by F P Adriani
He raised his head finally, looked at me with hooded dark eyes. “I’ve really been worried about you, Pia. …And I probably haven’t shown it enough. I’m afraid…of a lot of things….”
“I know,” I said.
*
Festival Day. I woke up alone in body but with a headache in mind.
I got to the South Entrance’s transport station too early so had to stand around in the bright sunlight, which did not help my headache situation. I’d taken some headache powders right before I left, but they hadn’t had time to work. And I’d forgotten my sunglasses.
I pulled my shirt-jacket closed tighter as my other hand fiddled with my gun holster, then slid into one of my unzipped jacket pockets, my fingers hitting the springy-pinchy red frond stuck inside there; I’d completely forgotten about it from that day in the mine.
My spine strangely tingled, so did the back of my neck. But the sunlight wasn’t responsible this time.
This day was responsible; I had failed so far. I hadn’t met my deadline in finding Hu, which I never expected to. But now I decided that once I was done with The Festival, I would quit the guard job and walk away, to another part of the planet and begin my REAL job in earnest.
I thought of Tan then, of how his dark eyes had stared down at me the night before, of how warm his skin had felt against mine, of how his curly thick public hairs had tickled my belly….
I sighed loudly: no use in focusing on Tan and me because there really wasn’t a “Tan and me.” It wasn’t meant to be. And what did “meant to be” mean anyway? I’d long ago given up on thinking in destiny terms. That just wasn’t practical….
The transport finally pulled into the docking station. The dark-blue metal door slid open sideways, and in the doorway I saw a few familiar faces from the transport training; they pulled out folders and began silently and slowly writing in them as if they had all the time in the Universe.
On the platform, my co-workers stood looking as tense as I felt, but I remained off in the distance, even when I was finally on the transport, I stood back away from the others, staring out the big side window as the landscape flew by, the red, the green, the white, the gray, of the plants and the buildings and the sand, always the sand.
*
A few hours later I was standing at the exterior auditorium’s edge, looking out over the sand again. Tomorrow there’d be races among the biggest dunes. But, today, some people sat on machines putting the finishing touches on sculpting the dunes, and others stood setting up neon-colorful flag markers. The dune workers wore long robes as colorful as the markers, and the shocking colors looked beautiful against the gray-white of the sand.
The small communicator on my shoulder beeped, and I pressed the receive button, heard John’s voice calling me into the inner auditorium, which held the temporary art exhibit, a mini-museum. I’d be stationed there till late afternoon when I’d have to do some transport time.
The mini-museum was packed with civilians. I moved among the sand-cast statues now, half keeping my eye on the people passing through and half thinking of Tan throughout my shift, of how he’d always wanted to be an artist. He should be here seeing all this; maybe we should be seeing it together. But he wouldn’t be coming to The Festival until late tomorrow afternoon, when I’d be working on a transport….
“Excuse me—Guard!” I heard someone say loudly, and when I turned my head, a tall dark-haired woman rushed up to me. In her right hand she held a little girl’s left hand, and as the woman spoke again, I watched her hand tug at the little girl’s. “I just realized someone stole my daughter’s wallet!”
My head shot to the woman’s frowning face. “When?”
“I don’t know when exactly! In the last fifteen minutes? She had a wallet inside her blue pocketbook. Can you do anything?”
“It was my allowance—I saved it!” said the little girl, her voice breaking a bit.
I looked down at her black ponytail, at her round face, saw two tears falling, one down each cheek. Something about her face reminded me of myself at her age, and I did not want to think about that time.
Instead, I wondered what kind of fucking creep steals money from a child. I looked at the woman and said, “Not much I can do. You can see the crowd—the person may be gone by now. Give me a description of what was stolen.” She did: a red fabric coin purse containing only ten dollars and nothing else.
I reached into my jacket, unzipped one of the pockets, pulled out two fives from my wallet, and held them out to the little girl. “Here you go!” I said, bending forward, then I looked up at the mother.
Her eyes widened, her left hand pressed to her chest. “Oh—but I can’t let you do that!”
“Yes. Please do. No one should have this day ruined. What’s your name?” I asked the girl.
“Suzy!”
“Well, Suzy, I can’t replace your purse, but at least you’ve got your allowance back.” I watched the girl’s tears stop, and then I was rewarded with a toothy smile as her hand took the money from mine.
*
That incident wound up being not the only one of its kind that day, which wasn’t surprising wherever lots of humans congregated. But at least those more minor crimes were the worst of it. I went to sleep that night in the auditorium, glad that nothing terrible had happened—or, more correctly, I went to bed in the auditorium, but I did not get much sleep.
I kept seeing the past, my past here, my early childhood filled with happy moments, just like I imagined little Suzy’s moments had been earlier that day, before she’d been robbed. And just like the latter part of her day had been tainted by her money’s theft, the latter part of my childhood had been tainted by my parents’ deaths.
My dad had been an orphan; he’d never known his parents. My mom’s parents had been a part of Diamond’s history, and they too had lost their lives in a construction accident during the building of the planet’s largest airport. I had never known my grandparents, but Diamond itself had. So much of my family had given themselves to this planet, and now here I was back again, effectively doing the same.
