by F P Adriani
The guy I’d lunged for eyed me warily, then lowered his head and sneered, “My family’s gotta eat.”
“You fucking moron,” I said. “What does everyone else here live on—air? What the hell do you think they’re doing here?”
I balled my hands into fists.
The fourth guard shook his head at me as a warning, then his head jerked to the left. “A witness over there said Nell did good. These two were picking on the miners for not striking. Nell got it under control, but then right before the rest of us showed up, that one jabbed her in the side with a pole.”
“You hear that, Nell?” I asked her, turning around and walking back to her. “You did good.”
Just then, I saw one of the miners rushing in our direction; his hands held a water container.
*
“Your spleen’s bruised,” one of The Complex doctors said to Nell several hours later as I stood by Nell’s bed. “You’ve got to remain here under observation for a few days. There might be more extensive internal bleeding, but I don’t see evidence of this yet. Sometimes a newly introduced weakness may be present that doesn’t completely fail till later on.”
“Great,” Nell said.
“You should be almost back to normal within a few weeks, but I wouldn’t recommend working before then.”
“Great,” Nell repeated under her breath more, her face looking very upset. I could tell tears were near.
The doctor walked away and I said to Nell, “At least you’ll be safer here!”
“Like you’ve said, other people are relying on me….”
“Don’t you worry about us; just worry about yourself right now.”
“What happened at the mine—who were they?”
“You know the way it is here. The same-old, same-old,” I said, though I began wondering if maybe that was an assumption everyone made that no one should have ever made.
This particular guy had struck Nell in front of others; this hadn’t been done in secret, it hadn’t been hidden.
There was so much sabotage and violence going on here in general, and some episodes appeared less organized, some seemed more organized. People usually looked for magic-bullet easy single solutions and magic-bullet easy single causes. But some situations had multiple causes.
I said all this to Tan; after I left Nell, I went to his office.
And at my words then, he looked at me and said, “It’s funny you should say that—the guy’s insisting he’s got nothing to do with the usual sabotage. He just wants to see this all fail.”
“Why?”
Tan shrugged and said, “You got me,” and, strangely, at that moment I wish I did have him.
But my shift was calling again, so I left his office and went back to work.
*
Nell gradually got better and the day before she left The Complex’s hospital and went to stay with her family, she said to me that she didn’t want to come back to work here. I certainly understood that, yet I would miss her if she never came back, no matter that she hadn’t been entirely honest. I hadn’t either.
I now hated how complicated everything had gotten here on Diamond. Or maybe it had always been very complicated? Maybe starting and then sustaining a new planet from the ground-up would always be a problematic endeavor? Could that be a big reason why I never wanted to come back to Diamond? Not just because of what I’d lost, but also because of what I felt I’d never gain? Nothing ever seemed enough here. As much as some people tried to move forward, something kept pulling the planet backward, as if humans could only ever live the same damn way no matter where they resided. Humans were always humans, causing the same damn insolvable problems.
*
Three days before The Festival, I had to work a morning shift starting at six o’clock. No mine workers would be in until nine. But a few of us guards had to pull this extra early duty. And I had paperwork to do then too.
After what had happened to Nell, and with record-breaking heat expected today, I wasn’t looking forward to this shift. So to help me cope, I brought a thermos of ice-cold pineapple juice, pressed from Diamond-grown pineapples. It was richer than the juice from Earth and oh-so-heavenly. The only good thing about ultimately slipping into the dreary hot mine: I could imbibe the juice.
Two of us would be working around the same area: me and John. When I finally got to that area and stepped inside, John was there; he held a file folder in one hand and a sweaty thermos of something in another hand.
Yawning into his thermos, he stood near one of the brighter wall lights; he took a gulp of his liquid, then looked at me and said, “It’s too fucking early for this.”
“Too right,” I replied, laying down my juice onto a wall shelf.
“I’ll take B Route today. Keep in touch,” he said, and then he slipped around the corner and out of sight.
I often found working under the yellowy mine lights hard on my eyes, but I started on the paperwork for the day anyway. And I had just picked up my juice and taken two delightful long chugs when my right eye noticed one of the wall-drilling sensors blinking.
It couldn’t be John—no way for him to get to the sensor’s section on my side unless he’d come back around the corner. And I seriously doubted he’d developed a sudden urge to start drilling into a wall.
I laid my juice back onto the shelf—then stood and listened. I could hear a very faint uneven banging.
Oh no. Not fucking again.
My pulse picked up speed; my hand on my stun stick now, I shot down the corridor, slowing when I turned each corner, sliding closer to the wall then.
After several minutes of these slowing-downs and speeding-ups, finally, in the distance, I saw a man by one of the walls; he was making a wedge inside it with something—a pipe. Thin and very young, he didn’t look like one of the mine workers, nor was he dressed in their usual uniform. As far as I could tell, he didn’t have a weapon on him and he was alone.
I pulled out my stick and yelled, “Put down that pipe and remain still with your hands up!”
The guy dropped the pipe and something else he’d been holding; then he shot farther into the mine.
