. “You don’t know where you are. The nearest town is six hundred miles east of here through nothing but scorching desert. That’s where I was captured. There’s no way out of here. Tell your group to keep their heads down, and don’t cause trouble.”
Without another word, Natalie stood up, walked over to a rubbish bin, tossed in the shattered view-screen she had been picking at, and walked away.
In the shack that evening, Matthew told the others about Natalie. Rachel drew in a breath and began to nod. “Well, that’s good to know. We can’t just walk out of here, or cruise out on a couple of iguanas. We’ve got no supplies, and unfortunately, we’re in pretty rough shape.”
Jimmy had found a broken handheld computer in the wreckage, and was trying to pry the back cover off to investigate its problem. He murmured under his breath, “Speak for yourself, lady.”
Rachel ignored him and went on. “That means that we’ll be leaving the Commandant’s hospitality by air transport of some kind. It won’t be easy. There will be some level of confrontation. But this place must get supply drops coming in, and that’s our best bet. Until we can figure out how that’s going down, Natalie’s right. Everyone just keep your head to the dirt, and don’t piss them off.”
*
The next morning, on their way to work, the Troopers stopped the entire group in the courtyard under the skyway. They could see blue and the clouds reflected on the long glass panes. The skyway hung between two broad distilling warehouses, twelve stories tall.
They stood in silence before a concrete loading dock in front of one of the buildings. The sun was mid-dip. Orange slanting rays cut sideways across the jagged wall and through the buildings, and for once it was breezy. The steel and concrete around them cast long, cool-colored shadows across the ground. Matthew crossed his arms, wondering what they were waiting for.
Glazier rubbed the stubble on his face. “Tell you what, Matt. I’d kill for a cup of coffee.”
Matthew smiled, perplexed at Glazier’s change of character. Gusset rubbed his belly, standing among the crowd with his eyes closed, still waking up. Rachel looked distracted.
Matthew touched her on the shoulder. “What are you thinking?”
She gave him a tight-lipped smile. “Actually, I’m wondering if your new friend blew our cover. You better hope I’m wrong.”
A steel roll-up door in the structure on the left opened, and Trague walked out next to a tall, thin young man in a tight black jacket with the same white circle patch. They were smoking cigarettes. The thin man had long black hair, oil coiffed. He handed Trague a cigarette lighter, and Trague slipped it into his cigarette package, and pocketed it. Two baton-wielding troopers came out and flanked the door. Trague walked out toward them; his companion followed a few steps behind.
One hand on the railing, Trague waved his cigarette at them, leaving an arc of smoke to drift through the air. “Good morning, filth. I’d like to congratulate you all on the excellent work you’ve been doing with the wreckage from the ship crash. The investigation at that site will go a long way toward bringing civilization to this cesspool of a planet. The Admiral seems to believe that you disgusting little monkeys will make excellent citizens in time. For my part, I am yet to be convinced.
If he’s right, however, there is a lot to accomplish. We must clean you up, we must build a proper infrastructure across this fucking desert, but more importantly than anything else…” Trague pulled a short black pistol from a belt holster and raised it in the air. “We have got to get rid of the bad apples.” Trague laughed, and a quiet whimper went up from the crowd.
“Listen to you all, mewling like newborn mice. Not to worry, not to worry. This is not for you. No, no. This is not for you. The person this is for doesn’t whimper when a gun is pointed at her, do you?”
Trague lowered his pistol directly at Rachel. A dozen Troopers stepped from behind the nearby buildings, surrounding the crowd.
“You see, I knew… I told you, I could tell there was something special about you the moment I met you.” Trague took a long pull from his cigarette, and flicked it at the crowd. He blew out the smoke as he walked down the short staircase to the ground.
Matthew could feel his group tense up. Jimmy shuffled closer to Rachel.
Trague went on, as he and the troopers pushed through the crowd. “When suddenly my friend Faber here shows me a report that came across his terminal. ‘Small rebel enclave may have escaped after Waverly destruction; apprehend at all costs.’ And I knew, when I saw t
he pictures, that I had seen that lovely face before.” Trague came to a stop right in front of Rachel, and pointed his gun at her chest.
Matthew saw Rachel’s chin raise in expectant defiance. Trague smirked, and the Troopers closed into a circle around them. “I know. The last time I saw you, I could tell that you didn’t care for me. That you wished you had been able to move.” He laughed. “I failed you then. I failed to demonstrate to you that whether or not you can move is irrelevant.”
He reached up with his free hand in the direction of Rachel’s face. “Because you belong to me. Everything, in this place, belongs to me.”
In a blur, Rachel smacked Trague’s hand away from her face. With her left she grabbed the wrist of his gun arm. Trague took a short step forward and head butted her in the face, and she crumpled to the ground. Jimmy rushed Trague, bear-hugging him around the waist. Trague grabbed back, kneeing Jimmy in the throat, and slammed the butt of his pistol down hard against his temple.
As Jimmy went down, Matthew stepped forward. Trague, still bent over Jimmy, twisted and released a shocking kick to Matthew’s chest. Matthew felt the hard edged boot compress into his torso, and he flew back onto the ground. He could barely lift his head to watch two troopers dragging Rachel away.
Gusset and Glazier both were receiving a second beating with the plasma shock batons. Trague gave the unconscious Jimmy a hard kick in the gut, and followed the Troopers who carried Rachel up the concrete steps. Trague and Faber exchanged a word, and the entire group went back inside. Matthew’s last glimpse of Rachel was her hair brushing the platform as her body was dragged away.
The grey people were frightened off in a herd toward the junk yard. Matthew and his friends were left to pick themselves up, but a single Trooper loitered nearby, interrogating a boy pushing a wheelbarrow, but keeping one eye on them as well. Matthew was able to wake Jimmy, but he couldn’t sit up. Glazier and Gusset slowly rolled to their feet.
