Dove Arising

by Karen Bao

  “After much deliberation”—he emphasizes the last word with a brief incline of his head—“and with a formal commission from the Standing Committee . . . We award Phaet Theta the rank of captain.”

  27

  DISBELIEF CLOUDS MY VISION EVEN AS MY chair lurches forward. Ecstatic, I nearly topple off; the lower half of my face smarts from smiling.

  The applause deafens me. I disembark and walk toward the General on the platform. Like Jupiter, he squeezes my hand so hard that the bones chafe against cartilage.

  The insignia is a squat silver dagger that reads CAPTAIN, with PHAET THETA embroidered below. Yinha beams at me as the General attaches the badge to my chest, indicating her own with a reedy finger. Like her, I now have teaching privileges and, in wartime, command of a company of soldiers. It’s the first time I’ve seen her smile.

  When I return to the viewing platform, the General makes more tiresome comments about pride and patriotism. Finally, he lets the restless trainees leave. We must pack our things away; tomorrow we’ll move into new quarters in the main part of the Defense compound, and neophyte trainees will take our place in the barracks.

  I don’t have much to bring, only a few sets of shirts and pants and my old white robes. I thought my load would contain more, but I realize that the things I was preparing to take aren’t material. They’re people. Nash, Eri, Orion . . . With my new title, I won’t see them often.

  Nash voices my thoughts. “Training was . . . tough. And I’m sorry for being mean to you the first week. But I was glad to have you around—I’ll think about you a lot, Stripes.”

  When she embraces me, she plants a sloppy kiss on my cheek that makes me feel happy and sad at the same time.

  Other people come up to my cot and hug me. The finality of this farewell hits like a side jab from Wes, hammering in the reality again and again. If I ever see my friends, it will be to lead them on missions or patrol. I’ll give them direct orders and evaluate their performances. Two years from now, when they go on to Specialization or return home, I must stay in Defense.

  What about the greenhouses? Finishing Primary? Finding a job in Bioengineering, as I’ve studied to do for ten years? And Umbriel—will he want to spend his life with a soldier? I’ll never have the life of quiet innovation that I’d imagined.

  Ninety-nine percent of base doors are now open to me via my captain’s fingerprint, but hundreds of intangible ones are shutting tight. I did join Militia without thinking about the long-term repercussions. If I hadn’t left home for this place—to rescue Mom, to keep my family safe—I could still be looking at my future with a hint of happiness.

  Instead, my life is on autopilot.

  But there on my handscreen are 3,500 Sputniks, waiting to leap out of the family account and free Mom.

  Mind fuzzy, I make my way through the twisting corridors to the Defense exit. Yinha is waiting for me. She grabs my arm.

  “I need to talk to you for a few minutes. It’s important—about your new job.”

  “Gotta go.” I accelerate, but Yinha’s fingers dig into my flesh. Her inconsistency hurts my head. I don’t know when she’ll act friendly or push me around like a superior, a position—stupefying, no?—she no longer holds.

  “Where to? It must be important, because I’ve got urgent advice for you. Your captain duties technically started the minute you got that insignia. Thought you’d want some pointers from me before you mess up.”

  I freeze. Leaving Mom in Penitentiary for a second longer than necessary pains me, but she must wait a few minutes for me to dampen Yinha’s obvious suspicion by complying.

  We walk into the busy dinnertime hallways of Base IV, where the security pods spread their attention among hundreds of commuters. The clamor will muffle whatever Yinha wants to say. People stand straighter as we pass, moving out of our way when they see the patches on our jackets. We reach the Atrium in record time. Adding to the strangeness is the realization, when I peek into a civilian security mirror, that Yinha is shorter than I remembered—shorter than me, in fact.

  “First of all, congratulations. Saw something in you from day one.” Yinha’s tone isn’t condescending or flat; she doesn’t even utter the word cool. She pulls me into the entrance of the Market Department. People are buying groceries or sitting at small circular tables, shoveling cooked food into their mouths.