“Shit!” I said, breaking into a run after him. I kept yelling, “Stop!” but he only kept running.
He was superfast, and he soon reached an elevator. I saw him stop and pick up something from the ground, and then shoot into the elevator car. But I slammed myself between the metal doors before they could fully close.
He was crouched and ready for me, and as the elevator started descending, I saw what he now held: a thick heavy chain. His hands lifted it, and I held out my stick and shouted, “Put it down, kid!” And he was a kid; he couldn’t have been more than a teenager, a dirty teenager with greasy hair and too-skinny arms.
We were headed down to the place I dreaded; I had to get this done before then—
—he swung the chain at me and only barely missed me. I could feel the air rush near my neck. I jumped back and forth from one foot to another, but I couldn’t get the stick near enough to him; I had to keep the stick away from the chain, the chain might damage it then—
—the chain came my way and I jumped back, my ass slamming against the wall behind me, my front unable to fully avoid a blow this time: I felt part of the chain slide over my left shoulder, felt the dagger of pain there. I winced and we both jerked to the right a bit as the elevator shifted.
“Stop already, kid!” I shouted, my right hand on my gun now. “I’ve got a gun and I can end this in two seconds. Don’t make me pull it!”
“Fuck you, bitch!” he shouted back.
And the misogynist bitch word did it, both for him and for me: he got too cocky, so then sloppy. He slowed down, and I was so enraged that I yanked up my stick and slammed the side into his neck. He jerked away from the stick, the chain falling out of his hand. Then I jabbed the stick’s point into his gut, and his whole body collapsed on top of the chain.
The elevator rushed to a stop. I felt my head and stomach swimming badly
now as I stood over his body, but I managed to pull off my handcuffs, slide him over to his belly, and finally cuff his hands behind his back.
As I was straightening up, something red sticking out of his pant pocket caught my eye.
My fingers slid down, pulled out the bizarre coiled red stem and pointy purple flower. Bringing it to my nose, I took a sniff, smelled the unmistakable combination of garlic and pine. I recognized the plant; it was rare, grew in only one place on Diamond. A place I knew well because I’d been born nearby.
I shoved the plant into my jacket pocket, then reached around and hit the elevator alarm.
*
It turned out he’d intended to plant a bomb. The creep had dropped it and I had unknowingly charged past it.
“Goddamn it. He could have killed me,” I said to the hot air.
It was almost an hour later, I was back upstairs, and a bunch of people—including Tan—now filled the area I’d been patrolling. I was sitting on the ground, and a doctor had slipped off part of my shirt-jacket to examine me.
“Well, this looks nasty,” she said, sighing as she applied an anti-inflammation gel. “But, I don’t think anything’s broken. You’ll need X-rays and then rest for a few days.”
“How? Festival’s coming up.”
“Rest till then,” she said, fixing me with a hard, don’t-argue look.
Tan walked up to us then. “Doctor Simms is right. If you can’t make it then, Pia, we’ll do without you.”
“No, I don’t want to let anyone down. I’ll be all right. I heal fast.”
“You did great today,” Tan said, and he was looking down at me with pride…and something else.
Doctor Simms straightened up, pointed at my shoulder and said to Tan, “I’ll need to examine that back at the clinic.”
“In a little while she’ll be there,” Tan said in a firm voice.
And the doctor half-frowned as she walked away.
Tan turned back to me, looked down at my shirt, at where my thin undershirt was exposed. I yanked up my outer shirt all the way, and he turned around to talk to someone else.
Once I’d finished buttoning myself, I braced my right hand against the ground to help push up my body. As I moved, I moaned at the pain in my left shoulder. Tan must have heard it. He rushed over, bent forward and helped me to my feet.
He held me pretty close; I could clearly see his worried mouth, his worried eyes as they stared into mine. His worried eyes moved closer, then the next thing I knew, his worried mouth was on mine. His soft lips kissed me deeply, tenderly. And, for a few moments, I forgot we were standing there in public, where we worked, and I was wounded and I could have been killed.
Then I heard someone laugh or cough—or something. And I pulled from Tan’s kiss. But he wouldn’t let me go from his arms.
“Tan!” I said in an urgent low voice near his face, but looking around at the others there. “People are looking at us. They saw that.”
“I don’t give a damn,” he said, and then he kissed me, again.
*
Later in the doctor’s office, after she’d examined me better and had given me medicine to take with me, Derek and Tan’s secretary Abe walked in the door.
I smiled a little at them and the doctor said I could go.
Abe was very young and very unsmiling, as usual. But Derek was his usual friendly self.
Walking up to me, he said in a pleasant voice, “I’m here to drive you home. Abe’ll follow us and drive me back. I’ll take you in your car.”
*
As soon as we got inside my car, I said, “Have you seen Nell?”
“Yep—just yesterday at her parents’ in fact.” His pale profile sort of fell; I’d never before seen it do that. “I’m so disgusted at what happened. I feel rage over it. I should have been there.”
“And you could have done what exactly?” I asked.
