Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation

by Phoebe Wagner

  At the bottom of the bag is the hand-crank radio. Raonaid winds it with a sound like a mosquito whining and flicks the switch.

  “One, two, three, four,” says a voice distorted by static. Something quickens in Nagin’s heart at the sound. “One, two, three, four.”

  “It’ll be on longwave soon,” Raonaid says. “And I ought to be out there above the plains, telling people so. Instead I’m here, chasing after you.”

  Nagin lets that pass, sitting cross-legged on the floor, listening to the test signal. One, two, three, four. She lets it run several more times before she asks, “Why are you so angry with me?”

  “I need you to be what you are,” Raonaid says, fretful.

  “What’s that?”

  “A scientist,” Raonaid says. “Especially now, Nagin. This,” she gestures at the radio, “will change everything.”

  “Some things,” Nagin says. It won’t reverse the inundation. She may live a thousand lives, or just this one. The uncertainty doesn’t concern her. But however the hereafter, she won’t ever forget the weight of water, the snowmelt overwhelming the banks of the Jamuna. “It will change us, perhaps.”

  “Yes!” Raonaid looks like she wants to spit again. “And I thought I could rely on you. I go out there and tell people there’s nothing to be afraid of! What happened wasn’t a judgement on us.”

  “There is nothing to be afraid of,” Nagin says. “We had our faiths before the flood. We were more than—”

  Ash and dust, she thinks, remembering the God of Raonaid’s upbringing, who brought hellfire and vengeance. Nagin thinks she might cry again, waiting for that overwhelmed feeling, but it doesn’t come. She’s steady and calm, aware of what transcends the mundane in herself and in Raonaid; in the city of Delhi; in all other living things.

  “More than what we can see,” Nagin says.

  “It’s superstitious nonsense!” Raonaid says. “Wish-fulfilment for those who need to believe it.”

  “I see,” Nagin murmurs, delicately. “Like your pahari.”

  It’s a calculated remark. Pahari, hill-folk, an old-fashioned pejorative—but Raonaid came from such people, a lifetime and half a world away. Nagin walks out after that, clambering down the crumbling stones beneath the neem trees, back to the bazaar.

  §

  Some people are concerned by the new lights at the top of the hill, visible for miles around. Nagin sits at the edge of a boat where by day they sell spices, breathing in dal-chinni, elaichi, and hing, and points up towards the high ground. She has taken the children up there to see the radio transmitter up close. Some were fearful of it; others wanted to climb to the top and find out how far they could see. She had hoped they might carry their new knowledge home to their parents, but none really understood its purpose.

  “Invisible waves,” Nagin says, again, pointing upwards, but the children who attend the night classes are unimpressed. Until today, they had never heard a recording of a human voice.

  “They don’t believe in what they can’t see,” Raonaid says, softly, jumping from the nearest boat. She’s carrying chameli from the far edge markets, the scent luscious in the saturated air. Around them, the rath-bazaar bustles with laughter, music, people calling their wares. The long lines of floating lanterns clank together, clank apart.

  “It’s not my area of specialism,” Nagin says, the academic’s phrasing rising complete from the depths of her mind. It’s true: Nagin’s post-doctoral research concerned the chemistry of the noble gases.

  “I suppose not,” Raonaid says, tentative. Nagin has been dozing afloat, rather than going home. Until now, she was unsure if Raonaid had set out for the north again. “But you’re trying.”

  “I will find a way of explaining it to them.”

  “Yes, you will,” Raonaid says. Nagin wonders if it’s an apology, and then Raonaid hands her the armful of flowers, and she knows it is.

  “Rachel,” she says, and Raonaid looks at her sharply. She keeps her name in her own tongue, disliking it in English. But Nagin values the old language, and in particular its impersonal consonants, permissive of distance from what is spoken of.

