Dusk

by Ashanti Luke

  “You infested fuck-holes are gonna pay! Every last one of you! When they get here, you’ll all be sorry!” He let his sobs overwhelm him, sank to the floor, and then, almost as soon as he hit the floor, he lunged at the door again and banged on it repeatedly. “You hear me, you Fringe-whore fuckmongers!”

  “The Vanden Mittoren will be your downfall! You can’t keep us here forever! Dr. Milliken is too important to the war! You will drown in the blood of your fucking children before the Vanden Mittoren are done!” And then he collapsed, his cheeks still fluttering, nostrils still flaring, sucking in the tears that had not had time to dry, sending quiet spasms through his body as he coughed into his arms, curled into a ball, but keeping his head next to the door seam. He sat there sobbing, not sure himself if the sobbing was real or feigned. The pain, however, was very real. Maybe the sobbing was an exaggeration of what he felt inside. If it was, it was too long coming. Either way, the whimpers and gasps continued as he tried to take in the muffled sounds from the hall over the throbbing of his own blood and exasperation. And he stayed there, curled in a ball, no sound but his own lament, for impossibly long minutes. He tried to glean how long he had been there, but seconds, minutes, even hours, were now blended into an inchoate haze. The darkness held him in confinement. He was trapped in a fugue. His stupor turned him in on himself repeatedly, and he was left there tessellating into his own dread. Time and space warped as he collapsed in on himself, and the sobs became very real again as he approached his own event horizon. Then there was a sound, a whoosh, a point outside of his own existence that blue-shifted into his mind with alarming clarity. Even there, on the threshold of despondency, it was clear it was a door opening in the hall. He focused on reigning in his emotion and making way for the sound waves that squeezed, contorted and muffled, through the seine of the door seam.

  There was a pattering, like the clambering of a spider in a child’s nightmare, and then a barely perceptible murmuring—the words were indistinct, garbled, but the anger in them was clear even through the filter of the seam. Then there was another pattering, more erratic this time, which grew louder. There was some clambering, and then another whoosh like the first. This one was louder and a slight tremor went through the wall—a shiver that would not have been discernible if Cyrus’s head had not rested against the door frame. Then there was another whoosh, another pattering, and then he was alone in silence again.

  Cyrus lay there for what seemed like only a moment, breathing deliberately but calmly into his nose and out through his mouth, slowing the unreliable expanding and contracting of his lungs into a voluntary, but relaxed, quiet. Breathing like this eased his heart rate into a steady rhythm, stilling the pounding in his temple. As he lifted himself, he realized his legs had lost most of their feeling. As he stood, his knees wobbled, and as the blood rushed down into his legs with a tickle, the precariousness of his stance became evident. As he shambled toward the chair, it felt as if all the blood that had not rushed to his legs had settled in his bladder. He picked up the chair and set it on its legs again. He put up a concerted effort to sit down gracefully, but halfway through his descent, his leg gave, and he plopped clumsily into the plastic seat. He propped himself upright, focusing his awareness on his toes, his knees, his elbows, his shoulder, and then he flexed the muscles from his neck down to his toes and back up again. His body protested at first, but as his blood began to circulate again, his mind became clearer. The noises in the hall could mean many different things, but the timing was too convenient to have been much of anything other than what he suspected. As far as he could tell, this whole operation was a puppet show, a fiasco orchestrated by men and possibly women who had never known anything of violence or true combat other than the occasional skirmish, riot, or melee. Most likely their fathers, their grandfathers, and even their grandfathers’ fathers had never seen anything more. Cyrus had no illusions that his own background was any different, but this put the men who kept them on decidedly different terms in his mind; he might not be any more experienced in conflict than them, but their ignorance and methodology made them easy men to predict and exploit.

  fifteen

  • • • • •

  —Do you believe in God, Dada?

  —Yes, Dari, I do.

  —Then why don’t you ever go to church with me and mommy?

  —Well, it’s mostly because of how I think a god would have to be. I don’t really like the way churches anthropomorphize God.

  —Anthropomorphize. Miss Hasabe taught us about that. That’s what they do in fables when animals wear clothes and talk and act like people.

