by M M Buckner
At last, the volley of gunfire ended with Heaven still intact Cycling through the lock took far too little time, and when Kaioko opened the hatch to sick-ward, a vein in my neck started throbbing.
Four’s segment of the ladder well did not reek of medicinal disinfectant. It smelled—unearthly. With infinite slowness, I emerged from the lock and cast my flashlight around the cylindrical walls. The well dripped with space fungus.
Black mounds covered the floor like a sooty carpet and gave the walls a dark velvet sheen. Smoky ruffles festooned the ceiling, and dark, fluted sprays clustered around the ladder leading up to Five. Where the ladder met the hatch above, fibrous black stalactites swelled downward. Deck Five held the factory. Perhaps some of Heaven’s sugar had seeped down through the hatch to feed this fungal growth. In my flashlight beam, the fibers glittered like onyx.
And that scent! How can I describe the rainbow of deep, lusty aromas? Acrid, bittersweet and briny, too, like sea salt. It reminded me of Juani’s veggies, but more musky and concentrated, full of buttery nut-like essence. In an uncanny way, the smell attracted me.
On Four, the artificial gravity felt weaker still, and we bounced over the fungus with springy, muted steps. The silver D and U glimmered weakly in the flashlight beam. “Which way?” I asked.
“Up lead to the ‘pactor room. Switches already off in there.” She pointed to the D. “We go sick-ward.”
She pushed back her sleeves and struggled to open the Down door. Less gravity made it difficult for her to gain leverage on the wheel, but I held back and didn’t help. The door opened sluggishly. Then a stark greenish light flashed through the open door. With prickling neck hairs, I leaned to look inside.
The walls and surfaces strobed bright, then dark, then bright. A dying fluorescent tube buzzed off and on as if possessed by devils. But where were the rows of beds? I saw no moaning victims, only a small room, wedge-shaped like the others. The lime-green light intermittently revealed cabinets, work counter, a tiny sink. Plastic beaches filled one corner, suggesting a waiting area. This wasn’t sick-ward. This was just a check-in station—an anteroom.
Four light-globes winked from recesses in the low ceiling, but they were as dark as the bulbs in the ladder well. A dead surveillance camera tilted off center. Only the fluorescent tube seemed to be wired to Juani’s emergency generator. I stepped inside and inspected the anteroom more carefully.
A film of fungus covered everything, but there were indications that someone had tried to scrub it away. And unlike the galley where every loose item was stored in a bin, this room held a chaos of junk. Antique medical apparatus, glass jars, spoons and plastic tubing were flung about, as if recently engaged in some urgent experiment.
Supine on the steel table under the blinking light lay a partially dismantled cyberdoc. Evidently, someone had cannibalized its inner workings for lab equipment A rack of specimen vials occupied one end of the table, filled with various shades of pinkish fluid. There were also a nanoscope and something that looked obscurely like a centrifuge. More parts cluttered the work counter, and after a puzzled examination, I recognized the remains of one of my robotic probes.
These kids had taken apart my scientific equipment? Did they think we sent the probes as toys? That gear cost us mega-deutsch, and look at it. A pile of rubbish.
Kaioko motioned me toward another door at the back, an ordinary oval bulkhead with a raised sill like the others in Heaven. “That sick-ward,” she said and pointed.
And then, oh gilty gods, I did hear moaning. The door stood open a crack, and a pale yellow light flickered on the other side. Vague shadows moved on the wall, and the moaning started again, very faint and hoarse. I did not want to pass through that door.
Can you feel how I dreaded it? The idea of people waiting to die—it swamped my imagination. After spending so much money, time and—let me say it—passion, on keeping myself well, I simply could not find a way to understand.
Kaioko gave me a weak little shove, but I resisted. “You know where the switch boxes are. You go.”
“Nobi, please take another drink.” That was Sheeba’s voice. She was in there, inside sick-ward with those victims. I should have rushed in to rescue her, no matter what septic corruption awaited me. Instead I stood petrified—and I eavesdropped.
“Please, just one tiny sip.” The sorrow in her voice made me shiver.
Then Vlad spoke. “Please take some water, Nobi.”
