The Singing Wind and The Golden Hour

by Nicole Feldringer

  The Singing Wind and The Golden Hour

  Nicole Feldringer

  July 1, 2018 Volume 8 No 9

  The Singing Wind and the Golden Hour

  by Nicole Feldringer

  "They're calling it Valles Fever." The words came from the nursing station, on the other side of Abe's curtained-off area. "Five more admitted today." Kala shifted in the hard chair, rotating the discomfort to a new part of her body.

  Abe's breathing hitched. Kala's feet hit the floor, and she scooted towards him. Her fingers picked at the sheets, smoothing them, wanting to smooth his hair then feeling silly for the impulse. Imagining him laughing at her.

  Laughter was better than the convulsions that had overcome him on the outskirts of town that morning. Kala had been scrambling over the yardang rock formations that served as natural windbreaks for the colony, waiting for the golden hour, the perfect shot, while Abe collected biological samples for Martian ecosystem monitoring. It was his first real job out of Lyceum, and Kala wanted his success more than she had ever wanted her own.

  As the first rays of sunlight grazed the tops of the ridges, Kala raced to capture the landscape before the radio operator raised the main antenna, retracted since the last windstorm. The antenna mast's shadow corrugated across the yardangs, destroying the illusion of wilderness.

  They said the wind used to sing as it constricted between the yardangs, before humans caulked the spaces with their civilization. Kala never heard the whisper of a song, despite hours spent photographing the landscape--futilely, since in the two years since her graduation she had blown her first and last opportunity at exhibiting her work. Maybe if she hadn't been brooding over experiences she would never have, Kala might have noticed Abe's illness sooner. But by the time she had packed away her camera and tugged her gloves over chapped hands, he had already tumbled nose-first into his precious soil.

  Kala's gaze traced the IV tube to the bag hanging from its stand. "How do you feel?" she asked.

  He swallowed. "Woozy. I've never stayed overnight in a hospital before."

  "Your fever was really high."

  Abe started to nod, then winced. "Where's my dad?"

  Kala grimaced. "Call with the insurance company." To distract him, she added, "I overheard the nurses talking about an outbreak. Other people with the same symptoms."

  Before Abe could respond, the curtain rings rattled, and Abe's father joined them. Kala shifted over to make room. "Good news," he said, not meeting their eyes. "You're being discharged today."

  "They can't just send him home," Kala said. "He's still sick. Are they discharging all the other cases too?"

  "His grandmother will care for him while I'm at the construction site," Abe's father said. "He'll be more comfortable in his own bed."

  "It's not right," Kala said stubbornly. Abe charmed everyone in the neighborhood, and she was sure their kitchen would be filled with tamales, dumplings, and casseroles by sunset. But. "They have drugs here. Doctors."

  "They say he's not contagious anymore, and there's nothing more they can do for him. Just drop it, Kala. Please."

  "Guys, I'm right here," Abe protested.

  "They can't just send everyone home." Kala hated the ragged edge of tears in her voice. She plucked again at the sheets. They were starched to scratchiness. Her best friend had collapsed before her eyes, and the doctors were just going to toe the line of corporate greed set by the insurance company? Send him home with instructions to drink fluids and rest?

  "I'm sure they're working on a vaccine," Abe's father said as he helped his son sit upright. The nurse appeared, pushing a wheelchair. Kala backed up and was engulfed in the curtain as they maneuvered Abe off the bed. "This will be over before you know it."

  A package waited outside her apartment. Kala wrestled with the lock and nudged the parcel inside, leaving it on the floor by the door. Her feet sank into the luxurious pile of carpet--a Mars reproduction of a family heirloom left on Earth, and the sole gift she had accepted from her mother when she moved out--as she crossed the room to flop on the bed. Kala rooted around the sheets until she found her screen. She ignored the blinking message from her mother. A trap closing around Kala, demanding her attention. It could keep demanding, and she would keep ignoring.

