“Already?” I glanced up at the digital timer on the wall. It’d been only seven minutes. Security allowed each visitor to get a maximum of fifteen. “It’s still early.”
“I know, I’m sorry. I just haven’t been getting much sleep lately, and you came so late.”
It was difficult for me to regard her and not picture the vibrant woman who’d somehow managed to deal with all the shit I’d put her through, who’d cared for me since before I could walk. But she did seem exhausted.
“It’s fine,” I said. “I’ve got to start getting ready to sweep the floors at Old World Noodles soon anyway. I can’t wait.”
My mother wasn’t amused. “I really hope you reconsider the Piccolo,” she scolded. “I don’t want you to have to—”
“I know,” I stopped her. Sick or not, I could tell where she was going. “Wind up like my father. I promise I’m staying on the right side of the law still.” It stung my throat to force the lie out, but for her sake, I had to. She was frail enough without having to fear for my safety.
“Okay...” she said.
“I’ll be back first thing tomorrow,” I said. “Same time as usual if the lines aren’t bad.”
Her lips began to tremble, but she steadied them enough to speak. “You really don’t have to keep coming back every day.”
“I know that.” I forced another grin. “But I look forward to it from the moment I wake up. I really don’t mind it here. It’s nice and cold. I just wish the glass was gone.”
She muttered something under her breath. I expected my response to at least make her expression brighten a little, but all it managed to do was get her to angle her despondent gaze away from me.
“I love you, Mom,” I said.
“I love you too,” she replied before being beset by another bout of coughs. This time, she didn’t bother to let it pass. She just got up and shambled away into the Q-Zone without looking back.
I lingered for a minute while another Ringer with the same affliction limped in to take her place. This one was in far worse condition. His pale flesh was stippled with rashes, and he was skinny, even for a Ringer. His medical gown barely fit, allowing me to see ribs so visible they appeared like the keys of a xylophone. The poor man couldn’t have had more than a week left.
I rushed from the room. It took a lot out of me, visiting. I lumbered back through the decon-chamber, again waiting anxiously the entire time I was inside for me to come up clean. I did.
After I exited, the elderly receptionist cleared me, and only on her screen did I realize the time. My shift at Old World Noodles was starting in thirty minutes. I really needed to get a new hand-terminal so I could tell the time on my own. There was too much to do.
FOUR
“Where’ve you been, Drayton?” the manager of Old World Noodles asked me before I could even get through its entrance. The squat Earther wore a cross glare on his broad face and stood with his thick, hairy arms crossed. I could tell he was propped up on his toes to pretend he was taller than he was. Even then, I still had a good half-meter or more on him along with every other working Ringer scattered throughout the Uppers,
“Security was tight at decon,” I replied. “I couldn’t get through. It won’t happen again.” It was the best excuse I could come up with, if only because it was true. Sure, I should’ve left earlier, but there was no predicting that the Ringer ahead of me would be caught trying to smuggle something in and hold everyone up.
“Sure,” he replied, his voice dripping with skepticism.
“Mr. Belview, I—”
“Save it. You’re finished. There’re thousands of others like you in the Lowers who would kill for a job here. I’ve got no time for another lazy-ass Ringer. First to flee Earth, first to ditch a little bit of hard labor. Typical.”
He slammed the door in my face, leaving me with a bevy of additional excuses stuck on the tip of my tongue. Through the glass, I could see some of the patrons at the tables snicker.
My heart sank. Barely five minutes late and I was out of a cover job. I slowly backed away, deflated and wondering where to go next, when I bumped into something as solid as a boulder.
“Watch it, Ringer!”
I caught my balance and whipped my body around. My gaze dropped to see a security officer in full red-and-black Pervenio regalia. Unlike me, our collision didn’t affect him in the slightest, both due to his stocky build and a weighted boiler suit calibrated to help him acclimate to the low, one-seventh Earth-g conditions on Titan. The tinted visor of his sleek helmet aimed directly at my face, and he gripped the handle of his sheathed shock-baton a little too comfortably for my taste.