“Save it,” said a feeble voice. “They’ll need it later.”
“Please, Nobi, try,” said Sheeba.
With a whimper, Kaioko hurried through the door into sick-ward and left me standing alone in the anteroom. Mortified by my own cowardice, I pushed the sick-ward door closed so they wouldn’t see me skulking outside. Nobi, that was Kaioko’s brother, the graffiti artist. Through the almost-closed door, I heard Kaioko’s piping wail. I stood as if anchored by magnets.
Near the door, Vlad whispered something rapidly to Sheeba. I didn’t catch all of it. Something about mixing blood serum to make a cure. Sheeba’s blood. Was he using Sheeba’s blood? No, Shee wouldn’t let him do that. I moved a little closer, listening. Yes, he said it again. He had mixed some kind of potion from Sheeba’s healthy blood, but it didn’t work.
In shock, I picked up one of the vials from the table and held it to the light Inside the plastic vial, scarlet threads of liquid rose and spun in a thick yellow oil, then settled gently back to a pool at the bottom. Gilty gods. That untrained kid had taken Sheeba’s blood? I pictured a bristling wad of dirty needles. To what had Shee exposed herself? That juvenile thought he could cure an unknown pathology when Provendia’s brightest scientists had failed? Of course his snake oil didn’t work.
But Vlad was coming through the door.”…I can’t save him. I can’t do anything.” When his hand touched the jamb, I stepped quickly behind a cabinet.
“It was worth a try. Don’t blame yourself,” said Shee.
The door opened wider. I couldn’t let Sheeba find me trembling in the shadows like this. As Vlad stepped over the sill, I streaked for the ladder well and fled.
16
A NOWER
“Youth is a blunder, manhood to a struggle and old age a regret.”
-BENJAMIN DISRASLI
I hadn’t seen anyone die since my youth. No, let me qualify that. Of course I’d seen casualties of war zones, but that was just the Reel. Luminous pixels in purple-and-gold metavision. When we browsed Verinne’s playbacks of agitators burning, bleeding, breaking apart and flying to pieces, we coded in frames and special effects and descriptive captions, and the dying workers shrank to bit-maps of data. To us seasoned surfers, war dead counted no more than bets placed, time elapsed and winnings paid.
Okay, that’s not true, either. The Reel bothered me. Lately, I’d been feeling more uneasy than ever, and sometimes when we watched the playbacks, the taste of lychee juice would well up at the back of my throat. Then I’d have to rush out of the screening room and throw up. I used to be able to hide it better, and for the sake of the Agonists, I still tried to keep up the bravado.
But not here in Heaven. That feeble voice from sick-ward harrowed me. The boy was suffering. All these protes should have been decently euthanized weeks ago.
Right, I know what you’re thinking. But before you accuse me of cold-blooded murder, try living through a market collapse. Witness the sea rise over your native coastline, and watch your national government expire in a matter of days. Root frantically through your basement for an antique radio because angry mobs have ripped down all the Net links. Burn your last tank of petrol driving the back roads to Lahore, praying your wife is still alive. Then lie alone on a warehouse roof, feeding old batteries through your radio, and listen while your whole family dies in a traffic jam. After that, call me a murderer.
I couldn’t get back to Calcutta mat day. I couldn’t stop the panicked drivers from crushing each other’s vehicles against the bases of buildings. I couldn’t get th
ere in time to unlock the broken doors. I couldn’t…
Euthanasia is humane. It’s painless and quick, and there are many things worse than death. Many things…You wonder how I could still think that way after meeting Heaven’s juveniles face-to-face, sharing their food and listening to their dreams. True, I’d grown fond of them—some of them. But you still couldn’t convince me mat their handful of short, dreary lives would ever be more important man a stable world.
Yes, I fled from the voice in sick-ward, across the anteroom and down the evil ladder to Three. I ran through the dark corridors, following the beam of my flashlight, till I found Juani lying unconscious on the floor of his generator closet. Graven gods. Had he died, too?
“Breathe, Juani. Breathe.” My beam danced over his sprawling body and stopped at his gap-toothed grin.
“Man, you so slow, I take a siesta.”
