by M M Buckner
“Man, you look pale,” Juani said.
Sheeba held my head and made me lean forward till my nose practically touched the scummy floor. “Take deep breams,” she said. As if I wanted to snuffle up that fungus, ha. Then she made me lie flat on my back and put my feet up on a pillow while she patted my forehead with a cool damp cloth. Molto comforting. I nuzzled against her hand. If only my face hadn’t developed those annoying little grooves and puckers, it would have been celestial.
But her attentions were cut short. The thug chief chose that instant to rise from the dead. He sat up groaning and wincing, making a production out of the minor bruises on his ribs. Sheeba abandoned me and rushed to his side. She wanted him to lie down again, but he refused. Too much to do. Everything depended. Blah blah blah. What an infernal superman. Sheeba mentioned that I had saved his life—again. When he noticed me lying on my mat, he lifted my arm, and—I figured I was hallucinating—he gave me the prote handshake.
“Gee was wrong about you, Nasir. You a good man.”
Next, an odd thing happened. He was going through the pockets of his (my) EVA suit, looking for his flashlight, when his pulled out a small shiny bit of gilded metal. It was the good luck ankh Sheeba had hidden there for me, eons ago, when we first began this blighted war surf. As he turned it over curiously, the polished Egyptian cross reflected sick-ward’s light like a mirror.
Sheeba noticed what he’d found and took it “Silly junk.” She threw it against the wall.
Liam seemed as surprised as I was. “Sheeba, what is that thing?”
She shook her head. “Just a gold-plated trinket. It reminds me how stupid I used to be.”
“But it’s the symbol of the life force,” I said. “You gave it to me as a gift. You told me it had rejuvenating power.”
“Nass, that was make-believe.” Her mouth set in a hard line as she adjusted one of the clips on Kaioko’s transfusion tube. “I’m done with fairy tales.” Poor exhausted child.
She fed her punk stew with my spoon and gave him the rest of my water. As soon as he could stand without wobbling, he gripped my arm with manly affection—presumptuous cur. Then he whispered quiet instructions to Juani, and he set off again to go EVA and play Heaven’s dogged guardian.
Sheeba followed. What did she mean, deserting her sick patients? Why, look at poor Kaioko ringing death’s doorbell. And me. I felt nauseous. In fact, a moment later, I turned on my side and threw up. About a liter of bright red Chili Diablo oozed across the floor like molten lava.
“Bless a Jeez.” Juani made a face and went to get a mop.
Wiping my mouth, I happened to glance at Geraldine, who was staring straight at me. No longer blank, her dark eyes shimmered with malice, and she clenched her teeth in a mega-unfriendly way. Another mood swing. I was just trying to decide if I should call for help when she sprang across the room and grabbed my throat
Freaking hell, not again. In Four’s light gravity, she literally lifted me off the mattress by my neck. I clutched at her hands and tried to get my feet underneath me, sputtering through my constricted larynx. Geraldine’s muscles knotted, and her handsome, scarred face quivered with the effort of strangling me.
I started going faint. Ye gilders, I would not let this hysterical juve choke me to death. No way would Nasir Deepra meet his end at the hands of a teenager. Especially not in a vomit-stained longjohn. I went at her face with my fingernails.
Then she punched my head so hard, I lost balance and fell against the wall.
“I know who you are,” she growled, touching the scratches I’d made on her cheek. “Chief won’t believe me, but I know.”
Her blow rang my artificial eardrums, and the noise blared like an unholy siren. Louder it grew. As shrill as the sonic lathe.
Then Juani ran in, threw down his mop and grabbed Geraldine by the shoulders. “Gee, the alarm. The alarm going off. We gotta get ready.”
Geraldine stood gawking like ah idiot while I cringed and tried to look harmless. Juani shook her again and repeated his announcement about the alarm. The siren was not in my head after all. What I heard was the blare of a major warning signal:
“What is it, Juani?”
“Justment,” he said, still gripping Geraldine.
At the mention of that unusual word, she seemed to come to herself. She slapped Juani’s hands away and said, “Help me strap Kaioko.”
