FSF, September 2008

by Spilogale Authors

  "No.” Osaji realized that she had made it sound trivial and self-indulgent. “It is necessary for opportunity. To broaden one's self."

  "Education, then?"

  Knowing the next question would be which offworld academy had admitted her, Osaji said, “No. It is better to work one's way."

  "Financial enrichment?"

  "No!” That was antisocial selfishness. “A person needs to learn the ways of the great worlds, to experience different cultures. How else can a person's mind expand? Ben is small and stifling."

  Though she had spoken the last words very softly, the agent caught them. Outwardly, the woman did not react, but her questions changed.

  "Has the Great Work ceased to inspire?"

  "No.” Osaji shifted nervously. She still felt the Great Work of creating a habitable planet from this cratered ball of ice was a noble one, and she honored the dedication of the generations who had gotten this far. But it was slow, centuries-slow, and she would not live to see it done. If she did not leave, she would never even see what a habitable planet looked like. “It is just.... We are free to leave? They always say so."

  The agent smiled, making her even more formidably pretty. “Of course. It is just that clients often think they wish to leave when what they really need is to solve some personal problem. It would be very selfish to ask us to spend the resources to send a person off-planet just because someone cannot face an obligation."

  The shame Osaji felt then was like nausea, a sickness rising from her stomach. The woman had seen right through her. Osaji had tried to cloak her cowardice in brave fantasies to make it look less ugly. The truth was, leaving Ben meant abandoning her own grandmother, that sweet and helpless aged who had raised her and who now chained her with responsibility she didn't want. It was so low, Osaji sat staring at her hands folded in her lap, unable to raise her eyes. And yet, losing her hope of escape felt so painful she couldn't move from the chair, couldn't let some other more deserving person take her place.

  The agent said gently, “Very few people who leave Ben like it on other worlds. We are not suited for that sort of life. Besides, it is nobler to face things here than to flee."

  Osaji made no sound, but prickly tears began to brim over and drip on her clasped hands. She tried to think as a noble person ought to, about bravely facing her problems, but instead she felt a black resentment. Mota would live for many years yet. Her body did not make her old; her straying mind was the problem. The disease had come upon her early—so early that Osaji, the last grandchild, did not yet have a life of her own, and so became the family solution. The true tragedy was Mota's. But being her caretaker, there was nothing to aim for—no goal, only monotonous endurance until the end. And then what? All Osaji's chances would be gone by then.

  At that lowest point, when her prison seemed impenetrable, she was distracted in the most irritating way, by a raised voice at the desk next to her. A wiry, weatherbeaten foreigner was berating his agent.

  "Are you going to get your prigging rear in gear, or do I have to raise hell?"

  The man's agent, a timid young woman who looked acutely embarrassed by the attention he was drawing, tried to calm him in a low tone.

  "Don't you whisper at me, you simpering little bureaucrat,” he said even louder. “You are going to give me a visa and a ticket on the first shuttle out of this clam steamer, or you are going to hear some real decibels."

  "Please, sir,” she pleaded. “Shouting at your agent will not solve your problem."

  "You don't know what a problem is, sister. At this rate, you're going to know pretty soon."

  Osaji's agent went to the rescue of her traumatized colleague. “What seems to be the issue?"

  The unkempt offworlder turned on her. He was only half-shaved, and wore mercenary coveralls. “The issue, my dear, is this whole lickspittle planet—on which vertebrate life does not yet exist. The entire goddamned culture is based on passive aggression. Don't you all know this is a frontier? Where's your initiative, your self-reliance? Where are your new horizons? I've never seen such an insular, myopic, conformist, small-minded bunch of people in my life. This planet is a small town preserved in formaldehyde. Get me out of here!"

  Osaji had often thought the same things about Ben, but hearing them expressed so coarsely made her bristle. The intensity of the emotions she had been feeling reversed polarity, turning outward at the hateful offworlder beside her. He had had chances she would never get, and what had he done with them?

  A manager came out from one of the back offices and tried to draw the man into a private room to pacify him. The offworlder, perhaps sensing he would lose his audience, stood up to defend his ground. He was short and his spindly legs were a little bowed, but he had a ferocious demeanor.