  “Dinner’s on me. That’s nonnegotiable.” She reaches into a refrigeration unit and snatches two packages of sushi; each piece has been molded into a star shape, with either white or black rice. Her handscreen flashes as Sputniks are deducted. I’m too shocked to object. I’ve never had sushi before; seaweed cultivation and laboratory meat formulation are notoriously costly. Will my new life be like this—having the money to casually buy luxury dinners for other people?

  As we move toward the rear of Market, a dark-eyed private, at least four years older than me, emerges from a group of friends and presents me with the back of his hand.

  “Captain? Can I have your autograph?”

  Beside me, Yinha smirks but remains silent. One of the other boys whispers something, causing the rest to snigger into their palms.

  With my forefinger, I open a blank document on the private’s handscreen and shakily scrawl my initials. Only thirty minutes have passed since my promotion, but it has been enough time for my notoriety to spread through Defense. This soldier wants to get a piece of me, before it reaches the remainder of the base. People will discuss me when I’m not around, which is bad enough, and not because I discovered or invented something useful. Base residents admire our best researchers and engineers but fear top military personnel. I don’t want to be feared.

  “Thank you! I’ll keep this close to my heart.” The private inclines his head and takes off with the rest of the group, leaving my cheeks too fiery for my liking.

  “Typical fan boy. He was supposed to salute you first. Not cool.” Still wearing a superior smile, Yinha chooses a tiny table at which we’re enveloped by noise. She opens her sushi but otherwise ignores the food. Her dark eyes rotate, scanning the vicinity for security pods and finding none. Those things wouldn’t stalk two officials with clean criminal records.

  “Do you know why you’re a captain?”

  “My training score?”

  “You scored well, but you had only three points more than Wezn. And we employ enough captains in Militia already.”

  Does Yinha consider me a threat to her position? It’s plausible, but no ill-meaning officer would buy her colleague a dinner of sushi—maybe cucumber salad.

  “Who had the idea to rank me so high?”

  She pulls a sour face. “The General. Jupiter’s father.”

  My mouth drops open. To cover my surprise and vulnerability, I drop a piece of sushi on my tongue with the sterilized glass chopsticks. The wasabi sticking to the roll hits my eyes, which involuntarily leak tears.

  Yinha continues. “Some people in the scoring panel didn’t like your little stunt during the third evaluation—steering the ship away from the enemy target against Jupiter’s direct orders. You’re lucky you got the points that you did.”

  “But it was a civilian ship—”

  “It would’ve been a threat to the Bases if it were really Batterer. If there had been soldiers aboard, if they were posing as civilians and later carried out an attack— Well, chaos.”

  Yinha chomps on a piece of wasabi-laden sushi. Her eyes don’t water at all. “Some of them didn’t like your leadership style in the last evaluation either. Not enough valor, they said, though I argued that you displayed an unusual amount.”

  “Thanks.”

  “They know about your workouts with Wes, but they liked the effort, so they let those continue. There are so many security pods zooming around Defense, several of which filmed you. They’re even in the troops’ residences.”

  Surveillance—I guess I expected that. “Are they watching me now?”

  “There are at least three pods in your new apartment
. I know because I counted three in mine.”

  The rice from the sushi sticks in my throat.

  “I don’t like being watched but, obviously, it’s for my safety and the security of the Bases.”

  I make a big show of checking the time on my handscreen.

  “My family’s waiting for me,” I say, telling a quarter of the truth.

  “Pity.” Yinha crosses her arms and drums her fingers on her triceps. She doesn’t believe me. “Hold on a few more seconds and let me finish—cool? Listen, I don’t interact much with the higher-up commanders. But I know them. They have some larger motive for promoting you to captain—larger than putting you in an apartment with three pods to watch you—but I don’t know what it is. Be careful, Stripes.”

  I don’t want to listen anymore, because she could very well be right. Disregarding my manners, shuddering at what the Militia’s “larger motive” might be and whether it has anything to do with the accusations against Mom, I stuff my mostly uneaten sushi into my empty canteen and rise from the table. “Thanks for the food. My sister would love to try sushi.”

