Among The Stars

by Robin Banks

“Oh. This you worry about? Is no problem for you. You are young, strong, pretty. You find work. Maybe is better for you. You have a house, family. You have a good life.”

  “But what are you going to do?”

  “I am not young. Not pretty. Strong is not so good when you are old like me. Nobody believes you. And I know to do one thing, and nobody needs that. Hard for me to start again.”

  “So what would you do?”

  “I go home. I find my brother. He has a house, children, grandchildren. I see his first child when he is a baby, nobody else. Maybe they don’t like me, but we are family. I go home and I cry, because my life is finished. I cry for my children.” He looks around at the animals and swallows hard. “This is worry for me. But is not worry for you, ok? You are ok.”

  “Where is your family?”

  “Pollux. Little place, far away. Very good, but very hard. Very poor.”

  “I’ve not heard of it. Sorry.”

  “No, this is what we like. Is good place. You would like. You work hard, you do well. And no Fed.”

  “What, like Anteia?”

  He laughs until he starts coughing. “No, no. On Anteia rich people have everything. On Pollux everyone has nothing. Like here, with us. Everyone works hard, everyone in the shit, everyone the same.”

  “I don’t understand how that can work.”

  “It doesn’t work so good. This is why we are poor. But we like poor and free more than rich under the Fed. Maybe one day you come visit. You bring your wives, your children. But now you do not worry about this. Now you think happy thoughts. Think that soon we are ok.”

  Tom whispers “Nicky, we’re not kids.” I’m not at all surprised that he would say that. I’m surprised at how gently he says it, though.

  “I am sorry for this. I am sorry you are not kids. Maybe one day you are. All the problems go away, and you can be kids. But now you work, you go home, you rest. Soon this is over.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Soon the animals have no food.” He bites his lip. “Then I have to do something. But please, do not worry. Something soon happen. You see.”

  3.

  I used to enjoy seeing Alya. I suppose I should still look forward to seeing her. I should hope that she’s bringing us good news. That never happens, though, so every time I see her these days I brace myself for the next blow. She never disappoints.

  “Do you want the good news or the bad news first?”

  Tom closes his eyes. “Out with it.”

  “Jameson’s decided to cut down on the air.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “Cutting costs. He’s not going to power the life support for the portabubble all day long. It’s going to be on first thing in the morning, last thing at night, and at lunchtime. You guys will need to get into the stables after breakfast and won’t be able to leave until lunch.”

  “What about carting out the shit?”

  “We’ll have to pile it up in here somewhere and cart it out when the air is on.”

  “Gods. This is getting a bit much.”

  I don’t know why, but the thought of being stuck in the stables for hours on end is making me sick. I don’t mind being in my bunk at night – it’s home and I’m asleep. This feels different. Alya must read something in my face, because she rushes on to tell us the rest of the story.

  “The good news is that you can have the afternoons off. I’ve not asked Jameson, but he won’t be able to check on you without suiting up, which he’ll never bother doing. You can have lunch, go off to the bubble, and come back before bedtime. Kolya and I can manage here. How’s that?”

  I’ve got to tell her something. The truth seems a good place to start. “Odd and horrid. Every time I think things can’t get any worse, they do.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. But it won’t be forever, ok? Only a few days. And you can have more time off.”

  “Somehow that doesn’t really help.”

  “It may help once you’re out of here. Get out of this squelch, get some decent food, check out the girls, whatever it is you guys do when you’re not working.”

  “Yeah. Alright.” I can’t make myself sound convincing. Alya looks more upset than when she came in. I feel like a heel, but I can’t feel good about this. It feels less like a break and more like a temporary expulsion.

  We still get the hell out as soon as we can, though. I have no intention of getting stuck here for hours waiting for the air to come back on.

  They’ve put ropes down the access tunnels now, all the way up to the bubble. The slope is too slippery otherwise, unless you want to crawl up on your hands and knees. Even with the ropes it’s hard work, but it’s worth it to get out.

