by M M Buckner
“Can I push him outta the airlock?” Geraldine said.
Sheeba released me and closed her eyes. Her expression almost made me want to take Geraldine’s offer.
“Forgive me, Sheeba.”
She jerked away as if I carried a contagion worse than Heaven’s malady. Her multicolored eyes flared like suns, and through clenched teeth, she said, “Call that ship, and make them stop.”
I didn’t know she was capable of turning on me with such fury. “My phone doesn’t work,” I said weakly. But it was the truth. If I could have called the board and rescinded that order, I would have. For Sheeba, yes, at that moment, I would have done it
Geraldine sprang to her feet. “He want euth’? I show him euth’. Let me take him, chief.”
Liam worried his beard and took his own time reasoning out a reply. “Nasir, you save my life twice. You give Kaioko your blood.” He frowned, at my photograph shimmering in the cube. “Why you come here?”
His question made my lips twitch. A lifetime ago, we planned this surf, the Agonists and I. Grimly, I recalled our motives. His question demanded an answer I couldn’t give.
“We were playing a silly game,” Sheeba said.
“Darling, no.” I gestured for her to keep silent, but she wouldn’t.
“The bullshit ends here, Nass.” Angry spots darkened her olive cheeks. She threw her head back and gazed at die ceiling as if searching for explanations. “I lied, too. I’ve been so—so dumb. All this time. I pretended that we came seeking endarkment, but that was just crap I downloaded off the Net It didn’t mean a thing.”
“Dearest, you truly believed—”
“Let me talk. It’s my turn.” She scooted across the deck till her back pressed against the wall. “I came here for recreation, like you, Nass. I wanted a quick spiritual high. Metaphysical head candy. I’m a murderer, as much as you are.”
Liam looked from Sheeba to me, and his blue irises glinted. “You both smarter than me. You trick me very completely.”
“Don’t believe her.” I gripped handfuls of air. “You know what she’s like. She’s innocent”
“Chief, I take care of this commie.” Geraldine tapped my shoulder with her hammer, and I winced.
Liam nodded. “Lock him on One for now.”
“Let him live? After what he done?” The wench stamped her foot.
“I said for now,” the chief answered.
Geraldine spun and smashed her hammer into my elbow. Then she kicked me toward the door. “Move, ‘xec.”
“Yaah!” I sprawled across the floor, clutching my elbow. “Sheeba, forgive me. Please, I beg you. I’m so sorry.”
But the time for forgiveness was past. Sheeba wouldn’t look at me. She huddled against the wall with an expression of utter misery. Another temblor convulsed Heaven, the weakest yet. When it ended, I dodged around Geraldine and tried to embrace Shee from behind. But the evil wench punched me in the kidneys, and when I fell, she kicked my ribs. I clutched at Sheeba’s legs and pressed my lips to her feet. “I love you.”
“Get off me.” Sheeba tore free and sprang beyond my reach. Her face, ye gods, how it twisted.
When Liam touched the nape of her neck, she flinched away from him, too. She would have fought him, but he forced her arms down and held her. Spasms shook her body. At last, she stopped resisting and buried her face against his filthy shirt.
I said, “How much to let her go? I have money.”
He hit me high on the cheekbone. Geraldine’s punches had been mean, but Liam’s blow carried the vengeance of Heaven. It was savage, inordinate, without reserve. My false eye lost its signal. A bone snapped in my cheek, and when my dental implants fell loose against the back of my throat, I nearly gagged. It would have been a relief to lose consciousness, but that mercy wasn’t granted. Geraldine dragged me into the corridor.
“Kai-Kai waiting to die. You like that?” She poked and jabbed me all the way to the ladder well. With only one eye, my depth perception was gone. She smashed my face against the safety hatch, then shoved me into the lock and stepped on my back as she climbed in beside me. “You wanna call your guards to euth’ her? It be easy now. She strapped to a mattress.”
Yes, Kaioko was suffering alone in sick-ward because of me. And Sheeba would die here, too. I’d lost her. My achievements, titles, wealth and possessions shriveled to ashes. What had it gained me to store up trillions of deutschdollars? Nothing I could buy would ever restore the broken pieces of Sheeba’s faith.
