by Kevin Bliss
“Thank you.”
That’s when it hit Belinda that despite her quiet criticism of all the Upsilonians – Grace included – who saw Alisson as a mascot to help them deal with the dreariness of what was to come, she was guilty of the very same thing. She could save the girl with Vroo and make things better. She turned the rapidly-fashioned bandage into a decorative flourish over the wound on the wrist. Why? Because it helped to gloss over the worst thoughts about her sphere of existence which even medication couldn’t blunt.
Charlie kicked off his brown shoe – the one which he complained had been too small.
“Oh yeah…” he moaned, stretching his toes and wincing a bit. “Can you imagine what would have happened if when we got to the Attachment Race tonight, everyone sat down…refused to move? Just refused to cooperate with their program. People used to do that in the face of long odds, you know.”
“So what are you,” Belinda asked, “a revolutionary?”
“I could be. But no one ever listens to me. If I was right alongside another person – and they were a mute? They’d have a better chance of making an impression on people. I just have that effect.”
“Doesn’t sound like it bothers you.”
“It has advantages,” said Charlie.
Belinda found him charming in a sort of way that made her wonder if she’d been in confinement for too long.
“What did you do…before?” she asked.
“I worked for a safety company,” Charlie said with a self-deprecating shrug.
“Interesting work.”
“You could say that.”
Then it dawned on Belinda what he meant:
“Wait. Were you…you weren’t an actual inspector, were you?”
“Sure,” he said. “What’d you think? Management?”
“I never knew anyone who did that before. How many years?”
“Seven.”
Belinda was as impressed as she was sympathetic.
“Isn’t that well over the life expectancy?”
“Yeah. Average is…maybe three years. If you’re lucky.”
Inspectors were the cannon fodder of ‘safety companies’ who provided a seemingly endless stream of test subjects to corporations and governments alike. Have a new medication, form of transport, home automation system? Wondering if it might kill anyone? Don’t take chances; call any of the half dozen safety companies that covered the planet. They’d help you figure out the weaknesses and vulnerabilities in your project for a very reasonable price per head (extra charges may apply for serious injuries or fatalities suffered by inspectors). And, for those who consented to work as inspectors, it provided a nice guarantee of continued life on Earth (for as long as one survived).
“So what happened?” Belinda asked.
“I don’t know. It never really spooked me…because when you start, you figure any day on the job could be your last. I had bad reactions to chemicals, got burned three or four times on various parts of my body. Even a few broken bones. Then there was this supervisor I had who kept saying, ‘Aren’t you dead yet?’ every time he saw me in the halls. I got fed up one day and quit on the spot. There was a Collector at my door that night.
“That’s terrible,” said Belinda.
Charlie shrugged it off with a smile.
“Can I tell you something?” Belinda said to Charlie.
“Sure.”
She proceeded to explain everything – going all the way back to her history with the Council for Relocation Outreach, the initial use of Vroo and everything that had happened since. She told him about Grace and Peg and Alisson and the way that three weeks in a transition compound had eaten her up inside despite the temporary relief from meds and her coping tactics to distract from the painful reality that life as she knew it was ending.
Charlie listened patiently, only occasionally looking Belinda in the eye because it seemed to make it easier for her to spill the story when he didn’t. When she was finished, he told her that he understood and this period – like others before it in human history – would go down as a sin by man against man. That didn’t particularly help, but it was better than certain other things he could say. Truth is, nothing could help.
They sat quietly for quite a while – perhaps nearly an hour, by Belinda’s estimate. There was no good way to judge when it was safe to reverse course and make their way back to the site of the Race or the transition compounds. But one thing was sure: they couldn’t sit up against the tree forever.
“We should move,” Charlie said, as if reading her mind. He started to stroll even further from where they’d come and Belinda walked alongside, not sure if his choice to continue on was the right one or not.
“What are you thinking about?” Belinda asked.
“I’m thinking our compounds are going to go down in history as the ones who killed the Attachment Race.”
“That’s not funny. Alisson’s going to suffer from this. People died.”
“I was only trying to lighten the mood.”
They continued to walk, feeling their way along where the moonlight didn’t give them guidance.
“Do you know this area?” Charlie said.
“No. I was living a few hundred kilometers from here when they collected me.”
“Me too.”
“If we come across another dead town, it would be a good place to sleep.”
“We could wander for days…”
“I know. Just a thought.”
Belinda wanted to stop. She was tired. They sat up against a tree that had been felled by weather or some other natural occurrence. It looked as though it hadn’t been down for long.
“If we don’t know where we’re going, why don’t we turn around? Upsilon will be stabilized before too long.”
“Maybe. Do you think there’s a chance they’d shoot at me for being an Omicron man?”
“Oh, come on.”
“Listen, that was an ugly scene back there. People are going to be unhappy.”
“Doesn’t mean they’ll shoot.”