  Kala settled in to pour over the Marsnet for information on Valles Fever. Most hits were public expressions of worry or sympathy. A few curated reassurances from the Disease Control Center about progress on the vaccine, carefully worded so the DCC made no promise of progress, only effort. Nothing she trusted, nothing she could use. Kala left requests on forum after forum and was rewarded hours later when someone responded from a burner account: First death confirmed in the Warrens.

  Kala sat up and punched out who? with sweaty fingers.

  Nothing.

  She messaged Abe. Again, nothing. Kala prayed his silence meant he was sleeping, or that his grandmother had confiscated his screen to force him to rest. She checked once more for breaking news, but the Marsnet was useless. She would have to do her own footwork. Before folding up her screen, she finally clicked the blinking message from her mother. Did you get the package I sent? Do stay away from the Warrens.

  Kala crawled out of her nest of blankets and dragged the package back into bed with her. She stared down at the sealed box in her lap. Her mother, who wouldn't step a pedicured toe outside her late-gen neighborhood, had inexplicable taste in gifts. Like the fancy lizard Kala had refused on account of her apartment's no-pet policy. If it had been a convoluted ploy to get Kala to move back home, it hadn't worked.

  Kala peeled the flaps back. Inside the box was a top-of-the-line face mask. Meanwhile the DCC denied they had a potential epidemic on their hands. Right.

  I got it, she typed back. Thanks. She set her screen aside and untangled herself from the sheets. As she left the apartment, she tucked the face mask into her satchel next to her camera.

  Kala let gravity lead her downhill to the Warrens where the streets twisted and dead-ended at the edge of the planitia. The neighborhood was the least sheltered part of the colony, and the most densely populated as first-gen families were pushed to the fringes of livable space. If rumors were true about the number of new ships being built on Earth, it would become even more crowded. Their colony population was projected to hit six digits before the new year.

  The door of the Petridis family apartment was tagged with graffiti. Kala scowled and pressed the buzzer. The few people on the street stared at her suspiciously as she waited, like she hadn't been coming here since their first day at Lyceum where Abe won a lottery to attend and Kala didn't have to.

  Kala's mother had been less than enthused about the broadened enrollment. "I don't want you spending too much time with the first-genners," she said after asking where Kala had been after school. "What's the boy's name again?"

  "Abe Petridis."

  Her mother's lips stayed pursed. "I suppose it would be to your benefit for some Earth culture to rub off on you. If you must socialize, I prefer you bring your friend here."

  A preference was not the same as an order though Kala would have ignored that as well. Abe's grandmother, who had worked for the Korean space program before marrying Abe's grandfather in California, had promised to take them exploring the next day, and Kala had a new camera to practice with. Meeting at Abe's after class had fast become tradition.

  Finally, the video camera mounted above Abe's door focused on Kala's face. Kala twisted her fingers, sweaty digits sliding past one another. At the hospital, Abe had at least been receiving medical attention. What if his condition had worsened since coming home? And why were the streets so empty? Even the homeless man who statione
d himself on this block was nowhere to be seen.

  "How's he doing?" Kala blurted when Abe's grandmother cracked open the door. Behind Halmoni, a pot simmered on the stove.

  Halmoni wiped her hands on her apron. "He's not allowed visitors. Go home, Kala, until this blows over." She glanced past Kala, up and down the street. "It's not safe for you to be out."

  The door slid shut in front of her nose. Kala blinked at it. No one had complained when she visited him at the hospital. So, he must have relapsed. She pressed her fingertips to her face and tried not to hyperventilate. Halmoni was making soup. Halmoni was not panicking. Abe was okay.

  Kala dithered on Abe's stoop and buttoned her jacket to her chin. The streets were quiet, everyone cooped up with their fear. Grooming it into something dark and twisted. She hoped Halmoni would tell Abe she had stopped by.