  “This is something new,” she says, meaning whatever it is that’s happening inside her, this coming of faith or consciousness of the ineffable, or merely a recognition, in the twilight of a frantic life, that she has come to where she ought to be. “And so are the longwave transmissions. But you’re right. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  Raonaid nods, slowly. “They’ll be calling you panditji,” she says, not as though this is a thing to be welcomed.

  “They called my father that,” Nagin says, lightly, as Raonaid puts a flower in her hair. “All right, my children. Once more.”

  She hits the switch on the radio. Around her, the children start at the sound. One, two, three, four—and they begin again.

  Panditji means scholar, as well as priest. If it comes to pass, it will do.

  §

  “You could come with me,” Raonaid says, the morning she leaves, the long road stretching ahead beneath the open sky.

  “I will,” Nagin says. “Some day.”

  Perhaps some day they won’t have to go on foot. Perhaps they will in any case, step by step, across the soil of this land that’s still theirs. On her way back across the water, Nagin rows past a cobra in a neon sign, curled snugly around the loop of an R. Like her, it’s content to be where it is. Nagin doesn’t disturb.

  Radio Silence

  Carlin Reynolds

  The Sailor-Boys

  Brandon O’Brien

  We is some rebels, yes.

  We does still sneak out the window

  close to midnight with we sailboards

  under we arms, scaling the outer

  island walls to ride the winds.

  Up here, we ibis-free, the bellies

  of we boards scarlet, or yellow

  like kingbirds, cutting the gale

  like skipped stones could split water.

  We is some aves, yes,

  watching cormorants stain in the

  blackwater beyond the beaches

  where rigged exploitations did catch fire

  but couldn’t have enough water to douse it.

  We is some blessed ones, yes.

  My mother did say we was once like

  the black(-gold)-and-white(-collar) world of the developed,

  all of their bigger pictures with no solutions,

  but we let all our colors fly. Like

  us boys doing now before sunrise,

  we is some fresh starts, yes.

  We does soar over sighing tragedy,

  the heaving high tide of Mama Dlo short of breath,

  and laugh, cheer the wind on as we float.

  We is some rebels, yes.

  Dust

  Daniel José Older

  Very late at night, when the buzz of drill dozers has died out, I can hear her breathing. I know that sounds crazy. I don’t care.

  Tonight, I have to concentrate extra hard because there’s a man lying beside me; he’s snoring with the contented abandon of the well-fucked and all that panting has heavied up the air in my quarters. Still, I can hear her, hear her like she’s right behind my ear or curled up inside my heart. She’s not of course. If anything, I’m curled up in hers.

  But then again, her dust covers everything, all of us. It coats the inner walls of this station even though it’s airtight. It coats my inner walls. It’s reddish and probably lethal, but who knows? We’ve never seen anything like it before.

  The man beside me is Arkex. He is just another dustfucker amongst many; he mans the drill. Today I’m a man too—very much so it turns out—and I was surprised because I’d always taken Arkex for straight. I don’t bother hiding my stares when his muscles gleam in the foul glare of our excavation lights. He never looked back, though, not on my man days, not on my woman days, and I gave up noticing. But tonight he showed up, appeared at my door without a word, just a smile softe
r than any I’d seen him wear before. Before, his only smiles fought off the impossible monotony of the ‘stroid mines or spilled sloppily out at bad jokes over Vanguard at the Rustvine. This one comes from deeper in him: comely, it requests permission to be held.

  I considered for a few moments, took my time. In these thick seconds, he maybe thought back on the times he’d snickered with the others. The jokes about me I’m sure I’d rather not know, the ones I can see from across the bar in sidewise glances, suppressed laughs. On the days I wake up a woman, Arkex’s sneer thickens. We’re all hidden beneath layers of protective gear out there in the caves, just thick genderless grunts, hard at work and always on the brink of death. Still, word gets out what body I’ve woken to, idiocy ensues.

  Tonight, his shoulders hunched, his eyes ask forgiveness. I scowled, took the fullness of him: a tight shirt, once white, now dust red, and those big yellow shield pants, all laden with pouches and rope. Skin red like mine. I stepped to the side and motioned him in with my chin.