I decided to move on quickly.
I was in the ground level of the central atrium at the heart of Darien’s Upper Ward, so if I caused even a hint of trouble, there’d be more Earthers on me in a second than I could count.
Before I took the job on the Piccolo, the Uppers wasn’t a place I often found myself, and even afterward, I rarely did more than pass through on my way to the docks. Ringers like me couldn’t afford most of what was sold there anyway, so there was rarely a reason to linger.
Besides the serious risk of sickness, I found it too bright, with countless ads lining the pure white walls. And definitely too loud. The airy spaces allowed you to hear voices and advertisements echoing from every direction. They all wound up muddled together into a frantic commotion far less melodious than the hum of Lowers machinery.
It was also hot. Just standing around made sweat leak from every pore. The Uppers were constantly heated to around fifteen degrees Celsius to remain comfortable for its mostly Earther populace. Way too warm for my blood. On the Piccolo, everywhere but the Ringer dorms was kept to the liking of Earthers, so I’d grown somewhat used to dealing with it, but it was always nice when I got to return home to a bed where I actually needed covers.
What I found most discomforting about the Uppers, though, was how spotless everything was. Not that I particularly enjoyed staring at the rusty, grated ceilings and ice-rock-carved walls characteristic of the Lowers, but everything seemed too perfect. I couldn’t even find a wrinkle in the uniforms of patrolling security officers—whose prevalence also didn’t help put me at ease. No matter which direction I looked, there were at least two in sight for every Ringer hard at work performing janitorial jobs similar to the one I’d just lost.
It’d been like that since I could remember, but things had been growing worse ever since the Titan-wide riots that occurred while I was away. Pervenio kept it off Solnet, but I’d heard that three security officers wound up beaten to death in the Ziona Colony Block on the other side of Titan during the latest M-day. Things always got heated between our races around that day—when Earthers reveled as if they’d conquered the universe just because Earth wasn’t dead—yet in other years, people rarely died of anything but their own carelessness.
The holiday never really bothered me much. Earth was barely more than a series of old tales and pictures as far as I was concerned. I knew I’d never step foot there. Earthers had their unifying holiday just like we Ringers had Trass Day, named after the man who built the ship that carried our ancestors to the Ring before the Meteorite nearly extinguished all life on Earth. It was celebrated November 10, when they are said to have first touched down on Titan in the year 2036.
Trass’s towering statue, which rose through the center of the atrium, was the only visible thing in the Upper Ward that remained untouched from before the Earthers arrived and the Ringer Plague left them in charge of renovation. It depicted Darien Trass on his final day on Earth, standing beside a little girl as they pointed toward the sky. The base was surrounded by real plants with frilly pink flowers that were still slick from being watered. A plaque embedded on it read: HE GAVE HIS LIFE TO GIVE US THIS RING.
The ship he built to escape the Meteorite had limited space, and only the most qualified people were permitted to board. It’s said that the girl beside him was his daughter and that he sacrificed his position o
n his ship so that she could go, even though she didn’t meet the requirements. He chose to sacrifice himself rather than any of the other three thousand passengers, none of whom had done much to make the exodus possible. I don’t know many people who would’ve done the same. He could’ve been King of Titan if he’d wanted. Instead, his line merely became one of the many families that helped establish the Ring in the centuries that followed. The last of them were said to have died during the plague following the Great Reunion.
I took a seat on the bench beside the memorial so that I could gather my thoughts. It was my favorite spot in the Uppers for that, not that it had much competition. Trass gave his life to save what he thought would be the last remnants of humanity. Surely he wouldn’t have sulked after missing out on a job at Old World freaking Noodles.
I tried to imagine myself being happy working in the Uppers for the rest of my life like my mother had. It wasn’t all bad. Many of the generous walkways were lined with planters like the one around the memorial, displaying all manner of colorful flora that had supposedly thrived outside on Pre-Meteorite Earth. It was a bit pretentious, but I’d always been fond of plants. We didn’t have them in the Lowers. Translucencies cut into the dense enclosure of the Darien Colony Block permitted the whitish glow of Titan’s sky to shine through as well. Down in the Lowers, we never got to see any real sunlight.
