by Robin Banks
If anyone told me a few months back that I would have rejoiced at the prospect of being stuck in a tin in space for two weeks with nothing to do but shovel shit, I’d have laughed at them. Right now, though, this is heaven. For us three guys, anyway.
Alya started the trip looking relatively ok, or at least better than she has since we got bogged down. Although losing Laika hit her hard, life on ship has been such an improvement that she started to look almost healthy. She was even eating ok. With every passing day, though, she’s been looking increasingly fucked up, though it’s a different kind of fucked up from her usual. Instead of being tired and miserable, she’s rested and terrified. I know her well enough to believe that she doesn’t get scared over nothing. I’m assuming it’s got something to do with creepy Sean, Parker, or both. I just wish she told us exactly what it is, because not knowing is stressing me out and pissing Tom off. He’s not really into drama, unless it involves fucking, and neither of us likes being kept in the dark about issues that affect us.
I try talking about it with Kolya, but he won’t have any of it.
“You want to know? You ask her.”
“I can’t just ask her. If she wanted to talk about it, she would.”
“See? That is your answer.”
“But it feels like it’s a big deal. Something we should be aware of. Kolya, she acts like she’s flying towards her own spacing.”
He pats my cheek. “This is bad for her. Very bad. This whole year is bad. But this, now? Very bad.”
“But you won’t tell me why?”
“No. Not my story.”
It all comes to a head a week into our trip. I’m cooking when an almighty racket makes me jump. By the time I realize that it’s just noise over the com, I’m already halfway down to the bridge, so I keep going. When I get there, it seems like a waste of time because Alya is already sitting in the pilot’s seat, listening. Then I realize that she’s all huddled up and faintly shaking. I’ve gotten used to see her shaking on Hestia, because she could never get warm enough, but it’s warm here. I stand and watch her for a few moments, until her shoulders start heaving and I realize she’s crying. That’s when I decide that I’ve had enough of this.
“You’re being an asshole, you know.”
“Eh? What?” She spins around and rubs her eyes.
“You keep telling us to trust you, that we’re in this together. But you’re clearly keeping something from us. Something important. So you clearly don’t trust us. Rather hypocritical.”
“My problems aren’t relevant.”
“Oh, really? We go through a semi-hostile takeover, you narrowly stop us signing our lives away, you know the people involved, you fucking hate their guts, and it’s not relevant?”
Her godsdamned bottom lip is trembling now and still she won’t speak, so I let rip.
“I guess you don’t have to explain stuff to us now that you have us in your pocket.”
“I what?”
“You know that. Tom and I, we’re under contract to you. You know how important that is to us. You know we’ve got no other option. So you can keep hiding stuff from us and lying to our faces and it doesn’t matter, because we’ll just have to go along with it. I get it. It doesn’t mean I like it, though. I think it’s fucking shitty.”
“No. The whole point of this was for us not to be in anyone’s pocket.”
“You control my contract, which controls my credit, which controls my air, which controls my emancipation. That’s a lot of clout.”
“No. It was just a sham so you wouldn’t have to sign up with them.”
“It’s real enough for me. You could cancel it and wreck my life.”
“It’s not like that!”
“So you don’t want me to work for you?”
“I want you to work with me. Regardless of what the contract says.”
“Bullshit. If we were partners I’d be entitled to know what the fuck is going on, what the fuck those people did, and why you hate them so much. Wouldn’t I?”
Her eyes get bigger and her voice gets smaller. “Yes.”
“Well?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I’m not going anywhere.
“The circus, they’re just like any other circus, really. Well, not quite; they play rougher. A lot rougher. You’ve seen it. But that Parker guy is basically just another Jameson. A more capable Jameson. Smarter, meaner, harder to handle, but he’s not the problem.”
“So what is it?”
“Sean. I don’t like him. I don’t trust him.”
“I’d worry about you if you did. He makes my skin crawl.”
“That makes two of us.”
“Three. Tom is aware. Well, he doesn’t see it himself, but he trusts me, so he’s aware. And Kolya doesn’t like him either.”
“That’s just because we spoke about him. Now he’s biased.”
“Which brings us back to my original question. How the fuck do you know the guy? What the fuck did he do?”
She doesn’t look like she’s going to answer, so I give up and start walking off.
“Luke. Wait. It’s embarrassing, ok? We used to go out.”
I stop dead. “You used to do what?”
“Don’t make this worse than it already is, ok?”
“You went out with that? Why? I mean, shit, you could never have been that desperate. You’re pretty, you know, for an older person.”
“An older person?”
“You’re older than me.”
“Everyone is.”
“Whatever. But you went out with that? Why?”
“He looked different back then. He was kind of good looking, actually.”
“Now you’re shitting me. That’s a physical impossibility.”
“He was. Well, he wasn’t stunning, but he looked alright. Nothing like he does now.”
“What the hell happened?”