  —Yeah, and they usually have the worst, least admirable characteristics of people. I can’t understand why God would be as petty and mean as He is portrayed.

  —So what do you think God is?

  —I dunno. I think God is less like a person and more like an idea. Like trying to explain abstract art to a blind man; the more you explain, the farther you get from the heart of the matter.

  —You know, sometimes in church, God sounds more like Santa Claus. Like he has a naughty list and a nice list and people go to the altar thingy and sit on his lap to ask for gifts.

  —You’re right. But I don’t think it should be like that. I think God is in us all and when we are naughty, deep down, we know we are falling off the list—our own list—and we either react to it or we let it tear us apart.

  —Yeah, I usually know I’m being a knucklehead when it happens. Even if I’m not sure, I have a feeling, like if I take one more step, I might slip. But you and mommy still love me even when I slip, even when it’s real bad. The thing I don’t get is why the Santa Claus god doesn’t love the people who slip up.

  —Well, that’s the trick. If God doesn’t ‘love’ or ‘hate,’ then I think ‘falling off’ is just people using God as an excuse to pass judgment on and belittle others.

  —Yeah, but the pastor is closer to God, right?

  —See, that’s the catch. You should never set any man above you—no matter what he claims to be—nor should you expect any man to set another above himself.

  —Well, what about Miss Hasabe? I have to answer to her all the time—and you and mommy too.

  —Respect and reverence are two different things, Dari. A man of integrity always answers to the people he respects, like it or not.

  —What if they don’t respect you back?

  —Make sure you hear these words and hear them well, regardless of what you do, what you say, who you respect, and who you do not, at the end of the day, above all else, you have to answer to yourself and yourself alone—and the mirror accepts neither lies nor excuses.

  • • • • •

  “What was that little stunt you pulled yesterday?” Winberg’s voice was usually condescending, but today, as Cyrus sat battered and bruised on the floor next to his bunk, Winberg’s tone had gone way beyond the outer marker.

  “You see, it’s this new exercise called minding-your-own-goddamn-business,” Cyrus looked up to meet Winberg’s eyes. “You should try it sometime.”

  “Well your nonsense might have been passable on the ship, but down here, it’s gonna get someone killed. I’d say that puts it right in the ‘my-goddamn-business’ category.”

  “Then you watch your own back, and I’ll watch mine.” Cyrus stopped, but then as Winberg was about to open his mouth, he continued, “Seems to me like that might be easier for you if you get out of my face.” Cyrus moved as if he were about to stand, but Winberg grumbled and then walked to the window to look into the artificially darkened night sky.

  Cyrus sat back down and extended his leg beneath the bunk to stretch it. Tanner, eyes puffy from limited sleep, leaned over from the bed a bit, “A bit high strung are we?”

  “I don’t like the bend in his keel,” Cyrus reached his hand beneath the bed to stretch his leg further.

  “I hadn’t noticed,” Tanner smiled then exhaled. “He does have a point though. This could get out of hand.”<
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  “As far as I’m concerned, it already is out of hand.” Cyrus slid his leg out of the stretch, but kept his hand underneath the bunk. The muscles in his forearm continued to tense and relax and his body stayed turned more toward the bed even though he focused his attention on Tanner.

  “Maybe they will sort this out sooner than we think,” Tanner said. The inflection in his voice was wispy, as if he barely believed it himself.

  “You and I both know better. This whole operation is a lampoon. They keep playing with us. If they listened more carefully, they could hear the truth. But I don’t give a damn whether or not they hear. Bottom line is, I’m not staying here to rot while they ‘sort it out.’” Cyrus’s eyes focused on Tanner’s.

  “And I would not expect you to. I’m just saying, don’t jump into the fire just because you’re mad.” Tanner held his focus but his gaze was not as sharp as his tone.

  “What other reason is there to jump in a fire? They keep at us like they might get somewhere, but they are too monkey-minded to see there is nowhere to go. I’m not gonna let them play with me until they get tired.” Cyrus knew the holovision might not have been loud enough to mask his rant from their captors, but he didn’t care.

