A Universe of Wishes

by A Universe of Wishes (epub)

  Rows and rows of chest-high cassava plants lined the laboratory, their stems standing rigid and tall. Broad green leaves twice the size of my hand stretched to the artificial ceiling light and rustled beneath the recirculating air. I held out my hand to brush against them and inhaled.

  In the far corner, more than twice as tall as the others, stood a single cassava plant. Deep green leaves the size of my arm fluttered in the manufactured breeze, and the thick stem dropped ramrod straight to a wide patch of soil all its own. Beneath it spread a tuber-and-root system that arched out of the soil like leaping dolphins frozen in time.

  “Nice to see you again, Nana,” I murmured.

  It was magnificent and by far my favorite place on the ship, though I needed to do one thing before working in my sanctuary.

  “Secure,” I called out.

  “Outer door locked. Inner door locked. Laboratory secured.” The voice came from a speaker somewhere off to my right, though it was probably covered in kudzu now. I nodded—as if the AI could see me—and then slipped off my thin, gauzy gardening slippers. My toes stretched and wiggled, as if knowing what came next and too eager to remain still, and I stepped forward into the loamy earth.

  My feet sank into the cool soil, and with one deep breath all of the day’s stress and confusion leached out of me, as if the garden needed it for nourishment, when in fact I needed it for my sanity.

  “Skip to next recording,” I said after several seconds of restorative breathing.

  “Current recording not complete—would you like to finish?”

  I must have paused it during the last whole ship power interruption. “Yes,” I answered before dropping to my knees to examine the leaves of a stunted plant below me.

  “Playing.”

  The voice stopped, then a popping, crackling, hissing sound filled the lab as I began to weed. It carried on for several seconds before another voice, a woman’s voice, loud and deeply accented, started speaking.

  “Look here. If you don’t lissen to one thang else, you lissen to this: Ain’t no village without the harvest. And ain’t no harvest without the village. You understand? You can’t do this thang by yo’self.”

  I listened to Nana Gbemi’s words as I moved down the rows of cassava plants, pushing fertilizing beads down to the tubers and pruning wilting leaves.

  “Yo’ bent back is all you can control. Can’t control the sun. Can’t control the rain. Can’t control any of that ’cept for yo’ fingers and yo’ back. Work, and work hard, and know that when the time comes help will arrive. Why—”

  Two loud beeps cut through the recording.

  “Kweku, it’s Jen.” The ship’s pilot sounded apologetic. “Harry’s looking for those revised food budget numbers.”

  I closed my eyes. “Yep, I’m on it, Jen. Thanks for checking, though. Tell Harry I’ll bring them up in the morning.”

  “You might want to bring them up tonight.” Her voice dropped to just above a whisper. “He’s been hovering around me for the last half hour during run-throughs, and I can’t take much more.”

  “Why doesn’t he—” I began, then inhaled and counted to five. “You know what, never mind. I’m on my way.”

  “Thanks, Kweku. And I’m sorry.” Jen signed off, and I sighed, staring at my dirt-covered hands. After some time I brushed them off on my scrubs and headed back out to the office.

  “Liberia, rerun Resource Analysis on current projected yields,” I said.

  “Existing parameters found. Would you like to revise them?”

  I stared at the garden that took up most of the space in my lab—an acre’s worth of crops stuffed into what once was the lower level of Liberia’s holds, now repurposed as the Science and Research module. I stared at the young plants propagated from Nana, the giant cassava cared for by dozens of others in preparation for this moment. I imagined Nana Gbemi showing me how to harvest the tubers without damaging the roots, with my mother crying softly in the corner when we found out I was selected for the journey. I imagined the thousands of faces gathering at the landing site on the colony. Eager, hopeful faces.

  “Existing parameters,” I said. I couldn’t justify lowering the colony’s requirements. I just couldn’t.

  I stripped and put back on my uniform and removed most of the dirt from beneath my fingernails. Every movement seemed to require three times as much energy, and I grabbed a coffee cube from my stores. Any help right now was appreciated.

