by Karen Bao
Today, though, my joy has left no room for fear.
A HOVERCRAFT THE SIZE OF A SMALL WHALE arrives to spirit us toward the center city, its pill-like outline dark against the brightening sky. Painted teal with gold stars around the nose, the vehicle is shaped like a kidney bean and gives the stiff impression of official importance. We climb inside the open top, which is made of tinted glass, and take seats on the cushioned U-shaped bench hugging the vehicle’s walls. Wes sits dutifully next to his father, and I squeeze in between Andromeda and Yinha. The driver retracts the ceiling over our heads and floats us upward.
En route, we spend less time moving than bobbing amidst other hovercraft. These vehicles, which range from an eighth to half the size of ours, span the color spectrum from neon green to muted gray. The smallest ones roll through the air like tires. Above us, a hovercraft like a segmented worm parts the air: it’s tens of meters long and packed with people, probably a commuter tram.
Due to the high volume of traffic, my senses have more time to soak in Battery Bay’s sights, sounds, and—yes—smells. Exhaust, smoke, a hundred cuisines blending together. There’s a big, confusing world out there; it’s frightening and overwhelming. Part of me wants to hide from it, but part of me wants to explore every continent, every island of this mysterious waterlogged planet.
“You hungry?” the driver asks. He’s a small, blond man with a square chin and a prominent nose who speaks in slightly broken English. “Roti in overhead compartments.”
“Famished,” Yinha says. “Mr. Driver, you have your priorities straight. Thank you.” She takes down a huge insulated lunchbox and hands a paper package to each Dovetailer and Batterer. Wes and Alex’s Odan comrades sneer a bit at the processed food, so different from their people’s homegrown fare, but accept the packages anyway. Wartime turns even the pickiest eaters into omnivores.
When I unwrap my roti—green curry encased in flatbread—a wave of savory and piquant scents overwhelms my nose and fills my mouth with saliva.
“Go on,” Wes tells me, biting into his roti with the side of his mouth. “It’s not half as spicy as it smells.”
But when I chomp down, it’s like biting into lava. Green, fibrous lava that tastes like spinach, chicken, garlic, cumin, coriander, and a barrage of other spices I don’t know. My eyes tear up, and Wes smiles sheepishly. That smile alone makes my heart seem to sputter.
I’d almost forgotten what a good liar he is. At least this time it was harmless.
After swallowing and swigging water, I find I actually like the curry. Then guilt dulls my appetite. Dovetail hasn’t had meat, even the lab-grown stuff, in months. My siblings have probably forgotten what vegetables are. Still, I finish my portion; wasting food would only exacerbate my guilt.
“I’m sorry there so much delay,” says the driver.
“I thought you cosmopolitan folk called this time of day ‘rush hour,’” Wes points out, wiping his smirking lips with a cloth napkin.
“Wrong name. Everything slow down. Many hovercraft lanes close after Pacifia bombs—this things take long time to fix.”
“Mr. Driver, sir,” I say, eyes still smarting from the spicy food. “If there are fuel and food shortages, why are people still behaving like they did before?”
“Eh?” he says.
I repeat my question, more slowly this time.
“Oh,” the driver says, drawing out the word. “Battery Bay travel more, take more from poorer ally cities, make them have shortages. Still, everything more expensive here since the war start. Everything, I tell you.”
I polish off my roti and fold up the paper wrapper, looking for a compost bin. Unfortunately, the hovercraft doesn’t seem to have one; the Batterers toss their wrappers into a trash chute, and, biting my lip, I imitate them. Wasteful Earthbound, I think to myself. The Committee was right about that.
“We are trying to stabilize the economy,” Costa says, turning to face Andromeda. “We came here to the Sea of Japan to pick up raw metals for manufacturing; two days from now, we sail to the Philippine Sea. Our land-based allies there will have the crops we need.”
“See?” the driver says to us. “When we dock I’ll buy overpriced mango.”
“At least Parliament funds cover your vehicle’s fuel costs,” Costa jokes.
