“If it’s important enough, leadership will alert us,” Paya said. “It’s always been thus.”
“There was a tattoo,” Taryka said. She pushed over a crude drawing of it, what she could remember, that she had sketched onto a reusable tablet.
Paya squinted at the markings. “If it’s tattoos you’re interested in - and I know by this point that I can’t dissuade you when you go on your little crusades - you should talk to Makrolai in the upper promenade. She has quite a collection of old tattoos and markings. A scholar, really.”
“Thank you,” Taryka said, and poured the rest of her tea into Paya’s cup.
Paya sputtered, but Taryka just grinned and left before she could protest.
Taryka made her way down to the lower promenade. Asking after Makrolai, she was directed to a battered little modular living space that had been converted to a storefront. Most people used the front of their living spaces as public parlors where they traded, shared gossip, and exchanged handmade goods. Makrolai’s door was open to the public space. Bits of glass hung from discarded bits of wires tinkled in the draft from the ventilation system. Streamers of red ribbon were tied around old pieces of wood fished out of the nearby pond.
“Hello?” Taryka said.
A rumbled old woman that Taryka had mistaken for a pile of rags unfurled herself from a big chair in the corner of the parlor.
“Don’t tell me your name,” the woman said. “Let me guess.” She hobbled to Taryka and took her palms into her rough hands. Squinted at her with bleary eyes. Her face was very thin; the layers of modified clothing made her appear far heavier than she was. She would have to observe the fasting days just like the rest of them.
“Paya says you know something of markings,” Taryka said.
The woman clicked at her. “Your name... the cant of your face. The nose, flared her at the end, the slight rise in the bridge, yes... the soft jaw. I know those eyes, too, yes... I have seen your ancestors, girl. Your name is... Leimali?”
“No, I’m Taryka.”
“Damn,” the woman muttered.
“You’re Makrolai?”
“Seems so,” the woman said, and collapsed into her chair again.
Taryka handed her the drawing. “I process bodies during overdark. One came in last night with a marking like this. You know where it’s from?”
Makrolai bunched up her mouth and peered at the symbol. “This marks the Others,” she said.
“The... Others? Those from other ships?”
Makrolai chuckled. “Other... places. That’s good enough.”
“I know we often get strays from other ships. I’m just very curious where she came from. Her body was removed from processing without a proper autopsy.”
“I expect it was. You’d find it a bit different from yours.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s one of the Others.”
“I don’t understand. There are only other ships. We are surrounded by darkness. There is no other place to... be Other-from.”
“That’s what they would like us to believe.”
“Who?”
Makrolai rolled her eyes. “It’s not worth getting into.”
“I want to know who this woman was.”
“I can’t help you.”
“But -“
“I’m a mad old woman,” she said. “That’s what they called me, when I spoke the truth. You want truth, you find it out for yourself.”
Taryka turned from her, listening to the tinkle of the glass mobile and the whir of the warm air moving across the promenade. She stared at the image on her tablet, and heard her sister’s voice again, “You always meddle. This isn’t a world for meddlers.”
She wiped away the mark on her tablet. She went back to her flat and mediated for an hour. Flickers of the dreams from the night before kept bubbling up, jerking her away from awareness and back into the cold, hard world of thought.
Taryka went back to her analyzer. “Tell me when Doctor Divati has his shift today.”
“Doctor Divati is working the overdark.”
“Thank you.”
“You are welcome, Taryka.”
Taryka prepared for work as the darkness descended, and the overdark approached. There had once been painfully bright light in the ship, all the elders said; light so bright it made you want to dance all day and celebrate all night. There was no overdark then. The overdark, the powering down, was a way to conserve energy across the ship. No one knew what or when their final destination was. But clearly the leadership understood that to get there, they needed to further ration and preserve what resources they had.
Taryka went about her work, processing the first body of the overdark, until Doctor Divati arrived. Then she quietly put down her tools and went to his office.
Divati beamed at her when she entered. “Taryka, to what do I owe this audience?”
“I have a question about an autopsy you performed.”
“Of course,” he said, but she saw a flicker of unease in his face. “Have a seat.”
“A body came in last overdark,” she said. “I... I did some of the processing, before you had it taken away. She was not from here.”
“Certainly,” he said, taking a seat across from her. “We have many strays -“
“People from other places.”
“Indeed.”
“The processing I did was not consistent with violet gas. I believe an error was made in the autopsy.”
“Really? Well, I will look into that.”
“Doctor, I know that her tattoo was from... the Others.” She watched his face, trying out her bluff. He frowned for the first time, and when he looked at her now, it was more seriously.
“What do you know about the Others?”
“I know there have been more and more,” she said, “even as all of us here seem to be less and less. I must know what’s happening, doctor. She haunts my dreams. I fear a great wrong has been done here, and there are more great wrongs to come.”
“You are too young.”
“I will go mad, not knowing. The way my sister went mad.”
“Your sister had an unfortunate sickness. It was not caused by a lack of knowledge.”
“You know there is madness in us. You treated my sister. My mother. You owe me this one truth.”
“You want to know?” Divati said. “It will drive you mad?”
“I want to know,” Taryka said. “I will bring this to leadership.”
“That would be foolish,” he said. “They will kill you.”
“If you don’t tell me, I’ll take it to them.”
Divati mush have seen the resolve in her face, because he said, “Come with me.”