“A few fights too many and a whole load of booze, I guess. Maybe the evil exuding out of his pores ruined his complexion, too.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Five years, give or take.”
“I’m not buying that. Nobody changes that much.”
“Alright then. Follow me.” She walks into the cargo bay and down to her ATR. When we get there, she rummages in one of the cupboards under her bed and digs out a holo. “There you go. Evidence. Believe me now?”
The guy in the holo looks nothing like the guy I met. No leathery skin. No missing teeth. No scars. That’s nothing, though. The main difference is that he doesn’t have those malignant, sunken eyes. His long, wavy hair frames a smiling face. He looks a little bit like a paler, older Tom.
“This is the guy? For real and no shit?”
“I told you.”
“Holy shit.” The guy in the holo is standing next to a woman wearing a sparkling circus costume and a ton of make-up. I’ve just realized that I know her, too. “This is you, isn’t it? Shit.”
“Yes, it is.” She reaches over to snatch the holo back, but I lift it up out of her reach. “Don’t be an asshole.”
“I’m just having a look. Man, you look different, too.”
“About half the size, for starters.”
I look at her, then back at the holo. “No, that’s not it. I mean, you look thinner in the holo, but you look sick. Weak. And kinda desperate.”
“I’m smiling.”
“Your mouth is. I’d hide the knives from you.”
“That must be a really good holo, then.” I let her take it off me.
“So you were in an act with the guy?”
“Yup.”
“Doing what?”
“I didn’t do anything. I just stood around somewhat underdressed, while he threw knives at me. Well, not at me, around me.”
“You are kidding, right?”
“This conversation would go a lot faster if you just accepted that maybe I’m not saying any of this because I’m trying to sound cool.”
&nbs
p; “Ok. Fair point. It’s just that the guy is so obviously off. The way he looked at you was just wrong.”
“Yeah. He wasn’t any nicer back then. Just better at hiding it. His face caught up with him, kinda thing.”
“And you let him throw knives at you?”
“Never felt safer. He wouldn’t have jeopardized his career, not even to hurt me. I was not important enough. And as for getting myself in that situation, I just didn’t know any better. Then I learnt. So I left and I came here. I left to get away from him and now we’re going to be on a show together. I can’t catch a break.”
I’ve seen her exhausted, joyous, furious, heartbroken, and most things in between. I’ve never seen her this scared. Not even close.
“What did he do?”
Her eyes widen. “He never hit me. Never. It wasn’t like that.”
“Ok.”
“No, seriously. He didn’t.”
“Ok. I get it.”
“You do? You believe me?”
That makes me laugh. “Is that so weird?”
“On show, yes. People assume the worst, and the more you deny it the more they believe it must be true.”
“I know. I hate that. Anyway, if you were lying about this you could be lying about the whole thing. Not sure why you would. Can’t see a possible advantage.”
“To make you think I was less pathetic. Less weak.”
“Do you care enough about my opinion to make yourself a liar?”
She frowns. “Probably not. But I care enough to tell you the truth. The guy never laid a hand on me in anger. I would have left straight away.”
“Which is why he didn’t, and why I believe you.”
“Beg pardon?”
“If he’d laid a hand on you, you would have walked. So he didn’t. So you stayed, so he could keep heaping shit on you. Until he did something that crossed a line. Then you left. Makes sense.”
She stares at me with her mouth hanging open. “How the hell did you figure that one out?”
“That’s always how it goes. They hand out as much shit as they can without ruining the game. And how much you take depends on all sorts of stuff. Options, mostly. Easy to tell people to just leave, but if all their other options are worse, they ain’t going anywhere.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“What?”
“You. You’re practically twelve. How do you know all this stuff?”
“When it comes to fucked-up situations and awful people, I grew up in the right place.”
“So did Tom, didn’t he? You don’t see him philosophizing about it.”
“I’m going to pretend I know what that means. Look, I know about people hurting people. It’s not a big deal. And you’re just avoiding my question. Which is fine by me, if that’s what you want. You told me the gist of the story. The specifics are none of my business.”
She takes a deep breath. “It’s going to sound silly.”
“If you think so, then it probably will.”
“He used to be ok when I first met him. Great, really. He’s very smart and very charming when he wants to be. He was so… Vibrant. Alive. And he wooed me relentlessly. I’d never been wooed like that before.”
I can’t stop eye-rolling at that.
“Well, I hadn’t! And my life sucked and his didn’t. The circus was freedom and glamour and excitement, looking at it from the outside. But they were leaving and I was going to be left behind, back to my everyday shit. So when he asked me to drop everything and go with him, I did.”
“What were you doing?”
“This you’ll probably not believe. I was a Patrolman. I should have never got in, but I did. I was doing ok. I was looking to make Corporal.” She laughs at my expression. “I told you that you wouldn’t believe me!”
“How the fuck did you end up in the Patrol?”
“Same as everyone else. I took the entry exam, I passed, I trained, I graduated, I did my probation, and I got in. Why is it so weird?”