  “Analysis run. Verbal or hard-copy report?”

  “Hard-copy.”

  “File transcribed.”

  A small disk popped out of a slot on my desk and I tucked it into my pocket before heading up to see the boss.

  * * *

  The lift shuddered its way up to the command deck. I gripped the railing tight as the lights flickered and the ancient system groaned past each floor. Someone should really take a look at this thing, I thought, resolving to mention it to Sirah. Then the doors opened, and I immediately forgot about it.

  Everyone stood or sat around the various instrument panels in Liberia’s center of operations. The equipment, like everything else, was outdated, but it gleamed like fresh polish. Jen, a tiny caramel-skinned black girl with freckles dotting each cheek, took great care of her domain. We’d been in the same orbital piloting class when we found out we’d miss the rest of school to train for operating Liberia, and the fierce determination she constantly wore on her face powered me through our exercises too. Now she just looked irritated at the impromptu gathering cramping her workspace.

  “We have to do better,” Harry said as he stomped around the pilot console, carving a path through the gathered personnel like rapids through a canyon.

  I slipped into a space against a panel next to Francis and Tomas. Tomas scrunched up his nose and leaned into his boyfriend’s chest and away from me.

  “You smell like the business end of one of those old plows.”

  I tilted my head. “Weird…I am really close to a horse’s ass right now.”

  Francis snorted back a laugh, and Tomas straightened up and glared at him. “Oh, that’s funny to you?” Tomas said. But Francis pulled him back close, and I chuckled at the two of them. Harry heard the disturbance and squeezed his way back toward us.

  “Kweku,” he barked. “Where were you?”

  “Uh-oh, here we go,” Tomas murmured.

  Tall and thin with black skin that glittered like the star-filled space we traveled through, Harry was the oldest of us all. Our fearless eighteen-year-old captain wore his full harness and carried his helmet beneath his arm. He chewed gum as if it single-handedly kept him alive. He blew a bubble—defeating the fierce image he tried to cultivate—and folded his arms.

  I held up the disk. “You wanted to see the numbers?”

  “No, I wanted to see those five hours ago—I wanted to see you here ten minutes ago. You missed the drop-ship run-through. Again.”

  “Well, I have the numbers, Harry, and”—a huge yawn slipped out between my words—“besides, everyone’s exhausted. We need to sleep.”

  “Sleep?” He looked incredulous at the thought. “Sleep? You can sleep when we land. Until then everything has to run smoothly.”

  “What about your crew, Harry?” I said. “Don’t we have to run smoothly?” I saw Tomas shaking his head, but I couldn’t help myself. “We can’t keep going at this pace.”

  Harry glared at me, silently chomping on his gum, and I sighed. This wasn’t what I wanted.

  “Look—” I began, but an alarm chimed a warning and Jen cut me off.

  “Tremor coming up.”

  That got everyone’s attention. A fluctuation in the jump lanes we cruised along could turn a million-ton colony ship like ours into shimmering space dust. Impressive quantities of space dust, but space dust nonetheless.

  “Okay,�
� Harry said, “everyone strap up and strap in. This isn’t a drill. I want you all secured in five minutes.” His eyes found mine, and he motioned for the disk. “Give it here—I’ll run it while we wait.”

  I handed the data over and turned to head toward my post—I was backing up Jen and Francis, so luckily I didn’t have far to go, just had to slip into my overharness. Before I could strap in, however, Harry’s voice stopped me.

  “Kweku.”

  I turned and raised my eyebrows. The older boy held his helmet just above his head, his jaw clenched as his eyes bore into mine.

  “We’re all in this together—we’ve got to be a team.”

  I forced out a thin smile. “I know, boss. I know.”

  * * *

  We navigated the tremor without trouble. As Liberia skirted the gravitational distortion, Jen, with Francis beside her as copilot, monitored the readouts like a hawk, making minute adjustments until she rang the all-clear alert. I was on the lift, mashing the buttons, before the siren had finished ringing.