He took her down to the elevator near the flooded pond. They entered the elevator. She expected him to choose a level, but he did not. Merely sat there in the silence, until the transparent door closed. Behind him, there was damage to the back of the elevator. Taryka could see through to the mesh beneath, the thin filament that protected the inner hull from the outer hull.
“She was not from here,” Divati said. “There are a few who know this. It may be you should be among those few in this next generation, one to know the truth of things, so you can protect the others.”
“Where? The ships? That’s all there is, Divati.”
Divati closed his eyes and sighed. “It’s not,” he said. “There is more out there. Much more. We cannot let them know.”
“Let who know?”
“We can’t let them know that we have landed.”
Taryka felt numb. “Landed...?”
“Our ship reached its final resting place. The people we bring in, the bodies... they are those who have settled here. We need them to replenish our organic stores.”
“When did we land?” she said.
“A decade ago,” he said.
“You kept us… we are in the dark.”
“
The dark is all we know. The light would kill these people. New bacteria, the radiation, and we know almost nothing about the microbiome here. You think you can just unload everyone on some new planet, when three generations have known nothing but deep space? You can’t.”
“But the ones who sent us –“
“We have learned how to live in this bucket,” he said. “The transition to being outside… it could kill us.”
“But clearly... some other ships have made it work!”
“We study them, these bodies, to see how they are adapting,” he said. “The results are... inconclusive. We can’t risk losing this.”
“And your power,” she said.
“What?” Sharp.
“What happens to your power, when people have a whole world to explore? What happens to your power, when we can... leave? When we no longer fast... When -“
“You’re naive.”
“This is mad.”
“It is practical. You understand, Taryka. You are the most practical of all the processors. You can help me with these studies. You can -“
“People need to know.” She thought about Paya and her three cups of tea. “People shouldn’t have to live this way for no reason.”
“People like being told what to do,” Divati said. “There is quiet here. Order. Safety. What’s wrong with that?”
Taryka firmed her mouth. What was wrong with it, indeed? All these generations, all of her ancestors, Divati's ancestors, sacrificing to get them to some other world, and here they sat, too terrified of the light to leave the darkness.
“I understand,” Taryka said.
“Do you?”
“I understand.”
“Good.” Divati took her hand. “Come now, you just need to rest. This is a great revelation.” He walked with her back to the processing center. The overdark was beginning to lighten; her shift was nearing an end.
“Here we are,” Divati said, guiding her to a seat. “Let me get you something, just a little something, for the shock -“
Taryka burst up from her seat. “No!” she said. She tried to run past him. He hit her across the face with the back of an instrument tray. The shiny metal tools crashed to the floor. A spray of blood from her face arced across the front of his gown. Her gaze met his, and she knew in that instant that her instinct had been right: he was going to make her mad, put her away, silence her, just like Makrolai.
Taryka burst out of the processing center as the rest of the level woke. She ran through the promenade, blood streaming from her face, shouting, “They’ve lied to you! We’ve landed! We’ve landed! We are free!”
Those around her recoiled. A few market vendors pulled down their awnings to shield their wares from her, as if she were a threat to them.
“We have already arrived!” Taryka said. “Don’t you see? Don’t you know? There’s no vacuum of space beyond these walls! No ships out there! The strays live on the planet. There’s a planet out there, everything we’ve been taught we were seeking. They’ve kept it from us.”
Paya ran up to her, took her by the shoulder. “Hush now, Taryka, you are exhausted. Where have you been?”
“I’ve seen it, Paya,” Taryka said. “We aren’t bound here any longer. We are free.”
Paya smiled and stroked her hair. “Of course, of course.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“I have seen many who came to believe this, in my time,” Paya said. “It’s... a type of sickness. You are just a little ill.”
“You listen!” Taryka said, and twisted away. “I’ll show you!” She ran. Several others followed, including Paya. Taryka ran to the end of the promenade and went down into the yellowing park, through the flooded paths where the pond overflowed its boundaries, and to the elevator. She picked up a great length of metal pipe near the pond worksite, and unlocked the elevator.
There, where the metal mesh was rotten, she began to hammer at it with the pipe. Again and again she hammered, until the mesh broke away. She peeled at it, revealing a gooey, glistening type of flesh beneath.
“Stop!” Paya yelled. “You will kill us all!”
Taryka pressed the elevator closed. Paya banged on the translucent doors.
“This is all an illusion, Paya! All a lie!” Taryka dug her hands into the flesh beneath the metal. She took out great fistfuls of the stuff, gelatinous goo, the consistency of liquefied organs, began to pile up around her. A great stench began to issue from the wound, so great she almost passed out. Her breathing came ragged; sweat poured down her face. Eventually the hole was big enough to crawl into.
She looked back. A great crowd had gathered around her. The order police were coming down the promenade.
Taryka crawled into the fleshy tunnel and continued her work. She dug with the pipe now, deeper and deeper. A tapping at the elevator doors. Raised voices. The order police would be through soon.
She jammed the pipe into the end of the tunnel. Resistance, then - the pipe slid forward, broke through. She gasped and yanked it out.
Until the moment the end of the pipe came free, she was still uncertain what to expect: the vacuum and a cold, blistering death; some other world, its violet sky too bright to endure; a wave of police, simply waiting for her to crawl her way to them.
What she did not expect was to pull the pipe away and see only darkness on the other side. Stillness. Nothingness. It was as if she stared into death itself, into the black during overdark.
Taryka threw away the pipe and used her hands to widen the hole, pushing the engorged flesh out past her feet as she propelled herself forward, ever forward - and slipped into the darkness of the unknown.
END
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