  When we get to the top we’re fucking filthy. Our legs are plastered in mud to our knees and splattered all the way up. Our hands are caked in mud from the rope. The cuts in my hands are stinging like mad, so I wipe myself on my trousers. I can’t look worse than I already do.

  Tom tries to rub the stains off his trousers and swears. “We should have brought a change of clothes.”

  “And changed where? Anyway, I’m running out. Everything I have is wet or dirty. Or wet and dirty.”

  “We could get some new gear.”

  “You wanna try nicking stuff while we’re looking like this? No way. We’ll be lucky if we find anywhere that’ll let us in.”

  Sometimes Tom gets so angry that he can’t stop crying. He’s not upset or hurt, it’s just that all his anger builds up in his eyes. That makes him angrier, obviously, because he’s not the kind who cries in public. It all spirals horribly until he’s worked it all out of his system. There’s nothing I can do or say to help. I know, because I’ve tried plenty of times. Everything backfires. The only thing I can do is pretend that I can’t see it, that it’s all cool. That, or find him something safe to punch.

  We carry on up the main street. We’re sticking out like sore thumbs and all for the wrong reasons. Tom’s jaw is clenched so hard it’s gotta be hurting him. His eyes are burning with fury and streaming with tears. The cuts on my hands have started oozing again. We both look like hobos. I hope to fuck that nobody tries to stop us, talk to us, or even look at us the wrong way. If they do then it’s all gonna go down. We really don’t need that. Or maybe we do. We need something, for sure.

  Nobody approaches us, though. Nobody even looks at us. We’re just two more dirty nonentities on the street. We walk and walk until Tom’s fury subsides to a manageable level. I’m feeling worse with every step, with every reminder that nobody here cares if we live or die. It’s a familiar kind of feeling, though, so it’s alright. I can deal.

  We’ve been walking aimlessly, just following our feet, and somehow we’ve ended up at the ATR hub. We always end up there. These places must send some kind of signal out to people like us. The hubs attract us, and our presence repels almost everyone else. Who the hell wants to be around people like us, unless they really have to?

  I don’t want to be here either. It feels too much like home, and like trouble. But we’ve walked a long way, we have nowhere to go, and if anywhere is gonna serve us it’s gonna be a place near the hub. They serve anyone who can pay.

  We manage to find a table in a place so dark and dingy that nobody’s gonna mind the state we’re in. Once we’ve sat down, you can hardly tell how filthy we are, anyway. Our coats are still mostly clean. If I cover up my hands, we look normal. Normal for a slummy shithole like this one, anyway.

  Tom’s face has gone back to normal, too. He’s wearing his blank expression, the one for when he’s out in interesting places and doesn’t want people to read him. I’d forgotten how impersonal that felt. I’ve never been able to match it: I come out looking surly instead. I’m much better at making myself into a non-entity, so people don’t bother to read me at all.

  He taps his fingers on the table. One of them sticks to the surface. “I don’t think we’re going to get table service here. What do you want?”

  “Coffee
.”

  “Nothing to eat?”

  “Are you buying?”

  “Not likely.”

  “Coffee, then.”

  When he comes back, he slides my coffee right under my nose and talks into his cup. “You alright? You look like shit.”

  “I feel like shit. All I wanna do is lie down on this table and go to sleep.”

  “I wouldn’t. You’d probably stick to it. Place’s a shithole.”

  “Man, I’m sorry. So sorry.”

  “What are you on about? Place was a shithole before you walked in.”

  “I’m sorry about everything. About getting you into this. About how it’s worked out.”

  “This again? It’s bullshit. We’re no worse off than we started. At least we’re not on Celaeno. We’ve had some cool times and seen some cool places.”

  “And now we’re bogged the fuck down in a fucking place where only the shitholes will serve us.”

