by F P Adriani
“Yes and that’s why you shouldn’t worry about her. She can take care of herself. And Pia and I will watch each other’s backs. No worries,” Nell said, winking a long-lashed brown eye at me.
Derek slid a big hand into the shoulder bag on his other arm. He pulled out a letter-sized envelope and handed it to me, saying, “The list.”
I nodded as I put the envelope into my own bag; then, his hand gently clasping my forearm, Tan started pulling me away. He grabbed my biggest suitcase as he spoke to Nell and Derek. “Let’s go have breakfast at the restaurant. You hungry?” he asked me now. And I was hungry. But for more than breakfast actually.
Tan looked particularly good this morning, like his old self, his old dressed-in-all-black self, just like when I’d first seen him and fallen in lust with him. Once again his gorgeous black-covered legs were on display beneath their tight fabric. Why the hell had he dressed this way today? Did he mean to frustrate me? Bluntly, I asked him that.
And now he laughed. “No—no. I just don’t see my legs the way you do.”
“Well, you should. No other man has anything on you, so you shouldn’t feel he does,” I said, referencing Mike without explicitly saying his name, to avoid an argument, as Nell had urged.
Tan seemed to know what I meant. Slowly, he nodded at me; then he gave me a light kiss on the lips as we walked into the restaurant.
Nell and Derek joined us a moment later, and we all had a great breakfast together—a too-short breakfast together. Only an hour long, but one of the best hours of my life. We gorged ourselves on fruit and pancakes, we laughed and even cried a bit, and not just from the joking we did.
Sitting there in the warm environment with my friends surrounding me, suddenly, I didn’t want to leave. Why did I often feel so frustrated with Diamond? It wasn’t all bad here. If I never came back, there would always be moments I missed, just as there had been from my childhood….
I had blocked some of those memories too; I still blocked them most days, but, lately, they came back quite often. Now I remembered sitting with my parents in a similar scenario, having a wonderful breakfast in a restaurant on one of the smaller Astral Mountains.
The largest ones were very hard to traverse, and few people had been up at the tops. But there was this myth that the mountaintops were so high, the sky at night so dark, that if you stood there, it seemed as if your head lay among the stars.
That was the way I felt now, sitting in this restaurant, my head in the stars of my friends. Nothing could top that.
*
We couldn’t linger too long at breakfast because Nell and I had to load our bags onto the baggage service cars, but not before I made some adjustments inside my miraged-case; namely the insertion of Nell’s second weapon (the big one, like my Granger, the ones non-Herans weren’t supposed to have on Hera). I did this under cover of Tan’s and Derek’s bodies intentionally blocking me from the security cameras. I’d considered hiding all our weapons from both the port’s and Hera’s view, but then I decided Nell and I would be better off coming clean; that would make us look better if anything with the authorities happened.
As the time to fly drew nearer, there were some tears—from Nell and Derek. I also had some inside me, but I held them back.
And Tan looked more worried than sad. With my hands clasped in his, he said, “Don’t hesitate to contact me if you need to. I don’t know what I could do from here, but if there’s something, let me know.”
Wiping his blue eyes with his brown sleeve, Derek said then, “We expect to hear back from you two every other day!”
“Oh Derek,” said Nell, sounding exasperated, “you’re acting like we’re going to the gallows.”
“You might as well be!” he snapped. “You didn’t grow up there. So you just don’t understand.”
“All right, all right. Don’t jump down my throat.” Nell sighed now. Then her mouth easily slid into a reassuring smile. “Really. I’ll be back before you know it. Now, kiss me one more time before I go!”
That sounded like a plan—a plan that Tan immediately followed, with me.
*
It wasn’t long before Nell and I were seated together on the shuttle and heading toward Hera.
When we’d reached Diamond’s upper atmosphere, I said to Nell, “You know, I don’t understand your ticket, how you got on—you’re clearly not Mike.”