  Her attention was again caught by the empty doorway to the undercity. The pavement there was stained with saliva and mucus. Had the first casualty of Valles Fever been someone like the old street man? He could die and not be named, possibly not even counted. Whereas if it were someone from the neighborhood where she grew up, someone like her mother, the news would be splashed across every media outlet. From the rumors Kala had heard of the undercity, it sounded like just the sort of place that could spark an outbreak.

  The vacant opening beckoned to her. The DCC wasn't making any headway in identifying the source of the outbreak, and if it was anyone other than Abe she would have been satisfied with kvetching on the Marsnet. But it was Abe. The one person who persisted in believing in her when she gave him no reason. She owed it to him to discover what was being covered up.

  Kala fumbled in her satchel for the face mask. She drew the mask over her face, adjusting the strap so it didn't pull her hair, and crossed the alley. She peered down into the passage.

  Was she really going to do this? She had never been to the undercity, of course, but it couldn't be sanitary down there, and when had her inner voice started sounding like her mother? Some part of her was screaming that she was making a colossally stupid mistake, but she had plenty experience ignoring that feeling--just ask Nasreen.

  The gallery owner had called in favors and reporters and caterers, and as opening day approached, Kala hadn't been able to look at her photographs much less send them to the printer. Instead, she drank herself to oblivion in her apartment, which is where Abe found her. "Why would you do this?" He chucked a bouquet on her table. Neither of them made a move as the greenhouse flowers slid over the edge and onto the floor.

  The prospect of Abe dying was far more terrifying than visiting the undercity or bailing on her own exhibition. Kala took a deep breath and ducked into the stairwell. This was not why her mother had sent her the mask, she was certain.

  Her exhalation condensed on her face, trapped by the mask, as she felt her way into the subterranean reaches that had sheltered the original colonists, Kala's great-grandparents among them. She kept her eyes wide open, afraid to blink, but the black was so complete that after a while, she couldn't tell if her eyes were open or closed. Her fingers quested along the carved rock wall.

  It was like a tomb down here. No wonder folks stayed away if they could. Her boots scraped on the rock as she felt for each step. Kala glanced over her shoulder. The doorway to the Warrens seemed very far away. She swallowed and turned, the threshold ghosting on her vision. She descended a few more steps before she realized the faint light came from below.

  She hesitated, imagining the scene she would encounter in the undercity. Like the hospital but so much worse without doctors or nurses or painkillers. Kala forced herself to take another step forward, then another, until finally, she stumbled to level ground at the mouth of a cavern.

  Instead of pestilence, she encountered order. A camp stretched before her, each neat grid filled with sleeping bags and cookware. A couple of rows back, a princess canopy had been erected out of pink tulle. Lamps like will-o'-the-wisps served as irregular gathering points. Faces lifted to stare as she passed.

  In her cleanish clothes and face mask--not even willing to breathe their air--Kala was certain she had hit peak interloper. Whispers coalesced in her wake. Surface dweller. She walked on, no longer sure what she was even doing down here. People seemed healthy. Dirty and distrustful, but this was no hospital. Kala raised a hand to lift her mask but was interrupted by a bout of coughing.

  She followed the sound to the old man who hung out across from Abe's apartment. Not dead then. He sat on a three-legged stool, elbows resting on his knees. "Enough with that look," he said. "I've had this cough forever. From working in the mines. You won't be catching Valles Fever down here."

  Kala pushed the mask up. Cold air pricked her face.

  "I know you," the old man said. "The friend of the Petridis boy. I'm Malcolm. What brings you to the undercity?"

  "Kala," she introduced herself, nonplussed that he knew Abe's surname. She cast around for a place to sit, but she couldn't tell what was trash and what might be precious to him. "Do you mind if I ...?" He waved assent, and she folded herself to a spot of bare ground, wrapping her arms around her legs. The cold leeched through her layers, and Malcolm's cackle sent him into another coughing fit.

  She said, "There are rumors someone died from Valles Fever, and when I didn't see you around, I started worrying. About what was going on down here."