I had been sitting in school when my parents were killed; I’d been happily eating a peach when my teacher told me I had to go to the main office, that something bad had happened to my parents. I pissed myself, I was so frightened, and since that day I hadn’t eaten another peach.
*
Luckily, early the next afternoon, I was stationed in the exterior auditorium; I got to watch the dune races a bit as I worked. Every now and then I’d use a pair of binoculars and stare out over the sand, see the colorful vehicles traversing and encircling the rounded dunes, one after the other, they’d come, following each other in a line, cutting each other off, mistakenly crashing into the dunes. Normally, I didn’t enjoy watching sports, but this was some exciting stuff.
Even though I’d never before seen a dune race, I could tell when something went wrong with this one: when a car veered completely off course. I’d been watching that car because the vivid purple color had caught my purple-loving eye. But then the car suddenly broke off from the others and started crossing between dunes, started accelerating.
My heart pounded harder, yet I could do nothing but stand and watch as the car headed for one of the lower lookouts where people paid extra to watch the races up close.
My co-workers were on top it: a transport cut off the car’s path, which slammed to a halt right before it would have careened into the transport’s side. I saw the driver get out, I saw the transport guards surround the person. I saw arguing, hands lifted, heads bobbing in anger; I imagined voices lifted by the same anger….
“What on earth has happened?” I heard a distressed voice behind me say.
“Nothing—nothing,” I said over my shoulder. “It’s all under control.”
A moment later, a frowning John walked up to me and said, “Change of schedule. Take a break. Then we’re on the transports. Gotta report there in forty-five minutes.”
*
“Wha
t’s going on?” I asked him when we’d walked out of civilian earshot.
“It looks like some trouble’s started.”
“I can see that,” I said dryly. “A car out there went off course. I don’t know. It looked deliberate.”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out.”
I suddenly realized I had to piss, and there were no bathrooms on the transports.
I left John and walked to the nearest factory-personnel bathroom, which took me longer than it should have: I had to pass through a big room packed with standing people facing the room’s short end. Someone politician-looking stood at a podium there, giving a full-of-politician-platitudes speech.
“…The hard work of many people brought us where we are today and will take us into tomorrow. Not only have the off-planet sand exports gone up over a hundred percent in only a few years’ time, but so have the rice exports. We’re on track to become the biggest rice producer of any planet….”
The voice faded as I moved through a doorway into the emptier cafeteria area, where factory maintenance personnel were setting up tables and chairs for a big dinner later on. I rushed by them, nodding in response as one of them nodded at me, then I rushed even more down the hall, my bladder feeling as if it would burst through my clothing.
Finally my right hand was pushing open the cold metal bathroom door, and a moment later I was sighing in pissing relief.
When I was finished, I quickly washed my hands, then slipped back out the door.
Something flashing by on the left caught my eye—it wasn’t the color, gray suit, or the shape, tall and slim, but the speed. Someone had moved too fast around the corner, as if startled, maybe by my exit through the door.
It might be nothing, it might be something.
I began walking in that direction, slowly, trying not to make any noise with my footsteps, and when I turned the corner, I could see the gray-suited person; a gray hat sat on his head, the material covering his right profile on my side. I couldn’t see his face, so he probably couldn’t see me either.
I slipped into the doorway beside me and watched him with only my left eye sticking out of the doorway: he was standing by a built-in wall shelf, attaching something beneath. My hand on my gun, I said loudly, “What are you doing there?”
His head whipped around, his narrow face visible now. His eyes turned in my direction, looking startled; then they clouded over, bored-like. “It’s a serving shelf for after. It was sagging, I fixed it.”
“You’re maintenance? You don’t look it. Show me your Festival personnel badge.”
“Okay. Here it is,” he said, and then he whipped out a gun and fired a shot.
The laser bullet zoomed right past where my head had been an instant before. And now I pulled out my own gun, smacked my communicator on, and said in a rush, “Trouble in Red Corridor! A wall shelf tampered with! Man in gray suit with a gun!”
I could hear the guy’s receding fast footfalls—or what seemed to be his receding fast footfalls. I cautiously stuck out my gun a bit, and got nothing back. Now, my blood pumping full speed, I stuck out my head a bit again—no one there. A gray hat lay on the floor.
I ran past the hat and down the hall, hearing some shouts and screams coming from a small kitchen on my right—I pushed through the doorway so hard, I nearly fell into the room.
“He went through the private dining area!” one of the white-coated cooks shouted at me, wildly waving a big frying pan toward a big glass door.
My feet pounded in that direction as I said to him, “Don’t let anyone go into the hall! Move away from here!”
At the glass door now, I could see into the bigger crowded room; I pushed inside fast. A few of the people standing there looked startled—by me. Nothing else appeared out of the ordinary. And plenty of gray suits were in evidence. Fuck.
My eyes quickly scanned the male faces, but none of the visible ones looked familiar. “Did someone in a gray suit just come in here fast?” I demanded at the room, my gun pointing forward but at the floor.