The driver nods. “So glad to be Parliament employee. If government stop paying fuel, I stop driving.”
Shortages across the Batterer alliance don’t bode well for us. I’ll need to convince Parliament that Dovetail would make good use of their limited resources—but how? My sense of dread grows as we fly past patches of damaged skyscrapers. Most have missing windows and lean to one side, with several or more floors caved in. The worst look like toothpicks snapped in half. Repair crews buzz around the buildings in hovercraft outfitted with cranes, staying within public no-go zones marked by blinking orange lights.
The traffic jam eases as we fly along the edge of Battery Bay’s enormous park, an area of forests and grassy fields several kilometers wide and walled in by skyscrapers. From here, the neighborhoods grow more multifaceted: storefronts with curved architecture, stone statues of women with fish tails and men holding three-pointed spears. The structures at ground level are made of brick, metal, stone, concrete; some have existed for ages, while others seem as if they were constructed yesterday.
At an intersection, a small vehicle painted black and yellow like a wasp cuts us off. The hovercraft driver slams his fist on the center of his steering wheel, causing our vehicle to emit a horrible squealing noise.
“Urban planning geniuses didn’t think to make one lane for government only?” Alex’s flat tone sounds condescending, but I know he doesn’t mean to be haughty. Wes sighs; Costa blinks, unsure what to make of Alex’s question.
“You mean . . . Parliament members occupying their own lane? We are not the Lunar Standing Committee. If we didn’t live like the rest of our people, how could we govern them?”
I bite my lip to keep from asking more questions. Battery Bay’s leaders not only go out in public and battle for one another’s votes in Parliament, they sit in air traffic that not even a pigeon could weave through. Would the Committee ever consider putting up with such inconveniences? And after years of living under their iron-fisted rule, does anyone in Dovetail understand what the word govern really means anymore?
“ABSOLUTELY NOT!”
The Batterer representative stands on a balcony across Parliament’s enormous spherical hall. She’s dressed in a white pantsuit with an enormous teal flower pinned to her lapel, her orange curls plastered to her scalp with some kind of gel, so that they look like frozen ripples in a magma sea. The indignation in her face makes me regret opening my mouth in pleading speech. I’ve fed Parliament comprehensive data on our shortages, the anthrax attack, and the deaths of Dovetail’s members, but that painful information may yet prove insufficient. Maybe numbers weren’t enough.
“My fellow members of Parliament,” the woman says, “I beg you: do not waste food, fuel, and ammunition on off-world revolutionaries with questionable intentions. Do not succumb to the cries of a child chosen to garner your sympathy.”
As the woman’s rejection sinks in, the hall wavers before my eyes. Will all of Parliament detect my vulnerability?
A thick metal arm connects Minister Costa’s balcony, upon which we stand, to the wall. Right now, it’s extended to place us in the room’s center. Andromeda sits next to me, Yinha periodically whispers in her ear, and Alex scribbles in his black notebook.
Prime Minister Sear, the head of state, stands behind us, occasionally pacing back and forth. I can almost hear him breathing down our necks. Mine in particular—I feel like he watches me with one eye and the rest of the room with the other. Although he’s simply dressed in a dark gray suit, his towering stature and the falcon profile shaved into the side of his head make him stand out. His silken tie gleams
like melted gold. Like every representative in the room, Sear sports an accessory that indicates party affiliation; about half wear gold, and the other half wear teal, like the woman who spoke out against me.
The fact that I’ve been here before doesn’t put me at ease. The spherical blue-green hall feels empty without the usual herd of reporters and lobbyists. They were shut out after Parliament called a high-security closed session.
More representatives speak against me, citing Battery Bay’s failed mission to democratize the Moon thirty years ago. They don’t trust that Dovetail’s small revolution will be worth thousands of young lives.