  “Be back before curfew,” Yinha says. “I need to escort you to your new home.”

  Not quite. Home has never been anywhere other than apartment number 808, Theta complex. This new apartment will simply be where I sleep.

  28

  I SPREAD MY FEET AS WIDELY ON THE FLOOR of the Law lobby as I can without looking absurd and point in a haughty manner to the insignia on my chest. Several of my Militia subordinates line the walls, giving me an extra incentive to look authoritative.

  “I’m here to pay Mira Theta’s bail.”

  The middle-aged receptionist flips through the touch screens around her desk. She has smooth, dark skin and a wide nose that looks proportional when her lips stretch into an even wider smile.

  “You’re her genius older daughter, no? She told me stories about you.”

  I drop my stiff Yinha face, taken aback.

  “I’m usually with the prisoners, keeping them in line—well, Mira never needed to be kept in line. Today is my desk day.”

  We shake hands; she pulls back as soon as my profile appears on her handscreen, intimidated by my Militia rank. Glancing down at my handscreen, I learn that she’s Deima Upsilon, Penitentiary warden.

  “Now put your left hand up on the counter. . . .”

  I pull up my family’s loaded bank account and present her with my handscreen.

  “This is a great day for Mira. She’s getting out of custody and finding out her daughter’s a captain.”

  Is she worried? She sounds overly optimistic.

  Deima taps my handscreen and presses her thumb to it. The touch screens on her desk flash the words, BAIL AUTHORIZED. Without the bail money, my family still has more than two hundred Sputniks to spare. Good.

  “All righty,” says Deima. “Your mom’s trial just got moved up about fifteen months, to this August the twenty-fourth, 17:00, in Law Chamber 144. Sound good?”

  I’m so relieved I could skip across the lobby. My family now has a year and a half less to wait. Maybe the change means Law will treat Mom with mercy. I breathe slowly, fighting the sudden hope. It’ll probably lead to disappointment.

  “Miraculous.” Deima laughs at her own pun. I can see why Mom got along with her. “Enough dallying. Come with me.”

  Deima takes me through the lobby and two sets of doors into the dimly lit Penitentiary tower. We board an elevator with graying walls.

  “I’m not supposed to let people into the prison area, but you shouldn’t have to wait any longer to see your mom. Besides, Captain, you’re part of the 0.2 percent of Base IV’s population that’s allowed up here.”

  Deima’s clever. I’m glad that Mom had her.

  We get off at the fourteenth floor. My pupils dilate as soon as the elevator doors close behind us. Floor 14 is completely dark and completely silent. Using my handscreen for illumination, I discern long spans of identical doors curving into the distance on my left and right. Militia guards are positioned every fifty meters or so along the wall. The halls branch off quickly. The architects of this place did a good job ensuring that it would be difficult for anyone to get in or out.

  Deima stops at Cell 1494. What an unlucky number.

  “Don’t be scared when you see your mom. I . . . I didn’t do this to her,” Deima says. “It was the other wardens. Really, don’t be scared.”

  Her words don’t have the effect she intends. They terrify me.

  Deima presses her thumb to the scanner, sticks her tongue out for another contraption to verify, and says slowly into some sort of microphone, “Deima Epsilon.”

  All three detectors blink green. One by one, three sets of double doors slide open to reveal a tiny white cylindrical cell so small that my arms can span its radius. There’s a stool in the center of the room, with a sad little pail pushed underneath to hold human waste. Other than that, there’s something I can barely identify as a person, curled on a ragged mat, robes torn and browned with grime. She seems to be sleeping, if it’s possible to sleep while in such a state.

  My mother’s waist-length hair is gone. Black fuzz covers her skull; her head is small and bumpy, unrecognizable. But the intelligent eyes that fly open when the doors slide apart are indisputably my mother’s, as are the flared nostrils and the overall expression of disbelief.