I looked around the atrium. There were plenty of other jobs I could apply for. Employers were always looking for Ringers who had experience working amicably with Earthers to do the jobs that Earthers didn’t want to do. I had that. And I was happy to accept the low wages. They were still higher than what I could make in the Lowers or at the hydro-farms performing similarly menial tasks, since most Ringers refused to take work in a place mobbed with Earthers.
My confidence renewed, I went to stand. A Ring-wide Pervenio transmission suddenly popped up on every ad and view-screen in the atrium. The image of Director Sodervall—the voice of Pervenio Corp throughout the Ring—appeared all around me.
I approached the largest view-screen in sight. A crowd formed around it. Earthers, Ringers, everyone stopped what they were doing. It wasn’t often he publicly addressed the entirety of the Ring, so when the Voice of the Ring spoke, everybody listened. He typically spoke of unrest or a new policy, but today, he appeared extra cheerful, although that wasn’t saying much. His craggy lips seemed to be permanently stretched into a thin, straight line.
“People of the Ring!” Director Sodervall began. “Why should we remain divided? Why should we bicker and brawl? Recent troubles on Earth have inspired our great benefactor, Mr. Luxarn Pervenio, to petition the United Sol Federation to reconsider its position on the Departure. Under his proposal, all offworlders, including those from Titan, will be permitted to enter their names in the Departure Lottery, provided they are healthy and have received all available immunizations. The USF Assembly’s vote will be held next week, on November 10. Soon the fight to ensure our survival will rest in all of our hands!”
A palpable ripple of discontent passed across the entirety of the Upper Ward. The Earthers sitting at a nearby bar grumbled under their breath. I heard one mutter, “Mr. Pervenio is losing his mind,” and another, “Great—next they’ll name one of the Ringers king, and we’ll wind up bowing to him. You’ll see.”
Talking heads appeared on the screens to discuss the announcement. Every Ringer in my vicinity stopped what they were doing and ignored their bosses’ shouts for them to return to work. It was hard to get a read on any of their expressions with their masks on, but many of the eyes I saw bled with contempt. Just like mine were.
The Departure was the main reason the majority of my people hated M-day, but it wasn’t because they were upset they couldn’t participate in the Lottery to win a place on an Ark-ship bound for the stars. It was because they believed that there was no reason to spend billions of credits on sending a ship beyond any realistic means of contact—that the Departure was a mockery of what Darien Trass had accomplished under the stress of a meteorite bearing down on Earth.
I’d never concerned myself with that before. If Earth-born citizens wanted to brave space, I was happy there’d be fewer of them. And yet, the Director’s line about requiring “all available immunizations” caused the hairs on the back of my neck to stand on end and my teeth to grind. I knew firsthand how that essentially discounted 99 percent of Ringers, who if they’d been able to afford them, would obviously have sprung their loved ones from quarantine. It was like spitting in our faces. And holding the vote on the 10th, Trass Day, was just rubbing it in.
“Better off sending them all to Earth,” I heard one of the Pervenio security officers beside me whisper to his partner. “Maybe some real gravity will teach them to be human again.”
His partner snickered. “It’d solve our problem, that’s for sure.”
My fists clenched. I turned to face them, but before I could do anything impulsive, a bottle sailed across the atrium from somewhere behind me and smashed into the view-screen above. The impact was so loud that it sounded like a gunshot. Terrified screams rang out as I was showered in sparks.
“Keep your damn Lottery!” a voice hollered.
“Trass chose us!” shouted another.
“The Children of Titan already have a home!”
The ring of flowering plants wrapping the base of the Trass Memorial suddenly went up in flames. Then, while I stood frozen, the situation escalated beyond anything I’d ever experienced in the Uppers. A group of Ringer workers grabbed the security officer beside me and beat him with his own baton. They stole the pulse-rifle off his back and fired it at the officers attempting to subdue them.