  Back inside my lab I bypassed my small cot in the corner—it took some doing; I was incredibly tired. But the garden called to me. It sang to me of sustenance for the body and soul, of a future of new beginnings, of a chance to spread fresh roots in greener pastures.

  The giant cassava cultivar waved at me as I walked toward it over the soil, barefoot once more. A breeze from the recirculation pumps ruffled its leaves, but I imagined it was greeting me after an elongated absence. Silly, perhaps, but comforting.

  “Play,” I said. After a few seconds, Nana Gbemi’s cackle filled the lab, and I began to walk up and down the rows of cassava, misting the leaves as I went.

  “Why, I remember I thought I was all alone. That nobody cared if the harvest lived or died. It was just me and the dirt and the scrawny plants strugglin’ just to make it. I thought I’d never be able to care for all them. But I was thinkin’ ’bout it all wrong. ’Cause when the time comes, just when you think you ain’t able to carry on, help comes along from the last place you was expectin’.”

  The system cut off as the lab door chimed, and I groaned at another interruption, then frowned at the entrance. My lab didn’t really get visitors. Tomas’s joking aside, there was an earthy, pungent aroma down here that took some getting used to.

  “Who is it?” I called as I set down the mister.

  “Harry. We need to talk.”

  Damn. What now? But I wiped as much dirt off my scrubs as I could and moved to the front to let him in. Harry stepped inside, still wearing his harness and chewing his gum, and a familiar expression, complex and fleeting, swept across his face. Disappointment mixed with apprehension and discomfort. He didn’t like my lab, didn’t think it was a necessity. He glanced down, and too late I realized I hadn’t put my shoes back on, let alone brushed the dirt off my feet, and I flushed with anger at my embarrassment.

  “Yes?” My tone was curt, and his eyes narrowed. He held up the disk.

  “Care to explain this?”

  “What? Did the data not transfer over right?” Confusion replaced anger. “I can run them again for you real quick.”

  “No, they transferred over fine. They’re too high. Still.”

  I stared at him. “Too high? They’re too conservative if anything. I’ve run these projections a dozen times, and they’re all saying the same thing: We need these plants, Harry; the colony is depending on these seedlings to help generate a new farming system. If we’re off by even a little, we risk jeopardizing the nutritional—”

  “You really think we need all of this”—he waved a hand at the garden behind me—“to come down with us?”

  Damn it, why couldn’t he see? “Absolutely. Failures in the transplant process—”

  “And this…cultivar? You need a dedicated support pod just for a large plant?”

  “It isn’t just a large plant,” I said, growing angry again. “The cultivar is the ancestor of all of these plants. If we experience any sort of yield loss, her survival is critical in—”

  “ ‘Her’?” he interrupted, and I closed my eyes, fighting off another wave of exhaustion. “Kweku, your personification of these…these plants, was amusing at first, but it’s quickly growing old. We can’t take all of this with us.”

  “Harry—”

  “No. Find a way to cut it. End of story. And go see Jen—we need a full run-through with all reserves.” He glanced at my feet one more time, then shook his head and left. I stood there as the door slid shut behind him, trying to suppress an overwhelming urge to shout, scream, swear, kick something, and pull my hair out. The frustration spread from a tight ball of anger in my stomach. I counted to ten before I walked stiffly back to the garden. The cultivar—no, Nana—stood there, her leaves still, even as the recirculator chugged along.

  * * *

  The second tremor caught us all by surprise.

  We were minutes from approaching the exit window to drop into the system for the Colonies. I was standing in the back of the command deck, staying out of the way as Jen and Francis ran through checklists and whispered instructions and murmured confirmations. They were surrounded by printouts and barely focusing on the console’s readouts. Ironic, really. We’d been preparing and double-checking and readying ourselves for anticipated disaster so much that when it actually showed up we didn’t recognize it.