  It’s not like he’s the first. Usually, I turn them away. They are curious, hungry for a story to yap out at Rustvine, and suddenly meek. The handful I’ve let in, their vulnerability radiated past the layers of dust and couldn’t be faked.

  It doesn’t matter to me: their soft smiles and whispered promises in the thick of the heat. They always fall asleep and then I lie there, tuning out their snores so I can hear her breath; trying to match mine with hers. Silently, impossible like love, I feel it inside me. And tonight, tonight, for no reason I can discern and for just a few perfect, rockstar seconds, I catch hold and we do breathe as one, the asteroid and I, taking in the immensity of space. In the moment between, when the air lingers inside, I ask it to shift course. I don’t ask, I plead. Because time is running out. Swerve, goes my prayer. One word: swerve. Because a full turn just seems like too much to ask. A U-turn? Come now: these are celestial bodies, not space ships. So, swerve, I whisper silently. And when we exhale, together, we release that tiny prayer and mountains and mountains of dust.

  §

  A few hours later, I’m bleary eyed and raw at the Rustvine. I’d passed out to the lullaby of the asteroid’s susurrations and woke up with wet pebbles in my head. Too much Vanguard. Still, something had happened. It’s nothing I could explain to anyone, not without getting thrown in the brig and losing my hard-earned Chief Engineer position. But I know it was real.

  Slid my hand beneath the sheets between my own legs and I’d switched again; soft folds where last night was a full throbbing dick, put to good use, too. It’s happening more and more these days. I linger. A few tasty ghosts of last night at my fingertips: Arkex beneath me, behind me, his hands on my shoulders, mine on his. I wondered if he’d grasp my womanbody with the same savage tenderness. Would he be too gentle? Not interested at all? I leaned over him, my fingers still rolling circles between my legs, but then the gnawing sense of somewhere to be surfaced, overtook everything. The Triumvirate. Their star glider was probably already docked in the hangar, their irritating little envoy slinking his way along our dust-covered corridors to the Rustvine.

  I disentangled from the sheets. All my shield pants and dress shirts lay crumpled in the bin. All that was left was this stupid skirt that I only have for stupid parties I show up to uninvited. Absurd. But I threw it on, laced up my caving boots beneath it and pulled on an old Sour Kings t-shirt. Glanced in the mirror, ignored the feeling that it wasn’t quite me looking back and then nudged Arkex with a steel-tipped toe.

  “Ay. Got places to be. Find your way out, eh.”

  Arkex had mumbled a curse, not even registering I was now a woman, maybe not caring, and turned over. The sheets slipped from his body; the redness even tinged his chest. I poured the dregs of yesterday’s coffee into a stained paper cup and shambled down the corridors.

  §

  At the far end of the Rustvine, the more ornery dustfuckers trade grimaces and slurp down Vanguard shots. A whispered debate rages, you can see it play out in those tiny face flinches. Everyone knows impact is only a matter of hours now; everyone knows the galaxy may be about to witness the most colossal suicide mission of all time. Discontent catches slow fire, thickens every day.

  Arkex is among them now, having risen from his satisfied stupor, and so is Zan, one of the few female squad leaders. From their scowls and studious refusal to even glance my way, I know some foul fuckery is afoot.

  They say the best cure for Vanguard pebble brain is Vanguard, so I order my second shot and turn back to the awkward little man sitting across from me.

  “Jax,” Dravish says, glaring at me. “Are you even paying attention?”

  “His Holiness the Hierophant,” I say, “Minister of the Noble Triumvirate, who you represent most humbly, wants an update on our trajectory, delicately reminds the crew of asteroid Post 7Quad9 that the destruction of the asteroid and the post along with it is on the pulldown menu of possibilities if Earth remains at risk.”