Fifteen minutes ago, during my own speech, how did I not anticipate these arguments and counter them? All my words feel like a waste now. Wes, who leans his elbow on the edge of Costa’s balcony, catches my gaze. He rolls his eyes, and I hold back a laugh. My heart doesn’t beat faster; it . . . warms up. That alone dissipates some of my frustration and exhaustion. We’ve stolen several glances at each other since entering Parliament, but I’ve generally confined him to my peripheral vision. In front of all these people and their cameras, letting my eyes settle on Wes would be akin to printing my feelings on a banner and hanging it from the ceiling. Those feelings belong to us, and us alone.
“The situation’s worse up there now compared to when the Battle of Peary took place,” one of Sear’s aides mutters to her colleague. “And still these representatives don’t want to get their hands dirty. I smell party politics, or reelection schemes . . .”
“There might not be Batterers around to reelect them,” another aide shoots back.
Across the hall, Representative Harrington of the Mississippi River Delta stands up to speak. He’s a balding, pasty man who’s dyed the stringy remains of his hair jet black. The faux gold lily pinned to his lapel gives me confidence. Instantly, he deflates it, announcing, “These particular Lunars’ intentions might be good, but cooperation on a large scale is impossible.”
I hold back a grimace—why would he argue against his own party’s agenda? Then I remember what Costa said on the runway when we first arrived: now that the war has expanded, each district has its own goals.
“The Moon’s residents are as different from us as the Pacifians. Their thirst for scientific progress has eroded their humanity. They neglect their poor, confining them to inhumane living conditions. To maintain the population, they tell women to have at least one child, but no more than three.”
Each of Harrington’s points feels like a punch in the gut. Peeking around the hall, I see nods of agreement. The worst Batterer prejudices against Lunars stare us Dovetailers in the face. And we can’t argue against them, because they’re based on fact.
Andromeda shoots to her feet, looking personally offended. “Those are things Dovetail will change, sir—”
The Batterer man plows on, ignoring her, and she sits back down unsteadily. “They have alien family values—none at all, in fact. Their last names are Greek letters, rendering the family unit unrecognizable. Brother betrays sister; parents keep secrets from children.”
Next to me, Andromeda and Yinha bristle. I have to speak again. But would that make things worse? I feel like a child cowering in the dark—nothing like the white-haired girl from the Chinese folktale Yinha told me once. One whose mere appearance struck fear into evildoers’ hearts, and whose words drew sympathy from the good.
“Representative—” Sear says. Glancing at our faces, he narrows his hawkish eyes at Harrington. “Representative, enough!”
Harrington sneers back at the Prime Minister. The two men must have clashed for years; I can almost smell the acrimony between them.
“Sear, I could argue for days about the Lunars’ degeneracy,” Harrington says. “And we’re still debating whether to trust them with an alliance?”
Despite my exhaustion, part of me roils with grief and rage. There’s a furnace buried inside me, and it roars to life every time someone denies someone else’s humanity, denies that every life is worthwhile, denies that my parents could have loved me.
“If they cannot even feel affection—”
Without thinking, I spring to my feet. “Stop!” I say into the microphone hovering in front of my face. Amazed at my own rudeness, and fearing the consequences, I watch its tiny propellers spin and speak through clenched teeth.
“You’ve got us all wrong. My parents fought Committee rule, knowing they would die for it. Why do something so . . . suicidal? They did it so that my brother, my sister, and I could grow up safe. They did it out of love—first for us, then for everyone who ever suffered under Committee rule.”
I take a deep breath and sweep my eyes over the room. “I hope Representative Harrington’s views don’t represent the entirety of Battery Bay’s. Because if they do, Dovetail will not ally with you. You wouldn’t deserve it.”
The hall goes so quiet that I hear cloth rustling as representatives and their aides shift and squirm. Their beady eyes inspect me for signs of weakness. Across the hall, a tall, brown-skinned aide with bright auburn hair grimaces at me, muttering something into a microphone at his neck. I glare at him until his lips are still. Then he turns sideways so that he’s no longer facing me. That’ll show him, I think with mild satisfaction.