Geraldine bounced on top of me in the safety lock. “You never ask how Kai-Kai lost her pretty hair.” When she pushed me through the lower hatch, I missed the ladder and fell to the floor below. “She got splashed with hot soup during Justment.”
The wench dropped down beside me and landed random kicks on my torso. I imagined Kaioko’s blistered head.
“Why you couldn’t fix the rockets, huh?” Geraldine yanked me to my feet and thrust me through the bulkhead door. “Why we have to shake so much?”
My mouth filled with bile, and I choked it down. That euthanasia order wasn’t the first one I’d signed. And this wasn’t the first war my policies had launched. Twelve billion people on Earth were too many. Someone had to make tough decisions.
“Move it.” Geraldine threw me into the same wedge-shaped cell whose E, W, and A’s I had memorized ad nauseum during the first hours of my incarceration. Then she spat on the deck and slammed the door. Is it necessary to add that she turned off the light?
“By dark, you mean death, Sheeba!”
I’d shouted those words a year ago. We’d been sharing one of our late-night movie fests, lounging in a mountain of pillows.
Sheeba grinned and squeezed my thigh. “Nass, you’re leaping to conclusions.”
“I know what you’re thinking, that I’ve lived, too long.” Her stray remark about one of the actors had flipped my jealousy switch. I felt petulant. “You think I don’t deserve longevity.”
“Poor beau.” She caressed my head against her chest and gently rocked me like a baby. “You get so defensive. Why would I think that?”
“Because I’m useless. I don’t contribute anymore. All I do is consume and have fun.” I nuzzled against her and inhaled her herbal scent, needing her to contradict me.
“But you serve on those boards,” she said.
“Ha, we just rubber-stamp memos. No one really needs me.” I prayed she would disagree.
“Didn’t you have a child once?”
She threw me off track. That wasn’t the argument I expected. “You mean the sperm I left on deposit? I don’t know if EuroBank ever used it.”
“You didn’t ask?”
“They pay my interest on time. It’s not my concern how they manage the assets.”
Sheeba’s velvet eyebrows pleated in three edgy creases. Was that the only lame reason she could think of why someone might need me—a damned offspring? Her question fanned my flaming insecurity. When she sighed and restarted the movie, I jerked away.
“You don’t think I have any saving graces.”
“What do you need saving from, Nass?”
What, indeed? In the dark cell, I listened to Geraldine’s bare feet slap away down the corridor. My dental implants no longer fit in my battered face, so I took them out and pressed my ear against the steel to hear the sluicing and whuffing. Deck One sounded hollow. All the toads had been evacuated up to Five, and I missed their shrill voices humming through the walls. They were in the garden now, climbing through the trees, chasing rainbows. Did they know the word, “euthanasia”?
“Deepra, you sap. You’re weak,” I said aloud, twisting the blanket till it shredded in my hands.
Curse the bloody Reel. My action had condemned everyone here. Even with a working phone, I couldn’t reverse the euthanasia order. The board had already voted, and things had gone too far.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid.” I butted my forehead against the wall. “Sheeba, forgive me.”
My left thumb be
gan throbbing too painfully to ignore, so in a kind of stupor, I checked my IBiS. Its faint glow flared in the dark like a match head. The IBiS was suffering some kind of major system overload. Way too many missed appointments. Whole categories of NEMs were going on standby till they received fresh instructions through the Net. Among others, my liver NEMs were going off-line.
But more bizarrely, NEMs that had shut down earlier were spontaneously reactivating. And not just my dental NEMs. The little sodders in my thyroid had started generating new T-cells—without doctors’ orders! That was unprecedented. Against all odds, the NEMs seemed bent on their healing mission. Yet their anomalous behavior couldn’t sustain my interest. Sheeba despised me.
My fingers traced the shattered line of my cheekbone, as a person prods a toothache, making it hurt. If I could have touched that euthanasia order, what would it feel like? I tugged at my sagging flesh. Soon I would have wattles. A glossy black curl came loose in my fingers. How quickly my youth was decomposing. All these decades, the mop-headed boy in my mirror had suckered me. I’d believed that was me, but he was just a tailor’s dummy bought off a shelf. This withering eyesore was the real Nasir. My disguise had never fooled Sheeba.