  “Phaet—you came for me.” My mother stretches out her hand, but I’m too paralyzed with joy to do anything but stare. “Welcome to my luxury apartment.”

  “I’m here to evict you,” I fire back, pulling her into a hug and doing my best not to crush her. I’ll never let go of her again.

  “You two are free to go,” Deima says. “Good luck with the trial, Mira.”

  “Thank you.” Mom takes Deima’s proffered hand and stands. She puts her hand on my cheek, as if checking to see whether this strange soldier is really her offspring. She squeezes the skin over the bone, as she used to do when I was younger, but it hurts far more than when my face was fleshy and her fingers weren’t feeble twigs coated with greenish skin.

  Deima claps her on the shoulder. “You’re my favorite inmate. I’m going to miss you.”

  “You were my favorite warden. I’ll miss you as well, but I hope I never see you again.”

  All three of us laugh.

  I take her arm, and we shuffle back the way I came. My mother slips every few meters, her legs clumsy with disuse. Seemingly smaller than ever, she positions herself behind me whenever we pass a helmeted guard, like a novice private caught in enemy fire. The Beetles ignore us, except to salute in response to my insignia.

  When we reach the bustling Atrium, Mom staggers again from the sudden increase in sensory input, shuts her eyes, and jams an index finger in each ear.

  I pull her to a bench on the side of the dome, as she used to do for me when I was younger and all the people in the Atrium frightened me. If everything were as nature meant it to be, Mom wouldn’t lean on me for another twenty years.

  In the security mirrors, I see people staring at us with morbid inquisitiveness, drawn by the irony of what probably looks like a streaky-haired crone guiding a starved, black-haired boy to refuge.

  Mom points at the insignia on my chest. “Congratulations, my girl.” She sounds anything but happy. “Militia—of all the things in the universe . . .” Mom sits on her handscreen, lowers her voice to a whisper, and puts her lips by my ear. “Do you have friends there? Do you feel safe?”

  I nod, even though both my friends and true safety are now far away.

  It’s enough for Mom. She straightens again. “Would you come home, maybe once a week?”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  She looks away. “This might not be justified—but I worry that you’ll change, Phaet. You’re so strong and brave, and I like to think I’ve taught you well . . . but what if you forget where you come from?” She pulls back the sleeve of her stained robe to expose open cuts and half-formed scabs. “
My guards seem to have forgotten.”

  I lean back, repulsed by her festering wounds, even as grief constricts my trachea.

  “Full-powered Electrostuns, Phaet. They sliced my hair with a dagger, and my scalp along with it.” Mom’s voice rises. “They drugged my water, giving me dreams of you three—distorted and hazy dreams. And they laughed—they thought everything was funny—seemed to enjoy tormenting me—”

  “Mom, stop!”

  “—and I could hear them playing handscreen checkers when they were done with me. Checkers.”

  Mom spent fifteen years sheltering me from the darker departments. She’s always hidden the important things—like when I had a sister on the way; I didn’t know until I asked Dad what was wrong with Mom’s belly.

  Mom’s head droops so that her chin nearly touches her visible sternum. “I’m sorry I told you these horrible things, Phaet. But you’re growing older, and you deserve to know all about the organization you’ve joined. Oh, I wish you hadn’t! In training, you could have been paralyzed, or dead, or made mentally ill for the rest of your life.”

  “All for you.” She’s doing something that I’ll never understand, something that mothers inexplicably do: agonize about their children in the most hypocritical of instances. She shouldn’t concern herself with my health; she can hardly stand, while I’m stronger than ever.

  “I can’t find words in this Journalist head of mine to sufficiently thank you for it.” Mom squeezes my hand hard; the gesture seems to use up all the strength in her body. She rises, takes a few staggering steps, and then looks back. “Let’s go to Cygnus and Anka.”

  I tail her and latch onto her arm. Although she smiles back at me, her eyes glaze over and avoid contact with mine. Now that I’ve become a captain, she can’t look at me the way she used to. She can hardly look at me at all.