When tension stretches the mood so thin it might snap at any moment, Prime Minister Sear gestures for me to sit down, his dark eyes glinting dangerously. The representatives chatter to each other.
“We should have stopped her, Lady A,” Alex whispers to Andromeda. I doubt he means for me to hear. “We can’t expect a yes vote now—we can only hope they won’t boot us out.”
With an electronic system and scoreboard, Parliament votes on whether or not to send troops to the Moon. The room lights up red; the proposition has lost, 490–242. Although Sear supported us, many members of his party must have voted with the opposition. I know I’m devastated, but the sensation doesn’t register in my body. I see the crestfallen expressions of Andromeda, Yinha, Alex, and, yes, Wes—and imagine the fear on my siblings’ faces if they knew how vulnerable this will make them. And yet, I don’t feel a thing.
Head held high, I walk behind the Dovetail members as they exit the auditorium. As we’re streaming out our balcony’s door, Sear grabs my upper arm. Alex notices and tries to turn back, but Sear’s Batterer guards restrain him. The lights in the hall are dimming, and the falcon head shaved into Sear’s scalp looks more and more as if it’ll attack me next. Trying not to panic, I turn my attention to the debate beginning in Parliament—something about hastening the city’s departure for the Philippine Sea, since Pacifian allies fill the Sea of Japan and Pacifia itself is approaching from the north.
“Was that story about your parents the truth, or did you lie to us again, Odan girl?” His fingers tighten around my arm. “You were an escaped Pacifian engine room slave the last time I saw you.”
Panicking, I shake my head.
“Which question does that answer?” His breath smells of basil leaves and red meat. “Last time, our city bent to your will—yours and that boy’s.”
I squirm, struggling to escape his grip. If he weren’t the Prime Minister of Battery Bay, I’d try to kick my way free.
“I’m not done, girl,” Sear growls. “I promised Battery Bay to eliminate the Pacifian-Lunar threat, and they will vote me out if I fail. Many of my party’s representatives have long hoped to fight the Committee and finally crush Pacifia. We could have formed some kind of alliance today, but it’s fallen to pieces. My own party split with me—because of your words.” He shakes my limp arm, furious about his tenuous grip on political power—like any Committee member. Even though he’s an elected official, responsible to millions of citizens, that commonality terrifies me.
“You are permitted to accompany your countrymen to the hovercar,” Sear says. “But do not enter the international hostel with them. Find another place to sleep. The ho
stel, a place of diplomatic goodwill, does not tolerate malicious intentions. Or liars.”
He releases my arm, and I back away, restraining myself from rubbing away the pain.
“If the guards see your face there, they will notify me immediately. Get out of Parliament.”
From down the hallway, I hear a hovercar’s engine revving up. But I’m too shocked to move.
“Out!” Sear thunders.
I rush from the hall as if speeding away will erase all that transpired here today. Everything went wrong, and it’s nobody’s fault but mine.
The same hovercraft that brought us here whisks us away. We’re heading to the temporary Odan settlement, where we’ll exchange intelligence with Wes’s father and the other Sanctuarists. Just what I need—more people who despise me. If I hadn’t been so ignorant and selfish last year, they’d still live on their beautiful islands. I led the Lunars and Pacifians right to them. By the time Wes and I finagled a survival plan involving booby traps and a Battery Bay intervention, we could only save the people—not all of them, and not Saint Oda itself—from obliteration.
“Great,” Yinha says. “Now we’ll have to find Phaet a place to sleep.” She looks at me. “Thanks to Sear. Not you.”
“He is hothead,” the hovercar driver comments under his breath.
“He’s punishing you unfairly.” Andromeda frowns like a mother whose child has been sent home from Primary. “I have half a mind to tell him all the things you’ve accomplished—and more.”
Her concern surprises me—maybe she’s started liking me more since we took off from the Free Radical. Or she’s always liked me, but couldn’t show it in front of Callisto.
“Don’t,” Yinha says. “We don’t have the leverage to argue with Sear over Phaet’s accommodations.”