“You have zero respect for authority. Even when you are the authority. You treat all rules like they’re optional extras.”
“Not all the time. Just when they’re silly, or unfair. Or inconvenient.”
“My point precisely. I just can’t picture you as a Fed.”
“I hated it. I could do it, but I hated it. And the crap on Pollux kicked off when I was halfway through my training.”
“Pollux? Where Kolya’s from? What happened?”
“’68? The Troubles? Did they teach you about that?”
“Not much. Some grubber revolt?”
“That’s one way of putting it. You might not want to describe it in those terms when Kolya is around. It was a giant clusterfuck. Very political. A lot of innocent citizens died. Patrolmen too. I was still at the Academy when it started. They brought some of the injured back for rehab. Some of them talked to us, told us their stories. The more I heard about it, the less I wanted to know.”
“Why didn’t you quit, then?”
“And do what? My air isn’t paid for, you know. I had no good choices.”
Something just hit me. “You talk as if your air was paid for.”
“What?”
“You do. Never thought about it, but you do. I think. I don’t really socialize with first-classers much, you know, apart from… Anyway. You talk as if independence was possible, or something.”
“It’s not possible. But it should be strived for.”
“That makes no sense.”
“If you can’t get there all the way, it doesn’t mean you should give up on it. You should try and control the terms of your subjugation.”
“What?”
“Subordination.”
“Not helping.”
“Enslavement? Control?”
“You should control who’s in control?”
She smirks. “Yeah. Sounds silly, but yeah. And how much control they’ve got over you, too. Even though you can’t win, you should fight to minimize your loss.”
“That I get. Isn’t life simpler when you talk like normal people? But you’re still talking around the subject.”
“I guess I am. Well, it was like this. After I quit everything and went with him, he started to change. Things would go wrong and he’d be moody, but nothing major. There was less of the good stuff, though.”
“What, like the wooing?” I can’t stop smirking.
“Shut it. But yeah. None of that, and more and more of the moodiness. Then he started to drink. When he drank he’d be even moodier, but he always had a reason for it. You know how it is on show: something goes wrong every five minutes. He could always find an excuse. Then it started to happen all the time. Anything could set him off. I could do something that I’d always done and suddenly it wasn’t ok anymore, so he’d get drunk and have a screaming fit, or go out and get into a fight.”
“Actual fight?”
“Yeah. That’s how he got his face all smashed up. He’d go out and aggravate people until someone smacked him one. I watched him doing it a couple of times, then I just refused to go out with him. I guess he had to go out and look for violence because he couldn’t get it at home. I just wouldn’t go for that. If I had enough of him, instead of hitting him I’d just go and sleep in his ATR and come back in the morning for my breakfast.”
“Why did you go back?”
“I had nowhere else to go and no way to get there. And I love circus. I really do. I’ve never been happier. I knew that if I left him I’d have to leave the show. I’d measure the bad bits against the good bits, and there were always more good bits. They weren’t coming from him, but because of him, and that amounted to the same. Giving him up would have meant giving up my whole life, good stuff included. And anyway it wasn’t that bad. It was manageable. I wouldn’t have signed up for that kind of home life, but once it turned into what it was, it was manageable.”
I nod.
“Aren’t you going to tell me that I was a fool?”
“For doing what?”
“For not seeing it coming. For not getting out of there as soon as it started to go wonky.”
“Why would I?”
“Everybody else does. They go on at me about quitting a good job to run off with a good-for-nothing asshole and then staying with him after he started misbehaving.”
“You said you hated your job.”
“But it was a good job.”
“How could it be a good job if you hated it?”
Her mouth pops open. “You know, it was easier to think that it was just me when it was just me.”
“What?”
“I tell you stuff that makes everyone else roll their eyes and give me a lecture, or just walk away, and you see my point without me having to explain it. It makes me feel validated. I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing. It’ll probably encourage me to be even less sensible. Feels good, though. Anyway. So things were shit, but ok. Then one day he said something and I realized I needed to get the hell out of there. By then I’d sorted myself out so I could leave safely. So I did.”
“What did he say?”
She swallows. “We’d had a bit of a mishap…” she trails off.
“You don’t have to tell me. Guy sounds like an asshole already.”
“There was a chance I may be expecting a baby. Not planned, you know, but with me being ex-Fed it would have been ok. He didn’t like it, though. He told me that if I ever got pregnant, he’d kick the baby right out of me.”
“What?”
“Those were his exact words. ‘I’ll kick the baby right out of you’. He was sober when he said that. I realized that I couldn’t trust him to be joking. Maybe he was and maybe he wasn’t, but either way it was fucked up. Even if he didn’t mean that, if he didn’t do anything like that, it would be just as bad. I wouldn’t bring a child into our life together. Turned out that there was no baby, but I left anyway. I never regretted that.”
“I don’t really know what to say.”
“You don’t think it’s silly?”