  “Your brand of bluster does not normally come without impetus, but I am curious. How are you going to achieve this egress, and where do you plan on going? We are in a giant hermetic dome somewhere in the middle of a planet-wide desert.” Tanner could see the corners of Cyrus’s eyes quivering.

  “You don’t have to go along if you have doubts. Just don’t get in my way.” Cyrus clenched his teeth and kept his voice down, but his tone was biting nonetheless.

  “Doubts? Why would I stay here? Besides, I’d follow you into the fires of Hell if it came down to it because I know you wouldn’t take anyone else into the fire rashly.”

  Cyrus’s anger was no longer directed toward Tanner, but the fire still burned within him. His fury lapped at the walls of the material flesh that tried futilely to contain it. Tanner and Cyrus sat there for a while wordless. Cyrus continued to stretch, his hand still under the bunk, until finally Tanner lay face-down on the floor next to him and began doing push-ups. After his sixtieth push-up, Tanner sat up facing Cyrus, taking in deep breaths. “Have you noticed it’s a lot easier to do push-ups here? For a while I thought it was anxiety until I realized it was harder to do jumping-jacks because the rhythm was all off.”

  Cyrus turned from the bedside, pulled his knees to his chest, and then cupped his left hand over his fist as he pulled his knees into him with his forearms. “Remember, Asha is smaller and slightly less dense than Earth. The gravity here is about 87% of Earth’s.” He grumbled through the words, but the tension in his voice was subsiding.

  Tanner met Cyrus’s eyes again. They were still ablaze, but more focused. It was clear they were calculating. “You still want to leave?” Tanner asked, keeping his own voice down.

  “It’s more a when than a whether-or-not at this point. I just need to sleep on it a few nights to get my head in order.” After that, Cyrus crossed his legs, spun out of his crouch into a standing position, and then sat on the bunk with a creak. He kept his right hand in a fist over his chest, concealing the bolt he had surreptitiously removed from the bed. He then settled into the pillow, the bed thumping lightly against the wall as the missing bolt allowed it to move under his shifting weight.

  • • • • •

  Davidson was losing his mind. For the third night in a row, the tapping in the walls kept him awake. It was not constant, but as soon as he was about to fall into sleep, it would start again—and sleep was already hard to come by in this place. It had started two days before, when Milliken had been dragged off for hours and had been asked inexplicable questions about some imminent attack. Horribly confused, Milliken was of little use to them, but he had received a righteous beating for his trouble nonetheless. When they first laid hands on him, he had—so he said—managed to put one of them down with an unsuspected kick to the groin, which had only exacerbated his flogging. In the end—he said—he had walked out stumbling, but the other guy had to be carried out.

  Milliken had hobbled back into the room, propped himself on Davidson’s bottom bunk, and had requested Davidson trade bunk positions with him for a couple days. That night, as Davidson rested on the top bunk in a haze that served only to give him a false hope of attaining sleep, he was moored to reality by a rapping within the wall. The noise was faint at first but became louder. It seemed rhythmic, but not steady, which convinced Davidson it was not mechanical. But what else could make that noise?

  • • • • •

  Cyrus sat next to his bed facing the wall, using the leg of the bed frame as leverage in his leg stretch. He kept his left hand on the leg that rested under the shadow of the bunk, apparently rubbing his ankle. Someone put a hand on his shoulder. He turned to see Villichez stopping slightly behind him. “I had been meaning to tell you, but I kept forgetting. I took the liberty of taking over your holovision shift in your absence a few days ago.”

  Cyrus relaxed his stretch and adjusted his left sock to stash the bolt he had removed again this evening. He turned to face Villichez, continuing to stretch once he rotated. “Discover anything?”

  “Actually there was quite the interesting history program in the middle of your furlough. It discussed some of the origin of the civilization on this planet.”

  “Like what?” Cyrus spread his legs slightly wider, but he focused his attention on the old man as he sat on the bunk next to him.