  Dravish nods, trying to affect a meaningful glare but only getting a half-smirk peeking out from somewhere beneath his handlebar mustache. “All eyes are on you, Jax. The universe is watching.”

  “Even though,” I add unnecessarily, “no one lives on Earth any more. Are you enjoying your stay at our lovely facility?”

  He’s a small man with alarmingly long fingers and a tendency to call attention to them by rubbing his hands together like a plotting marsupial. “I don’t like being without my jag pistons. The Barons have spies everywhere.”

  I shrug. There’s enough firepower and political intrigue focused on this one hurling rock to destroy several galaxies, so I instituted a strict no firearms policy from the get-go. Anyway, it makes bar fights more fun. “It just means you have to be more creative when you kill people, Dravish. I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

  Dravish taps his steel cane on the tiled floor and snorts.

  I have more important things to consider than the Hierophant and his passive aggressive secretaries. The dustfuckers have stopped consorting and spread out across the room; more trouble. Beyond all that, I still carry the memory of that perfect clicking into place earlier, when our breathing became one.

  “There’s something else, Jax.” Annoyed that I’m not looking at him, Dravish fiddles his fingers faster against themselves. A murmur ripples through the Rustvine; someone unusual has just entered and the denizens accumulate to catch a glimpse.

  My shot arrives. “What?” I throw it back.

  “The Hierophant sent his daughter along with me.”

  I spit the shot back into the glass. “Maya?”

  “He has only one.”

  The crowd opens and a figure in a long black robe strides out. The ornate silver machinery of the Triumvirate halos her; beneath it, a gilded faceguard catches the ill orange glow of the Rustvine’s security lights. Elaborate leather belts crisscross her chest and another wraps around her waist. Still, she moves like a leaf pushed in on a gale of wind. Real wind, I mean, not the endless monotony of exhaust fans. She is a thing alive, glistening even, and completely out of place in this underground trashhole of dustfuckers and the taste of disaster.

  Moving effortlessly, she sits. I put a handrolled Garafuna in my mouth, light it. Dravish mumbles something and finds somewhere else to be. The faceguard emits a mechanical sigh, lifts, and there’s Maya, smiling like a jerk. “Smoking is bad for the environment.”

  I exhale a ringlette and take in her face. It hasn’t changed much since the academy days. Maya has three moles reaching like Orion’s belt from the edge of her mouth to her right eye. That’s the eye that’s always squinting, just a little bit, like she doesn’t quite believe you. It’s the gap between her two front teeth that gets you, though. You can’t miss ‘em, those big ol’ teeth, and whenever she lets that grin loose, the gap reaches out to you and says hi. She has pudgy cheeks, too, like a brown girl version of those horrible little dolls the Chemical Barons distribute to make us all forget how they flooded Earth. E
xcept the dolls are heinous and Maya, Maya is stunning.

  “You know what else is bad for the environment?” I take another drag. Exhale. “Blowing up people’s asteroid homes.”

  She scrunches her face. “It’s not your home, it’s your job.”

  “It’s a busy season; I keep having to sleep at the office.”

  “Is that why I haven’t seen you in two years?”

  I shrug, tear my eyes away from her face. “I’m not hard to find.”

  The Rustvine has settled back into its regular banter: filthy, dust-covered men mutter their dust-covered prayers to each other, sip Vanguard till everything tastes like oblivion, which is slightly less bitter than disaster. Directly across from me, Arkex hunches over the bar. A few seats away, Zan mutters to one of her men.

  “As an opening gambit, I’d say you’ve softened some since our Ac days.”

  I look back at Maya, scowl, look away. “You want a drink?”

  “Really, Jax?”

  “People change. You could be a regular heathen like the rest of us now. I don’t make assumptions. A simple ‘no, thank you’ would do.”

  “But why pass up a chance to annoy you?”

  Finally, I allow a smile out. She’s been demanding one since she sat down and I’ve never been able to say no to her.

  She sits back, releases the gap-tooth grin. “See now! There it is.”