To my utter bafflement, they started lashing Kaioko into her mattress with thick straps of canvas. All the mattresses had these straps, but Kaioko’s had been unhooked and thrown to the side. Now Juani and Geraldine cinched the straps tight around her chest, legs and forehead. The girl lay as deeply submerged in her coma as ever. Why did they suddenly feel the need to restrain her?
Next, Juani gathered up all the loose items in the room. Empty blood sacks, plastic tubing, chili bowls.
Geraldine motioned him toward the anteroom. “We gotta stow Vlad’s mess. Come on.”
Juani pointed to me. “What about him? Strap him in?”
Geraldine’s nostrils flared as if she were sniffing something vile. “Let him bounce in his puke.” Then she marched away.
Juani opened a wall bin and tossed all the loose items inside. He offered me the mop. “Hurry, go clean up your mess before Justment.”
I frowned at the pool of vomit. Was he kidding? I was almost too dizzy to stand. Juani shrugged, laid the mop at my side and went into the anteroom to help Geraldine. I heard the two of them banging cabinet doors. It sounded as if they were packing up the dismantled cyberdoc in a sudden mania of spring cleaning.
My vomit smelled vile. With a sigh, I stripped the sheet off my mattress and, on hands and knees, I wiped the floor clean. Then I searched for the little ankh Sheeba had thrown away. Carefully, I polished the gold-plated charm with my fingers and zipped it inside the breast pocket of my longjohn.
“We going up to the garden, blade. Best place to be during Justment.” Juani took my arm and helped me stand.
Geraldine blocked the door, fingering the hammer in her pocket. “You go, Juani. Look after the people. I take care of the houseguest.”
“What you gonna do?” Juani’s hesitant tone frightened me almost as much as the wench’s hammer.
“Be calm. I taking loverboy to help me lock down the power plant.” She nodded at the rising sound of the alarm. “We go hurry. Justment coming.”
Juani nodded. Without another word, he raced for the ladder well, leaving me alone with the angel of spite.
“There’s no need for violence,” I said.
Geraldine ignored me. She knelt at Kaioko’s bedside, kissed the sleeping girl’s lips, then tightened die straps more securely. After another quiet kiss, she got up and motioned me to follow.
“Where’s Sheeba? I want to be with Sheeba.”
Geraldine spoke without turning. “Doll-face below.”
She barely looked at me as we cycled down through the ladders and locks to Deck Two. She merely fondled the hammer in her pocket. The shallow cuts on her arm had turned dark red. I didn’t dare ask her what “Justment” meant. The way Juani talked, it sounded like Armageddon. As we climbed down the ladder, I felt nauseous, and the warning siren hurt my head.
In the solar plant, we found Liam and Sheeba lashing down a pile of machine parts under a cargo net. Curiouser and curiouser.
“What’s going on?” I shielded my face so Sheeba couldn’t see my wrinkles.
“Justment,” Liam said. “Gotta go lock everything down.”
Sheeba glanced up from the magnetic bolt she was anchoring to the deck. “He means adjustment. It’s nearly time for the orbit correction.”
“Adjustment?” My brain still wasn’t functioning clearly.
“Remember, we saw the last one from Kat’s shuttle nine days ago. They send a signal from Earth.”
Heaven quakes. I remembered. The guidance rockets on the satellite and its counterweight fired out of time with each other. We hadn’t approved the funds to replace a bu
rnt-out synchronizer, so every orbital adjustment shook Heaven like a whiplash. All too vividly, I remembered Juani tapping the X wall. “He old. He tremble.”
“This tank will break apart!” I yelled.
Geraldine punched my shoulder. “There,” she said, pointing toward ops bay. “We go get ready for Justment.”
She shoved me through the door before I could react. I was still weak from the bloodletting, and Sheeba and Liam were too fully occupied securing loose items in the solar plant to notice what Geraldine was doing. As soon as we’d passed into the ops bay, she closed the door behind us and twisted the wheel to locked position. In bewilderment, I watched her wedge her hammer so no one could turn the wheel from the other side.
The desks and office supplies still lay overturned and jumbled across the floor, and nothing was tied down. I didn’t see any way to secure so many loose objects. Was this how the wench meant to kill me—death by office furniture?