A vignette of memory flashed, clearer than I wanted—Liam touching the nape of her neck. I huddled against the wall, remembering the natural way she turned to that punk for comfort. Ah Sheeba, how you fix my pain.
Wildly, I thought of writing her a note to explain my actions. Maybe if I told her what happened to my family…but of course, there was nothing to write with. Another black ringlet came loose in my hands, and what did it matter? No physical attraction of mine would have won Sheeba’s love. Shee and I were born in different times.
She would never appreciate my reasons for signing that order. She didn’t live through the horrors of sewage raining from the sky and shiploads of livestock dying beyond the reach of hungry people onshore. She didn’t have to stitch together a new world from the moldering body parts of the old one. Guarding the status quo was not in her lexicon. That moral imperative emerged from my day and time.
I twisted the blanket till its threads unraveled. She didn’t see the faces at the barred window of the warehouse in Lahore. No, scratch that. Edit that out. I don’t want to remember that part Focus on something else. Quickly…
When I got to Lahore that night, mere was looting, madness. Prashka wasn’t there. Debris blocked the streets, and ragged orange fires painted the sky. I tried to call her, but mobs had ravaged the cell towers. So I made for the old warehouse district, which by a miracle was still intact. When my Mercedes ran out of petrol, I traded its useless keys to a guard for the pass code to a deserted building. Han Tang’s Golden Empress Foods. I barricaded myself inside, climbed to the roof, and set up my antique radio. All night, I listened to the ham operators broadcasting from Calcutta. I lay there weeping, wanting to die.
But at dawn, thick smoke brought me awake, and thirst drove me inside. My appetite for life proved stronger than grief. I drank the juice from a can of lychee nuts.
Then the rioters came. They broke the fences and flowed through the warehouse district like a raging tide. I set the building’s security field to drive them away with electric shocks, but there were so many. They pressed thick around my walls, and the ones in back shoved forward, so the ones in front couldn’t stop. Their weight broke the glass windows, and their faces crushed against the sizzling electrified bars. I hid in the men’s room and drank lychee juice, pretending I couldn’t hear….
Two months later, when the mobs were gone, I still had pallets of lychee nuts. Gradually, I began to trade with the other survivors, and we set about rebuilding. That’s right, Shee. That’s who I am. A survivor. Must I be the apologist for my entire generation? Sheeba, have you forgotten that we rebuilt the world.
A quiet noise vibrated through the steel. An echo of steps. Someone was walking down the corridor toward my cell. I wiped wetness from my cheeks and ducked into the far corner, blinking my one good eye and waiting as the door scraped open. There in the half-light stood Juani. No mistaking his awkward teenaged frame, though shadows hid his face. He propped the door open with his bare toe and placed a tray on the floor. Then he turned to go.
“Juani, wait. Talk to me. What did they tell you?” Without my dental implants, the sentences slurred together. Maybe I hoped to trick Juani into letting me out. Maybe I feared the loneliness.
He held the door with his hand. “Gee showed me your picture, blade. Why you want to euth’ us? We living as fast as we can.”
I drew the folds of the shredded blanket around me. Juani rubbed his thumb back and forth over a flange on the door. When he saw I couldn’t answer, he stepped over the sill to leave.
“How’s Kaioko?” I blurted. “Did she—go to the garden yet?”
Juani spoke over his shoulder. “Kaioko still breathe.” Then he shut the door and left.
I threw off the blanket and pounded the steel door. Kaioko. Juani. The girl with the amoeba birthmark. “Murderer,” Sheeba said.
She thought euthanasia was evil. Yet in my day…in my time…
“Emotional blocks,” I said aloud to the empty darkness. “Deepra, you’re the ace of war surfers. Who gives a flying fuck about a handful of teenaged protes?”
I did. I cared. There, I said it. Damn the Reel. Damn my soul to hell.