Nell shrugged her green-covered wide shoulders, and her eyes seemed to be on the dark space outside the oval window beside her, on the distant tiny flashes of starlight. Now she said, “We came here together yesterday and traded in his. No big deal. You know something? A part of me is looking forward to this.”
I knew what she meant. Nell and I had never been on anything even remotely like a vacation together, and this trip certainly wouldn’t qualify as one. Nevertheless, I now realized how nice the two of us being alone felt—in other words, spending day after day together with no men to distract us would be a great feeling.
A little later, the shuttle docked at Diamond’s Spinning Space Station, and since the shuttle was quite still then, I decided to use the bathroom.
As I peed, I thought about the things that needed doing on this flight: for one, I needed to think on Millie Rodriguez’s Heran traveling itinerary more. Last night, Mike had dropped off a copy of it at my hotel room, which I should have been suspicious about then—like, why wouldn’t he have just brought the itinerary today?
But my mind had been on the document then. It wasn’t a long one, yet the places Millie had planned on visiting were troubling.
A Hera traveling plan was a requirement for noncitizens. Visitor whereabouts had to be revealed to the government there, at least at first. Heran government officials—a.k.a. goons—could then spot-check a traveler, so it was best to stick with at least a little of an itinerary plan. But that checking couldn’t possibly last: too many people, not enough goons, and that meant that once a person had been on the planet for a little while, she kind of could do whatever she wanted. Basically, that was the trouble with Hera: lots of things were done for show only.
Whether Millie had taken advantage of that laxness or had actually followed her whole itinerary, I didn’t know yet. But that document was all I had to go on at the moment, other than the John-crap Hu had relayed to me….
As I walked back to my seat, I was sighing: while having Nell’s companionship would be great, we still had business to attend to, which Nell knew just as well as I.
In my chair again, I pulled out Derek’s envelope, rereading the title on the front: Things You Shouldn’t Do On Hera (In Most Cities There). Then I pulled out the list inside, immediately realizing that if one page had been laid after another, the list would literally be as long as both of my legs.
“Holy shit,” I said, my eyes widening, my fingers flipping the pages as the list droned on and on. I scanned the words on the list, some of which said:
Don’t stay outside a dome without a breather mask for more than fifteen minutes at a time, for more than two hours a week total—otherwise, you’ll get Daxon Sickness, and the first time you get it, you’ll probably need hospitalization
Before going outside a dome, always be fully dressed and apply palella-oil-based sunscreen: in low-wind high-density daxon pockets, the daxon concentrates sunlight like a lens—you can get second-degree burns after only a few minutes of exposure, even during early evening if the daxon molecules are still excited, though that chemical burning takes longer
Never leave your hotel room door unlocked
Always lock the bathroom door when you’re in your hotel bathroom if no one else is in the outer room
Avoid staying alone in a hotel room, no matter if you’re a guy
Never go out a large bar’s back entrance (too many muggings from drunk gang members, who tend to hang out at large bars as their “turf”)….
On and on the list went, sounding like the most hostile-to-life place I’d ever read about. Some of it I knew already, som
e of it I didn’t—and much of it scared the shit out of me even if I’d already heard of it. Just seeing it all written down so damn officially….
“People bring up kids on Hera?” I asked out loud now.
“Yeah—kids like Derek,” said Nell.
“How the hell did he come out so nice?” I looked up at Nell beside me. But she had pulled out her copy of the list, and her eyes were casually scanning it now.
“He wasn’t there that long. His parents moved off Hera before his teen years. And his parents didn’t come from there….” Still reading, she frowned now. “Well, really, it’s definitely not a place to raise kids.”
“Sounds like even adults don’t belong there.”
“Now do you see why I’m coming along, Pia-babe? And at least I’ve been there once…. Though half this stuff I didn’t even know. No one told me then! And then the different languages Derek mentions. What the hell is the Moonspan language—at Cielo City?”