“Geraldine, let’s talk this out.”
She shoved me aside and started rummaging through a pile of phone rechargers.
“Honestly, we’re sure to find some common ground if we try.” I edged around her toward the door.
“Stay where you are.” She hurled a fax printer against the wall and kept digging.
“You’re angry. I can see that. You’re going through a tough time.”
Abruptly, the siren intensified to a ululating scream. The adjustment. Those heavy steel desks would rocket around the room like meteors. When I slid another centimeter toward the door, Geraldine flung an ashtray straight at my head, and the damned thing clipped ray chin. Then she went back to mining the loose pile of office supplies.
“Sheeba, help!” I shouted, pounding on the locked door.
Geraldine seized something buried under a jumble of optic cable, and while she wasn’t looking, I jerked her hammer free from the wheel and leaned all my weight to release the lock.
“Gee.” Liam’s baritone voice thundered through the door. “Come out, Gee.”
He must have finally recognized the wench’s intentions—murder and suicide in one.
“This,” Geraldine announced triumphantly. “This what I looking for.”
She waved a small opalescent cube in the air. It looked like a holographic sales brochure. So what? A piece of marketing literature. When the door fell open, Liam grabbed my forearm and yanked me through to safety. Sheeba was waiting to enfold me and soothe my nerves. Then Liam went for Geraldine. We watched through the open door.
“Stay back, chief. I going to the garden,” she warned, holding up the little cube.
Liam grabbed her waist and lifted her like a sack. She twisted and shrieked, but he carried her out of ops bay and set her on the solar plant floor. Then Sheeba slammed the ops bay door and locked it.
“Shit, Gee.” Liam wiped sweat from his forehead. “You crazy?”
“Yeah, crazy.” She handed him the sales brochure, then pointed at me. “He the one, chief. I told you.”
Liam looked at the cube’s blank facets and shrugged. “What does it mean?”
Sheeba crouched over his shoulder. “This is an advertising brochure.” She touched the tiny button inset near one corner.
That button set off an avalanche. The room went wild. Walls flew against me, and I couldn’t tell which side smashed my head first The solar beam painted jagged shapes through the air like a dancing laser.
“Nass, the adjustment has started.” Sheeba caught my forearm and drew me against her. “Hold this.”
As the walls bucked back and forth, she closed my fingers around one of the cables anchored to the floor with magnets. We bunched together, all four of us, clinging to the cable as our bodies flipped first one way, then the other, while the room seesawed.
In the ops bay, large objects crashed. I could hear their noise through the walls. A trail of saliva or maybe vomit laced across my cheek, but I couldn’t let go of the cable to wipe it. I felt like a rag that someone was shaking to get the dust out.
Gradually, the oscillations diminished, and I lolled against Sheeba for comfort. Everyone was breathing heavily.
“Hold tight. Next wave coming.” Liam reached across Sheeba to squeeze my shoulder, an act of silent reassurance. No doubt, he saw I needed it.
As the deck started rocking back and forth again, I wrapped my arms around the cable. Long ages ago, I had lounged in Kat’s cozy shuttle with a drink in my hand and watched this phenomenon from a distance, idly speculating how it would feel.
Kaioko, strapped to her heaving mattress, was mercifully asleep. And Juani in his garden. What would that be like? I envisioned toads bouncing among the leafy steel food vats. And it struck me that if the newscasters ever learned about this, the scandal would lead the top of every hour for days. I made a mental note to release funds for that burnt-out synchronizer ASAP. But ASAP might not be soon enough. The walls were flying again.
The cable abraded my sweating hands. One quake followed another, with only the briefest of intermissions. At some point I lost my grip and ping-ponged among the turbines. Up and down became meaningless. The solar beam spun, and I grappled to catch hold of any surface, but the steam pipes scalded my palms, and the cargo net was full of sharp, bouncing machine parts. I let go and whirled away with bleeding knuckles. Liam grabbed my belt and drew me back to the cable.
Eventually the lulls grew longer than the quakes. I settled to the deck, caught my breath and tried to inventory my bruises. The veins on the backs of my hands stood out like knotted strings. Had my face aged that much, too? Geraldine started blubbering. That’s all we needed.
