by M M Buckner
“Sheeba found the cure by accident,” I said. “At first, we thought one liter would be enough.” I tapped Vlad’s arm and scrutinized his veins. His head lolled back and forth. “Look at him. He’s dying of thirst, but he won’t drink.”
“Who cares? He’s a hostile.” Kat made a grab for the cyberdoc, and when I caught her wrist, she scratched me. “Why don’t we just feed this guy some more Peps and interrogate him?”
I ignored her and watched the cyberdoc extrude an appendage to tap Vlad’s vein. Then I rolled up my sleeve.
“Katherine asked you a question.” Grunze gripped the back of my neck. “Why do we need to cure this sodder’s disease?”
Glassy NEM power rippled through me, and I shook off Grunze’s hand. With a look, I dared him to touch me again. “Everything I do is for Sheeba.”
Figuring out how to work Kat’s cyberdoc proved much easier than convincing the Agonists to let me do it. Kat’s whine about obscenity was absurd. She was kowtowing to moral fashion, I saw that now. On the other hand, Verinne made logical arguments against sharing NEMs with employees. Widespread longevity would change all the equations of supply and demand, she said, and it wasn’t fair to saddle unschooled workers with so many extra years.
“Yeah, think about it,” said Grunze. “If protes started living as long as we do, where in hell would we put ‘em all?”
“This is only one boy, and we need his help to find Sheeba,” I reminded them, smoothly failing to mention the liters of blood I’d already donated to Kaioko.
It was Winston who came closest to stopping me. “Nasir, if workers get NEMs, it might cause another Crash.”
Winston’s words touched each of us. At a profound level, he stirred the old fear that drove all our decisions. The Crash. No one liked to speak of it. I’m not sure which memory we hated worse, the Crash or what we did to survive it. Do you imagine we wanted to face that sordid time again?
But the global climate was still degrading, and our fragile economy was growing feebler by the decade—because we senior execs were the only ones shoring it up. That’s why we kept ourselves strong and vigorous—we knew what could happen. If we didn’t fend off another Crash, who would? The survival of our society, our values, our culture, everything of worth depended on the lessons we’d learned from history, and no short-lived employee could appreciate our hindsight For the good of humankind, we had to keep longevity to ourselves. I am not a wicked man. Let me confess, breaking that taboo made me shudder.
“But I don’t care. Sheeba needs us.”
“Well, I’m not watching.” Kat put on her helmet and went EVA.
Verinne flinched when the cyberdoc tapped my vein. Grunze wouldn’t make eye contact. They soon followed Kat outside and left me to perform my depravities in private. Maybe they did so out of friendship rather than repugnance. I wanted to believe that.
Winston stayed, though. I floated in free space beside Vlad’s bunk during the transfusion, and Win held my foot so I didn’t drift too far from the cyberdoc. I thought he’d forgotten what I was doing, but he surprised me.
“Why do you wanna save these protes, Nass?”
“It’s not them. It’s Sheeba.”
“Slippery Nass, you’ve made friends with ‘em.”
“You’re dreaming. Hand me that gauze.”
An hour later, Vlad sat up and asked for water. The Agonists had returned by then, but at first Vlad didn’t see them. I was still feeling woozy myself from giving so much blood, and as I drifted against the bunk, one of the metal rails barked my shin. Damn, this bloodletting gnarled me. My NEMs always took a while to recover.
As soon as Vlad understood how to suck nutrient through a microgravity straw, he downed a full liter. His color was returning, and I could swear his lopsided face was filling out with new flesh. We toasted each other with squeeze-bulbs of orangeade. Then Vlad stretched out his fingers and stared at his hand, as if he were flabbergasted to find himself still alive.
“Feeling better?” I said. “You want to go home?”
He nodded and gave a slight smile. “Thank you.” When he noticed the others, he drew back in the bunk, clinging to the straps that held him secure in the weightless cabin. No doubt, they’d given him unkind treatment earlier. “Nasir, you know these commies?”
“Don’t call us that, you filthy agitator.”
“Katherine, be calm,” I said, waving her back.
My friends hovered in a loose knot near the console, watching with sour expressions while I floated beside the bunk shielding Vlad.