  There really was no need for me to be there. Those two could handle any situation. I was just beginning to announce I was heading back to my lab when Liberia slammed into the tremor and reality twisted inside out.

  The distortion picked up the room and shook it, turning everyone on their heads and sending objects whizzing by at breakneck speeds. The floor was the wall, and the wall was a mess of broken displays flashing pixelated streaks of red, green, and blue lightning.

  Sirens wailed. I could hear them through the muffled helmet that had snapped out and over my head during the impact. Vital signs flashed green in my display, so I stood, waited for the wobble in my knees to steady, then hailed the emergency frequency.

  “Everyone all right?” I asked. While I waited for a response, I checked on Francis and Jen. Both seemed fine, though Francis had a yellow warning flashing on his display—he had a gash below his eye, which his suit was working on patching up. Still, he flashed me a thumbs-up and began sorting through his readouts.

  “Okay, I think,” someone responded before coughing.

  “Tomas?”

  “No, Ty.”

  “Sirah here. Tomas is with me in Medical. He’s fine, but his comms are damaged.”

  “Okay, thanks, Sirah.” I cleared my throat and fidgeted as others began to check in. Jen moved next to Francis, looked over his numbers, crawled over to the only functional console on the former wall, now the floor. I flashed her the okay sign and waited for someone else to take over.

  “Harry here. What’s the status?”

  “Running diagnostics now,” Jen said, “but it looks like that tremor triggered a premature separation.” She tapped a few commands and then shook her head. “Yep, the entire Research module is partially disengaged. Holding steady for now, but no telling if it’ll hold through reentry.”

  “Research?” My voice sounded faint in my ears. The lab. “Air loss?”

  A pause, then, “Can’t tell. Seals are still holding, it seems.”

  Please, God.

  “Okay,” I said, thinking fast. “Okay. I’m heading to prep for harvest and storage. Sirah, tell Tomas to ready the containment pod for Nana, and—”

  “Wait,” Harry broke in. “Kweku, we need all hands up here. There isn’t time.”

  “Jen and Francis have it covered, Harry, and I need to assess the damage.”

  “No, I need you to assist them while we start reentry. We don’t have time—”

  “They’ve got it handled, Harry.
”

  “Kweku, the time—”

  “Make. Time.”

  Jen’s helmet whipped around as she stared at me. My voice was tight and my fists were clenched, so I took a deep, shuddering breath and forced some calm into my words. “Please, Harry, make time. This whole venture is a failure if we don’t rescue the harvest.”

  Silence stretched on the line, then Harry sighed.

  “No unnecessary risks, hear me? We need you.”

  I exhaled as well. “Roger.” I commed Jen directly. “Jen, I’m heading down. Tell Tomas through Sirah that Francis is here and has a head injury, but he’s okay.”

  “Got it,” she answered. Then, “And be careful.”

  * * *

  The lift was a disaster. A ladder system connected all of the modules in case of emergencies, so I squeezed through the narrow trapdoor and started the climb down, hand over hand, my breath echoing in the confines of my helmet.

  Each floor I passed had bright-red emergency lights flashing above the entry hatch. I glanced in a few of the windows, trying to determine the extent of the damage, but darkness and impatience prevented me from seeing much. After a while I stopped checking and just continued down. My hands were beginning to ache, and a knot formed at the base of my neck from the position I was holding it in, trying to watch my footing. I stopped once to rest, but the panicky need to verify that everything was okay quickly swamped me, and I continued on. No more breaks.

  Down and down and down some more. Dark and dark and darker. I planned as I descended. Talking out loud reassured me.

  “Bag and seal the herbs. Separate by soil pH, and send them on. Have the tractor start pulling and boxing the cassavas, then move to the beans. Once the pod gets here, we can load up Nana and go.”

  On and on, again and again, I ran through the steps as I climbed down farther and farther, and after a few repetitions I started numbering them. I was on repetition 217 when the connection hatch for the Research module came into view at the bottom of the ladder. A flashing red warning brought me to a sudden halt.