Freaking hell. I had to rest against the wall to compose myself. Why did the sight of this teenager’s acne-pocked face bring me such relief?
“All switches off. You can mash your CAES anytime you like,” I lied. Deck Four’s switches were still on, but I rationalized that it probably wouldn’t make a difference.
“Hey, blade, you slow but sure. Where’s Kai-Kai?”
“She’s with Nobi,” I said.
In the near darkness, I heard the boy sigh. Then he jabbed his old keyboard as if he wanted to punish it. This time, he didn’t explain what he was doing, but I could hear the compressor firing up and forcing air into the rank of titanium bottles lined against the wall. He was storing potential energy in his CAES.
But the compressor was a fossil. It sputtered and complained, and the tanks filled slowly. Minutes dragged by until a reading finally appeared on Juani’s gauge. I asked, “How long will this take?”
‘Till the blue light come on.”
“Well, make a rough guess. Half an hour? Less? More?”
“Half a what? A Nower?”
He wasn’t wearing a watch. Evidently, timekeeping eluded the precocious young minds of Heaven. Okay, I could go with that I crouched and watched the screen till the blue light came on.
“Now what?’ I said.
“We do a black start. Make a plus sign for me.”
“Plus sign?’
Juani angled the flashlight beam to show me his crossed fingers. The screen glow lighted his huge grin. “It means hoping for good news.”
With fingers still crimped together, he punched a rapid series of keys. Then he cocked his head sideways, listening. I didn’t hear a sound. No woofing, sluicing or whirring in the walls. No creaking hull. Nothing.
“Hm.” Juani tapped one key several times in a row and watched the screen. Then he scrolled and tapped another rapid string of code. The lights blinked once, and a sound reared up like a wild animal roaring through its death throes. Then nothing. Darkness and silence.
“Man, don’t let go that plus sign. I’m gonna try one more thing.”
Before he could touch a key, a different noise started up, a thumping rattle in the ladder well. Someone was pounding on the hatch from below. Juani shot to his feet. “The chief. He want in, but I can’t juice the airlock yet. Man, I hope he’s not in trouble.” The boy looked back and forth from the thumping noise to his dim little screen.
“Does the hatch have a manual override?” I asked.
“You mean hand-operated? Yeah. It’s this red lever, and a bellows pops out of the floor. Then you go pump air with your foot”
I was already halfway to the well, casting my flashlight beam toward the red lever. I didn’t ask what a bellows was. “I’ll find it. You do your black start.”
“Keep that plus sign tight, blade. Tight!” he called after me.
I did, too. I curled my two fingers together so firmly that my knuckles cracked. Apparently it worked, because just as I reached for the red lever, the well’s incandescent lights blinked on, and the lock started running through its cycle, filling with compressed air. Juani’s black start had succeeded. Thank the golden gods, I didn’t have to pump air with my foot.
Moments later, the hatch slid open, and Liam and Geraldine climbed out. Liam was carrying the welder’s battery on one shoulder like Mr. Universe, and Geraldine snarled, “Move outta the way, commie.”
This irked me in the extreme, considering my only purpose had been to help them. I ground my teeth and let the evil wench pass. Liam gave me a civil nod.
“Have you got it sealed off?” I asked. “How long till we can repressurize?”
“I seal your runny mouth,” said Geraldine…
Her high-pitched gibe pushed me over the edge, and I tossed out a nasty wisecrack. “While you were screwing around, Nobi was dying.”
At that, they both halted, and Geraldine’s emerald eyes went wide. Liam set his welder down and thoughtfully rubbed his hands, but Geraldine yelled, “You lie.”
My remark was unbelievably crass, I know. You have to understand how angry that girl made me. She exercised zero control of her emotions. Liam touched her arm, but that didn’t stop Geraldine. She slapped my chest with her open hand, knocking me backward.
“Your ‘xec friends split our hull. Now they coming aboard to euth’ us.” She walloped my chest again and forced me farther back. “Stupid ‘xecs, all they gotta do is go wait. Sooner later, we all be dead.”
“Gee.” One cautionary word from Liam shut her up. He raked a strand of yellow hair out of his eyes. ‘Truly, Nobi is gone?”