“I’ll take you home if you’ll show me how to get in,” I said, unrolling a printout of Heaven’s plan.
Vlad eyed my crew, then shook his head.
“Kaioko’s sick, and she’s been calling your name,” I whispered.
“Everyone die sooner later,” he said. But he didn’t deny knowing a way in.
Since my small lie hadn’t worked, I tried another tack. I showed him the cyberdoc screen that still displayed stats from our transfusion. “Look, we found the cure. You were right about good blood chasing out the bad. I gave you some of mine, and it made you well.”
Vlad grasped the cyberdoc and read the state. Then he asked the device for additional reports. He seemed well versed in its capabilities. Before this, I didn’t even know he could read.
“There’s something here in your blood,” he said, pointing his stubby finger to an arcane line of code on the screen. “Something I don’t recognize. What is it?’
“It’s probably some medication I take. What does it matter? You’re cured.”
Vlad studied the data with an uncertain frown. Then he placed his hand in the cyberdoc’s mouth and gave himself a health exam. Evidently, the results astonished him. Perusing the report, he absentmindedly polished off a second liter of orangeade.
“Will you give your blood to the others?” he asked.
“Sure,” I lied, tapping the map of Heaven. “Show us how to get in.”
It took time and cunning to overcome Vlad’s mistrust of my crewmates. My generous blood donation and his own restored health were the strongest points in our favor. I kept feeding him squeeze-bulbs of nutrient, and finally, we bamboozled him into showing us Heaven’s back door. When his finger touched the spot on the map, it seemed so obvious that, subconsciously, I must have already known it. Or maybe the glass man did.
Heaven was made from a fuel tank, and its pointy end had once been the tank’s nozzle. That made a natural opening. There in that nozzle, Liam had improvised an emergency airlock out of scrap and spare parts. Surrounding this makeshift airlock like a protective fence were the six colossal couplings that linked Heaven to its tether. And shielded within this fence, the secret lock led straight into the garden.
“Heaven’s blind,” I told my friends. “They’ve lost all external sensors. Unless Liam happens to be spacewalking when we board, they won’t see us coming.”
“We can tap the hull to let them know,” Vlad said innocently.
“Dear boy, that’s brilliant.” Kat snuggled under Vlad’s arm.
She’d gotten very chummy with the medic since my NEMs had restored his looks. Her favorite live-action role play was Mata Hari, the exotic lady spy. So she flapped her fake eyelashes and worked her scarlet-dyed mouth into a kind of sexual grimace. She probably thought this would seduce the youth into revealing information. Or maybe the medic had caught her fancy. His physique was growing more supple with each passing minute, and the intelligent gleam had returned to his brown eyes. Even his lopsided jaw seemed more symmetrical.
Kat ran her fingernails through his wavy brown hair. “Is there a secret code we should know?”
“Nothing special. Just tap a few times.” Vlad shied from her advances with a perplexed raise of eyebrows.
He recommended that we wait for Heaven to pass into Earth’s shadow. No sense exposing ourselves to solar radiation. When the time came, we suited up, all six of us. I didn’t have the heart to leave Winston beh
ind again. While Vlad wasn’t looking, Kat handed out the stun guns and sticky-string pumps, and we quietly slipped the weapons into our pockets. I didn’t want the medic to know we were armed. As an afterthought, I grabbed the portable cyberdoc and zipped it in my backpack, explaining that Sheeba might need first aid.
Kat positioned her shuttle as close as possible to the tether couplings, then programmed the autopilot to track Heaven’s spin. We were taking a risk leaving the shuttle unattended, but everyone was stoked for the surf. We set our thrusters on low, stepped through the airlock and dove.
This close to the center of rotation, we spun with less angular momentum than we had on the gunship. Earth’s night face cast a cloudy glow, but with metavision, we could see continents glistening through the smog, like hazy galaxies scattered across the dark oceans.
At first, the massive alloy couplings that attached Heaven’s tether appeared to be fixed hardware. But closer, we could see the metal joints flex and buckle. The tether’s thick, woven composite stretched wider than a city street, and it oscillated constantly. If there had been a medium to carry sound waves, we might have heard it singing. Those shocks created by the orbital adjustment had never completely disappeared. They’d merely died to a steady quiver, dampened by the tether’s friction.