  “Back home was the same, and we were home. I’d rather be here. I’d rather be anywhere. This is our kind of place. We could make a living.”

  “Who the fuck’s gonna hire us? People cross the road to avoid us.”

  “We did alright last week.”

  “Short-term game. Not something we could keep up. And not something we could live on.”

  “So we may have to expand our activities. It would have been the same at home.”

  “At home we knew people. Here we’re cold and we’re poor and we’re fucked and nobody fucking cares. In this whole bubble, on this whole world, nobody cares about us apart from us. We could drop dead and nobody would bat an eyelid. Maybe they’d be annoyed at our corpses littering their streets, but they’d prefer that to having us alive and in their faces.”

  “Cut the fucking drama. Not a soul at home would have helped us if there wasn’t something in it for them. It’s just us. It’s always been just us.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “We do what we always do. Whatever we need to do.”

  I don’t like the look in his eyes. You back Tom into a corner and he’s gonna do anything to get himself out of it. I’ve never seen how far he can go. I don’t want to. I really wish I hadn’t started this now. I was so busy venting that I didn’t think that maybe he didn’t need to hear my crap.

  “You’re right. I was being dramatic. It’s not that bad. We can still sleep on show. We’re still getting wages.”

  His mouth twitches. “How long for, though? We need a fucking plan B. If the show folds, we need to have options.”

  “Alya and Kolya said…”

  He cuts me off. “They can say anything they want. They can promise you anything they like. Truth is, they can’t fix our lives for us. What are they gonna do?”

  “They’re gonna have to get jobs, I guess.”

  “And what, keep us? Until when? We need to sort ourselves out. And our options are precisely the same we had back home.”

  “Not quite. We’re not fucking kids anymore. You can pass for eighteen, easy. People are gonna take us more seriously.”

  “Until they look at our papers. Then we’re back where we started.”

  “How about getting fake papers?”

  “If we had enough credit or connections to get fake papers, we wouldn’t need fake papers.”

  “True dat.” I can’t help grinning.

  “That’s more like it. Cheer up. It’s just a bit of water, for fuck’s sake.”

  I look up at him and his eyes are so weird. I don’t know if he’s gonna laugh or cry. I hope he does neither, 'cause if he starts I know I’m not gonna be able to stop myself. He catches me staring and pulls a face at me.

  “Drink your fucking coffee. It won’t be any better when it cools down.”

  “True dat. If it gets cold enough, I might be able to taste it.”

  “You do not wanna do that.”

  “Nope.”

  “You fucking snob.”

  “Excuse me for having standards.”

  His face reassembles itself into blankness. He’s been scanning the room behind me all the time while we’ve been talking, same as I’ve done on his side. The doors have been opening and closing behind me all the way through, but nothing or nobody caught his attention. Now something has.

  I raise my coffee up to my face and mumble over it. “What up?”

  He leans back on his seat and stretches, casually managing to flex in the process, then runs his hands through his hair. Oh. That. Ok.

  I’m so not cool with this, but it’s not up to me. It’s never been up to me. I know that. Tom catches something in my expression, though, because his eyes flash with anger.

  “Problem?”

  “No.”

  “You’re not gonna be an asshole about this?”

  “Nope.”

  “Good.”

  “Can I look?”

  “No need. He’s walking over.”

  A guy ambles past our table, heading towards the shitter. He eyeballs Tom pretty hard going past. Tom checks him up and down before smiling. I don’t know what he’s got to be smiling about – the guy’s not much to look at. He’s not well-dressed, he’s not good-looking, and he’s looking at Tom like he’s a piece of meat. He’s not even remotely subtle about it. It makes my stomach churn.

  I suddenly realize that the guy doesn’t have to be subtle about it, that this side of the game has changed forever. Tom doesn’t look like a kid anymore. Banging him for credit may be illegal, depending on local laws, but wanting to bang him is perfectly fine. This is a huge deal and I’m not sure that Tom has thought through all the implications. I need to talk to him about it, but now’s not the time, because he’s in business mode. As soon as the shitter door shuts, he gets up.