  His bushy eyebrows rose. "Worried about us? More like worried about yourself. Or your friend?"

  Kala flushed, thinking of all the times she had passed him by without so much as making eye contact. She was discomforted to realize how much her own past actions had been shaped by his lack of social capital. "Yeah, well, I am worried about Abe, and I'm angry no one is doing anything to stop the spread of the fever. They think it's just a problem for the Warrens."

  "So you're doing a little investigating. Gonna solve the mystery of the outbreak on your own?" He rubbed his hands together. "You won't find answers in the undercity. We're healthy as houses, it's the air above that's bad. Mark my words, more will fall sick after the next dust storm."

  Malcolm's words haunted her all the way back to the surface. If the undercity wasn't ground zero for infection, then where was?

  The wind grew in intensity throughout the day, and Kala stuffed more weatherproofing beneath her apartment door. The forecast was calling for a moderate storm. A few weeks of fighting back the dust, of pacing the interior corridors of her district. Already Kala's fingers itched to hold her camera. To stand atop the yardang and watch the storm roll in, even though she knew it was too dangerous. Dust abraded skin as well as camera lenses.

  Such a stunt might have been possible before Mars was terraformed and the artificial magnetosphere installed. Then, the dust storms had been more dusty than stormy. Now that Mars had a denser atmosphere, the winds were worse. At least they weren't forecasting a global storm like the one that hit when she and Abe were in Lyceum. All of Mars had been shut down for months though their teachers had of course assigned independent study projects.

  Kala finished the weatherproofing. The wall she shared with her neighbor shook as something struck it from the other side, and a framed picture fell to the floor. She rolled her eyes and unfolded her screen. The intracolony portion of the Marsnet was still operational and a welcome distraction from stir-crazy neighbors. She settled on her bed and messaged Abe.

  How are you?

  Kala chewed her lip as she waited for a response, wondering how far Halmoni's no-visitors edict extended.

  Bored. How's the storm in your sector?

  A grin spread across her face. Bored was good. Bored was not dying. Stormy. Neighbors are loud.

  Kala's fingers hovered above the screen. Abe's degree was in biology, and she wanted his input on Malcolm's theory but didn't want to sound like she was doling out unwanted medical advice. Hey, have you heard anyone talking about a correlation between Valles Fever and air quality?

  I don't hear anyone talking about much of an
ything, he wrote. Air quality like how?

  Don't know. Something having to do with the dust.

  Sure, the infection could be airborne, but why now? The dust storms were here long before we were. They're nothing new.

  Kala rolled onto her stomach. So if I figure out what's changed, maybe I can identify the source of the outbreak?

  May not be an obvious factor, he wrote. Could be something that's been in the environment all along but is now more virulent, or we're more susceptible.

  Still, it's a place to start. It's not like I'm doing anything else.

  Good luck. Let me know what you find.

  Kala closed her messages. Illogically, she wished the DCC would share the specifics of the confirmed cases, so she could map incidences, but it would be a privacy-law nightmare. Whatever the source of the infection, it had to be local to the Warrens. There still hadn't been a single case reported elsewhere. She opened the news and started reading.

  When the wind finally died, Kala's eyes were gritty with lack of sleep. Her hand throbbed from hitting refresh, but not enough to stop. Confirmed cases of Valles Fever were spiking. The disease was still confined to the Warrens, but reports were frustratingly vague, statistics and travel advisories mixed in with real estate development updates.

  Numbly, Kala shoved her screen across the bed. Malcolm and his friends would be safe in the undercity, and her mother was probably wearing a facemask inside her apartment, just in case, but where did that leave the Warrens? Screwed, by a quirk of the wind.

  Kala reached to clear the screen, hesitating mid-swipe over an article about the housing development project. It was just a blurb, really. No mention of why construction was halted, machinery damaged by wind or needing excavation by dust. There were so many possible reasons for the continued shutdown of construction that the lack of explanation in itself was peculiar. She rested her chin in her hand.