by K J Kabza
She holds out her hand. "Give me your alarm."
The request seems so banal. I remove it and hand it over, as if she’s asked to inspect a piece of costume jewelry. I’m not sure what’s happening. "What are you doing?"
"I’ll take it inside with me," she says. "I’ll spend a long time in the airlock, as if we’re standing there talking. By the time I come inside and check in with the Exodus desk …" She looks away.
I open my mouth, then close it swiftly around my drinking tube to prevent all that moisture from being sucked away. "Lian—"
"I’ve thought about it," she says stubbornly. "They won’t do anything to me. They need miners too badly, and you’re old and sick, and I think everyone would secretly be happy if they heard you got to die outside. She died doing what she loved. You know that’s what they’ll say."
I don’t want to argue. I feel like I have to. "My biomass—"
"—will get picked up later by a rescue squad, so what does it matter?"
I fall silent. I sip at my water tube.
Lian stands, surfacing for air.
I look at her, so smooth and beautiful under the fierce light, my wrist alarm in one clenched hand. Her face melts. "Thank you, Marie," she whispers.
"Thank you, Lian," I say.
"I’ll miss you."
I almost say Me, too, but in a few moments, I won’t be able to miss anything. Not even Sadie. So I just say, "It was a privilege to know you."
She nods.
Her alarm chirps. Mine chimes in. She turns and moves back to the airlock, so very slowly, weaving in and out among the knee-high towers, as if they really were stupendous trees, each trunk a new horizon.
The airlock yawns open. Gold light splashes over the wasteland. Is swallowed.
Alone in my forest, under Sadie’s tree, I remove the water pack from my back. There’s still about one third left. I hold it above my head with one hand, then I yank out the drinking tube with the other.
I tip my face up to the rain.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Begin Reading
Copyright
Copyright © 2019 by K. J. Kabza
Art copyright © 2019 by Mary Haasdyk