“I think—I think someone did, yes,” a short woman said in a low voice, nodding at me as she laid a shaking hand at her throat.
“Where’d he go?” I asked her as I rushed past.
“That door on the left—near there!” a male voice said.
And just then I saw another glass door swing as someone forced his way out.
“Goddammit! Let me through!” I yelled, running now, shoving people out of my way. I finally stood beside the doorframe, my back to the wall, and cautiously twisted my head to look out—into an even bigger area with even more people. Yet there was a break on the right into the crowd, some people rushing away, and the running man in the gray suit.
I charged into the room, yelling, “Stop!” and in response got another shot fired in my direction, but I was quicker to duck away this time—and furious because someone else could have been hit.
People started screaming, but I wasn’t the only guard in this room; another came from the side and rushed at the gray-suited guy’s back, knocking him over. The gun slid from the guy, but he struggled as the guard tried to yank the guy’s arms behind his back.
I ran closer and said, “Enough!” holding my gun pointed at his head.
He stopped struggling, and just as I thought I could breathe a relieved sigh—the room’s floor shook. I heard a giant BOOM WHOOSH, a familiar sound.
And then screaming and running bodies passed me as they fled toward safety—but, apparently, they couldn’t figure out where safety was because some of those bodies came back to where they had been as voices were yelling, “A bomb! Get out!”
The explosion seemed to have come from where I’d been: that shelf. My heart fell down to my feet; hopefully no one had gotten there yet at my urging! Had I done the wrong thing in chasing the guy? Should I have stayed and warned everyone away from the hall?
But there was no time to analyze the whole situation further: someone had set off the evacuation alarm. A siren loudly whined.
Unfortunately, once the bomb had shaken the place, the other guard hadn’t been able to cuff the guy, and now he broke free, punched the guard in the gut, and took off again. Frantic people were moving between me and him, and I couldn’t get a good shot!
So I ran after him a second time—too many people in the way still—
—I felt the floor shift again under my feet, lost my balance, grabbing at the air—and my gun slipped out of my hands and onto the floor. And then I watched helplessly as someone accidentally kicked it away into the crowd of feet and bodies.
This interior earthquake hadn’t seemed like another explosion but like the building’s workings underneath had collapsed a bit. Or maybe not. I just couldn’t tell. So much confusion.
My frantically searching eyes found the guy in the gray suit once again; he had fallen to the floor, but now he scrambled to his feet and shot toward the other end of the room. A hall there led to the transports. Instantly I got my head fully together and I shot after him a third time.
I gained on him as we approached the ramp to the transports, but then on the ramp, he ran faster down to the last transport and jumped aboard. I pushed my leg muscles beyond where they’d normally go—and made it onto the transport just before it pulled away. A second later and I would have been dropped a hundred feet below onto the sand.
Turning my head, I saw the guy’s startled eyes. Before I could pull out my stun stick, he lunged for me, toppling me over onto a crate or something, which didn’t break. And that had actually been a good thing because now I realized he didn’t have much force behind his muscles: he didn’t seem like a Sander.
Unfortunately, he must have realized I was a Sander: he was on top of me now, his gripping hands going at my throat with whatever force they did possess; it was hard but I could still breathe. I quickly slid my knees up and kicked my lower legs into him till he flew back toward the transport’s shell. He lay stunned for a moment, pressed to the metal. Then he shot
up and reached for one of the loose spare door pistons beside him; they were almost as long as I was. They were light but still metal.
I pulled out my stun stick as his hand punched open the transport door button. Air rushed in, whipping our hair and clothes around, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw the endless white-gray blur of sand speed by.
With nasty strangely brownish teeth, the guy grinned at me as he swung the piston my way—I jumped sideways just in time and slammed my stick into his neck. He fell to the floor. But I had jumped too near the door; the transport suddenly jerked, catapulting my whole body out the door.
And then I was falling falling falling falling falling. I hit the sand like a human bullet. And then I blacked out.
*
When I woke up who knew when later on, my body ached in about a thousand places, but I was too stunned to even move. The Sun beat down against my eyes, against my face; cold sweat trickled down my neck and into my shirt.
I tried to slowly unfold myself from the sand’s cushion, but my recently injured shoulder now felt as if every sinew were being pulled apart by an opposing force. My right hand grabbed there, and the pain only intensified. I saw stars instead of sand for a few moments. Then the stars cleared. And, from this angle, in this deep into a desert cavern, it seemed as if nothing but sand existed for miles around. I could hear only the wind, which started whipping round harder suddenly. What the fuck would I do now?
I gingerly reached for my communicator hanging off my bad shoulder, but no matter how many times I pressed the buttons, the device was dead. The fall must have done it.
Why had no one come looking for me? I wondered. And then I remembered the disaster at the factory; the people there had themselves to worry about…. I thought of that little girl with the ponytail and red pocketbook, saw her sad little face swim through the sand. Had she been there at the factory? Had she gotten out unharmed? I didn’t want to think about it, so then I thought about Tan, hoping he hadn’t gotten there at all yet…and then I didn’t want to think about that either.