“I’m not sure,” I answered, shamefaced. “He sounded bad when I left”
Liam motioned with his head, and Geraldine reluctantly moved off toward the generator closet. Then the chief nodded at me. “Will you help carry this battery?”
He lifted one end and waited for me to lift the other. He’d scuffed my white space suit pretty badly, but what caught my eye was the thruster harnessed to his back—the good one that hadn’t been damaged. I also took note of the helmet clipped to his belt. When he took off that gear, maybe I could lay hands on it and slip outside. If Provendia’s troops really were attempting to board, I wouldn’t have far to go.
With a shrug, I gripped the other end of the battery, and we lifted together. The thing weighed only a few kilos in Three’s reduced gravity—Liam didn’t need my assistance. At the time, I thought he was hassling me, but looking back, I believe he was trying in his mute, primitive way to soothe my feelings.
He and I carried the battery into the generator closet, where Juani was waiting with his recharger cables. While Geraldine helped hook up the connections, Liam said, “Be calm, Nasir. You safe here.” It seemed as if he wanted to add something. His lips opened. The straw-colored braid had fallen forward across his chest, and with an unconscious gesture, he flung it behind his back. Then he closed his mouth and returned to the ladder well.
I followed and spied while he stowed my thruster behind the ladder and climbed up toward sick-ward. As soon as he closed himself into the safety hatch, I grabbed the thruster and checked its diagnostics. Good. All systems functional. But I needed the helmet and EVA suit as well.
So I pursued him up to Four. I tiptoed into the anteroom just in time to see him disappear into sick-ward, and I caught the door to keep it from closing all the way.
“Liam.” The warmth of Sheeba’s voice made me knot my fists. I hid behind the door to listen.
Liam said, “How’s he doing, Doc?”
If Vlad spoke, I didn’t hear it. Nobi’s hoarse voice answered instead. “Chief, you don’t have to whisper. I going into the garden.”
Kaioko moaned, “Not yet, Nobi.”
“But I want to,” her brother said.
Kaioko started chirruping again, and Sheeba murmured consoling phrases. “There, now. It’s okay. He’s just resting.”
I tried to feel scorn for all this sentimental crap, to pretend the black sorrow opening in my chest was only a stomach cramp from the awful chili. But I’d had a brother once.
Raju. Without warning, a pocke
t of suppressed memories opened up inside me like a gaseous burble erupting from a buried landfill. I hadn’t thought of my brother in decades. Raju died mat day in Calcutta. My parents died then, too. Sometimes I forgot their names. Sanjay and Gaeti. They were trampled two blocks from their front door. My father used to cook chicken tandoori.
Vlad said, “Nobi, won’t you try one sip of water?’
Sheeba whispered in a singsong chant, “It’s okay. Your brother’s going to be fine.”
My brother didn’t exist any longer, not anywhere. His memory lay deep under the rising waters of Bengal Bay. Time had moved on.
“Hold on to him, sir!” shrieked Kaioko.
And Sheeba cried, “He’s gone.”
At the sound of Shee’s voice, I crammed a knuckle in my mouth. The pain in my chest was not grief. That boy meant nothing to me. I’d never seen him. I barely knew Kaioko. Poor, innocent Shee shouldn’t have to witness this kind of thing. It was the Reel. Only the Reel.
When Kaioko burst into sobs, I felt ashamed of eaves-dropping and moved away from the door. My face burned. So the boy was dead. Score one for whose side now? I tried to summon up the war surfer’s emotional armor, but there was no purple-and-gold metavision to give me perspective. I spread my hands and stared at my glossy fake fingernails. This—whatever this emotion was—it felt too actual. I turned to flee—and ran straight into Geraldine.
“Chief, the commies invaded. They inside Two.” Geraldine elbowed past me, but she came to an abrupt halt halfway through the sick-ward door. “Oh gosh.”
She stepped inside. They were all together now, while I waited in the anteroom, gnawing at my artificial nails. No one spoke, and even Kaioko’s sobs were muffled. I imagined her biting into Geraldine’s shirt the way she had bitten into mine.