“Moonspan’s a combo of Old-Earth Spanish and Lunian-English from Earth-Moon Colony 3.” I knew this because I had some spanish ancestry, and I had been to the Earth-Moon.
“Geez, I don’t even know how to process all that,” Nell said now. “Forget about speaking whatever the hell it is. I don’t even know Spanish or Lunian. At least we don’t have to go to Cielo.”
“Unfortunately, that’s exactly where we have to go.”
“Oh shit,” said Nell.
*
The rest of the flight was uneventful, and we slept through half of it. We were both kind of groggy by the time we stepped off the shuttle and into the port, where we had to wait on long lines for other travelers to be processed first.
As I stood there waiting, I noticed the air had changed: it felt heavy, similar to on Diamond, but the air here was more acid or something, like a dark heaviness that lay in your lungs, seeming to burn them.
I knew everything was pretty much indoors here; even the mining was sometimes done under cover. And this indoor air was filtered and supplemented. But it still felt more like breathing soup than air. Apparently, traces of daxon and other gases couldn’t be entirely removed—the daxon was everywhere, in the air, in the crust, in the waterways.
I remembered Tan’s telling me that I wouldn’t like being indoors here. He was so right….
Whenever I moved my head now, afterward, it seemed as if my brain was still bouncing inside my skull and couldn’t stop; I was starting to feel stoned.
And maybe I looked stoned—and maybe that was why the port security stopped us.
*
It happened while we were being processed at the exit terminal.
Nell and I had been standing before the port-security attendants. Both of us had declared one gun each, which we now had on our bodies.
After the attendants frisked us and checked our guns against our itineraries, one of the attendants pushed Nell’s cases and pocketbook through one scanner while another attendant pushed my bag and all of my cases, including my miraged-case, through another scanner. I breathed a relieved inward sigh when no alarms sounded.
But then my attendant said I couldn’t leave the port yet.
I swallowed hard. “What?” I asked, thinking, “Busted!” Had I fucked up something somewhere, left something exposed? Did I really look high? I felt that way at the moment; the air was doing funny things to my stomach now….
The attendant was speaking to me and Nell again: “This is a spot security check and you got picked.” She handed back our bags. Then her blond head nodded at another attendant, who flashed his side where his gun was strapped as he used his other thumb to point Nell and me away.
As we walked behind him, Nell mumbled from beside me, “Doesn’t seem like any spot-check.”
“Mm,” I said, my eyes on the attendant’s bouncing ass in his gray pants. The guy had very nice round buns. And I was determined to make the best of this moment because, for shit sure, that view might wind up being the best thing in my life for a long while.
*
The Nice-Buns Guy led us into an office and left us alone there. A big desk covered half the room, and an enormous wall-sized window took up the space beside the desk.
I walked up to the window and finally got my first clear view of the outside, where, in the distance, bulbous purple, green and red clouds heavily hugged the ground like a dangerous multifaceted jewel; the clouds slowly floated in front of a gray ominous sky that seemed to stretch upward for an eternity. With such a cloudy dense-looking atmosphere, I thought it amazing that any sunlight reached the surface here….
My eyes scanned the landscape more closely, and beneath all the sky-colors, I could see the shining silvery city bubbles. The domes had been arranged like connecting border growths between the land and sky, the structures now looking as if they’d always been an organic part of the landscape.
“Wow,” I said to Nell, still taking it all in.
“I know. There’s nothing like the view here.”
“It’s hostile to life though,” I said.
“Yep, that’s Hera!” said someone else, a strange someone else. Nell and I were no longer alone.
I turned away from the window and saw a thin man walk behind the desk. He wore a white shirt and black pants; he offhandedly dumped a file onto the desktop, then looked at me through thick eyeglasses.
I waited only a moment before I demanded, “What’s this all about? Why were we stopped?”
“Because of what you do for a living,” the man said, his glass-covered eyes looking from one to the other of us. When we both remained silent, he said, “Let me see your itineraries.”
I handed him my paperwork.