I curled on the floor and buried my head in my arms, but I could not forget the scorn in Sheeba’s eyes or the taste of lychee nuts. The gunship’s noisemakers started up another racket, and Heaven’s rusty walls creaked. On a higher deck, something wrenched loose with a loud popping screech. It sounded as if another piece of the hull had come loose. For several seconds, the entire factory reverberated, and I held my breath. Then, silence fell.
I crawled across to Juani’s tray. In the darkness, my hands closed on a water sack and a shallow dish that held something knobby and firm—broccoli. I stuck a piece in my mouth, longing for that fresh sweet taste. But I couldn’t chew. I couldn’t remember where I’d dropped my teeth.
And then, ye gods, I saw something few people ever get to see. I saw that my time had passed.
23
LIKE CLOCKWORK
“To everything, there is a season, and a time for every purpose under Heaven.”
-ECCUSIASTES
Death is an autoimmune disease. Medical researchers have confirmed that fact finally. After learning the keys to our biocode and defeating all the antagonistic little d’s of disease, disorder and decay, the physicians still can’t put an end to Death. We’ve added centuries, but immortality remains beyond our outstretched fingertips. Perhaps our bodies finally die from a lack of distraction. With no more ailments and infections to battle, the human organism grows bored and launches an attack on itself. So the true cause of Death is boredom. This is my theory, at least.
Consider an example: I’ve been sitting here all this while, telling you my story, waiting in the anteroom to sick-ward. This is the last evening of my life. A few hours ago, one of Provendia’s noisemakers knocked out the last functioning solar panel and blew Heaven’s lights again, so my only illumination is this emergency fluorescent tube. I’m waiting for Heaven to pass out of Earth’s shadow into the sun so Juani can fire up his thermionic generator and recharge our grid. As soon as that happens, I will die. You’d think I’d be making the most of my remaining time.
Picture me sitting cross-legged on the anteroom floor, listening for noises, sporadically recording this story in my implanted memory stick, and at times dreading the end. I’ve been trying to understand Sheeba. Yet now and here in this fleeting instant, all I can think about is that damned fluorescent tube blinking over my head. It makes my skin look green, and Ican’t shut it off. I’m sick of waiting. I crack my knuckles. I try yoga. In thwarted fury, I consider ramming my head against the wall to get it over with. You see what I mean about boredom?
Sheeba said we make up our past like a fairy tale. Her words inspire me to get
on with this pack of lies. My life, yes.
“Murderer.” Her judgment rang through the cold air of my cell on Deck One, and between alternate bouts of wretched self-loathing and total boredom, I slept. In Heaven, time has no measure. More than once, I awoke to Provendia’s gunfire. The rusty hull trembled and grated, but the barrages sounded casual, almost languid. Thank the gods, they didn’t use the sonic lathe again, only the noise-makers. The gunship captain was rinding this war too tame. It offered no opportunity for career advancement. I dozed again.
My final round of sleep in that dark, locked cell must have lasted several hours because I awoke with a feeling of satiety. My first anguished thoughts were of Sheeba. Yet it was clear that my body had rested long and well. Not only that—my broken cheek had healed. I explored it with my tongue. Bizarre.
Then I pressed my ribs where Geraldine had kicked me—and felt no pain! The fractures had mended. And the swelling in my bloodied nose had gone down. I found my teeth and fitted them into my gums. Then I touched my face—and cried aloud. Smooth skin. Taut and springy with youthful elastins. I jumped to my feet, found the direction of spin by instinct, and bounced on my toes like a giddy adolescent. The glass man had made me whole again.
My thumb projected a stream of glowing icons, and I scanned them eagerly, learning what had happened. Incredible as this sounds, my injured false eye had regenerated. All my dormant NEMs were bringing themselves back online!
Cut off from the Net, with no access to their handlers, their hard-coded urge to heal drove them to improvise. Whole herds of the little NEMs were teaching themselves independence and developing work-arounds. My liver enzymes had moved back to normal. My T-cells were leveling out. This old body had revived without doctors’ orders.
And what about this joy I felt, this confident new hope? Where did it spring from? Sheeba still hated me, and doubdess, the juves still intended to fling me into the void. How could a few hours of sleep so completely change my wretchedness to cheery optimism? This attitude was false.