“Nasir?”
I twisted around to face Sheeba, and what a look she gave me. Her water-colored eyes flashed like two northern lakes reeling in storm.
I tried to cover my wrinkles with my ugly hands. How hideous I must have looked. But no, she wasn’t looking at my complexion. She was holding that sales brochure. Its active holograms danced around the cube like tiny marbling rainbows. The brochure absorbed her attention.
She didn’t have time to say anything more. Another oscillation sent us flying, and Heaven’s ailing tank careened from side to side. By a miracle, the hull stayed in one piece. I didn’t let go of the cable this time because, even if it sliced my palms to the bone, it was still safer than bouncing against a hot steam pipe.
Behind the ops bay door, furniture bashed the walls. I visualized desks rifling through the air and shards of broken plastic flying like daggers. How on Earth did the aging hull survive such punishment? Even after the quakes began to dwindle, I couldn’t stop shaking.
“First seven waves the worst,” said Liam. “The rest not so bad.” He let go of the cable and took the weeping Geraldine in his arms.
“Nasir,” Sheeba said again. “This is a Provendia brochure.”
She was still holding the little cube, staring into the depths of its holograms. I couldn’t see them well from the side. They were designed for straight-on viewing. I said, “That makes sense, dear. This is a Provendia factory.”
“But Nasir, look at this photograph of the chairman emeritus.” She held the little brochure in her hand like a fission grenade. “Nasir, it’s you.”
22
FIX MY PAIN
“There it no one, no matter how wise he is, who has not in his youth said things or done things that are so unpleasant to recall in later life that he would expunge them entirely from his memory if that were possible.”
-MARCEL PROUST
“Did you sign the euthanasia order?”
Shee’s eyes blazed at me, and her lips trembled. She was waiting to hear a reasonable explanation. Her dear friend, Nasir Deepra, the man with the multiplex soul, would not exterminate innocent people. She wanted me to say the man in the photo was my rogue twin brother, my runaway clone, my look-alike third cousin.
Believe me, I thought about saying those things. When I hesitated, her lovely burnished cheeks went pale. I should have lied. Instantly, glibly,
I should have told her what she wanted to hear. Despite the photo caption listing my name, she would have believed me. But I didn’t say anything.
Then her eyes changed. She handed the cube to Liam, who took it with a bewildered frown and tilted it sideways.
Sheeba, please berate me. Scream. Punch me in the jaw. Do anything. Only, don’t look at me that way. Words wedged in my throat, and shame burned my face. Maybe Shee saw the wrinkles puckering around my eyes. Maybe not. What her eyes reflected was a rotting, 248-year-old cadaver, clinging so tight to a fistful of wealth that he would murder children. After a moment, she exhaled a broken sigh. If she had broken my spine in two pieces, it would have hurt less. With that quiet breath, she annihilated me.
“Chairman Emeritus,” Liam read aloud, “Nasir V. Deepra.”
Another quake convulsed us, less extreme man the earlier ones. We gripped the cable in reflex until the oscillations ended. Then Geraldine edged away while Liam turned the little cube in his fingers, comparing its iridescent projections to my living face.
Geraldine growled, “You believe me now.”
Her tears had long since dried. In a dead voice, she explained how she found the cube in the trash and gave it to Kaioko as a play-pretty. Her green eyes narrowed in my direction, and she laid her hammer across her knee. It was Kai-Kai who discovered how to make the pictures come out.
Quietly, Sheeba hissed, “Stop the euth order, Nass.” Then she pinched a pressure point on my wrist that drove hot daggers of pain up my arm.
Her violence shocked me. It left me speechless.
“He the one,” Geraldine snarled low in her throat, pointing at me with her hammer. “He say the people have to die.”
Another aftershock jolted us sideways, but no one reached for the cable this time. I could have made logical arguments, but what was the point? These youngsters wouldn’t appreciate the gravity of a financial panic. Sheeba’s fingers encircled my wrist, threatening another attack. Sheeba? My darling didn’t give pain, she took it away.