  “Gonna find out what the deal is. If there’s one.”

  “Are you sure about this?”

  “Fucking chill. Get more coffee.”

  He walks off. I slide along my seat so I can have my back to the wall and keep an eye on the whole room. I hate this bit. I hate waiting to see if Tom is really going for it. I hate even more waiting for him while he's doing it. I just try not to think about it. Tom says that I’m full of shit, that it’s no different to him waiting for me to nick something, but that’s not right. The only thing I mind about stealing is the risk of getting caught. Tom carries on like what he does is all cool for him, practically free credit, but I don’t see how that can be true. I don’t get it. But my opinion doesn’t matter. I have a job to do, so I do it. These things don’t always go smoothly. I’m not much of a backup, but I’m the only backup he’s got.

  I’m starting to wonder whether I need to go and get another coffee to justify being here when Tom comes out. Not enough time for anything to have happened. I find myself breathing more easily. I don’t like his expression, though.

  He sits on his seat with his back to the wall, picks up whatever’s left of his cold coffee, and talks into the mug.

  “Two hundred.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Nope.”

  “Ok, so what is he? Patrol? Guards?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Man, I don’t care how expensive this place is. Two hundred can’t be the going rate.”

  “It’s legit, I think. There’s a catch.”

  “What catch?”

  “He wants you there.”

  “No fucking way.” I’m doing my level best to look like we’re just having a nice conversation about nothing much, but I’m not sure I’m managing. I can’t believe that Tom would even bring this up.

  “Not like that.”

  “Shut the fuck up about it.”

  The guy walks out of the shitter then and gives us both a good look. I don’t even try to hide my hostility, but that doesn’t faze him at all.

  “Luke? Just hear me out.”

  “You know where I draw the line.”

  “Yes. Your mother would be so proud.”

  “You leave my mother out
of this.”

  “Are you gonna fucking listen to me or what?”

  I let him talk because I’m so angry that I don’t trust myself to speak.

  “He doesn’t want you to do anything. Just to be there.”

  “He can go fuck himself.”

  “Will you please calm the fuck down and listen? He won’t touch you. He won’t try anything. You just have to be there. Two hundred.”

  “You are seriously asking me this. You’re not just talking about it. You’re asking me to do it.”

  “Riddle me this. You’re happy enough to stand outside a door, keeping an ear out for me, knowing what’s going on inside, but standing inside that same door is an issue? I’m sorry. I don’t get it. You’d be doing the same thing. You’d be just as involved.”

  I know that’s not right, but I don’t know why. It doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel like the truth. But all those words in a line make sense and I don’t know what to say to make them go away.

  “Luke. Two hundred. How many days of air is that? I may need it. And it’s not the going rate. I’d be doing it once, instead of a bunch of times.”

  That’s that. I can’t say no. I fucking can’t. I can’t even be angry at Tom for this. He’s making sense and I’m not. The fact that I hate every bit of this doesn’t make any difference. Here and now, he’s right and I’m wrong.

  I nod.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. Whatever. Where?”

  “Not here. Too obvious. He knows a place.”

  I get up. “Get on, then.”

  We get out of that shithole and hang out outside for a bit. The guy comes out and starts walking down the street. We follow him. If anybody is watching, it probably looks like we’re about to mug him. I fucking wish we were. I’d be much more comfortable with that, but the risk’s too high.

  The guy dives into another shithole, hands some credit to a guy at the counter who barely looks up, and carries on walking towards the back. Tom follows the guy and I follow Tom. In a flash I realize that the hubs are not stars we’re orbiting around; they’re fucking black holes, and we’re trapped, spiraling around them in ever-decreasing circles. With every cycle it gets harder and harder to pull away. One day we’ll just be sucked right in and then fuck knows what will happen to us.