Nell did the same, saying, “So what’s the problem? We’re security specialists—so?”
His eyes were on our papers. “What are you doing on Hera?”
“We’re on vacation,” I said.
Now he just stared at me, sarcastic gray eyes behind his thick lenses.
“A working vacation,” added Nell.
He glanced down at our itineraries again. “I see you’re off to Shiloh Center in a few days. You two speak Moonspan?”
I shook my head “no.” Nell didn’t move. I could see annoyance behind her fake blank face. She was trying to hide her pique, unsuccessfully—though maybe the man couldn’t tell that because he didn’t know her. At least I hoped he couldn’t tell; I wanted to get out of here without incident….
“You’ll need a guide around there,” the man said now. “I can hook you up with a good one.”
“No thanks,” I said fast. “We can get our own guide.”
“No, I’m setting you up with a guide. He’ll be in touch.” There was a smile on his face now, a pushy knowing smile. He handed back our itineraries; a gray business card sat on top of mine. The card said: Jamie Connors, Personal Heran Guide To The Heran Sky.
My brow lowered. “What’s this all about?”
He held out a hand, palm-up. “A tip,” he said. “You’ll soon learn on Hera that when someone gives you information, you have to give something back.”
For a moment, I just glared at him.
Then my fingers fished in my shoulder bag for my wallet; I pulled out a Diamond twenty-dollar bill and shoved it into his waiting hand. But his hand still waited.
If this really was the Heran way, I’d soon be broke.
Swearing under my breath, I slapped down another twenty.
“Very nice,” he said, his long fingers slipping the two bills into his white shirt pocket.
*
A moment later he’d let us go, we were outside his office, and Nell was glaring at me. “What the hell was all that crap about?” she asked fast.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t care. Let’s get to the hotel.”
*
We spent the rest of that first day resting in a near-to-the-port hotel room, which would be our base for now.
However, our adjustment to the air just wouldn’t go well; we both felt
too lightheaded. So we (stupidly) tried eating more than normal to make the physical transmission smoother. But that only made Nell feel worse.
By the early afternoon of our second Heran day, she had taken a couple of unpleasant toilet trips. After the third trip and a long shower, she came out of the bathroom complaining of persistent nausea.
“Is it morning sickness?” I asked her, pressing a cold damp towel to her forehead as she lay back on her bed.
She was wearing only a robe now, and her body seemed too heavy for her, seemed to sink into the mattress. “No, it’s afternoon sickness. It’s not the pregnancy. I mean, I’m sure that’s making it worse, but that fried squash last night, and then before….”
“I’m not surprised you feel so sick. Fried food’s not exactly health food for anyone. But we’ve got to get over to Cielo tomorrow—you think you’ll be able to handle that longer train trip?”
“Yeah. But whether I can do anymore than that is another story.”
“I need you with me, Nell. Or at least I can’t leave you alone later.”
“I’ll try, Pia. What did you have to do today?”
“Just one thing, but first there’s the supplies to get. There’s the protective-polyskins and helmets—we should wear the skin-suits beneath our clothes, just in case. I mean, the store downstairs recommends them to tourists. I’m gonna buy one. What do you think?”
“I think if we’re going to run around here, we better be prepared.”
*
“I look like I’m going diving,” I said a few hours later, standing before the dresser mirror as I adjusted a purple skin-suit’s top beneath my black blazer. I shoved the purple gloves inside my blazer pockets, eyeing my top’s back neck, where a flexible folded breather-helmet hung limp; I’d only need to use the gloves and helmet if I got stuck outside a bubble, which hopefully wouldn’t happen.
Behind me in the mirror, a fully dressed and suited Nell was lying back on the bed again with that damp towel over her eyes. Earlier I’d urged her to see a doctor, but she only refused and came with me downstairs, first to send a we-got-here-okay message to Derek and Tan, and then to the hotel’s store, where we wound up finding some medicine. So far, via the medicine, Nell was doing better; at least she no longer needed bathroom time.