  The bed creaked and shifted against the wall as Villichez’s weight settled. “Well it was mostly an articulate, but one-sided, rant about the iniquities of Earth and how the emigration to Asha left most of those shortcomings behind. It mostly talked about how the sampling of the first expeditions to the planet eliminated religious and racial prejudices, which were further avoided through the ban of leviance from Earth after a man called Prolocutor Mundi was elected leader of Asha. Basically, the only languages that really survived the exodus were Greek and a form of Commonspeak called Ashan. It also seems none of the original colonists held much stock in religion.”

  “Well, that makes a lot of things make sense. Although they seem to be, as far as I can tell, exceptionally ignorant of life on Earth. Most casts that I’ve seen show Earth as populated by idiotic monsters.” Cyrus relaxed his stretch then shifted into another one.

  “It seems to me the hatred they left on Earth was replaced with a hatred for the place where they left it. The cast suggested the citizens of Earth were parasites that had raped the planet into a stagnant wasteland, and that Ashan civilization was more evolved, for lack of a better term, because it arose in a wasteland, rather than degenerated into one. It seems this hatred manifested itself into a riot in the midst of the war that caused most documentation from Earth to be destroyed, which over the course of the five hundred plus years, I’m sure has directly resulted in the ignorance you speak of.”

  “What kind of moron destroys information?” Cyrus scoffed.

  “In my experience, it is usually the kind that never really used it to begin with.”

  • • • • •

  Davidson closed his eyes, but the tap, tap, tap, tap, tap… tap, tap, tap, tap… penetrated his skull, arrested his brain, and drew him back to consciousness each time he tried to sleep. It had been more sporadic the dome cycle before, but now it persisted, and it seemed to persist the entirety of the city’s artificial night. The sound made him restless. He stirred, he tossed, he looked around the room, but no else seemed to pay the noise any mind. Some seemed restless themselves, but no one seemed agitated beyond their wits.

  Finally, he appealed to the darkness, “Milliken, are you awake?”

  “Yeah,” wafted up airily from beneath the bunk.

  Davidson turned and hopped off the edge of the bunk. His body was wearier than he had expected and his knees could barely take the shock. He plopped down on the side of Milliken’s
bunk harder than he had expected and the metal frame sent a jolt through his thighbones. “You hear that noise?” Davidson asked beneath his breath.

  “Yeah.”

  “Is it keeping you up too?”

  “I haven’t been able to sleep since I got gaffed. I can barely hear the sound.”

  “Every time I almost get to sleep it starts pounding through my head. It’s driving me insane.” Davidson realized it was harder to hear when he focused on keeping his own voice down. He leaned toward the wall to see if it was still there.

  “Maybe they are doing it to try to break us?” Milliken proposed, clasping his hands over his chest.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “It sounds a little like IPA signal code.” Milliken sidled closer to the wall using his shoulders. He knew their captors were probably monitoring them through fly-eye cams and mics, and probably also through infrared, so he tried to make his motions as natural and subtle as possible. “If it is, it’s kinda choppy. It’s been going on for so long, the ball-biters must not be able to hear it.”

  Milliken sat deathly still in the bed. Davidson tried to keep from moving, but his body seemed to be shaking at a steady oscillation. It was hard to hear the tapping in the wall over the pounding of blood through his temple, but he knew the moment he tried to go back to sleep it would be all he could hear. Then, as his breathing began to settle and his nerves began to somewhat calm, he could hear the pattern despite the aberrant rhythm. Tap, tap, pause, tap tap. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. Pause. Tap, tap, tap, pause, tap. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, pause, tap, tap. And then shakily, it repeated.

  Evidently Milliken had translated the pattern as IPA code because he began to mumble to himself, “Vuh… Vuh… yee.” He stopped, counted under his breath, and then mumbled again, “Vee guh ay… ay tsuh.”

  “Wie gehts?” Davidson answered. It was German, or so it seemed. “How are you?” he translated, letting his words drift out on a gasp so as to avoid the room’s microphones. Davidson slid closer to Milliken’s head and the wall, but did not turn. If someone was watching them, he did not want to call attention to himself. It seemed if they could hear the tapping, he would have had more sleep, because they would have stopped it by now. “Can we send?” Davidson said into his own hand, not sure if even Milliken could hear him.