Charlie shrugged. He scratched his head and looked around.
“So…how do we know they’ll do the departure tomorrow morning? If it’s still chaotic, could be they’ll delay.”
“Does it make any difference?”
“Well…think about it. How many others went running into the woods?”
“I don’t know.”
“Might take a while for them to scoop everyone up. And if that’s true…it gives us time.”
“Time for what?”
“Did you ever hear about runners?”
“No. Don’t even…don’t say it.”
“I’m only asking if you’ve heard of them.”
“Of course I have! Did you know that most of those people end up dead?”
Charlie paused before responding. No sense in turning the exchange into a fight.
“I think that might be a myth they keep alive to stop us from going on the run.”
“No. When I worked for the Council on Relocation Outreach,” Belinda said. “I’ve seen the reports.”
She was every bit as tense as when Alisson was being coerced into attaching with the slug. The very idea of what Charlie was proposing was something that even the most hardened souls in transition compounds wouldn’t speak of on their most defiant days.
Sure, people with the choice of submitting to relocation or trying to evade authorities were, on occasion, going to choose the latter and try to keep their grip on the home planet at all costs. The term ‘runners’ had been coined by the general public (just as forced migration became the easier way of referring to Balance-Driven Relocation). The powers-that-be classified runners as Relocation-Tagged Fugitives. What mattered, however, was the idea that a person or persons could actually manage to disappear into the mass of humanity still clustered in urban settings. Authorities were absolutely intolerant of such a notion making its way through the population. Worse, that men and women could sneak off into unpopulated
areas and hide out from Collectors meant additional resources would have to be devoted to digging them out.
As Belinda (and most Earthers) had come to understand it, the preferred method of dealing with the nuisance was to “terminate with consideration for humane treatment abandoned…” Whether that was the actual approach to runners or just a bit of useful propaganda, it kept thousands from even considering escape.
“It’s just…something I was thinking about,” Charlie said. “If there was a time to take a chance on disappearing back into the world, this would be it.”
What scared Belinda the most was not that Charlie would try to force her into running. She felt she understood him well enough to know it wasn’t his style. The truly frightening thing was that a small part of her found the idea appealing. Something about risking everything for whatever additional time on Earth could be gained touched off adrenaline and fired synapses in such a way as she’d rarely known since childhood. To be chased would be to live.
“No,” she said. “Look at us. We’re maybe five miles from where we started. No food, water or idea where we’re going. If there was a plan…it would still be insane. But you don’t even have that much.”
“Right.”
“Right?”
“I agree. But I just wanted to say it out loud. While we’re still on Earth. While it’s still something we could actually do.”
Belinda closed her eyes and inhaled deeply the smell of the outdoors without Upsilon’s collection of unpleasant odors mixing in. She was in limbo. They’d dashed off for a time, slowed and now stopped. They weren’t going back to the transition compounds on their own, as they should. But they weren’t putting any distance between themselves and the authority figures who would have them pried from the planet.
“I don’t think it makes sense to go back tonight,” Charlie said. “I wouldn’t even know the direction for certain. We did so much winding through the trees…it’s hard to tell.”
“But you do want to go back?”
“Not sure what I want.”
The conversation stopped there. They found the most comfortable means of resting against the fallen tree, clung together for a little extra body heat and went silent. Their thoughts were their own, even as they orbited the same small space. The quiet (with occasional surges of wind through the high branches of trees and the relative softness of Charlie’s shoulder as a pillow) allowed Belinda to very gradually sink into sleep. She didn’t reach out for it or try to hold it at bay and it may have been the most tranquil slide into slumber she’d ever experienced in her life.
Chapter 17
They weren’t unnecessarily rough or rude. The hands that shook Belinda and Charlie awake at the initial emergence of daylight did so with no apparent malice. A small band of relocation officials, called to the region in the wake of the chaotic end to the Attachment Race, circled the pair (who hardly would have looked threatening) and did the job they had been assigned.
The night wasn’t completely restful. Belinda stirred once or twice. Felt a little cold, but her thoughts of what would happen the following day seemed to cause more drowsiness than anxiety. After all, it was closure. She wouldn’t have to worry about the worst-feared outcome of life in the current age of man; it would be done.
Climbing into the transport which rolled on old-fashioned power and wheels, Charlie and Belinda had to separate from one another to fit in among the half dozen other refugees from a mating ritual gone wrong. They sat in silence among the others, glancing back and forth all the while. The closest compound was still Upsilon and the officials drove directly through the gates to deliver the men and women retrieved from the woods.
“Name?”
It was a small woman with short, black hair at the table to which Belinda had been directed. She didn’t wear the canary yellow of Watchers, nor did she look at all familiar. She had to be one of the support staff brought in to clean up the mess and get things moving once more.
“Belinda Q.”
The woman searched her records.