  "Do you know who you're talking to, son?” he said. “Ever hear of Scrappin’ Jack Halliday, who captured Plamona Outpost in the War of the Wrist?” When no one around him showed the slightest recognition, he gave an oath. “Of course not. You bottom-dwellers don't care about anything unless it happens ten feet in front of your noses."

  The manager tried to be conciliatory, but Osaji could see it would have no effect. Her anger had been burning like a slow fuse all last round, and now it reached the end. She stood up and shouted, “Did you come here just to make us listen to your profanity and your complaints? If you can't make it on Ben, that's too bad—but stop whining!"

  Scrappin’ Jack looked like he had been ambushed from the direction he least expected. Rattled, he stared at Osaji as if hearing phantom sniper fire, and all he said was, “What the—?"

  A little appalled at what she had done, Osaji sat down again facing her agent. At last the manager was able to lead the intemperate offworlder away. The office slowly resumed its normal functioning.

  "That's what they're all like on the other worlds,” Osaji's agent said in a low voice. “An emigrant has to cope with that, day in and day out. Are you sure—?"

  "No,” Osaji said. “I think the lifestream put him there to show me something. I am not supposed to leave Ben."

  The agent smiled encouragingly.

  "I am grateful for your good work.” Outwardly composed again, Osaji gathered up her bags and left, feeling wrung out but relieved.

  * * * *

  2. Barnacles and Floaters

  Osaji's sister Kitani lived with her family in a dome that was divided up into pie-shaped Domestic Units surrounding a central dining and recreation area. Kitti's DU was on the second floor, meaning it was smaller, though the family had been on the waiting list for an upgrade for two rounds. It was one of the compromises people made to live barnacle. Brother-in-law Juko answered the door with a red-faced, howling baby in his arms. He was a gangling man with a perpetual, slightly goofy smile—and it was just as well, for the hubbub he ushered her into would have induced hypertension in anyone less tuned out. The DU had only two rooms—a sleeproom and an everything-else room—and their older daughter was having a tantrum in the sleeproom. The main room was simply crammed with furniture, cookware, baby strollers, clothes, and diaper bins. Mota's baggage formed an obstacle in the middle of the floor. “Tell your Aunt Saji it is good to see her,” Juko shouted to the baby in his arms. As an in-law, it wasn't polite for him to speak to Osaji directly.

  Osaji dumped her bags on the floor—there was nowhere else to put them—and tried to give Juko a greeting just as the baby threw up all down his front. He smiled as if his face didn't know what else to do, and disappeared into the sleeproom.

  Osaji's grandmother sat in an armchair, looking slightly dazed. Kitti came out of the sleeproom and gave Osaji a frazzled hug. Looking at the mound of baggage, she said, “Is it that you're changing arks?"

  "Yes,” Osaji said. “It wasn't a good fit, with Cormorin.” Propriety forbade her to come any closer to speaking ill of others.

  "That's too bad,” Kitti said with a remote, distracted sympathy, as if it didn't concern her. Osaji wanted to pull her aside right then and make her pl
ea, but it didn't seem like the right moment.

  The right moment didn't come that evening, either—a crowded, chaotic succession of rearrangements, feedings, and infant outbursts. Not until the next morning did Osaji and Kitti get some time alone together, when they took the children to the playground in an adjoining dome. They sat on a bench and watched barnacle children frolic under the overhanging sea.

  Kitti was first to bring up the subject. “Mota's really deteriorated,” she said. The bald declaration—not tentative, not a question—showed how shocked she had been. It made Osaji uncomfortable.

  "You think so?” she said, though it was exactly what she had wanted to talk about.

  "Don't you? She's much more weak and unsteady on her feet. You ought to get her more exercise. You know, ageds can still build up muscle tone if they work at it."

  "Ah,” Osaji said.

  "And her mind seems to be wandering. She repeats herself, and loses track of what people are saying. You need to stimulate her more, challenge her mentally, get her involved."

  "Isn't it just that she is old?” Osaji said.