Maneuvering between the couplings proved trickier than we expected. Grunze and I miscalculated and overshot Kat collided with a metal buckle. Vlad bounced like a newbie. Only Verinne navigated with style and touched down at the nozzle rim.
Heaven’s secret airlock was small, and we had to enter one at a time. Vlad dropped through first while the rest of us clung to the couplings and waited our turns. I went next. Since we were in Earth’s shadow, I expected the garden to be dark, but it wasn’t. Small solar cells glimmered through the foliage like ultraviolet glowworms, backlighting the leaves and haloing every object with a silvery sheen. The effect was enchanting. By this soft luminescence, I found Vlad perched in the leafy crown of a tree. Beside him sat three little boys and a young girl with a baby.
A weight thudded onto my back, and thin arms reached around my neck. With a laugh, the child swung around in front of me. Keesha. Her birthmark blushed purple in the silvery light. She squealed and smeared my faceplate with fingerprints.
I set her on a limb and ripped off my helmet. ‘Tell the kids to hide. Quick, Vlad. Before my friends come.” It was only too easy to imagine Grunzie scorching one of the kids with his stun gun.
Vlad didn’t hesitate. He stuck a thumb and finger in his mouth and gave three shrill whistles. Like magic, Keesha and the others vanished among the leaves. Throughout the length and breadth of Deck Five, foliage trembled as kids scrambled into hiding, and I watched them disappear with relief.
Seconds later, the Agonists dropped through the airlock and gathered in the treetop. They gawked at their surroundings like tourists. The garden frankly astonished them. Nothing had prepared them for this botanical opulence limned in spectral silver light. One by one, they slipped off their helmets and inhaled the humid air.
When the misters switched on, moisture beaded our skin, and Verinne laughed like a girl. “Nasir, what is this place?”
Kat slid down a huge wet leaf and bounced in a web of vines. “This is plasmic!”
Grunze tore off a branch. “It’s real. I’ve seen a few hothouses on Earth, but nothing like this.”
Verinne rolled her face against the wet leaves and caught the dripping vines in her arms. Her shoulders relaxed as if years of stress had fallen away. Winston stuffed a long green veggie down the front of his EVA suit and pranced like a clown. Kat poked a flower behind her ear.
“This greenware’s worth a pile of deutsch.” Grunze sniffed one of the vats. “Is it some kind of research project?”
I caught Vlad’s eye and winked. “Maximal nondisclosure. None of you say a word about this.”
Why did I lie to my own crew? It felt wrongheaded, and yet an instinct prodded me to shield the garden.
Kat plucked more blossoms, and Verinne squeezed the juice of a yellow fruit onto her tongue. Winny stuffed more veggies in his suit, and Grunze slid an arm down in one of the vats to check out the nutrient.
“Focus, guys. We’ve come for Sheeba,” I reminded them.
As Vlad led us through the maze of flora down toward the ladder well, my pals tripped over vines and grabbed the trees for stability. They weren’t accustomed to the Coriolis effect, but that didn’t slow them down. They swung on vines and threw fruit at each other and spat seeds. Totally infantile. They would have lest themselves among the glimmering plants if I hadn’t hustled them along.
The whole time, I kept my eye peeled for errant juves, but thankfully, none of them showed their faces. When we found the airlock to Deck Four, I discreetly asked Vlad to wait behind and be the last one through. I felt oddly protective of the toads.
Had I made a mistake bringing the Agonists here? What would happen when my friends met the Heavenians? I began to have serious doubts, but there was a momentum building, a sort of rising tide, and it carried me along at breakneck speed. My eyesight grew sharp, and my reactions quickened. The Agonists were resources, a voice kept telling me. The glass man flexed his (my) overtensed muscles.
No solar cells brightened the ladder well. Heaven’s fickle power grid had crashed again. So with helmet lights glaring, we descended the dark ladder and gathered around the bulkhead leading into sick-ward’s anteroom.
“I’ll go in first and talk to them,” I whispered while Vlad was still above us in the garden. “Maybe we can get Sheeba away without violence.”
‘Talk? They’re fuckin’ agitators.” Grunze checked the settings on his stun gun.
“Violence is what we came for,” Kat said as she slotted a load of sticky-string in her pump. “One hundred says we have casualties before this is over. We’ll get primo Reel.”