“Yes,” she said. “And you…are to gather with group C. They’re just off to your left. The man in charge will get you settled. Everyone leaves for the space elevator complex within the hour.”
Belinda searched the compound for Charlie and spotted him waiting in line to check in with a different official, offer his name and be told where to go.
“Ah, I see that you have morning meds coming,” the woman said. “That will be provided before your group departs. Are you feeling alright?”
“More or less,” said Belinda.
“Good. By the way, you qualified for Mars.”
Mars. Not the best, not the worst. In fact, there was still the possibility of terraforming on Mars. It might take generations to complete, but the point was that Mars had a future.
Charlie saw Belinda from his spot in line and offered a hesitant wave. She thought about him for a moment. What was he? Needy was the wrong word. He was the sort, she felt, who would find a way, sniff out the open space which was beyond the ‘line of fire’ every step of the way through life off Earth. He was a survivor. But there was something else. She couldn’t put her finger on it. Then she decided: Charlie would inevitably, from time to time, say something she’d never have thought of – something unique, funny, head-shaking. Whatever. He was as close to what she wanted to carry with her from Earth as anything.
“Belinda?”
The woman who had processed her and given Belinda the assignment motioned for her step aside so the next person in line could be handled. This was it. It might not work, but if she didn’t try, she would always wonder.
“What about the man I attached with?” Belinda finally said.
The small woman searched her records.
“I don’t have a pact with your name on it.”
Belinda looked back at Charlie once more.
“It might have gotten lost in the fight. We sealed the deal just before the shooting broke out. We have a right to our attachment.”
The woman was a little put out at the complication. Still, she followed through. Discussions between several officials took several minutes, during which both Belinda and Charlie were held away from their originally-designated groups. When the scrum of deciders finally broke, the woman with whom Belinda had previously been dealing approached.
“Your gentleman is schedule for Callisto. We’ll honor the attachment if you want, but only for both of you to depart for Callisto. On your own, it’s Mars.”
Chapter 18
At the age of fourteen, on the way to the church to attend the funeral of a grandmother she didn’t know very well, Belinda was counseled on the virtues of faith by an aunt who seemed to think she was still worth ‘saving’.
“There’s never any absolute proof. Faith is as much about trusting yourself to make the right decision as it is about trusting in some bigger than yourself.”
Belinda had winced at the thought. She wouldn’t admit it to anyone else, but she knew she didn’t have the self-confidence to trust herself. She tuned out the rest of her aunt’s sermon by pondering the question of why it should be expected of a girl her age to trust the things she was told and not allow doubt to push a wedge into her thinking.
The illusion of the loveliness of space elevators from a distance broke down once up-close reality kicked in. Arriving at the facility in a gaggle of transports, the final group of Omicronians and Upsilonians (which had been swept from the surrounding forest following the abrupt end to the Attachment Race) were faced with the humbling, gargantuan manmade contraptions. To pass through the tightly-guarded entry gate was to come face to face with an odor wafting off the tresanium cables which were an astounding thirty meters in radius.
Men with rough hands and dirty faces worked to cool the cables, extract the detritus from launch and put out any smoldering left on the ground. These men, which Belinda was seeing for the first time, were hanging onto Earth by virtue of a miserable job (not unlike the one Char
lie had before being ‘collected’). When the facility’s laborers could no longer move quickly from one lift to another and keep the elevators on schedule, they too would be sent away.
The sea-green luminosity of the cables stretching into space remained, but gone was the whimsy with which they had appeared for Belinda over most of her life.
Each lift was at least three hundred meters from its closest neighbor and the compartments hugging the central tresanium cable (which had appeared as dots shimmying up the sea-green thread from a distance) were gray and cube-shaped – practical, but completely uninspiring.
These cabins bottomed out at twenty meters above the ground. The platform necessary to raise passengers to board them did so slowly and with a sickening groan.
Belinda had opened her senses wide since leaving Upsilon for the final time on her way to the lift field. She took in every detail available – bugs and leaves, stones worn down to pebbles over years and blades of grass (especially blades of grass). She would always remember what a tree looked like from thirty paces. That was easy. But she was desperate to capture the little things. She wanted to be able to close her eyes for the remainder of her days and see the wrinkled skin of a broken twig resting on a blanket of pine needles. That kind of thing, she reasoned, was worthy of every effort – every brain cell available.
It was even more critical to remember these things now that Mars was out of the picture. To choose Charlie and accept life on Callisto had been a split-second decision.
Crazy to attach after only knowing someone for a few hours.
Yet she’d taken the plunge and was determined to never second guess her choice.
Watchers pulled in from various compounds directed foot traffic to keep everyone who was outbound on the right path. The colored disc hung from a wire around the neck of every departing soul made for quick and easy distribution among the dozens of lifts. Engaged with the enormity of the space elevators at close range, Belinda didn’t pay attention to the people around her other than to make sure she didn’t collide with someone.