  Kitti mistook it for a real question. “Age doesn't have to mean deterioration. There are plenty of ageds who are still intelligent and active."

  "But Mota's not."

  "No, she needs to be encouraged to improve herself."

  Osaji felt an upwelling of desperation. “I've been wondering whether an ark is the best setting for her. Perhaps she would be better off elsewhere."

  "Where?” Kitti said. “The domes for the aged are overcrowded, and you can't get anyone in without a medical permit. She's not that badly off."

  "Still, it's really hard in an ark. There's no room for unproductives in an ark. And it's not just her; she makes me an unproductive too, because I have to look after her. It's two wasted berths, not just one.” And two wasted lives.

  Abruptly, Kitti changed the subject. “What about you? Have you met anyone?"

  Osaji thought back on the slow torture of the last round: every day regimented by the need to look after Mota punctually. Not once had she broken free from that elastic band of obligation. Not for one moment had Mota been completely out of her mind. There had been no space left for anything else.

  "You could register, you know,” Kitti said. “The computers do a good job matching people."

  Most Bennites found mates this way. In a place where everyone lived in isolated pockets scattered about the seafloor, it was the most practical way to meet someone compatible. Osaji had resisted it for years, out of a waning hope that she would meet someone the old, magical way, guided by the fateful currents of the lifestream. At the thought of her naivete, she felt a sharp ache of disappointment. “Who would take a mate with an aged attached?” she said, and the bitterness sounded in her voice.

  Kitti finally heard it. “You can't let her ruin your life,” she said.

  Though Kitti had not meant to sound accusatory, Osaji felt it that way. She burst out, “Kitti, if you would only take her for a round...."

  "Me?” Kitti said in astonishment. “I have the young ones. You've seen our DU."

  "I know.” But the young ones, the DU—they were all Kitti's choices. Osaji had had no choices of her own. Kitti's had foreclosed all of hers.

  The feeling of constriction returned. The thought of another round like the last was unendurable.

  "I'm afraid,” Osaji said in a low voice, “that I'm going to start to hate her."

  Warmly, Kitti put an arm around Osaji's shoulder and hugged her tight. “Oh, you would never do that. You're a good and loving granddaughter. What you do for her is really admirable.” She looked in Osaji's bleak face and said coaxingly, “Come on, smile. I know you love her, and that's what counts."

  Kitti had gotten so used to dealing with children that she couldn't interact any other way. All problems seemed like childhood problems to her, all solutions reduced to lollipops and lullabies. Osaji stood abruptly, wanting to do something evil, wanting to do anything but what a good and loving granddaughter would do.

  That evening, after dinner, she rose and said, “It is necessary to go on an errand.” Luckily, Kitti and Juko were busy with the children, and no one offered to go with her.

  The docks were still crowded with delivery carts, baggage handlers, and floaters coming and going. She walked down the harshly lit aisle, pausing at each tubular port where arkmates had posted their crew needs. She hurried past Cormorin's port, noting resentfully that they were advertising two berths.

  While she was reading a posting for a hydroponics technician, wondering if she could pass, a too-familiar voice made her whirl around and look. There he was—the outworlder, Scrappin’ Jack, trying to impress a circle of young longshoremen. She could hardly believe the authorities had not gotten rid of him. As her eyes fell on him, he looked up and saw her. “Holy crap,” he said, “it's the shrew."

  Quickly she looked away to avoid any further contact, but he was not so easily discouraged. Pushing through the traffic, he came to her side. He was barely taller than she, a compressed packet of offensiveness. “Listen,” he said, “about yesterday, in that office—you've got to understand, I was tripped out on cocaine."

  As if that were an excuse. She scowled. “Why would an outworld mercenary come here?"

  He gave a dry, rasping laugh. “Sister, you're not the first to ask. They asked me all through those godawful treatments for high-pressure adaptation. But rumor was, there were empty spaces here, unexplored territory, room to spread out. All true—it's just under tons of water, and the habitations are a bit too togetherly for me."

  An idea occurred to her, brilliant in its spitefulness. “Has he considered going on floatabout? That is the way to explore Ben.” To spend months trapped in a bubble drifting through opaque blackness, that was the real Ben. It would drive the man mad.