The earsplitting sound of shouts and gunfire made my head spin. I was in the center of it all. I didn’t know what to do besides cover my ears until someone grabbed my arm. There was no telling how I would’ve reacted if the touch hadn’t been so tender.
“Kale, you’ve got to get out of here!” a woman yelled into my ear.
I turned my head and saw Cora. Her eyes were so close to mine and open so wide I could see all the myriad shades of blue encircling her pupils. I’d seen images of Neptune on view-screens, and even they couldn’t compare.
“Kale!” she repeated. I snapped out of my daze and ran with her. Security officers raced by us toward the fray, and I lowered my head so they wouldn’t notice my mask-covered face. It seemed pointless, considering how tall and lanky I was, but it worked.
We went as fast as we could. Blood-curdling screams and the sound of skulls cracking echoed across the Uppers as an endless stream of Pervenio security officers reestablished control. By the time we reached the lift down to the Lowers, I was so drenched in sweat it looked like I’d just been swimming. Groups of officers were positioned at every corner inside, wielding pulse-rifles now rather than batons. I leaned against the wall to catch my breath as we began to descend. Cora stood next to me. The heat hadn’t left her nearly as exhausted.
She leaned in so that nobody would hear her. “What were you doing up there?” she asked crossly, as if I’d done something wrong.
I thought about asking her the same thing, but I knew the answer. There was a reason the heat didn’t bother her, and it was the same reason she wasn’t wearing a sanitary mask or gloves: She was a hybrid in the truest sense of the word. Her mother was a Ringer dating back to the first settlers like mine, but she’d been impregnated with Cora by some vagrant Earther who’d forced himself on her. Ringer mothers unfortunate enough to have to endure that abuse typically died of illness before they could give birth, so Cora was a rarity. As such, she was embraced by my people and had a strong enough immune system to be willing to spend time in the Uppers.
Being mixed-race also meant she had a unique look to her, which only made her more stunning. Her neck was long and shapely, the way pretty Ringer girls’ were, but she was shorter than most and slightly curvier. She was also abnormally reticent for one of us. A majority of the Ringer girls I k
new growing up were excessively outgoing, at least amongst their own kind.
I’d heard that before the Great Reunion, sex on Titan was as ordinary as conversation. Being crammed into tight, freezing living quarters when the Ring was first settled had had that effect on our ancestors. No longer. Monogamous relationships between Ringers was the way now. Sticking with someone you knew was safe went a long way toward avoiding quarantine. Honestly, the whole topic made me anxious. It was easy for Earthers, who with their vast clan-families didn’t have to worry about finding somebody, since it was usually arranged. Sometimes, I worried I was the only Ringer my age I knew who hadn’t already shacked up permanently with another person.
“Just passing through,” was what I managed to say after an extended period of silence. Seeing her outside of the Piccolo once was a rarity; twice in one day had me tongue-tied.
“Same,” she said. “Trass, I didn’t expect that. What’s Pervenio thinking?”
“Probably that they’re helping,” I said.
“Yeah.”
We stood in silence for the rest of the ride. Her being timid and me being nervous just from sharing her air made for a painfully awkward combo. The lift stopped at Level B3, and I followed her off, even though I had nothing to do there.
Outside of the central lift, we were greeted by a ring of decon-chambers. I thanked Trass everyone had to pass through them alone. I think I would’ve fainted if I’d gotten into one with Cora and had to watch her strip down.
I stepped out of mine—clean, thankfully—and then an alarm suddenly wailed behind me.
“Contagion detected,” an automated voice repeated over and over.
One of the chambers blinked red and Ringers throughout the node gathered to watch. Officers in hazmat suits ran through transparent halls stringing the decon-chambers together, and a short while later, I heard screams as a woman was dragged into an auxiliary lift. I didn’t get a clear look at who she was.
I searched the crowd in a panic but didn’t see Cora anywhere. Strong immune system or not, she looked enough like a Ringer, and that was a one-way ticket to quarantine, even if she’d probably survive it.
Children of Titan Series: Books 1-4: (A Space Opera Thriller Box Set) Page 28