Winston chuckled and sprayed laser beams at the wall. “Mega-sleek surf.”
When Verinne unpacked her cameras, I saw disaster building. She’d brought a bag full of Bumblebees, and she clipped tiny camcorders to each of our collars. She wanted to cover every angle. “This Reel will be very special to me, Nasir. Imagine. We’re actually surfing inside Heaven.”
“Wait while I go first. If we swarm in there all at once, they might hurt Sheeba.”
My friends accepted that reasoning. They agreed to wait in the ladder well while I went ahead. But Verinne activated the small camera in my collar. “We’ll be watching, and if we see trouble, we’ll come.”
Warily, I touched the wall and listened for vibrations. Sheeba was in the anteroom speaking to Kaioko. Liam was there, too, along with Geraldine and Juani. With my NEM-sharpened senses, I could feel their different respiration rates. All the ringleaders were gathered on the other side of that door. Behind me in the ladder well, the Agonists fondled their weapons. Ye graven beasts, I felt caught between fire and kindling. “This is all about Sheeba,” I whispered.
“Of course it is.” Verinne patted my shoulder. “Settle down. We can do this.”
When Vlad dropped into the well, the others hid their weapons, and I drew him aside. “You and I should go first. We don’t want to start an accidental fight.”
Vlad glanced at the others. “You don’t trust them. I understand.”
His words brought me up short—because he was right, I didn’t trust them. Or did I? Who was I conspiring with and who was I deceiving? Neither? Both? Vlad opened the bulkhead door, and with a quickening breath, I peered into the anteroom.
27
IS THIS ENOUGH?
“There’s no such thing as old age, there is only sorrow.”
-EDITH WHARTON
“Beau, what happens after death?” Sheeba asked me that question the night before we entered Heaven. It was late. We were lounging in my suite at Mira, and she was rubbing my toes with a smooth, round, polarizing magnet. Her question startled me out of a luxurious doze.
“After death? Nothing,” I said
. “Your mind’s obliterated.”
“No paradise? Rebirth to a higher plane? Lake of fire, maybe?”
“You just black out.”
She squeezed lotion in her hands and rubbed my heels. “Do we go on dreaming?”
“Nada. Nichts. Niente. We cease to exist. End of story.”
“Hm. That’s a funny thing to wish for.”
I jerked as if she’d pinched me. “Sheeba, why do you keep saying that? I don’t wish for death.”
She tickled my feet “Cross your heart and hope to die?”
“It’s no joke,” I said.
“Nass, it’s okay to wish for death sometimes. Everybody does.”
“Not me. Not you. Not anybody we know.”
Her questions were ruining our otherwise magnificent therapy session. My muscles tensed up again, so she massaged my calves and worked her thumbs along the backs of my thighs. Then she straddled my legs and kneaded my buttocks. I groaned softly, and just as I was relaxing, she said, “You look for death in these wars.”
“Wrong. I am totally at one with the survival instinct.” She giggled and bounced on my legs. “And you say I’m full of fizz. Ha ha ha.” Then she tickled my ribs. “You don’t have the slightest inkling what happens after death.” I twisted and grabbed her hands to make her stop tickling me, but she arm-wrestled me down. The girl was strong.
“Swear it doesn’t fascinate you.” She laughed. “Swear.” She had me pinned. I said, “Sheeba, this isn’t funny.” “You think about death all the time.” She squeezed my wrists. “You fear it and hope for it, and you spend molto deutsch running away from it. That’s a lot to feel about nada.”
A lot to feel, yes. Megatons. As I peeked into the anteroom, Kat and Grunze milled restlessly behind me in the dark ladder well, fingering their concealed weapons. Verinne checked her video feeds, and Winston covertly recharged his laser pistol. I felt their menace building like voltage.
When Vlad and I slipped into the anteroom and closed the door behind us, Sheeba didn’t notice at first. She was bending over the work counter, studying an image through the nanoscope. Liam stood beside her, draping his lanky arm around her shoulder. Kaioko sat on the table swinging her legs, while Juani and Geraldine leaned against the opposite counter, chewing plant stems. The scene was quiet, domestic. The fluorescent light flickered.