  "You think so?” he said.

  "Yes,” she said encouragingly. “There is an ark looking for new crew. It's named Cormorin, just down the hall there. An applicant should ask for Dori."

  He looked like he was actually considering it. “Why not?” he said. “It couldn't get worse. Thanks, kiddo."

  As he was turning to go, the floor shifted slightly underfoot, and the hanging lamps swayed. He stumbled. “Whoa,” he said, “I thought I was sober.” Osaji didn't bother to tell him it had been a ground tremor, all too common here along the cleft. She turned to escape the other way.

  Across the hall, at the mouth to the next port, a tall, lean woman with a patch over one eye was watching, cross-armed. As Osaji passed, she said, “Is someone looking for an opening?"

  Osaji stopped. The woman's shaggy hair was gray-streaked, but she looked fit, with a composed, cool look of self-sufficience about her. The eye patch seemed like an affectation, a declaration of nonconformity, and Osaji suddenly decided she liked it.

  "Lura of Divernon,” the woman introduced herself.

  "Osaji of ... nowhere, right now."

  "Divernon needs a hand to help out at odd jobs, particularly wet ones."

  Osaji looked down. “Your applicant enjoys wet.” She could not say she was good at it—that would seem unhumble—but she was. “Her profile is listed in the registry."

  "I don't need to see her profile,” Lura said. “I just saw her handle that offworld jerk."

  Osaji looked up, astonished that anyone would commit to a crewmate without studying their compatibility profile. Lura's one eye was disconcertingly alert, but laughing. From her face, it looked like she often laughed.

  "Does the young adventurer come with anyone else?” she asked.

  Osaji blushed, feeling a pang, but said, “No."

  "It would not matter if they were less than married.” Lura had mistaken the cause of the blush.

  "How many does Divernon hold?” Osaji asked, to change the subject.

  "Myself, Mikita—and you. We were hoping to get a couple to join us, but we can't wait any longer. The Authority wants us to vacate this port tonight."


  "Just three?” It was a skeleton crew. They would work hard, but enjoy a lot of privacy.

  "Divernon's last crew got married and left us,” Lura said wryly. “Maybe a single will be safer."

  That sounded like a happy ark, if a little lonely. But just now, lonely seemed good. “The ark leaves tonight?” she said.

  "Can Osaji of nowhere be ready?"

  "Yes. She needs to fetch her baggage."

  "Fetch away,” Lura said.

  As Osaji hailed an electric cart, she could scarcely believe what she was doing. Joining an ark on impulse, without studying the others’ profiles, without even meeting one of the two she would spend the next round with. It was an act of lunacy, or desperation.

  When she got back to Kitti's DU, she had the cart driver wait out of sight while she went in, hoping to find the others preparing for bed so she could slip out unseen. Juko was in the sleeproom putting the children to bed, but Kitti was still in the front with Mota. She had opened up Mota's baggage and was sorting through it. One wastebasket was already overflowing with items she had decided to discard.

  "What are you doing?” Osaji said.

  "Getting rid of some of the useless junk she is hauling around,” Kitti said with efficient cheerfulness. “Really, Saji, haven't you looked through these bags? Some of this stuff must be fifty years old.” She held up a battered wooden flute, missing its reed. “What's this for?"

  It was the flute Great-uncle Yamada had played on the day they married the two arks, Steptoe and Elderon, when Mota was young. Osaji had heard the story so many times she had often thought she would scream before hearing it again. She looked to Mota, expecting her to start the tale, but the old lady was withdrawn and silent.

  "Do you play it?” Kitti asked pointedly. Mota shook her head. “Then what use is it? Why carry it around?"

  "Do whatever you want with it,” Mota said, looking away. “I don't mind."

  Kitti stuffed it in the trash bin.

  Osaji looked at the discards. There was the dirty plush toy their grandfather had given Mota when she first got pregnant, the rock Yamada had brought from the surface, the little shell pendant for luck. Osaji knew all the stories. “Kitti, these things are hers. You can't just throw them out."