But he didn’t respond to my statement; instead, he said, “Yesterday I told her when she’s totally better, we can arrange our schedules together. And she can come live with me in my house.”
“I think Nell wants her own house,” I said. “What about the man and the woman who did that to her?”
“They insist they’re not guilty.”
“Right,” I said, and I rolled my eyes up, and then toward my side window.
*
Finally in my room in front of the big dresser mirror, I undressed—and winced when I saw the ugly blackberry-wine-colored bruising on my shoulder and near my collar bone. My face appeared whiter than white. Basically, I looked like wounded shit.
The topical pain killers had kicked in, but I still felt occasional needle-like jabs of pain there, as if they were deeper down, trying to break free of the bruise. And as soon as I lay back on my bed, bending my legs in the process, I realized my bad knee was hurting too, throbbing, had probably been for hours. But I hadn’t noticed earlier because I’d been so focused on my more painful shoulder.
My leg must have twisted during the running or the struggle or something. Just thinking about myself moving and walking and running through the rotten day, my whole body began aching, including my head now.
“Oh Universe,” I said into the room, “this sucks.”
*
I barely left the hotel room for three days. I slept, I rubbed on medicine, I used hot and cold compresses the hotel room-service brought me.
On the second day of my room-time, I received two phone calls: one from Nell, the other from Tan. Nell was still recovering but was exhausted, and Tan, as usual, could not get away to come see me.
“Well?” I asked. “What about the bastard with the bomb?”
“He’s still being questioned. But unlike what happened with Nell, I don’t think he was working alone.”
“Uh-huh. What a surprise.” There was a long, tense silence on the line. I felt some anger there too: maybe a little from me, or maybe a little from him, or maybe a little from both. I wondered about the nature of any anger from him: was it toward my insinuation, or toward the object of my insinuation? Did he expect me to not want vengeance, to not feel angry? And that I was angry, did that piss him off? If so, what fucking nerve he had.
Sitting there on the phone breathing at each other, I was beginning to get tired of the situation with him, tired of how sometimes the things people had done in the past never really ended when they affected futures so much, as if people always carried long strings of past deed-beads behind them, and the strings were so tough, people could never fully cut through them and drop some of the beads.
I didn’t want to talk to Tan anymore right now. I pleaded pain, in my shoulder.
“You better not work The Festival,” he said quickly.
“Are you kidding? I’m working it. I’ll be all right by then.”
*
The night before The Festival, many of us had to stay in the barracks; early in the morning we’d be transport-flown over to The Festival.
Surprisingly, I ran into Nell outside the barracks that last night; as we hugged, she said the next few days she’d be working at The Complex handling paperwork. “I’m still not allowed to do anything else now. Doctor’s orders.”
“I’m glad you won’t be at The Festival. It’ll be too strenuous, and you don’t need to get hurt again.”
She pulled away from the hug, and I could see her mouth trembling a bit. “I’ve…I’ve got bad feelings about that, Pia. Don’t you?”
For an instant, I thought about what she’d said, but the truth was: I didn’t know what kind of feelings I had. Except that I’d come here to do one job but found myself obligated to do another. And I hated leaving anything unfinished. But I also hated getting my ass kicked and, especially, killed.
Nell continued, “Are you even healed enough yet?”
My right hand reached up and gently rubbed at my shoulder; it was still a bit tender, not quite certain of itself. “Eh, my shoulder isn’t there yet,” I said now. Then I dropped my hand. “But I’ll be
all right. Have you heard anything about the fucking guy who hurt you?”
Her mouth tightened. “I hope both he and Galeta rot in jail.”
“Have they been convicted then?”
Nell slowly shook her head from side to side. “Months still, till they’re on trial. They’re both out on the street again for now, probably doing more wonderful things to society.”
“That’s the system,” I said.
*
In my old room an hour later, I was standing in my pajamas, readying everything I needed for the next few days: my uniforms, my weapons, my money. My important papers—I’d put those in a safety-deposit box earlier that day. We guards would have to sleep on cots in an auditorium inside the factory. And with so much moving around, I didn’t want anything important of mine to fall into the wrong hands….
A loud knock on the door. I moved over to it, thinking it was Nell, but when I looked through the peephole, I saw Tan’s serious profile, his brooding mouth.
I unlocked and opened the door. When he walked in, I closed the door behind him, then looked at him and bluntly asked, “You here to wrestle beneath the sheets?”
“You know it,” he said, his eyes fixed on my face, his mouth tight. I could see his chest heaving a bit behind his black shirt. “How’s your shoulder though? Like I told you, I would have come see you, but I couldn’t—”
“—get away, yeah. I’ve heard that before.” I sighed, both at his words and at my shoulder. I reached up for it with rubbing fingers, as I’d done earlier with Nell. “My shoulder’s better,” I said. “Whatever the doctor gave me, it worked.”
“Then why are your fingers favoring it?”
Dropping my hand, I exhaled in some frustration. “Did you come here for shoulders or sheets?”
“Both,” he said.
He was very gentle in bed this time, his arms warmly clasped around me both during and after.
